May 2019 - October 2019

Breaking Changes

• The Font constructor has now inverted parameters: fntFilename as first and texFilename as second
  • The reason for that is the new single parameter constructor
• SceneNode::parentNode() getter has been renamed to just parent(), to be consistent with the new setParent() setter
• The xResolution and yResolution fields of the AppConfiguration class have been replaced by a single 2D resolution vector
  • The setResolution() helper method has been removed as it is now possible to call resolution.set()
  • In Lua x_res and y_res have been replaced by the resolution 2D vector
• The old non ImGui debug overlay has been deleted. If you need the debug overlay you also need to enable the ImGui integration
  • As part of this change the fontTexFilename and fontFntFilename strings in the AppConfiguration class have been deleted
• The withProfilerGraphs and withInfoText flags in the AppConfiguration class has been unified into a single withDebugOverlay flag
  • You have to explicitely set the new flag to true to enable the debug overlay even when your application is compiled in debug mode
• Many nctl::String::copy() methods have been turned into assign() methods in order to be more consistent with STL
• The Timer::now() method has been removed, refer to the new TimeStamp class

New Features

• Emscripten is now supported as a target platform, meaning you can now use the nCine for web games! 🕸️
• The user can now query the available fullscreen video modes on PC and choose one
  • The IGfxDevice interface has been enriched with methods to query the current video mode, the list of available ones and to set a new mode
• A new deferShaderQueries flag has been added to the AppConfiguration classes
  • When it is set to true all the shader error checks and introspection queries are deferred upon the first use of the shader, if it is ever used.
  • The option allows for decreased starting time at the expense of possible stutters when the shader is first used in a frame
• New methods have been added to the audio classes to query their state
  • They were used in the new Audio Players section of the ImGui debug overlay interface
• If you use the nCine compiled as a static library you have now access to more functionalities in the OpenGL classes
  • You can now create PBOs and TBOs.
  • You can now use GL_SAMPLER_1D and GL_SAMPLER_3D types in shaders
  • A new GLCullFace class has been added to track OpenGL face culling state
• The Font class now relies on FntParser class to extract all the data from a FNT file
  • More checks are now performed to ensure the text can be properly rendered
  • More glyph channel configurations are now supported and rendered correctly
  • The Font class can be constructed with a single parameter: the FNT file. The texture will be loaded according to the file specified in the first page tag.
• When you compile the engine you can now choose to disable the support for various dependency libraries and features
  • You can disable threads support, Lua bindings, Png or WebP image loading, Ogg Vorbis sound loading or audio altogether

Improvements

• The version of the integrated Tracy has gone from v0.4.1 to v0.5
  • It is now easier to use Tracy in custom nCine projects, including on Android
  • Threads can be named so that they can be tracked in the Tracy profiler
  • You can now also retrieve current thread priority or set a new one
  • All log entries are written out as coloured Tracy messages
  • Threads id are invalidated on join and cancel so that they can be reused
• The version of the integrated ImGui has gone from v1.70 to v1.73
• The GameController mapping database has been updated from the one included in SDL 2.0.9 to the one in SDL 2.0.10
• The SceneNode classes has seen the addition of long awaited helper methods in the shape of setParent(), alpha() and absAlpha()
  • The first one makes it easy and intuitive to set a node parent without going the opposite way by calling parent->addChildNode(this)
  • The alpha related methods should make it easier to query for a node alpha value
  • There are also new Lua methods for scene nodes: set_parent(), get_alpha() and set_alpha()
• The new TimeStamp class can be used to collect timestamps at the full precision of the internal clock
  • The Time class has been enhanced with stop() and totalTime() methods to aggregate multiple time spans
  • Most methods of the TimeStamp class are also accessible through the Lua API
• It is now possible to assign() a certain numbers of characters from a C string to an nctl::String object
• You can now enable the ImGui debug overlay even when the scenegraph is disabled
  • In this case be sure to track OpenGL states using GLBlending, GLDepthTest and the new GLCullFace class
• The Font class has a new query method, numKernings(), to retrieve the number of kerning pairs in a font (it is called num_kernings() in Lua)
• You can access the array of animations in an AnimatedSprite and the array of rectangles in a RectAnimation
• On Windows the executables use the Windows subsystem instead of the console one
  • They will also expose version properties thanks to the VERSIONINFO file
• The Android Gradle plugin version has been updated from 3.4.0 to 3.4.1 and Android build tools from 28.0.3 to 29.0.2
  • The changes have been reflected in the template project as well

Fixes

• Compiler warnings related with nctl::UniquePtr wrapping forward declared classes have been fixed. They could have sometimes led to incorrect object deletions and possible leaks. 😨
• The OpenAL implementation has been rewritten and many bugs that were lurking in the code should have been squashed 🐛
• Some changes dictated by the layout of the new ncTemplate project
  • The CMake scripts now expect a nCine-data/icons/icon.ico file instead of the old nCine.ico
  • Installers are now built with the CPACK_PACKAGE_VENDOR and CPACK_PACKAGE_HOMEPAGE_URL variables correctly set
• The returned value for GL_MAX_UNIFORM_BLOCK_SIZE is now clamped to 64kB because some OpenGL drivers might return very big numbers