GameFromScratch.com Top Code Editors & IDEs in 2025 The following is a round-up of popular and still in development tools for game programmers, specifically code editors, terminal based editors, IDEs and modern AI assisted tools. If you are looking for a new editor hopefully you will find it here. We go into slightly more depth with each tool The post Top Code Editors & IDEs in 2025 appeared first on GameFromScratch.com. #top #code #editors #ampamp #ides

There is another game artists focused Humble Bundle, joining yesterday’s 3D Artists Tools & Brushes Bundle, this one is the Flipped Normals Extreme Add-Ons Bundle for Blender & ZBrush. This is a collection of add-ons for both Blender and Brush. It is important to note the following: Free lifetime updates are not included in the bundle purchase. All creators have included coupon codes in the bundle, so you can purchase directly from their shop at a discounted price to receive updates and full support. As with most Humble Bundles, the Flipped Normals Extreme Add-Ons Bundle for Blender & ZBrush is organized into the following tiers: 10$ Tier Fit Curve Blendshop – Layer-Based Compositing / Color Grading Tool – Blender 4.0+ Geo Sign 1.0 – Sign Generator Blender Addon Power Maps ZBrush Plugin Model Enhancer – ZBrush Plugin 20$ Tier Wrap Gen – Generate Fully Customisable WrapsFit Lattice Real Cloud 1.0 – Cloud Creator / Blender Addon + 200 VDB Assets Power Shapes ZBrush Plugin ZBrush – Mask & Delete Plugin 30$ Tier Lazy VFX 1.0 – VDB Assets & Blender Addon Better Lighting V2 – Light Presets & Gobos Library Fluid Kit – Water Generator & Water Assets Library Lazy Forest V2 – Forest Generator Addon + Trees & Plants Library Physical Starlight And Atmosphere Physical Celestial Objects – Procedural Planets Physical Open Waters Spline Brush – Turn Splines into Brush Strokes Light Wrangler: Essential Lighting Add-On For Blender Quad Maker Power Modeler ZBrush Plugin Easy Mesh ZBrush Plugin Power Primitives ZBrush Plugin Power Text Brush Maker ZBrush Plugin Real-time Hair ZBrush Plugin Torn Pro – ZBrush Plugin UV-Pro Mastering UV Unwrapping – ZBrush Plugin ARMORED MIRROR Zbrush Plugin Geo-Scatter 5.5 Using links on this page to purchase the bundle helps support GFS. You can access the  3D Artists Tools & Brushes Bundle here and the Flipped Normals Extreme Add-Ons Bundle for Blender & ZBrush here. If you’d like to see coverage of a specific asset in action in video form please do let me know on the GFS discord server. #extreme #addons #bundle #blender #zbrush

Murder Engine – C# ECS 2D Game Engine / News / May 27, 2025 / C#, Engine The Murder Engine is a C# powered, open-source, 2D game engine built on top of FNAbuilt around ECS or the Entity Component System. The Murder engine is described succinctly as: This is the source for Murder Engine, a pixel art ECS game engine built on top of FNA. 🚧👷 Warning Proceed at your own risk. This is an in-development engine, which is another way of saying that it will change quite a lot. We do our best to keep release branches stable, but expect a lot of breaking changes and things that are not perfect. It cleanly separates your game logic from the level editorand the level editor has a surprisingly robust number of tools. This includes a full map editor, via conversation system, ways to define entity composition and manage game data and much more. Projects are ultimately created using the C# programming language and Microsoft Visual Studio 2022, so obviously Windows is required. The engine is open-source under the MIT license. It is also home to several sub projects such as bang – the C# entity component system framework as well as gum – the language for creating branching dialogs that is embedded in the editor. One thing this engine certainly lacks however is documentation. There is a minimal amount of reference materials available but for the most part you will have to puzzle things out on your own. Thankfully there are two projects to get you started, the former Ludum Dare winner Neo City Express as well as the Hello Murder starter project. When starting out with either project make sure you clone the repository recursively. Key Links Murder Engine GitHub Repository Neo City Express Repository Hello Murder Repository Project Documentation Discord Server You can learn more about the awesome but poorly named Murder engine in the video below. #murder #engine #ecs #game

Audio is such an important component of any game and 3D audio in 3D games adds massively to immersion. Today we are going to look at two different Godot add-ons that add Audio Occlusion capabilities to the Godot game engine. The first solution is VASTLY easier to use; the aptly named Godot Audio Occlusion Plugin that’s part of the Audio Arsenal bundle by Ovani Sounds. The other is part of the free and open-source Giga Audio plugin, which also provides two different 3D area audio zones. The Ovani Godot Audio Occlusion Plugin is described as: The Audio Occlusion Plugin for Godot makes sounds in your game behave more realistically. When a sound is behind a wall, door, or obstacle, this plugin will automatically make it sound muffled or filtered—just like it would in real life. It works by attaching an AudioOccluder to any AudioStreamPlayer3D in your scene. The plugin calculates how sound would travel through the environment and adjusts the audio in real time, depending on what’s between the source and the listener. To do this, it simplifies your world into a voxel grid—a 3D block-based map—and simulates how sound waves move through it. You can even preview how the plugin sees your world by enabling Voxel Preview in the Inspector. You can easily customize settings like: Range Voxel resolution Collision mask Detection margin The Giga Audio plugin is described as: Audio Occlusion, Audio Areas, and Audio Depth Areas for your project. …yeah, slightly less verbose description there. 😉 You will find that as a general trend, the Giga Audio plugin has less documentation and no samples to get you up and going. Don’t worry though, we have that process mostly covered in the video below. Key Links Audio Arsenal bundle by Ovani Sounds Ovani Godot Audio Plugin Giga Audio GitHub Repository Giga Audio YouTube Video Using the links on this page to purchase the bundle helps support GFS and thanks so much if you do! You can learn more about using both of the Godot 4.x audio occlusion add-ons in the video below. #godot #audio #occlusion

All the way back in Blender 2.79 the Blender Foundation made the decision to remove the integrated game engine. Several projects continue adding game engine support to Blender and the one that most adhered to the original BGE vision is the Range Engine. Since then there have been several releases to the Range Engine. Features of the Range Engine: POWERFUL MODELLING TOOLS Based on Blender, With Range Engine you can Model and Sculpt you own Assets, Make Materials and Textures, create high detailed Animations And build breathtaking levels with advanced tools and modifiers. BEAUTIFUL MATERIALS Make amazing environments with beautiful PBR materials, you can use your imagination to make advanced materials with Shader Nodes Editor. CODE WITH PYTHON OR VISUAL LANGUAGE Range Engine makes coding looks easy, you can code with Python 3.10 or make visual scripting with Visual Language, you can also use both ways together! PUBLISHING PROJECTS Of course you want to show to everyone the amazing work you did, In Range Engine you can export and publish your game with safety, optimization and With no Fees and Licensing Problems! Key Links Range Engine Homepage Range Engine Discord Ovani Audio Arsenal Bundle Link Spyro Inspired Range Engine Demo Scene from Video Other Blender Game Engines UPBGE Armory 3D Engine You can learn more about the Range Engine for Blender in the video below. #range #engine #blender #game

Bevy ECS in Godot Engine / News / May 22, 2025 / Godot, Rust The Bevy game engine is an open-source data driven ECS based game engine using the Rust programming language that lacks an editor. The Godot game engine is the most popular open-source project with a robust set of tools and an integrated editor. So what happens if you add Rust and ECS from Bevy to the Godot game engine? That is exactly what these two GDExtension based open-source projects do, they bring Bevy to Godot. godot-bevy Godot-Bevy is a Rust library that brings Bevy’s powerful Entity Component Systemto the versatile Godot Game Engine. Use Bevy’s ergonomic and high-performance Rust ECS within your Godot projects to get the best of both worlds. Features Seamlessly integrate Bevy ECS in Godot 4 projects Use Bevy systems to control Godot nodes Spawn Godot scenes from Bevy Maintain clean separation between ECS logic and Godot’s scene tree Leverage the full power of Bevy’s Rust-based ECS while using Godot’s editor and rendering capabilities Systems can be scheduled for the visual or physics frame bevy_godot4 Bring the design power of Bevy’s ECS to the mature engine capabilities of Godot 4. At it’s core, this crate is just a godot Node that stores a Bevy App that you add as an autoload in your Godot project. However, this library also provides utilities to be able to work with Godot nodes from within the Bevy framework. The architecture in this crate is based on bevy_godot, a similar crate for working with Godot 3 and GDNative. In the video below we show you how to get started with both of these Bevy -> Godot extensions, including a few install hiccups you may encounter along the way. #bevy #ecs #godot #engine

Every other Tuesday we get an Unreal Engine Fab marketplace giveaway, and this Tuesday is no exception. You can get three free game development assets during the next two week for Unrealas well as one free asset at the personal tier. If you are using a different game engine or tool, we have guides below that instruct you on how to export from Unreal Engine to other engines such as Godot, Blender or Unity for example. These assets are available free from May 20th to June 3rd and are yours to keep forever once “purchased”. This Month’s free assets include: In addition to these assets, there is also the free Polar Facility environment at the personal tier. There are also a pair of Unreal Engine asset bundles running on Gumroad: The SpaceNova Unreal Engine Bundle The StarNova Unreal Engine Bundle In addition to the Unreal Engine bundles, there are Godot and Unity versions as well: StarNova for Unity Bundle SpaceNova for Unity Bundle StarNova for Godot Bundle Using the above Gumroad links to buy the bundle helps support GFSIf you are interested in getting these assets into other game engines, check out our various guides available here: You can see all of these assets in action in the video below. #fab #free #asset #giveaway #june

Microsoft have just made a major announcement that will shake the business model of popular AI based code editors Cursor and Windsurf. Both of these companies are built around forks of Visual Studio Code that build AI tooling “into the bones”. Microsoft have just announced they are open sourcing GitHub Copilot Chat Extension and will be building the functionality into the core of Visual Studio Code. Details from the Visual Studio Code announcement: We believe that the future of code editors should be open and powered by AI. For the last decade, VS Code has been one of the most successful OSS projects on GitHub. We are grateful for our vibrant community of contributors and users who choose VS Code because it is open source. As AI becomes core to the developer experience in VS Code, we intend to stay true to our founding development principles: open, collaborative, and community-driven. We will open source the code in the GitHub Copilot Chat extension under the MIT license, then carefully refactor the relevant components of the extension into VS Code core. This is the next and logical step for us in making VS Code an open source AI editor. It’s a reflection that AI-powered tools are core to how we write code; a reaffirmation of our belief that working in the open leads to a better product for our users and fosters a diverse ecosystem of extensions. Why open source now? Over the last few months, we’ve observed shifts in AI development that motivated us to transition our AI development in VS Code from closed to open source: Large language models have significantly improved, mitigating the need for “secret sauce” prompting strategies. The most popular and effective UX treatments for AI interactions are now common across editors. We want to enable the community to refine and build on these common UI elements by making them available in a stable, open codebase. An ecosystem of open source AI tools and VS Code extensions has emerged. We want to make it easier for these extension authors to build, debug, and test their extensions. This is especially challenging today without access to the source code in the Copilot Chat extension. We’ve gotten a lot of questions about the data that is collected by AI editors. Open sourcing the Copilot Chat extension enables you to see the data we collect, increasing transparency. Malicious actors are increasingly targeting AI developer tools. Throughout VS Code’s history as OSS, community issues and PRs have helped us find and fix security issues quickly. Next steps In the coming weeks, we will work to open source the code in the GitHub Copilot Chat extension and refactor AI features from the extension into VS Code core. Our core priorities remain intact: delivering great performance, powerful extensibility, and an intuitive, beautiful user interface. Open source works best when communities build around a stable, shared foundation. Thus, our goal is to make contributing AI features as simple as contributing to any part of VS Code. The stochastic nature of large language models makes it especially challenging to test AI features and prompt changes. To ease this, we will also make our prompt test infrastructure open source to ensure that community PRs can build and pass tests. In unrelated news, Microsoft also announced the open-sourcing of WSL or Windows Subsystem for Linux. You can learn more in the video below. #microsoft #opensource #visual #studio #code

Today we are checking out the Go language powered game engine Ebitengine. In our recent rundown of game engines by programming language series I often received requests to cover the Go programming language. Truth of the matter is, outside of language bindings, there are very few Go-powered game engines, certainly not enough to make any kind of dedicated list. There is however the Ebitengine, by far the most popular choice, an open source 2D cross platform game engine. Details of Ebitengine: A dead simple 2D game engine for Go Ebitengineis an open-source game engine for the Go programming language. Ebitengine’s simple API allows you to quickly and easily develop 2D games that can be deployed across multiple platforms. Features: 2D GraphicsInputAudioKey Links Ebitengine Homepage Ebitengine GitHub Repository Documentation You can learn more about the dead simple, cross-platform, open-source 2D Go language powered game engine Ebitengine in the video below. #ebitengine #language #powered #game #engine

Unreal Engine 5.6 Preview Released / News / May 17, 2025 / Unreal A few weeks ahead of the State of Unreal at Unreal Fest 2025 Epic Games have released a new version of Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine 5.6 Preview. This release finally adds MetaHuman integration, a host of animation improvements, an updated UI, performance improvements and more. Sadly the much anticipated new game templates didn’t make this release. There are also SpaceNova and StarNova Unreal Engine bundles running right now for Unreal Engine on Gumroad. There is also the 5K World Building Assets for Unreal Engine bundle over on Humble Bundle. Highlights of the Unreal Engine 5.6 release: Vast, high-fidelity open worlds with maximum performance, and consistent 60hz frame rates. The biggest and most powerful update yet to the animation authoring toolset. MetaHuman Creator is now available in-engine including blending and sculpting of MetaHuman bodies plus improved visual fidelity and new realtime workflows for MetaHuman Animator. Faster creation with Content browser 2.0 and the new Viewport toolbar layout. The ability to build expansive, high-fidelity worlds faster than ever with powerful procedural workflows Key Links Unreal Engine 5.6 Release Details Unreal Public Roadmap Level Up 5K World Building GameDev Assets Humble Bundle SpaceNova Bundle StarNova BundleYou can learn more about the Unreal Engine 5.6 Preview in the video below. #unreal #engine #preview #released

Unity 6.2 Beta Released / News / May 15, 2025 / Coming approximately one month after the final release of Unity 6.1, Unity have just released Unity 6.2 Beta. This new beta doesn’t add a ton of new functionality, with the highlight features being the new LOD import system and World Space UI for UI toolkit. The biggest change by far in this release is the reworking of their AI tools, with Muse being retired and Sentis being renamed with the entire thing being rebranded as Unity AI. Additionally, there are several game development bundles of interest to Unity developers that just launched. There are two new Unity bundles from Leartes on Gumroad, the 15 environments SpaceNova Bundle as well as the 5 environment StarNova bundle . There is also the Must Have New Assets MegaBundle on the Unity Asset Store. Details of the new Unity AI: Unity AI consists of three main components: Assistant – A contextual helper that answers questions about your project, generates pre-compiled code, and can execute agentic actions like batch renaming files or placing multiple objects in a scene. Drag project assets into prompts or query selected console errors. Replaces Muse Chat. Generators – Improved tools for creating sprites, textures, animations, and new sound generation capabilities. Generators publish directly into supported Unity assets for a seamless workflow. Replaces Muse Sprite, Texture, and Animate. Inference Engine – Inference Engine continues to focus on local AI model inference performance gains for unique runtime experiences. Renaming Sentis to Inference Engine. Interested in trying Unity AI? Here’s what you need to know: In-Editor installation – Install Unity AI through the “AI” button at the top of the Editor after downloading Unity 6.2 Beta. Free during Unity 6.2 beta – All users who install Unity AI will receive free Unity Points to try the features. Free points will expire at the end of the beta, when Unity AI will transition to a paid Unity Points model. Data usage and privacy – Unity AI uses your provided “Content Data” to execute AI model inferences. You can opt out of Content Data sharing for AI model training through the Unity Dashboard.I intended to go hands-on with the new Unity AI features in more depth in a follow-up article. Key Links Unity 6.2 Beta Announcement Must Have New Assets MegaBundle on the Unity Asset Store SpaceNova BundleStarNova bundleYou can learn more about the Unity 6.2 beta release and about the three Unity related bundles in the video below. Purchasing bundles via links on this page helps support GFS. #unity #beta #released

Level Up 5K World Building Assets Humble Bundle / News / May 15, 2025 / Humble, Unreal The Level Up 5K World Building GameDev Assets Humble Bundle is a collection of game ready 3D environmental assets for world building. Most of the assets are for Unreal Engine with a few Unity assets. That said, using the guides below you can export to other game engines, such as the Godot Engine as you can see in the video below. There are also SpaceNova and StarNova Unreal Engine bundles running right now for Unreal Engine on Gumroad. 1$ Tier Medieval Dinnerware Pack Medieval Village Props Package Buildings VOL.3 – AttachmentsBuildings VOL.9 – Modular Pipes & GuttersBuildings VOL.10 – Air Pipes and VentsAverage Tier Book Generator Gothic Furniture Props Vol1 Medieval Village Houses Pack Vehicles VOL.7 – Retro CarsBuildings VOL.2 – Electric & AirVehicles VOL.6 – Hitches & TrailersRetro 80’s VOL.2 – ElectronicsLighting VOL.3 – Industrial30$ Tier Apocalyptic Hospital Apocalyptic HospitalBrooke Industrial The Bazaar Cyber-Town Pack Fafnir’s Keep Research Tent Environment Quarry Environment Cyberpunk Night Street Nordic Medieval Tavern CCA Subway Train Terminal Auge Mountaintop Observatory Industrial VOL.1 – WorksiteMedieval VOL.3 – Church Cathedral Using the links to Humble provided on this page helps support GFS. If you have an issue with the link, try opening it in a new tab and it should work just fine. If you are looking at using the Unreal or Unity assets in another game engine, be sure to check out the following conversion guides: #level #world #building #assets #humble

Today we have the fourth dev release of the Godot 4.5 cycle, following hot on the heels of Godot 4.5 dev1 released in March, the Godot 4.5 dev2 released earlier in April and the Dev3 release the end of April. These releases add new features and improvements to the Godot engine leading up to the final Godot 4.5 release. These are pre-beta releases and obviously are not supposed to be used for production work. There is also a new Godot Engine asset bundle showcased in the video, the Godot StarNova Bundle on Gumroad but be sure to use the code SN40 at checkout to save off! In Godot 4.5 Dev4 the following are the highlight new features: Progress on initial C# support for web platforms Embedded window support on MacOS 3D physics interpolation moved to SceneTree Variant can now be exported Stackable outlines/shadows on Label Specular occlusion from ambient lights Key Links Godot 4.5 Dev 4 Release Announcement Interactive Changelog Godot Web DotNet Update You can learn more about the Godot 4.5 dev4 release and see several of the new features in action in the video below. In addition to the Godot StarNova Bundle, there are also Unity and Unreal Engine bundles, which can be converted to work with Godot and other engines and tools. The SpaceNova and StarNova Unreal Engine as well as the Unity SpaceNova and StarNova bundles. Use code SN70 and SN40 for each bundle respectively to save a huge amount. Using GFS links to purchase the bundles helps support us. If you are looking at using the Unreal or Unity assets in another game engine, be sure to check out the following conversion guides: #godot #engine #dev4 #released

Code::Blocks C/C++ IDE 25.03 Released / News / May 13, 2025 / Code::Blocks is an open source (GPL v3 licensed) cross-platform (Windows, Linux and MacOS) C, C++ and Fortran IDE. You could be forgiven for thinking the project was dead as the last binary release was in 2020! Thankfully this is not the case as a little over a month back Code::Blocks 25.03 was released. Features of Code::Blocks include: Highlights: Open Source! GPLv3, no hidden costs. Cross-platform. Runs on Linux, Mac, Windows (uses wxWidgets). Written in C++. No interpreted languages or proprietary libs needed. Extensible through plugins Compiler: Multiple compiler support: GCC (MingW / GNU GCC) MSVC++ clang Digital Mars Borland C++ 5.5 Open Watcom …and more Very fast custom build system (no makefiles needed) Support for parallel builds (utilizing your CPU’s extra cores) Multi-target projects Workspaces to combine multiple projects Inter-project dependencies inside workspace Imports MSVC projects and workspaces (NOTE: assembly code not supported yet) Imports Dev-C++ projects Debugger: Interfaces GNU GDB Also supports MS CDB (not fully featured) Full breakpoints support: Code breakpoints Data breakpoints (read, write and read/write) Breakpoint conditions (break only when an expression is true) Breakpoint ignore counts (break only after certain number of hits) Display local function symbols and arguments User-defined watches (support for watching user-defined types through scripting) Call stack Disassembly Custom memory dump Switch between threads View CPU registers Interface: Syntax highlighting, customizable and extensible Code folding for C, C++, Fortran, XML and many more files. Tabbed interface Code completion Class Browser Smart indent One-key swap between .h and .c/.cpp files Open files list for quick switching between files (optional) External customizable “Tools” To-do list management with different users Key Links Code::Blocks Homepage Code::Blocks 25.03 Release Notes You can learn more about the Code::Blocks C/C++ IDE and about the 25.03 release in the video below. If you are looking for another C/C++ IDE, JetBrains recently made a free version of their CLion IDE available. Source: https://gamefromscratch.com/codeblocks-c-c-ide-25-03-released/ #codeblocks #ide #released