2026 Devlog

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🔗 Spring & Early Summer Links

2026-08-01

A link roundup is overdue! This update covers some Zig updates, changes to how Steam surfaces new games, talks I enjoyed and more.

Zig Stuff

We released Zig 0.16.0 in April, and are gearing up for Zig 0.17.0 now. Mitchell Hashimoto also pledged another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation.

The Zig core team is now 15 people, and lots of exciting progress is being made. In particular, the recent incremental compilation improvements have been a game changer for me. Pun not intended, but I’ll take it.

I’ll post some stats & a demo once I’m ready to show off my new game, but TLDR I can rebuild my game+engine essentially instantly now.

On a semi-related note, Software You Can Love 2026 tickets are now on sale! My shader workshop is sold out, but tickets to tables day and to both talk days are still available.

I’ve also published some more game dev libraries in Zig here. I’ll try to do dedicated write ups on the new ones when I have time.

Programming

Lots of great talks are coming out of Software Should Work:

Steam Stuff

Valve has been making some changes to how smaller games are surfaced on Steam.

Indies always get worried when this happens. While I dislike platform capitalism, according to vginsights indies make up about 35% of the revenue generated on Steam, so I think a reasonable baseline assumption is “Valve isn’t trying to squash indies”.

In this case, Valve raised the cutoff required to show up on popular upcoming, but they also introduced a personalized game release calendar. If you’re logged into Steam you can see it here.

I don’t think there’s enough data yet to draw definite conclusions, but this seems like an improvement to me. For games at the borderline, popular upcoming was very sensitive to the raw number of games sharing a release date.

This resulted in a lot of strategizing around release timing. When there’s a meta like this that’s relevant to you, you should probably learn it, but we’re all better off if we can just focus on making good games instead.

Other Steam updates:

Upcoming Steam Events
Update to Store Tags: Additionas, Removals, and Edits
Updates to Pricing Conversion Tools
Steamworks SDK 1.65 has been released
- SetGamePerformanceSetting and SetGameRenderResolution caught my eye, not sure where this info is surfaced in the dashboard though

Game Dev

Eric Lengyel dedicated the Slug algorithm into the public domain:

I was granted a patent for the Slug algorithm in 2019, and I legally have exclusive rights to it until the year 2038. But I think that’s too long. The patent has already served its purpose well, and I believe that holding on to it any longer benefits nobody. Therefore, effective today, I am permanently and irrevocably dedicating the Slug patent to the public domain.

Also, the creator of Box2D recently released Box3D–a 3D physics library for games written in C17.

Also, PIGCON happened! I’ll share my talk once it’s uploaded.

Misc

The Most Disrespectful Guitar Solo In History
- The actual solo is here, but you’ll want to watch the commentary first
The Artist Who Colored Ghibli
Respectable People Don’t Litter
Being John Rawls

Song of the Month

I wanna contribute to the chaos—
I don't wanna watch, and then complain.
'Cause I am through finding blame
that is a decision that I have made.

Twin Size Mattress - The Front Bottoms

🔗 Neat Shader Tricks, The Future of Graphics APIs, and Other Links

2026-02-16

It’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…

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.

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.

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.

Steam Stuff

Misc

Now that’s what I call a website.

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.

Olde Tyme Mem’ry - Mischief Brew

2026 Devlog

🔗 Spring & Early Summer Links

Zig Stuff

Programming

Steam Stuff

Game Dev

Misc

Song of the Month

🔗 Neat Shader Tricks, The Future of Graphics APIs, and Other Links

Graphics

Game Design

Marketing

Zig Stuff

Steam Stuff

Misc

Song of the Month

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