Godot Engine 4.4 is finally here! 🚀

Look forward to plenty of quality of life improvements hidden within this release. Faster load speeds, reduced stutter, streamlined processes, and more!

On top of that, long-awaited comfort features like embedded game windows and interactive in-game editing will feel more in line with other software on the market.

We invite you to take a look over at the 4.4 release page for an overview of the main changes in Godot 4.4:

https://godotengine.org/releases/4.4/

📅 259 days
🧮 3,520 commits
👤 521 contributors

We present to you: Godot 4.3 ✨

https://godotengine.org/releases/4.3/

We hope you enjoy the new release page[godotengine.org] format as much as we did preparing it!

It's been a while since our previous maintenance release for Godot 4.2, but the wait should be worth it!

We've had ample time for bug fixes to be tested in 4.3 dev snapshots before being backported to the stable branch, which means that the new Godot 4.2.2 is significantly bigger than the usual patch releases.

150+ contributors submitted more than 400 improvements for this release, which makes it pretty significant as far as patch releases go. You can review the complete list of changes with our interactive changelog[godotengine.github.io], which contains links to relevant commits and PRs for this and every previous release.

See the release notes on the Godot blog for more details.[godotengine.org]

The illustration pictures used in this announcement is from RAM: Random Access Mayhem, a top-down roguelike shooter where you take control of diverse robotics enemies. RAM won the Audience Choice award at the IGF 2024, so be sure to wishlist and follow that upcoming Godot game!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2256450/RAM_Random_Access_Mayhem/

We released Godot 4.2[godotengine.org] two weeks ago, with major improvements and bug fixes all around the engine. Like any big feature release, it had a few rough edges which we've been focusing on addressing in the past couple of weeks. This allows us to already publish this first maintenance release, Godot 4.2.1, which irons out some of those issues while fully preserving compatibility.

See the release notes on the Godot blog for more details.[godotengine.org]

The illustration picture used in this announcement is from Voice of Flowers, a metroidvania that takes great inspiration from Mario games, developed in Godot 4 by Tomasz Chabora – one of Godot's most profilic maintainers!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2609560?utm_source=GodotWebsite&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=421

Earlier this year we stepped into the future of Godot with the release of Godot 4.0[godotengine.org], and 4 months later we followed it up with Godot 4.1[godotengine.org] which was full of new features and improvements. Today we are proud to announce the release of Godot 4.2, our latest and greatest offering to game developers looking for a free and open engine that inspires joy and creativity!

Over the course of the last 5 months 359 contributors submitted more than 1800 improvements for this release. This includes new rendering features, such as AMD FSR 2.2 support and improved lightmapping; multithreaded navigation map baking for both 3D and 2D; C#/.NET support on mobile platforms; multiple usability improvements to the 2D tilemap system, and of course hundreds of bugfixes and polishing touches.

We cannot thank each contributor enough for their dedication and relentless spirit, their trust in the project, and their generosity. We also must express our love for everyone reporting issues during the testing period and helping us make sure that thousands of Godot users get the best version of the engine we can collectively create.

For most games and apps made with Godot 4.1 and earlier it should be relatively safe to migrate to 4.2. Don't forget to always make backups when moving versions, even minor. If you use Godot on Steam for professional work, make sure to use the Beta branch feature and select your preferred major and minor release to avoid unexpected updates. Before upgrading your project, please consult with the list of critical and breaking changes[godotengine.org] as well as our migration guide[docs.godotengine.org].

Read the full announcement and release highlights on the official blog![godotengine.org]

Godot 4.1 was released a month ago, and got its first maintenance release a couple of weeks later.

It's finally coming to Steam after a bit of delay, because I (Rémi) was on holiday and Yuri couldn't deploy to Steam yet.

Still, here it is with a number of important bug fixes and improvements.
Some of the most important changes in this release include:

• Fix for a crash due to an infinite loop in AnimationStateMachine.
  
• Command-line export of C#/.NET projects should no longer drop random files.
  
• Custom export options which you can define with an EditorExportPlugin are now correctly restored on the editor restart.
  
• For Linux users there is a potential fix for freezes when interacting with menus on Wayland.

See the release blog post for more details.[godotengine.org]

The illustration picture for this release comes from Gunforged — a 2D roguelite shooter where, you’ve guessed it, construct your weaponry from a huge number of different parts. The game is being made by Firebelley with Godot 4 using C#, and is planned to be released later this year. You can wishlist it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2258480/Gunforged/

After four months of work, we are excited to bring you Godot 4.1!

It's an update that follows our pledge to improve upon Godot 4.0 with frequent incremental releases — with a focus on stability, performance, and polish. We took great care to prioritize the bugs you had encountered in Godot 4.0. With over 900 reported issues addressed, the engine should feel more reliable and easy to use.

Of course, a new release also comes with a bunch of welcome new features. There is the new and improved AI navigation avoidance system, the ability to detach code editors and put them on another display, and new tools for technical artists in the form of 3D noise and a reworked particle turbulence.

For most games and apps made with 4.0 it should be relatively safe to migrate to 4.1. Don't forget to always make backups when moving versions, even minor. If you use Godot on Steam for professional work, make sure to use the Beta branch feature and select your preferred major and minor release.

Read the full announcement and release highlights on the official blog![godotengine.org]

With the Godot 4.1 release on the horizon[godotengine.org], contributors have been hard at work on major and exciting improvements to the engine. But we appreciate that many of you would like to have your experience a little less exciting and a bit more stable when using Godot 4 in production. To that end, we try to backport as many useful fixes as we can to improve your workflows, and the new Godot 4.0.3 release is the result of these efforts.

Almost every area was touched upon with bugfixes and stability improvements. This includes multiple crashes and glitches eliminated in constructive solid geometry (CSG), GDScript language server, importing of assets, and all things related to rendering and visuals. Several reported platform-specific crashes and freezes were addressed, especially on Android and Windows. And of course there were improvements to the overall user experience and documentation. The latter received a massive bump in completeness thanks to a serious effort from Calinou, who updated a lot of descriptions in the rendering API.

See the release blog post for more details.[godotengine.org]

Note: We forgot to post updates here when uploading the previous 4.0.1 and 4.0.2 maintenance releases – see their respective blog posts (4.0.1[godotengine.org], 4.0.2[godotengine.org]) for details.

The illustration picture for this release comes from the Godot Juice[mreliptik.itch.io] course by MrEliptik. It's a great primer on adding juicy visual effects to your Godot 4 projects from the creator of Dashpong, and you can be sure it's based on practical experience! It's available on https://mreliptik.itch.io/learn-how-to-make-juicy-games-with-godot-4 and Udemy[www.udemy.com].

As we announced last week, Godot 4.0 has been released!

Read the official release announcement[godotengine.org] on the Godot blog for all the details on what's new.

There is also an amazing video by GDQuest covering the new features:

As it's a major update which breaks compatibility with existing projects, we delayed the update on Steam to give users time to decide if they want to upgrade now, or stick to Godot 3.5.x for the time being.

If you want to stay on Godot 3.5.x, please select the stable-3.5 "beta" branch in the Steam settings for the Godot Engine app. It has incidentally just be updated to the newly released Godot 3.5.2 maintenance update[godotengine.org].

As of today, Godot 4.0 is on the default branch!

Note that the official demo projects are still in the process of being ported to Godot 4.0. We also stopped including them in the default Steam distribution, so instead of having your Project Manager filled with all existing official demos, you can choose the ones you're interested in from the Asset Library. At this time, you won't find any official demo in the Asset Library, so change the filter from "Official" to "Community" to find the many amazing demos and templates that users are publishing right now.

PS: If you had switched to the stable-4.0 branch to try it early, we recommend switching back to the default branch now that it's up to date.
We usually keep the latest "stable-x.y" branch one patch version behind "default" so that you can easily rollback an update if it causes issues. So when Godot 4.0.1 is released, we'll push it to "default", but not immediately to "stable-4.0". Then when 4.0.2 is released, it will be pushed to "default" and the previous 4.0.1 will be pushed to "stable-4.0", etc.