Terragen changes log v0.9.43
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Latest changes are at the bottom of the page)


v0.9.08:

-- Rendering

* Renders much faster. Renders front-to-back and ignores micropolygons that are invisible.
* New anti-aliasing option: Extra blended detail (registered users only)
  This provides extra surface detail and reduces "popping" artifacts in animations.
* Added a 'minimum softness' to shadow tracing to prevent sharp triangle edges.
* Orthographic rendering option (in Camera Settings), with handy Auto Setup feature.
* Adjustable pixel aspect ratio (note: this not the same as picture aspect ratio)
* Option to generate random clouds on each frame

-- Terrain/Landscape

* Rearranged Landscape window with larger surface map tree view.
* Larger Landscape view as a separate Window, with Enlarge and Shrink buttons.
* Landscape sculpt/view window's maximum size is limited by screen resolution.
* Landscape sculpt window shows red circle to represent sculpt brush.
* Improved terrain sculpting tools.
* When copying and resizing old terrain, it asks if you want to adjust the point spacing keep the same real-world size.
* Fixed "psychedelic" water colours in landscape view.
* Fixed "Combine With" crash for different sizes of Existing and Secondary.
  (Is now able to draw preview and perform combination on the overlapping region. Warns user when window is opened.)
* Fixed freeze from pressing OK in Landscape Settings while Surface Editor is open.
* Fixed Perlin generators. They also have increased detail at higher resolutions.
* Fixed 8bit raw import for all terrain sizes.

-- Water

* Water shoreline 'surf/foam' effect (this feature is subject to change over the coming weeks)
* New water settings for "wave roughness variation" (subject to change over the coming weeks)
* Shadows on water can be disabled via a new option in Lighting Conditions

-- Other

* Default display gamma correction at 2.2 (this is pretty much the sRGB standard)
* Default render gamma correction at 2.0, and shadow lightness reduced to 25%
* Script execution can be forced to interpret positions as in metres (Anim Settings).
* Scripts can be executed from Anim Settings.
* Script execution options for enabling/disabling cam, sunpos and exposure
* WaterLevel script command
* Script Parse Effects capability (will release World/Camera Transform plugin at a later date)
* Optional f-stop/t-stop control in Camera Settings for convenience.
* Removed 10000-cap on sky size (was included due to an old atmospherics bug)
* Makes backups of files before overwriting them (appends _bak to filenames)
* Correctly saves multiple plugin effects to world files and surface maps.
* Maximum zoom value increased.
* Fixed zoom round-off problem
          (zoom scrollbar no longer feeds back rounded value when executing script)

---

v0.9.09:

* Fixed Lightmap crash bug on nVidia cards.
* Lightmap displayed at higher resolution in Lighting Conditions window (128x128).
* Fixed slight graphical glitch on Water window panels.
* Fixed behaviour of Water Foam settings when Enter is pressed after editing.
* Render Gamma Reset button resets to correct value (new default is 2.0)
* In Terrain Combination window, Copy Existing allows the Secondary terrain to adopt the correct size.

v0.9.10:

* Aspect Ratio Lock added to Image Size panel of Render Settings.
* New splash screen design (background image courtesy of Luc Bianco).
* LandscapeView operates correctly in Large Fonts mode.
* New World resets cloud layer (except generation parameters).
* New World resets the entire surface map.
* New World updates all displays when it's done.

v0.9.12:

* Terrain Modify dialog: Can display heights in metres, plus other improvements.
* Cloud altitude is shown in metres if those are the user's chosen units.
* Script execution: missing last frame is fixed.
* Splash screen background resized and displayed in "large fonts" mode.

v0.9.13:

* Cloud scroll speed in reflections is fixed.
* Fixed render buffer size problem which sometimes caused a crash.

v0.9.14:

* Splash/about box: image resize in non-standard screen DPI, independent of video card/driver

v0.9.15:

* Splash/about box: fixed image resize (for non-standard screen DPI)

v0.9.16:

* Fixed deletion of surface layers (was crashing when removing a non-root surface!)

v0.9.17:

* Re-enabled LWO export, similar to v0.8.
* (Currently only exports the bottom left 255x255 datapoints, but this will change in future.)
* Render Settings: checkbox for lock aspect ratio is set correctly when dialog is opened.
Landscape View/Sculpt window:
    * Fixed repeat redraw bug when sculpt brush is used multiple times quickly.
    * Holding Ctrl switches the left and right mouse buttons (nice for tablet users)
          (eg. in sculpt mode, Ctrl-LMB lowers the terrain while LMB raises it)
PDK fixes:
    * Terrain effects are passed correct instance pointers.
    * Basic Lighting information is available to plugin effects through the PreRender struct.
    * Surface distribution effects receive the same information as surface colour effects.

v0.9.18:

* Fixed bug with Lock Aspect Ratio by forcing an immediate update.
* Fixed missing polyons that happened when a render was split into multiple segments
      (although gaps may still appear at lower detail settings or in the preview render).

v0.9.19:

* Fixed a buffer allocation bug that caused a crash in rare situations.
* During rendering, it displays the anti-aliased result after each render segment.

v0.9.21:

* Ensured new surface layers are always randomised.
* Fixed rounding errors when saving terrains (no more mysterious spikes).
     (found to still have problems - fixed in v0.9.31)

v0.9.31:

* 3D Preview ported from TG Mac. Complete documentation here:
    http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/guide/3dpreview/
* Import of SGI images (8-bit and 16-bit greyscale) and TGA images (24-bit uncompressed).
* Export of SGI images (8-bit and 16-bit greyscale).
* Fixed missing triangles at shoreline (previews may still show problems but full detail renders are good).
* Fixed rounding errors when saving terrains (no more mysterious spikes).

v0.9.32:

* Fixed bug loading cloud settings (bug introduced in v0.9.31)
* Fixed bug loading terrains with negative heightscale (bug introduced in v0.9.31)

v0.9.35:

* 3D Preview improvements, and better window behaviour.
* Prevents 3D Preview from opening with invalid terrain sizes.
* Fixed a crash that would occur if you had the Surface Editor open while opening a world file.

v0.9.37:

3D Preview:

* Improved key handling.
  (Can use multiple keys at once. Can change modifiers, eg. shift, while other keys are held.)
* The Ctrl key is now used as the second modifier instead of the Alt key.
* Greatly optimised the 3D Preview setup time.
* Added an 8 x 8 lightmap resolution which is the default for larger terrains.
  (This decreases lightmap generation time without an appreciable impact on final quality.)
* Fixed a bug in 64 x 64 texture generation which usually led to no grass texture showing and could lead to a crash.
* Reworded some 3D Preview preferences and customisation controls.
* Memory usage in the 3D Preview appears to be under control. Please let us know if there are still issues.
* The progress dialog used during setup no longer "grabs focus" unless you switch away from TG quickly before it's shown for the first time.
  (The 3D Preview will still cause TG to come to the front when it's shown. A fix is being investigated.)
* Made some changes to theh Lighting Settings window which prevent the 3D Preview lightmap from being invalidated unnecessarily.
* Made some changed which should reduce the time needed to open terrain files, particularly for larger ones.

Other:

* Camera bank is saved in and loaded from World Files.
* Scripts can have a FrameDigits command to change the number of digits in saved images to anything between 1 and 8.
  An example command: FrameDigits 6
  Any FrameDigits command must come after the InitAnim command.

v0.9.38:

* Fixed a problem with the 3D Preview where mouse looking by dragging  
  in a straight line horizontally near the top or bottom of the window  
  could end up with you looking straight up.
* Fixed a problem which triggered the Runtime Error 6 during the 3D  
  Preview generation process.
* Changed the way the atmosphere is generated for the 3D Preview. The  
  new way prevents problems with the sky being black, which affected  
  large terrains particularly, when the camera was above the sky at  
  atmosphere generation time.
* Changed FPS display to its release configuration.
* The Gamma Correction setting from the Display Preferences is now  
  saved across sessions.

v0.9.39:

* "Units" script command allows scripts to specify camera positions and water level in metres.
  Usage: Units m
  Anything other than "m" following "Units" causes the script interpreter to default to terrain units.
* Tooltips are back!
* Unregistered users attempting to render larger images or terrains no longer get an ugly error (only an information popup).
* Camera bank is reset to 0 before loading world files (so old files that don't store this value are loaded as 0).
* Script "FrameDigits" command removed. Replaced with format strings in InitAnim line, similar to TG Mac.
  Example: InitAnim "C:\anim\frame#4n", 1    ;this creates files named frame0001.bmp, frame0002.bmp, etc.
  (scripts without any formatting characters continue to work as before)
* Private PDK addition: CastRay and ShadeHit functions.

v0.9.40:

* Accepts key files named "terragen_key.tgk" as well as "terragen.key" because we shouldn't be using the .key extension.
* Fixed some bugs in CastRay
* Preferences system no longer causes Terragen to fail on Windows 98 and some Windows 2000 systems.

v0.9.41:

* Installer includes msvcp60.dll for those systems that need it.
* No longer causes an error on "World File -> Save World" with some file/network setups
  (exact cause is unknown, but perhaps it suggests the network drive/computer was disconnected since the file was loaded?)

v0.9.42:

* Preferences system fixed.
* Fixed run-time error 11 with zero sun radius.
* Fixed some bugs in CastRay
* Installer change: msvcp60.dll put into program directory
  to avoid a problem with Windows file protection

v0.9.43:

* 3D Preview preferences default to correct values when no prefs file is on disk.
  Users of v0.9.41 or v0.9.42 should open the 3D Preview Preferences
  (from the Terragen -> Preferences menu), select the Medium preset and then
  click OK to correct the existing prefs file.
