The free and open source game engine 'Godot Engine' is closing in on the big 3.1 release

Announced today, Godot Engine 3.1 alpha 5 is now officially available and the last alpha before they really lock it down to focus on critical issues.

The Godot team have been ridiculously busy since the 3.0 release back in January last year. Here's some highlights of things coming to the 3.1 release:

• OpenGL ES 2.0 renderer.
• WebSockets support using libwebsockets.
• 3D ragdoll system.
• 3D soft body physics.
• An improved animation editor.
• Simplex noise generation.
• An improved FileSystem dock.
• Drag and drop to rearrange Editor docks.
• Improved controller axes mapping.
• DNS resolution for high-level networking.
• A newer visual shader editor.

And obviously there's a massive amount more. Some of which you can find here for a little overview. See the announcement here.

In terms of funding, they're doing pretty well. Their Patreon has hit well over eight thousand per month and so they're now looking to hire another person, although this will require them to get extra funding to around twelve thousand so it could be a while.

If you're working with the Godot Engine, we would be interested in knowing your thoughts! Especially true if you're doing a game that will support Linux, let us know in the comments.