5.6.249

Introducing the 3D, real-time editor in GDevelop 5.6

GDevelop 5.6 is now available with a full 3D and real-time editor. The new editor provides you the tools to navigate, build and edit any kind of 3D scenes. This is the first version of the 3D editor, so expect more updates, bugfixes and improvements in the coming weeks.

The 3D editor can be activated using the 3D mode in the top toolbar. Once launched, all the features for 3D edition are available:

• You can move using the "free camera" mode, allowing you to fly in the scene, moving the camera with the keyboard WASD or arrow keys, or the mouse wheel.
• Press F to focus the selected object and automatically switch to the "orbital camera" allowing to move around it.
• You can select, move, rotate and resize object instances using the "gizmo" tool shown on the selection.
• Grab an object using the handle at the center of the gizmo and drag objects naturally — they'll automatically project onto the ground or other surfaces beneath them

📱 On touchscreens, use 1 finger to select/move instances, 2 fingers to move or zoom and 3 fingers to rotate the view.

More than just a 3D editor, the new editor is real-time preview of the game:

• See layer effects and object effects applied in real time,
• Dynamic lighting: Watch as lights illuminate your scene with realistic shadows,
• Adjust colors, scales, rotations, and more in the sidebar and see changes instantly.

You can edit scene, external layouts and custom objects:

• Custom objects ("prefabs") are "composite objects", built with one or more other objects and optionally some logic. Think of them as objects containing their own scene inside. They can now be edited in 3D exactly like a traditional scene.
• When navigating outside of a custom object, they are now rendered in the scenes using it (and in other custom objects that also embed it) exactly like in the game.
• Objects like 3D particles have specific rendering in the 3D editor, and custom objects will be able to change their rendering using events. For example, the 3D Height Map objects can now display their actual geometry in the editor.

Read the full announcement on the GDevelop blog and learn about the technical architecture in this article.

👉 More to come

The 3D editor is a solid foundation for the future. Like everything with the GDevelop game engine, the 3D editor is open-source. It opens the door to even more powerful features we're planning:

• Full manipulation of 2D objects in the scene from the 3D editor. For now, 2D objects can't be edited in the 3D editor.
• Support for point and spot light objects, with real-time preview of them in the editor,
• Collision meshes,
• Custom shaders that can be authored and previewed in real-time in the editor,
• Additional visualization options for custom extensions,
• More performance improvements and, obviously, bug fixes.

🕹 Example

• A new free example: 3D Wipeout Platformer

🎨 Assets

• Add a new free pack: Wipeout 3D
• Add a new premium pack: Total Wipeout Obstacle 3D

🐛 Bug fixes

• Fix broken 'Pick nearest' action

5.5.248

🐛 Bug fixes

• Fix a bug where deleting a light object would make all instances disappear
• Fix instances from the scene not created when launching a preview of one of its external layout

⚙️ Extensions

• Allow to choose sounds in some custom objects (Score counter and Dialog box)
• [Reviewed] [Gamepad] Fix a conflict with the save-state feature

5.5.247

💝 Improvements

• Add extra descriptions for some 3D physics properties.

🐛 Bug fixes

• Fix broken preview due to running a second preview while the first is loading.
• Fix extension not unloading correctly when it's removed while its tab is active.

5.5.246

💝 Improvements

• Various AI improvements:
  • Suggestions are now shown after each relevant step in the AI agent flow,
  • The AI chat design was improved so that it's easier to follow what the AI agent does to the project,
  • AI is now using flexible AI credits to track the consumption:
    • AI credits are given every week to GDevelop accounts with a membership. They allow to make requests to the AI and these AI credits are consumed according to the complexity of the AI answer and the work it's doing.
    • This is more flexible than the previous system of AI requests, which would be consumed even if the answer of the AI was very short. The AI credits adapt better to conversations and back-and-forth between the user and the AI.
    • Accounts without a premium membership still get 40 credits for free every month to try the AI.
• The default orientation of newly created 3D model objects was changed to face axis X+. This is better adapted to GLTF conventions and GDevelop axes orientation for most 3D games.
• Extension improvements:
  • When an extension is installed, any extension that it depends on is now automatically installed too.
  • And when an extension is removed, a warning about any dependent extensions is shown.
  • Actions/conditions can now use parameters and properties of type "resource".
• Various UI improvements:
  • Show object parameters in red if any behavior parameter is wrongly filled,
  • Display a placeholder when the Spine resource is invalid
  • Automatically fill behavior parameters when an object is set
• Improve panels positioning when opened:
  • Left and right panels now have an equal size by default,
  • Bottom panel is in-between the left and right panels
  • If multiple panels on the right, or bottom, they take half of the size.
  • When closed and re-opened, panels keep their position on the screen.

🐛 Bug fixes

• Avoid a crash at preview when behaviors are missing
• Fix background of External Events tabs when an associated scene is not chosen yet
• Fix the previewed scene not following the current tab
• Fix a crash on macOS when opening a project having a node_modules folder
• Fix hot-reloading of layer 3D near/far plane, FOV and 2D drawing distance
• Fix local variables missing in events read by the AI
• Fix resources used in behavior configurations were not exported
• Fix Bitmap texts not being displayed after a first unload
• Fix exports wrongly failing after an unknown resource URL was used

⚙️ Extensions

• [Experimental] [Height map] Fix physics not enabling when an image is used
• [Reviewed] [Leaderboard dialog] Remove broken resources from the default variant

🎨 Assets

• Add a new free pack: Wipeout 3D
• Add a new premium pack: Total Wipeout Obstacle 3D

🕹 Examples

• Updated Starter Games with more descriptive object names
• [3D Lane Runner] Updated to use the 3D physics instead of the 2D platformer
• 4 new free 3D starters:
  • 3D First Person Survival Crafting
  • 3D First Person Farming
  • Top-down Survival Crafting
  • Top-down Farming
• Fix broken resources in the leaderboard dialog of several examples

🕹 Premium Game Templates

• Updated Match 3 Template
  • Supports PC and mobile (touch)
  • Major performance boost
  • Smarter, lighter game systems
  • Fixed candy overlap bug
  • Random goal candy color each level
  • Now runs smoothly on low-end devices
• Updated Chess Template: added draw handling, new conditions such as in checkmate, in stalemate, and bugs fixes

5.5.245

💝 Improvements

• All the starters are now listed in their own section in the Create Project Dialog, to kick-start your game easily. Dozens of new starter games are available for all game genres.

• The Create page and the "Create new game" dialog are now displaying the AI prompt input: this allows to get started and prototype games quickly, by letting the AI chose a starter game for you and adapt it to your request.
  • This input can be dismissed if not needed.
• The AI Chat has been improved: it can now inspect your opened project events, objects, behaviors, extensions... It also has a better access to GDevelop documentation, improving its suggestions.
• Multiple UX improvements for the AI:
  • The tooltips now explain if an extension must be installed or not,
  • The mode and prompt are now saved when re-opening the panel,
  • The panel is now always on the right when a project is open, or in the center otherwise.
• UI improvement for courses:
  • Add a button to copy code blocks to clipboard in the Javascript Course.
• Add hints on the web-app that local save is available in the desktop app

🐛 Bug fixes

• Multiple AI fixes:
  • correctly clear & load requests and history when logging in/out.
  • correctly link the request to the game after a project is created.
  • Automatically pause a request opened either from the history or by opening the panel on an unfinished request, to avoid triggering unwanted executions.
  • Fix being able to send an AI request with a non-available configuration
• Try to fix "Error 153" shown on some platforms on courses videos
• Display a placeholder for instances with unknown object in the editor.

⚙️ Extensions

• [Reviewed] [3D 9-patch] Allow to use variants
• [Reviewed] [PlaygamaBridge] update to v1.26.1
  • Multiple fixes: CDN fallback, Game ready event, Facebook ad preload fix
• [Reviewed] [3rd person camera] Add a mode for spaceships

🕹 Examples

• [3D platformer] Use variants for platforms

🕹 Premium Game Templates

• New premium game template: 3D FPS Parkour (by Crowbar_Coder)
• New premium game template: Bubble Gacha Tea (by Abcia2)
• New premium game template: Pixel Art Cookie Clicker by SnowyRawrGamer

5.5.244

💝 Improvements

• Add new course "Introduction to Javascript in GDevelop"
  • It will be made available in the next few days, as a stand-alone course and also available in the Indie Kickstarter Studio Bundle.
  • This is for users looking to learn JavaScript basics, implement complex patterns in their games, and learn how to manipulate GDevelop objects through JavaScript.
• AI Agent improvements:
  • Improve Layers and Camera documentation, so the agent can more reliably modify layer properties,
  • Improve the AI to allow the agent to modify (or add or remove) object groups in scenes,
  • allow using "up" and "down" arrows to navigate through chat history in the AI agent & chat.
• Improve previews on the web-app:
  • Support for hot-reloading (like on the desktop app),
  • Huge speed-up (no more file uploads, everything is done locally on the device storage),
  • Fix for Safari/Firefox not opening the preview window.

🐛 Bug fixes

• Fix Tilemaps layers visibility not being taken into account in the game
• Fix default value of "String with options" wrongly reset in the extension editor
• Fix .fnt loading for files generated by some tools
  • A new "header" has been added in every .fnt generated with the common BitmapFont generator at http://snowb.org/. They will now be properly loaded.
• Fix leaderboard entry rate limiting: this enforces a limit of 12 successful saves per minute globally and 6 per minute per leaderboard.
  This is more than enough for the very large majority of games. This will avoid issues when sending too many scores because of a mistake or wrong game design.

⚙️ Extensions

• [Reviewed] [Array tool] Fix "has number" and "has string" conditions for object variables
• [Community] [3D collision] Fix the distance expressions
• [Reviewed] [Playgama] Update to version 1.26.0

🕹 Examples

• Several new 2D and 3D starter examples: shoot'em up, 3D FPS, 3D racing, Horror game, Arcade Flight Simulator, 3D Tank starter... Check them out in the New Project dialog!

🕹 Premium Game Templates

• Add a new premium game template: Restaurant rush (by @VegeTato)
  • A pixel art 2D game where you rush around a diner to take orders and serve customers as quickly as possible.

🛠 Internal changes (for developers)

• Fix case in generate types script
• Update Posthog to latest version

5.5.243

💾 Save States: introducing ready-to-use, flexible "Save & Load" actions

The new "Save State" actions allow to save & load an entire game - or some part of it - using only a few actions.

By default, the save and load actions will save the full state of your game at any time — including all objects, variables, sounds, effects, and more. Saves can either be handled by GDevelop (which will save it on the device internal storage using the name you specify) or stored in a variable, giving you full control on where you store the content of this variable.

save-load-3d-demo.mp4

The Save State page of the documentation describes all the features of this new feature, including:

• Adding the "Save configuration" behavior to your objects to exclude some objects from the saves (typically, interface or visual controls should all be excluded to avoid them being moved when reloading a save)
• Excluding variables from being saved/loaded.
• Saving/loading from a variable.
• Using "profiles" to tag objects (or variables, or game/scene data) and only save/restore these.

👉 This new example shows how to use the actions.

save-load-demo.mov

The "Save & Load" actions are useful to do quick saves, long-term saves (for example, when a level is completed) or easily implement checkpoints (for example, save enemies/coins and restore them if the player dies and restart from the last checkpoint).

⚠️ While it will work in most cases, there are still a few limitations, notably saving of custom objects, and some objects/behaviors could have edges cases when restored from a save. The extension is tagged as Experimental while we gather feedback and improve it.

💝 Improvements

• Add "Pick Nearest" and "Rotate toward object" actions.
• UI improvements:
  • Automatically scroll down the AI Panel when the AI is working
  • Automatically close the object editor dialog when editing a variant.
  • Save the selected layer in each scene so it is persisted across sessions (thanks @Digvijay-x1!)
  • Save grid settings in variant editors
• Display both values and labels in selector properties
• Add a grace distance to Destroy Outside behavior to avoid deleting objects if they are never seen but near the camera
• Improved GDevelop documentation:
  • Core features are now grouped by category, like extensions.
  • Add collapsible blocks describing parameters of actions/conditions in the documentation.

🐛 Bug fixes

• Fix missing ability to select text when a fatal error is displayed on screen
• Fix instance sometimes not visible after being added by the AI
• Fix the link to the asynchronous function help page
• Fix aspect ratio being lost when hot-reloading 3D models

⚙️ Extensions

• [Reviewed] [Toggle switch] Add a condition to check if the switch is pressed or held outside
• [Experimental] [Screen orientation checker] Remove the background color property: the color can be set on the shape painter directly from the variant editor
• [Reviewed] [Multitouch joystick] Add a condition to check if a button was just pressed
• [Reviewed] [Star Rating Bar] Handle hot-reload
• [Experimental] [Height map] Handle hot-reload
• [Reviewed] [3D particles] Fix the rotation around X axis to be the other way
• [Reviewed] [Gamepads] Add a condition to check if a button was just pressed
  • Also fix the "Gamepads count" and "Last pressed button" expression

🎨 Assets

• Fix orientation of multiple public 2D assets to face right by default
• Add pixel-art buttons, based on buttons by Kenney.nl

🕹 Examples

• Add Save and Load example using the new Save State feature
• A lot of new starter projects have been added
• [3D wall sliding] A 3D first person platformer with wall sliding (thanks @Boy1developer!)

🕹 Premium Game Templates

• Add a new 3D template: 3D chess game in local with AI, or 1v1 in multiplayer by @Jurfix
• Add a new game template: Scratch Lottery Ticket (Marketing game)
  • Use this engaging game template for brand promotion, and customer engagement across interactive kiosks, mobile campaigns, and more.

🛠 Internal changes (for developers)

• Add internal flag allowing to disable entirely hitboxes of Spine objects to avoid unnecessary recomputations (thanks @danvervlad!)

5.5.242

💝 Improvements

• Add basic support for skyboxes in 3D games: a new 3D effect called "Skybox" is available on layers. Once added, you can set up the 6 images to be displayed by the skybox.

  The skybox is not yet visible in the editor itself. The upcoming 3D editor will allow you to see the skybox in real time when editing the game.

🐛 Bug fixes

• Update storage action to make the usage of manual load/unload clearer
• Fix templates not accessible when bought via an unlisted bundle
• Fix groups wrongly underlined in red while having the right behaviors in the Events Sheet

⚙️ Extensions

• [Community] [Advanced 3D Features] Fix look-at bugs and minor issues
  • Fixed bugs in "👀 Look at position" and "👀 Look at 3D object" actions
  • Corrected parameter name in "↔️ Check the distance between two objects in 3D"
  • Improved wording in "😀 Change morph target value" description
  • Thanks @PANDAKO-GitHub
• [Reviewed] [Leaderboard dialog] Display a score and allow to submit it to a leaderboard

5.5.241

💝 Improvements

• All community extensions can now be browsed on this new Community List page. This is a big list of all extensions made by members of the GDevelop community. It's accessible from the GDevelop website top menu and will be added progressively to other repositories.

  • Feel free to suggest links to your own extensions. The GDevelop Extensions Team won't make a review of your extension, but will just ensure it's safe and will add it to the list.

    👉 You can open an issue or, better, a Pull Request to add your extension with a description and a link to it.

    There is no quality or code criteria to add an extension to the Community List (as long as the extension is safe to use and does not contain malware or illegal content). You're responsible for the quality and maintenance of your extension.

  • Community extensions inside GDevelop have been renamed to "Experimental" extensions. The new name to indicates that they are peer reviewed so that they can progressively be improved, to be possibly moved to the reviewed extensions at some point.

We hope this new, easily accessible list will help both contributors share their extensions easily and encourage trying new things. Once your extension reaches a point of maturity, feel free to also suggest it to be added as an experimental extension to the GDevelop Extensions repository.

🐛 Bug fixes

• Underline groups having missing behaviors are now properly shown in the Events Sheet
• Fix button labels no longer updating in the editor
• Fix child object creation when called from another function
• Fix a crash at runtime when behaviors are missing in functions

🕹 Examples

• [Gamepad tester] New example allowing to check if gamepad(s) work correctly.

🕹 Premium Game Templates

• Fixed a bug in Impostor Alert with the THNK extension

5.5.240

💝 Improvements

• New condition to check if a key was just pressed. It's recommended to use this one instead of the existing one and a "Trigger Once".
• Multiple AI improvements: improved instances manipulation, better variables support, allow AI to swap an object by another one from the asset store, make AI able to change multiple properties at the same time and to change layers/effects/scene and some game properties.
• Extensions improvements:
  • Allow extensions to define labels for properties with string selectors
  • Add a link to an help page for asynchronous functions
• Make comment events editable exactly as they look
• Additional bundles are now available in the Learn & Shop sections:
  • A premium bundle, including multiple courses, asset packs, templates and a gold subscription
  • A curated platformer-specific bundle, including everything needed to learn & create a platformer game
  • Update Bundle Page with more details about content and limited offer
• Improve documentation with reference of all available effects.
• Add support for setting a full name for a student account.

🐛 Bug fixes

• Fix the list of assets suggested for sliders and toggle switches
• Fix a 1-frame delay when applying anchors to child-objects
• Fix missing extension dependencies in exported assets
• Fix landscape/portrait orientation not working on iOS
• Fix the chosen preset for AI not always valid when switching between chat and agent
• Fix bundles showing up in new object search
• Fix grammar in text font size change warning (thanks @AnseloOriginal!)
• Fix AI not properly removing behaviors associated to a behavior just removed
• Forbid to add Physics behaviors on objects inside custom objects

⚙️ Extensions

• [Reviewed] [Button] Allow to use a bitmap text for labels (perfect for buttons for pixel-art games or needing super crisp texts)
• [Community] [Scrollbar] A customizable scrollbar to help making a scroll view. Thanks to @Jurfix and @Alios5.
• Update Playgama Bridge to v1.25.0:
  • Added Huawei platform (beta), JioGames platform (beta), payments for CrazyGames
  • Added player.extra with additional information provided by platforms. For example: player.extra.jwt on Playgama, player.extra.payingStatus and player.extra.signature on Yandex
  • Added additional information for purchases provided by platforms. For example purchase.jwt on Playgama
  • Added new leaderboards type native_popup
  • Added leaderboards and join community (group and page) for Facebook
  • Added game_ready analytics event
  • Updated server for receiving server time to Playgama
  • Fixed payments for Discord, BitQuest, Facebook and storage for BitQuest

🎨 Assets

• New prefab ("custom object"): Multiplayer custom lobbies (thanks to @Jurfix!)
  A fully customizable lobbies screen where you can use your own art style that fits your game.

🕹 Examples

• Reworked 'Parse JSON from API' example

🕹 Premium Game Templates

• The premium FPS template has been fully reworked to use the 3D Physics engine.
• A New premium template for one of the most iconic 2D platformer, a Celeste-like game template: check the Celestia template (by @VegeTato)

Internal changes (for developers)

• Allow to easily work on the game engine using the web-app development version