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Update Notes / Updates March 16th - Dynamic Lights & Promethium Equipment Changes
« Last post by Thomy on March 15, 2023, 04:18:40 pm »Hey guys,
Dynamic Lights can now be enabled from the Game Settings. They beautify the world by emitting light from various sources, such as fires, lanterns, monsters, etc. Promethium equipment has also received buffs that increase the amount of rot damage done to enemies. In order to support dynamic lighting core parts of the rendering engine have been rewritten and improved. If you are interested in the change there is a technical section below.
Dynamic Lights
Quite some optimizations and changes were required for an improved lighting system to properly work. If you are interested there is a dedicated section later in this news post regarding the technical details. Dynamic Lights can be enabled from the game settings to get lighting effects from fires. Feel free to play around with the setting but bear in mind that higher quality lighting requires GPU power to run smoothly. The lower settings, however, shouldn't be a problem for older devices. Here's an example of Canifis with Dynamic Lights enabled and without:
This is only the beginning of dynamic lights. I have effects planned for unique monsters but also projectiles or graphics from bosses. It will also be possible to simulate a day and night cycle with dynamic lighting. Let me know what you think!
Promethium Equipment
We still aren't quite happy with the popularity and combat power of promethium items. Thus they received a buff that increases rot damage overall. Promethium weaponry including arrows now deal part of their damage as additional rot damage instead of having a 50% chance to infect rot. The set bonus has been adjusted to also increase rot damage by a given amount instead of only reducing it. This will make rot weapons a strong alternative in longer fights.
Game fixes / changes:
I have reviewed and optimized various parts of our rendering engine to prepare for dynamic lighting. I also investigated a problem where loading would take very long on slower devices. This is a rather technical summary so feel free to skip it if not interested:
I hope you're enjoying the dynamic lighting system. Feel free to share your ideas on what models in the game could also emit light. The system is fairly flexible and I am open for suggestions. I recommend to have a look at Barrow brothers, Tormented demons or equip auras to see what is possible.
All the best,
Thomy
Dynamic Lights can now be enabled from the Game Settings. They beautify the world by emitting light from various sources, such as fires, lanterns, monsters, etc. Promethium equipment has also received buffs that increase the amount of rot damage done to enemies. In order to support dynamic lighting core parts of the rendering engine have been rewritten and improved. If you are interested in the change there is a technical section below.
Dynamic Lights
Quite some optimizations and changes were required for an improved lighting system to properly work. If you are interested there is a dedicated section later in this news post regarding the technical details. Dynamic Lights can be enabled from the game settings to get lighting effects from fires. Feel free to play around with the setting but bear in mind that higher quality lighting requires GPU power to run smoothly. The lower settings, however, shouldn't be a problem for older devices. Here's an example of Canifis with Dynamic Lights enabled and without:
 |  |
Promethium Equipment
We still aren't quite happy with the popularity and combat power of promethium items. Thus they received a buff that increases rot damage overall. Promethium weaponry including arrows now deal part of their damage as additional rot damage instead of having a 50% chance to infect rot. The set bonus has been adjusted to also increase rot damage by a given amount instead of only reducing it. This will make rot weapons a strong alternative in longer fights.
Game fixes / changes:
- An issue with the attack interface for halberds has been fixed.
- Wyrm combat has been rewritten to fix a bug where they'd continuously dig themselves in.
- Magic dart can now be properly used with normal magicks.
- Operating books can no longer be used to taunt enemies.
- Items can no longer be equipped during teleport animation. Under rare conditions it was possible to cancel out animations and get into buggy states.
- Built-in spells of staves can no longer be cast with other staves after relogging.
- A problem was fixed that could get you into a permanent walking animation when failing an obstacle at Barbarian agility course.
- Chronozon is now categorized as demon.
- Ammunition in quiver can now be moved during combat.
- Prayer auras now correctly degrade when used in combat.
- Double hits (dark bow, dds, etc.) can no longer harm monsters that have damage immunities.
- Multiple problems with dialogue options mixing up were fixed.
- The weapon speeds of various weapons were fixed.
- Tutorial dialogues regarding community now mention Discord.
- The chance to poison an enemy with ranged weapons has been increased to 25%. Poisonous melee weapons have a chance of 50%.
- Entering bank pin is now required when collecting items from the Grand Exchange.
I have reviewed and optimized various parts of our rendering engine to prepare for dynamic lighting. I also investigated a problem where loading would take very long on slower devices. This is a rather technical summary so feel free to skip it if not interested:
- Animation quality: very distant objects now render in much lower qualities, improving fps rate by quite a lot on slower devices. You feel this improvement in areas with lots of torches.
- Animation performance: the way animations are calculated in the CPU have been optimized. I have also removed the need of updating model colors every animation frame.
- Model & texture loader: cached instances can no longer be removed during loading times. This results in the game not having to fetch the same asset twice or thrice on slower devices.
- Calculations for radius and height of a model was optimized. It can now be calculated during an animation frame.
- Mipmapping for textures is now done on a per texture level instead of a per texture array level. This greatly reduces the computation time of newly added textures.
- A way to dynamically calculate normal vectors for models was added to improve shadow quality and support dynamic lighting. Usually this information is stored inside a model file but we don't have this information. So it needs to be calculated when the model is loaded. This takes some time but it won't affect fps rates much since it happens in background without affecting any game logic.
- The internal structure of object and floor areas have been reworked. They load quicker and no longer can be refreshed on every rendered frame resulting in less frame drops.
I hope you're enjoying the dynamic lighting system. Feel free to share your ideas on what models in the game could also emit light. The system is fairly flexible and I am open for suggestions. I recommend to have a look at Barrow brothers, Tormented demons or equip auras to see what is possible.
All the best,
Thomy
