Question for those who are into mobile game dev: unity is still a shitshow or they just quit the idea of charging for each install ? Trying to choose a game engine and I have no f clue what to choose for a 2.5d platformer

Pick something else, Unity will try to fuck you over again for sure.

@ars1 so what’s the next engine that can be used ? Godot ?

@Draedus Godot is more performant in 2D. So if you doing 2.5D with 2D graphics that's the clear winner imo

If you going for 3D then I guess Godot is still good enough since Godot 4 or you could try Unreal or some of the newer, less known ones

Unity rolled back their bullshit policy, but the problem was not the policy itself, rather, it's how they broke customer trust. As @ars1 said, who can tell *when* (not if) they'll do it again?

There is a lot of discussion on 2.5D on r/godot. I think Unity doesn't actually have a native 2D from what I have read (heard they are using 3D but making it look 2D or something). While Godot started with 2D and is adding 3D. From what I have played with in 3D and 2D in Godot is really nice.

I don't really understand completely how 2.5D works. Is it 2D with extra steps? Is it 3D made to look 2D?

@CoreFusionX they fired the dude in charge, but the entire board went along with the messed up policies to begin with. So same people, different day. Its too bad to see this happen. Unity is a pretty cool engine.

@Demolishun 2.5d is actually 3d platformer. It's 2d with some depth in it.

I started doing godot. Hope won't hit a wall using it.

@CoreFusionX True. Wanted to give them a chance, but also I don't want to be f**ed after the product is released. So in the end I choose godot. Seems open source, community friendly and see no problems in using it

@Draedus they have r/godot and somewhere they have a forum. I search for stuff in the subreddit to find answers before posting questions. A lot of git repos to solve specific problems.

Last night I downloaded a random level generator. It would randomly generate and entire platformer level in one of the examples.

@Draedus If you're using Discord, join the Game Dev Network server. They have rooms on all the popular engines and the community is awesome and very helpful. The Godot channel is decently active, I lurk there and help people from time to time too :)

I tried to get into game dev often but it always felt so overwhelming, so I never got very far past making a few butt ugly samples. Have any of you guys successfully pulled something fun and interesting in your own?

@ars1

It is overwhelming, but most of the heavy lifting nowadays is done by the engines.

I always found back then that most indie gamedevs struggled when it came to the enemy AI and with networking.

Because of course, those two are complete fields on their own.

Fortunately, both unity and UE offer you rather complete solutions in that sense, as long as you don't require anything super custom, reading, you won't be able to make a MMO, or counter strike bots, but can pull a typical diablo-like or fps no problem.

@CoreFusionX UE was so much fun to use, though the learning curve is a bit steep. I’d love to dive right back into it with UE5 and see what I can do. Assets are a pain though, though I saw a lot of progress in 3D modeling and animation tools for small teams and amateurs. Maybe after I get through my tensor flow and PyTorch courses I’ll dive back in.