game:changelogs:alpha18 [Dangerous Rays Official Wiki]

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=====Alpha 18 Changelog=====

**Release Date:** TBD

//This version is not released yet. This changelog will be updated regularly before until this version is released.//
//Be aware that this changelog only give information about core engine changes/additions. Gameplay new elements and improvements are not listed here as it would spoil player and they are to many changes for it to be correctly listed here.//
<panel type="primary" title="New">
- **Engine and game code completely reworked from scratch**
- The game is now compiled in 64 bits to take advantage of every RAM memory available on the system. WINDOWS 7/8/10 64 bits is REQUIRED in order to run the game
- Engine is now compiled using the latest Microsoft visual studio compiler for improved performances  
- Engine is now able to use every CPU cores for accelerating various calculations by running parallel tasks
- Engine has now official support of Windows 10
- Usage of C++11/14/17 language for improved engine/game code architecture and performance
- Complete modding toolset in now integrated with the game (map editor, model/texture converters, material editor, texture editor...)
- Renderer is now based on DirectX 11.1 graphic API (old version was OpenGL 2.1 which is the equivalent of DirectX 9)
- Added Physically Based Rendering (PBR) support
- Lighting pipeline is now linear and gamma correct
- Added physically based light brightness and temperature support
- Added shader bytecode caching system
- Added lit particles support
- Added skinned decals support
- Added threaded occlusion culling support
- Added geometry shaders support
- Added hardware tesselation support
- Added specular color change support
- Added 4096x4096 pixels shadowmap support
- Added 3D textures support
- Added "ACES Filmic Tone Mapping" support
- Added "Sky Atmosphere" post-process effect support
- Added "Sepia" post-process effect support
- Added "Vibrance" post-process effect support
- Added "Luminance Sharpen" post-process effect support
- Added "Vignette" post-process effect support
- Added "Chromatic Aberration" post-process effect support
- Added color blindness filters support
- Added Variance Shadow Mapping support
- Added texture arrays support
- Added ribbon trail effect support
- Added video playback support (.OGV format)
- Added height fog effect support
- Added inverse square light falloff support
- Added negative light brightness support
- Added Ambient Occlusion maps support into the material system
- Added new node/component 3D scene management based system
- Added terrain shadows support
- Added terrain surface type detection system
- Added terrain decals support
- Added terrain smooth LOD transition support
- Added texture macro variation system to reduce the terrain texture tiling effect
- Added terrain triplanar texture mapping support
- Added vegetation billboards occlusion culling support
- Added threaded vegetation update support  
- Added adjustable grass density support
- Added grass LOD support
- Added vegetation sway movement support
- New photorealistic sky system
- Added rain simulation support
- Added water realtime reflections support
- Added new roads generation system
- Added roads blending effect with terrain at road start and end point
- PhysX engine upgraded to version 4.1.1 (old version was 3.3.0)
- Physics engine code completely rewritten 
- Added Multi Box Pruning physics broadphase algorithm support
- Added convex hull decomposition physics shape support
- Added physics constraints (joints) support
- Added dynamic physics shape type change support
- Added compound physics shape support
- Added physics sweep and overlap queries support
- Added trigger physics shapes support
- Added box character controller support
- Added GPU accelerated rigid bodies support
- FMOD audio engine updated to version 2.0 (old version was 1.05)
- Added FMOD Studio API/tool support
- Added support of changing used audio device
- Added audio DSP effects support
- Added sound preloading system 
- Added sound priority system
- Added threaded sound loading support 
- Added sound sources live editing support
- Added vertex morph animation support
- Added animation trigger system
- Added additive animation blending support
- Added animation root motion support
- Navmesh (AI navigation) system completely reworked
- Added new navmesh dynamic rebuilding system
- Added navmesh serialization/deserialization support
- Added navmesh threaded generation support
- Added navmesh offmesh connection support
- Particle System completely reworked
- Added particle basic collision support
- Added particle complex emitter types support 
- Added particle atlas animation support
- Added particle emitter zones/shapes support 
- Added particle complex emitter modifiers support (vortex, gravity...)
- Added particle emitter interpolators support for colors/params
- Added Async zone (map) loading support
- Added XML full unicode support
- Added XML file patching system
- Added config system inheritance support
- Added localization special character accents support (French, German, Czech...)
- Added localization russian cyrillic support
- Added localization chinese support
- Added localization korean support
- Added localization japanese support
- Added borderless window mode support
- Added new 3D ".mdl" mesh binary file format
- Added automatic model optimization system (remove duplicated vertices, fix wrong normals, optimize vertices topology...)  
- Added resources multithreaded background loading support
- Added Steamworks API integration (overlay, steamfriends...)
- Added new game scripting system 
- Added UI custom styles support
- Added numerous new UI element types
- Added UI translucency support
- Added UI floating point font size support
- Added UI font oversampling support
- Added UI scaling support
- Added UI elements rotation support
- Added input double key press detection support
- Added "Uber Noise system" used for procedural generation
- Added Parallax Occlusion Mapping support
- Added Sky Lighting post-process effect
- Added Variable Refresh Rate support
</panel>

<panel type="primary" title="Changed/Improved">
- Various optimizations (Usage of special CPU instructions set, optimized functions...)
- Improved deferred rendering technique
- Improved shader tangent binormal vector calculation
- Improved normal maps compression quality
- Improved texture mipmaps filtering quality 
- Improved alpha blended objects rendering (grass, vegetation...)
- Improved contribution culling performance
- Improved decals system (used for bullet holes, blood on walls...)
- Improved decals performance
- Improved textures filtering quality 
- Improved post-process effects system
- Improved and optimized render to texture system
- Improved HDR 
- Improved HDR auto exposure
- Improved global lighting accuracy and fidelity
- Improved light attenuation accuracy and fidelity
- Improved specular lighting accuracy and fidelity
- Increased directional light (sun light) shadow max draw distance
- Improved sharpen filter shader performances and quality
- Improved transparency rendering system
- Improved shaders management system
- Improved compatibility with AMD GPU's
- Improved material system flexibility
- Improved compatibility with video recording softwares 
- Improved "Depth Of Field" post-process effect
- Improved Bloom post-process effect
- Improved SSAO post-process effect 
- Improved deferred rendering GBuffer color precision
- Much faster terrain rendering
- Increased max terrain textures layers from 5 to 16
- Improved random terrain heightmap generator system capabilities 
- Improved terrain elevation calculations
- Improved terrain texture painting system
- Improved terrain spatial grid system
- Improved terrain loading times
- Improved terrain smoothing algorithm performance
- Max vegetation layers count (Number of trees, bushes and grass type) increased from 32 to 255
- Improved vegetation rendering performances
- Improved vegetation billboards rendering performances
- Improved automatic vegetation billboards generation system
- Much faster grass rendering
- Reduced grass "popup" effect
- Reduced vegetation system memory footprint 
- Greatly reduced vegetation collision shapes memory usage
- Improved vegetation billboard angle selection calculations
- Improved vegetation spatial queries system
- Improved vegetation global draw distance
- Improved vegetation LOD system
- Improved sun and moon simulation performance
- Improved sun lighting coloration
- Improved sun position update behavior
- Improved fog rendering
- Improved moon simulation realism
- Improved distance fog effect
- Improved distance fog blending into the sky
- Improved thunder simulation rendering
- Improved thunder simulation performance
- Improved weather conditions changing logic
- Improved water rendering quality
- Improved water rendering performance
- Improved roads smoothing algorithm
- Improved roads rendering performance
- Improved roads occlusion culling system
- Improved Physics engine code architecture 
- Improved convex hull physics shape generation
- Improved physics queries performances
- Improved physics simulation performances
- Improved physics shapes cache system performance
- Improved character controller behaviors
- Improved geometry physics cooking system
- Improved audio engine performances
- Improved audio engine hardware compatibility
- Improved sound sources velocity calculation
- Removed OpenAL dependency
- Improved audio 3D listener calculations
- Improved audio doppler effect 
- Improved max software sound channels detection
- Improved sound sources attenuation calculations
- Improved sound channels groups management
- Improved speed of sound simulation
- Improved sound sources callback system
- Improved global animation system
- Models animations are now stored separatly in ".ani" files for more flexibility 
- Improved animations blending 
- Improved navmesh generation performance
- Improved navmesh partitionning techniques
- Improved navmesh crowd navigation system
- Reduced navmesh memory footprint and consumption 
- Improved navmesh terrain vegetation handling
- Improved particle system flexibility
- Improved particle system performance
- Improved game saving and loading performance
- Improved game saving/loading stability 
- Improved XML file parser performances
- Improved config system compatibility with modding
- Improved config system code architecture
- Improved config system flexibility
- Improved config system loading performances
- Improved config system arrays handling
- Improved config system error detection process 
- Improved localization files structure
- Improved window Alt-Tab support
- Improved display resolutions detection system
- Improved screenshots system (now support .jpg, .png, .tga, .bmp output file formats)
- Improved ressources (assets) loading time
- Improved UI rendering performances 
- Improved UI true type fonts management
- Improved input system hardware compatibility
- Improved file system read/write performance
- Various file system system security improvements
- Improved file compression/decompression performance
- Improved dev console 
- Improved random number generation system 
- Improved physics engine solver algorithm for more precise and fast physics calculations.
</panel>

<panel type="primary" title="Fixed">
- Fixed potential compatibility problems with gamer laptops powered with AMD graphics cards
- Fixed object disappearing below terrain geometry
- Fixed terrain black artifacts on AMD graphics cards
- Fixed micro freezes related to grass rendering
- Fixed terrain vegetation system memory leaks
- Fixed incorrect moon phases issues
- Fixed water blending issues with distant fog
- Fixed temporary frame rate drop after player spawn (related to roads generation)
- Fixed physics engine memory leaks
- Fixed physics engine numerous wrong behaviors
- Fixed movement stuttering issues caused by character controllers
- Fixed animated models culling issues
- Fixed outstanding navmesh generation issues
- Fixed UI fonts related memory leak
- Fixed "an invalid object handle was used" audio related issue 
</panel>