Godot Digest 12
The first beta of 4.4 has been released, the GodotCon USA announcement has been made, and the official newsletter is available for subscription.
Godot 4.4 Beta 1 has many interesting new features and improvements. We will check the official blog post and videos from some content creators regarding Beta 1.
Let’s get started with some industry news first.
Game Dev News
GDC has released the list of the finalists for this year's IGF (Independent Games Festival). With almost 500 entries, the jurors select independent games for different categories. The winners will be announced on March 26. Here is the list of finalists in each category:
https://igf.com/article/consume-me-leads-5-nominations-2025-igf-awards
According to Metaplay's Game Development Renaissance report, 77% of game developers expect the industry to grow during this year. I have to say, the sample for this report is small and kind of biased. They surveyed 150 Unity developers from the US and UK. It is up to you to decide if the information is good enough. Here is the link to the original article:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/report-77-of-devs-expect-games-industry-to-grow-in-2025
On a different note from the previous report, the Games Developer Conference released the results of its annual survey, which surveyed more than 3,000 developers worldwide. The State of the Game Industry report reveals several interesting facts. I found a couple particularly interesting: a huge number of AAA developers are still working on live service projects, and climate change has had a noticeable impact on game dev studios.
Here is a nice resume of the report:
Otherwise, if you want to read the full report (highly recommended), you can request a copy here (it is free):
https://reg.gdconf.com/state-of-game-industry-2025?_mc=edit_gdcsf_gdcsf_le_x_10_x_2025
Official News
Finally, GodotCon will have an event in North America! Announced last week, GodotCon Boston will be happening from May 5th to May 7th. The deadline for speakers or sponsors is February 23. Tickets are unavailable yet, but you can subscribe to get notified when they are available. More information in the official post:
https://godotengine.org/article/godotcon-2025/
Since Godot 4.0, the engine added support for UIDs to handle the file system. Long story short, they moved to rely directly on the file system structure to use unique identifiers to handle files. The problem is that the system wasn’t fully implemented, and some files were excluded in that release. With 4.4, the support for UIDs is complete and fully integrated into the engine. Each file would have a companion .uid file that references the resource. Any action you do to the resource file has to be done to the UID file. Read more about it and learn the benefits of this system in the official blog post:
https://godotengine.org/article/uid-changes-coming-to-godot-4-4/
Godot 4.4 Beta 1 has been released! The first beta freezes the code in terms of new features. From now on, the work until 4.5 is to fix and improve what we have, and no new features will be added to the version. Some of the highlights for 4.4 are: embedded game window, visualization of 3D particle emission shapes, .NET 8, and integration of Jolt Physics. To learn more about this release and all the new features, improvements, and bug fixes, check the official blog post:
https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot-godot-4-4-beta-1/
If you prefer the video format, several content creators shared the news of the first beta in their channels, highlighting some of the most important features and opinions.
Octodemy shared the changes introduced in Beta 1, focusing on the changes to 4.4 in the last month.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zBfqW1AN3Q
Queble summarizes this release's new features and reviews the official blog post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0XCo-dp2zw
Finally, one of my favorites, Gamefromscratch, reviews the release as usual. He calls this version one of the best engine betas ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiJ5bOsnZbQ
Godot just launched its official newsletter. You can keep in the loop for the Godot Conference and all the news related to the engine. If you want to subscribe, hit the link below!
https://godot.news/subscription/form
From the Community
Here are some of the latest tutorials and resources from the Godot community.
Rainy window shader — FencerDevLog
This is a cool effect where you can simulate raindrops trickling down over a window. As always, from shaders master Fencer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAOt24qV98c
Gridmap in 4.4 — Coding Quests
Here is a review of the Gridmap node changes from 4.3 to 4.4.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw0F2J4gNw0
Player stats and leveling — Michael Games
Continuing the tutorial series on building an AARPG, Michael now discusses his implementation of player stats and XP leveling mechanics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gJ0VCx_IAA
The second part of this tutorial is where Michael polishes and fixes some issues from the previous code. Check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaUYclZ8e9g
Voxel terrain #1 — MakerTech
MakerTech has launched a new tutorial series on creating voxel terrain. The first part covers the basics of creating cubes. This one gets bonus points because it uses the brand-new Beta 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uGtO7sk-_c
2D/3D hybrid sprite game using LimboAI — Chap.C Creates
A two-part tutorial covering the basics of adding 2D sprite animation to a 3D environment, using LimboAI for the state machine.
Part 1 covers mostly the setup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kHcFRhd_XA
Part 2 goes into the actual creation of the state machine using LimboAI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGqO7SVKqkM
If you want to learn more about LimboAI, you can check the repo link below. In a nutshell, it is a C++ extension for creating behavior trees and state machines.
https://github.com/limbonaut/limboai
Triangular tunnel shader — FencerDevLog
This shader takes me back to the 1990s when I played those “3D” space simulators. The effect is quite similar. You may need it for your retro arcade game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1aGzEWxgPo
Implementing BFS — Coding Quests
Walkthrough on how to implement Breadth-First Search in Godot to solve pathfinding problems. It goes through the concepts of BFS and how it is implemented in GDScript.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fghntq-Om-I
Function chaining — Heartbeast
This tutorial will teach us how to use function chaining in our objects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W5LSq3U7vw
Save game data with components — Rapid Vectors
In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a component to save data that we can use with different resources. The idea is to save and reload this data on each game session.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X7S1k_cvwA
Command pattern — Michael Games
Learn what the command pattern is, in which cases to use it, and how to implement it in GDScript.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE2qJkVooqU
Another Godot newsletter, this time an official :D Damn, what a lively community :D