In case you missed it, this week it was announced that Godot 4 will not support OpenGL from the get-go.

You can read the full article here. But the basic gist of it is as follows:

• OpenGL will be implemented by the time 4.1 is out. Due to the re-implementation of the renderer code to support Vulkan and modern rendering techniques, the support for OpenGL will take a couple of extra months after launch.
• GLES3 will be the OpenGL version supported. Originally, the plan was to support GLES2, but "As more work was poured into the Vulkan back-end, it became clearer and clearer that supporting GLES2 is not an option anymore."
• On windows, they are considering shipping Godot running on top of ANGLE. In consideration for those who can't run GLES3 or Vulcan.

Those are the main points. But you REALLY should just read the whole thing.

If you'd rather listening instead of reading, Gamefromscratch has your back:

After the announcement was made, Juan Linietsky, on a more personal note, twitted this, regarding Godot's implementation of Vulkan that started some two years ago:

If you want to make some extra reading on the history of Godot and Vulkan, you can try some of Godot's official news on the matter:

• Moving to Vulkan (and ES 2.0) instead of OpenGL ES 3.0
• Vulkan Progress Reports:
  1. Report #1
  2. Report #2
  3. Report #3
  4. Report #4
  5. Report #5
  6. Report #6
  7. Report #7

Lastly, if you have no idea what Vulkan even is, I found this nice TLDR on the Vulkan subreddit, made from a non-developer focused article:

As a low-overhead API, Vulkan is the next step forward for AMD's Mantle API, which in of itself was a spiritual successor of the OpenGL interface.

Co-created with EA's DICE, studio behind Battlefield, Mantle adapted the multi-core advantages of consoles and brought them to the more robust hardware of PC. According to Robert Hallock, AMD's Head of Global Technical Marketing, AMD contributed the Mantle platform to Khronos "To jumpstart the process of bringing the OpenGL family over to a low overhead approach."

Simply put, Vulkan is the next step in the evolution of open standards popularized by OpenGL, and is the the direct decedent of AMD's Mantle API. According to Senior Manager of Public Relations at AMD Antal Tungler, Vulkan brings "Roughly the same benefits as DirectX 12" does over its predecessor. – Techradar.com. What is Vulkan and what does it mean for the future of gaming?

📰 Godot news round-up

• Kenney, the dev behind kenney.nl, has jumped into the Godot bandwagon:

he went so far as to finish his first Godot game, called Ken Shmup. although for now at least is only available to his Patreon supporters.

• Also related to Kenney, there's a sale going on right now (and for the next 8 hours) on Itch called the Creator Day July 2021. It includes all of Kenney's Assets and tools like Asset Forge, as well as some games and tools from other creators. Each item is 25% off, or you can buy everything for $49.99. It would cost 101.72 regularly. Here's the link
• The Microsoft Game Development Kit is now available for free on GitHub -

The GDK is the same base development kit used by hundreds of game creators today and was previously only available to approved partners building for the Xbox ecosystem. The GDK contains the common tools, libraries, and documentation needed for developers, it's the future of the Xbox ecosystem across all platforms—PC, cloud, mobile, and console. - Game Stack Blog

• The Garden Path's Kickstarter campaign is live.  - With 27 days to go and already at over one third of its $27,522 goal, the game was featured in both Godot's Games Showcase from April 2020 and Games Showcase from April 2019. "A slice-of-life game about bringing a garden back to life, coming to PC."
• Another Godot game campaign to keep an eye on will be live on Indiegogo on August 9th, for the game Bittersweet Birthday. The game will be published in 2022 on PC and the Nintendo Switch (Ported by Pineapple Works). There's a free demo available on Steam.  - Indiegogo link.

If you have anything you want to share with the Godot development community please let me know by sending an email to contact@godotes.com