Godot 4.5 Release Brings Accessibility Features, Shader Baker, and Stencil Buffer Support

Godot is a free and open source game engine that has earned its spot among indie game developers and hobbyists by providing a lightweight design, ease of use, and a flexible scene system. It supports both 2D and 3D game development across multiple platforms.

After months of development and testing, the Godot team has released Godot 4.5, a stable version that focuses on accessibility, performance, and workflow improvements.

🆕 Godot 4.5: What's New?

Godot 4.5 introduces plenty of improved accessibility and workflow features. It introduces partial screen reader support through AccessKit, covering Control nodes, Project Manager, inspector, and standard UI nodes. This should make Godot more accessible to visually impaired users.

Then there is the newly added Stencil Buffer (shown below) support that enables masking geometry and creating holes in 3D scenes. Developers can use it with shaders and meshes to produce advanced visual effects, previously difficult to implement efficiently.

If you have ever come across an extra loading screen when firing up a game that says "shader compilation," then you will appreciate the Shader Baker in Godot 4.5, which pre-compiles shaders during export to reduce stutter.

There's also a major upgrade on the 2D side of things, with Chunked Tilemap Physics that merges collision shapes in Tilemaps. Large maps now require fewer physics calculations, improving performance and making 2D gameplay smoother.

We wrap this section with the Editor changes, which now allow language switching without restarting. This improves workflow for developers testing localization and working with multiple languages in the editor.

Additional updates include a mute game toggle and a togglable inspector, giving more control over gameplay preview and resource inspection without having to navigate multiple menus.

🛠️ Other Changes & Improvements

You cannot miss these other notable changes:

• On the Web Editor, Godot now supports WebAssembly SIMD for better performance.
• In the GUI department, Godot adds a new FoldableContainer node and support for stacked layers of effects.
• On Android, Godot now supports 16 KB pages, edge-to-edge display, and accessing the device’s raw camera feed.
• On Linux, there is now native Wayland sub-window support, allowing Godot to create new independent windows on Wayland sessions.

If you want to delve deeper into this release, you should go through the changelog.

📥 Get Godot 4.5

This release of Godot is available on the official website and GitHub for platforms like Linux, Android, macOS, and Windows. A separate Web Editor is also provided, allowing you to use Godot directly in your browser without installation.

For existing users, there is a migration guide available to help transition projects from earlier 4.x versions to Godot 4.5.

Since this release introduces changes in areas like physics, rendering, and scripting, checking out the guide before upgrading is strongly recommended to avoid unexpected issues.