Godot 4.4 Dev 3: Vertex Shading, 2D Batching, and More

We are back with another big dev update with over 330 commits merged in the last few weeks! Contributors continue to work on amazing new things while we continue to merge our backlog of important features that missed the 4.3 cutoff. The combined result is a lot of great stuff compressed into a short amount of time.

\ Many of the changes in this release are bug fixes that will be backported to Godot 4.3 and released in 4.3.1! So please test this release well so we can be confident with the changes and release 4.3.1 with them as soon as possible.

\ Keep in mind that while we try to make sure each dev snapshot is stable enough for general testing, this is by definition a pre-release piece of software. Be sure to make frequent backups, or use a version control system such as Git, to preserve your projects in case of corruption or data loss.

\ Jump to the Downloads section, and give it a spin right now, or continue reading to learn more about improvements in this release. You can also try the Web editor, XR editor, or the Android editor for this release (join the Android editor testing group to get access to pre-release builds).

The original cover illustration is from Fogpiercer, a turn-based card battler where your deck is a train! It is developed in Godot 4.3 by Mad Cookies Studio. You can wishlist the game on Steam and follow the developers on Twitter.

Highlights

In case you missed them, see the 4.4 dev 1 and dev 2 release notes for an overview of some key features which were already in that snapshot, and are therefore still available for testing in dev 3.

\ Here are a few highlights that you might find particularly exciting!

\

@export_tool_button annotation

Being able to create a button in the inspector from tool scripts was a highly requested feature, and many contributors took it upon themselves to make it happen in GH-96290: new contributors jordi-star and Macksaur, and maintainers Ernest and Danil!

\ This new feature allows you to be even more expressive with the dev tooling that you can easily create with @tool scripts.

\ Let’s take a look at an example:

@tool extends Sprite2D # With a callable (could also be a local function). @export_tool_button("Toot", "Callable") var print_action = print.bind("toot") # With a lambda. @export_tool_button("Randomize Color", "ColorRect") var color_action = func(): self_modulate = Color(randf(), randf(), randf())

\

Massively optimized scene startup for large projects

Work has not slowed down on improving the scene startup experience, still thanks to amazing contributions by Hilderin. This dev snapshot introduces a massive improvement to editor load speed for large projects (GH-95678). Large projects can expect up to a 3× speed improvement when loading the project and a similar speedup when doing any operations that scan the filesystem.

Vertex shading

This dev release re-introduces the long-awaited vertex shading option for materials (GH-83360), thanks to contributor ywmaa landing their second major feature in Godot, after export support for Blender Geometry Nodes. Vertex shading is used primarily to achieve an early PSX style and to optimize performance on older and lower-end devices.

\ You can enable vertex shading either from within an existing StandardMaterial3D, ORMMaterial3D, ShaderMaterial, or by force enabling it on all materials using the rendering/shading/overrides/force_vertex_shading project setting.

\

Add batching to RendererCanvasRenderRD

After tackling the Metal rendering backend merged in an earlier snapshot, Stuart took on another impressive rendering contribution: 2D batching!

\ Batching has been implemented in the Compatibility renderer since the release of 4.0. This release brings the same performance benefits to the other backends by implementing batching when using the Forward+ and Mobile backends (GH-92797). Now 2D performance is comparable between all backends.

\ Batching is a performance optimization that drastically reduces the number of draw calls in a scene. The benefits of batching will be particularly noticeable in scenes with a lot of text rendering or repeated sprites that share a texture (e.g. when using tilemaps or making a bullet hell).

\ We have further improvements planned for batching on the RD backends that should allow it to be even faster than the Compatibility backend. Stay tuned for updates in later dev releases!

Expression evaluator (REPL) in the debugger

The expression evaluator adds a new tab to the bottom panel that allows you to evaluate expressions using the local state of your scripts while stopped at a breakpoint. Many users are familiar with this workflow from other REPL debuggers.

\ This feature has been a work in progress for awhile and was recently finished and merged in (GH-97647), thank you to Oğuzhan, Erik, and Tomek for bringing it across the finish line.

Implement autostart for all profilers

A common complaint from users is that they need to go back to the editor once they start their game in order to enable the profiler. This made it hard to measure performance in the first few seconds of loading a scene and was an overall hassle for developers.

\ Hendrik introduced a checkbox that allows you to set the profiler to automatically start when you run the engine and capture valuable profiling data immediately (GH-96759).

Add markers to Animation

Markers allow you to create sub regions of an animation that can be jumped to, or looped without playing the entire animation.

\ Markers are even supported inside the Animation Tree, where you can easily select animation markers for looping or to begin playback.

\ For more details check out the pull request GH-91765, which was one of the first Godot contributions of ChocolaMint!

Linux camera support

Previously, Godot only supported accessing the device camera on macOS and iOS devices. pkowal1982’s long-running pull request GH-53666 was finally merged and adds support for the Linux platform, allowing developers to access connected cameras from within their game.

Fallback to OpenGL 3 if other rendering drivers are not supported

Currently when trying to run Godot with the Forward+ or Mobile backend on a device that doesn’t support Vulkan, D3D12, or Metal, the engine will provide the user with an OS alert notifying them that they don’t have support for the needed graphics API and they need to try again with the Compatibility backend. This alert has proven to be confusing for users and the process of opening the scene ends up being cumbersome.

\ Now with GH-97142, first contribution from SheepYhangCN, the engine will automatically fall back to using OpenGL (the Compatibility backend) when the other backends are not available. This should provide the smoothest possible experience for users on older devices.

\ Since the Compatibility backends can look different from the other backends, game developers may not want Godot to automatically fall back. In that case, they can disable the rendering/rendering_device/fallback_to_opengl3 project setting to avoid falling back, and users with OpenGL-only devices would then get notified that their hardware is not supported.

And more!

There are too many exciting changes to list them all here, but here’s a curated selection:

• 2D: Fix pink GradientTexture2D (GH-94744).
• 2D: Fix polygon node losing its UV toolbar (GH-96466).
• 3D: PathFollow3D update transform immediately by default (GH-96140).
• Animation: Update AnimationPlayer in real-time when bezier curve properties or bezier editor changes (GH-96753).
• Audio: Fix one frame overflow at the end of WAV files (GH-96768).
• Audio: Use a LocalVector to store data to optimize AudioStreamMp3 (GH-97026).
• Buildsystem: CI: Update clang-format pre-commit hook to 19.1.0 (GH-97483).
• Core: Add callable support for find and rfind Array methods (GH-95449).
• Core: Fix inability to use ResourceLoader in C# after threaded load in GDScript (GH-92888).
• Core: Add translation domain (GH-95787).
• Core: WorkerThreadPool: Revamp interaction with ScriptServer (GH-96959).
• Core: StringName: Fix empty hash (GH-96586).
• Dotnet: Generate strongly-typed method to raise signal events and fix event accessibility (GH-68233).
• Editor: Fix MeshInstance3D gizmo redraw performance for PlaneMesh with larger subdiv value (GH-96934).
• Editor: Fix error reopening non existing scene on startup (GH-97028).
• GDExtension: GDExtension: Allow class names to be unicode (GH-96501).
• GDScript: Fix issue with GDScript binary tokens being non-deterministic (GH-96855).
• GDScript: Fix Dictionary.merge() type validation (GH-96864).
• GDScript: Fix operator[] for typed dictionaries (GH-96797).
• GUI: GraphEdit: Improve dotted pattern grid performance (GH-96910).
• GUI: Fix TabContainer minimum size (GH-97132).
• Import: Add BC1 compression support to Betsy (GH-95915).
• Navigation: Fix AStar2D, AStar3D, AStarGrid2D from not returning a path when the destination is disabled/solid even with allowpartialpath option (GH-94246).
• Physics: Move Godot Physics 2D into a module; add dummy 2D physics server (GH-95261).
• Physics: Move Godot Physics 3D into a module; add dummy 3D physics server (GH-95252).
• Physics: Add forgotten getspace() check in GodotArea3D::removesoftbodyfrom_query() (GH-97130).
• Porting: Fix project manager stealing focus on i3 (GH-96829).
• Rendering: Use distance to AABB surface to calculate Mesh LOD instead of using supports (GH-92290).
• Rendering: Fix BaseMaterial3D refracting objects located in front of the material (GH-93449).
• Rendering: Fix incorrect Reinhard tonemap operator (GH-93324).
• Rendering: Use temporal accumulation to improve the quality of shadows (GH-97428).
• Rendering: Fix regionfilterclip_enabled to avoid sprite bleeding for interpolated sprite sheets (GH-97602).
• Visual Shaders: Add vector operations to Remap node (GH-97314).
• Thirdparty: mbedTLS: Enable TLS 1.3 support (GH-96394).
• XR: Fix launching XR apps from the Android editor (GH-96868).

Changelog

136 contributors submitted 332 improvements for this new snapshot. See our interactive changelog for the complete list of changes since the previous 4.4-dev2 snapshot.

\ This release is built from commit f4af8201b.

Downloads

Download Godot 4.4 dev3

\ Standard build includes support for GDScript and GDExtension.

\ .NET build (marked as mono) includes support for C#, as well as GDScript and GDExtension.

• See also C# platform support.

\ While engine maintainers try their best to ensure that each preview snapshot and release candidate is stable, this is by definition a pre-release piece of software. Be sure to make frequent backups, or use a version control system such as Git, to preserve your projects in case of corruption or data loss.

Known issues

• “Attempting to use an uninitialized RID” error is printed when opening the editor (GH-97694). This is a harmless error, and should have no noticeable impact on your project.

\ With every release we accept that there are going to be various issues, which have already been reported but haven’t been fixed yet. See the GitHub issue tracker for a complete list of known bugs.

Bug reports

As a tester, we encourage you to open bug reports if you experience issues with this release. Please check the existing issues on GitHub first, using the search function with relevant keywords, to ensure that the bug you experience is not already known.

\ In particular, any change that would cause a regression in your projects is very important to report (e.g. if something that worked fine in previous 4.x releases, but no longer works in this snapshot).

Support

Godot is a non-profit, open source game engine developed by hundreds of contributors on their free time, as well as a handful of part or full-time developers hired thanks to generous donations from the Godot community. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed their time or their financial support to the project!

\ If you’d like to support the project financially and help us secure our future hires, you can do so using the Godot Development Fund platform managed by Godot Foundation. There are also several alternative ways to donate which you may find more suitable.

Clay John

\ Also published here

\ Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash