Defold For Unity Developers
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- čas přidán 10. 09. 2024
- If you are a Unity developer looking for a new game engine, you should certainly consider the Defold Game Engine. This is especially true if you are creating a 2D or 2.5D game for mobile devices or web browsers. It is a quite different engine from what you are used to, but as you will see from this video its a very elegant solution with a ton of power hidden inside, and may be the best choice for mobile 2D game development.
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the best part about this whole Unity fiasco is watching all the lesser known engines get their chance in the spot light. Defold is one I always felt deserved more love for sure.
The best part about Defold is it’s close-knit and friendly community.
If you hang around the Discord or more notably the official forums, it seems like everyone knows each other on a personal level (even if they don’t), they’re familiar with each other’s ongoing and past projects, they’re big supporters of each other’s releases, they’re very quick and precise about answering any and all questions, and the developers take feedback and converse with users every single day.
Even if you have qualms or complaints about different parts of the engine, switching to a different engine would mean losing that wonderful community, which is reason enough to stick with Defold.
Yes absolutely agree! The community is honestly one of the most healthy and personal gaming related groups I have ever been a part of.
I am proudly a part of this community for years and all I can say is just to confirm all of this.
The team behind Defold is worth highlighting - they are literally all the time online and talk with literally everybody, while still developing features and doing a ton of other stuff to make Defold a reality 🧡💙
Ngl the Godot Discord is sometimes a bit iffy. Not saying that it is bad or anything though. Somewhat feels a bit aggressive at times with people's programming beliefs and such.
@@HonsHon Godot Discord is what single-handedly convinced me to never use Godot again.
I just like how humbly defold is presented - "We make no claim that Defold is the best game engine out there for any game, but we dare to say that Defold is the best game engine for some games."
Also, I don't necessarily find defold's relative lack of features compared to other game engines to be a disadvantage; I honestly like doing lots of "useless" work to solve problems myself. I dare say that this makes defold best for inexperienced developers as it forces you to actually learn what you are doing. Though, this may become inconvenient for experienced developers working on larger commercial projects.
Oddly enough, for my a-level computer science project, we are recommended to use defold as opposed to others (thank you craig n dave) so its merits for those inexperienced are somewhat recognised.
Agreed. Sometimes less is more. You can take an RV out for a great vacation, but RV's are not ideal for running to the local store just to get milk and eggs.
Defold is a great game engine, elegant editor and a lovely community in one package! Thank you so much for highlighting Defold!
Can you create like a undertale with defold?
I love Godot, but I have been getting into Lua, and Defold is quite appealing because they have an official path to porting to Switch, unlike Godot. If you are approved by Nintendo for their developer program, Defold will give you what you need to make Switch games in Defold for free.
I've never used godot on Switch, but I think this is also the case for godot?
Not free because we'll have to pay maximum $250 for Switch porting tools, but definitely much cheaper than the $3,000 console porting service in Godot
@@0x4114 No.
One thing I really like about defold is their build sizes, these are much smaller compared to unity or godot.
Okay
@@idehenebenezerthat’s important
@@idehenebenezer Not okay
@@DarkOmegaMK2 I said okay because I was lacking of words to reply him so that I will get notified when others reply and catch up with the conversation
@@idehenebenezergreat you come back with more words 😁 jk ❤ this also one my most favorite advantages about Defold
We were actually planning on looking into Defold soon due to Godot 4's inadequate/broken web support, and I'm not too eager to downgrade to Godot 3 after such a long wait...
Glad to know it's got your seal of approval, Mike!
Looks like Godot 4.3 fixed the Web export ;-)
@@igorthelight Indeed. I have also been keeping track of the patch notes and testing the RC builds. It only took two years but we finally got there! ☺
@@sleepingcolossus The problem was that Godot 4.0-4.2 had a multithreaded web "engine" while almost none of the browsers supported that. Still, two years to fix - that's two long...
mate you are amazing and doing extra time these days but it's really helpful with the Unity Drama going on. And I like to see engines other than big 3 UE, Unity, Godot
Glad to help. If you like alternate game engine coverage, you've come to the exact right place! ;). Plus, thank you for the support.
@@gamefromscratch Hi, make also similar videos with Flax and Stride for Unity devs, because they have potential and C#.
I love this engine so much.
If it had better 3d support I don't think I'd even look at another engine.
I've been using Defold since 2018 and love it! The community is incredibly nice and extremely helpful. The engine itself has a decent amount of power behind it too. I just made a procedurally generated game with it and have no lag even on older devices
Just curious, why is that fast? It's Lua that fast or is this game engine really optimised?
@@Equisdeificationposiblemente por luajit
@@Equisdeification it's the game engines performance
Defold can easily be next Unity. I think the only thing holding them back is Lua because not many are comfortable with this language but it looks easy. And the lack of a decent 3D system. I don't think we need much more 3D then what Defold already has but others might think so...
They should. Not only game engines, but some games themselves use Lua for their scripting.
@@brodriguez11000 Yeah. Started learning Lua recently. Most Nintendo games in Bezel Engine are also scripted using Lua.
I got way too excited hearing Defold uses lua, I absolutely LOVE lua. I dont get to use lua alot but when I do use it I love it
Same Lua just feels very intuitive for me, I've enjoyed messing around in engines like LOVE2D and PICO-8 which both use Lua.
Wonderful! Please do this for Flax :) The Flax community and discord has been rapidly expanding since the beginning of the Unity debacle, and it’s awesome to see.
I will neither confirm nor deny, that I am highly considering a Flax video in this series...........
Flax can only accept one FBX for one animation, which could make the final Flax game size bigger than Unity and Godot games. In Unity and Godot, we can use one FBX for multiple animations
The Defold editor is written in Clojure which is a functional programming language based on Lisp that targets the JVM, Maybe because of that the Editor never crashed for you (Though I really dislike the JVM but do love Clojure and its style).
Yeah, I've used some Clojure myself some time ago, it's nice and pretty damn fast
I love Defold! Everyone is mega helpful in the community and super laid-back in general. ^^
Small communities can be like that. Growing bigger (#hint# #hint#) is where problems start.
I've been subscribes to you for a while, you know what... I don't even program. I try every now and then, but I just love ur content. You stay consistent and up to date. Thank you.
Glad to have you aboard, non-programmer and all!
Plus you should try coding it can be great fun... and incredibly infuriating ;)
Thanks for this. I only fairly recently (like last year) learned about Defold myself, and it does seem like a good alternative for anyone targeting mobile, even as a possibility. After seeing how poorly the Godot-based _Gloomgrave_ runs on my old iPad-and that's a turn-based roguelike with _Wolfenstein 3D_ graphics-I would like to hope that more people look into the alternatives.
I really liked Defold when I first messed about with it a few years ago. I really wanted to love it, but I got put off using it because the editor felt really sluggish on my M1 MacBook, possibly due to it being a Java-based app that was only optimised for Intel. It occasionally locked up or crashed to desktop.
I ended up learning and using Godot instead, though I always felt that maybe I should give Defold another chance. I also loved its elegance and focus, and the ability to export to Nintendo Switch, PS4 and (eventually) other consoles is a big plus point over Godot.
Well, I'm pleased to say that your video has made me go take another look, and it seems that with the latest 1.5.0 release they've finally addressed this issue - when you click on the 'Download For Mac' button, you get to choose from versions for Intel and Apple Silicon. Yay!
I've only messed about with it for a few minutes but I'm pleased to report that the editor loads up quicker and is much more snappy. Double yay!
Yay!
Great! I use it on Ubuntu and Windows 10 on a crap laptop, so it's great that it works seamlessly in other platforms too 😁
Sorry that it took so long to release Defold with M1 support! It is a whole new experience running the Defold editor natively on M1!
Oh man i had already started my journey into learning Godot, this engine is so tempting now though, i love the simplistic looking editor, like you mentioned, it's elegant
Fantastic video!
I've been using Defold for over two years and it's such a well optimized engine, IMO the best optimized engine for cross platform 2D games especially. The workflow just really clicks, and I also was happy to have such a useful engine where I could leverage my previous LUA skills (along with generic LUA modules and libraries). Definitely different strengths compared to Godot as the video mentions. Defold excels at small, optimized builds cross platform games, which is especially valuable for keeping sizes small with web and mobile games. In contrast Godot is more jack-of-all trades master-of-none and far less optimized for web builds.
We need this. The Kings, Rovios, and Zyngas of the world should fund something like a "Defold foundation" that supports and improves this engine.
The reason all three had been using Unity for recent projects is that there really isn't a lot of competitive edge in owning your own engine when you are making hypercasual mobile games (hence they were happily paying Unity), but with recent events (debacle), funding an open engine would let them just focus on making games without fearing rug pulls.
@@edincanadawell King is the number 1 sponsor of defold
I use godot, but defold really looks tempting just because it seems easier to port to mobile.
I was lookin for a simple upgrade from pico8.
Thank you for all the work you do!
Lua is better than most scripting languages in terms of performance but it’s still powerful
This is why I subscribe to this channel. Great info. I'll definitely be giving Defold a look.
third attempt to post. CZcams does not like me today.
Console exports are free. You only need to pay if you want source code access to the console specific stuff. (source is the Defold documentation which I tried to link to and that may be why my comments didnt save)
Awesome @gamefromscratch ! Would love to see a video like that about the transition to Stride
I haven't tried this engine but it sure looks promising!
Looks like there’s a typescript defold project. Going to give that a go, because learning a new la gauge along with an engine and editor - without knowing if it’ll be for me - is daunting
Hope you do Stride next!
I am so sad Stride's editor is not cross platform :(
@@comediehero
Well, Unity editor technically is not too, so a 'Stride for Unity devs' video would still be appropriate
Stride is an amazing game engine, but there are three things that made me go out of it:
* The editor uses windows-like renderized UI, and some IMGUI approach like Unity used for their engine provides way better responsivity and modding power for an engine (plus it is not much intuitive for someone who used Unity or even Godot for example, and Godot is not necessarily the best either)
* The scene view is kinda bad and slow, it lacks the "responsiveness" of Unity scene view and is kinda strange to use, and lastly
* It does not feel much polished. Yes, this is more "personal" but still these are my takes on it, I think solving the second would make the engine much more pleasant to use (and enhancing some things about the play mode), but the first is also something that is extremely important, the windowish feel to the UI responses, layout and appearance is really uncomfortable to me
Another thing that is very important is a default 2D template, I think most indie devs like to make 2D games and for prototyping some fast ideas they are the best, and it is not intuitive at all to make a 2D game in Stride which to me is not much palatable.
But still, I think the engine has much potential and I hope that they make it evolve more in the future.
@@diadetediotedio6918 All very valid and I agree. But I am mostly interested because of how performant it is for 3D. If it gets even a little love Godot is getting it could be something really special. More people should know about it!
I've switched from Unity to Godot, but Defold seems quite neat! I want to try to make something with it.
It definitely won't replace Godot for me, since it's focused primarily on 2D with lacking 3D support, but it's a nice option.
You can install Defold directly from Steam as well, quite handy when moving from different machines, my main pc is windows and my laptop is on linux, I can work on both machine seamlessly when needed. Also because of Defold is one of the game engine that still supports HTML that's a huge plus especially for indies and game jams etc.
It's a neat engine. I definitely don't trust any scripting languages that are 1 indexed but it's such a clean feeling app it's worth a look.
i have been using defold for more than a year now because i had some problems with unity and godot mobile performance and sdk support is bad and also for build size and the way the engine is small and you extend it using official and community extension or make extension yoursefl using lua and c++ and also i like how you can modify the render script and choose to render anything you like for better performance
Woa, i didn't know about this one, good stuff.
if defold was able to support cross platform export why godot users still relay on third party exports?. both are open source projects. defold has high level of google play integration where in godot we need to depends on external plugins which is not long term supported by creators most of the time.
I am wondering the same, but I know the answer is money. You can always make money on making console ports as a third party, many of Godot creators have their companies doing it, so it's kind of the way to ensure devs will always use their paid help on this.
Thank you for this ! I was getting tired of all the Godot-as-alternative videos.
suggestion: make one for Stride, and MonoGame (or FNA)
I think many people coming from Unity have C# as their main language, so they are pretty good to use
He has many videos on Godot. Also, if you already know C# it isn't very difficult to pick up a simple language like Lua or GDScript, so that is essentially a non-factor when considering switching engines.
@@TheOnlyGhxst
Yeah, I removed it, thanks, I did not saw the Godot one for some reason, but the others are still valid (even that he has videos on them, this is a good moment for making newer videos).
And for your last statement, this is simply not how things work in real life. True, it is easy to learn another language when you master some other language, but it is not trivial for someone who is only used to C# and have no deep knowledge to pick another language and get out of their comfort domain, this is a brutal factor (and I'm talking as someone which in the past, for years, only used mostly C# and game engines with C# because of this). Stride for example has a proximity to Unity in the workflow (which is another factor).
And for Flax too!
@@diadetediotedio6918 I can say as someone who has only dabbled with coding inconsistently over the years, learning a bit of one language or another then dropping it after a few weeks and having to relearn it later, GDscript is so easy to pick up that even if you have no programming or game development experience whatsoever, you can begin making things with it and understand the language within a weekend.
Stride doesn't have any console deployment feature. Whereas MonoGame is just a framework, not a complete game engine, so it has no editor and no built in things like physics engines, etc
Good people of defold, would or could you build a mobile app using defold?
And how big is the executable of an empty project?
Defold is predestined for it! Take a look at their page, there is a comparison. The file size is significantly smaller than that of other engines.
Yep, it was its original purpose as well when it was Kings in house engine.
Btw, Defold is very neat
Defold is *not* open-source. It is *soure-available*, although you may not find that important.
Did you read the license?
You CAN edit source code of the engine freely and release the game with this modified version for free.
You don't even need to share publicly any changes you made to the engine code in your game.
What you CAN'T do is copy it's source code and SELL it. This must have been added to license in order to abeid Swedish law by the Foundation, where they can't ever change its objectives. And they have objective to make Defold free to use always.
That's why, as opposite to some other companies, Defold will always be free.
And yes, OSI definition of open source is when code is permissive - which mean you can copy it and sell it, so that's why they discouraged Defold to use this term.
@@pawejarosz7329 Sorry. I have corrected the comment.
@@anselmschuelerno worries, it's frequently misunderstood and I know it's confusing, so I was rushing with an explanation as always knowing how it really is 😅
I like the way you said Goouii for GUI
The UI reminds of the old Discreet Logic Line of Pro Tools for Editors, Pre-/Post-Production in CGI and VFX end 90s circa. Very sleek.
Looking forward to a Cocos Creator video in this series :D
I only wish the 3d workflow was improved :(((
I think the word you used to describe Defold is "chic"
great video! would love one about Flax Engine too. thanks
An editor that never crashes ??? 🤩 (an UE dev)
I've never heard of defold before, but that logo looks hella funky in black and white
I'd love to see a video like this about Heaps, as the last few you covered are from some years back, and I noticed they have some kind of editor now.
WIth Godot issues on mobile and web, Defold is my main pick after Unity debacle.
how do you manage different projects that are using different versions of the engine?
With Defold? No problem 😁 There is rarely any need to modify anything when upgrading to a new version, breaking changes are rarely introduced and most of the time backward compatibility is maintained.
Good question, good answer. Thanks.
Also "Unigine" is very interesting.
unity owners surely will have nightmares of your this video getting in trend. 😂
It's really ❤❤❤
Please do one about Flax! I’m interested in that engine I think it might be a great alternative for Unity.
I have a few more in mind and Flax more or may not be on that list, we will all just have to take it in strides and see how it plays out.
;)
@@gamefromscratchyou just said Stride 😊
For whatever reason 👏 brilliant 🤣
I want to start being a game dev
I am currently a front end dev
I want to make games for casual maybe in the future as a job
So what should I learn
Defold
UE5
Godot
It will be very helpful if you guys give me any advice
Try all of them, see what u like and when you do find what you like use it. I don't want to tell you what to use because everyone has a different preference
@@Ferer414 thanks man
Had they chosen C# or Python as scriping language it would have been more popular
Perhaps. But the size of the engine would have exploded. Lua was chosen because of its great performance, simple C/C++ interop and its very very small runtime size.
Thanks Mike, my main choice as of yesterday 😀
the apk bundle size sold me to defold.
Smooooth!
The only fault of Defold is saying that it is 3D capable. Spent about 800 hours on my steam trying to get 3d into defold. Besides that flaw, Defold is quite the engine when it comes to 2D, tho dont try using 3D in it, no one did, no one does and for a long time no one will
MacOS application folder is not required for every application I ever put on MacOS, unless things have changed in the last couple years as I now use mostly Linux and Windows.
Been playing with this since you spot lighted it awhile ago. Just haven't had the time to keep up with this.
Defold editor is written in JavaFX, so it makes sense that it has never crashed for you.
is there a paywall for publishing on PS4 and Switch ? I just asked them / request and they added me to the github repos and i didnt saw any costs yet..but i also didnt published a game for now with defold :).
Thank you for this video - this is REALLY helpful.
One thing i found a bit annoying is the tilemap system - you can draw only one tile at time and have to switch with space for it. However - it is something where i can live with it (also you can use tiled as far as i know for it).
So i plan to go deeper into it.
The font is too small. I'm on 4k and still can't read.
I think Mike is in love
monkey mart motivated me to use defold. but i left defold for unity because of their weird ui
you had to lead with is it 3d capable and is it any good for it
What about Cryengine 5.7 ? Do you recommend it ?
They've gone too radio silent for too long IMHO
CryEngine is still being used by Entropia Universe MMO - but the company is switching to Unreal this year. :D
I miss Lua 😥
Buildbox 3 is the next best option!
Defold had two major disadvantages: (1) It doesn't allow us to create plugins/ tools to customize the entire editor as in Unity and Godot. (2) It lacks a built-in GUI tool and we have to rely on the community-made ImGui plugin
Hi sir, what do you think about gdevelop? Good video 😊
oh you little nasty prankster 1:09
DUDE THIS IS SO HARD TO INSTALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111111111111111111111
make for flax
Unigine next
nice serie
Fyrox next?
this is akin to rpg editor of old... on unreal store theirs an pay editor that was given away on free weekly once out their too
Can we get a video for Defold devs switching to Unity?
Just play this video in reverse.
I think Godot is the move, but good luck to everyone wherever you migrate.
defold is good engine, but man, UX is so bad and after unity godot or even unreal. And lua with no intellisence, no static types or even hints
Defold uses Lua which has no static types. If you want to, you can write your code in C++ in Native Extension or use community support for Haxe or Typescript 😊
Editor can use Lua code server (there is one official) to show you hints ans intellisence for it, but you need to enable it on your own. I think this should be enabled by default.
Other than this, I don't see any more UX flaws and I am using it for years 😁
*EA Unity be like:*
Lua though
This is cool, I'm not sure if I wanna use Lua though lol
Why?
@@bjornritzl Good question, I have absolutely nothing against Lua and I think it's a good and simple programming language. Just that I know most game devs want to just make a game (because duh?), but I kinda got into game dev not just because of wanting to make games but also because I wanna be better at coding. So langs like C++, C#, Python etc. are better options for me because they're just more widely used and good skills to have. So I've begun using PyGame and MonoGame as they use Python and C#. They may not be the best engines/frameworks but the language skills I'll learn from that will be useful for me personally. I don't think this should deter eager game devs from using Lua though! It's pretty useful in the game dev sphere as a surprising number of engines use it.
I was unsubscribed from your channel. 😢
Lua hmmmm
Gona have to try defold i like it
IronSource, lol. 🙄
second
I can't tell if it's just your mic or what, but why do you always sound like you have a mouth full of mac and cheese? The constant sticky sounds are very distracting in your videos.
COVID :(
I think he said he had a bad cold a few videos back. Or was it COVID?
Lua? What is this, Roblox?
Lmfao!
Its an industry forged, stable language...
believe it or not there are some good engines with lua. Pico 8, tic80, love2d, defold. The list goes on. Again, modding tools use lua. I do understand if you dislike the language
Wow!!! Roblox created Lua?!?!?
@@deluxe_1337 No. A team at a Brazilian university did in 1993.
Defold was made by King, this isnt even an option.
King isnt any better than Unity. King is the company that tried to own the word saga and candy, targeting indie games with their legal team and having them removed from the app store. on the Scumbag companies ranking, its pretty high up there.
The project has literally nothing to do with King now.
Defold's licence explicitly disallows any kind of commercialisation of the engine (which is also why it can't be considered FOSS-compatible, but afaik it's the only art that makes it so) to avoid anything happening to it in the future. King is right now just one of about 25 sponsors or something? Meanwhile, the Defold developer team is really doing a great job - not only improving the engine in an organised manner, making their own plugins to add functionality outside of the core, but also actively answering questions on the forums to help new people.
I vet your sentiment regarding King, I too found it ridiculous, especially the "saga" trademark thing, but I do feel that the developers deserve respect for their work.
Defold was at the beginning made by two persons, then acquired by King and then moved to it's own Foundation. King has nothing to do with Defold now and because Defold Foundation is in Sweden they ate bound to Swedish law to not change its objectives - one of them is to ensure Defold is free to use always.
Every tech company has its quirks but as long as projects become open source than all is fine, LLVM for example was created first by Apple and many contributors from the likes of Google, Intel, AMD, ARM etc. All of those companies are not in our interests and work to gain more money and control for themselves but the tool created and the fact that it is shared and open source invalidates criticising the said project, They just pay some clever engineers to do the job, It is the engineers skills that made the project into what it is, The company just has the money. You should differentiate between companies and open source projects that were payed by to be developed by companies.
@@astroid-ws4py Blender.
Is cocos creator worth learning?
Yes
@@gamefromscratchoh damn that was a quick answer hahaha
After Defold, Cocos Creator is probably the next best engine for web and mobile games. Under the hood it uses C++ for native platform exports and js/ts for web and minigame platforms. They also have switch support.