Release Notes for Build 121

Release date: April 24, 2006

• Added a new procedural fire effect. This replaces the old effect that's been in the engine and is vastly superior in multiple respects. The FireEffect class is now in the engine core and is accessible in the World Editor. The fire effect can be placed in a world by using the tool in the markers/triggers/effects panel. The Get Info dialog for the fire effect contains settings for the radius and height of the fire, the texture to use, and a couple animation parameters.

• A single fire effect is rendered as a camera-facing quad that is constrained to rotate about its local z-axis. Its animation is controlled by an intensity value and a turbulence speed value. The default texture, Flame.tex, can be used to simulate everything between a flickering candle and a roaring torch. When designing a new texture for use with the fire effect, be sure to leave empty space at the top and on the left/right sides so that flames aren't cut off. The alpha channel is used to control transparency.

• The texture pickers in the material manager and info dialogs now show preview images.

• Fixed a bug that would cause the file save dialog to crash if there was no selection in the file list.