GD4 or 5 for a side-scroller shooter game?

:slight_smile: hey guys :slight_smile: *** very much sorry for long write*** :cry:

:stuck_out_tongue:  i'm newbie in GD  but not a totally noob  about game developing,  i understand some basics, a little work on unreal engine and 3ds max (at all i know the basic of 3d animation & gaming )
 developing a huge game was in my mind while i thought i can handle it and stay in line, but as i go along for about 2 month, i saw it would take more than 1 year to reach a  just good beta version but i don't have this time and need to success to release in under 5-6 month, so i pull down my idea to a 2d simple but funny game and after that going for a 3D game 
then keep searching for some days and it take my time very much just for reading about 2D engines and finding a good one with !!!visual scripting & FREE!!! (like unreal) , so i found this engine with good commendation on slant  <img src="/uploads/default/original/1X/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif" width="18" height="20" alt=":mrgreen:" title="M. Vert"/>  , also i had another choices like Godot but i see gdevelop is more easy for a beginner when it's powerfull enough for my game to fast develop and publish


:sunglasses:  i wanna create a medium complex/simple game as a 2d side-scroller shooter and at this point as i see gd5 sup all pc native export, and my main publish target is win, i just wanna know something about this engine and make sure to work with 4 or 5 or even go to the another engine (maybe Godot, the only good alternative to Gdevelop = free & visual script)
 when i saw that steam released game trailers "hyperspace dogfights", make me glad:mrgreen:  cuz my plan is too and what feature that i need is in it in some way 

 :exclamation: my main problem is: i found some feature that i needed for my game but idk GD5 still missing good feature from gd4 or most of them are covered now after this 1 year release? (one of them was native export that is back now ) and how much fast update and new feature coming? is he still listening to forum and improving the engine along with the developer's request?  (i just wanna say it right now: i'm planning to donate good price or what ever is best support for 4ian, after my success release if this engine features help me)

:question: so my questions is:
1- what feature is missing right now that was on gd4? (as i know the only thing left to do is tilemap editor, i didnā€™t get the pain of function and such complex things still !!, cuz idk very much about these)
2- can this engine support co-op multiplayer for steam fine? such as chat system and voice chat is very important for co-op, and also what ever a medium-complex co-op need?, if answer is no, can i add this to my steam game in other/any way? (and also i need a guide or help for how to do it?)
3- a little light function, for example: a scene light in the room to make a dark room bright with toggle on/off (i wonā€™t use this more than 1-2 in a scene, as i read the forum before, more than 1 make the GD4 games crash, in gd5 light is missed or added?)
4- what the limits or annoying things have gdevelop at this point for my game or at all?

my risk and challanges: TIME!!! :frowning: (same like all)
i can solve my problems with such thing like: particle-physic-sprite sheet and atlas/tilemaps, but at all iā€™m just little confuse for about to start my game as a gd4 native game or gd5? or even go to the next choice = Godot

tell me if my eng is bad :blush: , so i can improve it

At the moment there is 2 person actively contributing to GDevelop5 with bug fixes and new features. It is promising at the moment, but keep that in mind after all only few people working on this in spare time for free. It is not developed by a studio and by paid developers, donā€™t expect too much.

In case you already know GDevelop is missing features you need to complete your game, then I recommend to move on and find something that has all the features you need. Nobody going to add a feature only because you ask for it especially not in such a short amount of time like you have to finish the whole game.

A lot, would be better to decide based on what features you need instead of what is missing.

I donā€™t think so, probably in case you code it yourself but you donā€™t want to code.

No light function in GD5 but maybe you can fake it depends on you preferences

The only thing can be annoying if a feature is missing that you need. Again depends on what do you need.

Keep that in mind GD4 is no longer developed, in case you find a bug it may not going to be fixed and in my opinion thatā€™s just way too high risk. It might ruin your whole game if you find out at the finish line something is bugged. I recommend to go with GD5 but in case it missing any features you need, then I recommend to look at something else. In case you donā€™t want to code there are some paid solutions but in case you donā€™t wan to pay either Iā€™m afraid you are out of options.

In my opinion GDevelop is a good choice for web games.
But for native games, I donā€™t recommend it. (Based on my little experience.)
Because of performance issues especially in android games.
Personally, I prefer using another engine for native games.
Also GDevelop taught me so much about game development. So for those who wants to begin (for fun and learning), GDevelop is a good choice.

By the way, can I ask you a personal question?
Where are You from? (Your name is a usual name in my country.)

ty a lot for answering, i read some forum topics before, specially urs :smiley:

i already known that just one person is developing the engine for some years with a little help by contributors, and this is a great engine made by just one man and he supported it well all the long but he cut some good flowers to make the garden more beautiful and spend lot of time for it while still the new IDE still have some issue and need improvement

at this point iā€™m just wasting lot of my times for just picking an engine :frowning: , and now finally i decide to start with gd5 and handle my game even if this engine donā€™t work fine for me (and forget that idea about light just for now, maybe while iā€™m creating my game, 4ian add this feature :mrgreen: )

as my game isnā€™t really complex (just a 2d platformer-shooter with such dumb AI zombies :stuck_out_tongue: ) but still i have very much mind harassment about 2 things while iā€™m working with *** GD5 ***
1- fine export to pc, donā€™t matter as a html or native (cuz my game would have a price and need to work good and ply smooth)
2- the multiplayer function depend on what engine iā€™m using or not? is it add able to a game in anyyyy way!!! (donā€™t matter if need to mess around with coding) or the core engine must support it?

and at the end can u tell me more about this engine and pls explain some missing feature in ur opinion (i found u have a good vision over this engine and at all 2d game developing (cuz i just mess around with 3d before)

The others answered your questions very adequately, the only bit I can add is in the multiplayer side, I am developing a 4 player coop space game, GDevelop has lots of annoying things I am using GD4 (for the multiplayer). Depending on how complex your game is, coop is very doable, chat is easy, voice I donā€™t think is possibleā€¦? But I havenā€™t looked into it. I feel like I bit off more then I can chew with my project but, a good challenge is fun.

The huge upside for me is I have a working multiplayer game, and I have about 60 hours into it, 40 of those have been networking nightmares :cry: but, thatā€™s still quite rapid imo. So for getting something done quick and runs quite fast on my old laptop, itā€™s worth a try.

The huge downside lots of freezing, crashing of the editor, make sure to save very often and to multiple files at once because strange things occur :confused:

I personally prefer GD4 layout and have no love for GD5, but itā€™s all personal preference.

As the others have said, there are other engines that are free or cheap and still offer rapid dev times. Good luck! :smiley:

GD5 has no networking, and not sure if it will be implemented.

thanks for answering, ur mean about native is export to mob or native to pc? cuz my target is pc and donā€™t matter as html or native
yep iā€™m agree with ur word about gdevelop is good and nice for begin(no other engine offer visual scripting for FREE!, just if we donā€™t mind godot)
the only problem is: it have much examples to learn from, but still need more doc and tut, and this is why iā€™m not sure to make a real hit on this engine or the only alternative to it = Godot

and about ur personal ask: i donā€™t know what do u think about my country but iā€™m from I.R.IRAN (cuz some countries such as USA, lies a lot about iran, their governments call us as a terrorist country while their armies killing the people all around the world and the most of this ages wars happening by their hands), after all iā€™m from IRAN but not a terrorist :laughing:

oh man, ur comment make me kill (here is no any avatar face to show how much iā€™m jurring :astonished: ), no networking in gd5 at all? after about 2 weeks i finally was planing to work with this engine at last/final decide, and support it a lot after i success but nowā€¦

i just want ask from 4ian WHY??? Really why man?!!! did u cut all the flowers to just start a new garden? man u had a great garden, what is the point of gd5 when u leave all these good feature behind? , iā€™m very sad cuz 4ian developed a nice engine but cut it from below
then pls, just pls one person tell me what is the gd5 point? he stop developing 4 and start 5 to reach where?

ty a lot man, u told me a very important feature is missing that i was really needed for my game (u saved a lot of my times, maybe some months, i wonā€™t forgive u :unamused: )
at the end: what is ur advice about working with gd4? i have a not bad pc (win) and my target is export to steam, my game will be a 2d side-scroller shooter (not a complex at all), do u use the lights of gd4? if we ignore voice-chat , can it handle for a co-op steam multiplayer?

Well as I mentioned itā€™s very doable, lots can be done quickly, but it has some very annoying stability issues, if you canā€™t look past those I would look at Godot, Construct, or Corona SDK are some that I really like.

To be fair, although it has its annoyances most engines do, I have found a way past them and I enjoy it for what it is a free open source engine that is pretty quick to dev and is quite fast at execution.

i really want stay with gdevelop but gd5 isnā€™t well for me and as i already checked trello-roadmap, 4ian is doing another things that isnā€™t those features that i need , and also as i read before gd4 have some issues for a polished and fine game (cuz i want to develop an indie game to steam, not a hobby one) , but still i fall in love with gdevelop and donā€™t want to leave it :cry: who the good guy offer a simple-nice engine for beginners with visual scripting for !FREE! ??? (others offer code or money), yep!! Godot :mrgreen: so byby gdevelop :stuck_out_tongue: (here i wish best for 4ian)

Can we make personal contact?
something like Steam or Discord.

Godot is a great engine, but the visual scripting is not close as powerful as the GD one, it takes lot of space and is not very intuitive, youā€™ll find it very hard to program an entire game (even if itā€™s simple) with visual script only :neutral_face:

yep Gdevelop is easy and good while is powerful enough, but i canā€™t develop my game with GD5 cuz it missing some core features for my game such as network and light, and i know it would be more when i jump in middle and mess around more ; and also i canā€™t develop with GD4 too, cuz no more supporting and some guys reporting stability issues and this is not good for a clean and price able game

i didnā€™t get the point of implementing GD5 instead of 4, cuz no one mentioned it before, it would be great if u mention

but at the end, whatever gdevelop stand at this point, it isā€™t a perfect suit for me, i really need network feature and also canā€™t stand with a left (leave) suit

The stability issues are with the editor, not your game, it has a good debugger, and as Lizard-13 stated the visual scripting is quite powerful, where as Godot it is limitedā€¦sorry I forgot you were after visual scripting only, I would try GD4 for a week, a good honest try, if it doesnā€™t fit the bill then look at construct or click team fusion they both have lights and networking.

Only would like to add, you can do multiplayer in GD5 but you need to code it yourself at the moment. It is not easy but possible.

In case you really want to make this game in 5-6 months In my opinion Construct 2 or 3 would be the best option for you because it does not require coding and do support multiplayer and lights. It even offer a free server for all Construct users that connect players for you so you donā€™t even need to worry about that.

Also Construct has one of the best multiplayer engine out there and it is important to mention we are not talking about simply ā€œnetworkingā€ but a complete multiplayer engine that has been optimized for performance. ā€œNetworkingā€ on it own is nothing but the ability to connect and send and receive messages over the network. Multiplayer is more complicated than just sending and receiving messages because you also need to take care of any delay, lag and lost pockets caused by slow connection or busy network, high traffic or slow PC. Not all players connecting at the same speed and run the game at the same FPS. In real time multiplayer it is important to know who was the first at the finish line but it is not as simple as connect all players and done. Ideally, the host need to run the game and need to predict what the players are going to do and what their position is going to be in the next moment and try to keep the players synced and up to date. It is something that networking on it own, not going to do for you.

Construct 2 Multiplayer take care of most of that problem. In case you go with any other engine that offer only ā€œnetworkingā€ you still need to build this multiplayer engine from scratch and take care of all that and it is a lot of work and even though we are talking about co-op in case it is online co-op it still require a server somewhere to connect peoples to each other or in case you are going to publish the game on Steam you can use the Steam Matchmaking API to connect Steam players in your game, but again it is require coding.

So my recommendation would be Construct.

But In case you want a free option that also do not require coding, there is not many options out there and GDevelop is the best option in my opinion.

Regarding GD4 vs GD5, again, I canā€™t recommend GD4 to anyone new. It doesnā€™t makes any sense to start a new project in a dead engine that is no longer supported and no longer get bug fixes. It might work at the moment, but what if Microsoft/Nvidia/Intel/AMD drop an update tomorrow that cause GD4 games to crash or even GD4 itself? You are out of luck I guess. Missing features or not, stable or not, I would not recommend starting a new project now in GD4.

As of GD5 unfortunately it does not have multiplayer nor networking or lights, I guess you need to make your decision with this in mind.

see ur private massage inbox :slight_smile:

iā€™m in middle air with 4 choice: gd4 with some high risk / gd5 with no multiplayer / Godot with no great vision on it / construct 3 with 150$ per year (and also even more, maybe GMS with 40$ paid just for win export - fusion - learn coding with cocos2d or corona.sdk)
i think cuz my next game after it would by unreal engine (already i get dirty with blueprint), Godot visual scripting is similar to it and is a good learning to ready more for unreal engine, but still maybe ā€¦ a single game with gd5? or pay for a ready multiplayer? ah maaann!!! :frowning:

ty very much for full and clearly mentioning about network and multiplayer and giving me a better vision on construct, but why u told construct 2 instead of 3? is 2 better? and also it cost very very very muuuch, 500$$$$ for more than just 5k revenue

iā€™m going to write a post on gd req and ask 4ian for mentioning the point of his mind about gd5 implementing for right now and the next 2-3 months (cuz he sign a doing thing which wasnā€™t in the trello-roadmap enhancements), it will give me a better decide to choose my engine

Learn to program Python or GDScript while waiting for Godot 3.1 :imp: because programming a multiplayer game with visual script only will be a pain in the :smiling_imp:

do u know the visual scripting and GDscript can be merge in Godot or not?

Yeah, you can even make custom visual nodes through scriptsā€¦ but you have to code for that :stuck_out_tongue: