Release Notes 1.61.0

What’s new

Content Development

Disable accessing invalid game objects exposed by reference

Changes in Binding and Data Binding

Starting with this release, Gameface comes with better binding and databinding safety by improving the way properties of C++ models and objects exposed by reference are accessed in JavaScript.

Until now accessing in JavaScript a property of exposed by-ref object or a data binding model was essentially exposing that property by-ref too. That means that when the pointer to that C++ object is no longer valid, the C++ code is responsible to call additional methods like View::DestroyExposedObject(). This makes it very easy to create use-after-free bugs in the game, while understanding the reason for the crash is not trivial (i.e. where JavaScript is using an object whose game counterpart has been destroyed or relocated).

Now when caching into a variable a property of a model or exposed by-ref object, instead of storing the pointer to the underlying property, we store the path to reach that property. Every time the property is used, it will be queried from the top level object or model, instead of using a cached pointer that may not be valid any more. You still need to make sure that the top level object or model is valid and call respectively View::DestroyExposedObject() or View::UnregisterModel() when it is destroyed.

Behavioral changes

Exposed properties to JavaScript will no longer be cached by address, but by property/index and parent object. That means that caching the nth element of an array for example will always point to the nth element, even if the array was reordered and the nth element is now a different element, while someone may expect that the object that has been kept will be the original one.

Get unsafe reference to a model property in JavaScript

If you still need to have an unsafe reference to a property in JavaScript, you can use engine.pinUnsafeReference(model.property1.property2).

There is also a method to disable safe data binding, but we discourage using it: engine.enableSafeDataBinding(false)

Integration

Custom Properties

If you have custom classes that inherit from Property, you need to make sure that ToArray() method works correctly if your Property has such semantics, including with C-style arrays.

Custom array types

Binder::TryBindArrayByRef() has additional parameter typedef void* (*ArrayElementGetter)(void*, size_t) which returns a pointer to the nth element of the array. You need to provide such argument to TryBindArrayByRef if your engine has custom array types. You can check Array.h and Vector.h headers for example.

Custom map and pair types

Every type that uses Binder::MapBegin() and Binder::MapEnd() in the bind function, such as maps, pairs, etc, should wrap the call to CoherentBind with CoherentBindKeyValueProperty(). You can check Map.h, UnorderedMap.h and Pair.h for example.

Rendering

Emoji glyphs support

Gameface now supports certain kinds of emoji fonts.

Gameface can load and display emoji from COLRV0 emoji fonts. Those are flat shaded emoji glyphs comprising of several path objects.

Gameface renders the emojis on the GPU and caches them on glyph atlases. This makes the emojis rendering smooth and with no performance bottlenecks.

For more details, see the documentation for the emojis support

Migration guide

Migrating to 1.61

Support for BGRA8 textures

The graphics library has a new pixel format -- PF_B8G8R8A8. All provided backends now support the new texture format and can create textures from it.

New shader types

With this version, Gameface comes with 2 new shader types: ST_CircleTextureRepeat, ST_EllipseTextureRepeat. Their corresponding pixel shader types are PST_CircleTextureRepeat (matching the already existing PST_RoundedRectTextureRepeat) and PST_EllipseTextureRepeat.

Caution

Note: If you rely on a custom backend, the PST_EllipseTextureRepeat pixel shader type must be implemented. As for the PST_CircleTextureRepeat, since it matches the PST_RoundedRectTextureRepeat shader type, no changes will be required.

You can check CohShadeGeometryRare.ihlsl, for reference on how the new shader type is used.

Changelog

Version 1.61.0

---

Released 09 Dec 2024

API	New pixel format for textures PF_B8G8R8A8
API	New shader types ST_CircleTextureRepeat and ST_EllipseTextureRepeat
API Unreal Engine	Renamed Switch libraries HttpServer.NN.nrs / nro to HttpServerNN.nrs / nro and MediaDecoders.NN.nrs / nro to MediaDecodersNN.nrs / nro to make them package correctly in Unreal Engine 5.5
Feature	Added COLRv0 emoji support
Feature	Disable accessing invalid game objects exposed by reference
Feature	Added ::slotted pseudo-element
Feature	Added support for shadow DOM
Feature	Added the slot element
Feature	Added the host pseudo-class
Feature	Added partial support for the 'all' css shorthand with value 'initial'
Enhancement Unreal Engine	Support Unreal Engine 5.5
Enhancement	Implemented surface cache flushing when changing render target
Enhancement	Added HDR support in media queries
Enhancement	Extended View's API to be able to get the current script stack trace
Enhancement	Added prebuilt C++20 ICU versions for Sony PlayStation 5 to allow linking with libc++ ABI v2. The libraries have cpp20 at the end of their filename
Enhancement Unreal Engine	Added control of texture pool size for Custom Effect textures
Enhancement Unreal Engine	Added custom effect texture pool APIs
Enhancement Unreal Engine	Cohtml and Renoir assert failures are now handled with ensureAlways, so they break the code execution only when a debugger is attached
Enhancement Unreal Engine	Fixed crash when Unreal Engine tries to execute Cohtml tasks one inside another
Fix	Leaking renoir commands for canvases on platforms with clang based compilers
Fix	Fixed Sony PlayStation 4 and Sony PlayStation 5 virtual allocator memory protection
Fix	Fixed the simple opacity when applied to SVGs
Fix	Fixed crash when using canvas radial gradient
Fix	Fixed crash when GC happens during cloneNode
Fix	Custom element callbacks are now executed in the correct order
Fix	Fixed wrong assert when using SVG as background-image
Fix Unity	Fixed OpenGL Rendering Target support
Fix	Fixed assert for incorrect lineStart when wrapping inline text that ends with a new line
Fix	Fixed assert with pseudo elements
Fix	Fixed stack overflow when using calling .blur() in a focus event handler
Fix	Fixed assert when removing focused node matching complex selectors
Fix	Fixed animated GIF frame duration playback (previously each frame was displayed for 10 times longer).
Fix Unity	When an abort request is made, the DefaultResourceHandler responds with success and not displaying any error or warning messages
Fix Unreal Engine	Improved live reload path matching when using non-normalized paths
Fix	Fixed wrong styles when using important declarations in pseudo-elements
Fix Unity	Fixed crash in Development Unity player builds for Android