raylib v5.0

It's been 7 months since latest raylib release and 10 years since raylib 1.0 was officially released... what an adventure! In the last 10 years raylib has improved a lot, new functions have been added, many new features and improvements implemented, up to 500 contributors have helped to shape the library as it is today. raylib 5.0 is the final result of all this incredible amount of work and dedication. Here it is the summary with the key features and additions of this NEW major version of raylib.

Some numbers for this release:

• +200 closed issues (for a TOTAL of +1540!)
• +550 commits since previous RELEASE (for a TOTAL of +6950!)
• +35 functions ADDED to raylib API (for a TOTAL of 552!)
• +60 functions REVIEWED/REDESIGNED
• +80 new contributors (for a TOTAL of +500!)

Highlights for raylib 5.0:

• rcore module platform-split: Probably the biggest raylib redesign in the last 10 years. raylib started as a library targeting 3 desktop platforms: Windows, Linux and macOS (thanks to GLFW underlying library) but with the years support for several new platforms has been added (Android, Web, Rapsberry Pi, RPI native...); lot of the platform code was shared so the logic was all together on rcore.c module, separated by compilation flags. This approach was very handy but also made it very difficult to support new platforms and specially painful for contributors not familiar with the module, navigating +8000 lines of code in a single file. A big redesign was really needed but the amount of work required was humungus and quite scary for a solo-developer like me, moreover considering that everything was working and the chances to break things were really high. Fortunately, some contributors were ready for the task (@ubkp, @michaelfiber, @Bigfoot71) and thanks to their initiative and super-hard work, the rcore platform split has been possible! This new raylib architecture greatly improves the platforms maintenance but also greatly simplifies the addition of new platforms. A platforms/rcore_template.c file is provided with the required structure and functions to be filled for the addition of new platforms, actually it has been simplified to mostly filling some pre-defined functions: InitPlatform(), ClosePlatform, PollInputEvents... Undoubtely, this redesign opens the doors to a new era for raylib, letting the users to plug new platforms as desired.

• NEW Platform backend supported: SDL: Thanks to the new rcore platform-split, the addition of new platforms/backends to raylib has been greatly simplified. As a proof of concept, SDL2 platform backend has been added to raylib as an aternative for GLFW library for desktop builds: platforms/rcore_desktop_sdl. Lot of work has been put to provide exactly the same features as the other platforms and carefully test the new implementation. Now SDL2 fans can use this new backend, just providing the required include libraries on compilation and linkage (not included in raylib, like GLFW). SDL backend support also eases the process of supporting a wider range of platforms that already support SDL.

• NEW Platform backend supported: Nintendo Switch (closed source): The addition of the SDL backend was quite a challenge but to really verify the robustness and ease of the new platform plugin system, adding support for a console was a more demanding adventure. Surprisingly, only two days of work were required to add support for Nintendo Switch to raylib! Implementation result showed an outstanding level of simplicity, with a self-contained module (rcore_swith.cpp) supporting graphics and inputs. Unfortunately this module can not be open-sourced due to licensing restrictions.

• NEW Splines drawing and evaluation API: A complete set of functions has been added to draw and evaluate different types of splines: Linear, Basis, Catmull-Rom, Quadratic Bezier and Cubic Bezier. Splines are extremely useful for game development (describe paths, control NPC movement...) but they can also be very useful on tools development (node-conections, elements-movement, 3d modelling, animations...). This was the missing feature on the raylib rshapes module to make it complete! Note that rshapes module can also be used independently of raylib just providing the only 6 functions required for vertex definition and drawing.

• NEW Pseudo-random numbers generator: rprand: After several years of users asking for this missing piece, a brand new pseudo-random generator module has been added to raylib. rprand implements the Xoshiro128** algorithm combined with SplitMix64, specially suited for fast software pseudo-random numbers generation. The module also implies some useful functions to generate non-repetitive random numbers sequences, functionality exposed by raylib. usage of this module can be controlled by a compilation flag, in case the default libc rand() function was preferred.

• NEW Automation Events System API: This new system was first added in raylib 4.0 as an experimental feature but it was a bit clumsy and there was no API exposed to users. For the new raylib 5.0 the system has been redesigned and proper API added for the users. With this new events automation system, users can record input events for later replay, very useful feature for testing automation, tutorials generation, assisted game playing, in-game cinematics, speedruns saving or even AI assited game playing!

• NEW raygui 4.0: The official raylib immediate-mode gui library designed for tools development has been updated to a new version, aligned with raylib 5.0. This new version is a complete redesign of raygui to unify all controls structure and usage, now all controls have the same function signature!. raygui has been battle-tested with the development of +12 published tools in the last few years. 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.

• NEW raylib web examples functionality: Beside the addition of several new examples, the web examples functionality has been improved. Examples have been organized by complexity level, marked with one star for simple examples and up to 4 stars for more complex ones. A new option has been added to web to allow to filter examples by function-name usage, to ease the learning process when looking for an usage example of some function. Finally, open-graph metadata information has been added to all examples individual webpages, improving a the visuals and information when sharing those webpages on social networks, sharing the example screenshot and details.

As always, those are only some highlights of the new raylib 5.0 but there is many more improvements! Support for 16-bit HDR images/textures, SVG loading and scaling support, new OpenGL ES 3.0 graphic backend, new image gradient generators, sound alias loading, improved 3d models loading, multiple optimizations, new bindings, CodeQL integration and much more!

Make sure to check raylib CHANGELOG for a detailed list of changes!

Undoubtely, this is the biggest raylib update in 10 years. Many new features and improvements with a special focus on maintainabiliy and long-term sustainability. Undoubtely, this is the raylib of the future.

Enjoy programming! :)

New Contributors

• @Koromix made their first contribution in #2968
• @Webfra made their first contribution in #2972
• @eltociear made their first contribution in #2976
• @devmanso made their first contribution in #2977
• @gingerBill made their first contribution in #2981
• @jarroddavis68 made their first contribution in #2983
• @RicoP made their first contribution in #2982
• @chocolate42 made their first contribution in #2997
• @eternalStudent made their first contribution in #3006
• @benjamin-thomas made their first contribution in #3014
• @RadsammyT made their first contribution in #3013
• @Soutaisei made their first contribution in #3017
• @szsam made their first contribution in #3021
• @kolunmi made their first contribution in #3031
• @Bigfoot71 made their first contribution in #3032
• @Stopfield made their first contribution in #3033
• @nullstare made their first c...

raylib v4.6-dev

This is not a raylib release

This pre-release is created only for the tag before a BIG library redesign merge.

rcore module has been split per-platform, this is one of the big changes comming to the future raylib 5.0 release.

Just creating this point in time in case everything needs to be reverted (hopefully not).

So, time to merge changes for the new release...

raylib v4.5

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! :)

New Contributors

• @trumoose made their first contribution in #2640
• @daipom made their first contribution in #2643
• @disketteman made their first contribution in #2682
• @acejacek made their first contribution in #2685
• @skylar779 made their first contribution in #2687
• @murilluhenrique made their first contribution in #2696
• @AQuantumPotato made their first contribution in #2701
• @deniska made their first contribution in #2702
• @bXi made their first contribution in #2719
• @realtradam made their first contribution in #2737
• @pure01fx made their first contribution in #2741
• @JupiterRider made their first contribution in #2745
• @SzieberthAdam made their first contribution in #2746
• @hatkidchan made their first contribution in #2750
• @Anut-py made their first contribution in #2753
• @Its-Kenta made their first contribution in #2757
• @IanBand made their first contribution in #2761
• @InKryption made their first contribution in #2763
• @IsaacTCB made their first contribution in #2783
• @RomanAkberov made their first contribution in #2786
• @RGDTAB made their first contribution in #2787
• @SpexGuy made their first contribution in #2793
• @shelvick made their first contribution in #2796
• @Pere001 made their first contribution in #2800
• @jtainer made their first contribution in #2797
• @lxmcf made their first contribution in #2804
• @simendsjo made their first contribution in #2826
• @AlxHnr made their first contribution in #2829
• @turborium made their first contribution in #2838
• @Wytekol made their first contribution in #2846
• @BugraAlptekinSari made their first contribution in #2836
• @charles-l made their first contribution in #2844
• @wtnbgo made their first contribution in #2840
• @ImazighenGhost made their first contribution in #2857
• @masoudd made their first contribution in #2870
• @KOLANICH made their first contribution in #2877
• @PencilAmazing made their first contribution in #2882
• @the-argus made their first contribution in #2905
• @haved made their first contribution in #2909
• @...

raylib v4.2.0

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 and improvements. It has been possible thanks to the many contributors that have 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!)
• +550 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 they 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! :)

New Contributors

• @KonPet made their first contribution in #2111
• @Schweinepriester made their first contribution in #2114
• @WIITD made their first contribution in #2116
• @lukekras made their first contribution in #2121
• @ampers0x26 made their first contribution in #2126
• @sol-vin made their first contribution in #2130
• @ronnieholm made their first contribution in #2136
• @WilledgeR made their first contribution in #2148
• @wolfenrain made their first contribution in #2149
• @ytrms made their first contribution in #2156
• @pancakevirus made their first contribution in #2163
• @jasonswearingen made their first contribution in #2168
• @anders-n08 made their first contribution in #2175
• @Toby222 made their first contribution in #2179
• @HarriP made their first contribution in #2189
• @jdeokkim made their first contribution in #2196
• @petelliott made their first contribution in #2202
• @eutro made their first contribution in #2208
• @ptarabbia made their first contribution in #2215
• @wereii made their first contribution in #2217
• @pitpit made their first contribution in #2233
• @salotz made their first contribution in #2238
• @planetis-m made their first contribution in #2243
• @shivajiva101 made their first contribution in #2253
• @tusharsingh09 made their first contribution in #2254
• @glorantq made their first contribution in #2260
• @gtrxAC made their first contribution in #2264
• @hero2002 made their first contribution in #2270
• @ArchieAtkinson made their first contribution in #2276
• @hartmannathan made their first contribution in #2277
• @MatthewOwens made their first contribution in #2281
• @phil-shenk made their first contribution in #2296
• @royqh1979 made their first contribution in #2298
  ...

raylib v4.0.0

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! :)

raylib v3.7.0

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! :)

raylib v3.5.0

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 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! :)

raylib v3.0.0

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 received 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.

raylib v2.6.0

This release is just intended to keep a tag of raylib 2.6 state before moving to the upcoming raylib 3.0 release.

On raylib 3.0 all modules globals have been moved to a global context state, using the name of the module (in capitals) as the object instance. It implied a very big refactoring of all the code, renaming ALL the global variables used in every module... but new code is more readable and global variables around the code are easily detected.

raylib 3.0 develop branch was used on GGJ2020 to develop a game and compile it for Desktop and HTML5 platforms, it worked very good. raylib 3.0 has also been tested on RaspberryPi and compiled with no errors for all CI available platforms. At this point raylib 3.0 should be stable.

From now on master branch will include this new design, a 2.6 branch will be kept for reference.

raylib v2.5.0

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 filesystem 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.