Kiln WikiLooks and sound

Drawing on screen and in the world

Run code every frame and draw over the game: shapes, text and images in pixels, markers and labels at world positions.

Game test pending 2 min read Updated November 7, 2026

New in 0.2.0-dev.16, not yet seen in the game. It passes its tests (projection, the time budget, dispatch). Nobody has seen a mod’s drawing in a real game yet.

A client mod can subscribe to RenderFrameEvent and draw through it. It comes once per frame, on the game’s render thread.

[Subscribe]
private void OnFrame(RenderFrameEvent e)
{
    e.Draw.Text(10, 10, $"{e.Fps:F0} fps");
    if (!e.Camera.Valid) return;                     // main menu, loading screen
    e.World.Marker(_home, Color.Orange);
    e.World.Label(_home, $"Home {e.World.DistanceTo(_home):F0} m");
}

What you can draw

e.Draw, in pixels from the top left: lines, rectangles, circles, triangles, polygons, arrows, text, and PNG images from your mod (Ui.LoadImage("pin.png")). Multiply sizes by e.Scale, the UI scale.
e.World, at world positions in metres: markers, labels, icons, lines, boxes and rings. Points behind the camera aren’t drawn; lines, boxes and rings are cut at the screen’s edge. ToScreenClamped puts an off-screen point on the edge of the screen, so you can draw an arrow towards it.
e.Camera, the game’s camera this frame: position, heading (0 is north), pitch, field of view, and Pivot, about where the character’s head is. Render.Camera reads the latest one from any thread.

Your drawing sits over the game’s picture, its HUD and menus, and under Kiln’s own windows, HUD lines and toasts. It goes away when your mod unloads.

Rules of the render thread

Don’t touch the game from the handler. Read what your mod keeps, and use Client.Post to act on the game.
Don’t keep e, e.Draw or e.World: they’re reused next frame, and drawing outside the handler does nothing.
Keep it fast: a handler gets 2 ms per frame. One that’s over that in most frames, takes 100 ms three times, or throws five times is turned off. Your log says why, and a toast names your mod.

With no subscribers, render events ask for no extra frames.

Limits

Client only.
World drawing needs the game’s camera, which Kiln finds on the current game build. On a build where it isn’t found, e.Camera.Valid stays false and only screen drawing works.
Camera shake (gliding) isn’t included, so markers can tremble a little against the scene.

The RenderSample mod in the Kiln repository has an FPS counter, a compass strip and waypoints: Ctrl+J drops one where you stand, Ctrl+Shift+J removes the nearest, Ctrl+Alt+J hides everything. Native plugins get the same drawing through kiln_render.h.