The Godot engine comes as an executable file that requires no installation.
To follow this course, you’ll need at least Godot 3.4 or a more recent stable release of Godot 3.
You can download it from the engine’s official website: https://godotengine.org/download
You’ll want to download the Standard version. There are two options to choose from on Windows and Linux. Unless your computer is very old, you should click the 64-bit (x86_64) button highlighted below.
Godot comes compressed into a ZIP archive. To run it, you first need to extract it from the archive.
You can double-click a downloaded ZIP file to open it on most systems, then select and drag and drop its contents outside of the ZIP to decompress the files.
Below, you will find our recommended steps to extract Godot from the ZIP file on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
The file explorer in Windows comes with a tool to extract ZIP archives.
To extract Godot:
The most common Linux file explorers come with built-in archive extraction tools. Here’s how to do it with Nautilus (Gnome file explorer), but the steps should be similar to other file explorers.
To extract Godot in Nautilus:
To extract Godot with the macOS Finder:
If you followed the steps to extract the archive, you should have an executable file next to the ZIP archive.
Double-click it to start Godot and open the project manager.
As your project manager is empty, you’ll get a popup offering to download demos from the Asset Library. Click Cancel to dismiss it.
You should be left with an empty window.
To create a new empty Godot project, click the New Project button on the right.
A popup gives you several options to get started. You can give your project a name and give Godot a path to an empty folder on your computer.
If you don’t have an empty folder ready, you can click the Create Folder button to create a new folder based on the project’s name.
You also get two renderer options: OpenGL ES 2.0 or 3.0. If your computer is less than eight years old, the default, version 3.0, should work fine.
Version 2.0 exists to offer compatibility with older devices or low-end mobile phones.
Once you’re ready, click the Create & Edit button to create the project and open the Godot editor.
You’ll land on the 3D screen.
Please keep it open to tweak your editor settings. We’ll do that in the next guide.