What is Godot?

Godot_logo.svg

Godot is…

  • free and open source software (“FOSS”).
  • used to create both 2D and 3D games.
  • an editor (a.k.a “development environment”) to arrange and program game assets.
  • an great alternative to commercial game creation software.

Godot is also…

  • a full game engine (which drives games created with the editor).
  • elegantly designed, featuring hierarchical organization of nodes.
  • cross-platform.
  • well-documented.
  • currently being ported to run inside web browsers, thanks to a grant from Mozilla.

Why Godot?

While initially designed as a toolkit to design games (combined with an engine to power finished games once they’ve left the nest), Godot is an incredibly powerful and versatile editor to create any software you can imagine.

Godot features modular hierarchical design. First you design a scene in isolation, giving it appearance and functionality. Then you can instance that scene as a sub-component inside other scenes This workflow is incredible for constructing and managing complex systems out of many bite-sized self-contained scenes.

Hint

Godot isn’t only for making games.

Last year for fun, I wrote a simple text editor in Godot’s 2D workspace. It was an incredibly fluid experience. Because Godot was built as a game development environment, handling keyboard input and working with the graphics was incredibly straight-forward.

Godot 3.0 Release Trailer

Official Godot Websites

Godot Homepage: https://godotengine.org/
Godot Documentation: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/
Godot on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/GodotEngineOfficial

Download Godot Here

Linux: https://godotengine.org/download/linux
MacOS: https://godotengine.org/download/osx
Windows: https://godotengine.org/download/windows

Note

The above links are the official builds, specific to each operating system.

Build Godot from its Source Code

If you’d like to build Godot from its latest source code, check out these links:

Godot’s Source Code https://github.com/godotengine/godot
Godot’s Compilation Tutorials
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable
/development/compiling/index.html

Warning

Depending on when (in the development cycle) you fetch and build Godot from the main branch:

  • Typically the code should be stable if a major version is about to come out.
  • Far between releases (as new features are introduced and debugged across different operating systems and computer architectures), your build might be unstable.

Either way, it’s always fun to see the latest state and direction of software.

Hint

If you’re more interested in using Godot than contributing to Godot’s source code, download the current official release from the Download section above.

Resources

There are treasure troves of great tutorials (both video and text) created on a regular basis by Godot’s incredible community.

Godot’s documentation actually has a page dedicated to showcasing some of the places you can find quality tutorials for Godot:

On that note, Godot’s documentation is an incredibly well-made, and always being expanded and polished. Here’s a great place to start:

More Intro Info?

If you’d still like to know more, but want to watch videos to get a better idea, the YouTube channel GDQuest has many incredible beginner tutorials.

Here’s a great Godot introduction video by GDQuest:

You can also find more beginner information and tutorials at GDQuest.com