Should you become a No-Code Game Developer if you want to do side hustle gamedev?
Gamedev Dairy #85
TL;DR
Intro
Why use NoCode for gaming?
NoCode as seen from the perspective of Godot
What does this change for me?
Recommendations
Important question to you!
Intro
I chose Godot Engine back in the day, mostly because it was free, good for 2D, and had some nice features, like Signals. I remained satisfied with the choice, until a recent documentary about Choo-Choo Charles, made me think about whether a change would be more beneficial.
For some time now, I was interested in the NoCode movement, usually fueled by issues of the NoCode Exits newsletter. Seeing a BluePrint developer succeed in such an epic way made me think twice…
Why use NoCode for gaming?
Anything that can simplify the process is potentially good!
The main benefits of NoCode as one can read on the Internet are:
empower to build faster and more efficiently (some claim even 80% faster, but I’ll skip that as too optimistic 😉)
increase productivity and reduce costs (time costs are the biggest one when taking a game-developing side hustle into consideration)
possibility to easily change design and functionality
But you can also read that they are often not extendable and limited to whichever features and capabilities are provided by a platform. These are arguments often attributed to software NoCode solutions, so nothing I can prove for Unreal Engine. But it’s good to take into consideration. All things considered, code should always be more extensible, and have more possibilities. The question is: is it beneficial to do everything in code?
Who knows, this might be my wishful thinking, if BluePrint would help in…
not having to remember so much (although I doubt it will…)
make it easy to return to a project (especially if you take longer breaks)
make it easy to maintain your own code (or NoCode in this matter)
BluePrint might become perfect.
NoCode as seen from the perspective of Godot
Godot Engine has had a visual scripting tool… in Godot 3. It was discontinued in 4 mostly because it did not gain a lot of traction. It is not something that surprises me, after all, Godot Engine is an Open Source endeavor, and its priorities lie elsewhere. They wouldn’t mind if someone made it into a GDExtension. If I had more skills and different priorities, I might as well be that person. Maybe… Someday…
What does this change for me?
Knowing me after so many issues you probably think I’m in a situation similar to this 😉
And I won’t say I’m not. The temptation of simplifying the entire process exists 😉
And I will learn what I can about BluePrint and Unreal Engine 5.
But… I will also continue learning Godot 4. Mostly because I already started that, and the shiny object syndrome, although visible will be a setback for me. Wouldn’t want that, now would I?
Recommendations
Speaking of games made in BluePrint, Alfred Baudisch, whom you might remember shared with me some games made entirely in BluePrint:
And games made by Cozy Bee Games
He even interviewed the creator of Northern Journey. Enjoy!
Comparing BluePrint and VisualScript in Godot is not quite correct. The point is that visual scripting was NOT intended for game programming. It had a very specific purpose:
> Programmers working in a team that want to make part of the game logic available to Artists or Game Designers in order to offload some of their work.
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.5/tutorials/scripting/visual_script/what_is_visual_scripting.html
Writing the whole game in VisualScript is not a good idea:
> For instance, in a team, you could code gameplay logic in GDScript as it's fast to write, let level designers script quests in the graphical language VisualScript
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.5/getting_started/step_by_step/scripting_languages.html
As a basic language, GDScript would be more suitable. But it has the the fact that it's very easy to learn and could be a first language of programming. Visual languages like BluePrint can only make relatively simple logic, for complex logic you still need to learn a normal language. And here Godot c GDScript will help a lot - they are trying to use it quite successfully for teaching even in schools.