Hi folks,
Today is my first work day in the new year, so it’s time to write my traditional years review on my (free) Patreon:
I wish you all a healthy, successful and creative year 2026.
The world needs more real (indie) artists and art than ever.
Ci vediamo, Helge Maus
P.S. For my upcoming Blender and Godot trainings, please look at pixeltrain Academy | Blender for Production | Godot Game Development for Indies
Godot 4.4 was released at the beginning of March. The update was another major step forward for the free, open-source game engine Godot, bringing numerous new features and improvements.
Highlights included the integration of the external 3D physics engine Jolt, the interactive in-game editor, game stuttering solving with a new ubershader system and AgX tone mapping. And many, many more small improvement …
You can find a complete overview here:
https://godotengine.org/releases/4.4
As usual with such major updates, it requires a certain amount of time to get used to it and extensive testing of existing projects.
Naturally, minor issues, glitches, and bugs will also arise. Therefore, from a production perspective, it always makes sense to wait for at least the first bug fix release before porting a complex project.
Godot 4.4.1 was released today. Thanks to the great community and numerous dedicated developers, it took less than a month to smooth out the rough edges.
So here is the maintenance release of Godot 4.4.1:
https://godotengine.org/article/maintenance-release-godot-4-4-1
Download-Links:
https://godotengine.org/download/archive/4.4.1-stable
Have fun,
Helge
P.S. I offer corporate and individual training (remote, English, or German) on Godot and Game-Design / -Development. If you are interested, you can find some information on http://www.pixeltrain.net or write me an email: info (at) pixeltrain.net
More information at http://www.pixeltrain.net or write me a message to talk 🙂
Done – my first German-language “Godot Fundamentals” (“Grundlagen der Game Entwicklung mit der Godot Game Engine”) course took place last week. Further advanced courses are already planned.
More information here: http://www.pixeltrain.net/events/
This marks another milestone in the restructuring of my training offerings towards FOSS:
In addition to “Blender for Production” now also “Indie Game Development with Godot”.
I believe indie productions are important for the creative future!
Yesterday was a big day for all Godot Engine game developers working on 3d games using physics.
Since yesterday the Jolt Physics Engine was added as an alternative 3D Physics Engine to the source code of the coming Godot 4.4 version.
A little bit of background for that:
The stable version of Godot has it’s own 3d physics engine, which is used for all kinds of physics simulation in 3d games. These types of engines are really tricky to maintain, also to make their simulations performant and stable and also give you all the features your need.
(Image credit: Horizon Forbidden West by Guerrilla Games)
Many developers using Godot for 3D with heavy use of physics are working with an external open source physics engine with the name “Jolt”. This engine is written / maintained by Jorrit Rouwe and many other contributors and is battle-proofed, because it is used in “Horizon Forbidden West” by Guerrilla Games. It is suitable for games and VR applications.
The Jolt Physics Engine is a multi core friendly rigid body physics and collision detection library. Written in C++. Suitable for games and VR applications.
You can read more about this engine here:
https://github.com/jrouwe/JoltPhysics
Before yesterday devs wanting to use this engine had to use “Godot Jolt” an Godot extension that integrates the Jolt physics engine. This was a separate extension you had to install.
Now this code was integrated and re-written. Here the statement of Mikael Hermansson, the developer behind the extension:
This new module is a port of the Godot Jolt extension, developed by myself over the past two years, in large part as a personal project, but with the last year (including this port) being sponsored by W4 Games. I’ve also received a significant amount of assistance and contributions from @jrouwe during this development, which I’m very grateful for. In fact, several major features have been added to Jolt largely to cater to the needs of Godot.
Here the full thread of the merge into Godot 4.4:
https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/99895
So, I’m looking forward to Godot’s future as a full fleshed and performant 3D Games Engine.
Have fun!
Helge
BTW, if you want to learn Godot from the ground up I offer some German classes in beginning of 2025: http://www.pixeltrain.net/events/
Also I’m planing a pixeltrain Godot Academy in English beginning next year.
If you are interested, please let me know.
Today another development snapshot of the coming Godot version 4.4Â is out.
👉 https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot-godot-4-4-dev-6/
So for everyone who wants to play with the new version or test some features you can now download this version from the Godot’s website:
👉 https://godotengine.org/
Beside of the many, many small improvements and bugfixes there are also again some new features adding to the others which were added in the dev snapshots for Godot 4.4 before.
If you are interested to follow my thoughts, news, and tutorials about Godot and Blender, you find them also on my (free) Patreon:
👉 https://www.patreon.com/posts/godot-4-4-dev-6-117431569?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link
Have fun!
Great Godot news – W4 Games and Second Dinner studio announced a strategic partnership.
Some thoughts and info here on my (free) Patreon:
👉 https://www.patreon.com/posts/second-dinner-in-109646377?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link
I am so thrilled, that the Godot as a free and open-source Game engine gets more and more visibility in the Games Develpment World.
If you are looking for training or coaching in Godot Game Development please reach out to me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pixeltrain/
Shortly before GDC 2024, W4 Games and Meta announced a new collaboration in the area of XR under the title “W4 Games and Meta Team Up to Expand Open-Source Godot Ecosystem on Meta Quest“.
As you probably know, I’m not necessarily a big fan of Meta, but I see this type of collaborations in the area of XR as a big boost for development and value for the development of Godot on these platforms.
The strategic cooperation covers the following areas:
The strategic partnership also contemplates the development of educational materials and joint marketing activities in the coming years. Meta and W4 Games are dedicated to contributing as much of this work as possible to the Godot project as part of our shared commitment to the open-source community.
Here is the entire press release on the W4 website:
I believe, that Godot is on a good track at the moment to get the same momentum as Blender some years ago.
If you want to learn more about Godot or even need training, please let me know info(at)pixeltrain.net. I would love to help.
Trainings-DVD: Flash Spieleprogrammierung
Autor: Helge Maus
Verlag: video2brain
Preis: Euro 49,90
ISBN: 978-3-9501978-2-2
Ob als Pausenfüller, Werbemittel oder als Besucher-Magnet für die eigene Website: mit Flash-Games sorgen Sie für Spaß und Begeisterung. Das nötige Know-How in Sachen ActionScript vermittelt Ihnen dieses Video-Training.
