July 2023 Progress Update

Progress…and a few roadblocks.

Work on Focal updates has continued, and unfortunately actually expanded in scope, since the older versions of Focal on Fabric (for 1.14.4 and 1.16.5 specifically), have ran into a cert issue, and will also need updates. Instead of hearing updates on all of this from me, I’m going to let dotModded take it from here:

Wow, we’ve made some good progress on Vulkan, but first let’s go over why we haven’t been able to get a release for the newer Minecraft versions, and a patch to fix Focal for Fabric on older java versions: Focal’s currently available Alpha versions are extremely complex and developed for multiple Minecraft versions in the same project. We don’t have direct Fabric builds for Focal Alpha as they’re run through a modified Patchwork to convert Forge Focal to Fabric Focal. As we have no common code for Alpha, each version is also technically using its own codebase to account for Minecraft and Optifine differences. Thankfully, this issue is limited to the Alpha versions of Focal, Focal VK uses as much code reuse between platforms and versions as possible. Our modified Patchwork version is also causing some problems getting even the previously working versions to properly compile, and we’ve been working hard to diagnose why while trying to not delay Focal VK any longer than it already has been. With Forge massively changing again, and patchwork not changing, the future for Focal Alpha isn’t looking bright…and that’s okay. It’s well beyond it’s planned service period at this point.

Coming into the future then, for a temporary time some Focal Alpha builds may be unavailable on Fabric for specific versions (currently 1.14.4 / 1.16.5), or may need further configuration to get working (manually updating those game versions to a new version of Java may get them working). The time spent on fixing these bugs for Alpha isn’t well spent, as Focal VK is well on its way and we can forget Alpha ever existed. Focal VK surprising is vastly easier to maintain across many Minecraft versions as it’s a complete flexible renderer that’s been modularized.

Now for Focal VK specifically; the exciting news is Jake has been hard at work on the Lua interface in Rust, and wow, it’s a good thing we switched as this code is so much easier to wrangle. Here’s some examples of working Lua image registration (note this is very early on still for the API and everything is likely to be tweaked before focal is available for developers):

Beyond the Renderpack (our conceptual name for Shaderpack in Focal) interface a lot of progress has been made for OpenGL compatibility. At this point we have full lockless async communication between OpenGL and Vulkan with up to 2 frames in flight each, the synchronization here was a test of sanity as we’re not only dealing with low latency thread syncing, but also syncing with an external device (GPU). There’s still a lot to do with OpenGL, but the base compatibility later is nearly complete. Once it’s finished, then it’s time to attach it to the game!

I’m excited for the future, and thank you all again for your continued support! Hang on a little more and I promise you won’t be disappointed!

2.1 got no updates this month, as everyone was quite busy with Focal and other duties. That said, I am happy to announce that, barring any unforeseen circumstances, it will be entering into it’s final stretch of development soon.

Me and Jake plan on sitting down in the coming weeks, fleshing out settings descriptions, moving settings around, testing settings, and finally, starting work on settings presets. We have no idea how long this work might take, but it is the final step before a Release Candidate build of 2.1 will be prepared, and after that…a full, free release of Continuum 2.1 on Focal Engine!

More updates about this process will come as they are relevant, and Continuum Early Access users should redeem their roles in our Discord Community Server if they wish to track our progress via the #Early-Access-Updates channel.