If someone encounters missing features or bugs while porting Godot, then we can look at adding/fixing them. Daytona has just mentioned improvements to GLES2, and I'm fixing a Warp3D Nova bug right now (well, would be if I weren't posting this ). We've already added/fixed a number of things in response to developers using OpenGL/GLES2/Warp3D-Nova. This is especially true of kas1e's GL4ES based ports, which have thrown quite a wide variety of existing OpenGL code at our new 3D graphics system.
How about creating only the export Engine for Gobot. I mean, if someone develops in other OSes and there is an export engine for OS4/MorphOS, this will bring the game to OS4/MorphOS as well. Like they do with Android, iOS and Web. How possible or hard do you thing this is?
@all Oh, I forgot to mention that I know that one talented guy is already playing around with Godot for a possible AOS4 port for some time already I will hint him to that topic here, in case he wants to talk.
Yes, obviously the slow downs on Godot if ported to OS4 wouldn't be due to the discrete desktop GPUs used in the X1000 or X5000. But there'd be a huge performance drop in comparison to current systems due to the X1000 and X5000 using outdated, EOL'd CPUs that were designed for embedded systems needing high single-threaded performance. As I said earlier, an X5000 performs on par with desktop Wintel systems from around 2003-2005 in terms of features and CPU horsepower. I don't know of any devs who would want to step that far back in time/performance to develop games for current platforms let alone drop what they're doing on current systems and adopt a dead (or on life support) platform to develop games for the same dead platform, except maybe kas1e.
There simply isn't enough demand for new games on OS4 to motivate anyone to port the Godot engine and Scons over to OS4. Again, it would be much easier to modify a current version of Godot running on a Wintel box or Mac to produce OS4 binaries than undertake the effort to port Scons AND Godot to OS4. And Scons is the one dependency that is definite. In my life as a developer I've found the FAQs for such projects to be totally inadequate and fail to mention the plethora of other dependencies required for a complete build.
After looking at the Linux build dependencies which would most closely mirror what would be needed for an OS4 build, there are quite a few more dependencies that would need to be addressed. These are:
Audio Handling Freetype (for the editor) OpenSSL (for HTTPS and TLS) Optional - libudev (build with udev=yes) Optional - yasm (for WebM SIMD optimizations)
The audio code would require a lot of work whereas the other dependencies already exist for OS4 or can be left out of an OS4 build as they are optional. But all this doesn't even matter because as I mentioned earlier, there's nothing to motivate anyone to even begin porting such a large amount of code to OS4. The Godot source archive is 96MB after unzipping the archive from Github. That's isn't a small project.
Updating the export engine of the Linux or Windows version of Godot to produce OS4 binaries would probably be easier than going for a full OS4 port. I'm not trying to be negative. I'm just being objective and pointing out how much work is needed to port current software to legacy systems. It is no easy task and takes a LOT of time. Such ports are also almost always inferior too. Either the hardware can't handle the new features, so said features are left out of the port or perform very poorly if left in, or the features/dependencies haven't even been developed for the legacy system which yields the same result.....a working albeit a crippled port.
Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/23 18:27:52 Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/23 20:42:49
I'm not sure why you keep talking about developers using AmigaOS 4 to develop for other platforms. Nobody expects commercial or even indie developers to do that. The prime motivation for wanting to port such engines is to bring more games to AmigaOS 4, and also as a toy for existing AmigaOS 4 developers.
As for performance and/or missing hardware features, the Godot engine has a GLES2 backend and targets mobile devices too.
Quote:
There simply isn't enough demand for new games on OS4 to motivate anyone to port the Godot engine and Scons over to OS4. Again, it would be much easier to modify a current version of Godot running on a Wintel box or Mac to produce OS4 binaries than undertake the effort to port Scons AND Godot to OS4...
In order for the Windows/Mac version to be able to produce OS4 binaries... the Godot engine needs to be ported to AmigaOS 4.
I guessed you missed the point about Godot being a cross-platform game engine/game development system? That's the whole point of having a cross-platform game development system and engine....to create games for various systems regardless of the hardware and OS that the dev prefers. That's why I keep talking about devs using it for cross-platform development. Why do you keep talking about it?
And of course the engine needs to be ported to OS4 if anyone is going to use it to play Godot developed OS4 games just as the engine was ported to Windows, iOS, Android, and Linux. Why are you so good at re-stating the obvious? The developer interface also needs to be ported to OS4 with all the dependencies that I mentioned earlier unless you expect PC devs to create Godot based games for OS4 on their PCs and move them over, so what's your problem? And I don't see any PC developers who will be doing this as most of them don't even know what an Amiga is, let alone want to develop games for an Amiga for free in their spare time on their Wintel boxes.
As for your statement, "As for performance and/or missing hardware features, the Godot engine has a GLES2 backend and targets mobile devices too." I never said that any missing functionality or performance hits would be tied to OS4's precious GLES, so stop acting so butt-hurt about my comments. None of my comments have attacked your work. I specifically mentioned anemic embedded CPUs and the lack of muti-core/threading capabilities. Engine performance will be less than optimal even if it ever gets ported to OS4 due to this "anemia". Game build times will also suffer greatly. OS4 sound handling code needs to be written and added to the engine and the developer interface as well if you want sound with those games. I didn't even mention the SSL/TLS functionality that would be missing in any network enabled games since SSL/TLS support is so outdated on OS4.
And don't forget about LIBUDEV. The game engine needs this to enumerate things like USB joysticks and mice for in-game play. This also hasn't been ported to OS4 and it's unlikely that it ever will be ported, so custom code would need to be written to accommodate USB devices under OS4.
So let the porting of this "toy" begin! Actually Godot is no toy. It's more comparable to the Unreal 4 engine or Unity. Here's a video showcasing it with comparisons to Unreal and Unity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPCv6F-IgXU
It also supports C# so there's another large chunk of missing functionality if the dev interface and engine ever get ported to OS4 since there's no Mono support for OS4.
So in this developers opinion, it's more likely that we'll see a port of the Unreal Engine to OS4 before we see a Godot port, and the chance of that happening is 0%. Unless you're talking about a very early Godot version that is feature and performance crippled.
Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/24 5:29:55 Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/24 5:31:10 Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/24 5:33:39 Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/24 5:39:40 Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/24 6:12:53 Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/24 6:27:37 Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/24 6:38:39
Yes, I get that Godot has an editor/dev-system, which is pretty normal for engines like that. It doesn't mean that developers have to actually use it on AmigaOS 4 to make porting the engine worth it. I see porting just the engine itself as worth doing.
I also have no issue with developers using a PC for development, if that works better for them. Oh, and I do NOT expect PC devs to write anything for AmigaOS at all. Incidentally, we already have multiple programs on AmigaOS that cannot be built natively (e.g., Odyssey). Not ideal, but the programs work, so I don't mind at all.
I also understand that you think our hardware is slow, anemic and that Godot is simply too heavyweight to be usable on our system. I'm not convinced. For sure, Godot's renderer is NOT yet at Unreal 4's level.
Regarding dependencies, we have up-to-date OpenSSL, so that one is NOT an issue. I doubt that libudev is used on the Windows version, so that's not necessarily a requirement, and I don't see having to write a native audio backend and other native code as a show-stopper.
It's clear you think it's so bad that it's not worth even trying. I disagree. Any OS shortcomings that are enountered are opportinities to improve the OS (and/or our GLES2 lib, Warp3D Nova, and drivers).
It looks like we'd better just agree to disagree, because you're clearly getting annoyed.
No, I DON'T think it's bad. I just think it's a very difficult task and would take a "team" of coders and a large chunk of time to port the engine and the interface to OS4. It isn't a one-man job at all and I think it would be a pity to port the engine and not port the dev interface. In my opinion, the dev interface is the easier of the two pieces to port.
It's just tiring to see non-coders always asking questions like, "Why don't we have Crysis for the Amiga?" or as in this case, "Hey, Godot is cool, let's just spend a week or two porting it over to OS4 since it's open source and we have the source code!". I know I'm exaggerating, but you get the gist.
I'm just trying to educate them as to why these types of projects aren't taken lightly and why they take so much time and resources and why the outcomes aren't always optimal when compared to the system that the software was natively developed for. I'm not annoyed with you but with non-coders who don't understand that these ports don't happen overnight.
I really respect your work. You've fought an uphill battle for years and exceeded the expectations of many people so please don't ever take my comments as criticism of your work. You deserve a medal in light of the closed source road blocks you've had to navigate in updating the 3D subsystem of OS4.
We can argue the speed of the X1000 and X5000 CPUs till the cows come home. For most applications, I will agree that the CPUs in those systems are "good enough". But they certainly aren't my first choice for any heavy lifting or modern gaming. I hope that OS4 survives and gains a more capable CPU soon as all the PPC variants seem to have died off or have become so scarce and expensive that they simply aren't practical.
Porting the engine would be a great first step, but ultimately I think the goal in porting the engine would be to get people interested in coding for OS4 again by showing off the games. When folks find out that the games were developed on a PC and transferred to OS4, their first response will be, heck, why not just get a PC and be done with it.
Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/24 7:23:14 Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/24 7:26:26 Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/24 7:35:50 Edited by ferrels on 2019/3/24 7:56:55
Me, I've been trying to encourage more people to have a go at writing/porting stuff that uses Warp3D Nova's new capabilities. The more people who do that, the more valuable it all becomes, and the more we can improve the system.
EDIT: Getting a modern shader-based game engine on AmigaOS has always been one of my goals. I actually bought a Torque3D license before they fully open-sourced it with that goal in mind. Porting has never been one of my strengths, though, so it's up to someone else to make that happen.
I think you've been doing a good job in that regard too. Part of my daily routine is just to check in here to see what new port kas1e is working on and read about his progress.
4. ported some time ago irrlicht Engine which s a pretty good 3D engine as well as some games which use it: SuperTuxart, Night of the Zombies, Worlds and HCraft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZiJCSJjm7o
However, I forgot to mention that I specifically asked for the Godot engine....
Irrlicht Engine is good enough even today even on PC and fits better for our limited amiga speed and needs. When and if someone will port Godot, it will mean nothing as well, there will be another engine which we want because we want to know that we have it, but didn't use.
Irrlicht Engine for real cool engine, books have written for, many expirienced coders agree that this is one of the best from last decade, and still, no one here use it except me :) And maybe 1-2 users more tried to use it and wrote me mails about.
In other words, there no needs for Godot, Irrlicht Engine is here, with SDK and stuff ready to use and games examples showing how fast is it.
I agree, its nice to have, but maybe not the most importet.
I don’t think people buy Amiga systems to play pc games, that be insane.
I think we need to focus on the basics. But I think, if Godot was ported, it will have many additional benefits, because lot thing need to be fixed to make that happen.
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). We've already added/fixed a number of things in response to developers using OpenGL/GLES2/Warp3D-Nova. This is especially true of kas1e's GL4ES based ports, which have thrown quite a wide variety of existing OpenGL code at our new 3D graphics system. 
