I've published a new development update for nCine, covering the work completed between September 2025 and June 2026.
The largest ongoing project is GrAIL (Graphics API Integration Layer), a work-in-progress Render Hardware Interface. The current implementation targets Vulkan and establishes the architecture needed to support additional graphics backends in the future. The article discusses several of the design decisions behind it, including opaque resource handles and immutable bind groups.
Other topics include:
- a new instanced sprite batching path for the existing OpenGL renderer, together with performance benchmarks
- faster directory traversal on Windows using
FindFirstFileExA() - new nCTL components (
Optional,Pair,Span,StringView) - iterator and hash container refactoring
- hashing improvements and benchmark results
- reorganization of application configuration to better support future graphics backends
As usual, the article focuses on implementation details, benchmark data, and the reasoning behind the changes.