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Comment by roflcopter69

4 days ago

Can you please elaborate why you think C# is not really well integrated into Godot? I'm using it myself and it seems fine to me. There's quite a community around Godot + C# check out https://chickensoft.games as well. FWIW the Slay the Spire 2 devs also seem to be happy with Godot + C#

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roflcopter69

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dandersch  3 days ago

For the record I would still choose C# out of all the options for a bigger game (GDscript with strict type-hinting might suffice for small ones). My main complaints that I can still remember:

- deprecated web export for C# with Godot 4. This is basically my main gripe and why C# has been a non-starter for me.

- Engine still has a separate binary for C# support. I think they are working on unifying them. But once you use the .NET one you can't export to web even when you don't use C#.

- setting up debugging+lsp was a pain and consistency was very flaky afterwards

Also a lot of the editor workflow is built around using GDScript with the built-in text-editor. I don't actually mind it that much, but you asked why it's not as well integrated and that's an obvious one for newbies. If your experience was wildly different, please do tell.

  • roflcopter69  3 days ago

    Thanks for sharing your experience. Mostly very fair points.

    Yes, exporting Godot + C# games to web is not possible right now and it seemingly takes the maintainers quite a lot of time to figure it out. It's apparently an official priority https://godotengine.org/priorities/#enable-users-to-export-t... but I wouldn't hold my breath for now.

    Similarly for the new GDExtension based C# bindings https://github.com/raulsntos/godot-dotnet which have been cooking for quite a while now. Those would make it possible to only have a single Godot build and get rid of the .Net build. Tbf, the maintainers were teasing that godot-dotnet will soon™ be ready for early testing so who knows.

    About setting up debugging+lsp, what were your struggles? Personally, I'm quite happy with JetBrains Rider Godot integration https://github.com/JetBrains/godot-support and JetBrains seems to be quite committed to supporting Godot https://godotengine.org/article/jetbrains-joins-dev-fund-sup... you even get support for Edit and Continue (EnC), which is what's easy to confuse with hot reload but EnC is actually the thing that makes it possible to change C# code while the game is running and the changes are reflected without losing the game state. Really handy. AFAIK you can't get this with open source C# tools like netcoredbg so I'd understand if you'd think that the Godot + C# DevEx is quite lacking if you use something like Neovim or Zed. I think VSCode has actually pretty good support but the really good tech behind the C# extension is proprietary and cannot be used by forks like Cursor or Windsurf.

    But I totally agree, the GDScript integration is what Godot cares the most about and it shows in many places in the editor. So my experience is not wildly different in that sense. Just some different aspects I focus on maybe. But I'm always curious to see how people approach this stuff and what they feel about it.

    • dandersch  3 days ago

      > It's apparently an official priority

      I've been following the github issue for C# web export and let me tell you: It's not been a priority.

      > EnC makes it possible to change C# code while the game is running and the changes are reflected without losing the game state.

      sounds exactly like code hot reload to me? It would be very nice to have.

      > About setting up debugging+lsp, what were your struggles?

      > Godot + C# DevEx is quite lacking if you use something like Neovim or Zed

      you got me. I tried integrating a Godot workflow using neovim and at some point with emacs. Both were subpar. This actually reminds of another pain point: gdshader. Also very integrated with the editor just like GDscript, which makes it another thing you have to work on getting integrated with your IDE of choice - or you bite the bullet and just use the editor for this. But shaders are such a massive shitshow that I can't really blame Godot for this.

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