It’s great that Godot was in a good place when Unity had its (inevitable?) implosion. Having used both engines I think they are comparable enough that Godot was a perfect fit for small indie and casual devs to move over to without having to learn a completely new workflow. If Godot hadn’t been around I don’t know where everyone would’ve migrated to.
I’d argue Unity’s implosion was wholly evitable. All they had to do was announce, going forward, there would be different licensing. Big new version six months from now? Hey guess what, we’ll do things differently from then on, so make your preparations accordingly. But no - they fucked over existing projects. They tried to retroactively interfere with the business decisions of games that were years into development.
Oracle only gets away with that shit because they’re an eight-ton gorilla. And people still desperately look for the exits every time Larry Ellison announces a relicensing scheme based on how many computers you can think of.
Glad to see there are some level heads leading this project. Also great answer to how to pronounce it, the GIF creator should’ve gone for that instead of the pun.
Yeah except it’s named after the play so it’s definitely pronounced God-oh. I think people just mispronounce it Go-dot if they haven’t heard of the play. Looking at you Mr Linus Tips.
but also the logo for the project is a robot so pronouncing it like that word makes sense and means it won’t be confused with the play: ro-bot, go-dot.
From the article linked on this very post:
Those open source values even extend to how you pronounce the engine’s name. We asked if Godot is pronounced “Go-dough,” like the play, or “Go-dot.”
“It’s open source,” Verschelde said with a grin. “Pronounce it however you like.”
They’re being diplomatic. From Wikipedia:
The name “Godot” was chosen due to its relation to Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, as it represents the never-ending wish of adding new features in the engine, which would get it closer to an exhaustive product, but never will.
It’s clear that it’s named after the play. It’s also clear that the devs really don’t care how you say it.
Personally, I think I’ll start doing god-ot, as in “got it”.
Isn’t butchering the french language cultural genocide or something?
“Go-dough,” like the play
“Like the play” - but where does the stress go? On the final syllable, as in French? (The play was originally written in French.) On the first syllable, as is more usual in British pronunciation of French words? (The author was Irish and apparently this is how he pronounced it - when speaking English.)
That’s exactly the problem with prescriptive pronunciations – they tend to break down depending on how narrow the transcription, which means they’re arbitrary anyway.
If it is truly based on the play, then it would have to be /go.'do/, like the French.
/'go.do/ is indeed an anglicized pronunciation.
Source: am a professional linguist.
Edit: and we should not forget: all human language is ultimately arbitrary in terms of form, modulo limits of human articulation. This is often referred to as Saussure’s Principle of Arbitrariness. Which is to say: no one should get bent out of shape about how people pronounce things. If the information transfer was successful, nothing else really matters from a linguistic standpoint.
That’s partly what I myself tried to hint at with the question and the parenthetical remarks. Various forms have their own claims to “legitimacy”.
And the whole issue somewhat surprised me, because I never even considered that there were these different pronunciations at all. I’m not a native English speaker, and I’ve always used a more French-like pronunciation of “Godot” that is used in my native language. I expected neither the inital stress nor the -ough diphthong in English, but a more French-like pronunciation. As much as I feel comfortable in English and use it every single day, some of these quirks in pronunciation can still catch me off-guard.
I think either is probably fine. Apparently the French stress the syllables equally, not just the second so it’s a minor difference.
Actually I just listened to the French pronunciation and it sounds more like they do stress the first syllable to me:
Apparently the French stress the syllables equally, not just the second so it’s a minor difference.
According to what I’ve read, they do stress the final syllable of the phrase (including multiple words). To foreign ears, this is simplified into always stressing the final syllable.
I absolutely don’t trust videos such as the one you link because they’re frequently made by non-natives. I’ve personally seen a number of them using obvious non-native (English) pronunciation. Also, I’d say that particular recording has equal prominence on both syllables. But I wouldn’t take it to be representative of French either way.
https://youtu.be/__bLxInvVsM - this should be better
And its logo is a robot, so it isn’t unreasonable to think it’s go-dot
But how do you pronounce robot? I’ve always pronounced it row-boat.
if you say “gow-doat” people will barely even register that you said it differently
My name is Empricorn. But it’s pronounced “Plarxaniatl”!
juː ʃʊd juːz ˌɪntəˈnæʃᵊnᵊl fəʊˈnɛtɪk ˈælfəbɛt fɔː prəˌnʌnsiˈeɪʃᵊn ðɛn
text
You should use international phonetic alphabet for pronunciation then
relevant xkcd
i hate that i can read this fairly easily
Unity was one of the first applications that made me take a good look at FOSS in general because my experience with it was:
“Hey let’s make a game for our final project”
“Okay, let’s try Unity”
Flashbanged in light mode
Dark Mode is only available for real cash money subscription license
“Yeah okay nvm let’s try something open source lol”
Meanwhile in my engine’s editor, the default is dark mode, with no plans on making light mode on my end.
They really paywalled dark mode? That move alone is incredibly dumb. Surefire way to alienate potential new users before they’ve even tested anything serious.
Used to. It took a single registry tweak to enable it which was easily found, but still a pain.
having to hack around your IDE for something that simple is a real bad sign
I’m building something heavily reliant on the physics engine. Unity you need to be an enterprise member for the ability to override methods related to physics. Easy choice
Is that why so many unity games have the same feel? I’ve started looking into the game engine that’s used and avoiding unit games.
I can’t say thats why, regardless of engine you’re trying to solve basically the same problems, more likely which example project is used as a starter, which I’m sure very much the same can happen regardless of game engine.
With the FOSS spirit however Im sure more contributors will make plenty of viable starter asset packs for inexperienced users and diversify the “feel”
But I can say being able to actually interact with the phys engine is practically what’s enabling my project, so I would imagine that also has a part in the feel of games
Joe-Dot
I think it’s pronounced: gif
Disgusting. I love it.
Gross, it’s not a JIF
Do not invoke the name of our Peanut Lord in vain!
Joe Doe
Isn’t it go bot?
The pair said it was a major relief that the calamity came after version 4.0 of Godot was released in March of 2023. That version, they felt, was most ready for a sudden rush of new developers.
Sounds like they saw it coming for a long time and successfully prepared for it
No amount of precedent will get me to stop pronouncing it G’doh.
This isn’t a Qt situation where the people who named it are objectively wrong about how those letters should get said. I just do not like any of the other options.
Wait, how is it supposed to be pronounced?
Qt? They insist it’s “cute,” which, no.
Godot? Don’t care.
Always heard it pronouced “cute”, how would you pronounce it ?
Cutie.
Because that’s how it’s fucking spelled.
The letters separately is how I’ve always said it/ heard
Yeah. I just say qt as separate letters. Smh
Meanwhile I picked Defold as my engine of choice and absolutely love it.
Does ‘it’ mean Defold or the learning curve?
I meant Defold, though I picked it up pretty easily. That said, I had very limited programming experience. It might be different for people used to working with other engines.
Right on
Godot went from a promising but limited engine for hobbyists to the 2nd most popular engine for solo developers in about a year. We’re even finally seeing high quality Godot 3D games releasing to Steam.
Give it a year or two and Godot might start to make headway into the established studios, too.
Unity’s implosion has been amazing for loads of engines. other than Godot too. Bevy is making progress, and some of the biggest indies this year are on less known engines, like Balatro’s Love engine
Few people get to choose their fate.
How do you guys pronounce it? Go-dot or guh-dough
god-oh with no stressed syllable, like a french person with that name might pronounce it
It serves my purposes well enough, and I enjoy using it.
I was trying to remember the other game making programs other than Godot and unreal, I genuinely forgot about unity
You must wait to find out.
I don’t really understand, Unity started as garbage. Sure it got better. Now what’s this about it blowing up?
Unity’s new revenue demands and that roll out blew it up. Not really the engine. They rightfully earned a lot of distrust.
Blowing up as in catastrophically failing.
Not blowing up as in to the moon.The company isn’t in great shape and their lack of focus made them neglect important parts of their main breadwinner, which is the engine itself. And corporate greed made their core product unattractive. I know a couple of big studios that said they will not make any new game in Unity because of the licensing fiasco.
