v0.113.0 Comes Alive

A material can now move the surface it is on, so flesh breathes and flags ripple with no rig behind them. A project you build in the editor opens on any machine, a prop that flinches every frame no longer costs a sixth of a second each time, and running out of video memory no longer blanks the world.

Surfaces that move

A .flsl surface shader can move its vertices. output offset is how far each point of the surface moves, in the node's own space:

shader flesh {
  stage fragment
  uniform swell: float = 0.08
  let beat = sin(time * 5.0) * 0.5 + 0.5
  output color = vec4(litSurface(vec3(0.6, 0.15, 0.2)), 1)
  output offset = normal * fbm(objectPos * 2.0) * beat * swell
}

• It works on anything the material is on: a map face, a primitive, an imported model, a rigged character.
• The offset can read objectPos, normal, uv, time, instanceColor, the shader's uniforms, and math, noise and colour functions. It cannot sample a texture or read the scene; the shader says so if you try.
• A pattern in the colour stays stuck to the surface while it moves.
• The surface casts its sun shadow from where it has moved to.
• Lighting, colliders and the selection outline use the surface's unmoved shape.
• In the shader graph, offset is a second port on the output node.

A rigged model wearing a .flsl material is animated on the graphics card, like any other rigged model. It used to fall back to the processor, frame by frame.

Projects that open on any machine

Some files the editor saved held the full path to a file on your computer, like /home/you/Game/models/rebel.glb. They worked on your machine and broke everywhere else: in an export, in a teammate's copy, and after moving the project. The worst case was an animation clip made in the Animation window for a model dragged in from Assets. It saved the model's full path, and after a reload it was no longer listed for that model.

Every file the editor writes into your project now stores paths relative to the project. That covers scenes, prefabs, animation clips and controllers, sprite animations, materials, particle effects, tilesets, UI styles, shaders saved from the graph, terrain palettes, map and texture settings, and a package linked from a folder inside the project. Files an older version saved with full paths are read as relative, and the next save rewrites them.

floptle check now also reports full paths in .flsl files and terrain palettes, and floptle check --fix repairs them.

A prop that flinches stays smooth

Resizing or turning a collidable model every frame, for a hit reaction or a pulse, cost around a sixth of a second a frame. That was its shadow being rebuilt from scratch each time. The shadow now keeps its last shape while the model is still moving and rebuilds once, after the model holds still for about a third of a second. A flinch that settles back costs nothing.

floptle shot --timing --frames N counts these shadow rebuilds and collider rebuilds, and floptle run --timing counts the collider rebuilds.

Low on video memory, the world still draws

With another program holding most of the graphics card's memory, a scene could draw only its sky, with particles smearing across the screen, under a wall of errors that never said why. Now the distance-field shadows shrink to what fits, the rest of the world keeps drawing, and the Console says once that video memory ran out and how much was asked for. Shapes left out of the shadows still draw and collide, and the sun's shadow map still works.

Upgrading

• Nothing to do. Open and save a project made with an older version to move any full paths in it to relative ones, or run floptle check --fix.
• A rigged model wearing a .flsl material now animates on the graphics card. If it looks different from before, tell us.