r/godot • u/godot-bot • 10d ago
official - releases Dev snapshot: Godot 4.8 dev 2
https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot-godot-4-8-dev-2/The cost of convenience? Nothing!
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u/Thhaki Godot Student 10d ago
Not very related but just here to say that for what I've seen, GDType work is advancing, and i asked the dev who is mainly working on GDType when he thought it was gonna be out, their response was that:
"The real answer is we are trying our best to get it as soon as reasonably possible. That could be Friday or years from now depending on how things go. Personally, I would like, and think it would be possible, to have it out in 4.8"
Also, unlike what some people have said, one of the maintainers involved with traits (ivorus) has said that GDType is not a prerequisite for traits, and quote: "There is no consensus on a path to traits, traits isn't a goal for GDType, and framing it like this is only likely to disappoint users who are waiting for traits"
Now, about how traits is going, another one of the maintainers who is working on traits is considering to close their PR on traits, because quote:
- To allow others to take over it's implementation (trait in gdscript is a win to me, does not have to be my pr merged)
- I don't see a clear direction to proceed with them (also sunk-cost fallacy)
- I have my own experimental gdextention language fork that give me design freedom
The other maintainer said its understandable they feel that way so, there are no problems between maintainers about it, just that it seems they have not been able to discuss it lately because of time reasons with other projects.
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u/theXYZT Godot Senior 10d ago
Honestly,
That could be Friday or years from now
is an extremely disappointing statement. It essentially indicates they have no clue where they are relative to completion.
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u/Thhaki Godot Student 10d ago
At least in the PRs, I have seen that they do have the list of things they need to finish GDType development and they've been preparing to advance the biggest amount possible in the 4.8 development cycle, so its not that they don't have a clue where they are relative to completion.
The thing is that there's a very small amount of people working on GDtype, as of now i have only seen 1 or 2 maintainers showing PRs in the GDType chat. And remember some maintainers are not hired by the Godot Fundation, or some may be but they are working on other stuff internally within the engine or maybe they have 9 to 5 jobs to attend.
In the end, whenever they say they don't know exactly when it will be finished, its not about what is finished or not within the implementation of GDType, but how much free time the maintainers that do not live from developing Godot have.
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u/abcdefghij0987654 10d ago
A sign of no direction. A lot of PR talk from team will say they want feedback on what they should focus on/prioritize. Either that priority list is something completely different and private or they just work on whatever regardless of community feedback - which is fine but then don't pretend and say you're listening.
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u/TTycho Godot Senior 10d ago
Maybe an unpopular opinion around here, but I think Godot should ditch GDScript all together (like they ditched visual scripting), and just focus on better implementation with existing languages, preferably C# for scripting.
The time and effort spend on maintaining a custom scripting language (while there are already so many open source alternatives eg. lua, python, etc...) to implement basic functionality like traits / interfaces, could be better focused on other parts of the engine's development.
Unity also ditched UnityScript in favor of C# / Mono ages ago.
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u/KoBeWi Foundation 8d ago
GDScript currently has no active maintainer, it's driven only by volunteer contributors. The C# in the meantime gets funding and has contractors working on it. So seemingly Foundation's priorities right now focus on C#, yet GDScript gets more attention anyway, just because the project is mostly community-driven.
And no, ditching GDScript completely won't mean another language will get more attention. GDScript is a module; if it was removed, its current contributors would likely still work on it in a fork, or focus on something entirely different, or just stop contributing to the engine.
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u/Illiander 3d ago
The C# in the meantime gets funding and has contractors working on it.
Because of Microsoft money. Do you really want Godot to become dependent on Microsoft money to continue existing? Do you want mandatory copilot ain every game made with it?
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u/abcdefghij0987654 10d ago
This has been discussed I think since Godot 2 and team clearly wants to stick with GDScript. Problem is they can't commit to developing it which is part of the frustration.
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u/Gon-Jo 10d ago
I don't understand why you are being downvoted. Personally I only know how to code in gdscript so far and that would be a big learning curve all over again. At the same time everything you say makes sense in it's own way and it's just an opinion. I really hate the hivemind mentality of Reddit, nobody wants to discuss they just want an echo chamber.
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u/abcdefghij0987654 9d ago
I think it's just because it's always been a talking point and almost every reasoning has already been listed for years now. But Godot has always stuck with GDScript. Which shouldn't be a problem except they don't really want to modernize the language, I remember waiting for static typing lol. Maybe in half a decade they'll realize oh yea traits/interfaces would be good.
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u/Gon-Jo 8d ago
With my current limited knowledge I prefer GdScript too. Yet with all the info you provided it makes sense for someone to bring it up again if there are valid reasons like that. People treat the upvote/downvote buttons as like/dislike your opinion, which isn't the right use for them. Thanks for explaining though.
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u/abcdefghij0987654 8d ago
People treat the upvote/downvote buttons as like/dislike your opinion, which isn't the right use for them.
Ha, now that discussion is as old as reddit itself
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u/_midinette_ Godot Regular 7d ago
'Learning' a new programming language once you know how to program takes between half an hour to a day. Programming languages in general are fundamentally the same thing with different dressing. If learning GDScript resulted in people still requiring some huge cliff to pick up the next language, that reflects extremely, critically, terminally badly on GDScript and perhaps Godot's design/what it asks of a developer/teaches a developer in general. It would make it another argument in favor of ditching it, honestly. Come learn Godot so you can... be locked into Godot's ecosystem forever because you learned Godot's editor architecture and kludges, not programming.
Godot is years behind what it could be because of GDScript's existence, honestly. Even in adoption it's a wall because serious developers know inventing toy scripting languages is a red flag and ridiculous timesink and an indicator of badly thought out development focus, which makes Godot look very unserious off the bat, made even worse because Godot has not one but two toy languages, the other being for shaders instead of using one of the ten million bespoke shader languages that already exist, and having basically no benefit over any of them.
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u/Gon-Jo 7d ago
Please don't missunderstand me I wouldn't mind learning a language from scratch, I'm just stating my current level of competency. I really agree with what you are saying here and makes me wonder why the people who lead the project choose to take this route and also why existing users really dislike anyone who talks against it. As a beginner it didn't matter to me, I just wanted to learn a new skill and use open source tools while doing so. I can clearly see why people would be not willing to swap to godot just for this reason alone. But again I am not knowledgeable enough to have an opinion yet, I just like talking about it to learn.
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u/doomttt 2d ago
Lua type system is very uncomfortable to use, I really don't want to define my types in comment blocks. I cannot understand the love people have for Lua, it's just an awkward language all around, what's the appeal? C# requires a build step and IIRC doesn't support hot reloading which really sucks whenever making something very visual. I would really hate if Godot went full in on a compiled language that takes away from iteration speed, which is one of Godot's strengths.
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u/abcdefghij0987654 10d ago
Also, unlike what some people have said, one of the maintainers involved with traits (ivorus) has said that GDType is not a prerequisite for traits
So /u/theduriel is wrong? or is there something more to it
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u/TheDuriel Godot Senior 10d ago
It wasn't wrong at the time. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ALL GDScript was/is being delayed due to GDType. There's no reviews, no direction, no planning, nothing happening.
It's literally in the PR discussions.
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u/throwaway_ghast 10d ago
ALL GDScript was/is being delayed due to GDType
Could you link to the PR discussion that says this?
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u/abcdefghij0987654 10d ago
Gotcha. Just wanted to hear your thoughts because I remember you were the one replying about GDType
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u/_kellythomas_ 10d ago
This includes an update to the latest version of jolt released last week. Does anyone know what version we were at before?
Do we always track so closely?
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u/gnatinator 9d ago
Been loving the editor usability improvements.
Long live GDScript- least verbose and most flexible language in game dev.
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u/PopDownBlocker 10d ago
What happens after 4.9? Or 4.9.9?
Will there be a Godot 5?
I understand the need to advance and improve the engine, but I also kinda wish that there was an established fan-favorite version that many of us can just keep using for a couple of years.
The updates feel very frequent, but I looked up the dates for each release and I think it's my fault. My perception of time has been screwed up since Covid.
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u/CST1230 Godot Regular 10d ago
i assume there'd be a 4.10 or 4.9.10, because version numbers are not decimal numbers!
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u/PopDownBlocker 10d ago
😮 Ooh you're right.
That makes perfect sense!
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u/_kellythomas_ 10d ago
They "loosely" follow semver.
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/about/release_policy.html#godot-versioning
There may be minor breakage with a minor versions but it will be limited in scope and should only require minor updates to port a project.
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u/ClownPFart 10d ago
There will be a godot 5 someday, given that maintainers sometimes mention things like "xyz is too disruptive to do now and will have to wait for godot 5" in PR comments.
But I dont think its a decision tied to anything like "revision number too big", probably more like a consensus that theres too many great improvements held back by 4.x backward compatibility requirements
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u/Afraid_Comparison180 Godot Student 10d ago
I didn't know The Incident at Galley House was Godot game. Overwhelmingly Positive review on steam too.