Release candidate for 0.56 [RC2]

[illwieckz]

Here is the second release candidate download:

• dl.unvanquished.net/prerelease/unvanquished_0.55.5-20260304-152823-5aa8965-0.56.0-rc2.zip

The test server has been updated.

[illwieckz]

Tone mapper improvements

One bug affecting the tone mapper has been fixed, and the configuration of the tone mapper has been refined a bit more.

Now we can say that enabling the tone mapper is the best way to enjoy Unvanquished maps, being done the old way or the new linear way.

More improvements around this are experimented, but they may probably come in a later point release after the 0.56.0 release. The tone mapper is now considered good enough for all kind of maps, which is a huge achievement.

Exposure

The cvar to configure the exposure is now r_exposure, renamed from the old r_toneMappingExposure name. The exposure feature is usable with or without the tone mapper, so the name is better this way.

Legacy shader loading

We fixed a regression that prevented to load properly some legacy shaders done the early XreaL way (like Doom 3 did, which is much limited than what we can do). This affected maps like Jota. The same regression also prevented to load some miswritten shaders, like some we can find in the Hangar28 map. Us making such mistake being rendered properly isn't a feature, but it happens that fixing the regression affecting legacy Xreal shaders also restored the permissiveness that made those miswritten shaders work. It worked before and it will continue to work.

Map touch-up

Some maps got minor tweaks (station15, vega…). Those tweaks are unrelated to the linear pipeline, those are generic improvements that would have been be good to do even without the linear pipeline, but both adds up. Example of improvements are soft particles used where it looks better, and better shadows.

More may come.

Translation

The translations contributed since RC1 was released are now shipped in the RC2. Thanks to those who contributed translations.