from Hacker News

Is Making Advanced GUI Applications with Godot the Future? (2020)

by macco on 6/18/22, 1:57 PM with 58 comments

• by preommr on 6/18/22, 4:54 PM

  Very unlikely.

  Godot has those features because game devs often need to make UIs for the game e.g. menus, etc. A decent game engine has to have that kind of functionality. Godot dogfooding is not a good indicator of it's potential as a ui toolkit. It's probably easier for them since they might need specialized components and because they're already familiar with the tools. There's a very strong advantage unique to them.

  There are alot of edge cases and broader applications that the right tool for the job like Qt and even electron cover because that's what they're specialized for.

  The expectation that godot will cover two major disciplines is possible... but unlikely.

• by krapp on 6/18/22, 3:59 PM

  I've seen a lot of applications posted to Godot subreddits, so it's clearly a thing. Godot has some clear shortcomings when it comes to application development, particularly with layout and text rendering, but it's not at all infeasible. I wouldn't do anything important with Godot at this point, though, at least not without C#. GDScript ... is better than GML and Dark Basic but worse than any language you would actually want to use.

  I think the important takeaway from reading the article is how crucial editor design is.

• by wly_cdgr on 6/18/22, 6:41 PM

  I really appreciate how Godot is the only one of the 3D engines that not only offers good 2D support as well (like say Unity) but really treats 2D as a first class citizen. I also REALLY appreciate how it's the only one that has decent built-in support for vector drawing.

  That said, so does Canvas, and HTML & CSS are a tried and true portable powerhouse UI combo, and JS/TS are infinitely more relevant than GDScript, so I am camp Electron. Especially now that web 3D is also better than it's ever been. I would rather see more work to make Electron gamedev-friendly than work to make Godot appdev-friendly

• by glowingly on 6/18/22, 3:36 PM

  I very much wish so.

  I tried using Godot at work and got turned down. They wouldn't even allow a demo or the "IDE" to be installed. Must use our licensed contract junk from leaches on government dole, because those are what's approved by cybersecurity.

  I now have a few more interview questions to ask of future employers and things to look out for during interview tours.

• by MaybeItsMia on 6/18/22, 4:34 PM

  Am I weird that I enjoy HTML/CSS for GUI and Layout? With CSS grid of course. Hell I love Godot, but the fact that you can't do something as simple as give a component a max width is so annoying.

• by HidyBush on 6/18/22, 4:38 PM

  Making GUIs with game engines is the future not because they are easy to develop with, but because the moment AR and VR become common we already have tools to make 3D interfaces

• by rm7 on 6/18/22, 10:18 PM

  I'm looking at moving my desktop application(s) from Microsoft WinForms to Godot, but its worrying that no one else is doing it yet. It certainly seems appealing, especially compared to the other options, but its not at all clear what the limitations and risks are without investing a lot of time/money into it.

• by DeathArrow on 6/18/22, 4:49 PM

  >It is not made for reusable components, like real GUI toolkits. The latter needs some explanation. The web way of creating reusable components is through some kind of templating. You are basically just copy pasting a chunk of HTML several times representing your new custom component.

  That's not true since HTML allows custom elements.

• by hdjjhhvvhga on 6/18/22, 2:55 PM

  I agree one would have a similar experience as the author when learning Flutter, but it is because on mobile you need to have all these shiny things so it's no wonder that documentation covers it in detail. However, you can perfectly write Flutter apps without animations, transitions and the like.

• by jayd16 on 6/18/22, 6:00 PM

  Game engines have a lot of nice tech and maybe one will get popular for apps one day. The major issue I see is that they're simply tuned for a different UX. They're usually very power hungry (both amps and CPU cycles) and designed to push as many pixels as possible.

  It's the exact opposite of the modern view layouts that try to cache view images to reduce the draw work.

• by butwhywhyoh on 6/18/22, 4:45 PM

  But you guys, this software isn't practicing good Design. None of those UI elements provide me with any _satisfaction_. I don't care how efficient it is if it doesn't follow solid Design principles (like massive checkboxes that take seconds to activate).

  /s

• by NonNefarious on 6/19/22, 9:09 AM

  I’d consider Godot but it’s unusable for deploying on mobile platforms.

  We need desktop and mobile, making Qt/QML our only apparent practical choice.

  BTW, we built a desktop app in QML and the GUI performs great. The resizing is smooth and elegant.

• by iLoveOncall on 6/18/22, 3:03 PM

  Well I'd argue that making GUI applications is not the future, so that doesn't bode well for making GUI applications with Godot.

• by bitwize on 6/18/22, 5:56 PM

  No.

  Inasmuch as desktop applications continue to exist, the future is Electron. The only applications for which there is still demand for traditional GUI apps are military and medical device applications.

  Electron is literally write once, run anywhere. It's leaps and bounds beyond anything else in this regard. RAM is cheap, and a few hundred megabytes per installation are a small price to pay for increased productivity and accelerated time to market.

• by DeathArrow on 6/18/22, 4:53 PM

  Godot is fine for GUI in Games and 3D apps. And that's it.

• by lakomen on 6/18/22, 7:15 PM

  I personally prefer not designing my gui but coding it.

  I met a guy who said he wanted to write whatever documentation, essentially a gui in Godot and I was like, why not use the proper tool for the job. Well he said he's familiar with Godot so he'd write it in Godot.

  And now this.

  I was learning about Android development, jetpack compose, the new thing where you essentially write components in code, I prefer it over the old way, gui design with Android Studio in xml files. I guess I can get used to both but would prefer jetpack compose because it's so similar to "the web wayTM".

  I'm guessing if you're used to graphical layout and design you'd disagree so TL;DR it isn't for me, but I've had Godot on the list of things to get into or at least try to scratch the surface and create a test project with it.