Schedule for GodotCon 2020 in Brussels

As announced a few months back, we are organizing a Godot Conference (GodotCon) in Brussels, Belgium in a week, on 3 & 4 Feb 2020. We expect about 75 attendees, so this should be a great event!

As usual, this GodotCon will follow the FOSDEM which also takes place in Brussels, and where we’ll have a Godot stand as well as a few Godot-related talks in the Game Development devroom which some of us co-organize. Namely: Python for Godot by Emmanuel Leblond, Benefits of porting Godot Engine to Vulkan by Juan Linietsky, and Reloading Escoria by Julian Murgia.

Below you will find the preliminary schedule for GodotCon Brussels 2020, as well as a short description of the talks and the speakers. The order of the talks is still likely to change, and a few more talks may be added as we often get last minute proposals (especially from core contributors who tend to prefer making Pull Requests over preparing talks ;)).

Note for GodotCon attendees: Always refer to the Events page when in doubt about specifics regarding the event (time, location). We’ll update this page in priority whenever there is new details.

For people who cannot attend GodotCon, do not despair―we plan to have a livestream on Godot’s YouTube channel, which will also be available in replay.

GodotCon schedule

Note: This is currently an unordered list of talks we will have. This post will be updated with a plan for when each talk should be in coming days. This is also a preliminary schedule and there will likely be a few more talks planned until the event starts.

Update 2020-01-27: Added talk by Aurélien C.

• Talk: Interior mapping with Godot

  Pedro J. Estébanez (RandomShaper)

  • Interior mapping is a technique to render interiors of 3D buildings in outdoor scenes without requiring any additional geometry. It tricks the eye into believing that there are rooms modeled behind the windows, but ceilings, floors and walls are actually created on the fly by a special custom pixel shader. This talk will show how this technique works and how to implement it in Godot.

• Talk: Functional programming and applications on GDScript

  George Marques (vnen)

  • Functional programming is trending nowadays, for a good reason. This talk highlights important points about functional programming, including advantages and disadvantages, brushes over some theoretical concepts, and shows how those can be applied when programming in GDScript.

• Talk: Visual Vertical Slice - Not just concept art, but not yet a demo

  Matejs Balodis

  • Visual Vertical Slice is essentially a gameplay trailer, when there is no playable demo. It showcases the idea of the game. With this visual material in hand, you can present your project to the target audience to see their reaction, you can show this to your programmers, so that they have a better idea of how the game should work, you can use it to plan the production of your game, you can present it to potential investors and publishers to start a dialogue.

• Demo: Making 3D adventure games with Godot

  Paweł Fertyk (miskatonicstudio)

  • Are you tired of 2D pixel art platformers? Try 3D adventure games! In this talk, Paweł will demonstrate the most effective ways of using Godot features to bring into existence 3D interactive worlds. Working example included!

• Talk: Using a RigidBody or a KinematicBody for my character?

  Marcel Admiraal (madmiraal)

  • It’s not obvious which type of PhysicsBody to use for your character. Even seasoned Godot users starting a new game struggle with this question. The problem is: It depends on the game you’re creating. In this talk we’ll explore the two key types of PhysicsBody: RigidBody and KinematicBody and look at some of the code behind their APIs. By the end you will be better placed to pick the right one for you for your next game.

• Talk: Making Godot tutorials

  Yann Burrett

  • From sharing cool tricks you’ve found to teaching the fundamentals of Godot with an ongoing series of projects, making Godot tutorials helps all of us. This talk will use a blend of education theory and video production experience to give you the skills to make the best tutorials you can.

• Talk: Reloading Escoria: making adventure games under Godot great again

  Julian Murgia (StraToN)

  • Escoria is a Libre framework for the creation of point-and-click adventure games with MIT-Licenced Godot Engine. Since its release, Godot Engine changed a lot at fast pace while Escoria code was still based on old Godot 1.x features. In this presentation, I’ll present the current state of Escoria and discuss the process of rewrite as a Godot Engine plugin. It’ll cover architecture and design, allowing adventure game creators to use Godot Engine as a full-featured editor for their adventure game.

• Talk: Blockchain in games

  Bojidar Marinov (bojidar-bg)

  • Blocks, chains, and buzz saws can be found in many games, but what does a buzzword such as a blockchain have to do with this? Join us as we demystify the ideas behind this technology and discuss their applications to a field most of you are likely already familiar with – games and game development. From a decentralized backend to microtransactions and autonomous organizations, the blockchain can be a powerful tool for developers, empowering them to build products in ways hardly possible before.

• Talk or demo: Mystery…

  Juan Liniestky (reduz)

  • As lead developer teasing us since last June with his progress on the Vulkan rendering backend, Juan won’t be able to get through GodotCon without talking the microphone and presenting some of the things he’s been doing lately. What exactly is yet to be determined, but he’s always good at improvising ;)

• Talk: Using Godot to make a 3D game as a hobbyist: getting the project done

  Aurélien C. (Blue Rabbit game)

  • Using Godot to make 3D games is rewarding and doable for hobbyist solo devs without significant coding experience and with a limited amount of time. This presentation aims at showing how a few strategies may help you getting a project done, based on personal experience with an ongoing project.

• Expect a few more talks by core developers and Godot users added in coming days, as late submissions land into my mailbox. I might do a talk myself if I find any time to prepare one :)

• Demos of current and upcoming games by several attendees.

The speakers

Here’s some info about our GodotCon speakers. Note that we’re still accepting late proposals, so you could be one of those too :)

Marcel Admiraal is an engineer and game designer with a broad range of programming experience; most recently in developing artificial intelligence for human-machine interfaces. His current focus is on creating games that can teach you something, or at least make you stop and think. He loves being distracted by the inner workings of the Godot engine and fixing some of those long-standing issues.

Matejs Balodis (Latvia) is a game developer, streamer and member of Rocknight Studios, where the development is done using FOSS tools. He actively promotes Godot Engine and other FOSS tools during livestreams on Twitch by showing viewers the creative process. As part of Rocknight, Matejs hosts a 3-hour game jam every weekend since January 2019 called Trijam, where over 450 games in 52 jams have been created thus far.

Yann Burrett (United Kingdom) is a professional educator, teaching everything from Stage Management to Game Design to English to Making Games in Godot. He’s one of the company directors of Canopy Games Ltd and the author and instructor of the Discovering Godot and Godot Getaway courses.

Aurélien (France) is not a professional developer but he has designed several successful serious games in the legal sector. He is currently working on a 3D game project with Godot, displaying the adventures of a blue rabbit.

Pedro J. Estébanez (Spain) has been involved in different kinds of software development across the years, his main interest and focus regarding computers being multimedia, computer graphics and video game development. He has been contributing to Godot for some years and providing consultancy about it. Currently he's working on his video game Hellrule.

Paweł Fertyk (Poland) is a long-time coder with a passion for open source and game development. His company, Miskatonic Studio, published the Godot-made Intrepid on Steam in December 2018 and is currently working on 3D adventure games.

Juan Linietsky (Argentina) is Godot's co-creator and lead developer, and oversees most of the features added to the engine to keep it efficient and well-designed. He splits his work time between writing code himself, and helping other contributors make good changes.

Bojidar Marinov (Bulgaria) is a young software developer and open source contributor to the Godot engine. His main interests are in the design of programming languages, elegant algorithms, and generally in doing more with less. He regularly visits various Godot community channels, helping newcomers to learn the engine's specifics.

George Marques (Brazil) has worked at Javary Games and IMVU making games with Godot, being a contributor to the engine since 2015. Currently works directly for Godot, in special maintaining the GDScript codebase. He's also a co-author of the book Godot Engine in 24 Hours published by Pearson.

Julian Murgia (France) is a contributor and member of the Godot Engine Leadership Committee. He has contributed in both code and documentation, helping here and there when possible. He also maintains the Escoria framework for point and click adventure games on Godot Engine.