raylib/HISTORY.md

introduction

I started developing videogames in 2006 and some years later I started teaching videogames development to young people with artistic profile, most of students had never written a single line of code.

I decided to start with C language basis and, after searching for the most simple and easy-to-use library to teach videogames programming, I found WinBGI; it was great and it worked very well with students, in just a couple of weeks, those students that had never written a single line of code were able to program (and understand) a simple PONG game, some of them even a BREAKOUT!

But WinBGI was not the clearer and most organized library for my taste. There were lots of things I found confusing and some function names were not clear enough for most of the students; not to mention the lack of transparencies support and no hardware acceleration.

So, I decided to create my own library, hardware accelerated, clear function names, quite organized, well structured, plain C coding and, the most important, primarily intended to learn videogames programming.

My previous videogames development experience was mostly in C# and XNA and I really loved it, so, I decided to use C# language style notation and XNA naming conventions. That way, students were able to move from raylib to XNA, MonoGame or similar libs extremely easily.

raylib started as a weekend project and after three months of hard work, raylib 1.0 was published on November 2013.

Enjoy it.

notes on raylib 1.1

On April 2014, after 6 month of first raylib release, raylib 1.1 has been released. This new version presents a complete internal redesign of the library to support OpenGL 1.1, OpenGL 3.3+ and OpenGL ES 2.0.

• A new module named rlgl has been added to the library. This new module translates raylib-OpenGL-style immediate mode functions (i.e. rlVertex3f(), rlBegin(), ...) to different versions of OpenGL (1.1, 3.3+, ES2), selectable by one define.

• rlgl also comes with a second new module named raymath, which includes a bunch of useful functions for 3d-math with vectors, matrices and quaternions.

Some other big changes of this new version have been the support for OGG files loading and stream playing, and the support of DDS texture files (compressed and uncompressed) along with mipmaps support.

Lots of code changes and lot of testing have concluded in this amazing new raylib 1.1.

notes on raylib 1.2

On September 2014, after 5 month of raylib 1.1 release, it comes raylib 1.2. Again, this version presents a complete internal redesign of core module to support two new platforms: Android and Raspberry Pi.

It's been some month of really hard work to accomodate raylib to those new platforms while keeping it easy for the users. On Android, raylib manages internally the activity cicle, as well as the inputs; on Raspberry Pi, a complete raw input system has been written from scratch.

• A new display initialization system has been created to support multiple resolutions, adding black bars if required; user only defines desired screen size and it gets properly displayed.

• Now raylib can easily deploy games to Android devices and Raspberry Pi (console mode).

Lots of code changes and lot of testing have concluded in this amazing new raylib 1.2.

In December 2014, new raylib 1.2.2 was published with support to compile directly for web (html5) using emscripten and asm.js.

notes on raylib 1.3

On September 2015, after 1 year of raylib 1.2 release, arrives raylib 1.3. This version adds shaders functionality, improves tremendously textures module and also provides some new modules (camera system, gestures system, immediate-mode gui).

• Shaders support is the biggest addition to raylib 1.3, with support for easy shaders loading and use. Loaded shaders can be attached to 3d models or used as fullscreen postrocessing effects. A bunch of postprocessing shaders are also included in this release, check raylib/shaders folder.

• Textures module has grown to support most of the internal texture formats available in OpenGL (RGB565, RGB888, RGBA5551, RGBA4444, etc.), including compressed texture formats (DXT, ETC1, ETC2, ASTC, PVRT); raylib 1.3 can load .dds, .pkm, .ktx, .astc and .pvr files.

• A brand new camera module offers to the user multiple preconfigured ready-to-use camera systems (free camera, 1st person, 3rd person). Camera modes are very easy to use, just check examples: core_3d_camera_free.c and core_3d_camera_first_person.c.

• New gestures module simplifies gestures detection on Android and HTML5 programs.

• raygui, the new immediate-mode GUI module offers a set of functions to create simple user interfaces, primary intended for tools development. It's still in experimental state but already fully functional.

Most of the examples have been completely rewritten and +10 new examples have been added to show the new raylib features.

Lots of code changes and lot of testing have concluded in this amazing new raylib 1.3.

notes on raylib 1.4

On February 2016, after 4 months of raylib 1.3 release, it comes raylib 1.4. For this new version, lots of parts of the library have been reviewed, lots of bugs have been solved and some interesting features have been added.

• First big addition is a set of Image manipulation functions have been added to crop, resize, colorize, flip, dither and even draw image-to-image or text-to-image. Now a basic image processing can be done before converting the image to texture for usage.

• SpriteFonts system has been improved, adding support for AngelCode fonts (.fnt) and TrueType Fonts (using stb_truetype helper library). Now raylib can read standard .fnt font data and also generate at loading a SpriteFont from a TTF file.

• New physac physics module for basic 2D physics support. Still in development but already functional. Module comes with some usage examples for basic jump and level interaction and also force-based physic movements.

• raymath module has been reviewed; some bugs have been solved and the module has been converted to a header-only file for easier portability, optionally, functions can also be used as inline.

• gestures module has redesigned and simplified, now it can process touch events from any source, including mouse. This way, gestures system can be used on any platform providing an unified way to work with inputs and allowing the user to create multiplatform games with only one source code.

• Raspberry Pi input system has been redesigned to better read raw inputs using generic Linux event handlers (keyboard:stdin, mouse:/dev/input/mouse0, gamepad:/dev/input/js0). Gamepad support has also been added (experimental).

Other important improvements are the functional raycast system for 3D picking, including some ray collision-detection functions, and the addition of two simple functions for persistent data storage. Now raylib user can save and load game data in a file (only some platforms supported). A simple easings module has also been added for values animation.

Up to 8 new code examples have been added to show the new raylib features and +10 complete game samples have been provided to learn how to create some classic games like Arkanoid, Asteroids, Missile Commander, Snake or Tetris.

Lots of code changes and lots of hours of hard work have concluded in this amazing new raylib 1.4.

notes on raylib 1.5

On July 2016, after 5 months of raylib 1.4 release, arrives raylib 1.5. This new version is the biggest boost of the library until now, lots of parts of the library have been redesigned, lots of bugs have been solved and some AMAZING new features have been added.

• VR support: raylib supports Oculus Rift CV1, one of the most anticipated VR devices in the market. Additionally, raylib supports simulated VR stereo rendering, independent of the VR device; it means, raylib can generate stereo renders with custom head-mounted-display device parameteres, that way, any VR device in the market can be simulated in any platform just configuring device parameters (and consequently, lens distortion). To enable VR is extremely easy.

• New materials system: now raylib supports standard material properties for 3D models, including diffuse-ambient-specular colors and diffuse-normal-specular textures. Just assign values to standard material and everything is processed internally.

• New lighting system: added support for up to 8 configurable lights and 3 light types: point, directional and spot lights. Just create a light, configure its parameters and raylib manages render internally for every 3d object using standard material.

• Complete gamepad support on Raspberry Pi: Gamepad system has been completely redesigned. Now multiple gamepads can be easily configured and used; gamepad data is read and processed in raw mode in a second thread.

• Redesigned physics module: physac module has been converted to header only and usage has been simplified. Performance has also been singnificantly improved, now physic objects are managed internally in a second thread.

• Audio chiptunese support and mixing channels: Added support for module audio music (.xm, .mod) loading and playing. Multiple mixing channels are now also supported. All this features thanks to the amazing work of @kd7tck.

Other additions include a 2D camera system, render textures for offline render (and most comprehensive postprocessing) or support for legacy OpenGL 2.1 on desktop platforms.

This new version is so massive that is difficult to list all the improvements, most of raylib modules have been reviewed and rlgl module has been completely redesigned to accomodate to new material-lighting systems and stereo rendering. You can check CHANGELOG file for a more detailed list of changes.

Up to 8 new code examples have been added to show the new raylib features and also some samples to show the usage of rlgl and audio raylib modules as standalone libraries.

Lots of code changes (+400 commits) and lots of hours of hard work have concluded in this amazing new raylib 1.5.

notes on raylib 1.6

On November 2016, only 4 months after raylib 1.5, arrives raylib 1.6. This new version represents another big review of the library and includes some interesting additions. This version conmmemorates raylib 3rd anniversary (raylib 1.0 was published on November 2013) and it is a stepping stone for raylib future. raylib roadmap has been reviewed and redefined to focus on its primary objective: create a simple and easy-to-use library to learn videogames programming. Some of the new features:

• Complete raylib Lua binding. All raylib functions plus the +60 code examples have been ported to Lua, now Lua users can enjoy coding videogames in Lua while using all the internal power of raylib. This addition also open the doors to Lua scripting support for a future raylib-based engine, being able to move game logic (Init, Update, Draw, De-Init) to Lua scripts while keep using raylib functionality.

• Completely redesigned audio module. Based on the new direction taken in raylib 1.5, it has been further improved and more functionality added (+20 new functions) to allow raw audio processing and streaming. FLAC file format support has also been added. In the same line, OpenAL Soft backend is now provided as a static library in Windows to allow static linking and get ride of OpenAL32.dll. Now raylib Windows games are completey self-contained, no external libraries required any more!

• Physac module has been moved to its own repository and it has been improved A LOT, actually, library has been completely rewritten from scratch by @victorfisac, multiple samples have been added together with countless new features to match current standard 2D physic libraries. Results are amazing!

• Camera and gestures modules have been reviewed, highly simplified and ported to single-file header-only libraries for easier portability and usage flexibility. Consequently, camera system usage has been simplified in all examples.

• Improved Gamepad support on Windows and Raspberry Pi with the addition of new functions for custom gamepad configurations but supporting by default PS3 and Xbox-based gamepads.

• Improved textures and text functionality, adding new functions for texture filtering control and better TTF/AngelCode fonts loading and generation support.

Build system improvement. Added support for raylib dynamic library generation (raylib.dll) for users that prefer dynamic library linking. Also thinking on advance users, it has been added pre-configured Visual Studio C++ 2015 solution with raylib project and C/C++ examples for users that prefer that professional IDE and compiler.

New examples, new functions, complete code-base review, multiple bugs corrected... this is raylib 1.6. Enjoy making games.

notes on raylib 1.7

On May 2017, around 6 month after raylib 1.6, comes another raylib instalment, raylib 1.7. This time library has been improved a lot in terms of consistency and cleanness. As stated in this patreon article, this new raylib version has focused efforts in becoming more simple and easy-to-use to learn videogames programming. Some highlights of this new version are:

• More than 30 new functions added to the library, functions to control Window, utils to work with filenames and extensions, functions to draw lines with custom thick, mesh loading, functions for 3d ray collisions detailed detection, funtions for VR simulation and much more... Just check CHANGELOG for a detailed list of additions!

• Support of configuration flags on every raylib module. Advance users can customize raylib just choosing desired features, defining some configuration flags on modules compilation. That way users can control library size and available functionality.

• Improved build system for all supported platforms (Windows, Linux, OSX, RPI, Android, HTML5) with a unique Makefile to compile sources. Added support for Android compilation with a custom standalone toolchain and also multiple build compliation flags.

• New examples and sample games added. All samples material has been reviewed, removing useless examples and adding more comprehensive ones; all material has been ported to latest raylib version and tested in multiple platforms. Examples folder structure has been improved and also build systems.

• Improved library consistency and organization in general. Functions and parameters have been renamed, some parts of the library have been cleaned and simplyfied, some functions has been moved to examples (lighting, Oculus Rift CV1 support) towards a more generic library implementation. Lots of hours have been invested in this process...

Some other features: Gamepad support on HTML5, RPI touch screen support, 32bit audio support, frames timing improvements, public log system, rres file format support, automatic GIF recording...

And here it is another version of raylib, a simple and easy-to-use library to enjoy videogames programming. Enjoy it.

notes on raylib 1.8

October 2017, around 5 months after latest raylib version, another release is published: raylib 1.8. Again, several modules of the library have been reviewed and some new functionality added. Main changes of this new release are:

• Procedural image generation function, a set of new functions have been added to generate gradients, checked, noise and cellular images from scratch. Image generation could be useful for certain textures or learning pourpouses.

• Parametric mesh generation functions, create 3d meshes from scratch just defining a set of parameters, meshes like cube, sphere, cylinder, torus, knot and more can be very useful for prototyping or for lighting and texture testing.

• PBR Materials support, a completely redesigned shaders and material system allows advance materials definition and usage, with fully customizable shaders. Some new functions have been added to generate the environment textures required for PBR shading and a a new complete PBR material example is also provided for reference.

• Custom Android APK build pipeline with simple Makefile. Actually, full code building mechanism based on plain Makefile has been completely reviewed and Android building has been added for sources and also for examples and templates building into final APK package. This way, raylib Android building has been greatly simplified and integrated seamlessly into standard build scripts.

• rlgl module has been completely reviewed and most of the functions renamed for consistency. This way, standalone usage of rlgl is promoted, with a complete example provided. rlgl offers a pseudo-OpenGL 1.1 immediate-mode programming-style layer, with backends to multiple OpenGL versions.

• raymath library has been also reviewed to align with other advance math libraries like GLM. Matrix math has been improved and simplified, some new Quaternion functions have been added and Vector3 functions have been renamed all around the library for consistency with new Vector2 functionality.

Additionally, as always, examples and templates have been reviewed to work with new version (some new examples have been added), all external libraries have been updated to latest stable version and latest Notepad++ and MinGW have been configured to work with new raylib. For a full list of changes, just check CHANGELOG.

New installer provided, web updated, examples re-builded, documentation reviewed... new raylib 1.8 published. Enjoy coding games.

notes on raylib 2.0

It's been 9 month since last raylib version was published, a lots of things have changed since then... This new raylib version represents an inflexion point in the development of the library and so, we jump to a new major version... Here it is the result of almost 5 years and thousands of hours of hard work... here it is... raylib 2.0

In raylib 2.0 the full API has been carefully reviewed for better consistency, some new functionality has been added and the overall raylib experience has been greatly improved... The key features of new version are:

• Complete removal of external dependencies. Finally, raylib does not require external libraries to be installed and linked along with raylib, all required libraries are contained and compiled within raylib. Obviously some external libraries are required but only the strictly platform-dependant ones, the ones that come installed with the OS. So, raylib becomes a self-contained platform-independent games development library.

• Full redesign of audio module to use the amazing miniaudio library, along with external dependencies removal, OpenAL library has been replaced by miniaudio, this brand new library offers automatic dynamic linking with default OS audio systems. Undoubtly, the perfect low-level companion for raylib audio module!

• Support for continuous integration building* through AppVeyor and Travis CI. Consequently, raylib GitHub develop branch has been removed, simplyfing the code-base to a single master branch, always stable. Every time a new commit is deployed, library is compiled for up-to 12 different configurations, including multiple platforms, 32bit/64bit and multiple compiler options! All those binaries are automatically attached to any new release!

• More platforms supported and tested, including BSD family (FreeBSD, openBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly) and Linux-based family platforms (openSUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, NixOS...). raylib has already been added to some package managers! Oh, and last but not less important, Android 64bit is already supported by raylib!

• Support for TCC compiler! Thanks to the lack of external dependencies, raylib can now be easily compiled with a minimal toolchain, like the one provide by Tiny C Compiler. It opens the door to an amazing future, allowing, for example, static linkage of libtcc for runtime compilation of raylib-based code... and the library itself if required! Moreover, TCC is blazing fast, it can compile all raylib in a couple of seconds!

• Refactored all raylib configuration #defines into a centralized config.h header, with more than 40 possible configuration options to compile a totally customizable raylib version including only desired options like supported file-formats or specific functionality support. It allows generating a trully ligth-weight version of the library if desired!

A part of that, lots of new features, like a brand new font rendering and packaging system for TTF fonts with SDF support (thanks to the amazing STB headers), new functions for CPU image data manipulation, new orthographic 3d camera mode, a complete review of raymath.h single-file header-only library for better consistency and performance, new examples and way, way more.

Probably by now, raylib 2.0 is the simplest and easiest-to-use library to enjoy (and learn) videogames programming... but, undoubtly its development has exceeded any initial objective; raylib has become a simple and easy-to-use trully multiplatform portable standalone media library with thousands of possibilities... and that's just the beginning!

notes on raylib 2.5

After almost one years since latest raylib installment, here it is raylib 2.5. A lot of work has been put on this new version and consequently I decided to bump versioning several digits. The complete list of changes and additions is humungous, details can be found in the CHANGELOG, and here it is a short recap with the highlight improvements.

• New window management and file system functions to query monitor information, deal with clipboard, check directory files info and even launch a URL with default system web browser. Experimental High-DPI monitor support has also been added through a compile flag.

• Redesigned Gamepad mechanism, now generic for all platforms and gamepads, no more specific gamepad configurations. Redesigned UWP input system, now raylib supports UWP seamlessly, previous implementation required a custom input system implemented in user code.

• rlgl module has been redesigned to support a unique buffer for shapes drawing batching, including LINES, TRIANGLES, QUADS in the same indexed buffer, also added support for multi-buffering if required. Additionally, rlPushMatrix()/rlPopMatrix() functionality has been reviewed to behave exactly like OpenGL 1.1, models_rlgl_solar_system example has been added to illustrate this behaviour.

• VR simulator has been reviewed to allow custom configuration of Head-Mounted-Device parameters and distortion shader, core_vr_simulator has been properly adapted to showcase this new functionality, now the VR simulator is a generic configurable stereo rendering system that allows any VR device simulation with just a few lines of code or even dynamic tweaking of HMD parameters.

• Support for Unicode text drawing; now raylib processes UTF8 strings on drawing, supporting Unicode codepoints, allowing rendering mostly any existent language (as long as the font with the glyphs is provided). An amazing example showing this feature has also been added: text_unicode.

• Brand new text management API, with the addition of multiple functions to deal with string data, including functionality like replace, insert, join, split, append, to uppercase, to lower... Note that most of those functions are intended for text management on rendering, using pre-loaded internal buffers, avoiding new memory allocation that user should free manually.

• Multiple new shapes and textures drawing functions to support rings (DrawRing(), DrawRingLines()), circle sectors (DrawCircleSector(), DrawCircleSectorLines()), rounded rectangles (DrawRectangleRounded(), DrawRectangleRoundedLines()) and also n-patch textures (DrawTextureNPatch()), detailed examples have been added to illustrate all this new functionality.

• Experimental cubemap support, to automatically load multiple cubemap layouts (LoadTextureCubemap()). It required some internal rlgl redesign to allow cubemap textures.

• Skeletal animation support for 3d models, this addition implied a redesign of Model data structure to accomodate multiple mesh/multiple materials support and bones information. Multiple models functions have been reviewed and added on this process, also glTF models loading support has been added.

This is a just a brief list with some of the changes of the new raylib 2.5 but there is way more, about 70 new functions have been added and several subsystems have been redesigned. More than 30 new examples have been created to show the new functionalities and better illustrate already available ones.

It has been a long year of hard work to make raylib a solid technology to develop new products over it.

notes on raylib 3.0

After 10 months of intense development, new raylib version is ready. Despite primary intended as a minor release, the CHANGELIST has grown so big and the library has changed so much internally that it finally became a major release. Library internal ABI has reveived a big redesign and review, targeting portability, integration with other platforms and making it a perfect option for other progamming language bindings.

• All global variables from the multiple raylib modules have been moved to a global context state, it has several benefits, first, better code readability with more comprehensive variables naming and categorization (organized by types, i.e. CORE.Window.display.width, CORE.Input.Keyboard.currentKeyState or RLGL.State.modelview). Second, it allows better memory management to load global context state dynamically when required (not at the moment), making it easy to implement a hot-reloading mechanism if desired.

• All memory allocations on raylib and its dependencies now use RL_MALLOC, RL_FREE and similar macros. Now users can easely hook their own memory allocations mechanism if desired, having more control over memory allocated internally by the library. Additionally, it makes it easier to port the library to embedded devices where memory control is critical. For more info check raylib issue #1074.

• All I/O file accesses from raylib are being moved to memory data access, now all I/O file access is centralized into just four functions: LoadFileData(), SaveFileData(), LoadFileText(), SaveFileText(). Users can just update those functions to any I/O file system. This change makes it easier to integrate raylib with Virtual File Systems or custom I/O file implementations.

• All raylib data structures have been reviewed and optimized for pass-by-value usage. One of raylib distinctive design decisions is that most of its functions receive and return data by value. This design makes raylib really simple for newcomers, avoiding pointers and allowing complete access to all structures data in a simple way. The downside is that data is copied on stack every function call and that copy could be costly so, all raylib data structures have been optimized to stay under 64 bytes for fast copy and retrieve.

• All raylib tracelog messages have been reviewd and categorized for a more comprehensive output information when developing raylib applications, now all display, input, timer, platform, auxiliar libraries, file-accesses, data loading/unloading issues are properly reported with more detailed and visual messages.

• raudio module has been internally reviewed to accomodate the new Music structure (converted from previous pointer format) and the module has been adapted to the highly improved miniaudio v0.10.

• text module reviewed to improve fonts generation and text management functions, Font structure has been redesigned to better accomodate characters data, decoupling individual characters as Image glyphs from the font atlas parameters. Several improvements have been made to better support Unicode strings with UTF-8 encoding.

• Multiple new examples added (most of them contributed by raylib users) and all examples reviewed for correct execution on most of the supported platforms, specially Web and Raspberry Pi. A detailed categorized table has been created on github for easy examples navigation and code access.

• New GitHub Actions CI system has been implemented for Windows, Linux and macOS code and examples compilation on every new commit or PR to make sure library keeps stable and usable with no breaking bugs.

Note that only key changes are listed here but there is way more! About 30 new functions, multiple functions reviewed, bindings to +40 programming languages and great samples/demos/tutorials created by the community, including raylib integration with Spine, Unity, Tiled, Nuklear, enet and more!

It has been 10 months of improvements to create the best raylib ever.

Welcome to raylib 3.0.

notes on raylib 3.5 - 7th Anniversary Edition

It's December 25th... this crazy 2020 is about to finish and finally the holidays gave me some time to put a new version of raylib. It's been 9 months since last release and last November raylib become 7 years old... I was not able to release this new version back then but here it is. Many changes and improvements have happened in those months and, even, last August, raylib was awarded with an Epic Megagrant! Bindings list kept growing to +50 programming languages and some new platforms have been supported. Let's see this new version details:

First, some general numbers of this new update:

• +650 commits since previous RELEASE
• +30 functions ADDED (for a TOTAL of 475!)
• +90 functions REVIEWED/REDESIGNED
• +30 contributors (for a TOTAL of 170!)
• +8 new examples (for a TOTAL of +120!)

Here the list with some highlights for raylib 3.5.

• NEW Platform supported: Raspberry Pi 4 native mode (no X11 windows) through DRM subsystem and GBM API. Actually this is a really interesting improvement because it opens the door to raylib to support other embedded platforms (Odroid, GameShell, NanoPi...). Also worth mentioning the un-official homebrew ports of raylib for PS4 and PSVita.

• NEW configuration options exposed: For custom raylib builds, config.h now exposes more than 150 flags and defines to build raylib with only the desired features, for example, it allows to build a minimal raylib library in just some KB removing all external data filetypes supported, very useful to generate small executables or embedded devices.

• NEW automatic GIF recording feature: Actually, automatic GIF recording (CTRL+F12) for any raylib application has been available for some versions but this feature was really slow and low-performant using an old gif library with many file-accesses. It has been replaced by a high-performant alternative (msf_gif.h) that operates directly on memory... and actually works very well! Try it out!

• NEW RenderBatch system: rlgl module has been redesigned to support custom render batches to allow grouping draw calls as desired, previous implementation just had one default render batch. This feature has not been exposed to raylib API yet but it can be used by advance users dealing with rlgl directly. For example, multiple RenderBatch can be created for 2D sprites and 3D geometry independently.

• NEW Framebuffer system: rlgl module now exposes an API for custom Framebuffer attachments (including cubemaps!). raylib RenderTexture is a basic use-case, just allowing color and depth textures, but this new API allows the creation of more advance Framebuffers with multiple attachments, like the G-Buffers. GenTexture*() functions have been redesigned to use this new API.

• Improved software rendering: raylib Image*() API is intended for software rendering, for those cases when no GPU or no Window is available. Those functions operate directly with multi-format pixel data on RAM and they have been completely redesigned to be way faster, specially for small resolutions and retro-gaming. Low-end embedded devices like microcontrollers with custom displays could benefit of this raylib functionality!

• File loading from memory: Multiple functions have been redesigned to load data from memory buffers instead of directly accessing the files, now all raylib file loading/saving goes through a couple of functions that load data into memory. This feature allows custom virtual-file-systems and it gives more control to the user to access data already loaded in memory (i.e. images, fonts, sounds...).

• NEW Window states management system: raylib core module has been redesigned to support Window state check and setup more easily and also before/after Window initialization, SetConfigFlags() has been reviewed and SetWindowState() has been added to control Window minification, maximization, hidding, focusing, topmost and more.

• NEW GitHub Actions CI/CD system: Previous CI implementation has been reviewed and improved a lot to support multiple build configurations (platforms, compilers, static/shared build) and also an automatic deploy system has been implemented to automatically attach the diferent generated artifacts to every new release. As the system seems to work very good, previous CI platforms (AppVeyor/TravisCI) have been removed.

A part of those changes, many new functions have been added, some redundant functions removed and many functions have been reviewed for consistency with the full API (function name, parameters name and order, code formatting...). Again, this release represents is a great improvement for raylib and marks the way forward for the library. Make sure to check CHANGELOG for details! Hope you enjoy it!

Happy holidays! :)

notes on raylib 3.7

April 2021, it's been about 4 months since last raylib release and here it is already a new one, this time with a bunch of internal redesigns and improvements. Surprisingly, on April the 8th I was awarded for a second time with the Google Open Source Peer Bonus Award for my contribution to open source world with raylib and it seems the library is getting some traction, what a better moment for a new release? Let's see what can be found in this new version:

Let's start with some numbers:

• +100 closed issues (for a TOTAL of +900!)
• +400 commits since previous RELEASE
• +50 functions ADDED (+30 of them to rlgl API)
• +30 functions REVIEWED/REDESIGNED
• +40 new contributors (for a TOTAL of +210!)

Highlights for raylib 3.7:

• REDESIGNED: rlgl module for greater abstraction level. This suppose an important change in raylib architecture, now rlgl functionality is self-contained in the module and used by higher-level layers (specially by core module), those upper layers are the ones that expose functionality to the main API when required, for example the Shaders, Mesh and Materials functionality. Multiple rlgl functions have been renamed for consistency, in this case, following the rl*() prefix convention. Functions have also been reorganized internally by categories and GenTexture*() functions have been removed from the library and moved to models_material_pbr example.

• REDESIGNED: VR simulator and stereo rendering mechanism. A brand new API has been added, more comprehensive and better integrated with raylib, the new stereo rendering can be combined with RenderTexture and Shader API allowing the user to manage fbo and distortion shader directly. Also, the new rendering mechanism supports instancing on stereo rendering! Check the updated core_vr_simulator example for reference!

• ADDED: New file access callbacks system. Several new callback functions have been added to the API to allow custom file loaders. A nice example it's the raylib integration with a virtual file system PhysFS.

• ADDED: glTF animations support. glTF is the preferred models file format to be used with raylib and along the addition of a models animation API on latest raylib versions, now animations support for glTF format has come to raylib, thanks for this great contribution to Hristo Stamenov

• ADDED: Music streaming support from memory. raylib has been adding the Load*FromMemory() option to all its supported file formats but music streaming was not supported yet... until now. Thanks to this great contribution by Agnis "NeZvērs" Aldiņš, now raylib supports music streamming from memory data for all supported file formats: WAV, OGG, MP3, FLAC, XM and MOD.

• RENAMED: enums values for consistency. Most raylib enums names and values names have been renamed for consistency, now all value names start with the type of data they represent. It increases clarity and readability when using those values and also improves overall library consistency.

Beside those key changes, many functions have been reviewed with improvements and bug fixes, many of them contributed by the community! Thanks! And again, this release sets a new milestone for raylib library. Make sure to check CHANGELOG for detailed list of changes! Hope you enjoy this new raylib installment!

Happy gamedev/tools/graphics programming! :)

notes on raylib 4.0 - 8th Anniversary Edition

It's been about 6 months since last raylib release and it's been 8 years since I started with this project, what an adventure! It's time for a new release: raylib 4.0, the biggest release ever and an inflexion point for the library. Many hours have been put in this release to make it special, many library details have been polished: syntax, naming conventions, code comments, functions descriptions, log outputs... Almost all the issues have been closed (only 3 remain open at the moment of this writing) and some amazing new features have been added. I expect this raylib 4.0 to be a long term version (LTS), stable and complete enough for any new graphic/game/tool application development.

Let's start with some numbers:

• +130 closed issues (for a TOTAL of +1030!)
• +550 commits since previous RELEASE
• +20 functions ADDED to raylib API
• +60 functions ADDED to rlgl API
• +40 functions RENAMED/REVIEWED/REDESIGNED
• +60 new contributors (for a TOTAL of +275!)

Highlights for raylib 4.0:

• Naming consistency and coherency: raylib API has been completely reviewed to be consistent on naming conventions for data structures and functions, comments and descriptions have been reviewed, also the syntax of many symbols for consistency; some functions and structs have been renamed (i.e. struct CharInfo to struct GlyphInfo). Output log messages have been also improved to show more info to the users. Several articles have been writen in this process: raylib_syntax analysis and raylib API usage analysis. In general, a big polishment of the library to make it more consistent and coherent.

• Event Automation System: This new experimental feature has been added for future usage, it allows to record input events and re-play them automatically. This feature could be very useful to automatize examples testing but also for tutorials with assited game playing, in-game cinematics, speedruns, AI playing and more! Note this feature is still experimental.

• Custom game-loop control: As requested by some advance users, the game-loop control can be exposed compiling raylib with the config flag: SUPPORT_CUSTOM_FRAME_CONTROL. It's intended for advance users that want to control the events polling and also the timming mechanisms of their games.

• rlgl 4.0: This module has been completely decoupled from platform layer and raylib, now rlgl single-file header-only library only depends on the multiple OpenGL backends supported, even the dependency on raymath has been removed. Additionally, support for OpenGL 4.3 has been added, supporting compute shaders and Shader Storage Buffer Objects (SSBO). Now rlgl can be used as a complete standalone portable library to wrap several OpenGL version and providing a simple and easy-to-use pseudo-OpenGL immediate-mode API.

• raymath 1.5: This module has been reviewed and some new conventions have been adopted to make it more portable and self-contained:

  • Functions are self-contained, no function use other raymath function inside, required code is directly re-implemented
  • Functions input parameters are always received by value
  • Functions use always a "result" variable for return
  • Angles are always in radians (DEG2RAD/RAD2DEG macros provided for convenience)

• raygui 3.0: The official raylib immediate-mode gui library (included in raylib/src/extras) has been updated to a new version, embedding the icons collection and adding mulstiple improvements. It has been simplified and constrained for a better focus on its task: provide a simple and easy-to-use immediate-mode-gui library for small tools development.

• raylib_parser: Added new tool to parse raylib.h and tokenize its enums, structs and functions, extracting all required info (name, params, descriptions...) into custom output formats (TXT, XML, JSON...) for further processing. This tool is specially useful to automatize bindings generation. Hopefully, this tool will make life easier to binding creators to update their bindings for raylib 4.0 or adding new ones!

• Zig and Odin official support for raylib: Those two new amazing programming languages are officially supporting raylib, Zig lists raylib as an official example for C interoperatibility and Odin officially supports raylib as a vendor library. Both languages also have several bingings to raylib. Additionally, Zig build system supported has been added to compile raylib library and examples.

Those are some of the key features for this new release but actually there is way more! Support for VOX (MagikaVoxel) 3d model format has been added, new raylib_game_template repo shared, new EncodeDataBase64() and DecodeDataBase64() functions added, improved HiDPI support, new DrawTextPro() with support for text rotations, completely reviewed glTF models loading, added SeekMusicStream() for music seeking, many new examples and +20 examples reviewed... hundreds of improvements and bug fixes! Make sure to check CHANGELOG for a detailed list of changes!

Undoubtely, this is the best raylib ever. Enjoy gamedev/tools/graphics programming! :)

notes on raylib 4.2

New raylib release! Nine months after latest raylib, here it is a new version. It was supposed to be just a small update but, actually, it's a huge update with lots of changes a improvements. It has been possible thanks to the many contributors that has helped with issues and improvements, it's the update with more contributors to date and that's amazing!

Some numbers to start with:

• +200 closed issues (for a TOTAL of 1230!)
• +540 commits since previous RELEASE (for a TOTAL of +6000!)
• +20 functions ADDED to raylib API (for a TOTAL of 502!)
• +60 functions REVIEWED/REDESIGNED
• +70 new contributors (for a TOTAL of +360!)

Highlights for raylib 4.2:

• raylib extra libraries cleanup: raylib has been on diet and all the extra libraries included on previous releases have been removed from raylib. Now raylib only includes the original 7 raylib modules: rcore, rlgl, rshapes, rtextures, rtext, rmodels and raudio. But no worries, extra libraries have not been deleted, they have been moved to their own repos for better maintainability and more focus on its functionality. The libraries moved out from raylib repo are: raygui, physac, rmem, reasings and raudio (standalone mode). On that same line, a new amazing GitHub group: raylib-extras has been created by @JeffM2501 to contain raylib extra libraries as well as other raylib add-ons provided by the community. Jeff has done an amazing work on that line, providing multiple libraries and examples for raylib, like custom first-person and third person camera systems, Dear ImGui raylib integration, multiple specific examples and even a complete RPG Game Example! Great work Jeff! :D

• raylib examples review: The +120 raylib examples have been reviewed to add clearer information about when the were first created (raylib version used) and when they were updated for the last time. But the greatest improvement for users has been the addition of an estimated difficulty level for every example, web has been updated accordingly to reflect those difficulty levels. Now examples are classified with 1 to 4 stars depending on difficulty to help users with their learning process. Personally, I think this "small" addition could be a game-changer to better guide new users on the library adoption! Additionally, this new raylib release includes 7 new examples; the most interesting one: text_codepoints_loading that illustrates how to load and draw custom codepoints from a font file, very useful for Asian languages.

• rres 1.0: New rres resources packaging file-format, including a rres-raylib library implementation and rrespacker tool. rres file format has been under development for +8 years and it was originally created to be part of raylib. It was highly inspired by XNA XNB resources file format but design has changed a lot along the years. This first release of the format specs is engine-agnostic and has been designed to be portable to any engine, including lots of professional features like data processing, compression and encryption.

• raygui 3.2: The official raylib immediate-mode gui library designed for tools development has been updated to a new version aligned with raylib 4.2. Multiple controls have been reviewed for library consistency, now all controls follow a similar function signature. It has been battle-tested with the development of +8 published tools in the last months. The tools can be seen and used for free in the raylib technologies tools page. Worth mentioning that several of those tools have been open sourced for anyone to use, compile, contribute or learn how the code works.

• raylib_parser: Multiple contributors using the tool to automatize bindings creation have contributed with improvements of this tool to parse raylib.h (and other raylib-style headers) to tokenize its enums, structs and functions. Processed data can be exported to custom file formats (i.e XML, JSON, LUA) for bindings generation or even docs generation if required.

• New file system API: Current API has been redesigned to be more comprehensive and better aligned with raylib naming conventions, two new functions are provided LoadDirectoryFiles()/LoadDirectoryFilesEx() to load a FilePathList for provided path, supporting extension filtering and recursive directory scan. LoadDroppedFiles() has been renamed to better reflect its internal functionality. Now, all raylib functions that start with Load*() allocate memory internally and a equivalent Unload*() function is defined to take care of that memory internally when not required any more!

• New audio stream processors API (experimental): Now real-time audio stream data processors can be added using callbacks to played Music. It allows users to create custom effects for audio like delays of low-pass-filtering (example provided). The new API uses a callback system and it's still _ highly experimental_, it differs from the usual level of complexity that provides raylib and it is intended for advance users. It could change in the future but, actually, raudio module is in the spotlight for future updates; miniaudio implements a new higher-level API that can be useful in the future for raylib.

As always, there are more improvements than the key features listed, make sure to check raylib CHANGELOG for the detailed list of changes; for this release a WARNING flag has been added to all the changes that could affect bindings or productivity code. raylib keeps improving one more version and a special focus on maintainability has been put on the library for the future. Specific/advance functionality will be provided through raylib-extras repos and raylib main repo devlelopment will be focused on what made raylib popular: being a simple and easy-to-use library to enjoy videogames programming.

Enjoy gamedev/tools/graphics programming! :)

notes on raylib 4.5

It's been 7 months since latest raylib release. As usual, many parts of the library have been reviewed and improved along those months. Many issues have been closed, staying under 10 open issues at the moment of this writting and also many PRs from contributors have been received, reviewed and merged into raylib library. Some new functions have been added and some others have been removed to improve library coherence and avoid moving too high level, giving the users the tools to implement advance functionality themselfs over raylib. Again, this is a big release with a considerable amount of changes and improvements. Here it is a small summary highlighting this new rayib 4.5.

Some numbers for this release:

• +100 closed issues (for a TOTAL of +1340!)
• +350 commits since previous RELEASE (for a TOTAL of +6350!)
• +25 functions ADDED to raylib API (for a TOTAL of 516!)
• +40 functions REVIEWED/REDESIGNED
• +40 new contributors (for a TOTAL of 405!)

Highlights for raylib 4.5:

• NEW Improved ANGLE support on Desktop platforms: Support for OpenGL ES 2.0 on Desktop platforms (Windows, Linux, macOS) has been reviewed by @wtnbgo GitHub user. Now raylib can be compiled on desktop for OpenGL ES 2.0 and linked against ANGLE. This small addition open the door to building raylib for all ANGLE supported backends: Direct3D 11, Vulkan and Metal. Please note that this new feature is still experimental and requires further testing!

• NEW Camera module: A brand new implementation from scratch for rcamera module, contributed by @Crydsch GitHub user! New camera system is simpler, more flexible, more granular and more extendable. Specific camera math transformations (movement/rotation) have been moved to individual functions, exposing them to users if required. Global state has been removed from the module and standalone usage has been greatly improved; now rcamera.h single-file header-only library can be used externally, independently of raylib. A new UpdateCameraPro() function has been added to address input-dependency of UpdateCamera(), now advance users have full control over camera inputs and movement/rotation speeds!

• NEW Support for M3D models and M3D/GLTF animations: 3d models animations support has been a limited aspect of raylib for long time, some versions ago IQM animations were supported but raylib 4.5 also adds support for the brand new M3D file format, including animations and the long expected support for GLTF animations! The new M3D file format is simple, portable, feature complete, extensible and open source. It also provides a complete set of tools to export/visualize M3D models from/to Blender! Now raylib supports up to 3 model file-formats with animations: IQM, GLTF and M3D.

• NEW Support QOA audio format (import/export): Just a couple of months ago the new QOA file format was published, a very simple, portable and open source quite-ok-audio file format. raylib already supports it, added to raudio module and including audio loading from file, loading from memory, streaming from file, streaming from memory and exporting to QOA audio format. Because simplicity really matters to raylib!

• NEW Module for compressed textures loading: rl_gputex, a portable single-file header-only small library to load compressed texture file-formats (DDS, PKM, KTX, PVR, ASTC). Provided functionality is not new to raylib but it was part of the raylib rtextures module, now it has been moved into a separate self-contained library, improving portability. Note that this module is only intended to load compressed data from files, ready to be uploaded to GPU, no compression/decompression functionality is provided. This change is a first step towards a better modularization of raylib library.

• Reviewed rlgl module for automatic limits checking: Again, rlgl has been reviewed to simplify usage. Now users do not need to worry about reaching the internal render-batch limits when they send their triangles to draw 2d/3d, rlgl manages it automatically! This change allows a great simplification for other modules like rshapes, rtextures and rmodels that do not need to worry about bufffer overflows and can just define as many vertex as desired!

• Reviewed rshapes module to minimize the rlgl dependency: Now rshapes 2d shapes drawing functions only depend on 6 low-level functions: rlBegin(), rlEnd(), rlVertex3f(), rlTexCoord2f(), rlNormal3f(), rlSetTexture(). With only those pseudo-OpenGl 1.1 minimal functionality, everything can be drawn! This improvement converts rshapes module in a self-contained, portable shapes-drawing library that can be used independently of raylib, as far as entry points for those 6 functions are provided by the user. It even allows to be used for software rendering, with the proper backend!

• Added data structures validation functions: Multiple functions have been added by @RobLoach GitHub user to ease the validation of raylib data structures: IsImageReady(), IsTextureReady(), IsSoundReady()... Now users have a simple mechanism to make sure data has been correctly loaded, instead of checking internal structure values by themselfs.

As usual, those are only some highlights but there is much more! New image generators, new color transformation functionality, improved blending support for color/alpha, etc... Make sure to check raylib CHANGELOG for a detailed list of changes! Please, note that all breaking changes have been flagged with a WARNING in the CHANGELOG, specially useful for binding creators!

raylib keeps improving one more version with a special focus on maintainability and sustainability. Always working towards making the library more simple and easy-to-use.

Let's keep enjoying games/tools/graphics programming! :)