Defold Forum

[Jenni Israelsen]

Ihad many problems to understand shaders, but after getting a grasp - it is so easy, convenient and powerful! I present to you my twisted version of understanding shaders, hoping it will help other aspiring devs

In a 3D engine (like Defold is) everything visual is a bunch of points (vertices). They are transformed from 3D space to a 2D screen space like a camera captures a 2D image of a real 3D world. From those points we can specify some basic geometrical shapes (primitives), imagine retro style 3D:

You must try something in order to stop being afraid of that thing. You must face that monster before it hits you. But when it hits you, you will probably blink in white (games are teaching!)

We will make that effect in shaders, but normally it will be more efficient to just tell your graphic designer (or yourself) to merely draw that one frame in white, ok? Although such exercise will teach you:

Create an empty project in Defold with a sprite.

Add an image - make an atlas and add that image into it. Add game object with sprite to your collection and set sprite image and a default animation to your new image. Do I need to describe it? ? It is probably a thing you did a dozen times in Defold

What we have toyed with is the idea of really short (max 5 minute) tutorials/videos showing hands on use of Defold, focusing on a single feature, concept, component or thing. I think this would make it more manageable and it can be created when we have some time to spare in between other tasks.

@britzl I think that community tutorials and vlogs like Brackeys, GFS, Thomas Brush or Black Thornpod have are awesome, something like this for Defold would mean a lot - you know, generic gamedev topics explained, but with addition of Defold examples

It would be helpful if this tutorial or another addressed how to use var_texcoord0 because this has peculiarities to defold. In particular, it would be easier for new users if they were aware of:

There was interest for hypercasual games (myself included). Maybe this is another thing Defold could be best at? The best engine for hypercasual games for mobile, html5. Consider adding a couple of playable hypercasual sample games with AdMob and app purchases already configured.

Consider adding a template with AdMob and app purchases configured. Add another one for Facebook instant games, and/or Poki, with SDK or extensions necessary. Configure the desktop game template for Steam, or/and Epic Games store? The idea will be to have project templates that are almost ready for release, you just need to add your gameplay (easy!). Combined with 1-click builds and you are good to go to release your game.

Consider adding top/must have extensions into the templates (camera? input? monarch? gooey? rich text?). Then show links to short tutorials how to use them in the readme once the project opens. This is for beginners. Experienced guys would have their own templates anyway, or could start from the empty project.

Beginner tutorials: Byte-sized examples that cover 1-2 topics each. Phaser is a great example - 1000+ examples. Phaser has super outdated website (getting started guide is for VS 2013), documentation seems to be outdated too, but they do have a ton of examples with the search. Each example with a running demo at the top of the page and screenshots, code snippets at the bottom.

Intermediate tutorials: Small examples with best practices, must have lua modules, performance tips. When to use collections vs game objects? Best practices how to organize them? Code snippets? Same layout: demo at the top, screenshots and code at the bottom.

There are ZERO Defold tutorials on Udemy. Keeping in mind that there are almost no breaking changes the tutorials will be up to date for a few years. No maintenance passive income for anyone interested

and look very similar, probably even competing with each other. There are a few pieces of info that I believe deserve to be on the home page. Engine size on different platforms is definitely one of the main selling points of Defold. It could be an image or an interactive chart that appears with animation.

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I tried to make my own lighting, and to me to worst thing i had to deal with was that i couldnt see it working in the editor. As i stated in other times before, i think that it could be solved by just compiling the scripts in the editor, like unity does.

Our intention is not for defold to be a 2D only engine. We are investing more into 3D support, and I just want to reiterate that voting for issues on GitHub will increase chances for a specific feature to be worked on we do have roughly 1k issues but at least I personally want to push 3D features as much as I can!

It is often stated that Defold is not meant to compete with other engines which focus more heavily on building 3D games. However, in the past year or so from my perspective, it seems as though the amount of questions and effort being put into building 3D games with Defold has increased drastically. I say this based on the activity I see on the forums, in Discord, and in the occasional engine new release threads.

To get to the point, it feels like there is a little too much effort going into implementing 3D support that could be much better spent working on the 2D side of things. It is honestly a little bit sad to see creators trying to build their 3D visions in Defold. They probably have never used an engine that is better suited for that, so they just decide to stick with Defold since learning a new technology can be annoying for a while.

Focusing the vast majority of resources on developing Defold for only 2D games really seems like the better option here, for both competition with other engines and giving developers a top notch engine to build their ideas.

The goal of this thread is to spark conversation and interesting ideas, not to express contempt with the Defold Team! Defold, its community, and its development Team are awesome and I believe the community and frequent interactions play a major role in its success.

Defold is very lean and stable. It is especially suitable for web and mobile games. There are certain kinds of 3D games which Defold can easily and reasonable handle which can do well on the markets. Certainly for big AA or AAA no one should think of using Defold, but for lowfi/retro leaning 3D games Defold is a viable tool with it being nearly viable for many other kinds of games within the PSX/PS2 eras.

I have experience with other engines. If I am making a 3D hyper casual game I would choose Defold over Unreal every single time. Tools like Unreal have way too much extra baggage for these kinds of projects. Even Godot or Unity are not as ideal as Defold in this market segment yet people choose them often anyway.

A big difference is Defold is open. Anyone can improve it to their desires even despite what the Defold team does to improve the product. So if someone really wants a specific feature they should make the effort to implement it.

As a 2D fan, I kind of agreed with the first post and was tempted to chime in accordingly. I did however think there was some nuance I was probably missing, and so I refrained. I think @Pkeod has provided that now.

True. This is not our goal, and it never will be. We will not compete with Unity, Unreal or perhaps even Godot in the 3D space. It is much too crowded and fiercely competitive. I have said this numerous times here and elsewhere.

However, in the past year or so from my perspective, it seems as though the amount of questions and effort being put into building 3D games with Defold has increased drastically. I say this based on the activity I see on the forums, in Discord, and in the occasional engine new release threads.

I agree. We are definitely seeing more interest in 3D. I believe a lot of this comes from the release of the Mesh component in Defold 1.2.169, released almost exactly one year ago. The mesh component is one of those low level but super flexible components that can be used for so many things. It is a perfect example of the kind of building blocks we prefer to provide. It is not super easy to use but it opens up sooooo many opportunities for cool 3D and 2D features.

BUT I am also extremely sceptical of a template project such as the one you are referring to. It sounds great when you read the label on the box, but is it actually something that will hold up in the long run? Can it be used in production or will you have to spend a lot of time patching and fixing up things?

Focusing the vast majority of resources on developing Defold for only 2D games really seems like the better option here, for both competition with other engines and giving developers a top notch engine to build their ideas

Are we really encouraging users like this? I think we are usually pretty clear on the messaging around the capabilities of Defold and it is definitely not our intention to mislead anyone. And I appreciate if you call me out if I get too excited about 3D! And I do get excited when I see developers create stuff like this:

Firstly, I agree entirely with @Pkeod and @britzl. Defold is, in its own right, a 3D rendering engine - not a 2D one. And Defold does do well to stay a 2D_game engine. Please notice the emphasis on rendering and game notation of the engine type.

Defold is an open framework and this is very different to a closed source game engine. Godot is somewhat comparable, but again I think its in a different space than Defold (for a number of rather complex reasons which I will explain).

OpenGLES is a toolkit and api as well. And yes you could just use that. However, Im assuming you know about and understand native-plugins in Defold. With OpenGLES in a native-plugin you can use all the 3D you want within the scripting of Defold objects, and I often also use properties in Defold objects to set and call 3D features - so it is quite easy to use 3D, its a matter of just spending time learning how to do it.

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