April 01, 2019

Flash Player and 1D rendering for Godot

UPDATE: This was an April Fool's joke.



These days I am busy implementing two new features that will take the Godot game engine to a new level.

1. Dedicated 1D engine

In order to keep going in the effort to equip Godot with the feature set expected by game developers, a new 1D engine will be added.

Benefits:
  • Since everything can be done in 1D, eventually the 2D & 3D engines will be removed. (There will be a transition stage during which the three will coexist to set an easy path for migrating current projects.)
  • Also, due to the lowered processing requirements, Godot will be greener, which is very important nowadays.
The same way 2D node types have CanvasItem as their supertype, those for 1D will be descendants of WireItem.



Some of the new 1D nodes in the node creation dialog.

2. FlashMovie node

For those still needing a state-of-the-art 2D & 3D renderer, the new FlashMovie node type will be added, allowing to embed any Adobe Flash application in a project.

To spend development time in what really matters, we won't create our own implementation, but embed the player through the ActiveX cross-platform, open standard.

Of course, when the 2D & 3D engines are finally removed, this will get an update by which only 1D Flash movies will be allowed.



A game created in Godot by embedding a game created in Flash. Easy and quick.


Due to the impact of the changes they will probably be held back until Godot 2020 (expected release in 2030).