Add Terrain3D as part of Godot

[Regrad]

All serious game engines have the ability to create territories for open locations. Unfortunately, Godot does not have such a built-in system, which is very disappointing. I suggest adding the Terrain3D addon, as the most advanced and stable (in my opinion) addon. Something similar happened recently with Jolt, which was a huge and important step forward. The same step will occur if the built-in territory editor appears in Godot.

https://github.com/TokisanGames/Terrain3D

[Mickeon]

The problem is that Terrain3D works completely fine as a GDExtension. It being in core offers no major advantage, other than increased binary size for users that wouldn't even use it. Jolt has been integrated into Godot because:

• GodotPhysics3D is heavily regarded as dysfunctional and there are basically no maintainers for it
• The developer(s) of Jolt showed interest in integrating it into core
• There are a few things that Jolt cannot do as an extension, or even now, due to the API missing
  • The developers can take a deeper look into what needs to be added so that Jolt can be integrated further, while allowing further customization for other physics engine.

What you probably desire is something along the lines of an officially-maintained addon, which is not unthinkable.

• See Implement Terrain #6121

[CarpenterBlue]

What you probably desire is something along the lines of an officially-maintained addon, which is not unthinkable.

If there were improvements to the addon management and pre-configuration, I would see that as a viable solution but currently, addons are pain to deal with.

[Regrad]

The main idea here is that Godot allows you to do everything important out of the box, except for editing territories. The best implementation so far is Terrain3D. Why not talk to the authors of the module, including their solution in the engine base? I think they will be only too happy. This may not give any tangible advantages in the module's operation and slightly increase the weight of the engine, but it will give a huge plus in the usability of Godot for ordinary users, providing everything you need right out of the box. This will significantly increase Godot attractiveness and popularity.

[sockeye-d]

I would argue the specific implementations of terrain varies widely between games, and having it be an addon makes it separate from the engine and thus won't unduely increase the size of the engine, especially if a dev finds the built in terrain to be unsuitable for their project.

Terrain3D is already a pretty well-known addon, and I would say that integrating it into the engine won't actually increase adoption of the engine, because people who don't need it don't need it and people who do need it will look up (or ask an LLM) "best terrain addon Godot 4" and find it immediately.