The developers of Godot have presented the “alpha” of the fourth version of their open source engine. It has been in development for two years. Among the key features are new rendering and lighting systems, changes to the physics engine, an improved import system and an updated editor.In a post on the official website, Godot developers invited everyone to take part in alpha testing.
At the same time, they noted that the list of innovations and functions is far from final and will be fully formed only by the release of the beta.
That is why now the authors of the engine do not recommend transferring their existing projects to Godot 4.0. At least before that, it is recommended to make a backup to avoid incompatibilities and other possible problems.
A total of 700 people worked on the fourth version of Godot.
The main innovations of “alpha” Godot 4.0The engine core has undergone significant changes (details can be found here).
- One of the key innovations is the introduction of unit testing, which will facilitate the identification of logical and other errors that disrupt the operation of the main engine systems.In Godot 4.0, the rendering system was completely redesigned, adding cluster and mobile backends based on Vulkan technology to the engine.
- The developers have made a new global lighting system, replacing GIProbe with VoxelGI (suitable for small and medium-sized environments).
- Also, SDFGI (Signed Distance Field Global Illumination) technology has been added to the engine, which allows you to create lighting for large open worlds in real time.A volumetric fog will appear in Godot 4.0.
- The shader system for visual effects will become more versatile, and the engine will have more optimization tools.The Godot Physics physics engine will return to the new version of Godot.
- Previously, the engine relied on Bullet, but now game developers will be able to use Godot’s internal solution.With the help of NavigationServer, it will be possible to stream large open spaces and bake navigation grids on the fly.
- Thanks to multithreading support, all calculations should become faster.Most often, game developers on the Godot engine used the GDScript programming language.
- In the new version, more functions will be added to it and its operation will be made more stable in order to simplify the coding process.New GUI systems and tools will be added to the alpha version of Godot 4.0.
- They will support new languages, including Arabic and Asian. This will improve the work with texts and simplify the localization process.The authors of Godot have transferred a significant part of the sound processing logic to the already existing AudioServer solution.
- This will make the engine’s audio system more flexible and multifunctional.In Godot 4.0, an improved import system will appear, allowing you to flexibly configure the necessary objects and scenes.
- The authors also stressed that the import of textures will become much faster.The editor has also undergone significant changes: new tile and animation editors, as well as improved usability of existing functions and new commands for quick access to various operations.
- You can fully familiarize yourself with the innovations and study the list of already known problems of the alpha version of Godot 4.0 here.