Hello again!

We had a fairly productive September, all things considered, and we’re back with another monthly progress update to recap it for you!


Continuum RT

We’ve once again made a lot of progress, and barring any major issues that could still crop up, we are hopefully in the home stretch! We still don’t want to give any major details/spoilers for this update until it is ready though.

Again, anyone that have supported, or continued to support RT during this time, THANK YOU! We greatly appreciate it. That said, we entirely understand if you want to end your subscriptions until the next update is ready.


Continuum 2.1

Despite Robo not having as much time to work on 2.1 as we would like, we managed to release a new build this month, with a lot of nice improvements, optimizations and a few new features!

The new build, Build 11, launched on the 29th with the main focus being the cloud rewrite and the performance improvements from that and other small optimizations. From our tests Build 11 is up to 23% faster than Build 10, while generally looking better. Most of this was a side effect of the cloud rewrite, but there will be more optimization focused updates in the future, though most will probably occur in Beta. Speaking of Beta, work continues on weather, which is still the last big feature needed to push forward into Beta with 2.1. We have no ETA for weather at this time, but time permitting, it will hopefully be implemented and in a build soon!

We outlined many of the other features that ended up in this update in our last monthly update, but here are the official patch notes in case you are curious (also available to CEA users on the downloads page):

  • Rewrote clouds. (Better looking and faster volumetric clouds).
  • Added more volumetric cloud options (including cloud speed).
  • Added custom color grade (made by Robo).
  • Added local coverage to planar (2D) clouds.
  • Added small optimizations to SSS (subsurface scattering).
  • Added more shadow resolution options.
  • Added more volumetric fog options.
  • Improved overall performance a bit.
  • Improved glow on emissive blocks.
  • Improved water heightmap.
  • Improved screen space specular reflections.
  • Improved screen space reflections on worst case scenarios (ray refinements).
  • Improved the look of metallic surfaces.
  • Fixed skylight darkness.
  • Fixed shadows sometimes sticking above the surface.
  • Fixed some lodding issues with shadows.
  • Fixed the ability for metals to reflect other metals.
  • Fixed lit redstone lamp ID.
  • Fixed NaNs (black dots) on normals.
  • Numerous smaller fixes and tweaks.

Here are some screenshots of some of these updates (click on images to enlarge)


Stratum

Stratum has also made some good progress this past month, with a new build being pushed as well. Build 8 includes the textures and updates mentioned in the previous blog, and more!

It’s not all good news unfortunately. One of our Stratum developers, who many of you may know as Hox, has decided to take a break from Stratum development, likely for the remainder of the year, to handle some personal business. Hopefully he returns sooner rather than later, but in the meantime Mythical will be continuing work as usual, so Stratum updates will continue despite Hox’s absence.

Textures added and/or changed in Build 8:

Added

  • Giant Brown Mushroom
  • Oak Door V1
  • Birch, Jungle, Acacia, Spruce and Dark Oak doors (all just variants of Oak for now)
  • Iron Bars V1

Tweaked / Fixed

  • Increased size of Lapis Ore
  • Acacia blockstate fix to use additional model variation
  • Minor adjustment to Giant Red Mushroom
  • Small improvements to Podzol and it’s AO
  • Improved Snowy Grass Block
  • Adjusted Tall Grass F0

Some work in progress stripped logs, as well as a cut sandstone texture are already in production for the next build of Stratum as well! We have included some teaser screenshots of those in the gallery below as well.

Screenshots (click on images to enlarge)


Until next time...

As always, we appreciate your continued support!