Defold 1.2.180 BETA

[Mathias_Westerdahl]

Defold 1.2.180 BETA

The latest beta is now released, and we invite those interested in beta testing the new features in the editor and engine to join now.
The beta period will be 2 weeks and the next planned stable release is two weeks from now.

We hope this new workflow will highlight any issues earlier, and also get valuable feedback from our users. And please comment if you come up with ideas on improving on this new workflow.

Please report any engine issues in this thread or in issues using Help -> Report Issue

Thx for helping out!

Disclaimer

This is a BETA release, and it might have issues that could potentially be disruptive for you and your teams workflow. Use with caution. Use of source control for your projects is strongly recommended.

Access to the beta

Download the editor or bob.jar from http://d.defold.com/beta/

Set your build server to https://build-stage.defold.com

Release notes

This release we’ve worked on some major improvements to both our OpenGL backend as well as our texture format support.
We’ve also added a much more robust Lua parser for our require() detection.

The sound component now also have a loop count.

Texture compression

We now support Basis Universal texture compression.
It is a format that transcodes at runtime into a final format that the device supports (e.g. ASTC or ETC2).
You can see more about which runtime formats we support in the code.

This makes it the first time we’ve had GPU texture formats on desktop and HTML5.
Not only will it take up less memory on the GPU, but the bundle size will be smaller.

This change also made the old WebP compression obsolete. For backwards compatibility, if your .texture_profiles uses WEBP_LOSSY compression type, it will now instead use BASIS_UASTC. The WEBP compression type now becomes DEFAULT.

OpenGL ES 3 support

This release we’ve also updated our OpenGL backend to support OpenGLES 3/WebGL 2 where possible.
For those platforms that require it (Android + HTML5), we also support an automatic fallback to OpenGLES 2/WebGL 1.

Most of the shaders should work as they are, but since it’s a major version update, you might find a case where the shader need a manual update. E.g. we had to update our font-df.fp shader to not use the reserved keyword sample. The change in our case was simply to rename the variable like so vec4 df_sample.

Also, special thanks @aglitchman for the extensive testing during the alpha period!

Engine

• Issue-5523 - Updated: Update to OpenGLES 3
• Issue-3375 - Updated: Added support for Basis Universal texture compression
• Issue-5544 - Added: Sounds now have a loopcount value
• Issue-5054 - Fixed: Improve detection of require() calls in Lua modules and scripts
• Issue-5359 - Fixed: Removed limit of max 32 global material tags
• Issue-5499 - Fixed: LU: Live Update fix for Android game manifest after reboot
• Issue-5500 - Fixed: NE: Added dmHttpClient::ParseHeader to dmSDK
• Issue-5511 - Fixed: Made sure gamepad axis pressed/released trigger more like a regular button
• Issue-5524 - Fixed: Make iOS Vulkan(Metal) builds work again
• Issue-5542 - Fixed: Build libgraphics_vulkan for Win32/linux again
• Issue-5529 - Fixed: Added delta encoding before font glyph compression
• Issue-5546 - Fixed: Use js-web when downloading symbols for wasm-web
• Issue-5551 - Fixed: Added option graphics.device_info to display GPU info in console at startup
• Issue-5578 - Fixed: Updated to c-ares library 1.17.1

Editor

• Issue-5580 - Fixed: Fixed SocketTimeoutException when starting debugger on Windows
• Issue-4996 - Added: Add code editor font name as a new user preference

[Dragosha]

We’ve also added a much more robust Lua parser for our require() detection.

I use a collection of functions for Lua called lume and getting a side effect of this changes:
build error “/main/helper/lume.lua the module ‘/modname.lua’ can’t be found”

Seems, if the code is using argument for require method instead direct lua path we have an error now?
Lume rep: https://github.com/rxi/lume

p.s. detected when tried to build an android bundle. Removing line 709 – local newmod = require(modname) - fixing this.

[Mathias_Westerdahl]

I think @britzl will know more about this scenario.

[Dragosha]

another example:

This from Playfab extension. (https://github.com/PlayFab/LuaSdk/tree/master/Defold)

[britzl]

Thanks @Dragosha! I’m on it.

[britzl]

Thanks @Dragosha! I’m on it.

A PR with a fix has just been merged (https://github.com/defold/defold/pull/5588). There will be a new beta in 30 minutes or so.

[Dragosha]

A PR with a fix has just been merged

Tested with same example. Works correct now. Thanks!

[Pkeod]

Should it be near possible now to get a normal render target with depth buffer instead of doing it the material way?

How to pass scene depth buffer to fragment shader as a texture? (DEF-2699)

I want to use the depth buffer values of a scene for post processing effects, such as doing SSAO or scene fog. Like this kind of thing http://www.roxlu.com/2014/036/rendering-the-depth-buffer https://learnopengl.com/#!Advanced-Lighting/SSAO

I really want SSAO!

https://learnopengl.com/Advanced-Lighting/SSAO

[Mathias_Westerdahl]

I would think so yes.
Don’t forget to vote for the issue (https://github.com/defold/defold/issues/3547)