After 6 months of development, the release of the free game engine Godot 3.4 is published, suitable for creating 2D and 3D games. The engine supports an easy-to-learn game logic job language, a graphical game design environment, a one-click game deployment system, rich animation and physics simulation capabilities, a built-in debugger, and a performance bottleneck detection system. The code of the game engine, game development environment and related development tools (physics engine, sound server, 2D/3D rendering backends, etc.) are distributed under the MIT license.
The engine was source coded in 2014 by OKAM, after ten years of developing a professional grade proprietary product that has been used to create and publish many games for PC, game consoles and mobile devices. The engine supports all popular stationary and mobile platforms (Linux, Windows, macOS, Wii, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 3, PS Vita, Android, iOS, BBX), as well as web game development. Ready-to-run binary builds are generated for Linux, Windows, and macOS.
In a separate branch, a new rendering backend based on the Vulkan graphics API is being developed, which will be offered in the next release of Godot 4.0, instead of the currently offered rendering backends via OpenGL ES 3.0 and OpenGL 3.3 (OpenGL ES and OpenGL support will be preserved through the provision of the old OpenGL ES 2.0 backend /OpenGL 2.1 on top of the new Vulkan-based rendering architecture). The transition from Godot 3.x to Godot 4.0 will require applications to be reworked due to API-level compatibility issues, but the Godot 3.x branch will have a long support cycle, the duration of which will depend on the demand for a strictly API by users.
Godot 3.4 is notable for adding the following innovations:
- The user interface for editing themes has been redesigned, which implements a visual process for selecting a node and provides the ability to change the design without leaving the preview mode.
- Improvements have been made to the editor to improve usability: a function for quickly loading resources into inspection mode has been added, the creation of a node at an arbitrary position is allowed, a new interface for exporting templates has been added, additional operations with gizmo (a system of bounding boxes) have been implemented, and an animation editor based on Bezier curves has been improved.
- A rollback mode has been added that allows you to immediately undo all changes to the scene caused by applying animation through the AnimationPlayer, instead of undoing changes to each property individually.
- An option has been added to the settings to change the zoom level of the 2D viewport, which, for example, can be used to increase or decrease 2D elements, regardless of the current stretch mode (stretch mode).
- Added the ability to work with files (including PCK) larger than 2 GB to the File API.
- Included changes to improve rendering smoothness by calculating frame changes without reference to the system timer, and addressing output timing issues when using vsync.
- In the InputEvents input processing system, support has been added for binding to scancodes that reflect the physical placement of keys on the keyboard, regardless of the active layout (for example, the WASD keys in the QWERTY layout will be automatically mapped to the ZQSD keys in the French AZERTY layout).
- Added AESContext and HMACContext interfaces for script access to AES-ECB, AES-CBC and HMAC encryption algorithms. Also added is the ability to save and read RSA public keys to generate and verify digital signatures.
- Initial support has been added to the render engine for stopping rendering of objects that are in camera focus but not visible due to being covered by other objects (for example, behind a wall). Raster (per pixel) overlay culling will only be implemented in the Godot 4 branch, and Godot 3 includes some geometric overlay culling and support for portal overlay.
- A new rendering method, ACES Fitted, has been added to achieve greater realism and physical fidelity by increasing the contrast of bright objects.
- Added support for the shape of the emission of three-dimensional particles in the form of a ring or a hollow cylinder.
- In the physics simulation engine, the performance of generating convex objects from meshes has been significantly improved and the collision tracking mode in the inspection interface has been redesigned. Support for the BVH (Bounding Volume Hierarchy) structure for dynamic spatial division has been added for the 2D physics engine. The 3D physics engine now supports the HeightMapShapeSW function and adds synchronization tools with KinematicBody3D.
- Added the ability to export 3D scenes in glTF format, for example, to open meshes prepared in Godot in Blender.
- Added support for lossless WebP image compression, which is now the default for texture compression instead of PNG.
- The Android port adds initial support for the Scoped storage API and a new way to download additional assets (Play Asset Delivery) for AAB (Android App Bundle) executable files.
- For the HTML5 platform, the ability to install in the form of PWA (Progressive Web Apps) applications has been implemented, the JavaScriptObject interface has been added for interaction between Godot and JavaScript (for example, JavaScript methods can be called from Godot scripts), AudioWorklet support has been implemented for multi-threaded assemblies.
- Added support for Apple Silicon (M1) based systems for macOS.
Source: opennet.ru