What’s with the xbox comment? Why can’t it be officially supported?
this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
67 points (98.6% liked)
Godot
6007 readers
20 users here now
Welcome to the programming.dev Godot community!
This is a place where you can discuss about anything relating to the Godot game engine. Feel free to ask questions, post tutorials, show off your godot game, etc.
Make sure to follow the Godot CoC while chatting
We have a matrix room that can be used for chatting with other members of the community here
Links
Other Communities
- !inat@programming.dev
- !play_my_game@programming.dev
- !destroy_my_game@programming.dev
- !voxel_dev@programming.dev
- !roguelikedev@programming.dev
- !game_design@programming.dev
- !gamedev@programming.dev
Rules
- Posts need to be in english
- Posts with explicit content must be tagged with nsfw
- We do not condone harassment inside the community as well as trolling or equivalent behaviour
- Do not post illegal materials or post things encouraging actions such as pirating games
We have a four strike system in this community where you get warned the first time you break a rule, then given a week ban, then given a year ban, then a permanent ban. Certain actions may bypass this and go straight to permanent ban if severe enough and done with malicious intent
Wormhole
Credits
- The icon is a modified version of the official godot engine logo (changing the colors to a gradient and black background)
- The banner is from Godot Design
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I'm not keen on the specifics but part of the reason W4 exists is because the Godot Foundation can't just pass around console SDKs. Only publishers and larger companies can use them and they're usually under NDA.
So your options are going to a publisher like W4 Games (which is an entity by Godot's founders) to handle that for you, or you can try porting it yourself and going through all the legal shenanigans.
What about homebrew games? I thought xbox had something like that.
You can turn on "dev mode" in your xbox console to be able to mess around with it and run homebrew, but that still doesn't mean you're allowed to publish your game to Xbox I don't think.
You can't get access to the SDK without a license. A license takes moments to get but makes it so you can't just pass it around. Unreal is the same way but they have plugins to add the SDK support for unreal
Xbox dev mode lets you run UWP apps but you don't get the Xbox SDK or the lower-level APIs, nor can you publish it without getting access to the SDKs first.
I think it’s because you can’t build for Xbox without Microsoft signing the binary. This is one of the reasons the Godot team founded W4 Games.
They claim that they cannot support any consoles for legal reasons: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-need-know/
it is impossible for Godot to include first-party console support out of the box. Even if someone would contribute it, we simply could not host this code legally in our Git repository for anyone to use.
Maybe that’s true, I’m not a lawyer. But Godot’s founders own one of the companies that provide console support: https://lonewolftechnology.com/
It could be a conflict of interest or an honest way to provide console support in Godot while also being compensated for their work on Godot. After all, food on the table is not open source.
The full list of Godot companies providing console support is here: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/consoles.html
Everything is locked down and filled with NDAs when it comes to console development. To access the xbox game development documentation - you need to sign an NDA (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/gdk/_content/gc/getstarted/gc-getstarted-toc). To access the SDK (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/gdk) you need to be a "Registered Dev Center Partner" which requires a publisher, fee payment, and agreement (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/publish/partner-center/open-a-developer-account). BUT even more specifically section 3 of the public GDK license agreement (https://github.com/microsoft/GDK/blob/Main/LICENSE-EN-US.MD) gives an idea of what you are allowed to do with that SDK code once given access and you can only use the code for "internal" use and only make one copy for backup use. This isnt even getting into how using the GDK makes your app subject to the usage agreement (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/usage-rules-for-digital-goods-rules-83812b1f-1ecd-9a46-d3a7-ad1eadce49d1).
I wonder what 19 lines they removed. Could be breaking change!