Release Notes for Version 6.5

Release date: September 30, 2017

(C4 version 6.5 corresponds to Tombstone version 2.5.)

Core Engine

The vector and matrix classes have been redesigned and now have new capabilities that promote higher performance and more legible code.

Vector components can now be accessed using the swizzle syntax that's available in shading languages. For example, a 3D vector v can be treated as another 3D vector with its components rearranged by writing v.zyx. A 2D subvector can be expressed by specifying only two components as in v.xy. In any case, the swizzled vector is just a reference, and no data is copied, so operations on swizzled vectors run with the same performance as the original vector. Swizzles can be any combination of valid components in which there are no repeats.

Matrix classes now have special members that allow operations involving rows, columns, and transposes without any data copying. A 3×3 matrix has members row0, row1, row2, col0, col1, and col2 that act like 3D vectors. There is also a special member transpose that acts like another 3D matrix whose entries are transposed. A 4×4 matrix has additional members row3, col3, matrix3D, and transpose3D. These last two members access the upper-left 3×3 matrix without any data copying.

The font format has changed in this version. Any custom fonts that were previously imported need to be imported again before they can be used.

The rendering speed, visual quality, and layout capabilities of text have all been significantly improved in this version of the engine, and they match the current features of the Slug library. See the Text Widget article for information about all of the available settings.

The supersampling option for text has been removed. The font rendering algorithm is now able to produce even higher-quality results without supersampling.

The soft shadow and glow effects for text have been removed due to poor performance. A hard shadow effect and a new outline effect are now available.

A new volumetric halo effect has been added to the engine. This renders a spherical volume with a radial density attenuation function, and it accounts for the actual visual depth between the camera and any intersecting geometries. Like the shaft effects, it has a noise option to eliminate banding.

The Font Importer generates smaller resources now by eliminating duplicate contours and redundant kerning data in a font. Degenerate curves and other types of bad data are also eliminated in poor-quality fonts. All custom fonts need to be re-imported to bring them up to the current format.