Godot Engine is free, open source, cross-platform in both editor and exports and the next major update will bring in Vulkan API support and progress sounds great.
It's been a couple months since the last full report from Godot lead developer, Juan Linietsky, who was previously working on a code refactoring process. Now that's done, they've been back to work on the graphics stack. Not just that though, other parts are being tweaked like node naming to be more consistent and clear between 2D and 3D.
On the rendering side this includes improvements to screen-space reflectionso that's not as limited as the one in Godot 3.x. Linietsky mentioned that the new version will use a special screen-space filter to properly simulate roughness.
Godot will also have much improved Subsurface Scattering, being completely re-done with "a completely new state-of-the-art scattering model". The difference is quite big, with it giving the right skin colouring between light and shadow (like the right ear being semi-translucent):
Godot 4.0 will also support soft shadows for all light types, a completely re-done shadow bias for shadowmaps to make it easier to used (based on developer complaints from 3.x), a much more accurate frame render time calculation to see performance properly, MSAA is back, long-requested decal support is in with Godot using clustered decals " so the cost is very low" and Godot 4.0 will also allow low-level access to the rendering APIs. For the full details, see this progress report.
Pretty amazing to see how far Godot Engine has come in such a short time for both 2D and 3D games, with so many new features being pulled in to make developers lives easier. Since it's free and open source, anyone can use it without needing to pay a single royalty too. Anyone can support it on Patreon too.
See more about Godot Engine on the official site. Godot Engine 4.0 with Vulkan API support is due to release later this year.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
gradyvuckovic May 2, 2020
There's a lot planned on the horizon for Godot, including usability improvements after 4.0 which I'm really excited about, as I think that's probably going to be the final touch needed to really help Godot take off.
I think Godot has a great future ahead of it, and will become a serious player in the game engine space very soon, and as a result we'll see popular games made with it. Which will be great for Linux, Godot's Linux support is absolutely first class, not just an afterthought, so supporting Linux for games made in Godot is very easy for developers.
I think it will be a while before we see Godot used in the AAA game market, probably many many years, but I can easily foresee a few popular indie games made in Godot emerging in 2021. The engine is just perfect for indie devs.
Between Godot 4.0, Blender 2.9, Inkscape 1.0, Krita 5.0, and ArmorPaint 1.0, the FOSS toolkit for creatives emerging on the horizon is really exciting.
So it is not like Linux is a first class citizen, Godot is being developed IN Linux, FOR Linux. And then it also works very well in Windows.
Very nice to here that from a project that is called to be one of the major player in game development.
its a shame that i dont have the patience that i used to have and back in the days that i had it, godot didnt exist (or i didnt knew about it, or it was not that good yet)
Comandante Ñoñardo May 2, 2020
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