I’m interested in Godot as an engine, but with the endless stream of updates and the current transition period between Godot 3 and Godot 4, I was wondering on which version I should start? Can projects be opened seamlessly between versions, or is backwards compatibility not a thing?
I’m interested in targeting Windows XP, PSP and PS Vita. For these platforms, I have found there are custom builds of Godot:
WinXP: Custom build of Godot 2.15, httpx://github.com/DNS/Godot-2.1.5-Windows-XP
PSP: Custom build of Godot 2.16 (?): httpx://github.com/technicaljicama/godot-psp/
PS Vita: Custom build of Godot 3.5rc5: httpx://github.com/SonicMastr/godot-vita/
Can anyone recommend a way to keep cross-compatibility?
I’m interested in these exotic legacy platforms because:
My favourite console is the PSP
I play most of my games on PSP or PS Vita
The PSP emulator, PPSSPP, is very well-built and cross-platform
I want to ensure maximum Windows version compatibility, and miss the days when XP was the minimum targeted version. I will mainly be playing on Win7. Win8.1/10/11+ adds no features I’m interested in depending on.
Godot has never supported Windows XP officially, even in its pre-1.0 open source state. (It’s possible that old Godot versions run on Windows XP, but correct behavior isn’t guaranteed.)
The minimum supported version was historically Windows Vista, and became Windows 7 in Godot 3.0.
Can projects be opened seamlessly between versions, or is backwards compatibility not a thing?
Can projects be opened seamlessly between versions, or is backwards compatibility not a thing?
No. You can open Godot 3’s project in Godot 4 and it will convert some things automatically but a LOT of the things will need to be changed manually. And there is no conversion from Godot 4 to Godot 3 so you cannot open Godot 4’s projects in Godot 3.
Anything built targeting XP will run on any PC with XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, Win10 (older releases), Win10 (newer releases) and Win11. And also more likely to run on Linux, as the older dependencies will have been dealt with.
Whereas if I target Win10, it isn’t even guaranteed run on my PC (older release of Win10).
Thank you for answering my question, friends I will be careful to pick and stick with a particular Godot version for my project, probably 2.15 and then port forward for other targets.
You understand that targeting ancient, fully deprecated operating systems can limit the growth of any project right?
At some point, people have to move on. Legacy OS simply cannot be supported forever if one wants their project to leverage features needing newer tech.
Hello, I may be late on the train, but since my current project/targets require me to be able to build for windows xp (but not for compatibility like you, but having a genuine Windows XP machine), I have taken it upon myself to port Godot 3.1 to windows XP export templates (It was inspired from the 2.1.5 export templates repo), It took me around 3 days, but it works. The only issue - Audio drivers are too new for windows XP so you’d have to implement them yourself, but still, considering that you have GDNative now, unlike with GD2, it shouldn’t be too hard to integrate some library like I’m about to (I plan on Using SDL2 with Joystick and Audio sublibraries, if you’re interested, do let me know to share that code with you too). Hopefully that somehow helps you out (albeit, again, being so late on the topic)
Hello, yes, so far I have it on Github, but after extensive testing, it seems that any game crashes on windows xp as long as certain lines of code get ran. I’m still trying to find out what the issue seems to be. When exported with 2.15 (SAME project script), it doesn’t cause even a slight lag, whilst if I run it with my custom export, it causes for PC crash on physical machines, and a lag spike on VMs. So far I haven’t been able to figure out a solution for that… I have gotten one idea for something that might be able to solve it. But I’ll be able to test out my assumptions next weekend.
Weirdly enought it hadn’t let me post this until this evening, it somehow left it in draft.
Update, as of latest progress, I’m able to run without any crashes - Godot 3.1 on windows xp. Not just an exported game, THE launcher. of course it takes some bunch of ported dlls, edited source code and custom compilations. Weird part is - 2.1.5 that takes a lot less porting only supports the exported games to run, but the Engine crashes under xp. 3.1 runs, but I’m getting error that I can’t read certain files, so probably as long as I can fix the file system so it can read/write correctly, probably would make Godot 3.1 overall runnable, INCLUDING even developing in Godot.
Also would have to reimplement audio drivers.
Once I’m done I’ll provide you with the ready solutions.
Just tested a project that when previously exported would crash → well, not anymore, soooo, those should be good news, so I suppose this is is only when it comes to the engine. Otherwise we’d probably be able to write games/software for XP with no issue.
In that case, later today I’ll update my Github repository for Godot 3.1 XP Engine and templates.
Okay, update, so
So far a few things:
I was able to fix an issue where neither 2.1.5 nor 3.1 Engines had the option to save/update projects. (It seems the way some WINAPI functions were getting called differ between WinVista+ and XP, which was throwing error when trying to read/write) Now that’s no issue.
2.1.5 Crashes in windows xp vm (and just closes itself so I haven’t successfully ran it in vm) but works perfectly fine on a physical machine (although the engine gives error about horizontal shadows but still works with no issues)
3.1 Crashes (critically) on windows XP (Engine => only when trying to open a project, otherwise the main directory - no issue). But this happens ONLY on physical machine, in vm it runs perfectly. So technically I’m close to solving the problem.
Yes, sure, I’ll try my best in 1 week max to add my changes to repository so that more people could work on it, just right now am working on too many projects of higher priority. If I don’t reply in 1 week, text me again to check in if you want.
Why promise and not deliver, I do not understand this. I took it upon myself to port Godot 3.6 to Windows XP, a fairly simple task, all things considered. @tinkergoob@QuasiStarr here is the repository: GitHub - pixaline/godot-ports at xp Yes the audio driver is not working correctly, but it compiles with MinGW, and most importantly, runs. Oh and since we’re talking about old architectures, the repo also contains an OS X Leopard (Macos from year 2007!) port of Godot 3.6 also done by me. Let us work and improve this together. ^-^
I will be careful to pick and stick with a particular Godot version for my project, probably 2.15 and then port forward for other targets.