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We are running a survey to better understand what kind of content would be useful for you. Please take the time to participate in our survey and help us to plan the future here: User Survey

This survey runs indefinitely and we are going to actively monitor it to stay up to date and carefully consider all feedbacks we receive. You are welcome to complete the survey as many times as you wish. Anytime your circumstances, needs and preferences change,  please take a minute and let us know by completing the Survey. The result of this survey is going to be very important when we make our plans for the future.

Huge thanks to everyone who take the time to participate in our survey!!

We did run a survey in December of 2019 to plan our roadmap for 2020. Considering what engine to target and what sort of content to work on. We have closed the survey now and we have the results to share!

Based on the results of the survey, I'm going to be making templates for the following engines in 2020:

• GDevelop 5 (for no coders and casual 2D web games)
  
• Godot (for coders (C#) and 2D desktop and mobile games)
  
• Unreal Engine (for both coders (C++) and no coders (Blueprint) and ambitious 3D and VR desktop and console games )

This 3 engines should be able to cover any type of project including, 2D, 3D, desktop, mobile, web, console, VR, AR for both coders and no coders.

What sort of content to expect in 2020?
Based on the genres and features most people picked in the survey I am going to come up with a plan for more complete and polished game templates for each engine.
During development of these templates, you be able to provide feedback what features you want to be added next using a poll similar to the survey you have just completed to make it as simple as possible to provide anonymous feedback. You be able to choose from some options what would you like to see added next and enter new ideas in to a comment box without any registration or personal information required.
Stay tuned for more info.

Thank you to everyone who did take the time to participate and I hope everyone going to enjoy the upcoming content I am going to be working on in 2020.

If you would like to know what the result of the survey was exactly and why I picked these 3 engines, I explain it in more detail below:

Why GDevelop?
I did want to pick an engine for no coders and the most popular engine in our survey was GDevelop 5 and the most popular programming method was events. I do agree with this result, GDevelop 5 is one of the best option for no coders and it was an easy decision to have GDevelop in our toolbox for 2020 for no coders.

Why Godot and C#?
I did also want to pick an engine for coders and because I did actually expect GDevelop 5 to be the most popular for no coders, the rest of the survey was designed to collect information so I can pick a second engine for coders. But this decision was not so easy to make.

The most popular language in our survey was JavaScript.
But only very few people selected a JS engine to prefer which is interesting. Many of you prefer JS yet not really interested in any JS engine other than GDevelop which is require no coding. While technically we can code our games in GDevelop using JS, it is not meant to be the main method of implementing generic game logic.
The most popular JS engine in our survey that require coding was Ct.js to my surprise. Not a single person picked Phaser3 or CocosCreator or CopperCube or else but Ct.js. However, Ct.js is positioned in our survey only as the 7th most popular engine and the engine itself also seems to be in a very early stage at this time.
Because of the inconsistency of this result and because Ct.js feels not mature enough and using JS in GDevelop to implement generic gameplay offer no benefit, I decided to ignore this result and pick the second language and a different engine for coders.

The second most popular language in our survey was C#
The most popular engine in our survey that support C# was Godot.
Godot was the 2nd most popular engine in our survey after GDevelop.
The preferred payment model for the engine was free.
The 5 most popular target platforms in our survey was Windows, Android, Web, Linux and UWP
The most popular dev platform in our survey was Windows.
The most popular engine in our survey was 2D engine.
The most popular engine features in our survey was dynamic lights, pathfinding, networking, physics, bone animation and spritesheet.
This result was more consistent and Godot with C# seems to fit most requirements and make sense to have it in our toolbox for 2020 for coders.

Why Unreal?
However, the most popular 3rd party services and tools and some engine features in our survey that many of you were interested in are not supported by Godot and GDevelop. More than 50% who participated in our survey would like to have integration and support for Mixamo, Substance Painter, Megascans, Goolge Sketchup, Epic Online Services and would like to have a 3D engine, terrain and vegetation, head tracking, access to camera and destructible environment which is all advanced 3D staff that Godot may not fully support at this time and certainly not GDevelop. More than 50% also would like to target game consoles and VR headsets which is also not fully supported by Godot. This result show a bit of inconsistency again that indicate while most of you prefer free and cross-platform 2D engines and many of you love GDevelop and Godot but at the same time many of you also considering to work on a 3D/2.5D commercial project for game consoles, VR headsets and AR devices that GDevelop and Godot does not fit at the moment.

Even though my plan was to pick only 2 engines, one for coders and one for no coders and GDevelop and Godot with C# are good fit for the most part, this result was make me consider to pick also a 3rd more advanced 3D commercial engine that support all the technologies and platforms that any 3D and VR project may need.

I was considering Unity and Unreal in the first place.
Unreal was the 3rd most popular engine in our survey after Godot and Unity was the 5th after Game Maker Studio 2, but it is not the only reason why I picked Unreal. I also personally believe it is a better choice.

Unreal is the industry leader engine used by big studios to develop AAA titles that we all love to play on our PC and game consoles. This engine has a lot to offer including a very powerful terrain and vegetation system, cloth and hair simulation, photorealistic rendering, cinematic and movie creation tools and the ability to turn any solid geometry in to a destructible mesh where each individual piece can also be effected by physics for more realistic result which is really neat features that so far only Unreal has to offer (for free) in one unified package.

Unreal is also completely free and open-source, no paid version is forced on us and we are not being pushed toward a subscription based model while Unreal is packed with tons of features and tools out of the box available to anyone. Yes we need to pay royalty but only 5% every quarter if we make $3k or more but if we choose to publish in the Epic Game Store we are not required to pay anything. The engine with all features is completely free to publish games in the Epic Game Store.

What make it even more unique is that Unreal offer a no coding solution called Blueprint that many other engines try to copy and offer a similar solution like Godot and Unity but none of them come close to the Blueprint system of Unreal. If you are an individual or small team with low budget with little or no coding experience and would like to develop a AAA 3D desktop or VR title, Unreal is the best engine currently exist.

If you are a coder, you can also code in C++ and the entire source code of the engine is also available to anyone to modify and use. You don't need to pay extra or require to negotiate a custom license, you are free to do with the source anything you want. But obviously you can not claim the engine is yours. If you are using a custom build of the engine you are still liable to pay the 5% royalty unless you publish in the Epic Game Store and you are not allowed to redistribute your custom build of the engine. But if you wish you can contribute your modifications and improvements to the official repository to benefit every Unreal user, there is no paid version of Unreal which is in my opinion make it a good open-source solution if that's what you looking for.

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