First Shader from Zero in Godot 4

Commenters praised Godot 4 as a delightfully simple yet powerful engine. lemmetellya and falsaberN1 highlighted its suitability for game jams, a pleasant UX, a strong animation system, and an easy Python-like GDScript. lilbigdoot argued Godot hits a sweet spot between Unity and Unreal: lighter and more approachable than Unity’s shifting systems and long-term architectural churn (including CLI/CI and .NET concerns), but still extensible enough to add custom renderers. That same commenter conceded Unity’s ECS direction had merit but felt its rollout lost momentum. tombert and others expressed nostalgia for Flash’s “animation-first” workflow and suggested projects like Ruffle or even resurrecting Flash tools as a creative path.

Opinions diverged sharply on shaders and tooling. ehnto and others expressed awe at what people can achieve with shader languages, calling shader development a high level of abstract thinking, while lolakutty bluntly found graphics programming boring. bob1029 and some commenters preferred visual shader graphs for productivity, saying hand-coded shaders are the niche skill that underpins AAA work, whereas others relish writing raw shaders. lukan and tombert mentioned alternatives like Rive and GDevelop, signaling continued interest in varied creative toolchains rather than a single dominant platform.