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Getting Started with Godot Game Engine

Getting Started with Godot Game Engine

Eric Zimmerman's photo
Eric Zimmerman
·

4 min read

Table of contents

Overview

While I largely work in embedded Linux systems, I like to dabble in game development when I have free time. In the wake of the Unity licensing change, there has been buzz about Godot, so I decided to check it out.

I have done a number of small projects with Unity, so I'll make comparisons relative to that.

Getting Started

  • Godot is portable and has no standard installer. I downloaded from https://godotengine.org/ and extracted to folder of my choice.

  • I started with Godot 4.2.1.

  • Initial learning from examples was slightly difficult due to breaking changes in Godot 4.

  • Starting from recent YouTube tutorials is the best bet.

Initial Tests

While proficient in C#, I decided to also try Godot Script.

2D Top-down Pixel-based

The first test was a standard 4-direction top-down 2D RPG / Zelta-style game.

Overview

  • Within the first day, I was able to:

    • import pre-made pixel-based assets and configure animations and animation trees.

    • create a character and follow camera

    • generate a multi-layer tilemap and set the z-order for enabling walking under or behind items.

    • Setup collisions along with tile-based collision properties.

    • Setup an NPC that wanders around the screen

Take-aways

  • The Tilemap and collision configuration feels right in Godot. I'm assuming that it was built-in from the start, while Unity was largely 3rd party components providing some level of support.

    • The "TileMap" tool is used for painting tiles onto the tilemap. It has numerous options for making the process quick and easy.

    • The "TileSet" tool allows configuration of tile properties. (e.g. Paint > Physics Layer 0 to set collision areas. Painting 3 tile tall trees on the map border was a little challenging at first though, but I appreciated the default display transparency when on a specific layer.

  • I loved the easy means of setting collision boundary for specific tiles.

  • It's somewhat unrelated, but I wasn't familiar with itch.io. I ended up buying some assets from https://limezu.itch.io/. The price was hard to pass up for the "Modern" series.

More to come

I have barely scratched the surface, but feel like the fundamentals came more quickly than Unity.

I cannot share this project directly since I used 3rd party assets... perhaps I'll reduce / substitute assets with the same names in the future and provide instructions on what to pull in.

3D 3rd Person RPG-Style

Similarly, this test was the basics of a 3rd person RPG-style game with follow-cam.

Overview

First, the majority of the assets are free from https://kaylousberg.itch.io/. These are pretty high-quality assets for prototyping, complete with animations.

Largely, I followed YouTube videos and adapted slightly to fit my needs, accomplishing the following within a few days.

  • Idle, Walk, Run, Jump and Shoot animation tree

  • Camera Controller which allows move with W,A,S,D and follow cam with swivel via mouse input with natural feel.

  • Basic controls - run and jump

  • Basic test level with 3rd party assets and collision detection

  • Basic grappling hook... got stuck trying to draw the grapple line and the feel is wrong.

Take-Aways

  • Similar to 2D, it was pretty quick to pull together the basics for an interactive 3D environment.

  • I like the use of scenes for objects, but still get a bit lost in object organization and associated scripts. To me, it still feels a little more natural than prefab process and deeper hierarchies of Unity.

  • The available amount of free assets are outstanding.

  • I built the map as a separate scene object, keeping the top-level project simple.

  • TODO: imported assets and changes... the proper method?

More to Come

I have barely scratched the surface, but feel like the fundamentals came more quickly than Unity.

I cannot share this project directly since I used 3rd party assets... perhaps I'll reduce / substitute assets with the same names in the future and provide instructions on what to pull in.

I plan to work through more basic functionality and update the notes here as I go through. Following that, perhaps some end-to-end simple games.

Godot 3.x Example - Grapple

I was interested in the following example on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMTNsSjk4xI

Godot has a 3.x to 4 conversion built in. While it isn't perfect, it is helpful.

It mostly converted well; I made the following changes to get it to run.

# Since we want better collisions, we have to do a lil work
func collide_with_rigidbodies() -> void:
    for index in get_slide_collision_count():
        var collision := get_slide_collision(index)
        if collision:
            var collider = collision.get_collider()
            if collider and collider is RigidBody3D:
                collider.apply_central_impulse(
                    -collision.get_normal() * .05 * velocity.length()
                )

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