Release candidate: Godot 3.3 RC 6

Godot 3.3? Weren’t we working on a version 3.2.4?

If you missed the recent news, we decided to change our versioning for Godot 3.x and rename the upcoming version 3.2.4 to Godot 3.3, thereby starting a new stable branch. Check the dedicated blog post for details.

But aside from the name change, it’s still the same release. Our last testing build was 3.2.4 RC 5 and so this new Release Candidate is named 3.3 RC 6. The version change doesn’t mean that we’re reopening the branch for new features, and so Godot 3.3 is very close to its stable release.

We still need a good round of testing on this new build to ensure that everything works as we want it before we make this the new stable branch (which will supersede the current 3.2.3 stable version).

As usual, you can try it live with the online version of the Godot editor updated for this release.

Highlights

The main changes coming in Godot 3.3 and included in this Release Candidate are:

• Android App Bundle and subview embedding support.
• 2D batching for GLES3 (it was implemented 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).
• Rewritten and greatly improved FBX importer.
• Improved Web editor and AudioWorklet support for multithreaded HTML5 builds.
• Configurable amount of lights per object, now defaulting to 32 instead of 8.
• macOS ARM64 support in official binaries for Apple M1 chip (only standard build for now).
• Optional GDNative support for HTML5.
• MP3 loading and playback support.
• WebXR support for VR games.
• Minimap support in GraphEdit.
• Fixes to Mono on WebAssembly.
• New CPU lightmapper.
• New dynamic BVH for rendering and the GodotPhysics backends.
  • If you experience a regression in either physics or rendering, you can try these Project Settings to revert back to the previous Octree-based approach and possibly fix the issue. In either case, be sure to report the problem on GitHub.
• iOS plugins support, with a similar interface to Android plugins.
• Multiple fixes to one-way collisions.
• New AspectRatioContainer Control node.
• Implement pause-aware physics picking.
• Optimize transform propagation for hidden 3D objects.
• Improved Inspector sub-resource editing.
• Detect external modification of scenes.
• Add support for copy-pasting nodes.
• Modernization of the multi-threading APIs.
• New editor to configure default import presets.

All these need to be thoroughly tested to ensure that they work as intended in the upcoming 3.3-stable.

Changes

The main new features are highlighted in bold. Refer to the linked pull requests for details.

• Android: Add support for the Android App Bundle format (GH-42185).
• Android: Add support for embedding Godot as a subview in Android applications (GH-42186).
• Android: Fix splash screen loading (GH-42389).
• Android: Add notch cutout support for Android P and later (GH-43104).
• Android: Add support for mouse events (GH-42360).
• Android: Add support for keyboard modifiers and arrow keys (GH-40398).
• Android: Fix screen orientation settings and API (GH-43022, GH-43248), GH-43511).
• Android: Update logic to sign prebuilt APKs with apksigner instead of jarsigner, as required for Android API 30 (GH-44645).
• Audio: Add MP3 loading and playback support (GH-43007).
• Audio: Fix pops in play() for spatial audio players (GH-46151).
• Audio: Add AudioEffectCapture to access the microphone in real-time (GH-45593).
• Buildsystem: Add production=yes option to set optimal options for production builds (GH-45679).
  • Users making custom builds should use this option which is equivalent to use_lto=yes debug_symbols=no use_static_cpp=yes.
  • Note for Linux builds: use_static_cpp=yes and udev=yes are now the default values, so you need libudev and libstdc++-static development packages to build in optimal conditions.
• C#: Official builds now use Mono 6.12.0.114.
• C#: Re-work solution build output panel (GH-42547).
• C#: Godot.NET.Sdk/3.3.0 - Fix targeting .NETFramework with .NET 5 (GH-44135).
• C#: Fixes to WebAssembly support (GH-44105, GH-44374).
• C#: Fix System.Collections.Generic.List marshalling (GH-45029).
• C#: Fix support for Unicode identifiers (GH-45310).
• C#: Add generic support to PackedScene.Instance (GH-42588).
• Camera2D: Fix frame delay and smoothing processing issues (GH-46697, GH-46717).
• Core: Optimize octree and fix leak (GH-41123).
• Core: Modernization of the multi-threading APIs (GH-45618).
• Core: Disable decayment of freed Objects to null in debug builds (GH-41866).
• Core: More fixes to Variant and Reference pointers (GH-43049).
• Core: Add append_array method to Array class (GH-43398).
• Core: Add ability to restore RandomNumberGenerator state (GH-45019).
• CSG: Various bug fixes.
• Editor: Improved Inspector sub-resource editing (GH-45907).
• Editor: Detect external modification of scenes (GH-31747).
• Editor: Add support for copy-pasting nodes (GH-34892).
• Editor: Fixed renaming/moving of nodes with exported NodePaths in the editor (GH-42314).
• Editor: Improve 3D rotation gizmo (GH-43016).
• Editor: Add a dynamic infinite grid to the 3D editor (GH-43206).
• Editor: Use 75% editor scale on small displays automatically (GH-43611).
• Editor: Require Ctrl for switching between editors, bind F2 to Rename Node (GH-38201).
• Editor: 3D editor grid improvements (GH-45594).
• Editor: Adjust auto-scale on 4K monitors to 150% (GH-45910).
• FBX: Rewritten and improved importer (GH-42941).
• Font: Load dynamic fonts to memory on all platforms to avoid locked files (GH-44117).
• Font: Fix fallback emoji font color (GH-44212).
• GDScript: Fix leaks due to cyclic references (GH-41931).
• GLES2/GLES3: Fix buffer orphaning on desktop (GH-42734).
• GLES2/GLES3: Fix flipped normal mapping in 2D with batching and nvidia workaround (GH-41323, GH-41254).
• GLES2: Various improvements to 2D batching (GH-42119).
  • See GH-42899 for instructions on how to test the improved 2D batching and report your results.
• GLES2: Fix glow on devices with only 8 texture slots (GH-42446).
• GLES2: Use separate texture unit for light_texture (GH-42538).
• GLES2: Fix PanoramaSky artifacts on Android (GH-44489).
• GLES2: Fix reflection probes for WebGL 1.0 (GH-45465).
• GLES2: Add support for anisotropic filtering (GH-45654).
• GLES2: Improve PCF13 shadow rendering by using a soft PCF filter (GH-46301).
• GLES3: Add 2D batching support, unified architecture with GLES2 (GH-42119).
  • See GH-42899 for instructions on how to test the new GLES3 2D batching and report your results.
• GLES3: Fixes to Screen Space Reflections (GH-38954, GH-41892).
• GLES3: Ensure that color values in Reinhard tonemapping are positive (GH-42056).
• glTF: Use vertex colors by default (GH-41007).
• glTF: Fix parsing base64-encoded buffer and image data (GH-42501, GH-42504).
• glTF: Fix handling of normalized accessor property (GH-44746).
• glTF: Relax node and bone naming constraints (GH-45545, GH-47074).
• GraphEdit: Add minimap support, enabled by default (GH-43416).
• GUI: Add AspectRatioContainer class (GH-45129).
• HTML5: Synchronous main, better persistence, handlers fixes, optional full screen (GH-42266).
• HTML5: Move audio processing to thread when threads are enabled (GH-42510).
• HTML5: Merged code for web editor prototype (GH-42790).
• HTML5: Add AudioWorklet support in multithreaded builds (GH-43454).
• HTML5: Add optional GDNative support (GH-44076).
• HTML5: Use internal implementation of the Gamepad API (GH-45078).
• HTML5: Tons of fixes all around to better support the Web editor :)
• HTML5: Refactored and simplified HTML page template (GH-46200).
• HTML5: Add PWA support to the editor page (GH-46796).
• Import: New editor to configure default import presets (GH-46354).
• Import: Fixed lossy_quality setting for ETC import (GH-44682).
  • See the linked PR for details, high lossy_quality values will now incur significantly longer import times (but correspondingly higher quality).
• Input: Add mouse event pass-through support for the game window (GH-40205).
• Input: Add support for buttons and D-pads mapped to half axes (GH-42800).
• Input: Add driving joystick type to windows joystick handling (GH-44082).
• Input: Add support for new SDL gamecontroller keywords (used e.g. by PS5 controller) (GH-45798).
• iOS: Add support for iOS plugins, with a similar interface to Android plugins (GH-41340).
  • You can read the updated documentation on godot-docs#4213, until it’s merged and included in the 3.2 documentation.
  • Previously built-in iOS features like ARKit, camera support, GameCenter, ICloud and InAppStore modules are now first-party plugins which can be installed from godot-ios-plugins. The relevant documentation will soon be updated to be clarify their usage with 3.3-stable.
• iOS: Fix multiple issues with PVRTC import, disable ETC1 (GH-38076).
• iOS: Add touch delay value to project settings (GH-42457).
• iOS: Fixes to keyboard input, including better IME support (GH-43560).
• iOS: Native loading screen implementation (GH-45693).
• Lighting: New CPU lightmapper (GH-44628).
• Linux: Fix issues related to delay when processing events (GH-42341).
• Linux: Implement --no-window mode (GH-42276).
• Linux: Prevent audio corruption in the ALSA driver (GH-43928).
• macOS: ARM64 support in official binaries.
  • Currently only for standard builds, Mono ARM64 builds are still a work in progress.
• macOS: Editor binary is now signed and notarized!
  • It is signed by Prehensile Tales B.V. like the Windows binaries.
• Linux: Dynamically load libpulse.so.0, libasound.so.1 and libudev.so.1 (GH-46107, GH-46117).
• Linux: Fix PRIME detection on Steam (GH-46792).
• Linux: Binaries are now stripped of string and symbol tables, which reduces their size significantly:
  • Editor: 9 MB less (standard) and 35 MB less (Mono).
  • Templates: 5-6 MB less (standard) and 30 MB less (Mono).
• macOS: Fix mouse position in captured mode (GH-42328).
• macOS: Fix get_screen_dpi for non-fractional display scales (GH-42478).
• macOS: Implement --no-window mode (GH-42276).
• macOS: Improve Mono distribution in .app bundle to allow codesigning exported binaries (GH-43768).
• macOS: Add entitlements config and export template dylib signing to the export (GH-46618).
• macOS: Binaries are now stripped of string and symbol tables, which reduces their size significantly:
  • Editor: 14 MB less (standard) and 9 MB less (Mono).
  • Templates: 9-10 MB less (standard) and 6 MB less (Mono).
• MeshInstance: Add option for software skinning (GH-40313).
• Node: Fix Editable Children issues with node renaming, moving, duplicating and instancing (GH-39533).
• Particles: Fix impact of lifetime_randomness on properties using a curve (GH-45496).
• Physics: New dynamic BVH for GodotPhysics backends (GH-44901).
• Physics: Various bug fixes for 2D and 3D.
• Physics: Fix multiple issues with one-way collisions (GH-42574).
• Physics: Implement pause-aware picking (GH-39421).
  • This breaks compat but is not enabled by default for existing projects (see project setting physics/common/enable_pause_aware_picking). It will be enabled by default for new projects created with 3.3.
• Physics: Implement CollisionPolygon margin property for Bullet (GH-45855).
• Physics: Implement Cylinder support in GodotPhysics3D (GH-45854).
• Physics: Allow CollisionObject to show collision shape meshes (GH-45783).
• Plugins: Detect plugins recursively (GH-43734).
• Rendering: Add fast approximate antialiasing (FXAA) to Viewport (GH-42006).
• Rendering: Disable lights for objects with baked lighting (GH-41629).
• Rendering: New dynamic BVH (GH-44901).
• Rendering: Add METALLIC to light() builtins (GH-42548).
• Rendering: Various fixes to light culling (GH-46694).
• Spatial: Optimize transform propagation for hidden 3D objects (GH-45583).
• Sprite3D: Use full float UV for better precision (GH-42537) [regression fix].
• TileMap: Add show_collision property to see collision shapes in editor and at run-time (GH-46623).
• VR: Add WebXR support for VR games (GH-42397).
• Windows: Fix debugger not getting focused on break on Windows (GH-40555).
• YSort: Make rendering order more deterministic (GH-42375).
• Thirdparty library updates (enet 1.3.17, freetype 2.10.4, mbedtls 2.16.10, miniupnpc 2.2.2, pcre2 10.36, tinyexr 1.0.0, zstd 1.4.8).
• API documentation updates.
• Editor translation updates.
• And many more bug fixes and usability enhancements all around the engine!

See the full changelog since 3.2.3-stable (chronological, or for each contributor), or the changes since the previous RC 5 build.

This release is built from commit 15ff752737c53a1727cbc011068afa15683509be.

Downloads

The download links for dev snapshots are not featured on the Download page to avoid confusion for new users. Instead, browse our download repository and fetch the editor binary that matches your platform:

• Standard build (GDScript, GDNative, VisualScript).
• Mono build (C# support + all the above). You need to have MSBuild installed to use the Mono build. Relevant parts of Mono 6.12.0.114 are included in this build.

Bug reports

As a tester, you are encouraged to open bug reports if you experience issues with 3.3 RC 6. Please check first the existing issues on GitHub, using the search function with relevant keywords, to ensure that the bug you experience is not known already.

In particular, any change that would cause a regression in your projects is very important to report (e.g. if something that worked fine in 3.2.3 or earlier no longer works in 3.3 RC 6).

Support

Godot is a non-profit, open source game engine developed by hundreds of contributors on their free time, and a handful of part or full-time developers, hired thanks to donations from the Godot community. A big thankyou to everyone who has contributed their time or financial support to the project!

If you’d like to support the project financially and help us secure our future hires, you can do so on Patreon or PayPal.