v0.117.0-rc30 Whole Worlds

Everything in rc29, plus a way for players to hand a running game their own files, and a fix for machines where nothing would start.

Files from the player

A game can now ask the player for a file, or take one they drop on its window: a logo for their team, an avatar, a save a friend sent, a mod.

• app.openFile({ title = "Team logo", filter = { "png", "jpg" } }, function(name, bytes, err) end) shows the system's own file picker. The game keeps running while it is open. The callback gets the file's name and its bytes, ready for assets.textureFromBytes or for saving with assets.writeBytes.
• function filesDropped(node, files) hears files dropped on the window during play, each as { name = …, bytes = … }.
• A game sees a file's name and contents, never where it is on the player's machine, and only the files the player chose.
• Files are limited to 8 MB unless the game asks for more, and to 64 MB at most.
• It works in the editor's Play and in exported builds on Windows, macOS and Linux. Linux under native Wayland delivers no dropped files, though the picker works there. A browser build and a dedicated server answer "unsupported" for now.

A machine where nothing would start

A machine whose graphics driver failed once could end up unable to start any game or the editor: every start stopped with a wall of GPU errors. The engine keeps a cache of the shaders the driver has built, and one saved while the driver was failing broke every start that read it.

• At start, the engine checks that the driver can still make a texture after reading the cache. If it can't, the cache is thrown away, the GPU is set up again, and the start carries on, with one line saying what happened.
• The cache is no longer saved after any GPU error, and a cache left by a run that never got as far as drawing a frame is not trusted.

Upgrading

Nothing to do.