Fun fact: the Godot editor is itself a Godot game.<p><i>> The Godot editor runs on the game engine. It uses the engine's own UI system, it can hot-reload code and scenes when you test your projects, or run game code in the editor. This means you can use the same code and scenes for your games, or build plugins and extend the editor.</i><p><a href="https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/getting_started/introduction/godot_design_philosophy.html#the-godot-editor-is-a-godot-game" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/getting_started/intro...</a>
As nice of an idea this is and how GUI making friendly godot is, wouldn't it being purely immediate mode make it not viable for most desktop GUI applications besides games? This would be the same issue when considering other game engines for this purpose.
This is also the reason why it's a breeze writing UIs in DearImGUI compared to QT or GTK.
Which explains why general purpose frameworks like QT and GTK take so much time to develop: they integrate more deeply with the OS to enable retained mode rendering.<p>To my knowledge there isn't a way of creating retained mode GUIs in godot but I'd like to be corrected.
> <i>Create non-game apps with Godot Engine</i><p>I really like to see how people manage to use some tools to build something entirely <i>not intended by the its creator</i> which give it another dimension. I once managed to build an installer for a windows app for a client (with a tight budget) using Winrar, although I usually use WixToolset.
another example of an interesting application for godot that's not a game is <a href="https://github.com/mbrlabs/Lorien">https://github.com/mbrlabs/Lorien</a> - an infinite canvas for drawing.