GodotCon 2023 Recap

GodotCon 2023 

It's been over a week since GodotCon 2023 wrapped up. I wasn't able to make it in person, so I was excited to be able to watch all the recordings  thanks to the work of Chaos Computer Club .

The event seemed like a great success, as they had some great speakers and it appeared to have great attendance. They had 2 days of great topics, along with Lightning Talks to really engage the community.

It was great to see how much the community comes together and is passionate about Godot and using it to create great things, in and out of the Games space!

Recap 

I put together a short recap of each talk that I watched to help highlight some takeaways and gain some idea as to what to expect from each talk. I highly recommend everyone watch through these talks and take something away from it themselves.

Please keep in mind that my notes from each talk are not exhaustive and I may have forgot to highlight other details that may provide more value to you. My takeaways may be different than yours, so be sure to give the videos a fair shake. At the time of this writing most of the videos have been uploaded to the Godot official YouTube channel  and will be embedded here, but some links may refer back to the the archive on CCC .

Clay John: The Future of Rendering in Godot 

Clay discusses the progress of the Renderer in Godot and what the future may look like. The current state of Rendering with Godot 4 is focused on Vulkan for modern hardware and a compatibility backend that is similar to the GLES2 that Godot 3 had. This compatibility backend is mostly done but lacking in some advanced 3D features.

Adam Scott: How a C/C++ noob ported DOOM to run in Godot using GDExtensions 

Adam discusses the history of DOOM running on ANY device and his approach of using GDExtensions to port DOOM to run as a custom Godot Node! This was a great rundown on how portable DOOM is and how adaptable Godot is to just be able to plug in pre-existing code thanks to the work of GDExtensions.

Paul Schrum: Godot GIS 

A practical GIS system built using Godot for taking real world scenario of viewing GIS data in a 3d space using FOSS and C# to solve his needs.

GP Garcia: Powering your Godot Game with Steam 

GP discusses his experience in needing to implement SteamWorks using PyGame and how he later shifted into using Godot and supporting the ecosystem by creating GodotSteam, which is currently in use with over 150+ games with solutions in Godot 2+. He discusses how it all works and some of vision and experience with the project! With Steam being a primary platform in the Games space, I highly suggesting giving this video a watch and checking out the project!

Jaanus Jaggo: The Making of Abandoned Spaceship Demo Scene 

Jaanus walks us through his inspiration and Production Pipeline for creating the wildly popular Abandoned Spaceship Demo Scene demoing Godot 4's exciting new features. The Scene took about a month's time to put together, and he outlines all his tools and processes he used to accomplish this amazing work!

Neil Holmes: How to publish your game on Xbox 

Neil discusses Microsoft's Gaming Vision and how to take your game and publish it on Xbox using the ID@Xbox Game Development Kit. Neil details each step and some best practices for preparing to submit your application to Xbox and how to improve the speed in which your game is approved.

Sander Vanhove: In-house editor plugins and tooling 

Sander discusses the value in building your own in-house tools using the various methods within Godot. Covering the topics of simple scripts, addons, Editor Plugins, GDExtensions, and more. Some examples of various types are shown, and inspiration is given throughout the talk, including during the Q&A.

HP van Braam: About Ramatak 

HP talks about Ramatak and the vision for the company to help target Mobile deployment. The Mobile market has many hurdles and is not well served in the FOSS side of Godot due to limitations in licensing and many other issues in the Mobile space. Ramatak Mobile Studio is a "distribution" of Godot that focuses on the "out of the box" experience for new users to help with Mobile deployment.

Senad Hrnjadovic: Running an Indie game dev studio based on Godot: the good, the bad and the ugly 

Senad discusses his experience in running an Indie game dev studio that focuses primarily on Godot. He talks about the technology and pipelines used for the different team members whether using Godot or not. He also discusses the process for hiring team members for the various needs of the project. Additional points discussed on learning, getting help and additional business dev points!

Miskatonic Studio: The journey to Godot 4: what can you expect? 

Pawel talks about Miskatonic Studio's experience in using Godot 4 via their project GOAT  which originally started on Godot v3.4.4 and was migrated to Godot 4! This discussion is more of a retrospective as to what went well, what didn't, and what to expect when using Godot 4.

Miguel de Icaza: Swift Godot: Fixing the Multi-Million Dollar mistake 

Miguel discusses his project GodotSwift and his journey from Mono to Swift and how he is looking to right his wrongs by contributing an "Escape Hatch" from Mono and C# to using Swift within the Godot Game Engine.

Lightning Talks: Saturday 

The first of the Lightning Talks covers some great topics such as:

• Godot Asset Pipeline and Import system
• Handling data in Godot using Resources
• Websocket server and Multiplayer in the web
• Experience and findings while using Godot as a Political Scientist
• Godot WebRTC and MQTT protocol for P2P
• Prototype inspiration and quick prototyping tips
• From no coding experience to constant game jams and a game released with a publisher in around 6 months

Some great conversations with members of the community along with great examples to follow!

George Marques: GDScript: Past, Present, and Future 

George discusses GDScript starting with what it is and where it's going. George breaks down the internals and the pieces of GDScript so we understand at a high level how it works and is processed. George also covers why we have GDScript and the benefits of having a built in languages and some of the problems using another language introduces. Follow his discussion of the history of GDScript and look at where it is and where it could be going in the future!

Fernando Spina and Lisandro "NoidEXE" Lorea: Looking good!: Achieving the best graphical quality in Godot 

Warning the first 6-7 minutes of audio peaks and headphone users should be wary

Fernando and Lisandro from the W4 demo team discuss creating demos and prototypes to test features in development and how they have achieved the best graphical quality using Godot. They share the work of a demo inspired by Vampire Survivors and Brotato. They also demonstrate the 3D project they have been working on: Legends of the Nuku Warriors. In this demo, they show off the process of importing scenes from Blender, problems they encountered, and ways they improved the import scripts.

Fernando "Vela" Cosentino: (Simplified) Flight Simulation Library 

Vela demonstrates the great Flight Simulation Library and all of it's controls through a demo presentation completely built in Godot. The project has a large number of operations and controls that are decoupled and adjustable to provide a variety of control schemes and implementation for space and planetary travel. The variety of controls are demonstrated via many demos outlining the capabilities of the package.

Ivan Bushmin: Bending wires: Deconstruction of Robot Detour's main mechanic 

Ivan discusses how they use the fun mechanic within their new game Robot Detour. We start with the introduction of what the mechanic is and a breakdown of what we want to achieve. Ivan discusses the process of creating the different layers of the mechanic and how he accomplished each, and some of the tradeoffs that came with the decision to write all the code himself.

Miguel Gonzalez Sanchez "Bitbrain": Super-charging content production with Godot addons 

Bitbrain discusses building addons for the purpose of creating content more efficiently and predictably. Addons are the third-party code and assets, which may include plugins, extensions or modules. The terminology is described along with an outline of their purpose. A look at the Addon Ecosystem helps us understand what types of Addons exist and maybe any gaps that could be filled! This is a great talk to better understand when to use an addon, what types of addons exist, and what a good addon looks like and examples of things to be considered when creating one.

Slides are available at bitbrain's website .

Raffaele Picca: Viewports: An Overview 

Raffaele discusses the use of Viewports and how they can achieve many visual effects from splatters, tire tracks, etc. The talk shows off many demos of uses cases of viewports and how they can render different scenes, both 2D and 3D within a dedicated viewport to achieve a desired visual effect. He also demonstrates some examples from Dome Keeper and the way they leverage over 15 viewports for specific visual effects.

Jared McCluskey and Wojtek Pe: Next-Gen Multiplayer Game Development with The Mirror 

Jared begins the talk discussing who composes of The Mirror and what they do. Starting with the inspiration of Second Life and how it operated as a runtime game development platform in the MetaVerse space! Jared outlines the different components of The Mirror and why someone would want to utilize the platform.

Wojtek then speaks about the technical side of what The Mirror is currently working on. This includes reviewing the codebase complexities and technologies that are being used on the various sides of the technical stack. They write in GDScript and when performance requires, they move things to C++. In addition to the technical stack, he looks at an overview of the challenges they face from a networking and physics with Jolt. He also discusses the benefits for Artists looking to build things for Godot and how they handle that in their marketplace. The talk continues discussing the GLTF asset pipeline and features that are available around visuals. Lastly the debugging and testing features are reviewed.

JLS Gangwisch: Volumetric Video in Godot: The Making of Strange Light, an Extended-Reality Experience 

JLS discusses the making of Strange Light, an extended-reality experience. JLS also shows off the custom addon used for importing point cloud data from a Kinect into Godot for processing via a particle system to render the point cloud data.

Lightning Talks: Sunday 

This talk covers a variety of topics such as:

• XR Support
• The blender import format
• Godot beyond games
• Prototyping tips
• Hot reloading
• Godot as a desktop background
• Using Rust with Godot
• Large Scale Worlds
• Unity to Godot import
• 2D level design tips.

It's great to see so many community members willing to help each other on these various topics. The first several minutes covers what topics people would like to see and allowing those who might want to present to get involved, the first lightning talk starts about 18 minutes in.

Harsha Padmanabha: Building Automotive HMI with Godot & RenderCore 

Harsha gives an introduction to Visteon and how they work in the Automotive ecosystem and use Godot with the automobile's dashboards and infotainment systems. Harsha also covers how they've used various technology stacks over the years in the industry. They have developed their own RenderCore technology that gives them more capabilities as a 3D engine that uses Godot as a compositor/editor on top of it. The talk goes over the workflow and a demonstration of the Godot side of the implementation with a remote connection working live.

Panagiotis Tsiapkolis: From Watercolor to mechs: Stylized rendering and asset pipelines in Godot 

Panagiotis discusses the production pipeline for stylized rendering and how to plan and solve some of the obstacles that may occur. The talk makes a great contrast between Rules as laws vs Rules as guides, which allows us to think about rendering a bit differently while trying to bridge the gap. He continues by digging into Technology, Tools, Knowledge, Organization, and Production. These Obstacles each have an outlined solution, some he addresses in more detail later in the talk.

Fireside Chat with Emilio Coppola, Rémi Verschelde and Krystof Klestil 

After some introductions, they take some time to discuss the process of how Godot is made and how people contribute to improving the engine. They chat about the excitement around new users coming to Godot and how that has affected their processes. They address the need for an asset store and the obstacles around that. They chat about what they know the engine needs to see wider adoption and how they are well positioned in the marketplace and looking forward to see how the future pans out in terms of adoption. During Q&A they talk GDC/GamesCon and goals around those events. They address the backlog of issues in Github that are open and need to be worked on. They also discuss the process of choosing the work that is implemented and how priorities are made. They talk about how the impact of increased financial support will assist the growth of Godot.