Hi,
The Godot Engine development team rapidly releases updated versions of Godot Engine.
Will upcoming version 5.0 be 100% backwards compatible with version 4.x.x ?
Also, any chance for adding back the visual scripting to version 5.0 ?
Nice work people, keep it up!
SS
I think that it will NOT be backwards-compatilble, because I believe that this will allow massive changes, some of which are needed.
Nothing is ever 100% backwards compatible and quite rightly so. Even Doom and Quake have to be re-compiled for the latest cloud-connected toothbrush. What you don’t want when 5.x is released is having a 3.x game that’s not released yet… Just saying that you should include those upgrades into your roadmap.
In regards to visual scripting, I know it’s a great thing when you are tipping your toes into programming, but as the scope grows so will your flow chart and maybe it’s time you switch to writing text. We old-timers are always happy to provide some knowledge on how to write beautiful code that will make your upgrade to 6.x or even 7.x much easier.
The point of 5.x, like 4.x, would be to make major changes we cannot do in 4.x because of compatibility, so compatibility will be broken in pretty major ways
Note that 5.x is many years away still
So yes, 5.0 will not be backwards compatible when it comes - but your assumption that it’s coming anytime soon is erroneous.
Unlikely. If you desire this, you can add a feature request in Godot Improvement Proposals. However the team has stated it has no interest in supporting this functionality. So your best bet if you want to do that is the Block Coding Plugin.
Well ok…
Official support for visual scripting system in next major version of Godot Engine would be good.
There are many people who would shy away from Godot because of the coding requirements.
SS
What do you base your assumption on?
There was VS support in previous Godot versions and it was not used to an extent that made it worth to keep it maintained. So that contradicts your assumptions.
GDScript is easy enough to grasp that it should be on a similar difficulty level as VS. If you can learn VS, then you can learn GDScript. And GDScript gives you much more freedom. I wouldn’t advise anyone to learn VS.
In UE it’s completely different story, because the skill gap between VS and C++ is much bigger, so it makes more sense to have something more beginner friendly.
That’s something you can ask for, but if you don’t follow my link above and post a ticket about it, it definitely has zero chance of happening.
I’m just going to add to what @wchc said, and say, maybe they should stay away. The problem with visual scripting is it’s VERY limited when compared to actual scripting via code. It’s frankly very similar to people coming here with LLM code and saying, “I’ve hit a wall.” Sooner or later, using either, you’re going to hit a wall where you cannot do things you can with code. They are just different delivery methods to the same conclusion everyone else reached: “I’m going to have to learn how to code to make software do what I want.”
When I was like 9, I remember going to school and learning Logo and immediately thinking it was crap, because I had already learned BASIC, and I could do so much more with BASIC than I could with Logo. Those kinds of tools are great for people learning logic or how to program, but at some point you have to graduate to something more sophisticated.
GDScript is a very easy entry point into programming. It’s also more fun than learning any other language. But is is a language. And if you really want to use block coding, there are a TON of options out there:
It’s ok for Godot not to be for everyone. Not everyone needs to learn how to code.
Not visual scripting per se, but we’ll get previews for code-based shaders in 4.7. Implement inline text shader previews by Chaosus · Pull Request #117726 · godotengine/godot · GitHub