Release Notes for Build 117

Release date: March 20, 2006

• The standard appearance of the graphical user interface has been overhauled. The new design doesn't have so much color in it and uses the more familiar dark-on-light shading for text. The fonts have been updated to look nicer and be more readable.

• Added the $backgroundColor, $windowColor, and $hiliteColor permanent variables to the Interface Manager. These can be changed in the Data/CFG/Variables.cfg file to alter the default appearance of the user interface. Each variable is interpreted as a 6-digit RGB hexcode with 8-bits per component: RRGGBB.

• Added window resizing to the Interface Manager. The World Editor and Model Viewer windows can now be resized by dragging the little widget in the bottom-right corner. As a window is being resized, it receives calls to the virtual SetWindowSize() function so that a window can reposition its contents.

• Added some new functionality to the EditableTextElement interface class. It can now accept more text than its size allows it to display (when the kEditableTextOverflow flag is set), and you can now use the shift key with the left and right arrows to select text.

• The standard file picker dialog now allows you to navigate into subdirectories. The popup menu at the top of the dialog contains each directory in the path leading back up to the original directory for which the file picker was created. Clicking the button with the 'go up a directory' icon or hitting Ctrl-Up-Arrow navigates to the enclosing directory.

• Added a check box to the Save As dialog in the World Editor that lets you strip out the editor data when saving a world. Stripping out the editor data removes information about things like viewport configurations, material names and previews, show/hide state, etc. When the strip box is checked, it only applies to that one save—subsequent saves will continue to write the editor data. The intent is that users will save different copies of final worlds that are stripped down for gameplay.

• Added the Connect to Root Zone item to the Node menu in the World Editor. After selecting a connector, this item connects it to the infinite root zone of the scene.

• Added the ability to set the number of skybox subdivisions in the World Settings dialog.

• Added a "Developer Panel" window that provides an interface for generating texture resources for lights, environment maps, etc., and also provides an interface for turning some rendering diagnostics on and off. The developer panel can be opened by selecting Developer Panel from the Tools menu or by typing dev in the console. This replaces the gentex command that was previously used to generate textures.

• Added a Preprocess() function to the Method class. This allows a method to perform precaching if it wants to.

• Made some miscellaneous optimizations in the light and shadow culling code.

• Fixed a problem that could cause a recursive chain of multiple remote portals to render incorrectly.

• Fixed a problem that would cause a vertex program error if refraction and fog were used in the same material.

• Worked around a driver bug that was causing the glow shader to drop into a software path on some GeForce FX GPUs. Glow should now render at full speed on all Nvidia hardware.