New Year's Update: What's next for Redot?

As we start the new year, we wanted to take a look back at everything we accomplished, and also give you a look at where the project is heading.

In just three short months we brought the community, the engine, and our website online. We released a stable version and made it so you can easily download and use Redot in the same way you could with Godot, making the transfer of your projects seamless.

We’ve introduced numerous bug fixes along the way, along with some new features—and there’s plenty more of both in the pipeline! For now, let’s take a step back, focus on the bigger picture, and look forward to what the next year has in store.

Redot Forum

From the very beginning, Discord has been the heart of the Redot community, serving as our lair, our command post, a hub where most of the action happens. However, as much as we love it, we’ve found that Discord’s Forums leave much to be desired when it comes to organizing and searching for specific topics. That’s why we’re introducing the Redot Forums—a dedicated space to make it easier to dive into discussions and find specific solutions for all things Redot. Our Discord isn't going anywhere, but we hope that our Forums will supplement it nicely, aiding you in your search for answers about Redot and beyond.

In fact, you should check them out yourself! The Redot Forums are already live, so be sure to visit and join at Redot Forum.

Engine

We’re committed to continuously enhance the engine with more bug fixes and new features—and we hope to supercharge this process in the New Year! While we’re keeping our 4.4 base on parity with Godot’s, we also aim to move some of these fixes to the stable branch where game developers can benefit from them right now, in this very moment, instead of some unspecified future.

As a first step, we’re currently backporting Jolt to the 4.3 stable. This will allow those of you sticking with 4.3 to take advantage of its performance improvements and added convenience. Anyone who has worked with Jolt before can tell you: it’s a night-and-day difference, an upgrade that truly matters. Our next major goal going into 2025 will be to comb through the more than three thousand PRs currently stagnating in Godot’s repository.

This is obviously a huge undertaking, but we've already got our eyes on a few PRs that need to be merged as soon as possible. We truly believe it will be worth it, resulting in tangible improvements for game developers and their projects.

Funding

Let’s quickly get through the less exciting part of this update, shall we? In the last month and a half we opened up donations on our Ko-fi account in response to numerous requests to do so, giving those eager to support us financially a way to contribute. While donations are completely optional and we offer no perks in return, they’re still greatly appreciated, as they’ve helped relieve the financial burden on those of us who have been funding this project out of pocket. Here’s a rundown of how those donations are being put to use.

Here's a breakdown of both the donations we received and our expenditures.

After fees we took in $1,625.65.

• Apple Developer account - Yearly ($100)
• Domain and Hosting – Yearly ($60)
• Windows SIgning – Yearly ($50)
• X Subscription – 2 Months ($32)
• Android Developer Account ($25)
• Zencaster Account – Monthly ($20)
• Buffer Account – Monthly ($5)

After covering the expenditures listed above, we’re left with $1333,65 to cover any other costs accrued in the new year.

Of those $1333,65 we have earmarked $600 for the possible Redot Foundation—for its initial establishment and operational groundwork. Following expert advice, we learned that the annual costs of setting up and operating a foundation, including lawyer fees, could possibly exceed our present financial capacity and present us with additional responsibilities that we might not yet be ready for.

We’re waiting until we get clarity on some of the requirements and red tape before making any final decisions or applying for tax-exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), but the donations for this goal have been set aside. We will keep you informed as we receive clarity on the situation, and as we move forward with this part of the project. Please be assured we're looking into this and will be building this very publicly, with an extra focus on transparency.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who recognizes this project as something worth contributing to. Your support means the world to us, and we deeply appreciate each and every one of you!

Addons/Tools

Redot is a community-driven project, and as such, we thrive on the incredible contributions built within our community. We’d like to spotlight a couple of such ongoing projects that we believe will bring tremendous value to each and every Redot user. Our goal is to develop these initiatives into fully usable tools by 2025, and we’re excited to see them take shape!

EventSheets

One of our community members, Wladek, is developing a visual scripting plugin called EventSheets. This amazing tool is designed to provide a visual scripting experience similar to Construct 3, GDevelop or Clickteam Fusion, making scripting more accessible and intuitive, for both beginners and pros.

Full implementation of this plugin will make it much easier to create 2D and 3D games without any prior programming knowledge, making Redot not just beginner-friendly, but an ideal choice as a first engine—a perfect jumping-on point for aspiring game developers. The EventSheet editor will also allow you to look into the GDScript generated by the event sheets, providing an excellent opportunity to learn coding and gradually transition to Gdscript over time.

This project is under heavy development, and we’re actively seeking contributors to help bring it to life!

ReScene

Ever found yourself dozing off at your keyboard while re-importing a large batch of models and painstakingly adding a physics shape to each one of them individually? We have too! That’s why community member David is developing ReScene: a tool designed to streamline the process by automatically importing and assigning basic physics shapes to multiple items.

For those objects where a simple physics shape is all that’s needed, this tool will be a massive time-saver. Currently, ReScene is a command-line tool, but drag-and-drop support is on the way. It’s still under active development, and we’re excited to see it evolve and expand!

Redot Experimental

Redot Experimental serves as a testing ground for bigger changes and bolder ideas — features that might break compatibility with Godot, or ones that simply wouldn’t fit within the constraints of the original Redot project. Some of these initiatives will take the form of standalone projects, and we’d like to spotlight the one we are currently focusing on.

Redot Engine Launcher

The Redot Engine Launcher is designed to be a centralized hub to streamline your development workflow. While the final version is still a work in progress, here’s what we envision for the finished product:

• Manage, Update, and Install Engine Versions: Seamlessly switch between different versions of the Redot Engine to better suit your project needs.
• Organize Existing Projects: Keep all your projects organized in one place with intuitive access and efficient management tools.
• Manage Addons and Asset Packs: Easily browse, install, and update addons and asset packs to enhance your development experience.

We hope to turn this into a major project going forward, implementing new features and feedback from our users as we go—the goal here is to make your work with your projects as efficient and pleasurable as possible! If you're interested in helping us out with this project, please let us know!

Redot Academy

Game development should be accessible to everyone. This continues to be our mantra.

We’re committed to providing tools and learning materials that empower anyone to kickstart their game development journey or accelerate their current projects.

In 2025, we’re excited to launch Redot Academy—a comprehensive hub for courses, tools, and structured learning paths designed to align with what Redot offers and what our community needs and wants.

The site will go live with our first full course, and all Redot Academy videos will also be available on our YouTube and Rumble channels. Additionally, Redot Academy will feature a collection of game templates—starter projects and tools to help you jumpstart your game development process.

More details will be shared as we continue sorting things out. If you’d like to contribute or get involved, we’d love to hear from you!

Redot Website

The Redot website is getting an overhaul!

While the initial site was very good, it was also harder to update or add content to, so we decided to give it a refresh. It will include a lot of elements from the previous site while also making it much easier to update and add content. Here’s a screenshot of how it’s looking:

Community

At Redot, we're fully aware that our community is our greatest strength and our most valuable feature. From presenting community-driven projects and contributions to celebrating group and individual achievements, we plan to showcase it as much as possible.

Game Jams

We already had our very first game jam and we're thrilled to report it was a huge success! We’re excited to keep the momentum going, and plan on holding four more game jams throughout the year, bringing our talented community together to create and have some quality fun.

Due to an extreme weather system affecting large parts of the US and Canada, we’ve decided to postpone the second game jam for everyone’s convenience. It is now rescheduled to begin on January 31st and will run for two weeks. Registration is open, and you can sign up here. The theme will be revealed when the jam kicks off. For now, stay tuned, look for collabs and sharpen your abilities. We can’t wait to see what you'll create!

Game Night

Who doesn’t love games? In 2025, we’ll be introducing our second recurring community event: Game Night! Join us for a fun-filled evening (or morning, your mileage may vary) where everyone from the community can jump in and play through a selection of multiplayer games with us.

It’s all about having a good time–and that's not even our last word on the topic! Stay tuned for more fun-filled community events coming your way!

Between everything we've shared so far and things we cannot yet reveal, 2025 is shaping up to be an incredible year for Redot—we couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.

We want to thank each and every one of you for everything you’ve contributed to this amazing project and its community. From the games you’ve created and the support you’ve offered one another, to the countless questions you’ve asked and answered, to the time you’ve invested into making Redot real, viable and flourishing—every bit has helped make this the most inspiring and collaborative game development community we’ve ever been a part of.

We truly appreciate all the passion, all the creativity, and all the effort you’ve poured into Redot, and we can’t wait to see what we’ll achieve together in the coming year. Thank you! And now... Go make that game.

The Redot Team