2026 Devlog
🔗 Neat Shader Tricks, The Future of Graphics APIs, and Other Links
2026-02-16It’s been a while since I did a links round up–here’s the cool stuff I read/watched over the past few months!
Graphics
(image from Shades of Halftone)
I’ve been looking forward to reading Sebastian Aaltonen’s No Graphics API post for a long time, and he recently published it! You should give it a read.
Sascha Willems also recently published How To Vulkan in 2026. If you’re here from my talk on YouTube and are looking for a tutorial on modern Vulkan, you’ll enjoy this.
Other cool graphics stuff…
- Shades of Halftone
- Raindrops On A Puddle
- Dithering Part 1 - Introduction
- The Hand Drawn Graphics Of Silksong
- State of GPU Hardware (End of Year 2025)
- Serializing 64x64 PNG in ~10 LOC
- bc7f: A New Real-Time Analytical BC7 Encoder
- GPU Textures as Derived (Compiled) Data
- Normal Map Compression Revisited
- How Virtual Textures Really Work
Game Design
This is a great write up: Gyms, Zoos, and Museums: Your documentation should be in-game.
These ideas are obvious in hindsight, and you probably already implement some of them, but it’s useful to have language for this stuff.
Other game design links:
I’m always looking for more game design writing. If you have any good suggestions, send me a link! I don’t think we collectively write about design enough.
Marketing
Chris Zukowsi’s The Optimistic View That Indie Games Are In A Golden Age Right Now is a good read. If your gut reaction is to disagree with his thesis, I encourage you to consider whether you’ve formed this opinion based on data.
Other indie marketing links…
Zig Stuff
We recently migrated Zig from GitHub to Codeberg. I’ve also migrated all of my Zig game dev libraries.
It always seemed crazy to me that so much of open source was hosted on a closed source proprietary platform, and that was before Microsoft bought it. Good riddance.
In other news, we’re hosting another Zig Day in Portland! I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make this one, but if you’re in the area consider stopping by. If you’re not, you can check if there’s a Zig Day near you.
Other Zig related links…
- Bypassing Kernel32.dll for Fun and Nonprofit
- io_uring and Grand Central Dispatch std.Io implementations landed
- Don’t Trip[wire] Yourself: Testing Error Recovery in Zig
- Do Not Optimize Away
- Ghostty Is Now Non-Profit
- Flow Control - keybind hints
- zig libc
- Two Package Management Workflow Enhancements
Steam Stuff
- Early Access developers can list their planned “1.0” release date
- Better permissions and controls for Web API Keys
- Updates to Accessibility categories
- New Steam Hardware coming in 2026
Misc
Now that’s what I call a website.
- The Discourse Is A Distributed Denial-Of-Service Attack
- I Fixed Windows Native Development
- On Being Officially Classed as a Robot
- Launching The Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income Initiative
- SOTA On Bay Area House Party
- Communities Are Not Fungible
- “Indie” never really meant “independent”
- The Dilbert Afterlife
- It Follows (warning: graphic)
- Profession - Isaac Asimov
- Fifteen Years
Song of the Month
When father bought the farm we sold the farm;
mistook his blood for rustic charm.
Sold his ghost as an antique, to the city.