What are the limitations of GDevelop?

GDevelop general
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Thank you both.

@ddabrahim:
You don’t seem very positive, it is a bit puzzling why are you still here if you are not using the software and you see the future uncertain. I value the information you shared but I hope others also going to answer my questions unless they agree in which case I’m not very motivated after reading your reply. AppGameKit is not something I’m interested in, I prefer something require no code and comes with an editor but what you told about HTML5 make me consider to find something that can export to Android and Windows natively in which case I left only with Clickteam. But thank you for the suggestion.

@Matt.B:
The isometric movement looks nice but there is a lot more to it than just movement on a small land. There is also combat, weapons, items, progression, shop, mobs, crafting may even building and a huge map. Unfortunately I don’t see people using GDevelop for such complex games and what ddabrahim told about the loading time because of the images also leave me with the question if GDevelop can support a complex and big game at all. But thank you anyway.

5

I have been doing game development for fun over a year now. I have messed with Unity, UE4, GameMaker, Construct, and GDevelop(most recent).

To stay in th positive direction, the fundamentals of GD are solid. Having the ability to create a custom made sprite, with custom collisions, and allow Java code within the editing has actually allowed for some amazing creation possibilities that many have still yet to discover.

Regardless of limitations anyhow (which all programs have), the development is active and currently functionality is great for getting started.

I currently have a 4 level parallax background, a player with 7 animations, pixel perfect collisions, weather conditions(rain only so far), and working on background and foreground grass at the moment, as well as an android friendly GUI. I have tested on my phone my game so far and it works great.

For what its worth, I would say the only thing you lose is time, unless you stick with it :slight_smile: By the time a good developer gets to the point in their game with GD, many changes on the dev side will have been made anyhow. If a part of what you need is currently not a function, move on and request it, and have patience and Im sure if it is viable for the development of GD, it will be implemented.

Hope that is helpful in some way

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To be honest, I dont even know. I guess it become a habit after so many years. I open the browser and type in the forum address without even thinking and once I see the titles, in some case I cant stand not to reply :laughing:

Maybe it hard to believe in case you don’t know any code but once you know how to code in any language which is just a few syntax rules you need to follow, it is just as easy as the events and a lot faster really since you don’t need to navigate between menus instead you can just type. But I understand if you have doubts, I was the same once.

AGK does have a 2D visual editor as a separated DLC so if you want you can make your levels inside an editor and then run it in AGK with a click of a button. In case you want a 3D editor, with a DLC you can also load GameGuru levels in to AGK with all textures, models and also animations and even the HLSL shaders from GameGuru is being replaced with GLSL in AGK by the loader. You get almost 1:1 result visually. but you still need to add logic using code inside AGK.
On a good day you can get the whole AGK package at 70-80% off which is not much more than any other tools out there.

I can tell you that right now, in Clickteam not all features are available or works the same on all platforms and this limitation is the reason I did not use it. If I make a game and I decide at the finish line I want to publish it to a certain platform I was not considering before, I don’t want to find my self the game won’t compile and there is nothing I can do about it.

This is also a nice thing about AGK, all the features in AGK are fully cross platform except platform specific features obviously. But 99% of features do compile to all platforms without require any changes which is make it truly stand out. No other engines offer such cross platform compatibility, in most engines you do need to make changes in order to make your game run the same on different platforms.

But the decision is yours.

Good luck.

Oh, I would love to throw a list of features here that have been requested in the past 5 years and I’m not even sure if it have been considered at all but I really need to go to bed now. :smiling_imp:
GD is begin developed only in spare time by a single developer and Lizard-13 did contributed lately but don’t be so sure anything is being implemented you request. If anyone going to consider anything here that would be Lizard-13, but still 4ian make the decision if merge the pull request or not. I’ve seen great features thrown away by 4ian because he did not want to maintain it :frowning: He is the boss and if he is not interested in maintaining something in the core product he won’t include it. Of course I can understand why, I’m not blaming him or anything but it still sucks.

But let stay positive, GD is great unless it missing any feature you need. :laughing:

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I will say just one thing, probably (just probably) there is no such software in the whole world that lets you work with isometric maps, open worlds, physics (liquids and drag&drop included), lights & shadows, inventory, progression, particles (probably you’ll want them to illuminate and collide with your open isometric world too), with ads and in-app purchases, skeletal animations, and every feature compatible with all the others, with a cool editor supporting real-time collaboration, etc. And with the capacity to export to multiple platforms in a click, and without coding! (and if it’s free better) :smiling_imp:
You are searching the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, a Chimera, … the Higgs Boson? :laughing:
I’m sure with some work you can make such game with an engine developed for such big projects (Unreal, Unity, Godot?), but you’ll have to code, and for such features, code a lot. My advise (don’t read it if you don’t like advises), would be using GDevelop or Construct to make a small game and get an idea about the event system and get some programming-like knowledge, then start learning programming in a bigger engine if you still want to make that super game :slight_smile:
I know I sound rude, but it isn’t because this engine, it’s because you are asking for something no engine can offers.

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I have used many engines, and languages. I quite enjoy GDevelop. Just to touch on a couple of the ops questions.

Large open world, easy. I am developing a massive open world space game, demo soon! :smiley: . Keeping resources in memory is odd in GDevelop but easy, sound in your initiation events just play the sounds then pause on channels, then simply play the channels in the game when needed and it’s always loaded. Images are the same, as are animations, put them where you need them, hide them and shows them when needed…not pretty but works very well.

As for performance, I have an old laptop i3, 8go ram, Intel hd 4400 and have 300-400 dynamic objects in heavy battles 60fps on Windows and Linux.

It’s a great program, just takes time like anything.

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Thank you guys.

Most of you seem optimistic regarding the capabilities of GDevelop yet none of you have published any games and non of you really mention any limitations either. It fine if you guys think GDevelop is capable and worth the time but then I would like to see evidence, finished games that also runs well.

@Lizard-13
It would be very important the game work on both mobile and desktop the same and offer an easy way to include ads and in-app purchase and easy way to export the game. I don’t think this requirement would be out of this world. I did look in to GDevelop and Construct 2 Free in the past few days but I don’t think I’m going to be using them. They are HTML5 only and many people reporting problems with HTML5 games on mobile devices. I also find it too complicated to convert HTML5 to Windows and Android. From GDevelop 5 I can export to Android but the game did not run well on my mobile, maybe it is the holy grail I’m looking for but I do want to focus on my game and I don’t want to deal with problems like no sound on mobile, not scaling right, the game running slow…etc and I definitely don’t want to spend hours only to export to see that it doesn’t work. I also tried to access the sensors in my mobile to check if I tilt the phone or something but could not find a way to do it. So HTML5 is not the way I go for sure. But thank you anyway and my apology to all of you for wasting your time. If GDevelop 5 do get native export, may be I have a look again and come back with more questions. Hope by that many of you finish the game you are working on right now.

@ddabrahim:
I did take a closer look at AppGameKit, it does not seem to be that difficult indeed but I could not say that it crystal clear. But multiple people did mention that how easy and simple to export the same game to all platforms. I did also come across a video showing how easy it is to make an AR game in AppGameKit and preview on mobile. It is really caught my attention and give me some great ideas and inspired me. Unfortunately the trial version does not allow me to export to mobile and it does not include the Visual Editor but I think I give it a go and see if I like it. Thank you.

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I don’t know did you search only html and mobile games, but here is some native games:

There is a game that will released on Steam this month:
[url]Hyperspace Dogfights [Alpha] [Itch.io] - #58 by arc1tec4]

My game work in progress (“open world”, gameplay happens in one scene. Metroidvania kind of game):
https://gamejolt.com/games/tundmatu/192044

And games in GDevelop website:
https://gdevelop-app.com/games-showcase/

Especially game Jeux suis fan by Michael J Hatena seemed pretty interesting.

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Yes, I did search for mobile games in the first place.

My understanding is that those games are made in the old version of GDevelop and the home page saying the old version is no longer developed so it is definitely not something I would consider using also it is desktop only, there is no native mobile export unless I missing something.

Regarding the games on the website, I don’t want to hurt the feelings of anyone, I understand those games did require great deal of effort to make but still, I would hardly call them complex games. What I would like to see is a game that compete with studio titles. To be honest HyperSpace Dogfights was the reason I decided to take a look at GDevelop, it is a decent game but doesn’t show a lot of gameplay but nice animations and graphics. I was hoping to find more of similar quality but more complex games, I did not so I asked for what the limitations are to get a better picture why nobody is making big titles here. But as I mentioned, the problem now is that GDevelop 5 is a HTML5 engine, I prefer native mobile export because HTML5 seem to have lot of problems on mobile. But thank you.

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To be honest, I don’t think it fair to judge an engine based on what the users are doing. I’ve seen horrible games made in Unity and Unreal that even made it on to Steam. But of course it does not explain the lack of commercial games made in GD.

I guess the bottom line is, most commercial games are made in other engine but not only because they are better but also because they do offer priority support. Free tools normally don’t provide that and not even many paid tools. When you make a commercial game and you do have a budget and a deadline to meet and not only make it for fun, you do want to get customer support so in case you have any game breaking bug that stand in your way to meet your deadline, you can request a fix and don’t need to wait for a public release so you can continue and meet your deadlines. Also if you need further explanation that the documentation does not provide you can ask for it or in case you simply need technical help in general with the problem you face you can request assistance over skype or messenger or even face to face with a technician. It is something that most paid commercial engines do offer. In case of open-source engine devs also need to consider how many people are familiar with the source code so how many people can potentially fix any problems they might have. So, when you expect to see studio quality games, you also need to consider this when you ask the question why people are using or not using X and Y for making commercial games. It is not only about pure features and capabilities but also support they can get.

So, only because people are not using GDevelop for commercial games not necessarily means limitations but only that, there are better solutions out there for commercial and big games.

For making HTML5 games that runs in the browser, personally I would use Phaser, then Construct 2 then either GDevelop or RPG Maker MV, so GDevelop is only the 3rd or in case you want to make an RPG, the 4th on my personal list for HTML5 games in the browser.

For HTML5 on mobile, personally I put Phaser first, RPG Maker MV 2nd because they do support atlas images and that is important for performance and their content management system is extremely well designed and fast, Phaser also offer a light weight physics engine specifically for mobile devices that is a lot faster on mobile then Box2D, Then I put Construct 2 3rd and GD is only the 4th again.

For making mobile games in general, personally I prefer AppGameKit, for many reasons it is simply the best and most simple solution out there in my opinion then I would put Godot and Unity 2nd and 3rd. But there are lot of other engines that people are using for mobile, like Cocos2D and Starling for example that I don’t really know as AGK does what I need perfectly and I did not look further.

For making games in general there is no best or worst engine. For the most part it is depends on what kind of game you want to make and what platforms you do want to support. Normally you need to choose engine for the game you want to make. For example, No Man’s Sky started in Unity then they decided to make their own engine. EVE Valkyre started in Unity then the devs decided to go with Unreal. Most of the time you can’t just pick a single engine and go with that one for a life, you need to be flexible and find the engine fit best the game you are making.

At the moment I would recommend GDevelop to complete beginners who do want to target desktop and the browser but in case you do want to target mobile, I would recommend to keep your ambitions and the number of devices that you going to support at the minimum with GD.

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The thing with GD (and any software that uber-simplifies things) is that it targets new-on-the-industry users. Why?, as it simplifies the process through events you’ll face some kind of technical limitation someday*, after that you/your team will switch to a more complete engine, more difficult/complex but with more freedom. You can do that easily because you’ve learned the event system/the logic/the workflow, and the bases never change, having said that I must note that the learning experience of GD is invaluable, but it’s a shame that complex games become something improbable :neutral_face:

*For example you can’t detect collisions between two instances of the same object and then differentiate them, because you can’t manipulate objects lists nor instance variables manually (there are workarounds, though).

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The main limitation in my opinion, is the person using it, GDevelop has some weird things that have to be done as workarounds, but everything does I think anyway, the ability to figure these out is of course another important learning factor. I think a complicated game is very doable in GDevelop! :smiley:.

My main engine aside from this one is Ethanon Engine, and it’s mostly code, but having to write everything myself, every function for everything from rotation to pathfinding got old with the limited time I have. Plus Angelscript is quite slow and not ready for heavy lifting like pathfinding…but anyway, meant for beginners or not, with a fraction of the time I can create something in GDevelop and it runs really well. To begin with it didn’t I had to figure out GDevelop’s quirks, with of course the forum with all the experienced members old posts helped me tremendously. :slight_smile:

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GD being for “newbies” is kind of a misnomer, since to get something that runs smoothly and working well takes hundreds if not thousands of hours depending on what you’re working on. I’ve learned a ton and still am learning after probably 600 hours at this point, and I don’t think I’ll truly ever learn everything for another 1000.

I can’t accurately say what the limitations are because I feel like I haven’t really learned the proper optimization processes yet. But from what I have learned, GD is extremely powerful and more intuitive than other systems, but even a newbie wanting to go in and make a full fledged game better have time and dedication.

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I know this thread is pretty old, so, many limitations don’t exist anymore but I want to reply some of the assertions, because the subject is interesting for me.

One of GDevelop limitations is obviously the absence of 3D.

I think many amateurs don’t out adds simply because they already know their games are too basic to pretend a payment. In my opinion, this is a good way to think, because represents humbleness. Maybe they will pretend when create good games in future.

Anyway, some people are young, so is in their rights publish even basic or unfinished games, this help them to be more comfortable and not excluded from game developing, encouraging them to make better in future as they both grow up and acquire skills.

“-could you make an open world game without loading screens?”
To be honest, even triple A games have loading screens. Old GTA games have it. Sometimes is a matter of performance more than a game or developer limitations.

“most Android games are running slow that I don’t really understand why”
I agree with ddabrahim’s reply, but this is the reason we have to support GDevelop. Every user/developer is a great chance to make GDevelop (or any other game engine) better and let the team implement new features and upgrade this engine.

“It would be very important the game work on both mobile and desktop the same and offer an easy way to include ads and in-app purchase and easy way to export the game. I don’t think this requirement would be out of this world.”
As far as I know, PCs and mobiles have peculiar differences. Every game engine team (Godot, Unity, Unreal, etc.) explains make the same game for mobile phones needs to be adapted.

I agree with ddabrahim, again, when he say “I’ve seen horrible games made in Unity and Unreal that even made it on to Steam.”
I remember the wave of horrible indie horror games back in the 2010. Many FPS with terrible physics and bugged characters drawn in a childish way. Other genres can be mentioned but I think is enough right now as an example.

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This limitations don’t exist anymore too, the community working on a solution really impressive!

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I knew it would happen, and this is a very good news although I’m waiting for a complete implementation with Blender or similar 3D software.

I remember when Sparkman on YouTube shows how to implement 2.5D sprites on GDevelop, then Pandako with his/her phenomenal skills.

Another limitation could be the lacking of useful pre-built tools. For example, times ago there was a grid movement made by mikesheldon (Grid movement [GDevelop wiki]) but it doesn’t exist anymore, only on GDevelop wiki. That would be very useful to shorten the time for those who want to create an old style top-down JRPG.

Anyway, anyone can contribute, so every lacking in GDevelop can be filled one day. I’m very positive on open-source free software.

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The exention grid movement has been updated to become this one:

image
image957×603 59.7 KB

There is two examples for it, links are in the description of the extension, and in the game templates in the homepage of the app.

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I knew that extension, I’ve talked about it in another post: Grid based movement that actually works

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Sorry for necroposting to an old post, but I do have to agree, many of these limitations don’t exist anymore.

Back when this was posted, GD5 was still in it’s early betas, lacking many features and optimization techniques. Hell, we didn’t even have FUNCTIONS or TILEMAPS back when this was posted.

Nowadays, GD5 is a beast of an engine. It’s evolution was quite astonishing, as DOZENS of useful features were added in, on top of the fact that the engine is still being regularly updated by the devs and the community with extensions.

I will agree on the bad performance of mobile games, which leads me to assume that GD5 isn’t really optimal for mobile games at this point, which is why we need to help support it so that it can eventually can be a good platform for mobile devices. Obviously, one thing that would help would be Dragonbones, but… yeah… those plans kind of fell through. Although, the engine is still open sourced with the community helping improve it, so it’s not completely out the window.

And I know it’s beating a dead horse by now, but I don’t think it’s fair to compare GD5 to Godot and Unity based on what people make. I mean sure, they’re both superior engines, but as everyone else said, horrible games were made in those engines too.

A tool is only as bad as the person using it. If you really work hard on a game in GD5, especially nowadays with all the new features, improvements, and optimizations, GD5 is actually quite viable to make some great games. In fact, we actually DID get a good amount of impressive games with the engine as of lately.

It’s only up from here, GD5 is only going to get better as long as we all keep supporting it.

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Folks, this is a post from 2018. Let’s not ping every person who has responded over the last 5 years with replying to it. Thank you.

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