What inspires you when you sit in front of the screen and dive into your next project? As developers, we often deal with behind-the-scenes work—those thoughtful improvements and fine-tuned processes that, most of the time, your player or end user doesn’t see, but that make all the difference.
The same goes for Godot: every seamless release reflects countless hours of dedicated effort. Developers work to make your experience smoother, faster, and more enjoyable.
At W4 Games, we believe that kind of care and precision deserves real support. That’s why we launched an initiative to actively improve Godot by sponsoring developers who can make a meaningful impact.
Michael Alexsander is one of them. This interview results from a project we worked on together—supported and funded by W4—to improve the engine for everyone.
Here’s how his work is shaping the future of Godot.
Michael Alexsander has been part of the Godot ecosystem long before his name became familiar on GitHub and Reddit. He’s been contributing to Godot since 2017, and his journey began the way many do in the open source world: by fixing small bugs that affected his own projects. Over time, those contributions evolved into deep collaborations with teams like Lone Wolf Technology. Today, he focuses on what matters most: saving developers time, improving workflows, and removing time-consuming steps in the everyday development process.
Why Godot?
When asked why he chose the engine in the first place, Michael’s answer reflects both technical values and a sense of mission:
¨When Godot came along, most of the available engines were either proprietary or very limited frameworks. Godot was open source, with an actual editor. It felt great to be part of something where everyone had access to the code—and the opportunity to shape it. Working on Godot feels like contributing to a greater good. It’s open source, it’s for everyone, and it’s growing. That’s what keeps me going.¨ -Michael Alexsander
Thanks to Michael Alexsander’s recent contribution, the engine now supports multi-node selection at runtime—solving a long-standing pain point for developers who were used to this workflow in other engines.
Here’s a closer look at the technical work behind these updates—along with improvements to the runtime debugger, the inspector, and other contributions that are already shaping Godot 4.4 and beyond.
Better Runtime Debugging Tools in Godot 4.4: Suspend Mode, Camera Tools & More on Interactive in-game editing
Until now, modifying your game while it was running was cumbersome compared to other engines. With Godot 4.4, it's now a reality. Thanks to Michael Alexsander’s work, developers can explore scenes, inspect elements, and debug in real time—all from within the editor. This feature, officially introduced as Interactive In-Game Editing, marks a turning point for runtime workflows—and W4 is proud to have helped make it happen.
It’s the kind of update that’s easy to appreciate once you see it in action—but what does it actually enable behind the scenes?
When you run a Godot project, the game opens in a separate window. With this update, you can pause the game at any point and interact with its elements directly—just like you would in the editor.
Previously, you could edit the game while it was running, but selecting nodes meant digging through a long list, which was time-consuming and made it difficult to ensure you had the right one selected.
Now, you can click directly on objects in the scene, inspect their properties, and move around freely with the camera—resulting in a much more intuitive debugging experience, closer to what other engines offer.
One of the key additions in this update is Suspend Mode, which allows the game to pause and advance frame-by-frame for deep debugging. This level of control was not possible before, making it a significant new feature for developers. With Suspend Mode, you can carefully inspect each frame and understand exactly how your game behaves during execution—without relying on breakpoints or logs.
Initially, when Michael began developing the feature that allows selecting nodes directly by clicking on the game view, it required pausing the game every time you wanted to select a different node. This wasn’t how the original remote selection behaved, but rather a limitation of the early implementation.
Now, thanks to his improvements, you can select nodes while the game keeps running at full speed, making live inspection much more practical and intuitive.
Frame-by-Frame Debugging, Suspend Mode & More
This suite of features makes it easier than ever to pause, inspect, and adjust gameplay elements in real-time:
- Suspend Mode: A hybrid between pause and breakpoint, it allows developers to inspect the game state and step through frames without fully halting the process.
- Camera Override: Provides the ability to control the in-game camera directly from the editor during runtime, offering a better view of the scene for debugging purposes.
- Live Node Selection: Developers can now select nodes directly by clicking on them in the game window—no need to manually search through the remote scene tree.
While this experience may feel seamless in Godot 4.4, it’s actually the result of two separate contributions that came together in the same release.
The interactive runtime debugging tools—such as Suspend Mode, frame stepping, camera control, and live node selection—were implemented by Michael Alexsander as part of PR #97257, sponsored by W4. These features are fully functional on their own, even when the game runs in a separate window.
In parallel, Hilderin developed the embedding of the game window into the editor interface for Windows and Linux (X11), as introduced in PR #99010. This visual integration made the tools feel native and in-place, enhancing the overall workflow—but it is not strictly required to use the runtime debugging tools themselves. Godot runs the game in a separate process to improve stability and prevent crashes from affecting the editor. Until recently, this made embedding the game window inside the editor impossible. Hilderin’s contribution overcame that limitation—allowing the window to feel native while keeping the architecture stable.
Rethinking Remote Inspection
Much of Michael’s work on runtime debugging was driven by the need to make remote inspection more accessible and intuitive—especially for developers working on large, complex projects.
¨Well, before this update, if you wanted to inspect a node at runtime, you had to manually search for it in the remote scene tree—especially painful in large projects. Now you just click what you see on screen, and the Inspector shows its properties right away.” —Michael Alexsander
This shift may seem simple, but it solves a deeper issue of visibility:
¨That was part of the issue—people didn’t even know remote inspection was possible. It was hidden, and not obvious at all. After this PR, once people saw you could just click on something in the running game and edit it, they thought it was a brand-new feature.” —Michael Alexsander
Under the hood, implementing this change required serious engineering effort:
¨Selection was tricky because it works through the remote runtime, which is another process. There are a lot of moving parts—sending messages back and forth, just to make something simple happen. That added a lot of complexity.¨ —Michael Alexsander
These improvements dramatically improve how developers interact with their projects while they’re running, offering an experience that is smoother, faster, and more intuitive.
From a Godot Veteran: Tips for Fellow Developers.
After years of contributing to the engine, Michael has seen how even small, invisible changes can transform a developer’s experience. So we asked him what advice he’d give to others—especially those considering the leap to a new version of Godot 4.4.
"Explore your tools. People sometimes laser-focus on specific things and forget to explore the options they already have. Look at what each button does—you might find something that speeds up your workflow." —Michael Alexsander
At W4 Games, we encourage developers to embrace the newest versions. This is not only to utilize new features, but also because each update represents careful efforts to improve your workflow's efficiency and stability. In relation to this, we asked Michael for his recommendations for teams already engaged in large-scale Godot projects. Based on his experience, he responded without hesitation:
"One thing I always recommend for people with big projects is to use version control. It really helps avoid losing work—it's like having a backup that grows with your game. Even if you don’t plan to share your code, it’s incredibly useful." —Michael Alexsander
We hope this story inspired you and that you enjoyed the interview. At W4 Games, we’re committed to supporting the kind of work that often goes unnoticed but makes a big difference—so that Godot can keep getting stronger for everyone.
That means fewer build surprises and more confidence every time you hit 'export.' We care about making that moment as smooth as possible.
That’s why we choose to support your ideas in coming to life.
We’re here for that.
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