Through 2020 it seems the free and open source game engine Godot Engine has gone from strength to strength, and they've managed to hire another developer.

Not long after announcing a new hire thanks to funding from Facebook , developer Camille Mohr-Daurat has now been hired thanks to a "generous donation" to work part-time over six months to improve Godot's 2D and 3D physics systems. They said their main goal is to modernise the whole thing - no doubt something that will excite a number of developers using Godot.

Mohr-Daurat has listed a few interesting goals to get started including sorting out a physics test framework, an audit of existing issues and sorting through pull requests from others, implement a bunch of new features like soft bodies and buoyancy, optimise and more.

See the announcement here .

All sounds pretty great and wonderful to see Godot end 2020 on another high note. Hopefully through 2021 we will see more developers take a look at using Godot Engine as it grows more feature-filled and powerful. The cross-platform support it offers is excellent. If you're working with Godot and plan to have whatever it is supported on Linux, do feel free to mention it in the comments.

Unity 2020.2 is the latest 'TECH' release with all the latest features, that eventually make their way into a more stable LTS release. Following their newer release cycle of two TECH releases per year and then the next LTS upgrade for everyone. There will be a new 2020 LTS release early next year.

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Looking over the full release notes , it seems they are continuing to go over their Linux support with a fine-tooth comb as this version of Unity includes quite a lot of fixes and improvements just for Linux.

Here's some highlights for their Linux support:

• Graphics: Added support for Virtual Texturing for Linux Standalone player.
• Linux: Added VTune integration support for Linux.
• Asset Pipeline: Unity no longer needs to reimport all textures, audio, and video when switching between Standalone platforms (for example, Win32 to Win64, or Mac to Linux).
• IL2CPP: Fixed a GC performance regression on Android and Linux.
• Burst: Fixed a compatibility issues between burst and older linux distros.
• Editor: Fixed a class of GTK warnings showing up in the editor log when running the Linux editor. ( 1268468 )
• Editor: Fixed an issue in the Linux editor where mouse input in one window could create undesired visual changes in other windows upon repaint. ( 1131492 )
• Editor: Fixed an issue on Linux where the prefab overrides popup could overflow the available vertical screen space. ( 1119679 )
• Editor: Fixed an issue where the keyboardLayout was not returning correct value on linux. ( 1167021 )
• Editor: Fixed an issue with Linux using FitRectToScreen instead of FitWindowRectToScreen. (1263999)
• Editor: In the linux editor, guiviews no longer gain focus on scroll events (scroll still occurs), which has the effect of preventing the editor from stealing focus on scrolls over guiviews that were previously unfocused. (1270605)
• Linux: Disabled unstable DrawHeader_WhenInvokedManually_FromPrefabOverridesTreeView_InvokesCallback test for case 1179487.
• Linux: Fixed a highlighting issue in the hierarchy window while dragging assets. ( 1251614 )
• Linux: Fixed an Editor crashes if there was not a X11 window desktop environment. (1264934)
• Linux: Fixed an issue where the eyedropper tool in the color picker did not work on Linux. ( 1174814 )
• Linux: Fixed keyboard modifiers from being incorrectly munged while moving between editor windows. ( 1218006 , 1236681 )
• Linux: Fixed performance regression while running in Play mode inside the editor. ( 1271213 )
• Linux: Fixed sporadic errors in the console due to sending invalid drag events. ( 1251591 )
• Linux: Fixed UnitySetup -L option incorrectly showing defaults. ( 1160471 )
• Package Manager: Fixed an issue where the Diagnose button in the critical startup failure dialog would not launch a diagnostics window on Linux.
• WebGL: Added check for Linux to use the correct version of the Brotli compression library. (1241347)

In regards to Linux support for the Unity Editor, it's currently still in a Preview status. From what we learned back in November, they're fully committed to supporting it and getting it into a properly released form with Unity 2021.2 which would be towards the end of 2021.

Daggerfall Unity is the open source game engine built with Unity for running the 1996 classic The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall and it's coming along very nicely.

A new release just went up with Daggerfall Unity 0.10.28, which the developer mentions is now "feature complete" and so it will be moving from Alpha to Beta status soon. Going by their roadmap , that sure is a lot of completed items. It's not finished though, as they will move onto bug fixing, minor adjustments, modding, translations and so on.

What's new with this release? Large HUD support, along with the ability to have the HUD docked or undocked meaning it can either stretch or have a more fixed size - good for bigger resolutions where it might get too stretched.

There's more ways to configure the HUD now in the settings file too, and a big overhaul to the movement system to better match the original. They can't match the movement system exactly, instead going for a system that enables you to feel more powerful and faster when you're a higher level. The biggest change appears to be the jumping ability, with it now giving small jumps to low levels and bigger / longer jumps for higher levels.

Plenty more smaller and varied fixes also made it in, there was a lot of little bits of fine tuning.

Since it's such an old game, it's also freely available as Bethesda Softworks put it up as a free download back in 2009. This means it really can live forever with an up to date cross-platform game engine. Daggerfall Unity isn't quite the same though of course, as it does have some unique enhancements so it's more like "Classic Daggerfall Plus" as the developer calls it.

Find it on the official site and GitHub .

Unity Technologies who work on the Unity game engine have announced that they have acquired the networking library MLAPI, along with the creator joining Unity.

In the post Unity's Brandi House mentioned how they're trying to expand the Unity ecosystem with a "first-party multiplayer networking solution for GameObjects that is easy to set up and extend, scales to meet the needs of high-performance titles, and is seamlessly integrated into the Unity ecosystem" and after considering many they ultimately decided to pull in MLAPI along with its creator, Albin Corén .

The good news is that it remains open source and will be developed in the open as expected, and they will not be changing the license which is currently as MIT. So now we have another open source solution for networking, fully backed by a big company - nice.

Unity said they will be expanding it in these areas, in addition to working on documentation and samples:

• Remote procedure calls (RPCs): Currently MLAPI has two RPC systems, “convenience RPCs” and “performance RPCs.” The convenience RPCs incur a performance overhead that performance RPCs address, but they are not straightforward to use. We are investigating options to replace both with a system that is performant, is easy to use, and has clean usage patterns.
• Snapshot generation: MLAPI’s current design poses challenges for incorporating features like delta compression or client-side prediction. To overcome this roadblock, we’re working on separating snapshot generation from packet-sending systems.
• Network relevance model: Sending the right data to each player enables developers to minimize their bandwidth costs and maximize players gameplay experiences. We’ll change MLAPI so new methods can be used to increase performance, lower the likelihood of cheating, and lower operating costs by lowering the amount of data sent.

See the announcement here and find the code on GitHub .

Epic Games have rolled out the latest major upgrade to Unreal Engine 4 while work continues on Unreal Engine 5.

This latest release with Unreal Engine 4.26 surprisingly has quite a lot of Linux issues sorted, along with dropping OpenGL in favour of Vulkan on the desktop now. It's a change that's not really surprising, with Vulkan being the future along with it being needed for Stadia which is quickly expanding its list of available titles.

We’re pleased to announce that Unreal Engine 4.26 is ready for download! This release brings new tools that extend your ability to create believable real-time environments and characters for games, film & TV, visualization, and training & simulation; continued advancements to our virtual production toolset; higher-quality media output; improved design review tools; and much, much more.

Epic Games

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We've rounded up the other Linux specific fixes for you here:

• Automation - Bug Fix: Fixed Linux packaging failure resulting from Lumin key being copied locally into Gauntlet.
• Core - New: Removed unnecessary target dependencies for ShaderCompileWorker on Linux.
• UnrealBuildTool - Bug Fix: Fixed retry in Linux when linking batch files.
• Bug Fix: Resolved an issue with Linux with the SegFault in source filtering and notification manager when closing QAGame Clear Regional Lists at the pre-exit instead of during the global dtor.
• New: Building with a -gbd-index with Clang v9 or above now cuts symbol loading time by more than half (45 seconds to 17 seconds).
• New: Added the No Relative Mouse Mode command-line option to support remote VNC.
• New: Lld linker is now supported with Clang v9 and above.
• Bug Fix: Implemented GetWindowUnderCursor for Unix Platform.
• Bug Fix: Updated README.md for Linux build.
• Bug Fix: Fixed SegFault in source filtering and notification manager when closing QAGame Clear RegionalLists at pre-exit instead of during global dtor when many objects / modules have been freed. Call RemoveAll on FilterCollection->GetSourceFilters updated in PreExit instead of global dtor when many objects / modules have been shut down.
• Bug Fix: For Unix, fixed FUnixPlatformMemory::GetStats() that always returned 0 when memory was over 10.24gigs.
• Bug Fix: UE no longer hard codes c14 in LinuxToolchain as the default c standard.
• Bug Fix: Added SP_OPENGL_SM4_REMOVED to IsDeprecatedShaderPlatform(). This fixes assert when getting shader stats (called from FShaderCookerStats::Initialize).
• Bug Fix: Added error messagebox when vkGetPhysicalDeviceSurfaceSupportKHR fails (no present support).
• Bug Fix: For Linux Vulkan, fixed amdgpu mesa crash where drawinstance call is outside render pass enabling shader complexity view.
• Bug Fix: Update translucent rendering fix to use BeginRenderingTranslucency.
• Bug Fix: Honor UE4's Mono-build environment using Build.sh .
• Bug Fix: Fixed BC6H/BC7 texture formats not being available for Linux.
• Bug Fix: Fixed submenus closing causing main context to close.
• Bug Fix: Fixed focus issue where Windows with never activate policy were being set to active.
• New: Updated Linux SDL2.0.10 to SDL2-2.0.13-13784. Also we removed Epic opengl and emscriptem changes. Source snapshot for SDL 2.0 (Updated Wed Apr 29, 2020) https://www.libsdl.org/hg.php .
• New: Enabled ssse3 by default for Linux x86.
• New: Build ShaderConductor for Linux Script now uses v16 Clang 9.0.1, and works around incorrect llvm-tblgen location. This also adds declspec guid -fms-extensions for build error.
• New: Updated Linux SDL2.0.10 build files to SDL2-2.0.13-13784.
• New: Added support for multithreading in forked processes. Use -PostForkThreading when SupportsMultithreading() is false to allow multithreading in forked processes. Forked processes do not inherit threads from the master, so this keeps the master process in single thread mode but transforms the RunnableThreads into real threads on the forked version. Use FForkProcessHelper::CreateForkableThread to use this feature. ForkableThreads will behave correctly according to the environment they are called in (singlethread, multi thread, forkable). SyncEvents created in -PostForkThreading environments are real events on the master process (Win, Unix platform only).
• New: Added TaskGraph.ForkedProcessMaxWorkerThreads cvar to directly control the number of worker threads spawned on forked processes that enable multithreading.
• New: TaskGraph can now be multithreaded on a forked server with -PostForkThreading. To do this the TaskGraph needs to be shut down and recreated entirely by the forked process for the switch to occur. The functionality can be disabled via "TaskGraph.EnableForkedMultithreading 0" if needed.
• New: Linux AArch64 libs for FreeType2 v2.10.0, ICU 64.1, and HarfBuzz 2.4.0 now include BuildForLinuxAArch64.sh cross compilation scripts. This also adds LinuxAArch64 back to installed engine builds.
• New: Added bGdbIndexSection bool to LinuxToolChain.
• New: Changed default linux directory permissions to 775 from 755 to make working with them easier.
• New: You can now use msbuild in mono for Linux when using an installed copy and mono >= 5.0.
• New: Linux directory watcher optimizations and fixes for cases where we're running with "virtual" layers in the platform file (i.e. pak files).
• New: Added a skip linux UE4_DO_ROOT_PRIVILEGE_CHECK check for programs.
• New: Updated to new LLVM V17 Clang 10.0.1 toolchain.
• New: Moved to using llvm-objcopy for objcopy and strip.
• New: Installed Linux builds now assume a bundled toolchain.
• New: Added support on Mac and Linux for user-defined .unrealrc files that allow developers to specify environment variables for UBT and UAT scripts. .unrealrc files in the home and the workspace directory will be applied before the editor, UnrealBuildTool, UnrealAutomation tool, etc are run.
• New: Added support for VK_KHR_image_format_list, VK_KHR_shader_atomic_int64 and VK_KHR_driver_properties support for Linux; added gpu crash extension support on Linux for AMD and NVIDIA.

Full release notes available here .

Vulkan support is coming with Godot Engine 4.0 and with it plenty of modern 3D rendering features, however the 2D side of Godot is also seeing plenty of love. In a fresh blog post , lead developer Juan Linietsky went over some of the big stuff that will be coming and it all sounds quite impressive for this free and open source game engine.

Performance is going to be improved, partly as a result of Vulkan with Linietsky mentioned as it has a "lower draw-call cost than OpenGL". However, that's not the only reason as they've done some dedicated improvements to optimize the 2D side including changes to enable "thousands of draw() functions from a node's _draw() callback" which will speed up both the GLES3 and GLES2 back-ends.

You're also going to see:

• Improved 2D lighting - all lights drawn in a single pass.
• Improved 2D materials - adds a new CanvasTexture texture type that can be used with any node or resource  to provide normal, specular and shininess map.
• Directional 2D light and shadow support.
• A new CanvasGroup node option - merges together the draw calls of its children nodes to have effects apply to all.
• 2D Masking / Clipping - the ability to easily mask out children 2D nodes using the parent shape.
• Signed Distance Fields for 2D - from any point in the screen, you can request the distance to the closest solid. Linietsky said they can be used for circle tracing, with the example picture below for a long-drop shadow simulating 2D lightshafts:

Lots more is to come for the 2D side of Godot Engine, with developer Gilles Roudiere working on a new 2D tilemap system and editor to improve on the limitations of what they have currently. You can follow progress on their Twitter account for that

Aside from that, Godot also teamed up with the Ogre3D developer Matías N. Goldberg who was commissioned by Godot to work on Betsy , a GPU texture compressor that runs on GPUs. Why do they need Betsy? It's to help solve a "major complaint" with importing textures being "excruciatingly" slow. It will work as a standard command-line tool outside of Godot but it's made with integration with Godot in mind.

There's still no date set for Godot 4.0 with Vulkan, as it seems they're going with a "when it's done" approach. You can support the free and open source game engine on their Patreon . On the subject of funding, recently they did also announce ASIFA-Hollywood as a Silver Corporate Sponsor and also Zenva Academy as a Silver Corporate Sponsor - so each should be giving them a little over £400 a month.

Godot Engine continues seeing upgrades to the current 3.x series while the work is ongoing to bring Vulkan support the upcoming Godot 4.0. The second Beta of Godot Engine 3.2.4 is out now.

This has quickly become the most advanced and fully featured free and open source game engine around, and their work on it continues to be seriously impressive.

Here's what's coming to Godot 3.2.4:

• 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).
• Rewritten and greatly improved FBX importer (new in 3.2.4 beta 2).
• Improved Web editor prototype and AudioWorklet support for multithreaded HTML5 builds (new in 3.2.4 beta 2).
• New option to snapping 2D transforms to whole coordinates , helps prevent jitter on pixel art camera motions (new in 3.2.4 beta 2).
• Configurable amount of lights per object , now defaulting to 32 instead of 8 (new in 3.2.4 beta 2).

The lighters per object change is a great one, something I've seen a few developers gripe about and try to get around. Speaking on Twitter about the old limit, Godot's lead developer Juan Linietsky mentioned how "stupid" they felt about not having made it customizable originally and that while it's not optimal having it as an option is better, especially given the power of most computers now.

Read more over on the Godot 3.2.4 Beta 2 release announcement .

If you're looking for some Godot tutorials you should check out GDQuest , and they have a number of examples open source and up on GitHub like their recent Tactical RPG movement release pictured in testing below.

Are you working with Godot? Feel free to let us know what you're doing with it in the comments.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is a true classic for many reasons, and it continues living on with the OpenMW free and open source game engine. It's been a while since the 0.46 release of OpenMW back in June 2020 but plenty of work has been going on since.

In a new blog post they did a round-up of work done during September-October and it all sounds pretty awesome. Here's a quick run over what's been going on:

• A modern 3rd-person camera view is coming, along with optional first-person head bobbing and a smooth movement feature to make animations look better.
• OpenMW is going to get Async Physics, which moved the game's physics from the main thread to one or more other threads, making OpenMW even better at using multiple cores.
• Work has continued on supporting groundcover with better performance, which adds grass and all sorts.
• The LZ4 format is now supported by OpenMW, which is used in later Bethesda games like Skyrim Special Edition. Supporting that game is a long way off, right now it might just help modders.
• Levelled items in untouched containers are now randomly generated from their respective lists when the game is loaded, mimicking the original engine.
• Automatic builds for Windows, Linux, Mac, and even Android on GitLab for every merge request that is opened.
• Work is ongoing to support the COLLADA 3D model format to work in OpenMW's rendering engine (OpenSceneGraph)

Amazing to see how much effort goes into open source game engine reimplementations. It's a very complicated job but one appreciated by thousands of players, as it keeps games alive on modern platforms and enables them to run better.

See more and download OpenMW from the official site . As you do need the Morrowind data files to play it, you do need a copy. You can pick up a copy of Morrowind easily from GOG.com .

If you didn't see it, here's the trailer for the last release of OpenMW:

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To play the classic city-builder Caesar III on modern platforms there is the FOSS game engine Julius, however there's also a more advanced version called Augustus that had a major new release.

Much like Julius, you need the game data files for Caesar III with this being a free and open source game engine only. It differs from Julius in quite a lot of ways too, and it's actually a fork of it so another developer took the Julius and built upon it to make something different. The idea with Augustus is to enhance Julius for Caesar III with customized gameplay, UI enhancements and much more (rather than sticking to being accurate to the original). Some of the additions include roadblocks, zoom controls, market special orders, a global labour pool, increased game limits and more.

Augustus 2.0.0 and 2.0.1 went up this week, and along with lots of bug fixes there's quite a lot of new features and overall enhancements to the game. Some highlights of this major update include:

• Allow indefinite play of campaign mission: after extending your mandate for a few years, the player will be asked again to accept the promotion or extend the regency.
• Soldiers on Forts now require food. Food is supplied through a new building, Supply post. A supply post sends a walker to collect food from granaries. Lack of food causes morale penalties and slows down recruitment. Multiple types of food provide a morale bonus. Only one Supply post can be built on a map.
• Added support for building rotation, add rotate building options. Works for gatehouses, Warehouses, Forts and hippodrome, as well as new Paths.
• Added support for loading outside images, to be used for new content.
• Added console, along with some cheats.
• Added new permissions to Roadblocks: labor seekers, tax collectors.
• Added a number of new aesthetics buildings (gardens, statues, etc.) for more visual variety, desirability effect is the same as statues of respective sizes.
• Added monuments: buildings that take resources and special buildings to complete and grant bonuses to your town when complete.
• Monuments added: Five Grand Temples; one to each of the gods, a Pantheon dedicated to all the gods and a Lighthouse.
• Added new buildings used in monument construction: the Work camp and Engineer’s Guild.
• Added building upgrades for Grand Temples and the Pantheon. Select and pay for one of two upgrades that empower priests in your city.

There's lots more to it big and small but those are some bits that really jumped out at me. Augustus really is advancing the original Caesar III and then some.

You do need the original game assets, which you can grab easily with a DRM-free copy of Caesar III on GOG.com or Steam . Gran a copy of Augustus itself on GitHub .