A new version of the Godot open source gaming engine has been released with better usability and features.

The Godot open source gaming engine was first made available under open source in 2014, but lacked some key features. The idea behind Godot is that developers can make use of common tools to make game design easier. It has a good visual editor and a scene system that supports instancing and inheritance.

The main improvements to the new release are to the editor, but in feature terms the headline improvements are better scene instancing and the addition of scene inheritance. In the previous version, you could only edit the root node of a scene, and if you attempted to edit sub-nodes, it resulted in data loss. You can now edit any child node of the instanced scene and have the changes persist.

The addition of scene inheritance means you could have a base scene with a common node hierarchy that could be extended for each class. The developers suggest you could have a base scene such as enemy or obstacle, with a node hierarchy such as explosions, shines, and indicators, then extend that hierarchy. The inheritance would also let you make non-destructive changes to imported scenes or those created by other team members. 

Other improvements include a new text-based scene format, support for ZIP packs on export instead of PCK, and support for OPUS Audio Format.

However, most of the improvements are to the editor. The developers say the priority was to improve tools and make the workflow more efficient. There's a new theme, and the layout has been improved with unnecessary icons, margins, and arrows removed to clean up the interface. The layout also lets you move and rearrange dock panels.

You can now carry out multiple scene editing with several scenes open at the same time, and if a dependency changes, the scene is automatically reloaded.

There's also a new code editor to support the multiple scene editing. Until Godot 1.1, scripts were opened contextually to the scene being edited. The new editor means that when you switch to a scene, the editor will open the relevant script to make the programming experience smoother. The debugger has also been improved and a video memory debugger has been added.

More Information

Godot Blog

Godot Download

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