Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog.

[4.0] - TBD

Added

Animation

• Revamped 3D animation storage.
  • New blend shape track to adjust blend shapes in animations more efficiently.
  • New expression-based transitions in AnimationTree state machines.
  • Support for animation compression to improve performance with long animations such as cutscenes.
  • Replaced transform tracks by position, rotation and scale tracks.
  • Removed the animation dependency on bone rests.
    • Better compatibility with models that use non-uniform scaling in animations.
    • Better compatibility with models exported from Maya and 3DS Max.
    • Easier animation reuse across different models.
    • Easier procedural generation of animations.

Core

• New TileMap and TileSet resources.
• New Vector2i, Vector3i and Rect2i types.
  • These are integer variants of Vector2, Vector3 and Rect2.
• Callable type for first-class functions (can be created with lambdas in GDScript).
• The Euler rotation order can now be adjusted in Node3D.
• New Array.map(), Array.filter() and Array.reduce() methods that can be used with Callables.
• Rewritten Tween with more functionality.
  • Tween is no longer a node.
  • Easier chaining of tweens.
  • Low-level tweening option to get an interpolated value directly.
  • Existing projects will have to be modified to account for this, as automatic conversion isn't feasible.
• New and improved IK in Skeleton2D.
  • New classes: SkeletonModifier2D, SkeletonModifierStack2D, SkeletonModification2DLookAt, SkeletonModification2DCCDIK, SkeletonModification2DFABRIK, SkeletonModification2DJiggle, SkeletonModification2DTwoBoneIK, PhysicalBone2D, SkeletonModification2DPhysicalBones, SkeletonModification2DStackHolder.
  • New Transform2D.looking_at() function.
• New and improved IK in Skeleton3D.
  • New classes: SkeletonModifier3D, SkeletonModifierStack3D, SkeletonModifier3DLookAt, SkeletonModification3DCCDIK, SkeletonModification3DFABRIK, SkeletonModification3DJiggle, SkeletonModification3DTwoBoneIK, SkeletonModification3DStackHolder.
  • The Bone struct now includes a local_pose_override.
  • The Bone struct now keeps track of its children bones, if it has any.
  • Added functions to Skeleton3D for getting the forward vector using the information stored in the rest pose for the bones.
  • New Basis.rotate_to_align() function.
  • Refactored the BoneAttachment3D node.
  • Removed the process_list functions.
• New GradientTexture2D resource (useful for 2D lights, particles, …).
• Support for gettext PO template generation from scene and script files.
  • Translation parser plugins can be written to allow extracting strings from custom file types.
• New Time singleton to replace date/time handling methods in the OS singleton.
  • Includes new methods to handle ISO 8601 timestamp conversion.
• Support for custom performance monitors.
• New randi_range() global scope function to return a random integer number within a range.
• New randfn() global scope function to return a floating-point number along a normal gaussian distribution.
• New pingpong() global scope function to return a floating-point number that increments then decrements in a "sawtooth" fashion.
• Vectors and Colors can now be clamped between two values their respective clamp() methods.
• New Vector3.limit_length() method as a Vector3 counterpart to Vector2.limit_length() (formerly Vector2.clamped()).
• New PackedArrays to replace PoolArrays.
  • 64-bit integer and float arrays are now available in addition to the existing 32-bit ones.
• New ConfigFile.parse(data: String) method to load a string as if it was a ConfigFile on disk.
• New Image.save_png_to_buffer() method to save a PNG image to memory as a PackedByteArray (instead of saving to disk).
• New File API to check, read and write symbolic links on macOS and Linux.
• Replaced GDNative with GDExtension.
  • Easier setup and compilation for various platforms.
  • Code structure is more similar to statically compiled C++ modules.
  • Lower performance overhead compared to GDNative.

Editor

• New TileMap and TileSet editors with better usability.
• Support for multiple windows.
  • Docks can be moved out of the main window into separate windows.
  • Single-window mode can be enabled in the Editor Settings to revert to the old behavior.
• New dynamic infinite 3D grid, replacing the fixed 3D grid.
• Movement and scaling handles in the 2D editor (similar to the 3D editor).
• New Replace in Files dialog in the script editor to complement Find in Files.
• Holding down Ctrl while drag-and-dropping a resource from the FileSystem dock to the script editor will now add preload() to the pasted resource path.
• New settings to change the freelook navigation scheme:
  • Default.
  • Partially axis-locked (similar to id Tech and Source's noclip modes). The Up and Down keys won't take the current view pitch into account.
  • Fully axis-locked (similar to Minecraft). The Forward, Backward, Up and Down keys won't take the current view pitch into account.
• macOS: More built-in mouse cursors are now exposed (such as diagonal resize cursors).
• macOS: Support for building Godot with Clang sanitizers.
• HTML5: Support for profiling projects exported to HTML5.

Export

• macOS: Projects can now optionally be exported to a application bundle contained within a ZIP archive.
  • Previously, a DMG image was always used when exporting from macOS.
• macOS: DMG images can now be codesigned after exporting.

GDScript

• GDScript was rewritten from scratch with a cleaner approach.
  • Annotations to replace keywords in certain cases (@export, @onready, @rpc(), @tool, @warning_ignore(), …).
  • Typed arrays (var array_of_nodes: Array[Node]). Any type can be used, including custom classes.
  • See individual progress reports for more information: #1, #2, #3.
• New documentation generation system.
  • Comments starting with ## are considered documentation comments.
  • Documentation comments be placed before any member variable, constant, enum or function declaration, or at the top of a file.
  • Documentation comments appear in the editor help and when hovering exported properties in the inspector.

GUI

• Support for multiple windows on desktop platforms. Projects can spawn additional windows, each with their own viewport.
  • Added NOTIFICATION_APPLICATION_FOCUS_IN and NOTIFICATION_APPLICATION_FOCUS_OUT notifications for "global" project focus changes (separate from NOTIFICATION_WM_FOCUS_IN and NOTIFICATION_WM_FOCUS_OUT).
• RichTextLabel property fit_content_height to make the label's height fit its content automatically (not always reliable).
• RichTextLabel's img tag now supports an optional color attribute to modulate the image.
• get_char_size() is now exposed in Font, making it usable in DynamicFont rather than being limited to BitmapFont.
• Tree can now highlight relationship lines for the currently selected item, its parents and direct children.
  • This is used in the scene tree dock in the editor.

Import

• Support for importing lights from glTF scenes.

Input

• Support for physical (keyboard layout-independent) key codes.
  • This can be used to provide W/A/S/D controls that work on any keyboard layout.
• DisplayServer.keyboard_get_current_layout() and DisplayServer.keyboard_get_layout_*() methods to get information about keyboard layouts.
• New Input.MOUSE_MODE_CONFINED_HIDDEN mouse mode to combine the confined and hidden mouse modes.

Mono/C#

• Support for exporting C# projects to iOS and HTML5.
• C# events can now be used to implement Godot signals.
• New Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code add-ons.

Navigation

• New NavigationServer.
  • Support for dynamic obstacle avoidance.

Networking

• Support for DTLS encryption in UDP and ENet.

Porting

• New DisplayServer abstraction, allowing for the creation of multiple windows.
  • This is used in the editor for detachable docks, but can also be used in projects.
• Android: Allow basic user data backup. This can be disabled in the export preset if needed.
• Android: Support for changing the mouse cursor shape (no custom images).
• iOS: The targeted device family (iPhone, iPad, iPhone and iPad) can now be specified in the export preset.

Physics

• New CharacterBody node to supersede KinematicBody.
  • Some KinematicBody features were moved to PhysicsBody.

Porting

• Android: Clients of the Godot library can now add their own command line arguments.

Rendering

• New Vulkan renderer.
• New OpenGL renderer, using OpenGL 3.3/OpenGL ES 3.0/WebGL 2.0 as a baseline.
  • Designed to target mobile/web platforms first, but also usable on desktop platforms.
  • Uses a low-end-friendly approach to maximize performance in simple scenes.
  • Currently supports 2D rendering only.
  • OpenGL 3D rendering is planned for a future 4.x release.
• Support for specular mapping when using 2D lighting.
• New DirectionalLight2D node for 2D lighting.
• CanvasGroup node to modulate several 2D nodes as a group (or apply shaders to them).
• Support for clipping in CanvasItem, replacing the use of Light2D as masks in a more convenient manner.
• Support for light projectors/"cookies" in OmniLight3D and SpotLight3D.
  • Only supported for lights with shadows enabled.
• 3D lights now have a Size property which can be set to simulate area lights.
  • This property also affects how fast shadow penumbras will grow over distance.
  • A shadow blur property is also available to set a constant blurring factor on a per-light basis.
• Shadow mapping with improved filtering and PCSS-like penumbra simulation.
  • Shadow normal offset bias is now implemented to avoid issues with shadow acne or peter-panning.
• New Decal node to project textures onto 3D surfaces.
• New fully real-time VoxelGI (formerly GIProbe).
  • Dynamic lights and emissive can emit GI that's updated every frame (instead of only updating sporadically).
  • Dynamic objects can receive GI and contribute to it.
• New signed distance field-based global illumination (SDFGI) for open world lighting.
  • Enabled in the WorldEnvironment. No node required, no baking.
  • Semi-realtime: dynamic objects can receive GI, but not contribute to it.
• Volumetric fog with optional GI contribution.
• Fog volumes to locally apply volumetric fog (or subtract to global fog using negative density).
• More physically accurate exponential fog to replace the old distance-based fog.
• New Aerial Scattering property in distance-based fog to fade out to the background sky instead of a fixed color.
  • Also available in volumetric fog with the Ambient Inject property.
• New GPU-based lightmapper.
  • When using a dedicated GPU, this results in much faster bake speeds compared to the CPU lightmapper.
  • Optional support for storing directional lighting information and rough reflections using spherical harmonics.
  • Improved support for lighting dynamic objects with better performance and quality.
  • In addition to automatic generation, LightmapProbe nodes can now be placed manually to provide better lighting information for dynamic objects where needed.
• Physical sky material and custom sky shaders, both supporting real-time updates.
• Global and per-instance shader uniforms.
  • This can be used to better reuse shaders, leading to improved performance.
• Support for automatically generating and using mesh LODs to improve performance.
  • Several LOD levels are generated for imported 3D scenes by default.
  • LODs are automatically used for mesh rendering using a pixel coverage-based selection algorithm.
  • Uses the meshoptimizer library.
• Support for LOD visibility ranges in GeometryInstance3D.
  • Manually authored LODs can be configured using distance and hysteresis cutoffs.
  • Can be used for HLOD setups to reduce draw calls while preserving culling opportunities when up close.
• Support for GeometryInstance3D distance fade to make distant meshes disappear smoothly without having to modify their material.
• Support for automatically generating and using shadow meshes to improve performance.
  • The generated shadow meshes are welded aggressively to improve performance with no difference in visual quality.
  • To further improve performance, hand-made shadow meshes can be specified in the inspector in MeshInstance nodes.
• Support for rendering a viewport's 3D contents at a lower resolution to improve performance.
  • 2D elements remain at full resolution to improve perceived sharpness.
  • A scaling factor above 1.0 can be used for supersampling, which is useful to maximize quality for offline rendering.
• See individual progress reports for more information: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7.

Shaders

• New shader compiler rewritten from scratch.
  • Support for uniform arrays (including sampler arrays).
  • Arrays can now be passed as function parameters (including arrays of structs).
  • The return type of a function can now be an array (including arrays of structs).
  • Array size can now be optionally written before the identifier (int[2] array; instead of int array[2]).
    • This eases porting shaders from GLSL.
  • Array constructors can now be called at any time after initialization.
    • For example, int array[3]; array = {1, 2, 3} is now valid.
  • New fma() (fused multiply-add) built-in function to optimize shaders in a low-level way.
  • New built-in data (un)packing functions to optimize shaders in a low-level way.
  • Warning system for common issues such as floating-point comparison and unused variables.
  • Argument names now appear in code completion tooltips.
  • More information in the progress report.
• Add Billboard mode to visual shaders.
• The constants PI, TAU and E are now available in the shader language.

Miscellaneous

• The engine is now unit-tested using doctest.
  • GDScript also now has integration tests.
• Switched from Travis CI and AppVeyor to GitHub Actions.
• A Fish shell completion file is now available for the Godot editor's command line interface.

Changed

Audio

• Increased the default AudioStreamPlayer3D unit size to (1 → 10) to make sounds more audible while setting up the node.
• Renamed the audio-related FFT_Size enum to FFTSize for consistency.

Core

• Tweaked the output strings to be more human-readable when printing various built-in Variant and Object types.
• Renamed File's endian_swap property to big_endian for consistency with ResourceSaver and StreamPeer.
• Renamed File's get_len() method to get_length().
• Renamed Object's PROPERTY_USAGE_NOEDITOR to PROPERTY_USAGE_NO_EDITOR.
• Renamed Vector2.clamped() to Vector2.limit_length() to differentiate it from the new Vector2.clamp().
• Renamed rand_range() to randf_range() to avoid ambiguity with the new randi_range() and make its return type more obvious.
• Replaced Node.add_child_below_node() with Node.add_sibling().
• Replaced Directory.list_dir_begin()'s skip_navigational and skip_hidden arguments with show_navigational and show_hidden.
  • Both arguments are false by default, which means the default behavior is now to exclude both navigational and hidden files from the returned list.
• Renamed the built-in Quat type to Quaternion.
• Renamed the built-in Transform type to Transform3D.
• Renamed Node3D's translation property to position for consistency with Node2D.
• Moved YSort functionality to a Node2D property.
• Viewports now use a size of 512×512 by default to make them visible out of the box.
• Screen orientation is now represented as an enum in the Project Settings.
• Renamed 3D nodes to contain an explicit "3D" prefix for clarity and consistency.
• Renamed various nodes:
  • Spatial → Node3D
  • GIProbe → VoxelGI
  • BakedLightmap → LightmapGI
  • Light2D -> PointLight2D
  • VisibilityNotifier2D -> VisibleOnScreenNotifier2D
  • VisibilityNotifier3D -> VisibleOnScreenNotifier3D
  • VisibilityEnabler2D -> VisibleOnScreenEnabler2D
  • VisibilityEnabler3D -> VisibleOnScreenEnabler3D
• Renamed various resources:
  • GradientTexture -> GradientTexture1D
• Old node and resource names are automatically converted when loading scenes from Godot 3.x.

Editor

• Renewed the editor theme for a more modern design.
  • Increased icon saturation by 30% when using a dark theme.
    • Icon saturation can now be adjusted in the Editor Settings.
• Improved the audio bus editor appearance.
• Improved layout and texts of the Manage Editor Features dialog.
• Improved the Video RAM debugger usability.
  • The Video RAM tab is now refreshed automatically when switching to it.
• Hovering layer checkboxes in the inspector now results in visual feedback.
  • Clicking between two checkboxes will now enable the checkbox that was last highlighted instead of doing nothing.
• CSV profiler measures can now be saved anywhere on the filesystem, not just in the project folder.
• Improved the 2D zooming algorithm to always visit powers of two (50%, 100%, 200%, …) and avoid floating-point precision issues.
• Times are now displayed as milliseconds in the profiler and performance monitors (instead of seconds).
• Improved the batch rename dialog usability and design consistency.
  • Clarified error messages when there are regular expression errors.
• Optimized editor icon generation to speed up editor startup.
• Script editor autocompletion now displays previews next to color constant suggestions.
• The number of replaced results now appears in place of the matches counter when replacing text in the script editor.
• Pressing Enter (or Shift + Enter) in the script editor replacement dialog now performs a forwards (or backwards) replacement operation.
• Pressing Ctrl + F now focuses the search field in the AssetLib tab.
• Pressing G now switches to the Pan mode in the 2D editor.
  • The TileMap editor's Bucket Fill shortcut was moved to B to cater for this change.
• Mouse wheel behavior for zooming in the animation behavior is now inverted.
• The Sync Scene Changes and Sync Script Changes settings' values now persist on a per-project basis instead of being always enabled by default.
• Various tooltips have been added or modified to clarify the editor operation.
• Various visual and formatting changes to the editor help to improve readability and be closer to the online class reference.
• Tweaked Camera2D editor line colors for better visibility.
• Light theme presets now use a negative contrast rate by default for a more logical preview of UI elevation.
• Increased the use of bold fonts throughout the editor.
• Revised icons for the Gradient and GradientTexture resources.
• Renamed "Identifier" to "Bundle Identifier" in the macOS and iOS export presets for clarity.
• Renamed the script editor's "Adaptive" syntax theme to "Default" and "Default" to "Godot 2", for consistency with the editor theme presets.
• Flipped the 2D editor icon to match Godot's coordinate handedness.

GUI

• Improved drive letter handling in EditorFileDialog and FileDialog.
• Container nodes (except PanelContainer) now use the Pass mouse mode by default.
• Pressing the left/right arrows while having selected text will now move the cursor to the beginning/end of the selection in LineEdit (while unselecting the text as usual).
• TextEdit's search() method now returns a Dictionary instead of a PackedIntArray.
• macOS: The Ctrl + A and Ctrl + E navigation shortcuts now work in LineEdit.

Input

• Renamed InputEventKey's scancode to keycode.
• Renamed InputMap's get_action_list() to get_action_events().

Networking

• Optimized bandwidth usage in the high-level multiplayer API.

Physics

• Split KinematicBody into the new CharacterBody node and PhysicsBody.
• RayCast nodes are now enabled by default.
  • The disabled property was renamed to enabled with its behavior inverted.
• Renamed PlaneShape to WorldBoundaryShape.

Rendering

• Some Environment settings such as depth of field have been moved to a CameraEffects resource which is assigned to individual Camera nodes.
• The ACES Fitted tonemapping algoirthm is now used in place of the old ACES algorithm.
  • The old non-fitted ACES tonemapping algorithm was removed.
• Quality settings have been moved from individual nodes and resources to the Project Settings for better centralization.
• Quality settings now have performance hints in their values' names, such as "Fast" or "Slow".

Shaders

• Renamed the .shader file extension to .gdshader.
  • Existing text-based shader files will have to be renamed before loading the project in a new engine version.

Miscellaneous

• Renamed the x11 platform to linuxbsd to prepare for Wayland support.
• The engine is now written in C++17.
• Python 3.6 and SCons 3.1 are now required to build Godot from source.

Removed

Buildsystem

• Removed the server platform in favor of disabling specific DisplayServers at build-time (e.g. vulkan=no).

Core

• Removed the YSort node in favor of the Node2D YSort property.
• Removed the deprecated Color.gray() method.
  • Use Color.v() for a better grayscale approximation instead.
• Removed built-in HQ2X implementation (used for crude hiDPI support in the default project theme).
  • This helps with binary size as HQ2X is made of particularly large functions.

Editor

• Removed the Dim Dialog on Editor Popup editor setting since it was made obsolete by the multi-window paradigm.

GUI

• Removed the ToolButton node in favor of Button.
  • Existing ToolButton nodes from Godot 3.x projects will be converted to Button nodes.

Input

• Removed the DisplayServer.get_latin_keyboard_variant() method (replaced by the more flexible DisplayServer.keyboard_get_current_layout()).

Networking

• Removed the deprecated allow_object_decoding property from PacketPeer.
• Removed the deprecated sync and slave high-level multiplayer keywords.

Export

• iOS: Remove redundant orientation export setting in favor of the orientation project setting.

Physics

• Removed the deprecated PhysicsBody friction and bounce properties (replaced by PhysicsMaterial).

Rendering

• Removed OpenGL ES 2.0 renderer (replaced by the new mobile-oriented OpenGL 3 renderer).
  • Vulkan, OpenGL 3.3, OpenGL ES 3.0 or WebGL 2.0 support is now required to run Godot.
• Removed support for 16× MSAA due to driver bugs and low performance.
  • For high-quality offline rendering, using supersampling together with 8× MSAA is a better option anyway.

Fixed

Core

• The positional command line argument now considers .res and .tres files as runnable scene formats.
  • This fixes Godot not running the main scene or a custom scene if they were saved with a .res or .tres extension.
• macOS/Linux: Fix the result of Directory.get_space_left().
• Windows: Godot can now kill its own PID using OS.kill().

Editor

• The Android exporter no longer reports progress on each file, greatly speeding up the exporting process.
• Searching with the Whole Words option enabled in the script editor is no longer exceedingly slow.

GUI

• Fixed OptionButton minimum size.
• TabContainer is no longer too large when tabs are hidden.
• ScrollBar now allows using scroll_to_line() when Scroll Active is disabled.
• DynamicFont outlines now have antialiasing disabled if it was disabled on the font itself.

Porting

• Windows: OS.execute() now only quotes command line arguments if they contain special characters.