It has been four months already since our previous stable release, Godot 2.1.3 - and one year since the release of our stable 2.1 branch and the start of the work on Godot 3.0, which should soon see a new alpha build.
This exceptionally long development cycle for Godot 3.0 has encouraged many Godot users to contribute new features to the stable branch, in order to bring them faster to end users and to their projects. The side effect is that such features can introduce regressions, which we absolutely don't want in the stable branch, so this 2.1.4 release required a good deal more testing than the previous one. But as a result, it's actually a pretty exciting "maintenance" release with various new features and a great deal of bug fixes.
Highlights
- Platform: iOS: MFI gamepad support, audio improvements
- Platform: macOS: system menu integration, better multimonitor DPI scaling, audio and input improvements
- Platform: Support for UWP (Universal Windows Platform) alias WinRT as target platform, with gamepad support
- 2D editor: Fix IK not being solved while dragging a bone (regression in 2.1.3)
- 3D editor: Ability to select subscenes when clicking them in the viewport
- Debugging: Many improvements to the editor's debugger and display of complex types
- Display: Add "expand" option for window stretch aspect
- GDScript: Backport advanced string format feature from the master branch
- Physics: Add one-way collision to tile-set/tile-map
- Physics: Backport move_and_slide API from the master branch
- Tools: Improvements to the Godot 3.0 exporter (still work-in-progress)
See the official blog announcement for more details, as well as the exhaustive changelog.
All in all, this is a pretty big maintenance release, and it should improvement the usability of the stable Godot 2.1 while we are waiting for the upcoming 3.0 version.
Support duration
As mentioned previously, the 2.1.x stable branch will continue to receive bug fixes and enhancements at least until Godot 3.0-stable is released. Given that Godot 3.0 is not planned to have support for OpenGL 2.x / OpenGL ES 2.x devices, we will likely continue to maintain the 2.1.x branch further until Godot 3.1, which should add back support for older devices.
So you can expect at least a 2.1.5 release in the future (especially in order to bring a more final version of the 3.0 exporter once the master branch is stable enough), likely in a couple of months.
Supporting the development
If you'd like to support Godot's development, apart from making cool games with it or contributing directly to the engine with code or bug reports, you can make a financial donation on Patreon to enable us to hire our lead developer Juan Linietsky full-time, thus greatly increasing the development rate of new features and bug fixes for Godot 3.0 and beyond!
Have fun with this new release!