Design Improvements

[Karl G.]

I've been doing some programming research and found a few new tips that will help me improve the client's performance, as it leaves much to be desired on some peoples' hardware. Being as there isn't much point in having a game if people can't play it, I'll be implementing render-throttling (reducing the number of render-calls if the frame rate drops) and vertex shaders. Vertex shaders have very good software emulation (processor-integrated on Intel machines) for those machines without hardware support, and will improve rendering speeds three- to four-fold on computers that do.

In another area, I'll be improving the GUI so that it no longer has to be stretched in order to remain usable. This will mean some of our lovable layouts will...explode...in the process, but it will end up being faster--and looking better--in the end. Getting rid of a render-to-texture/full-screen texture stretch and using a hardware cursor will improve performance greatly. Your mouse won't lag if you have a slow computer, too!

[Joe M.]

awesome.