Nova64 v0.5.2 — _Hippie Sunshine_

Released: 2026-06-02

A RetroArch core parity push (318 commits) plus the cross-platform release-cores pipeline and publish-pipeline hardening. This is the release where the libretro core catches up to the web runtime and cores start shipping for every platform.

Highlights

RetroArch core — Canvas UI extensions

parseCanvasUI (retroarch/nova64_libretro.c) now renders <image> tags, text effects, quadratic Bézier paths, smooth cubic paths, SVG arcs, group clipping, advanced cube transparency, <button> support, and font-family selection — XML-driven UI carts render natively in the core.

RetroArch core — controller bridge

• RetroPad face buttons bridge to DOM-style KeyZ/KeyX/KeyC/KeyV; SELECT bridges to KeyI/Tab, so inventory/menu carts work on a gamepad with no per-cart edits.
• keyp Escape/Backspace routes to START — every cart gains a controller back.

RetroArch core — rendering parity

• HDR-knee bloom bright-pass (torches glow, F-Zero stays calm), GLES point-light specular + projected point-light shadows, mesh-option parity.
• minecraft-demo visual-parity pass (per-face shading, instanced voxel surface, autoclear); texture pool bumped 64 → 512 for WAD-scale carts; wad-demo color + sprite alpha-cutout fixes; wizardry-3d playable.

Cross-platform cores (release-cores.yml)

• New release-cores workflow auto-builds .so + .dll on tag, then adds macOS universal, Linux ARM64 (Pi), Android (3 ABIs), and Linux armhf (dockcross/linux-armv7) targets.
• dockcross zlib hardening (-fPIC, pinned GitHub tag, quoting preserved end-to-end) and a Linux core smoke test before publish.

Publish-pipeline hardening

• prepublishOnly strengthened from validate && build to lint && test:all && build.
• publish.yml runs tests before build so a failing suite can't ship a stale dist/.
• Agent guardrails consolidated — AGENTS.md becomes the single source of truth; CLAUDE.md / CODEX.md / GEMINI.md / COPILOT.md are thin pointers.
• Local cart save dir /nova64/ gitignored.

Full history: git log v0.5.1..v0.5.2