The Axel Project

Hi all,

Denis covered all of the major features we’ve been working on recently in his last post a couple of days back, but only now have I gone through the hundreds of SVN and mercurial revisions and compiled a rough changelog (note; this is not complete and new features such as adaptive tonemapping and other features/fixes will be added before final release).

Alpha 2 (September 2010)
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Nutshell
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* Updater water shader
    o Fixed blackness
    o Improved refraction
* Fixed several engine exploits
* Improved rendering performance
* Updated VGUI (transition effects and improved stability)
* Added FP16 HDR
    o With luminance-based bloom
    o Controllable via ConVars
* Fixed terrain morphing
* Added background map support
* Updated post processing shaders
* Fixed all reproducible bug reports from Alpha 1
* Fixed BSP V19 and V20 loading algorithm
* Improved overall security of engine and closed several exploits

Common
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* [Engine] Fixed server crash exploit
* [Engine] Fixed model jitter when game is paused
* [Engine] Added background map support
* [Material System] Fixed “fullbright bug”
* [Material System] Improved rendering performance
* [Engine] Fixed dynamic lights rebuilding every frame
* [GameUI] Fixed loading dialog presuming singleplayer when starting a multiplayer server
* [GameUI] Fixed many KeyValues errors in Options dialog
* [GameUI] Updated multiplayer dialog layout
* [VGUI] Fixed ImagePanel crash
* [VGUI] Updated file open dialog
    o New icons
    o Completely fixed
* [Engine] Fixed “startmovie” saving corrupt TGA files
* [Engine] Fixed loading screen not rendering
* [VGUI] Added transition effects to all VGUI panels (fade in/fade out)
* [Material System] Added luminance-based bloom
* [GameUI] Fixed advanced video dialog title
* [VGUI] Added maximize/restore to native VGUI apps
    o Also features drag-to-restore (like Windows 7 Aero)
* [Material System] Added FP16 HDR
    o Can be disabled via –ldr command-line option
    o Added mat_bloom_vignette to control vignette
    o Added mat_bloom_multiplier to control bloom amount that is multiplied with framebuffer
* [Engine] Updated IP ban system
    o Clients are now informed of their remaining ban time
* [Engine] Minidumps now contain vital information such as modified ConVars and console log (see dumpinspect tool)
* [Engine] Greatly optimized code with industry-standard static code analyzers
* [Material System] Added vignette effect to create an awesome show of HDR+ToneMapping within the bloom shader
* [Material System] Added color correction
* [Engine] Nearly fully fixed terrain morphing
    o Physics objects now collide with the morphed terrain vertices
* [Engine] Flagged “host_timescale”, “host_framerate” and “host_speeds” as cheat ConVars
* [Engine] Fixed BSP V19 and V20 loading algorithm
* [Engine] Fixed “buildcubemaps”
* [GameUI] Fixed several leaks due to file contents being loaded into memory but not later being freed
* [Engine] Fixed ClientPrintf using an out-dated protocol
* [VGUI] Ctrl-A now selects all text in the text entry
* [VGUI] Fixed stack corruption when adding wide-char strings in AddItem

Game
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* Added red trail and glow to grenade
* Fixed shotgun shoot time
* Added cl_enable_player_sprays to enable/display player sprays
* Added “giveammo” and “giveammo_all” ConCommands
* Updated weapon icons for all retail weapons
* Updated post-processing shaders
    o Enable via pp_sobel, pp_monochrome, pp_grayscale
    o Also try pp_grayscale_fade to slowly fade from colour to grayscale
* Fixed water blackness as a result of a bad clipping plane
* Fixed flames not being removed when a player dies
* Updated rain precipitation
    o Updated rain tracer texture (now refracts)
    o Added rain splashes
* Fixed Kill entity I/O input on players resulting in a crash
* Fixed physics object crash on some maps
* Fixed AI follower crashes
* Bullets now have the same force on physics objects as retail
* Fixed weapon_sniperrifle taking a long time to autoreload
* Fixed bots not being kicked to make room for new bots in bot_create
* Optimized fire for lower end machines
* Fixed crash upon destroying client flame entities
* Fixed AR1 fire modes
* Added text to show AR1 fire mode switch
* HMG1 now does a 3 round burst when using secondary attack instead of switching between firemodes
* Fixed several leaks due to file contents being loaded into memory but not later being freed
* Increased damage for 357 weapon ammotype to 75
* New grenade model
* New 357 model
* Added reload function to HMG1
* Fixed AR2 fire animation

Tools
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* [mdldecompile] Added model decompiler which decompiles V37 models to SMD
* [mdlconverter] Added model converter to convert models from V36 to V37
* [studiomdl] Fixed studiomdl to write proper V37 models (with shared animation support)
* [WC] Fixed memory leak when using error.mdl
* [WC] Prevented infinite loop when unable to load error.mdl
* [dumpinspect] Added a little utility that reads the ASCII comment userstream of a minidump and prints it to console

Just so you know we have been working our asses off for the past few months! More news to come shortly (hopefully videos and screenshots).

On a side note, the rain update video was never publically posted on the blog, so here it is:

Peace out.

Update (16/08/10, 19:34 GMT): added approximately 15-20 more changes to the log.