News for May 2004

Escalating commitments with work and study mean the new release is still some weeks away (but before end of June). I still have to write the tutorial, tweak a few parameters / algorithms, and do the final test-and-debug-everything evaluation. Will it be worth the wait? I hope so.

The features new to L3DT 2.2 include:

• Greatly improved high-resolution texture-blending.
• Heightfield erosion (see pic below).
• A batch-engine for making sets of maps (hands-off mode).
• An 'export selected region' option.
• DirectX '.x' terrain mesh export (text-only at the moment).
• A 'flood-on-click' mouse tool for placing seas / lakes manually.
• Water-table modelling for pretty lush / dry grass effects.
• Horizontal and vertical rescaling of the heightfield, including histogram functions.
• Support for jpeg textures, light maps & normals (finally!).
• All new climate definitions including temperate, desert, etc. (also allows different climates in the same map).
• A whole lotta polishing of the GUI (inc. improved menu structure).
• The .exe is MUCH faster and smaller thanks to my belated discovery of compiler optimisations, and no longer requires the chunky MFC DLL's.
• There's a skybox in L3DTVi2.

Notes:

I've broken the mosaic heightfield functions good and proper, and I may not fix them in time for L3DT 2.2. That probably means a heightfield size limit of 4096 × 4096 pixels will apply in L3DT 2.2. Mosaic textures still work, however, so the limit there remains 32k × 32k pixels.