New Release (March 1st, 2009)

[darqSHADOW]

We have pushed up a new bugfix release to the content network.  Sylvain will post a followup with a changelog detailing the changes shortly.

This release is the first one we have moved onto the content delivery network.  This network sync's files to servers across the globe ensuring the users get the fastest downloads possible, while keeping our local bandwidth usage to a minimum.  This helps us eliminate some overage costs that we've experienced in the past with our web hosting, and should help alleviate some load on the server as well.  If you experience any issues with the new downloads, please let us know.

There are many things that we are hard at work on right now.  Besides the typical bugfixes Sylvain is busy working on the integration of the new Newton 2.0 SDK into the library.  The new Newton SDK includes a much faster and more accurate solver, as well as additional features that were not available before.  With this I am working on getting the documentation into everyones hands, which includes a website makeover and new release of the Wiki with linked user pages for the documentation.  We do not have a timeframe on either of these two items, but we are working hard at getting them live very soon.

John

[SylvainTV]

Here is a (non-exhaustive) change-log for this release

- Splatting Shader / Optimization splatAlpha (3x without lightmap / 4x with lightmap) in PS2 shader mode. It's interesting for people using more than 4 layers per chunk. It divides the number of passes by 3.
- ModelView 100% cpu active fixed
- Now Actor CPU mode with custom shader works with bump mode (with tangent info)
- Glow / Motion blur fix with custom viewports
- Added GetkeyFrame for texture cycles
- Added Maya 2009 Exporter to setup
- Filtering taking in account in shader texture autoload
- Added TVPhysics.SetMaxEventCount to set the max of Newton events
- Added DrawQuadWithShader (to complete DrawFullscreenQuadWithShader)
- Fixed international BillboardText, international characters didn't work
- Fixed ColorWriteEnable on MRT, enabled on all Rendersurfaces now.
more stuff that I didn't mention here !

Warning :

Now the engine will use the latest DX10 compiler to compile internal and custom shader effect files by default. Before it was using the DX9 compiler from D3DX9_31.dll for backwards compatibility purpose. If you have any problem with the new compiler, you can switch back by using TVEngine.SetEffectCompileMode(False). However it's better to run with the latest version of the HLSL compiler, it is constantly updated and improved and makes faster shaders !

A new feature though :

- Added Alpha To Coverage to mesh/minimesh. It allows to improve a lot the alphatested meshes when you use antialiasing ! Use SetAlphaToCoverage function on Mesh and Minimesh to try it ! It works on latest ATI and Nvidia cards ! The good thing is that you get good alphablended borders even without alpha sorting !

[darqSHADOW]

I pushed a new update to the servers last night.  Seems I had not updated the DX SDK on the build machine.  This update brings the DLL in line with the latest from Microsoft and updates the setup to include the latest DX DLL's, as well.  The resources gallery has also been updated to add a link to the latest SDK on Microsoft's website.

Running Dependency Walker against the newest DLL should show it requires D3DX9_40.DLL now.  If you see an older D3DX DLL referenced then you do not have the latest build.

Please let us know if you have any issues with this latest build or setup.  Thanks!

John