Earlier this week the first beta of Godot 3.2.4 was released bringing several fixes and improvements as well as a few new features.
The primary features of the first Godot 3.2.4 beta from the Godot blog include:
Android App Bundle and subview embedding support.
2D batching for GLES3 (remember that we added it for GLES2 in 3.2.2), and improvements to GLES2’s batching.
A new software skinning for MeshInstance to replace the slow GPU skinning on devices that don’t support the fast GPU skinning (especially mobile).
Several smaller fixes and improvements
Downloads for all major platforms are available for download here. The major new feature of most interest to me is the new sprite batching, an optimization trick to improve 2D rendering speeds. In the video below we run the popular Bunnymark test on Godot 3.2.3 and the new Godot 3.2.4 and we saw respectable improvements.
There is a new Humble Bundle of interest to game developers, this one is the Ultimate Fantasy Game Development bundle. It’s a collection of fantasy themed models, full rigged, textured and animated with tons of modularity and different texture packs. Even more impressive, the package is available as keys for both Unity and Unreal Engine asset stores and the models and textures are in a format that can be used in any 3D game engine with ease. As with all Humble Bundles, this one is organized into tiers:
1$ Tier
Plant Monster
Rock Monster
Mushroom Monster
15$ Tier
Giant Worm
Minotaur
Mimics & Chests
Medusa
Locks and Lockpicks
25$ Tier
Spiders
Dragons
Humans
Armor Pack 1
Weapons & Armor 1
Character Accessories
Trolls
Demons
Magic & Melee Sounds Library
Devils
As with all Humble Bundles, you get to decide how your money is allocated between Humble, Charity, the publisher and if you so choose (and thanks if you do!) to support GFS purchasing through this link. You can get additional asset packs in the same art style created by Infinity PBR on the Unity Asset Store. You can learn more about the asset pack in the video below.
Pixelorama and Material Maker are two very different programs that have an exceptional amount in common. One direct commonality is, they both received updates this week. In addition to new updates, Material Maker and Pixelorama are both open source game development related applications released under the MIT license and created using the Godot game engine.
Material Maker is a graph or node based procedural texture generation tool, perhaps the closest thing that exists to a free and open source Substance Designer alternative. Material Maker just released version 0.93 with new features including several new nodes and node improvements, support for custom meshes, an all new dynamic reference panel and more. The source code for Material Maker is available here.
Pixelorama is a pixel based art application with animation support. Pixelorama just released version 0.8.1 adding new tools for moving animation frames, a new purple theme, sprite generation improvements and more. The source code for Pixelorama is available here.
You can learn more about both releases in the video below or watch here on Odysee.
Recently discussed on the Godot website, several new features have been added to the Godot 4 GPU accelerated particle systems. New features include:
support for sub-emitters
new collision systems
box and sphere colliders
height map colliders for outdoor maps
SDF colliders for internal meshes
new particle attractors
While we are going to have to wait until Godot 4 to get our hands-on the new Godot 4 in a production environment, we can check out the new GPUParticles3D node in action by building from the nightly source. That is exactly what we did in the video below, check it out for a preview and a mini tutorial on using particles in Godot 4.
October 13th is the official launch date of the Oculus Quest 2, and with millions of Quests now in gamer’s hands, some are no doubt going to want to figure you how to develop games for them. This is a quick overview of the various different technical options and tools for developing games on the Oculus Quest 2.
The very first thing you are going to want to do is visit the Oculus Quest Developer Portal, the central repository and jumping off point for Oculus VR development. You are also eventually going to have to register to get your developer keys, which are required to deploy your completed game onto a headset. We will cover this in a later tutorial. For now let’s look at some of the options available for Quest 2 game development.
Native Development
Oculus release a set of low level C++ development tools for creating your own game or application basically from scratch. Native development is ultimately Android NDK development and requires Android Studio to be installed, as well as the Oculus Mobile SDK. There are a number of C++ code samples to get you started. Only take this option if you are an experienced coder and want to work at a very low level.
Unity Game Engine
The Unity game engine is perhaps the most commonly used game engine for VR development today. The Quest 2 is fully supported and you get a huge amount of starter content and tutorials to get you going. Oculus have getting started with Unity guides available here.
Unreal Engine
After the Unity game engine, Unreal is probably the next most commonly used game engines for VR development. Like Unity, Oculus have getting started materials for Unreal Engine available as well. If you are having trouble deciding between Unreal and Unity, check out this video comparing the two.
Godot Engine
The open source Godot game engine is another option for Oculus Quest development. There is a Oculus Mobile plugin available here as well as the Quest specific Quest Toolkit for Godot, which ships with tons of examples to get you up and started.
Other Engines
CryEngine can be used for Quest 2 development, as evidence by The Climb. Unfortunately CryEngine mobile and VR support is only available in a private beta currently. Additionally the Lumberyard game engine supports VR development, but currently only desktop platforms. You can run Rift and Vive games on the Quest, but using Lumberyard you can’t currently do native development.
WebVR
One of the easiest and quickest to get up and running is creating browser based VR games that can be run on the Quest 2. Here one of the easiest options is A-Frame where you can create 3D worlds using simple HTML-esque markup. Three.JS is the technology A-Frame is built upon and is another option, while the higher level PlayCanvas game engine has VR support as well.
You can learn more about the Oculus Quest 2 and the development options available in the video below.
VPainter is an open source free add-on for the Godot game engine that enables you to paint directly on 3D models. There are two modes of operation, one is to paint on the vertices of the mesh, while the second involves blending up to 4 different textures into one seamless material.
VPainter is open source MIT licensed and hosted on GitHub. To get started, merely clone (git clone _____) the repository https://github.com/tomankirilov/VPainter.git.
Next, copy the addons folder into your Godot project, merging it if you already have an addons directory.
Next, fire up the Godot Engine, go to Project->Project Settings, then select the Plugins tab and click enable:
VPainter is now enabled and will appear in the editor window when a MeshInstance is selected. For further details on how to use VPainter or to simply see it in action, check out the video below.
