SwirEngine 1.4.0

SwirEngine 1.4.0 is the Production World & Engine Power release line of a Python-first 2D/3D game engine with a stable 1.x compatibility contract. It combines an approachable gameplay API with a real OpenGL renderer, production-oriented world systems, physics, character controllers, GPU VFX, scalable visibility, asset processing, editor authoring, multiplayer foundations and native desktop export.

The 1.4 roadmap is complete at 10/10 = 100.0%. Publication is still treated as a separate safety gate: the final 1.4.0 branch must pass the strict release contract, full CI/runtime/packaging matrix and tag/version checks before PyPI and the GitHub Release are created.

████████████████████ 100.0% — 10/10

Install

Verified support covers Python 3.10-3.13 on Windows, Linux and macOS, plus Python 3.14 on Windows x86-64 through the dedicated validated native-wheel path.

python -m pip install -U swirengine

Optional audio support:

python -m pip install -U "swirengine[audio]"

Quick 2D game

from swirengine import Color, Game, Rectangle2D


game = Game("My 2D Game", 1280, 720, mode="2d")
player = game.add(Rectangle2D(0, 0, 120, 70, Color(0.1, 0.75, 1.0, 1.0)))

@game.update
def update(dt):
    speed = 380
    if game.key("A"):
        player.x -= speed * dt
    if game.key("D"):
        player.x += speed * dt
    if game.key("W"):
        player.y += speed * dt
    if game.key("S"):
        player.y -= speed * dt

game.run()

Quick 3D game

from swirengine import Color, Cube3D, Game, Vec3


game = Game("My 3D Game", 1280, 720, mode="3d")
cube = game.add(Cube3D(position=Vec3(0, 0, -4), color=Color(0.2, 0.7, 1.0, 1.0)))

@game.update
def update(dt):
    cube.rotation.y += 50 * dt
    cube.rotation.x += 25 * dt

game.run()

What is new in 1.4

1. Terrain + World LOD

• immutable heightmaps and chunk mesh generation
• distance-based LOD with bounded local chunk selection
• terrain material/splat metadata and heightfield ground queries
• direct LargeWorldStreamer integration
• deterministic cache/LOD performance contracts and real OpenGL validation

2. Physics 2.0

• additive PhysicsScene3D / PhysicsBody3D APIs
• deterministic box/sphere contact generation and response
• friction, restitution, sleeping/wake behavior and distance joints
• shape sweeps and continuous-collision foundations
• backend-ready public protocol while preserving established 1.x physics APIs

3. Character Controllers

• production CharacterController3D
• first-person, third-person and platformer presets
• grounded state, jumping, coyote time and jump buffering
• step-up, slope handling and ground snapping
• camera collision/synchronization and navigation steering

4. Renderer 2.0

• opt-in Renderer2, Renderer2Settings and Decal3D
• one-to-four cascade directional shadows with texel stabilization and 3×3 PCF
• depth/view-normal prepass and SSAO with depth-aware blur
• HDR bloom and bounded screen-space decals
• deterministic frame-pass diagnostics
• real EGL/OpenGL 3.3 execution validation

5. GPU VFX + Particle Power

• GPUParticleEmitter3D and Game.gpu_particles(...)
• OpenGL 3.3 transform-feedback ping-pong simulation
• point, box and sphere emitters
• GPU gravity, drag, lifetime, size and color evolution
• HDR textured sprite particles, alpha/additive blending and trails
• built-in instanced mesh-particle rendering

6. Asset Pipeline 2.0

• bounded background import with caller-thread finalization
• SHA-256 source/dependency fingerprints
• transitive hot-reload and cache invalidation
• persistent content-addressed derived artifacts
• dependency-aware glTF/GLB processing
• stronger PBR preservation, conservative mesh cleanup and opt-in texture optimization

7. Scene Acceleration + Occlusion

• deterministic static BVH and separate dynamic-refit layer
• conservative world AABBs and broad frustum pruning
• SceneAcceleratedRenderer2 candidate-view integration
• CPU Hi-Z reference queries
• real OpenGL 3.3 GPU maximum-depth pyramid without CPU readback
• deterministic 16,384-object validation workload

8. Editor Authoring Power

• ordered multi-selection with replace/add/toggle/range behavior
• grouped property, gizmo and asset authoring
• transaction-safe undo/redo and persistent authoring sidecars
• safe asset drag/drop paths
• material, physics and navigation inspector adapters
• explicit Play/Edit authoring isolation
• opt-in swirengine.editor14 creator-facing facade

9. Multiplayer 2.0

• replicated-component schemas
• canonical snapshots and sparse deltas
• bounded out-of-order interpolation
• deterministic client prediction and reconciliation
• bounded server rewind foundations
• per-channel bandwidth diagnostics
• stable NetworkPacket bridge

10. Showcase + hardening + release gate

Neon Frontier 1.4 is the integrated release-validation project. It intentionally uses generated geometry/data so source checkouts, CI and packaged probes do not depend on external game assets. A single application exercises terrain/LOD, Physics 2.0, Character Controllers, Renderer 2.0, GPU VFX, large-world streaming, Editor Authoring and Multiplayer 2.0.

The final hardening path validates:

• deterministic headless full-system integration
• the integrated performance budget
• real Linux OpenGL 3.3 execution under Xvfb/Mesa
• clean wheel installation outside the source tree
• Windows one-file NeonFrontier14.exe packaging and runtime probing
• Python 3.10-3.13 cross-platform compatibility plus the Windows CPython 3.14 native-wheel path
• strict 10/10 version/roadmap/release-workflow consistency
• Trusted Publishing to PyPI without duplicate-artifact masking
• post-publication installation from public PyPI before the release is considered complete

Stable feature set

2D

• sprites, textures, layers, sprite sheets and animation
• tilemaps, batching and viewport culling
• responsive labels, panels, buttons and progress bars
• keyboard, mouse and gamepad input with rebinding
• particles/VFX, camera rigs and collision queries
• settings, migrations, profiles and save slots
• tween/timeline/state-machine animation runtime
• font fallback, wrapping, alignment and cached text layout

3D

• perspective cameras and camera rigs
• mesh primitives, OBJ and glTF/GLB import
• Phong and Cook-Torrance GGX metallic/roughness PBR
• directional, point and spot lights
• skybox/environment cubemaps and IBL
• cascaded directional shadows, SSAO, bloom, decals, tone mapping and FXAA
• GPU instancing, frustum culling and scene acceleration
• skeletal animation and GPU skinning
• 3D collision, Physics 2.0 and character controllers
• deterministic navigation and large-world chunk residency
• terrain/LOD and GPU particle/VFX systems
• controlled shader/material variants

Production systems

• scenes, lifecycle hooks, grouped mounts and cached update snapshots
• prefabs, overrides, batch spawning and versioned serialization
• lightweight indexed ECS
• plugin runtime and transactional hot reload
• Asset Pipeline 2.0 with derived caching and dependency invalidation
• audio buses/groups and spatial attenuation
• stable networking plus opt-in Multiplayer 2.0 replication foundations
• creator/editor workflow with advanced authoring and reversible playtest state
• native export manifests and PyInstaller desktop builds
• debug overlay and profiler

Performance regression policy

SwirEngine keeps performance claims reproducible and workload-specific. The repository contains deterministic contracts for terrain locality/LOD, Physics 2.0 broad-phase/CCD behavior, controller sweep budgets, Renderer 2.0 planning, GPU-particle CPU scheduling, Asset Pipeline 2.0 cold/warm/invalidation behavior, scene-visibility pruning, editor multi-selection authoring, Multiplayer 2.0 snapshot/delta workloads and the final integrated showcase.

Host timings are diagnostics only. SwirEngine does not turn host-side timing numbers into unmeasured FPS claims. GPU correctness is validated separately with real OpenGL smoke tests.

Validation demos and examples

• Neon Frontier 1.4 — integrated 1.4 release validation
• Neon Frontier 1.3 — locked 1.3 regression game
• Neon Cube Hunt 3D — OpenGL + packaged-runtime regression arena
• Neon Snake 3D — complete 3D regression project
• examples/demo_terrain_world_lod.py
• examples/demo_physics2_contacts.py
• examples/demo_character_controllers.py
• examples/demo_renderer2_1_4.py
• examples/demo_gpu_particles_1_4.py
• examples/demo_asset_pipeline2.py
• examples/demo_scene_acceleration_1_4.py
• examples/demo_editor_authoring_1_4.py
• examples/demo_multiplayer_2_1_4.py

Development and verification

python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest
ruff check src tests examples demo_projects tools
python -m compileall -q src examples demo_projects tools
python tools/verify_1_4_release_candidate.py --require-complete

Dedicated milestone benchmarks, OpenGL validators, clean-wheel checks and native packaging probes live under tools/ and .github/workflows/.

API stability

SwirEngine follows semantic versioning for the stable 1.x public API. Version 1.4.0 is additive to established 1.x behavior: existing projects are not required to adopt Renderer 2.0, Physics 2.0, the 1.4 editor facade or Multiplayer 2.0. Historical 1.0-1.3 roadmaps remain locked.

See docs/API_STABILITY.md.

1.4 documentation

• docs/TERRAIN_WORLD_LOD_1_4.md
• docs/PHYSICS_2_1_4.md
• docs/CHARACTER_CONTROLLERS_1_4.md
• docs/RENDERER2_1_4.md
• docs/GPU_VFX_PARTICLES_1_4.md
• docs/ASSET_PIPELINE_2_1_4.md
• docs/SCENE_ACCELERATION_OCCLUSION_1_4.md
• docs/EDITOR_AUTHORING_1_4.md
• docs/MULTIPLAYER_2_1_4.md
• docs/RELEASE_HARDENING_1_4.md

Roadmaps

• SwirEngine 1.0 — ROADMAP.md — 31/31 = 100%, historical and locked
• SwirEngine 1.1 — ROADMAP_1_1.md — 10/10 = 100%, released and locked
• SwirEngine 1.2 — ROADMAP_1_2.md — 10/10 = 100%, released and locked
• SwirEngine 1.3 — ROADMAP_1_3.md — 10/10 = 100%, released and locked
• SwirEngine 1.4 — ROADMAP_1_4.md — 10/10 = 100.0%, release candidate

Links

• PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/swirengine/
• Repository: https://github.com/Swir/SwirEngine
• Releases: https://github.com/Swir/SwirEngine/releases
• Changelog: https://github.com/Swir/SwirEngine/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md

License

MIT