Release notes

August 17, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

0.2 - 2026-08-17

BSL improvements

  • Structs can now hold opaque types such as textures and samplers. They can be nested, passed to functions, and returned from them.

    struct CombinedTexture
{
    Texture2D    tex;
    SamplerState samp;
};

float4 SampleHelper(CombinedTexture ct, float2 uv)
{
    return ct.tex.Sample(ct.samp, uv);
}

  • Added support for templated structs and functions, including explicit specialization.

    template<typename T>
struct Pair { T left; T right; };

template<typename T>
T Add(T lhs, T rhs) { return lhs + rhs; }

template<>
float4 Add(float4 lhs, float4 rhs) { return lhs - rhs; }

Shader pipeline

  • Shaders can be compiled ahead of time and loaded from a prebuilt store, via the new cook tool and the ShaderRegistry.
  • Shader backends are now registered per platform and can load as dynamic libraries, so you can cross-compile shaders for other platforms from a host platform.
  • Program bytecode now carries the descriptor tables.
  • Generated SPIR-V is optimized with SPIRV-Tools.

GPU work contexts

  • Added GpuWorkContext, which owns the GPU state for a single thread or fiber.
  • Context owns command buffer pool, parameter set pool, transient scratch memory and a completion tracker.
  • Command buffer submission moved from GpuDevice to GpuWorkContext.
  • Transient memory allocation moved from GpuDevice to GpuWorkContext.
  • TextureUtility and GpuBufferUtility now take a context. RendererMaterial can be used from worker threads through one, and created asynchronously.

Native BC shaders

  • Block compression (BC1/3/4/5/6/7) now run using native shaders on the GPU, for a blazing fast compression
  • Mip-map generation is now also moved to the GPU
  • NVTT is no longer a dependency.

GPU backend unification

  • GPU resource tracking and barrier management moved out of the Vulkan backend into the core, so they are now shared by every backend.
  • GPU submit thread, swap chain and vertex input manager moved out of the Vulkan backend into the core, so they are now shared by every backend.
  • All GPU memory allocators now share a common IGpuAllocator interface.
  • Added GpuTimelineFence, refactor command buffer submission and GPU queues so they utilize them internally.

Async compute

  • Compute and transfer work can run on their own queues, in parallel with graphics.
  • The framework derives the cross-queue synchronization from how each command buffer uses its resources, so no manual semaphore management is needed.

GUI

  • CSS supports line height and character spacing, comments, and negative numbers.
  • CSS parsing reports errors in more detail.
  • Added font families. A family groups the font files that differ only in weight and slant.
  • New Font manager auto-discovers and on-demand loads font families and their faces
  • Added CSS font-weight property that accepts normal, bold, or a number from 100 to 900.
  • Added CSS font-style property that accepts normal, italic or oblique.
  • The CSS font-family property now accepts a family name, or a url() pointing at a single font file.

Input

  • All platform input implementations now sit behind a common IInputBackend interface.
  • Gamepads are detected when connected or disconnected while the application runs.

File system

  • Asynchronous file I/O on Windows, Linux and macOS, through platform specific file data streams that replace the fstream based one.
  • Package loading, internal RTTI operations, the buffered bitstream reader and compression all read through the new asynchronous path.
  • The FileSystem::OpenFile API now takes explicit flags for access control and asynchronous access.
  • Files are now opened with correct sharing modes, which makes sharing violations easier to detect. Existing sharing violations fixed.

Scripting

  • Added ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation support for C# code.

Core

  • MemoryDataStream accepts a custom deleter.
  • Assert dialogs can be disabled, for unattended runs.
  • New console variables dump Vulkan pipeline statistics and pipeline compile times.
  • Added TPool.
  • All platform specific code lives under a single root Platform directory, so a platform and its dependencies stay isolated.
  • Threading primitives and dynamic library handling moved into per-platform headers, so a platform can replace them.
  • Platforms can override compiler and linker flags. Importer builds can be disabled, which consoles do not need.

Breaking changes

  • The GUI is now evaluated in linear space. Re-import all UI textures tagged as sRGB.
  • Vulkan 1.2 is now the minimum required version.
  • B3D_ENABLE_TESTS is renamed to B3D_BUILD_TESTS.
  • Old API script export-tag is split into separate Assembly and API tags, because the old tag controlled two unrelated things.

0.1 - 2026-05-23

  • Initial release.