We’ve been keeping busy these past two weeks squashing the bugs that cropped up in 4.4 beta 1. Despite how much the previous snapshot added, it bears repeating that we have entered the 4.4 feature freeze, so our energy has been focused on addressing any new regressions or the aforementioned bugs. We’re still aiming for a release sometime next month, but that all depends on how effectively new bugs get reported during this period. Users are strongly encouraged to test these beta releases so this process can be as smooth and expedient as possible!

Please, consider supporting the project financially, if you are able. Godot is maintained by the efforts of volunteers and a small team of paid contributors. Your donations go towards sponsoring their work and ensuring they can dedicate their undivided attention to the needs of the project.

Jump to the Downloads section, and give it a spin right now, or continue reading to learn more about improvements in this release. You can also try the Web editor or the Android editor for this release. If you are interested in the latter, please request to join our testing group to get access to pre-release builds.

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Highlights

For an overview of what’s new overall in Godot 4.4, have a look at the highlights for 4.4 beta 1, which cover a lot of the changes. This blog post only covers the changes between beta 1 and beta 2. This section covers the most relevant changes made since the beta 1 snapshot, which are largely regression fixes:

• 2D: Add property guards to shape 2D’s (GH-101747).
• 3D: Add flag to enable use of accurate path tangents for polygon rotation in CSGPolygon3D (GH-94479).
• Android: Fix create_instance in GodotApp so non-editor apps can restart (GH-101050).
• Animation: Add validation for rotation axis to SpringBoneSimulator3D (GH-101571).
• Animation: Clarify SpringBoneSimulator3D’s gravity units and improve documentation (GH-101652).
• Animation: Fix glitch in SpringBoneSimulator3D by storing the previous frame’s rotation instead of using no rotation when the axis is flipped (GH-101651).
• Animation: Remove dead variable end_bone_tip_radius from SpringBoneSimulator3D (GH-101861).
• Audio: Fix default AudioBusLayout not loading correctly if path is set in Project Settings (GH-100371).
• Core: Fix “res://” being replaced by resource packs in the editor and on Android (GH-90425).
• Editor: Add editor setting to globally override project game mode settings (GH-101283).
• Editor: Don’t duplicate .uid files (GH-101683).
• Editor: Fix center viewport not working horizontally (GH-93792).
• Editor: Fix crashes when pressing enter on project manager screen (GH-101572).
• Editor: Fix Embedded Game Size (GH-101807).
• Editor: Fix Embedded Game Window with user arguments (GH-101739).
• Editor: Fix flickering in embedded game when paused (GH-102006).
• GDScript: Fix GDScript editor crash on invalid tween_property arguments (GH-101632).
• Input: Added shortcut for Lookup Symbol action (GH-101565).
• Input: Delegate handling mouse_mode to the DisplayServer (GH-101924).
• Navigation: Make nodes handle their respective navigation source geometry (GH-100882).
• Network: Fix peer stuck in CLOSING state (GH-101760).
• Physics: Add debug colours and fills to CollisionPolygon3D (GH-101810).
• Physics: Refactor post-step operations in Jolt module to be done as needed (GH-101815).
• Rendering: Bake UV2 emission using half float in the compatibility backend (GH-101730).
• Rendering: Ensure Voxelizer SDF generation uses the correct cell level (GH-101631).
• Shaders: Fix space transformations in WorldPositionFromDepth visual shader node generation (GH-100350).
• Windows: Fix left/right Shift key regression (GH-101763).

Changelog

76 contributors submitted 142 improvements for this release. See our interactive changelog for the complete list of changes since the 4.4-beta1 snapshot. You can also review all changes included in 4.4 compared to the previous 4.3 feature release.

This release is built from commit a013481b09.

Downloads

Standard build includes support for GDScript and GDExtension.

.NET build (marked as mono) includes support for C#, as well as GDScript and GDExtension.

• .NET 8.0 or newer is required for this build, changing the minimal supported version from .NET 6 to 8.

Known issues

During the beta stage, we focus on solving both regressions (i.e. something that worked in a previous release is now broken) and significant new bugs introduced by new features. You can have a look at our current list of regressions and significant issues which we aim to address before releasing 4.4. This list is dynamic and will be updated if we discover new showstopping issues after more users start testing the beta snapshots.

With every release, we accept that there are going to be various issues which have already been reported but haven’t been fixed yet. See the GitHub issue tracker for a complete list of known bugs.

• Baking a Lightmap3D is more prone to crash after we added support for transparency. The issue is tracked in GH-101391.

• Changes to scenes are not reflected in APK exports after the initial export in the Android editor. The issue is tracked in GH-101007.

Bug reports

As a tester, we encourage you to open bug reports if you experience issues with this release. Please check the existing issues on GitHub first, using the search function with relevant keywords, to ensure that the bug you experience is not already known.

In particular, any change that would cause a regression in your projects is very important to report (e.g. if something that worked fine in previous 4.x releases, but no longer works in this snapshot).

Support

Godot is a non-profit, open source game engine developed by hundreds of contributors on their free time, as well as a handful of part and full-time developers hired thanks to generous donations from the Godot community. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed their time or their financial support to the project!

If you’d like to support the project financially and help us secure our future hires, you can do so using the Godot Development Fund.

Donate now

And with that, the 2024 season comes to an end. What a year it has been, with the number of Godot submissions in game jams rising to new heights, more people working for the Godot Foundation than ever before, and most industry award shows featuring one if not more games made with Godot.

A busy year inside the project as well. Too much to compile into a single article, unless you want to read pages of meeting notes and technical documentation. So instead, we chose to celebrate the past by looking back at one cherry-pick per month, something you might have missed during the scuffle but is worth learning about even now.

This could be an event the team attended, a major project milestone being reached, or a fun moment online the Godot community gathered around. Likewise, we looked at the release dates of notable Godot games on Steam and decided to introduce you to some favorites alongside our own organizational news. The separate tech highlight section might even introduce you to a feature or two you missed out on so far.

But before we get started, let us sneak in an announcement: this blog post is part of our newsletter project, premiering this January. Subscribe to “The Nodeletter” to get a regular digest of Godot Engine news directly in your email inbox!

Tech Highlights

To be frank: there is no good way to summarize the work of hundreds of contributors across the span of an entire year without leaving out something important. The closest we can feasibly get are the Godot 4.3 release page, and the newly published Godot 4.4 beta 1 release notes.

For the purpose of this retrospective, we approached the engine maintainers directly, asking them to point us at one particularly compelling change they witnessed in their area of expertise. How many of these have you not heard about yet?

General

• 2D: 2D parallax
• 3D: 3D physics interpolation
• Core: Typed dictionaries
• Editor: Project Manager refresh, Android Editor: export support
• Documentation: Comment section added

Platforms

• Android: Native file picker support
• Web: Single-threaded exports and audio samples
• Linux: Wayland support
• macOS/iOS: Metal renderer
• Windows: Direct3D 12

Systems

• Animation: Feature migration from Godot 4.0 to 4.3
• Audio: Interactive music
• Import: New ufbx importer
• Navigation: Chunk & obstacle baking
• Physics: Jolt merged
• Rendering: Ubershaders
• VFX: Visual Shader overhaul
• XR: Godot Editor now available on the Meta Horizon Store

Godot Engine News

January

Nostalgia became the theme of January, as we compiled a small game showcase leading up to Godot’s 10-year-anniversary (counting from the moment the engine was first open sourced). For every year from 2014 to 2024 we shared two gems found on Steam and itch.io with the community, celebrating an ever growing list of Godot releases since the beginnings of the project.

Have a look at that monumental commit all those years ago!

February

As part of our social media expansion, we also created an official Godot Engine account on the streaming platform Twitch.

Using it to check on Godot game development streamers resulted in this funny compilation — both the content creators and their viewers expressed happiness that the communities they had built were being recognized by us.

Logically, the next step was to hand over the reins of the channel to some of these talented developers directly. You can find the takeover recordings on our YouTube.

March

In March, the Godot Foundation team assembled in San Francisco to meet community members at our biggest event booth yet, in the expo hall of the annual Game Developer Conference (GDC). We shared the space with our sponsor W4 Games and an amazing lineup of Godot-powered games that we had the pleasure of inviting.

We had a great time, both on the event grounds and at our own gatherings, and made sure to recount our full experience in a retrospective blog post — see you this year?

April

Towards the end of 2023 we announced a collaboration with Google and The Forge to improve the performance of our Vulkan mobile backend. The work concluded in April, with the matching PR being split into the 4.3 and 4.4 releases.

A few highlights:

• Usage of Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) buffers when available
• Add Android Thermal API support
• Replace large push constants with dynamic uniform buffers
• Optimize descriptor sets and descriptor set batching
• Optimize swapchain operations
• Integrate Swappy frame pacing from the Google AGDK

Read more about the changes in our collaboration update.

May

Did you know that we still update Godot 3? Not everyone upgraded their projects when the big codebase refresh happened last year, so by offering two versions alongside each other we aim to accommodate these existing games as well as the lower-end systems used by some developers.

The feature freeze for 3.6 happened in May, leading up to the most recent release in September.

Look at these shiny highlights:

• 2D physics interpolation
• 2D hierarchical culling
• Mesh merging
• Discrete level of detail (LOD)
• ORM materials
• Text to speech

June

Our annual community poll rolled around in June. We want to know who our users are, so we can learn about common needs and offer the best support possible.

This year’s poll had more responses than ever before, once again proving the incredible growth the Godot community is experiencing.

July

The Godot robot plushies took the internet by storm. In a collaboration with Makeship, we finally proved our infamous logo’s worth. Toothy grin and googly eyes translated adorably into the 3D medium. By the end of the campaign, almost 4,000 cuddly coding companions were headed towards new homes.

Aside from the profits being funneled into the Godot Development Fund and thereby opening an additional path to supporting the project financially, the plush also became a beloved community icon. Fanart was made, models of the robot were shared, and the character was granted countless cameos in games made with the engine.

CC0 model by FR3NKD

While the plush is currently sold out, we are working on bringing it back soon!

August

Instead of our usual release blogposts, we tried something new for Godot 4.3: a fully fledged release page detailing all the juicy features awaiting you.

Highlights of the biggest release yet:

• Interactive music
• 2D physics interpolation
• TileMapLayer nodes
• Overhauled visual shader editor
• Multi-threading improvements
• Single-threaded web exports

All in all, 3,520 commits from 521 contributors came together in this shared effort!

September

As an open-source community, the Godot project thrives in matters of community maintained extensions. To ensure that valuable knowledge does not get lost once a creator decides to step down, we opened a new GitHub organization called Godot SDK Integrations to host such projects.

Read more in our detailed blogpost on the topic.

October

We listened to the feedback of last year’s GodotCon attendees and did the unthinkable: doubling the ticket amount once more, allowing 600 people onto the premises.

On top of that, we introduced a game showcase and activities to the event schedule. Increasing our scope like so, we hoped to invite a wider variety of visitors to enjoy mingling with other community members and facilitate networking.

Read the full GodotCon 2024 review to reminisce together with us or (re-)watch the talks on YouTube.

November

Watch this year’s Godot Engine showreel and join us in awe of the variety of projects being created by this community. Every year our expectations are exceeded all over again!

Submissions are handled via our own showreel page and always announced on our blog, so keep a close eye on those if you are interested in pitching your own game for the next one.

December

The Godot Engine GitHub repository is not only the most popular one in the game development category and has been starred 92,300 times at the time of writing, but we also reached yet another milestone this December: crossing the threshold of 100,000 issues.

To celebrate the occasion (and snatch the coveted number) our Release Manager wrote a heartwarming blogpost that cannot be done justice by summarizing — so go read it for yourself!

Concluding our walk through memory lane, the only thing left to say is thank you. To those of you who contribute to the engine by code, donations, or growing the community through content creation. To our users, who help promote the project with their own success and battletest new features in real time. We also want to once again thank our corporate sponsors for believing in what we do. Lastly, I want to give a shoutout to my wonderful colleagues, for if they weren’t so incredibly dedicated to organizing and maintaining a collaboration this big, none of this would be possible either.

Don’t forget to sign up for “The Nodeletter”, to receive more summaries and highlights like these, but up to twice a month!