ezEngine Files

Highlights

Terrain:

• Added a new terrain system with non-destructive, brush based terrain editing. It supports both heightfields as well as voxel volumes. Since brushes are regular objects, moving one updates the affected areas in real-time, and brushes can be part of prefabs to shape the terrain below an object.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/36024816-a161-45bd-9471-1594528ebc28

Render Graph:

• Significantly refactored the rendering infrastructure. A render graph now declares up front all the dependencies, which is used to automatically insert Vulkan barriers. This is a major step forward to fully switching to Vulkan on all platforms in the near future.

• The Inspector can now inspect the render graph of a running application. Passes are shown as rows and resources as columns. This helps debugging rendering related issues (#1968)

• Render pipeline properties can now be driven through blackboards, instead of requiring dedicated code. This makes it significantly simpler to dynamically adjust global rendering options, such as fog. (#1974)

Lighting & Rendering:

• Area light support was added to all light types: point lights gain tube (capsule) length and radius, spot lights an emitter disc radius, and directional lights a source angle for the sun disc. (#1908)

• Added support for light shafts (god rays). (#1890)

• Integrated screen space shadows, adding contact shadows for small scale detail. (#1900)

• The default material now supports parallax occlusion mapping. (#1885)
• Added support for 2D array textures (#1905)

• Decals now support atlas textures for better randomization. (#1999)

• Added a CVar to change the default texture filtering mode. (#1957)

AI & Navigation:

• Added voxel based 3D navigation for objects that move freely through space (flying, underwater, spaceflight). Also added a navigation component that steers an object along a path through such space. #1996)

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3b719bf8-0983-416d-bd17-8ebaf5be3ff1

• Added a Detour Crowd agent component for navmesh based crowd movement with agent avoidance. (#1882)

Particles:

• Added an expression particle behavior that evaluates an expression and writes directly to particle streams. This allows for custom particle behavior without writing C++. (#1884)
• Added an attraction behavior that pulls particles towards nearby particle attractor components, letting effects react to their environment. (#1877)

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5a374cc3-9fb1-4b5d-aba9-0266efb1bee9

• Added turbulence and sphere bounds behaviors. (#1876)

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1c78c0ff-8239-4a6f-a525-58aaa687b234

Trees:

• Kraut tree editing is now done inside the Kraut asset, the external Kraut editor is no longer needed to build procedural trees. (#1873)

Animation:

• Animation clips can now contain custom float curves. Game code can use them to drive custom things, such as moving objects or dimming lights. (#1901)

• Sprite components now support simple animations. (#1967)

Editor:

• Added a Check Assets panel that runs validation rules over all assets of a project, to find problems in the data. Built-in rules check for unknown tags, empty objects and invalid required references. Custom editor plugins can register additional rules. (#1982)

• Log messages can now contain links to assets or objects, making it much easier to deal with problems. (#1947, #1935)
• Debug geometry is now rendered dimmed where it is occluded, so it stays visible through walls while keeping a sense of depth. Gizmos can render themselves with arbitrary lines, and shape icons can be marked to always shine through walls, which is used for spline nodes inside meshes. (#1916)

• Splines no longer need an array of node names. The order of the child objects in the editor defines the order of the spline nodes, and node names don't have to be unique anymore. (#1866)
• Visual graphs (visual scripts, visual shaders) now support comment boxes. (#1871)

• Copy & paste now works for components, arrays and maps, and enum copy/paste was fixed. (#1922, #1941)

Automation & Tooling:

• Added MCP servers for the editor and for running games, which let AI coding agents inspect and drive both. In development builds, any custom game executable enables this with the -mcpport command line option. (#2017)
• Project export and C++ plugin compilation can now be triggered through editor and editor processor command line options, and projects can be created from the command line. (#2010, #2011)
• Added infrastructure to suppress modal dialogs in unattended mode, so automated runs don't get stuck on a message box. (#2008)

Console & Input:

• Added support for custom console actions. The in-game console shows them in a main menu bar and they can be bound to certain keys. Custom ImGui windows can be registered and toggled from there, as well. (#1969)
• Added support for custom mouse cursors. The RTS sample demonstrates this. (#2005)

RML UI:

• The RmlUi debugger can now be used inside ezEngine.
• The RmlUI renderer now also supports gradient decorators. (#1984)

Core:

• Added ezTempAllocator for short lived allocations. (#1860)
• The projectile component gained a radius parameter, so projectiles can sweep a sphere instead of a ray. (#1932)

Build & Platforms:

• The Vulkan build is enabled by default, while D3D11 stays the preferred renderer on Windows. (#1958)
• Added build support for Ubuntu 26, Debian Trixie (13), Arch Linux and Linux Mint 22, and fixed POSIX relative file paths. (#1987, #1909, #1989, #2001)
• Plugin packages can declare build-configuration-specific dependencies. (#2000)
• Updated Qt to 6.11.0, AngelScript to 2.38.0 and Jolt to a recent version. (#1938, #1925, #1973)
• Compiler version detection handles unconventional version strings. (#2012)

Samples:

• Added the Bistro sample project. (#1856)

• The first-person sample gained procedural weapon bobbing and sway, all built with visual scripts. (#2014)

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/affdcf2b-7599-4373-9463-1a89f2276073

• Player movement in the samples was smoothed out. (#1923)

Documentation

The following pages are new or have been notably improved for this release:

Terrain:

• Terrain Plugin Overview (new)
• Terrain Patch Component (new)
• Terrain Volume Component (new)
• Terrain Brush 2D Component (new)
• Terrain Brush 3D Component (new)
• Terrain Materials (new)
• Kraut Tree Asset (new)
• Kraut Tree Component (new)

Rendering:

• Render Graph (new)
• Creating a Render Pass (new)
• Render Pipeline Properties (new)
• Custom Instance Shader Data (new)
• Light Shafts Component (new)
• Point Light Component (updated)
• Spot Light Component (updated)
• Directional Light Component (updated)
• Textures Overview (updated)

AI:

• Voxel Navigation (new)
• Voxel Grid Component (new)
• Voxel Navigation Component (new)
• Voxel Path Test Component (new)
• Detour Crowd Agent Component (new)

Particles:

• Expression Behavior (new)
• Attract Behavior (new)
• Turbulence Behavior (new)
• Bounds Sphere Behavior (new)
• Particle Attractor Component (new)

Tools & Automation:

• MCP Server (new)
• Editor Processor (new)
• Editor Launch Options (updated)
• Asset Check Panel (new)

Misc:

• Expressions (new)
• Mouse Cursor (new)
• Polishing Your Game (new)
• Console (updated)
• Bistro Sample (new)

All Changes

See the Release 26.9 milestone for the full list of closed issues and pull requests.

Contributions

This release contains contributions by:

• @AlexandrKedrov
• @C-Core
• @Mr-Fishy
• @performant32
• @s207152
• @Sanakan8472
• @tccountus
• @veksha
• @wdstudiosma
• @whouishere
• @x0r04rg