Godot 4.0 development enters feature freeze ahead of the first beta(godotengine.org) |
Godot 4.0 development enters feature freeze ahead of the first beta(godotengine.org) |
https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues
https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/45628
Eventually Godot will stabilize and be to game engines what Blender currently is to 3D modelers. If I had time to learn the Godot C++ code I would volunteer to help but I want to actually make video games instead of working on an engine.
Godot is not beautiful modern code or anything, but it's definitely not inscrutable layers of spaghetti which require deep expertise. It's very readable and compiles reasonably fast.
I've been funding it (a small amount monthly) for a long time now. I wish it had existed about 15 years ago in college when I had lots of time on my hands for toying with game making.
I can't remember the exact details around this, since I only used Godot for a couple of jams and the last time was a year ago. But I was wondering if others have had the same reaction, perhaps this could be fixed? I love the engine in general, but this thing irked me.
The tree turns out to be a great place to keep things, and you get several levels of control. Here’s how I think about it now.
`_init`: constructor. I usually use this to create dynamic child nodes
`_enter_tree`: now we have a parent; subscribe to signals, copy initial config, etc
`_ready`: I can be sure that all child nodes have called _ready, so anything I depend on there is… er, ready
`_exit_tree`: cleanup, especially anything we did with the parent and other ancestors. usually symmetric to `_enter_tree` if I’m using them
I just did a find all in my biggest recent project, and I never actually use `queue_free` or `free` for explicit memory management. Most of the times when I’ve thought I needed to, I actually was creating a bug
On a more serious note, I do expect test-ability isn't a high customer priority for Godot. Godot is self-hosted, maybe check how they run their tests?
I'm really excited for many features of Godot 4, and GDScript is perfectly adequate for UI glue code and stuff, but to write a serious game you really want C#.
There was even a pull request implementing this feature opened, but they claim the assigned maintainer just didn't have the time to review it yet (over 5 years!). One person can effectively stall all progress out of spite. That's no way to run an open source project.
Just look at this discussion: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/2972
But it's just not there yet, things which take seconds in Unity take minutes in Godot. Or are just impossible.
It's not done yet, it's going to probably be done in either late 2023 or 2024. Godot 4 needs to come out, and they need to add mono. I've never been more frustrated with a programming language before I found Godot script, just why.
Why not use Python, why, why not use? I don't know, haxe.
Even Godot's creator tried to calm everybody down, you're comparing what's basically a souped-up hobbyist project by maybe two or 300 volunteers to professional products by multi-billion dollar companies of tens of thousands of people.
All that said, I am fighting through Godot right now and I'm having the most fun with game development I've had in years. I try to armory as well, which is not nearly as advanced as Godot, but has the most welcoming community I've ever seen.
I Feel like, back when I first learned a program when I work with Godot. With mono, which is on 3.5 which is very nice.
Too long. Read, if you want to make a commercial product, you're still stuck using Unity or Unreal,
However, if you want to just make games for the sake of making games.
Godot.
Neither Python nor Haxe (presumably) have built-in types for vectors, quaternions, and matrices. Quite nice convenience features. Though I'd rather write in a lot of other languages than GDscript.
So it isn't as if they couldn't add the support.
Releasing big versions means your game can use version X.Y with only bugfixes to the engine added as updates and you don't have to make fundamental changes when the game engine changes.
That said, I would say a lot of changes can be breaking because backwards compatibility is a much lower priority then code speed or size.
I haven't followed game development in a long time, but has the industry moved to C#? I thought C# was limited to Unity and everyone else was still using C++?
The biggest player that uses it is Unity, but even they have their own special fork of Mono to get it to play nice.
Full Disclosure: I work for a Microsoft/Xbox Studio.
This is ridiculous. You absolutely can write a full game with GDScript or GDScript and C++. Keep in mind Godot has first class support for C++.
In fact, I'd argue C++ is far better than a bolted on C#...
Does GDScript have good debugging, linting, and profiling tools?
I'm not a game developer, but I'd love to hear your perspective on some of the criticisms I've encountered on the topic of scripting languages for game development.
One of the main criticisms I've heard of using scripting languages for game development is that they tend to be lacking when it comes to tooling.
The second form of criticism I've heard is that type issues become a serious problem as the size of game code growns past a certain point.
I still rely on GDNative for really performance critical systems though.
I asked someone on Twitter about this the other day [0], and I'm genuinely curious: what is it about C# that makes game development serious?
0. https://twitter.com/LegatXyotic/status/1552219744723402756
Rust is a joy to write in but I personally find that it asks a lot from you when you just want to ship a game that doesn’t need to be safety rated.
C++ is a great choice but it’s C++ and I’m just not good enough to enjoy a language with fewer guardrails. It also has similar verbosity issues to Rust and (likely because I’m a noob) eats up a lot of my time chasing dumb bugs rather than making a game.
I do most of my game dev in TypeScript because it’s a wonderful language and web is a great platform to easily ship toy games (my specialty). But it just isn’t fast enough for anything major.
Its not always fun or sexy to rewrite a reference type to a value type to get around your GC but you _can_ do that in C#. Its a have your cake and eat it sort of language.
What are the limitations of gdscript you allude to? Let's say I want to render an infinite scrolling hex grid. Why would c# excel or gdscript struggle?
It also doesn't have an all integrated top of the market IDE, only the Godot IDE. (Although I don't think you gain anything from using a 3rd party IDE in a Godot game. Even less something like Visual Studio.)
IIRC (and this could be wrong / have changed since I last looked into it) the idea was to re-work this in Godot 4 to provide more like bindings, so that users could opt to use Mono, .NET 6, CoreCLR, NativeAOT, or whatever version they preferred.
The way contributions are accepted (or not) is completely unrelated to the project being open source or not. It's always up to the maintainer to decide whether a feature should be merged or not. Open source projects are not popularity contests.
For a programming language, 5 years is not at all an unusual delay when we're talking about an extension to the basic syntax.
Don't like how they run it? Fork it. The maintainers have ZERO obligation to merge your PRs, especially when they don't actually agree with it.
I'm not sure about this one, I can understand why someone might agree with some of the arguments about list comprehension making readability worse, like stated in this comment: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/2972#i...
I have to agree with @pycbouh. While a lot of things python does is good, I really don't like list comprehension, especially when it becomes nested.
numbers = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]]
print([n for sublist in numbers for n in sublist if n % 2 == 0])
# > [2, 4, 6, 8]
Not very readable, and you save what, 3 lines? Not worth.
Personally, I enjoy both LINQ in C# and Streams in Java, perhaps more than a one liner. But again, that's a personal preference and the opinions are often split about syntax related questions.
The rewrite should make it easier to add new features now.
Also the design of Godot values ease of use and simplicity to an great degree. They are very conservative about adding new features and I think they have a point there.
Also list comprehension is an odd example, I wouldn't really rank it that highly when it comes to features I miss. More annoying for me is not having traits or interfacse. You are expected to go full in with "everything is a node" and are a bit limited when it comes to more advanced abstractions. I understand why they are reluctant adding them though and I respect their commitment to keeping things simple.
So it is absolutely possible to create complex applications with it.
Games engines are generally not used for apps, as games are optimized differently to apps. Games need to run smoothly at a high refresh rates at all times while apps can not hog all CPU power but need also be optimized to not needlessly drain the battery. This is no an issue in Godot specifically because it offers a low processor usage mode though.
So yes, Godot is a decent solution for apps. Only real issue is support for accessibility. There are screen reader plugins but if you want to do it properly, you might be better of with an app using native elements.
Apple's own UI libraries use their graphics engines too(SpriteKit, SceneKit), unfortunately supported only on Apple platforms.
For example, here is kanban PoC made by someone:
https://github.com/alfredbaudisch/Godello
But for web, that could be too much for browsers to handle. Godello loading at webbrowser has only some time watching at spinner, when you have fast Internet connection, loading about 10 MB of code, WASM etc.
But when I tried to save Godot 3D game example to HTML5, and load it to webbrowser, Chromium etc browsers can not handle that much data.
Some webbrowser users have slow connections. If there are many users, they start to complain webpages loading too slowly. With Godot everything is browserside, and generated with save button, from that it's hard to move anything to serverside.
But if you instead code frontend and backend with Javascript, it's possible to move more of frontend Javascript code to run serverside.
The tech that is often used in game engines, especially related to GPU support but also memory management and GUI structure is often 10-100x faster than what is commonly used elsewhere.
Text rendering can be just as nice as any desktop app, it is not trivial but not rocket science either, and quite a few smart guys have been doing nice work in this field.
> ...quite a few smart guys have been doing nice work in this field
can you expand on that? like creating quality of life improvements to existing tools like Godot, or something entirely new but in the spirit of game engines?
And your friends are clearly just working in a different way than the many people who Godot is a good fit for.
Even beyond hobbyists and new game developers, there are plenty of business models and artistic visions that don’t need a console port or that can indeed outsource it once there’s some financial momentum.
Also paying a third party to port a game to a different platform is not really that uncommon, even in the Unity world. I remember the Dev of The First Tree did exactly this.
It is not like you can just put your game in the PlayStation-store even if you use Unity or Unreal. There is a process to it and your game has to fulfill certain standards.
A good strategy is to first publish for PC and see if the game gains any traction. If it does, well the console port will pay for itself. If not, you saved yourself lot's of work.
See also: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-need-...
I could see Nintendo bucking this trend but they have enough IP to be their own island.
It might be smart for Godot to punt; it lets them go faster than Unity and catch up
Are you sure about this? I mean, as awesome as that would be just look at the mobile market - Android had every chance to be a properly open OS (e.g. AOSP), but instead its a mess of flakey drivers, locked down bootloaders and other anti-user practices that curb our freedoms with our devices.
I foresee that trend mostly remaining as it is in regards to consoles as well (and IoT devices), outside of projects like Steam Deck. But then again, I'm still bummed out that it wasn't possible for me to install Linux on my PS4 and use it as a development box (since updates explicitly fixed any vulnerabilities that would allow for that), because its form factor was great.
Hell, it's probably just a matter of time until PCs and laptops are sold with locked down bootloader and only run Windows or whatever other manufacturer sanctioned/mandated OS would be included.
* Export to desktop platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, UWP, and BSD.
* Export to mobile platforms: iOS and Android.
* Consoles: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One via third-party providers
https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-need-...
They mention a few other platforms where 3rd parties have implemented commercial compatibility libraries, but Godot is much bigger in scale & scope, and nobody's done the legwork on that.
Right now I rely on nim bindings for GDNative so it might be awhile before I make the change over, unless I decide to port my code to C++ or update the bindings myself.
Microsoft's strategy is to sell PC games on Windows devices. They might call some of them Xboxes.
Valve's strategy is to maintain a Linux distro that can play PC games.
Sony also ran.
Adobe is less an issue because the new version of Photoshop isn't going to break your PSD.
Having used Unity for a few years, this feels like the only sane approach. It might sometimes be possible to update a project or even follow the best practices with package updates, but in practice there's just too much brittle stuff that breaks (e.g. all of the materials in a project breaking and becoming invisible or other weird things, like scripts suddenly throwing plenty of runtime exceptions).
Just pin to whatever the latest LTS version is and then conservatively update packages as necessary.
Thankfully most games aren't too integrated with network solutions and don't have to worry about security related topics, like how a typical .NET or Spring Boot webapp would have to.
I’ll have to be a little practical and hope it makes sense. The tree in the editor is the same tree. Godot engine is written in Godot engine, so what is the distinction between being in the editor and being in the game?
The answer is that godot will ignore all project scripts by default while you are in the editor, but it offers mechanisms to enable them. The main way is a keyword in GDScript.
In Godot 3, you put `tool` as the first line of a script, and it will be loaded. Godot 4 has grown a pre-processy decorator syntax, so it’s the same, but `@tool`.
In your scripts, you can detect whether you are in the editor by checking `Engine.editor_hint`. You can do amazing things with this.
Then you can take it a step further, and convert your tool scripts into an addon. With an addon, which is just a directory structure for assets, your custom in-editor functionality becomes indistinguishable from native godot behavior.
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/plugins/run...
PS: I created a virtual node tree a few times to wrap UI components. Much like react. But honestly, I usually find a more idiomatic pattern later.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-refe...
If you don’t add a dynamically-created node to the tree, you are responsible for `free`.
That almost never comes up, because I eventually figure out how to decompose everything into a tree Node, or! A Resource.
Resources are managed in a separate memory pool, and don’t need to be added to the tree for godot to take care of it. Go ahead, you just try and `free` a resource! ;)
"Removes a child node. The node is NOT deleted and must be deleted manually."
Do you still have to queue_free the top node that was removed from the tree, or else how is it being deleted. Or is there a different method to call for removing it from the tree.
BTW: I really like the `_init` / `_enter_tree` / `_ready` / `_exit_tree` lifecycle as was described.
1:https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_node.ht...
remove_child just deactivates it, but keeps it around in memory for later.
Yes, everything is provided for. No need for separate tools, Godot comes with everything out of the box. (Of course "good" needs to be defined but I personally had no problems.)
> The second form of criticism I've heard is that type issues become a serious problem as the size of game code growns past a certain point.
GDScript has gradual typing support. You get at least TS-level of type safety if you want (but without the headache of TS.)
Also C# is not traditionally a game development language. It has automatic garbage management for which game development happens to be on of the few areas where that is not exactly ideal.
C# is mostly interesting for people already knowing C# or when there are specific performance needs where C# still outperforms GDScript (though personally I would rather write the performance sensitive parts in C++ or Rust).
Most people are highly advised to at least try GDScript. (Also it is very easy to mix and match languages. You can have parts in C#, parts in GDScript, parts in C++, no need to commit early to a specific language.)
Are you forgetting about the now decades worth of games made with Unity? C# works perfectly fine for games, GC behavior can be optimized, it can be transpiled to native code, it has a huge ecosystem and is very easy to pick up. .NET 6 or 7 are faster than ever, while Unity is stuck on an old version of Mono, too.
It's certainly easier for devs coming from C++ or Java than "weird python-like scripting language that we had to invent and are now stuck with".
It is simply a fact that a large part of the professional gaming industry uses C++. That one might be better off using a language without automatic garbage collection for performance critical parts in many cases is pretty standard wisdom. Not sure what there is to argue about.
> It's certainly easier for devs coming from C++ or Java than "weird python-like scripting language that we had to invent and are now stuck with".
So you have never used GDScript but feel qualified to have a strong opinion on that matter, why is that?
??? You can do everything in Godot in C++...
And GDScript isn't exactly a 'weird' language, it's downright ordinary in terms of semantics and features. The feature is that it's part of the engine and maps directly to C++ methods in the game engine...
If you're going to be doing a very large, ambitious game, odds are you'll also be creating your own C++ methods and thus debugging using C++ tools and the game engine tools...
That's the point. Lots of what Python does isn't required in a game engine and is slow.
It's basically visual scripting but quicker to produce, the whole thing is C++ underneath.
number_list = [ x for x in range(20) if x % 2 == 0]
print(number_list)
auto number_list = std::views::iota(0, 20) | std::views::filter([](const int n) {return n % 2 == 0; });
for(int num: number_list)
std::cout << num << ' ';Eve Online runs on *python*, for instance. So does Blender. For a glue language, I am highly doubtful that the .net is that much faster than v8 or any other runtime to make a difference.
What ends up happening is you write scripts for lower compile times and ease of use. Then if something is too slow you rewrite it in native. The speed of the scripting tier lets you write less in native. Its not irrelevant at all.
I think it could be fast enough if portability to different platforms wasn't such a high priority for game studios these days. Nobody wants to write typescript and then pay $50M for someone to port it for Switch or whatever.
And many of the idioms people abide by may no longer be relevant, or may only be relevant in niche but not general cases.
I have, which makes me feel confident in stating that it's a language that didn't have to exist, doesn't have a healthy ecosystem backing it, which pulls focus from the actual good (or to be good) bits of Godot, which there are a lot of, and in the end makes people doubt that the language they would actually be productive in is a first class citizen for the engine vendors.
If you have, you should be aware of the history of the project and then I am perplexed why you would make this claim.
They tried using multiple different languages until finally settled for developing GDScript. It is not a decision they just made willy-nilly but something they decided after using different languages did not work out as they hoped it would.
> doesn't have a healthy ecosystem backing
What ecosystem? The ecosystem is Godot and GDScript is an integral part of it.
> in the end makes people doubt that the language they would actually be productive in is a first class citizen for the engine vendors
If you had proper experience with Godot you would know that GDScript is very well liked in the community and people are actually very critical about C# integration, seeing it as more of a distraction and waste of resources. (Of course people that don't like GDScript might simply not stay in the Godot community, so I admit some self selecting bias might be going it.)
The C# integration was only done because Microsoft paid them to do it.
This is a fair point and it was probably a good fit for their own needs, but I think that the person you're responding to seems to suggest that GDScript and the entire idea behind it basically suffers from NIH - Not Invented Here. So while it may seem like a good idea to them and even many other people out there, they are missing out on a large amount of great tooling (IDEs like Rider or even Visual Studio), lots of development tooling (which they have to write themselves), code style checks, static code analysis tools (I don't think GDScript is supported by SonarQube or has an equivalent to gofmt), as well as a lot of knowledge about design patterns and possibilities of the type systems, which will sometimes feel odd, like Godot's approach to Singletons: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/s...
That's not to say that this will matter for most people - it's likely that for most users it's perfectly sufficient to have a quick and simple language that can have its scripts be edited right there in the editor and is reasonably easy to learn, which is where GDScript shines. Plus, no compile times are really great as well, at least for smaller projects (anyone who has tried compiling large codebases will know how annoying iteration can be in them).
But when you want to hire developers in the industry and take advantage of the existing C#/C++ knowledge, then using either of those and building the whole engine/documentation around them is probably the better choice. If you don't, your efforts might be split a bit thin, e.g. how C# documentation might not be as fleshed out in comparison (a bit like Boo used to be in Unity, which was deprecated eventually), or how C++ might be way lower level (which Unreal Engine also suffers from, because of which they offer their Blueprints system).
> What ecosystem? The ecosystem is Godot and GDScript is an integral part of it.
With time, Godot will probably have lots of possibilities around game development related topics, albeit in a focused manner - there was a terrain plugin written in GDScript, some efforts to get dynamic rendering scales up and running, probably some game logic related stuff and libraries for working with splines and whatnot. That said, many of these will feel a bit barebones and underdeveloped, because Godot doesn't have a large (or any) paid assets scene, which in turn means that the majority of packages will be volunteer efforts, for example: https://godotengine.org/asset-library/asset/231
That said, GDScript absolutely does not have a large ecosystem around general purpose computing tasks. Suppose I want a file server embedded in my multiplayer game, to allow users to fetch asset packages dynamically, like Half Life community server maps, which might turn out a bit difficult with GDScript. Similarly, if I want a WebSocket connection to subscribe my game to announcements from a central server, that might be difficult to get working. Similarly, if I want gRPC calls or to consume messages from RabbitMQ, there might also be no support from that. Talking among multiple other peer servers with PKIX or JWT? Probably not too easy to do. OAuth2 flows or something like OIDC? Connecting to a database from a server, to fetch player profiles? Nope, still need an additional separate API app that will talk through a RESTful API that GDScript might allow me to consume - even when I know that I will only be running the servers myself and don't need to think about the n-tier architecture. Of course, I think there were attempts at getting SQLite support working, which was pretty cool!
Of course, most of what's mentioned are just ideas around larger projects that might need some sort of a networking implementation, but the same might apply to image processing, audio processing, parsing data formats etc. That's not to say that Godot won't get around to at least some of those eventually, but in the case of C# and .NET/Mono in general, it might just mean pulling a NuGet package and reusing some of your old code from Unity/Stride projects (at least the non game engine specific parts).
That's not relevant for like 98% of the games out there like single player platformers, shooters etc., but you'd be surprised about how many cool ideas people have around general purpose computing in games!
> If you had proper experience with Godot you would know that GDScript is very well liked in the community and people are actually very critical about C# integration, seeing it as more of a distraction and waste of resources.
This is definitely a pain point and an issue that will cause division - since most game engines won't fare too well supporting multiple languages, especially if already spread thin without the support of a million/billion dollar org behind it all.
That said, you can hire C# developers and C# game developers, with experience in other engines. In that regard, GDScript might be a tough sell. The current community doesn't care much about that, or the things I've mentioned before, because they're largely hobbyists who generally develop games due to their own passion, instead of what a Gantt chart says. Thus, there might be a bit of a self-selection going on.
Either way, here's hoping that Godot will have a bright future ahead of it, currently still considering using it over Unity due to its open nature, albeit primarily using C# with engine agnostic code libraries. I do hope that C# support doesn't fizzle out, because personally I find it to be a pretty great language with a nice ecosystem around it.
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-g...
Maybe don't try to guess the possible lack of knowledge of random people on the Internet.
Usually it's just incrementing things in a loop, rather than creating lists...
Like why wouldn't you just do:
for x in range(20):
if x % 2 == 0
print(x)
Programming in C++ is well supported though. This is the main reason I personally would not use C# in Godot much. It is really good general purpose language that will do fine in almost any situation but it will not excel as much on performance critical stuff like C++ does but also does not have the ease of use for quick scripting like GDScript.
I guess it is a matter of the philosophies. Some people really like to use just a single language and then C# is a excellent choice while I think having languages optimized for certain strengths might be a good idea. So for me it is GDScript + C++/Rust/Nim if need be (the later ones also providing some safety on top of performance). Plus the vast majority of hobbyist devs will never run into any limitation with GDScript to begin with.
> That said, GDScript absolutely does not have a large ecosystem around general purpose computing tasks.
You have the whole C/C++ ecosystem of libraries that you can use if need be. Maybe not from GDScript directly but from a GDExtension language binding of your choice. If you are at the point that you can even dare to think about complex multiplayer games, you are a professional and can be safely expected to know how to use C/C++ libraries, mostly.
Though the ecosystem C# brings additionally to the table is also very nice to have, that much I admit.
> That said, you can hire C# developers and C# game developers
Can you, though? Writing a CRUD app in C# is quiete different to writing C# in Unity which is different to C# in Godot.
Maybe I am biased because I enjoy learning programming language but I am genuinely confused about the practice of hiring for specific languages. Maybe there are some developers that refuse to learn anything new, having been much on the other side.
Learning a new language takes days or worst case a week, learning libraries, best practices, switching towards a whole new area like game dev vs backend dev, that takes lots and lots of time. You can't really take a Unity dev and have them be productive in Godot from day one, they still need to learn how the engine works, how it expects them to structure their code and so on.
Anyone that has worked with a scripting language before can learn GDScript in a few hours, that is not a blocker at all. Wrapping you head around nodes and all on the other hand takes some time.
I think hiring for general game dev experience works out much better, as the concepts translate through languages and specific engines.
> Either way, here's hoping that Godot will have a bright future ahead of it, currently still considering using it over Unity due to its open nature, albeit primarily using C# with engine agnostic code libraries. I do hope that C# support doesn't fizzle out, because personally I find it to be a pretty great language with a nice ecosystem around it.
I think they are quiete committed to it at this point. There is obviously vast outside interest in it from all the people coming from Unity. Plus Microsoft has obviously an interest to keep C# in Godot and so will probably keep the money flowing.
That said Godot is not ready for complex 3d games yet with or without C#. It is still far away from Unity. Godot 4 did make big steps but I would expect that will take at least until 4.1 for it to be ready for bigger professional projects. For 2d though it might be best in class and superior to Unity.
This is an excellent point, though it also brings the complexity of C++ as a language to light as well. That's why many use Blueprints in Unreal Engine, just so they wouldn't deal with a powerful language like C++ that has lots of footguns, despite its libraries, interop and other capabilities. So much so, that they tried getting C# support into the engine (as well as a few others over the years).
In a sense, it's a spectrum, with something like C++ on one end, C# somewhere in the middle (reasonably performant and capable, but also with relatively few footguns) and GDScript on the other end, even though the library support isn't as good as, say, Python. Hence, if you need bunches of fancy functionality, you'll probably need to choose between either C++ or C#, not having access to the latter complicating things.
> Can you, though? Writing a CRUD app in C# is quite different to writing C# in Unity which is different to C# in Godot.
The concerns are a bit different, especially when you're racing against the render loop, but I'd argue that it's not all that dissimilar, be it in regards to C# in specific engines or different types of applications.
Personally, with a few key differences in mind, there isn't that much difference between developing local CRUD apps, doing web development, or even game development - those key differences in the case of game development being more focus on linear algebra and performance, and utilizing other abstractions (for example the whole scene graph concept and traversing it, which honestly is not that dissimilar from something like Pinia stores, which might be an interesting comparison).
Between different engines, you have the whole component system of Unity, which I think is a better fit for my personal headspace, but then again having everything be nodes in Godot is also great, especially since dealing with prefabs is no longer quite as awkward, even though you cannot attach multiple scripts to a single node, which is inconvenient.
In comparison, writing any kind of piece of software in Rust would be a wildly different experience from doing the same in C#, due to how different the language concepts (e.g. borrow checker) are. Similarly, I'd personally say the same about C++ and C# (the whole approach to memory management, even with smart pointers) and C# and GDScript (the gradual typing in particular).
> Learning a new language takes days or worst case a week, learning libraries, best practices, switching towards a whole new area like game dev vs backend dev, that takes lots and lots of time.
I'd suggest that learning a new language can take anywhere from a few months to close to multiple years, depending on the language and what you intend to do in it, especially when coupled with particular stacks/frameworks/engines. Just look at how much C++ software there is out there and how much of it is full of memory management related bugs. Sure, you might knock something together after a weekend with a book or two, but getting to truly know the ins and outs of a language, as well as some of the more popular design patterns (at least in the context of that language) will probably take way more than a week.
I do fully agree with your points about different engines having plenty of specifics, but would like to offer the suggestion that transferring from C# in Unity to C# in Godot will be a comparatively easy process, versus learning GDScript and not being able to use any of your in house non game engine specific libraries for development. Something like maths for splines, some back end logic for handling inventories, levelling up, dialogue trees, quest systems etc. Of course, in practice many end up being tied to a particular engine because nobody cares about portability - much like ORMs in practice rarely allow for painfree migration across different DBs.
> That said Godot is not ready for complex 3d games yet with or without C#.
With this, I can agree. It's nice to think about the future of the game engine, though. Somehow Godot seems to have gotten way more traction than the likes of Stride (which was great), NeoAxis, or even something like jMonkeyEngine. Not sure what their magic sauce was, but I hope they have a bright future ahead of them.