Steadfast

Steadfast is a remarkably fast and unobtrusive shader pack with exceptional attention-to-detail. Easy on the eyes and on your computer, Steadfast massively improves the graphical quality and realism of Minecraft without getting in the way of actually playing the game.

Steadfast is free and open-source software developed by coderbot, and can be downloaded from /shaders/steadfast-shaders (Modrinth), https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/shaders/steadfast (CurseForge), or https://github.com/coderbot16/Steadfast (GitHub). Anyone can modify and distribute it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3.

How fast is it really?

Steadfast runs great even on midrange laptops from 5+ years ago, with the default High profile delivering a smooth 60+ FPS experience on most computers capable of running Minecraft. On computers with a dedicated high-end graphics card, Steadfast flies and even the High profile can reliably reach 250-500 FPS. With a lower profile, it runs playably even on a Raspberry Pi!

Steadfast is designed for mobile / integrated graphics hardware, and is built to require minimal graphics memory bandwidth and only moderate graphical compute power.

Features

• Semi-realistic atmosphere with high-quality sky and fog
• Real-time shadows cast by the sun and moon
• Foliage that waves with the wind and has subsurface light scattering
• Perfectly-tuned lighting to give the illusion of bright sunlight and darker nights and interiors, but without excessive changes in brightness or contrast, or obtrusive effects like auto-exposure
• Approximate light shafts ("godrays") from the sun and moon
• Exceptionally detailed water waves with actual visual depth, reflection, refraction, and realistic absorption based on water depth
• Water and ice can reflect anything visible on the screen
• Sunlight and moonlight cast bright water caustics on underwater surfaces
• Windswept high-altitude cirrus clouds as well as support for Minecraft's standard blocky clouds
  • Note: Neither are enabled on the default profile for now.
• Ambient occlusion through Minecraft's built-in smooth lighting
• Integration with the Distant Horizons and Voxy mods, which offer extreme render distances without significant performance loss
• Wide compatibility with other mods and modpacks, including support for high-performance rendering pathways in mods like Create (through the Colorwheel add-on mod)

Platform compatibility

Steadfast supports the following hardware and underlying platforms:

• NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel GPUs
• macOS, including Apple Silicon
• Linux, including most hardware supported through the open-source Mesa graphics drivers, such as the Raspberry Pi and the Steam Deck.
• Minecraft 1.18.2 and above using the Iris shader mod (Iris 1.5 or newer).

Current limitations

Steadfast has some notable limitations that I hope to resolve in the future:

• Steadfast does not currently support any version of OptiFine.
  • Steadfast offloads a ton of calculations to the CPU, but the feature used to do this ("custom uniforms") works a bit differently in OptiFine compared to Iris and porting will take a lot of effort as a result.
• Steadfast lacks support for any dimension other than the Overworld, which includes a lack of any well-tuned support for the Nether and End.
  • To support another dimension basically requires making a new visual style for the shader. This can take months of work to get right.
  • The current Nether / End appearance is entirely playable and lacks the same serious bugs you might normally expect from shaders lacking dimension support, but not optimized or tweaked to the same level of quality as the Overworld dimension. In other words, it basically just works on accident.
• Steadfast does not currently support colored lighting.
  • This is really hard to implement in a high-performance and high-quality way, but I am looking into it and fortunately there is prior art in the community.
• The current default profile has some issues when underwater and lacks clouds.
  • This profile is mostly playable otherwise, and you can enable existing cloud options if you prefer. Fixes for both are under development.

Support policy

• I aim for a high standard of quality in my software, and the goal of the beta testing phase is to find and fix any bugs, stylistic issues, and similar defects.
• Please try to avoid duplicate bug reports, and use your best judgement when trying to find out if a bug is in Steadfast, Iris, Minecraft, another mod, or your graphics drivers / system, but if you aren't sure, please feel free to submit a report.
• We aren't able to help you get Steadfast working properly on phones and mobile devices running Android or iOS, even with software like PojavLauncher, due to widespread correctness issues and bugs in the graphics drivers and required compatibility layers.

Credits

• Steadfast takes heavy visual inspiration from Sonic Ether's Unbelievable Shaders (SEUS), especially SEUS Renewed, as well as some of Chocapic13's shaders. SEUS is a great shader pack, and I hope you enjoy this implementation of a similar visual style!
• Steadfast would not be possible without the Iris shader loader, in particular the continued development & maintenance by IMS212 allows Steadfast to work on many Minecraft versions with minimal fuss on the side of Steadfast.
• I would also like to thank my dedicated testers who helped highlight and uncover many of the bugs and issues fixed in the development of Steadfast!