Makes me so happy with having picked Spine up so recently to see this coming soon. Looks like a better baked and polished version of the physics motor/dynamic physics features that were in Creature2D (seems to have been discontinued ) which I used in the past for a bunch of game animation stuff, but I can't wait to get to play with this stuff with Spine's way better runtimes compared to anything else I used prior.

Was just watching Armanimation's stream and this looks more amazing than I could have imagined. V4.2 seems like it could make so much marketing bait material to advertise Spine to 2D game artists and 2D animators, and I mean this in the best way possible. Hope you get a bunch more new people pick it up for this awesome update.

A question, will third party runtime developers be able to support the beta features while this version is in beta? I know you said that the features would come to the (official I presume) runtimes in order of popularity (aside from libGDX runtime dropping first for obvious reasons) but I don't know how well this translates to runtimes that are not maintained by Spine team?

SilverStraw Yes, don't get me wrong. I completely believe this to be the case now after trying the software and realizing the value that it has. I honestly think it's at a great price now, but I could never really make up my mind whether that was the case when trialing it, hence why it was only now I ended up picking up the license, and that was really a toss of a coin as to whether it would really click for me at all, which it did.

I prefer to pay for software to support devs, and now I am happy to have had the circumstances come up that I was able to pay the upfront cost of diving into the pro license. Reality is it's pro grade software and it's so well supported with runtimes across game engines compared to any other software I have used. I also love Nate's comment about the enterprise customers fronting a lot of the costs, whereas the reality is pro is pretty cheap when you compare it to other animation software.

I have an FL studio license (top version) that I ended up upgrading to over several years, and I think if I had realized that Spine had a similar licensing structure (re updates) to that earlier, it would have been much more of a no brainer purchase years ago. I don't know if I am dumb but I never really looked into it deep enough until I was buying.

I first trialed it years ago but was unable to tell if it would be useful to me from the trial, and the price for the version I would use was quite steep for someone in my specific financial situation (serious gamedev with 6+ years experience but financially a hobbyist with low income and a hard limit on what I can earn (disability related)).

However after getting a significant hardware purchase refund, it was the day that Ludum Dare 54 was starting and I thought: "Lets go buy Spine no way this can go wrong..." I ended up getting the pro version.

And I was right, my experience with the software was amazing, I got going with the software within an hour of downloading it. It was simple to bring character designs I made in Affinity Designer into Spine with their JSON export, and it was simple to get animated characters out of it and into two game engines of my choice: starting off I used GameMaker, then 6 hours in switched the project over to Construct. Both engines had way simpler runtime implementations than anything else I have used for 2D skeletal animation.

In short I just wanted to say that I have already recommended Spine to multiple gamedev friends who are interested in 2D animation, and I will be continuing to work with the software myself, I am excited to dive into testing the 4.2 beta when it launches. I was a previous user of Creature2D, which now seems to have ceased development, and you seem to be resurrecting one of my favorite features of that software, and I am so excited to have gotten my Spine license at such a good time.

All I wished for previously was a little more granular pricing for folks who would be unsure the software is right for them, but after having used the software after buying it, price honestly seems more than fair and I would prefer Spine having a sustainable business model than being struggling to survive as a business.

Thank you for making such an awesome, accessible and easy to use piece of software, as a disabled person it's been one of the easiest to handle software packages I have ever used in creative media. I wish all the team the best, and for a bright future for Spine.