Godot Releases Godot 4

GM. It's Lootbox, your guide in the distracting cyberpunk world of web3 gaming news.

In today's loot

The open-source game engine, Godot, drops an engine rebuild
Demand for blockchain skills grows
The Sneakies - A startup building a web3 no-code tool for gaming is raising funds

Godot Releases Version 4.0

The open-source game engine, Godot, has released its biggest update yet - Godot 4.

And they say it's the "great rebuild."

What they did

The team at Godot has been working on the build for 3+ years, overhauling the entire engine.

Their goal?

Bringing the engine on par with the needs of modern game development. Going by comments on Youtube, devs are excited. 👍

So what's exciting

The new Vulcan-based rendering engine for high-end devices, OpenGL-based rendering engine for low-end devices, and support for Direct3D 12 for better compatibility with Windows and Xbox. Allowing for more crisp rendering on high-end devices and higher performance on low-end ones.
Godot 4 now has a powerful real-time pathfinding and navigation system for AIs, allowing them to navigate 2D and 3D scenes more efficiently.
They also added built-in support for XR games, which means you don't need a plugin to run them. It supports most major PC headsets, like Oculus and Monado, and some Android headsets with the help of a plugin.
The engine also supports WebXR, and OpenXR action maps, necessary input mapping systems specific to extended reality.
Animation re-targeting for 3D characters, which allows you to reuse animations even when characters have different proportions, was added. This feature saves time-consuming animation work and enables the use of animations from online libraries like Mixamo.

Curious about the entire feature set? You can read it here or watch the video below.

We've all heard the sentiment that we are in a bear market. Yet something surprising is showing up in the demand data for devs.

According to DevSkiller's report, demand for blockchain programming skills grew a whopping 552% in 2022.

So why is this happening?

Non-crypto firms have been scooping up developers with industry experience to use blockchain for storage or have decentralized proof of something within their own companies.
Finance firms have also been dipping their toes, driving demand for developers as they may be looking to build their own blockchains. JP Morgan anyone?
Gaming has also become a major driver of demand for this skill.. According to DappRadar, gaming accounts for almost 50% of on-chain activity.

Lootbringer's take

This is a good sign of the progress being made in the industry as it creates this flywheel.

Devs build apps, apps bring users, and users bring more devs.

Going forward as more dapps are built, the demand for blockchain devs is expected to dissociate from market movement.

An NFT project on Cardano is set to integrate into The Sandbox Game. It's called Clay Nation and would be the first from the chain to make this move.
Polygon Labs President Ryan Wyatt predicts gamers will drive web3 adoption, championing Polygon's role in facilitating decentralized gaming.
Popular streamer DrDisrespect sparks debate with a $100,000 blockchain-based in-game digital collectibles idea for video games.
Fungies, a startup building no-code tools for gaming developers to deploy storefronts and marketplaces, is raising its pre-seed round.
Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda may be departing pending shareholder approval. Lately, they have made progress into web3 gaming, and this vision may continue with the potential successor Takashi Kiryu who has experience developing metaverses.

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