Programming, graphics, games, media, C++, Windows, Internet and more...
# DirectX 12 News from GDC 2026 - My Comments
Sun
15
Mar 2026
Game Developers Conference (GDC) just took place on 9–13 March 2026 (renamed this year to “GDC Festival of Gaming”). Microsoft announced lots of interesting news during the event regarding further development of DirectX 12, its accompanying libraries, and tools. I didn’t attend the conference this year, but the announcements were also published on their DirectX Developer Blog. In this article, I will gather and summarize these news items, provide links to the appropriate web pages, and include my comments.
When I was working at AMD, I was deeply involved in this area - writing code, publishing articles on the GPUOpen website, attending GDC, and even giving a talk there twice. Back then, I didn’t post much about it on my personal blog, as I would have needed to watch my words and secure corporate approvals. Now, as I’m just a programmer at Plastic - a small game development studio - I can observe these developments from the outside and comment on them freely, which I am going to do with brutal honesty 🙂 If I had a YouTube channel, I would record a “reaction” type of video, but since I’m writing a blog, this will be my reaction in text form.
Disclaimer: Everything in this article is based on information shared publicly by Microsoft and GPU vendors and could be gathered by any graphics programmer. No insider information was used.
Comments | #microsoft #directx Share
# Total Commander - a Plugin Supporting a Custom Archive Format - a New Article
Sat
07
Mar 2026
Today I would like to present my new article: "Total Commander – a Plugin Supporting a Custom Archive Format". In this article, we will design our own file format that allows multiple files to be packed and compressed into a single archive, similar to formats like ZIP or 7Z. Using the C++ language and the Visual Studio environment on Windows, we will then write a plugin for the Total Commander file manager that enables creating and manipulating such an archive, including freely adding and removing files inside it.
The article was first published few months ago in Polish in issue 5/2025 (120) of the Programista magazine. Now I have a right to show it publicly for free, so I share it in two language versions:
"Total Commander – a Plugin Supporting a Custom Archive Format"
"Total Commander – wtyczka obsługująca własny format archiwum"See also GitHub repository with the source code accompanying the article: sawickiap/TotalCommanderPluginTutorial
