As a user of the Cocos Creator engine, I am using Spine for development, but the Spine runtime version for this engine is still stuck at 3.8, which is frustrating as the amazing features of version 4.2 are not available. Is this a support issue with the Spine official or the Cocos Creator official?
Is there a supported runtime version of Spine available for Cocos Creator?
Currently, there is no official Spine runtime maintained by Esoteric Software for Cocos Creator. The integration of Spine with Cocos Creator is managed by the Cocos Creator team, and the available runtime version is indeed outdated, stuck at version 3.8. This is primarily a support issue on the Cocos Creator side, as they are responsible for updating and maintaining the Spine integration within their engine. You might want to check if there are any community efforts or unofficial updates available, but for official support, it would be best to reach out to the Cocos Creator team.
The Cocos team actually was in touch with us about that a year ago. We identified some blockers, then they went to work on those. I'm afraid I've never heard back from them.
The problem with Cocos Creator is that it's basically impossible to create a good integration ourselves, as the Cocos Creator sources are not available. As such, you'd always have to rely on the Cocos team for the maintenance of the integration.