The Godot 4.4 game engine offers useful tools like interactive in-game editing

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The open-source game engine Godot has reached version 4.4. The development team has introduced numerous new features, including interactive in-game editing, embedding the game window in the editor and finalizing projects on Android. Editor loading times have been shortened again in this release, and Jolt Physics is now experimentally integrated directly into Godot.

Jolt Physics grows beyond the extension

Essentially, a standalone open-source engine, Jolt Physics for Godot, was previously available as an extension. Since its release in 2022, the library written in C++ has become the de facto standard physics engine for many Godot developers. The Godot team is now paying tribute to this and has integrated it directly into version 4.4 in collaboration with the Jolt development team. This integration is still labeled “experimental” and the community is invited to provide feedback on GitHub.

Jolt Physics can be activated in the project settings and is therefore available as an alternative to the existing physics engine Godot Physics. This was introduced in version 4.0 as the successor to the bullet engine. However, developers should first use the documentation to check whether their project is suitable for using Jolt Physics.

More convenient development thanks to new features

Some updates are intended to simplify development for developers, including the new, interactive in-game editing: Developers can now click on elements within a scene from the editor and move the camera in relation to these objects.

Another new feature concerns the embedding of the game window in the editor. In Godot, the game and editor traditionally run as separate processes, which serves, among other things, to keep the editor running if the game crashes in order to prevent data loss.

In Godot 4.4, developers can embed the game window in the editor, while the processes in the background remain separate. This should have a positive effect on development with a limited monitor size, for example if only a single monitor or laptop screen is available.

This new feature is reserved for Linux, Windows and Android developers, while macOS support will require a different approach for technical reasons. The GitHub image shows the visual appearance of the embedded game window:

As the Godot team explains, such features are already known from other game development software, so switching between the different technologies should be smoother.

Android development and faster editor loading time

Other updates include an accelerated loading time of the editor for large projects, which should benefit both the project start time and all processes that scan the file system. In addition, projects can now be finalized in Android. Previously, it was necessary to switch to a different operating system to create the binaries for the different platforms. This is no longer the case, meaning that a project can be developed from start to finish on Android.

Before Godot developers migrate to the new release, they should consult the migration guide. This lists the breaking changes compared to version 4.3.

Further information on the new features can be found on the Godot blog, the documentation, and the release page on GitHub, where the source code is available for download. Godot can also be downloaded from the official website.

(mai)