For anyone who's used this, how does it compare with popular open source engines like Godot, and with the commercial industry standards like Unreal Engine and Unity?
As discussed elsewhere in this thread, source-available is not the same thing as Open Source.
edit Not sure why I'm being downvoted here. This really isn't up for debate. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23233336 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23235217
Defold uses message passing, which initially I was very excited about, but it turns out my brain is used to thinking about objects and references and I kind of struggled to do simple things in Defold which is part of the reason I switched to Unity.
One thing that did make it over in the port is a cool actor-based AI that I probably wouldn't have thought to use if I started the game in Unity.
Defold does give you a ton of control though and it would enable more customization than Unity, especially now that it is open source.
I should also say the Defold community is great and the devs behind the game engine are very helpful.
And this is my first game so any difficulties with Defold could be due to my initial learning curve.
This gives a good overview https://defold.com/product/
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23233336 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23235217
> Defold allows you to see the internals, but if something doesn't work the way you want, you can't change it and still get to sell your game.
> You are free to modify Defold and you are not required to share the changes
but also:
> You can not commercialise original or modified (derivative) versions of the Defold editor and/or engine
I think they mean you cannot start a business selling your fork of their game-engine. I don't think they mean you may not use a modified engine in a commercial product. This seems to fit with the full text of the licence, which says:
> You do not sell or otherwise commercialise the Work or Derivative Works as a Game Engine Product
Just something to think about if you were planning on allowing mods in your game. Do they only care about how you advertise the product, or will they be looking at how it's actually being used?
Typically, people may buy a game in order to play its free mods, but you can't tweak the engine and then sell that modified engine to other game studios. Whatever happens, the end-user has to have a licence for the original game.
This is a little different though, as you can modify the engine, then sell your game, and permit payware mods to use your modified version of the engine, perhaps even insisting on taking a cut. All the while the Defold guys don't get a penny.
#1 OTOH deals with "selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources." This would seem to be the clause that would be violated by a "you can't sell this commercially" clause. Although, looking at it, I just realized that somebody could argue that due to the use of the phrase "component of an aggregate software distribution", that this actually isn't violated by a restriction on selling the software alone! I'm pretty sure that's not the way that was ever intended to be interpreted though, and that an aggregate can include as few as 1 components. Otherwise it would be silly, because you could always then in turn create an "aggregate" by adding some arbitrary files of your own.
#6 is titled "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavour" and explicitly refers to commercial use as a field of endeavour. The annotated version[1] says:
> Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.
Restricting commercial distribution of modified versions would discriminate against commercial users. I argue that the word "use" in this context is referring not only to running the program but to the exercise of any of the freedoms outlined in the Open Source Definition.
That depends on whether or not "use" and "distribute" are seen as two completely different "things", or whether distribution is a subtype of usage. It makes more sense, to me, for it to be the latter - but the actual text of the OSD is a little bit ambiguous on that point. At least to my reading.
Still, regardless of how one justifies it, I feel like it's pretty well accepted that a "you can't sell this commercially" clause in a license makes it non-OSD compliant. As it should be.
I've just actually started to do something with Godot and I'd be very grateful to find out the differences between these two engines.
Godot was a pleasure to use, I didn't feel the need to revisit Defold.