Original tags were: gamedev, gamemaker, godot, rant

So I’ve been tinkering away at my 3d framework for Gamemaker on and off for like, 4 years or so, slowly adding new features to it over time as I needed them as I used it for different projects. I initially started writing it for two reasons:

• GM’s support for 3D is very basic so for anything more complicated than throwing vertex buffers at the GPU I’d need to roll it myself, which is a great learning opportunity!
• I really disliked unity. I’ve been using GM for many years and I’m quite fast with it compared to how tedious I find unity.

And for the most part it's been an absolutely success! I learned a huge amount over the years by working on it, about file formats, shaders, 3d lighting, skeletal animations, matrices and dual quaternions, etc etc, its been hugely educational and really satisfying to work on.

Performance is now hugely improved! Rigs now interpolate from samples instead of recalculating each frame! Shout out to @TheSnidr's incredible SMF system which also uses the same technique, as without it as an inspiration I don't think I could've managed this! #gamemakerstudio2 pic.twitter.com/zAcXPmHbXG

— Flatgub (@Flatgub) May 13, 2021

However as nice as it to write your own tools and actually use them, I’m finding myself more and more wishing that I could use things most other engines offer out of the box without needing to spend months learning about it first. Sometimes I just want shadow casting or collision handling for arbitrary meshes or FBX support an actual 3D room editor or raycasting against anything other than AABBs. I think working on my ld52 submission was sort of the nail in the coffin for my patience in relying only on what I could achieve in GM.

I’m now at a sort of difficult decision though, because on one hand, a big part of me wants to go learn Godot, I’ve experimented with it a little and I found it was less painful than Unity, enough that I’m curious about pursuing it further. But on the other hand, I feel like if I jump ship now all the effort on making 3D easier for myself in GM has kind of been a waste?

“I’ve put in this much time and effort into GM, I really should just stick with it” is basically the one thing stopping me fleeing to greener pastures »;