GoCL (Gestalt Open Computing Language) is a lightweight static Vulkan library and a runtime proxy layer that adapts to the hardware it runs on. It detects GPU capabilities at startup, rewrites shaders when needed, selects texture compression paths based on memory and format support, and exposes runtime tuning through a plain‑text config file.
The same binary runs on integrated laptop graphics, handheld‑class devices, and high‑end discrete GPUs — no platform‑specific builds.
Key highlights
- Automatic shader emulation – unsupported features are rewritten before the driver sees them, enabling modern shaders on older hardware.
- Adaptive texture compression – ASTC when available, ETC2 fallback everywhere else, with configurable aggressiveness.
- Two ways to use it – link the static library into your own engine, or inject the proxy into pre‑built Vulkan games without recompilation.
- Zero per‑frame overhead – shader patching happens once at pipeline creation; texture transcoding is lazy; indirect‑draw batching has no cost when idle.
Link against GoCL_core.a and include the headers from src/. Your application
gains:
- Hardware‑adaptive rendering (capability oracle)
- Runtime shader emulation (FP16, Int8, Int16, SER, descriptor splitting)
- Intelligent texture compression (ASTC block selector + ETC2 fallback)
- VRAM budget tracking and pipeline cache persistence
- Software VRS emulation and meshlet‑based culling utilities
- Fully configurable via
GoCL.toml
-DGOCL_ENABLE_LAYER=ON to CMake. Deploy it with LD_PRELOAD (Linux) or by
placing it alongside the game executable (Windows). The proxy intercepts
Vulkan calls and transparently applies all of GoCL’s optimisations:
- Patches shaders before they reach the driver
- Transcodes ASTC textures to ETC2 on GPUs without hardware decode
- Tunes swap‑chain image count and present mode from
GoCL.toml - Splits large indirect draw calls into GPU‑friendly batches
The proxy is a Vulkan implicit layer that can be activated by setting
ENABLE_GOCL_LAYER=1 and pointing VK_LAYER_PATH to the build directory.
It also works as a classic LD_PRELOAD shim on Linux or vulkan‑1.dll proxy
on Windows.
No game modifications are required — the same config file controls both the engine and the proxy. For full details, see DETAILS.md.
- NVIDIA – Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace
- AMD – GCN 1–5, RDNA 1/2/3
- Intel – Gen9 through Arc Alchemist
- ARM Mali – Bifrost and Valhall
- Qualcomm Adreno – 5xx and newer
- Software renderers – SwiftShader, Mesa LLVMpipe
git clone https://github.com/thee3rdplayer/GoCL.git
cd GoCL
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
-DGOCL_ENABLE_TESTS=ON -DGOCL_ENABLE_LAYER=ON
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)
# Run a Sascha Willems example (replace with your built example binary)
./path/to/SaschaWillems/example/binary
# Inject the proxy into an existing Vulkan game (Linux)
LD_PRELOAD=./build/vulkan_proxy.so ./your_game
# Windows (PowerShell / Command Prompt)
ren vulkan_proxy.dll vulkan-1.dll
# Move the renamed vulkan-1.dll into the game’s .exe folder.- ARCHITECTURE.md – design and subsystem overview
- DETAILS.md – configuration reference, build guide, proxy usage, profiling, and platform notes
All code © 2026 Stanford Mukwena — www.thee3rdplayer.blogspot.com.
See SUPPORT.md for ways to contribute or get help.
