Editing Defold Shaders

Creates and edits Defold shader files: vertex programs (.vp), fragment programs (.fp), and GLSL include snippets (.glsl).

When to use

This skill covers GLSL shader files used in Defold's rendering pipeline. It does NOT cover .material files — for those, use the defold-proto-file-editing skill (see references/material.md).

Shader pipeline and GLSL version

Defold supports two shader pipelines:

1. Legacy pipeline — shaders written in OpenGL ES 2.0 compatible GLSL (no #version directive). Deprecated since Defold 1.9.2.
2. Modern pipeline — shaders written in SPIR-V compatible GLSL with #version 140 or higher. This is the current standard.

Always write shaders using #version 140 (OpenGL 3.1) at the top of the file. This directive selects the modern pipeline during the build process. If no #version is found, Defold falls back to the legacy pipeline.