hmm I had some help from a friend who knew a bit about godot, but I’d say just experimenting in the editor, and for the scripting intellisense was crucial to understanding what functionalities are available. I wish I could be of more help in terms of resources but really it would just come down to looking up whatever question i had in the moment about it.
godot is more object based than unity, which is more about making the components on the same gameobject type, in godot you make different subclasses which all lead back to a generic Node class. it’s almost like Unreal Engine in this regard, which is also like adding your own twigs to different spots in a class library. once it clicks though it actually feels more natural than unity in my opinion, like you don’t have a PlayerComponent script to put on a GameObject in the scene, you just have a Player in the scene which inherits logic from CharacterBody3D or whatever you extend it from.
however this does mean instead of stacking components on one object like a characterController, MeshRenderer and MeshCollider together, you instead have different objects for each so it would be a CharacterBody3D, with a MeshInstance3D and CollisionShape3D as children to it for the same effect. to make your own player script you would select the CharacterBody3D and at the bottom of the inspector add a script, which will change it to your own class type extending CharacterBody3D, meaning you will have access to a bunch of useful inherited logic for movement and stuff, like how a CharacterController in unity gives you nice functions for moving and whether you’re grounded and such. you can also choose to have a template script generated when you make your subclass, which will allow you to move around and jump with arrow keys and space.
In terms of scripting it feels very similar to unity, you have a _Ready method which mirrors unity’s Start, and a _Process which is the same as Update, and also a _PhysicsProcess which is like FixedUpdate. oh and instead of Prefabs, you make ‘Scenes’ which are basically the same thing as prefabs.
I guess what I’m trying to say is unity skills are hugely transferrable to godot, so you are probably more capable with it than you are aware of already just because of your capabilities with unity. and yeah I totally agree about Unity becoming unreliable as a business, I was looking for an opportunity to switch over and I’m super glad I did for this jam.
wow, thanks for the elaborate reply! Since I'm the artist of our team, some of the programming-specific info went over my head, but I'm sure it will be very helpful for the dev!
Your explanation for how Unity's component-based system differs from Godot's is very helpful. I'd heard before that it was different, but I had a hard time finding an answer to how exactly it was different. Your examples made it easy to imagine now!
Again, thanks for going through the effort of writing this explanation! We'll definitely consider dipping our toes into Godot, and your help has made that step easier and more tempting 😄
