The current stable Godot 3 version, 3.5, has just received a new maintenance update [3.5.2], addressing several reported issues. At the same time we’ve been working on the next feature update to the 3.x branch — Godot 3.6.

The development is slower paced, as most contributors focus on the 4.x branch, which is where the future of Godot lies. But little by little, improvements and bugfixes are being backported and we’ve accumulated enough of those now to propose a 3.6 beta 1, to start the testing phase leading to the stable release.

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.6 beta 1

  • xyz replied to this.

    DaveTheCoder My current little car project is in 3.5. I might try to run it in 3.6 to see how it fares.

      I'm still building my project in 3 so I'm glad to still see the support.

      I agree this is great! Godot 3.x is stable and packed full of all the features I need for a 2d game. Staying up to date with the 4.x branch working on a 3D game has been a bit of a headache.

      cybereality 4.0 is not stable.

      That's true, but it's called stable.

      Alice was walking beside the White Knight in Looking Glass Land.

      'You are sad.' the Knight said in an anxious tone: 'let me sing you a song to comfort you.'

      'Is it very long?' Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.

      'It's long.' said the Knight, 'but it's very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it -
      either it brings tears to their eyes, or else -'

      'Or else what?' said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.

      'Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes.''

      'Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?' Alice said, trying to feel interested.

      'No, you don't understand,' the Knight said, looking a little vexed. 'That's what the name
      is called. The name really is 'The Aged, Aged Man.''

      'Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called'?' Alice corrected herself.

      'No you oughtn't: that's another thing. The song is called 'Ways and Means' but that's only
      what it's called, you know!'

      'Well, what is the song then?' said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.

      'I was coming to that,' the Knight said. 'The song really is 'A-sitting On a Gate': and the
      tune's my own invention.'

      Alice And The White Knight
      Lewis Carroll

          DaveTheCoder That's true, but it's called stable.

          Stable in this case is supposed to refer more to the API's, they shouldn't be significantly changing anymore. It doesn't mean there won't be bugs tho, dealing with those is what the patch(the x.x.(n)) releases are for. New features would be the x.(n).x and big/new API breaks would have to wait for next major release, that being godot 5.

          In practice of course bugfixes can also be included in the new feature releases alongside the new features, so not only 4.0.3 but 4.1.0 will likely see them too.

            cybereality oh good. I'm rather new to this so I didn't want to risk losing progress by porting to 4.0. Will keep on chugging ahead then!

              a month later
              6 days later

              We had a first 3.6 beta 1 build a month ago, and it’s time for the second one. We’ve only merged around 50 changes since beta 1, but some of those are pretty substantial and have long been in development, so there’s a lot to test!

              Dev snapshot: Godot 3.6 beta 2

              3 months later

              The core of the Godot development focus is on the upcoming Godot 4.2, currently with a 3rd dev snapshot. But we haven’t forgotten about the 3.6 release, which has a slow but steady influx of important bug fixes, platform improvements, and rendering features. Godot 3 is still very important for a significant part of the ecosystem - notably people with released games, games close to being released, or who need to target OpenGL 2 / WebGL 1 to maximize device compatibility.

              Dev snapshot: Godot 3.6 beta 3

              I am just here to say I am thrilled about improvements to Godot 3! I think it's too early to develop a full game in Godot 4. Keeping godot 3.x alive and well is keeping the whole ship afloat. Huzzah and thankyou to 3.6 devs!

              5 months later

              The last 3.6 beta snapshot was back in August, so this new one is somewhat overdue… but better late than never, and it includes a lot of important bug fixes to platform compatibility, rendering, and thirdparty libraries. This beta 4 should be a good baseline to see where we stand in the 3.6 development, and plan what’s left before the complete feature freeze and release candidate stage.

              Dev snapshot: Godot 3.6 beta 4

              5 months later

              As a reminder, this is a feature update to the Godot 3.x branch, which means it’s only relevant for users currently using Godot 3.5 or 3.6-beta. Projects made with Godot 4.x cannot be downgraded to Godot 3. While most of the engine development focus is on Godot 4.3, some dedicated contributors still allocate some time to finalizing 3.6 for the many users who still have games in production using Godot 3.

              Release candidate: Godot 3.6 RC 1

              9 days later