Makeover update - September the 13th
Sunday, September 13, 2026 @ 22:24
Here is another vorfract update. Sadly, it's not the bugfixing update I thought it would be, nor does it bring any new tools or features.
However, since the world geometry is mostly low-poly and all the textures are also low-res and pixelated, I was wondering what other rendering styles (besides the default clean style) might look suitable, so I experimented with the rendering code for a bit.
The first thing I did, I added a CRT shader for a more retro look. I think that out of all the CRT shaders that I tried, I like the Hyllian shader best and it gets the closest to the look and feel of a real CRT monitor, at least in my opinion. It's a pretty amazing shader. The other two I included (Caligari and ZFast) look great as well.
I'm still enjoying how the game looks with the CRT shader on so for now, I'll leave it enabled by default, or at least in the current version.
Next, I added the option to downscale the rendered resolution to get an even more pixelated look (and this also significantly increases the frame rate).
On the lowest settings (and with 16X/32X MSAA, which only works on desktop and certain video cards unfortunately), it reminds me of the look of DOS games from the early 90's.
And finally, I also added two post-processing antialiasing shaders (FXAA and SMAA) which can work together with or as an alternative to the existing MSAA antialiasing.
Overall, I think the new rendering options were needed and I'm pretty happy with what's available now.
And last but not least, it was quite fun coding all of that, as opposed to fixing bugs (which is really what I need to be doing since there's still so many of them left).
And some other (important, but not terribly important) things:
- The "Panel saw" tool has been split from the "Linear saw" into its own separate tool.
- Attached the castle gate roof more securely into the gate pillars. Those desert storms can get quite rough at times.
That's it, thanks for reading!
