Godot 2.1 open source game engine released, v3.0 to bring physically-based shading

The latest version of the open source game engine focuses on improving usability, with the aim to make it one of the easiest game development environments to use. New features include:

• New asset sharing platform
• New plugin API
• Support for dynamic fonts – load TTF and OTF font files directly into your projects
• Fully internationalized editor UI – Godot can now be used in several languages and displays all unicode characters properly
• Editor visual customization
• Customizable keybindings
• Live script reloading
• Profiler & frame profiler – fully featured profiler (with graph plotting) that allows going back in time and seeing the performance numbers and most used functions frame by frame
• Remote scene inspector – inspect the scene tree of the running game live, including nodes and resources
• HiDPI/Retina support
• Drag & drop support
• Contextual menus
• Script editor usability improvements
• Improved asset pipeline
• Improved thumbnailer
• New AnimatedSprite features

Godot developers have also detailed plans for upcoming features. Version 2.2 (which is expected in 2/3 months) will include a new visual scripting language, support for Mono (C#), high level multiplayer networking and a more advanced audio engine. It should also feature many improvements to 2.1 features such as the Asset Library or plugin API, based on your feedback over the coming months.

Meanwhile, work on Godot 3.0 is starting already (release is expected in 6/7 months), and will include a new reworked, modern renderer with support for Physically Based Shading, improved shader language, VR, and many other nice things, as well as a greatly improved HTML5 export platform with WebAssembly support. The developers’ goal is to craft a game engine that can output really beautiful 3D visuals involving a lot less hassle than existing solutions.

More on Godot Engine’s website.