lazypenguin Posted October 15, 2023 Share Posted October 15, 2023 Introduction Hello everyone, We are extremely excited to announce the beta release of our new game client! For several months we have been working to completely overhaul ROSE Online's core graphics code and this release marks a major milestone for the game. We've rewritten the graphics renderer, added a new physics engine, added a new text renderer and fixed many, many visual bugs. This is the biggest update to the game engine in 20 years and as a result the game runs faster and looks better than ever before! Quote NOTE: Please note that several of the media below are interactive! Getting Started To get started using the beta make sure the "Use Beta Client" option is selected on the updater, then start the game as usual! Overview New Renderer Visual Improvements Z-Fighting Exponential Fog Improved Shadows Improved Glow Character Lighting New Physics Engine Better Options & UI Scaling Ko-Fi Supporters Future Thank You New Renderer Renderer rewritten from scratch for maximum performance Easily achieve 300+ FPS in busy areas on a mid range machine Effects, particles, etc. performance improved dramatically (RIP bonfire lag ) DirectX11 now supported by default for better native GPU performance & compatibility Future support for OpenGL/Vulkan/D3D12/Metal/WebGL/WebGPU The biggest change in this update is the complete rewrite of the renderer. Previously the game exclusively used Directx9 for rendering which is now legacy technology and has a lot of limitations. We rewrote the renderer to use new technology with a fast and parallel graphics pipeline that can target many different native graphic APIs. The game will now dynamically select the best graphics API to use which for most players will be Directx11. Additionally we took the opportunity to remove many inefficiencies in the rendering code. All these changes compound into massive performance gains unseen before in ROSE Online. The days of applying a mod to disable bonfire effects for better performance are a thing of the past. Things such as particles and effects will be noticeably faster for all players, especially in situations like Akram Arena near the crystal with a high amount of salamanders, AOEs and more effects. For most players, it is now possible to achieve an extremely high frame rate (300+) even in busy areas like Junon (see screenshot)! Once you've played ROSE with good performance you'll never want to go back! Visual Improvements As part of the renderer rewrite we also made many visual improvements to the game! We can proudly say that ROSE Online has never looked as good as it does with this new update. Z-Fighting Exponential Fog Improved Shadows Improved Glow Character Lighting Z-Fighting Major visual bug called "z-fighting" was fixed! Before our release we increased the maximum view distance in the game so now for the first time in ROSE Online you could see an entire map at once! This was a big change and we were quite proud of the achievement but when we increased the view distance some of the other problems in the engine started to become more noticeable. The biggest and most annoying problem was an issue known as "Z-fighting", here is what that looks like: z-old.mp4 z2-old.mp4 These "wavy" and "blurry" artifacts such as on the ship's sails are a result of "z-fighting". In the new engine we have updated the rendering pipeline to completely eliminate these visual artifacts! z-new.mp4 z2-new.mp4 This results in a much smoother and silkier gaming experience and is especially noticeable for players on high refresh rate monitors. There's nothing like playing ROSE Online at 144hz+ with no z-fighting! Exponential Fog Distance fog system rebuilt and improved Objects in the distance look better and more natural New fog opens opportunities for new environmental effects <br> When things are far away there is a "fog" effect that is applied to slowly transition those objects from visible to not visible. In the old client this feature was quite primitive and the effect was underwhelming and not immersive. With the new engine we have completely rewritten the fog system to a new "exponential" drop-off. This provides a more natural and immersive transition. The improved fog system is flexible and opens up the door to experiment with new environment effects, such as making Goblin Caves more spooky and dark! Here is an example of how a new dungeon fog system might look like: 2023-06-20_00-07-25.mp4 Improved Shadows Character/NPC shadows rewritten to be faster & more detailed! The ROSE engine doesn't technically have any dynamic lighting (yet?) but it does have a primitive shadow system that is limited to players, monsters and NPCs. While the shadows are an important effect they always left a lot to be desired and usually appeared as a blurry blob underneath the entity casting the shadow. For example: shadows-combined.mp4 We have completely re-written the shadow system to provide A LOT crisper and detailed shadows. Now even back items, weapons and other details of your character will appear in your shadow! Additionally we added the option to be able to control the level of detail for those who prefer a certain style or who are seeking maximum performance. Improved Glow Glow effects have been improved to be softer and less blurry Glow is an important part of the game. Highly refined items glow, special monsters glow and players even have the option of changing item glow color! However, the old glow in ROSE was a bit underwhelming as it used a basic technique to achieve the effect, in a sense it was more of a "blur" than a true glow. We have redesigned how glow works in the new client making for a much more satisfying and beautiful effect. For our players who love to play at MAXIMUM EYE CANDY, we have a new option that allows you to toggle the power of the glow. Of course the effect strength can be reduced but why would you lower it? Behold maximum glow: Character Lighting Lighting received by characters has been improved! As mentioned previously, while ROSE does not have full dynamic lighting there is a basic light system for lighting characters. For example when you are turned away from the sun, metal objects reflect less and there will be a shadow on the side facing away from it. We've rebuilt the character lighting system and light now has more of an impact on characters! <br> New Physics Engine Added a new physics engine to the game! Since it's original release ROSE Online has had a very primitive physics engine at its core. The functionality was limited and was used mostly to keep players on the ground or detect if they were clicking stuff. The original developers (Triggersoft) had ambitions beyond the current system but were unfortunately never able to realize them. A ROSE player preserved some old recordings from their experiments in this area 20+ years ago and called the series "The Ex-Future of ROSE Online"! Imagine how different the game would be with a proper physics engine! Well, you don't have to imagine anymore as part of this update includes incorporating a new industry standard physics engine into the client! Here is an example of short swords having physics and raining down a hill using the new physics engine. 2023-07-12_22-56-40.mp4 All existing physics functionality has been ported to the new physics engine which opens up the opportunity for some exciting features in the future. We are particularly looking forward to experimenting with adding physics to carts and castle gears. We no longer have to reminisce about "The Ex-Future of ROSE" and instead we can look forward to a very exciting future to come! Better Options & UI Scaling Improved video options for resolution/monitor/etc. Added new graphic options such a FPS limiter, glow quality, shadow quality & more Added new options for UI scaling When ROSE Online was first published, it was not uncommon to have video resolutions of 800x600, 1024x768 or if you were very lucky to be an early member of the WIDESCREEN club something like 1280x800. These days monitors come in all configurations and with many many more resolutions available including up to 4k and 8k! Unfortunately the game was never designed with these resolutions in mind and so the user interface had a fixed size. This means that if you play the game today on a high resolution monitor, you either have to suffer with a VERY small user interface or otherwise play the game at a smaller resolution. We're very excited to share that we have added UI scaling to the game options! Players can now select a scaling factor that makes sense for their play style and all interface components will scale accordingly! We also added the option to scale character, NPC and monster names. Additionally, we entirely reworked the display options for the game and added several new ones. Most importantly, it is now possible to choose which monitor to display the game when using fullscreen/borderless and all available resolutions will be shown in the resolution window. We also added some modern amenities like supporting v-sync and displaying FPS. We separated the view distance option from the quality option so players have more flexibility in balancing performance and quality. Finally we added some other options to enable players to customize their game further such as controlling glow quality, glow level, shadow quality and anti-aliasing strength. Ko-Fi Supporters We would like to thank our Ko-Fi supporters (https://ko-fi.com/rednimgames) who have been instrumental in testing the Alpha versions of this client and giving us invaluable feedback. As supporters they were able to get access to the early builds and provide their feedback through private channels. A big thank you to our supporters for their patience during our iterations. The Future This update has been several months in the making and we are very excited to bring this to the community. While all of us ROSE fans may have gotten used to these shortcomings of the game and adapted to the limitations, in modern times they are no longer acceptable. The team has a long term vision for the game and is committed to growing our community and bringing new players to our ranks. Part of that strategy means aligning ourselves with modern standards for games and this graphics update was a big part of that vision. We cannot understate how much of a landmark update this is for ROSE Online and in our opinion there has not been a more revolutionary change to this game since it was released. This change represents a new chapter for ROSE Online in which we are driving forward towards a strong and bright future backed by strong technological underpinnings and a beautiful game. For many of us on the team, our nostalgic glasses have cracked and the time spent reminiscing the iROSE Beta is diminishing. Using this new client and playing with all the features it brings, it is hard to go back to an older version. The future looks bright and we are excited to bring ROSE to its full potential. Thank you! Dear players, thank you all for being on this journey with us during our early access time. We are grateful to have this wonderful community of ROSE Online fans and we cherish your support. We hope that you will find this update as thrilling as we do, and that you are looking forward to the exciting future for ROSE Online! 32 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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