Thaddeus Crews has announced the availability of the second release candidate for the Godot 4.4 open-source game engine. The second release candidate, anticipated to be the final one, addresses all pertinent release blockers.

The release features regression fixes and reliable solutions to persistent issues, including optimizations for libtheora, compilation on arm64 Linux with GCC, implementation of atomic flags, correction of the Embedded Game window's startup location and size, adjustment of loading dock layout post-initialization, and resolution of cross-platform configuration for rendering driver settings. The Web editor and Android editor are now available for download. The project is on track for a stable release in approximately one week.

Godot 4.4 RC 2

Last week, we released the first of our  Release Candidate builds, a state suitable for production settings. This is the second entry, and already shaping up to be our last, as all relevant release blockers have been dealt with! While we prepare for the stable release—no more than a week’s time from now—let’s enjoy one last roundup of changes.

Please, consider  supporting the project financially, if you are able. Godot is maintained by the efforts of volunteers and a small team of paid contributors. Your donations go towards sponsoring their work and ensuring they can dedicate their undivided attention to the needs of the project.

Jump to the Downloads section, and give it a spin right now, or continue reading to learn more about improvements in this release. You can also  try the Web editor or the Android editor for this release. If you are interested in the latter, please request to join  our testing group to get access to pre-release builds.

Highlights

We covered the most important highlights from Godot 4.4 in the previous  4.4 beta 1 blog post, so if you haven’t read that one, have a look to be introduced to the main new features added in the 4.4 release.

Especially if you’re testing 4.4 for the first time, you’ll want to get a condensed overview of what new features you might want to make use of.

This section covers changes made since the previous  RC 1 snapshot, which are mostly regression fixes, or “safe” fixes to longstanding issues:

• Buildsystem: Fix libtheora optimizations causing errors in calling function for x86_64 Windows ( GH-103176).
• Buildsystem: Fix compiling on arm64 Linux with GCC ( GH-103303).
• Core: Use atomic flag to prevent flush_if_pending from reading unlocked command_mem ( GH-103298).
• Editor: Fix Embedded Game window wrong first startup location and size ( GH-103105).
• Editor: Fix plugin icons not displayed ( GH-103143).
• Editor: Load docks layout after their position is initialized ( GH-103266).
• Export: Fix cross-platform configuration of rendering driver settings (narrower approach) ( GH-103197).
• GDExtension: Bind new core METHOD_FLAG_VIRTUAL_REQUIRED bitfield ( GH-103302).
• GUI: Fix Tree hover position with multiple columns ( GH-103168).
• GUI: Fix label clipping when ascent/descent are fractional ( GH-103192).
• GUI: Label: Fix rounding errors with fractional scale ( GH-103224).
• I18n: CSV import: Generate positve UID for .translation and follow renames ( GH-103120).
• Import: bcdec: Fix unnecessary alignment of texture resolution when only one of its dimensions isn’t divisible by 4 ( GH-103259).
• Network: mbedTLS: Integrate TLS handshake defragmentation PR ( GH-103247).
• Porting: Fix Embedded Game does not focus when mouse over on Windows ( GH-103052).
• Porting: Android Editor: Fix expand button black bar issue ( GH-103117).
• Porting: Android: Fix excessive getRotation calls ( GH-103122).
• Rendering: Metal: Compile MTLLibrary on demand when pipeline is created ( GH-103185).
• Rendering: Windows: Offload RenderingDevice creation test to subprocess ( GH-103245).
• Rendering: texture_create_from_native_handle() should return RID for texture from RenderingServer, not RenderingDevice ( GH-103296).

Release candidate: Godot 4.4 RC 2