Just last week we announced the first Release Candidate for Godot 3.1 and things must have gone smashingly well, as after a year in development, Godot 3.1 is finally here! The biggest feature of this new release is the arrival of an OpenGL ES 2 renderer that works alongside the GL ES3 renderer that shipped with Godot 3.0. This renderer should enable Godot developers to target a large swath of devices with different drivers and performance characteristics and should remove one of the biggest hurdles preventing developers from upgrading from Godot 2.x.
The new renderer is by no means the only new feature of Godot 3.1, with a massive number of new features added. A highlight of new features from the Godot blog:
- OpenGL ES 2.0 renderer
- Optional typing in GDScript
- Revamped inspector
- Revamped 2D editor
- New TileSet editor
- Revamped filesystem dock
- KinematicBody2D (and 3D) improvements
- Revamped animation editor
- Revamped AnimationTree
- New axis handling system
- Visual shader editor
- 2D skeletons
- 2D meshes
- Improved 3D editor
- 3D softbody support
- Ragdolls and Skeleton IK
- Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG)
- OpenSimplex and NoiseTexture
- CPU-based particle system
- Greatly improved C# support
- Networking improvements
- Custom classes registration
- MIDI and microphone input
- More VCS friendliness
- Many more changes
In addition to the above summary, the detailed change log is available here. Be aware, while 3.0 and 3.1 are mostly compatible, there may be some breaking changes.
We have created featured videos on several of these new features as they were developed, including:
- Static typed GDScript
- Animation Improvements
- UI Improvements
- Skeletal Deformation
- Visual Shader Editor
- CSG Support
If there are other new features you would like to see us cover in more detail, let us know! Godot 3.1 is available for download on Windows, Linux and MacOS right here. If you are interested in learning Godot development, we’ve got you covered with this comprehensive tutorial series as well as this step by step game creation tutorial.