Why is Godot still developing the 3.x series when it should be focusing solely on 4.x? I believe Godot should prioritize enhancing and optimizing its 3D capabilities.
Every engine has a LTS (long term support) for its previous versions. Godot 4 may be out, but there are still projects being developed on Godot 3. As some point, Godot 3 will not receive update anymore, but it’s perfectly normal that it still has a support.
For instance, the latest version of Unity 2019 (2019.4.41f2) has been released two weeks ago, to fix a security issue with the previous versions.
I’d suggest you have a look at GitHub - godotengine/godot-proposals: Godot Improvement Proposals (GIPs)
Everybody is welcome to discuss about the future of the engine, whether it’s optimization, bug fixing, new features, whatever.
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Because there are people who still use it.
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You can check the release policy here:
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So while 3.x does receive new features and general improvements the focus is generally on maintaining and improving the stability and reliability of 3.x, not new features, this is both because it’s in LTS state meaning it’s mainly maintained for existing projects or specific needs (like specific targets with certain limitations or considerations), but also it has been around for a while now (3.0 was released in 2018, so over 7 years ago now) so it has gotten most of the features it could have already, so it doesn’t need as much new stuff in that way
But aside from this, the maintaining of 3.x does not take away resources from the development of 4.x, the work on 3.x is mainly done by a small dedicated group of people and 3.x has its own team managing merging and organizing the updates, and most of the time when someone contributes to both they make 3.x and 4.x versions of improvements. So maintaining 3.x doesn’t come at the cost of improving 4.x, most of the time the work on 3.x and 4.x is entirely separate
I hope that answers the question of why this seems contradictory, and why focusing on features for 4.x isn’t incompatible with also keeping 3.x a good, viable, and proven alternative
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Games take a long time to make. It’s not unusual for a project to take multiple years, it’s the norm. There are games that began development before Godot 4.0 was released, and are still in active development today. Upgrading is not always an option due to a multitude of factors from time to feature parity. I believe there are still some features that 3.x has that are missing/incomplete in 4.x
All that to say, it’s not unusual for game engines to provide long term updates/support, and it’s not unusual for even new projects to choose an older engine version, Godot or otherwise.
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