more support for console development.

[AviseOffical]

the reason why godot does not have full console support/template is because godot is open-source while consoles like (xbox, playstation) are not open-source. i think what would make godot better is having a new seperate godot repo that is private that adds the console licensing and template. on top of the public open-source godot. this should make it so plugins and things will work how they used to (with some limitations to other peoples godot forks).

[AThousandShips]

Converted to a discussion because the proposal had no clear details on how to achieve this and didn't use the issue template properly

[AThousandShips]

seperate godot repo that is private that adds the console licensing and template.

Who would this be for? Maintainers? We can't access that without signing an NDA either, and we can't expect maintainers to sign NDAs just to contribute

The issue isn't primarily closed source, it's that the bindings and drivers etc. are largely covered by other legal restrictions and actually makes it impossible to share them directly

[AviseOffical]

yea i get that with NDA's but i just feel like allot of people will not go with godot if they have to pay 800usd a year just for license trough w4 to just test if the game will work on console(s). i also think this is the only reason why people dont decide to use godot. why use a game engine that has device limitations when u could use unity or unreal without limitations even tough godot is the better game engine.

[AThousandShips]

That doesn't answer the question though, that doesn't remove the reasons why we can't do this

People can still get porting services for their games, just like Unity or Unreal, including to test things

As far as I know no engine offers the ability to test or port to platforms without going through those services, or having access to dev hardware

Some people, not knowing better, might look at Godot and think "I wish this engine offered free access to porting to consoles then I'd pick it", but unfortunately we can't do much to help with that

But regardless of that: What is your proposed way this would be used?

We can't publish the porting code online for anyone to look at or use, we can absolutely not share it with everyone, and just integrating it into official builds and not other builds would still not be a solution, and it would make it very complicated to build and upload official builds as the person who does those would have to sign an NDA

Assuming any of that would even be possible under the NDA, which I don't think it would be anyway