The Nodeletter
Breathe freely: no April Fool's jokes have been hidden in this newsletter – there are enough fake news out in the world already.
In case you have humor to spare in our stead, you can always use this forum post as a comment section or even discuss the featured topics with other game developers. For anonymous feedback, or in case you want to submit your own news, you can send a message to newsletter@godotengine.org.
For the web readers amongst you: did you know that you can subscribe via email or RSS?
Tech news
Attention: these Pull Requests (PRs) are merged for the Godot 4.5 release cycle, which means the features will only be available in preview builds until the next official stable release comes out.
🧭 Systems – Navigation
This recently merged PR creates a dedicated 2D navigation server. Previously we did some behind the scenes trickery of converting the existing 3D backend into a 2D view, but as you can imagine that is not entirely efficient. The biggest issue – aside from performance – this created is that you couldn’t compile a 2D engine without keeping certain 3D systems active.
📂 Systems – Import
Another highly requested functionality coming to the engine is DirectDraw Surface (DDS) image load and save at runtime. DDS is a VRAM image compression format supported by modern graphics cards, which is supposedly faster than other alternatives.
🏐 Systems – Physics
Chunking tilemap physics is an optimization in how collision shapes are handled behind the scenes of 2D games: instead of dealing with all tiles individually, they are now grouped together to improve performance of related physics processes. Rendering already employs similar strategies.
🐛 Get involved: Bug triage
Godot gets a lot of activity on GitHub, with around 700 issues opened every month on average. To handle this volume, the team is looking to onboard more people willing to help out. Bug triage is a great way to familiarize yourself with contributing to the engine and what problems we need to tackle – many started there before becoming frequent code contributors and maintainers.
If you're interested in becoming a triager, simply join the bugsquad channel!
Foundation news
🇺🇸 Godot meetup at GDC
Some of us attended the recent Game Developer Conference and can’t wait to tell you more about it. While there already is a proper blog post in the pipeline, we are waiting for the official talk recordings to be uploaded; since the sessions were so kindly sponsored, there likely won’t be a paywall. In the meantime, enjoy this snapshot from the casual Godot meet-up in the Yerba Buena gardens – how many familiar faces can you spot?
⚙️ Maintenance Release: Godot 4.4.1
There always will be more bug reports than anticipated after a stable release. Lucky for you, our contributors are really fast in getting these creepy crawlers under control – find a list of all fixes and changes in the linked blog post.
Cherry-picked mention: the editor will now stop repeatedly highlighting unchanged files as modified.
⚙️ Dev Snapshot: Godot 4.5 dev 1
As seen by the PRs featured in the Tech News section above, work on the next Godot release has already been pushing forward with full force. For a complete list of the new features, check out the linked blog post and our interactive changelog.
Highlights:
🥽 Godot XR update
We hear you asking: two updates in the same month? The XR team has put a lot of work into promoting their area recently and now wrote a summary of their recent game jam experience. Playtest the winners and sign up for the next event!
Community news
🛣️ Godot Path Tracer
In true open-source spirit, the program created in this video is available for everyone to try out on the creator’s GitHub. Before using it in your projects, it is suggested to look into denoising first - but the walkthrough on its own makes for a good first introduction into a more advanced topic like path tracing.
🏎️ Speedrunners Broke My Game
What do you do with bugs in your game? Correct, embrace them and turn the “mistake” into a successful marketing beat via the speedrunning community. Enjoy a more unusual kind of devlog and let it inspire you to consider flaws with different eyes from now on.
🦇 Acerola about shaders in Godot
We recently reported on this YouTuber’s switch to the Godot Engine. In his recent video, the shader expert points out that Godot’s graphics abstractions are lower level compared to what developers might be used to from other software, and leads you through his personal recreation of a few comfort functionalities.
Events
🤝 Godot Wild Jam: Jump! Collab
Our resident Godot-based jam organizers told us about an exciting collaboration with Toon Boom Animation coming up this month. The goal is to beta test their Jump! integration for Godot with the help of a rapidly growing community of jammers.
🍓 Game Jams
Mystery Game Jam: every April this community comes together to create mystery games, which they describe as a cross-over of story and puzzle game. The range includes detective games, courtroom games, escape games, … What will you make?
Psyche Game Jam: to celebrate Mental Health Awareness month this slower jam spans across eight weeks to give you plenty of time to “shoot for the stars” as the topic encourages. Narrative-based games of any sort are welcome, even already existing projects.
Indie releases
🔫 Psycho Patrol R
The developers of the megahit Cruelty Squad are back. Another first-person shooter awaits you, this time taking place inside the human brain. Should we mention you are a mecha police officer?
🌹 Merchants of Rosewall
Immerse yourself into the daily life of a humble shop owner in a fantasy town. Craft goods to sell, hire and manage companions, and take a jab at the local mystery in this job simulator meets visual novel.
🐕 Koira
Befriend a puppy and solve puzzles on your joined adventure through an enchanted forest. Protect your new best friend from hunters and enjoy the unique picture book art style together.
🪀 Bundle of Joy
Being a parent is always hard, even without a global pandemic going on. Nonetheless, this “day in the life” simulator describes itself as lighthearted, story-rich, and promises plenty of fun minigames.
🪪 That's not my Neighbor
You are a doorman employed by the Department of Doppelganger Detection. This job simulator requires looking at your neighbors very closely, lest you intend to let non-humans into the building.
FOSS tools
Made with/for Godot
#️⃣ C# GDExtension Bindgen
Are you working with GDExtension classes? Would you like to automatically generate C# bindings for them? Then better download this script fast.
🎨 GodSVG
The creator of this tool has been an active engine contributor for a long time, so the project is still in pre-alpha and looking for testers. This Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file editor differentiates itself by also representing the SVG code directly and letting you edit in real time.
🎧 Audio Occlusion
This lightweight add-on for your Godot editor adds Audio Occlusion, Audio Areas, and Audio Depth Areas to your toolkit. Required Godot 4.3 or higher.
Palate Cleanser
This fun little tool by community member Lim95 lets you generate your own Godot Wrapped: analyze your own Godot project and share the results with us in the comments!
Thank you…
…for reading this far. Remember that you can always reach us via newsletter@godotengine.org.
If you want to support the progress of the Godot Engine, consider donating to the Development Fund: it enables us to hire people to work part- or full-time on the project.
Read past newsletters in our web archive.
