Free and open source game dev tech Godot Engine is jumping up a few levels today with the absolutely massive release of Godot Engine 4.0 Alpha 1. This is going to change the game in huge ways.
This version has been in development for multiple years, with an aim to bring Godot closer to the graphical power and standards being set by the bigger lot (Unity / Unreal etc). All work being done has been in addition to the usual updates to the 3.x branch that is still ongoing too. Godot 4 though brings with it massive changes to the very core of Godot.
3D Scene example from Godot 4 with reflections
Some of the major additions include:
- Vulkan API support with two backends:
- Clustered - for desktop.
- Vulkan Mobile - speaks for itself, but also supports desktop - meant for simpler games.
- Absolutely masses of new graphics features like: specular mapping when using 2D lighting, fully real-time VoxelGI, signed distance field-based global illumination (SDFGI) for open world lighting, volumetric fog with optional GI contribution, new GPU-based lightmapper and the list goes on.
- Shader compiler rewritten from scratch.
- Major text rendering upgrades, with right-to-left language support.
- Overhaul to importing 3D assets, with a big speed bump too.
- New TileMap and TileSet editors with better usability.
- Godot Physics system to replace Bullet.
- Support for multiple windows of the Editor.
- GDScript was rewritten from scratch with a cleaner approach.
See the full announcement post on the Godot blog. A full list of changes is still being put together that you can see up on GitHub and it's pretty long!
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: TrainDocNo it's GLSL.
I'm not sure what making the language more accessible means than if they are using an existing one.
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Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: TrainDocNo it's GLSL.
I'm not sure what making the language more accessible means than if they are using an existing one.
I'm guessing the visual shaders implementation of the GLSL has been improved.
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Quoting: ridgeGuess it's time to stop...It really is. I've seen a performance of that . . . it is such a downer.
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Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: TrainDocNo it's GLSL.
I'm not sure what making the language more accessible means than if they are using an existing one.
Godot uses GLSL, but you're not writing the GLSL shaders your GPU would be executing from scratch. There's a lot of boilerplate that Godot puts together with your code snippets to make the experience more streamlined. Things like accessing the model-view matrix as simply MODELVIEW_MATRIX are not standard GLSL, they're uniform variables Godot is defining for you.
Last edited by setzer22 on 26 January 2022 at 8:12 am UTC
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Quoting: setzer22Ah that's close to what I was thinking. Thanks for the clarification.Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: TrainDocNo it's GLSL.
I'm not sure what making the language more accessible means than if they are using an existing one.
Godot uses GLSL, but you're not writing the GLSL shaders your GPU would be executing from scratch. There's a lot of boilerplate that Godot puts together with your code snippets to make the experience more streamlined. Things like accessing the model-view matrix as simply MODELVIEW_MATRIX are not standard GLSL, they're uniform variables Godot is defining for you.
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I've wanted to use this engine for my pet projects for a long time, but my utter ineptitude at programming has always prevented me from doing such. It's annoying when things like RPG Maker and AGS feel so stiffing creatively as a result of the intention restrictions, and yet those restrictions are the only thing keeping them usable to people like me as without them things become nauseatingly abstract.
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Go team!
People have been very positive in the Godot Discord and have helped to point out bugs. It’s been a pleasant experience watching the community work wonderfully together.
People have been very positive in the Godot Discord and have helped to point out bugs. It’s been a pleasant experience watching the community work wonderfully together.
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