URGE Engine Tech Demo 2 (Patreon)

Hey guys!

I waited a few days to post this so it didn't get overshadowed by the monthly update content.  AltairPL has prepared a second tech demo for his work-in-progress URGE game engine.  Like the previous one, it's not a game demo, but your feedback on it could prove critical for spotting bugs and making improvements to the inner workings!  I'll hand the post over to APL now, who will take it from here!

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APL here!  Since URGE is going on the shelf for the time being while I finish up RPG Maker work for v0.06, I decided to release an updated Tech Demo to get a bit more feedback.

It’s very important to refer to the instructions on how to use the tech demo in "AltairPL’s New Engine Tech Demo (Feedback Needed!)" section of the "April Progress Update!" post. But please, if you want to test either Tech Demo and post feedback comment, please do so in the relevant post; the old version in linked post and the new version in this post.

On the outside, this version works, or at least should work, exactly like the previous one. On the inside, however, there's plenty of changes and I really hope all of them are positive and there are no major issues.

The main difference is that this version uses shaders for all color manipulation. I know that in some cases shaders can lead to various problems, so I'm using pretty old shader language specification, which looks and works great and should be compatible with all relatively new hardware. IIRC, OpenGL and GLSL (shader language) requirements (versions 3.0 and 1.30 respectively) should be around DirectX 10 level (AMD/ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series and newer, nVidia GeForce 8 Series and newer, Intel HD 2000/3000 and newer), which I think is fair, all things considered.

Another major addition is the possibility to change some GFX setting via URGE.ini file located in "bin" sub-folder - there are currently 3 options, which I encourage you to test out:

• WaitForVSync - should decrease/eliminate tearing, but it may lower performance (shouldn't be noticeable on most hardware) and increase CPU usage.
• LinearFilteringImages - whether or not to use linear filtering (see below) when images are scaled/rotated by the game engine - dangling head is perfect way to test it out.
• LinearFilteringScreen - whether or not to use linear filtering (see below) for game screen scaling, as in when game window contents area resolution is different than internal game resolution.

Note on linear filtering: depending who you ask, linear filtering may be perceived as something good or something bad. I personally think it does look better, but a lot of people think that resultant image is way too blurry. I won't argue with them, since not only everyone has different taste, but I think it also depends on hardware. For example, I’m pretty sure that a huge display resolution may cause said excessive blurriness, but I also think that GPU drivers may also make things worse by applying their own filtering by their own, though I was never able to verify this theory. Anyway, back in the day, enabling linear filtering could cause a huge performance drop, so even though I haven't noticed any slowdown myself, I'm leaving it in your capable hands - feel free to comment if and how it works for you.

Old Tech Demo issues that should be fixed in this version:

• Blurry image should be related to linear filtering - see above for info how to change it.
• Non-ASCII characters in path to URGE executable should no longer cause crashes.
• Some other path issues were fixed, but not necessarily ported to loader.

Known Issues - either from old Tech Demo or new ones:

• F4 full-screen was not fixed since old Tech Demo and may cause various problems, like stretching image, screwing with OS DPI (scale) settings, etc.
• Rendering is performed when game isn't active/visible; I personally have mixed feelings about it, but I have an idea how to solve this.
• Windows XP is not supported (and probably never will be)

Anyway, here's the download link to new version. Enjoy and thank you in advance for all kinds of feedback (good or bad).