Potassium

1.4.0

Update starts safe GPU capability groundwork and lower-overhead render hot paths. Preparation for DLSS/FSR/XeSS optimisations in the future.

Added

• Added particle light caching to reduce repeated brightness lookups during particle-heavy scenes.
• Added entity light caching to reduce repeated packed-light calculations during rendering.
• Added safer ignore rules for local scratch files and side projects in the development repo.
• Added GPU capability detection for vendor, DSA, buffer storage, multi-draw indirect, and mesh-shader extension support.
• Added DSA-aware GPU object helpers for VBO/EBO-style buffers, framebuffers, depth renderbuffers, textures, and VAO format reuse.
• Added optional SIMD particle distance checks behind the Java Vector API feature gate.
• Added fast local math/random/perlin helpers for Potassium-owned render scheduling and sampling.

Improved

• Improved render smoothness with bounded time-based map update pacing.
• Improved memory behaviour with tighter text, ordered text, and wrapped-layout caches.
• Improved 26.x texture sharpness with safer anisotropic sampler uplift on supported GPUs.
• Improved particle and chunk distance paths by avoiding extra AABB centre allocations and sharing faster hitbox direction helpers.
• Improved platform checks by caching stable JVM system properties.
• Improved repo and release consistency across the maintained 1.21.11 and 26.x targets.

Fixed

• Preserved mining, HUD, and other gameplay-critical visual feedback on vanilla-safe paths.
• Fixed a client crash when launchers run Java 25 without --add-modules jdk.incubator.vector.
• Kept 1.21.x platform fallbacks Java 21-safe by avoiding preview native API hooks.
• Discontinued the grouped 1.21-1.21.10 release line for 1.4.0 and newer.
• Cleaned up release docs and version metadata so jars, changelogs, and supported versions match correctly.

Stability

• Kept renderer caches bounded to prevent unbounded growth during long play sessions.
• Kept particle distance checks on an always-loadable scalar fallback path when the Vector API module is unavailable.
• Kept macOS native scheduling fallbacks conservative on Java 21 builds.
• Kept client-only hooks behind client mixin configs so dedicated servers stay safe.
• Kept unsupported renderer, JVM, GPU, and platform paths on conservative fallback behaviour.
• Kept 26.X-only renderer optimisations out of older targets unless the hook is stable there.

Supported Versions

• 1.21.11
• 26.1
• 26.1.1
• 26.1.2