Full Changelog: https://github.com/NTDLS/AxisEngine/compare/0.0.46...0.0.47

Axis Engine 0.0.47

Highlights

• New game flow. Pick a pilot, then a ship, then weapons. Any pilot can fly any ship. The game starts in the Starting Situation set in Game Rules.
• Sectors. Sectors are split into quadrants, with scripted random encounters, objectives, enemy bases (Garrisons) and an in-game map.
• New HUD. A graphical HUD replaces the text HUD: ship status bars, a weapons panel, a reskinned radar, announcements, and sector/quadrant status.
• Visual effects. Post-processing (bloom, shockwave/gravity-well distortion, chromatic aberration, color grading, vignette), a procedural nebula backdrop, lightning, camera shake and ships shattering into pieces.
• Rendering overhaul. Direct3D 11 flip-model swap chain with frame pacing and tearing support. The world is drawn through a camera transform instead of an oversized offscreen canvas. PerMonitorV2 DPI.

Gameplay

New game and pilots

• New game setup: pilot → ship → weapons (by slot and weapon type), then start.
• Game Rules sets the Starting Situation (default: Sector Run).
• Framework for pilot actives and passives:
  • Energy uses renewable resources.
  • Actives can be Press, Hold or Toggle.
  • Stat modifiers are tracked by source.
• Pilot and Loadout asset types, with templates.
• Debug situation picker with prepackaged loadouts.
• Game over prompt when the player dies, with retry or return to the main menu. The player now dies when hull reaches zero.

Sectors and encounters

• Sectors (AeSector) made of quadrants, each with a cleared/uncleared status.
• Scriptable encounters: spawn enemies, mark objectives, follow-up actions.
• Enemy bases (Garrisons) and per-quadrant objectives.
• In-game map showing quadrants, bases and objectives.
• New Sector 1 sector.

Enemies and AI

• Rebuilt AI:
  • Intercept and lead-point calculations and evasive maneuvers.
  • AILogisticsAcePursuit and AILogisticsGuard (guards a moving anchor sprite).
  • AIBossPhases switches AI controller as the hull is damaged.
  • Swarm AI with dynamic spacing and individual movement.
  • Enemy wings spawn in formation.
• Heavy Transport: its back opens and releases a swarm. Destroy it before it reaches its destination (Transport Intercept situation).
• The Driller enemy (Drillers situation).
• AI and weapons now check IsReadyToFire the same way.
• Fixed the rotation direction of locking and seeking munitions.
• Fixed enemies not appearing in Debugging Starbase and Phoenix Ambush.

Weapons and effects

• Beam weapons.
• Procedural explosions with configurable styles.
• Explosion and power-up asset templates.
• Damage and explosions read munition metadata directly.
• Camera shake.
• Sprites shatter into fragments when destroyed.

Situations and levels

• Sector Run: the default starting situation.
• Transport Intercept, Drillers.
• Swarm Stress: escalating waves of swarms, for load testing.
• Effects Gallery: shows off every visual effect.
• Weapon Gallery and Explosion Gallery: debugging levels.
• Levels can configure a nebula backdrop.

Rendering and visuals

• Direct3D 11 + DXGI flip-discard swap chain:
  • Waitable-object frame pacing with a maximum frame latency of 1.
  • Tearing (AllowTearing) when vsync is off.
  • Falls back to a window render target if the swap chain can't be created.
• New high-resolution frame limiter (AeFrameLimiter).
• Camera transform replaces the 4800×2700 intermediate canvas. Transforms now combine with the current transform.
• Direct2D effects pipeline (Ae.Engine.Effects):
  • Displacement-map distortion (shockwaves, gravity wells). It mirrors the screen edges so black never shows.
  • Gaussian-blur bloom, color matrix and saturation grading, chromatic aberration, vignette.
  • Turbulence nebula drawn with a wrapping brush (no seams), faint by default.
  • Lightning.
• The skybox sprite system and its assets were removed; the nebula replaces them.
• Rewritten star field: consistent density and frame-rate-independent parallax.
• Camera and zoom system reworked, with smoother zoom while boosting and support for cinematic camera moves.
• Full-screen loading screen with an animated progress bar and fade-out.
• Full-screen no longer uses TopMost. The mouse cursor is hidden in full screen while the game has focus.
• PerMonitorV2 high-DPI mode.

Menus, HUD and input

• One themed look for all menus.
• New list + detail menu layout with scrolling lists, used by the situation picker and the loadout selection.
• Ship selection layout fixed (ships were clipping off the screen).
• In-game confirmation prompts replace message boxes, including the quit prompt.
• Modal menus that work while the game is paused.
• Escape-to-go-back no longer opens the quit prompt, and Enter no longer passes through a closing prompt to the menu underneath.
• New HUD (AeHud), drawn in screen space, with a reskinned radar.
• Configurable key bindings saved in settings, gamepad input, and key hints shown in the UI.

Engine foundations

• AeMath and AeVector rewritten as immutable structs. All call sites updated.
• Collision geometry rewritten on AeVector with ulong keys.
• Angles are signed, with unsigned wrapping for display. Rotation speeds are in degrees per second (radians internally).
• Fixed AeRenewableResources renewal rate to be per second.
• Fixed AeFrameCounter to average frame times instead of rates.
• Audio:
  • Metadata-driven.
  • Decoded samples are shared and voices are pooled.
  • Sound asset keys fixed.
• Game Rules:
  • Advanced settings and overdraw scale moved from the settings dialog into the Game Rules asset.
  • Every rule is required: a missing rule throws MissingGameRuleException.
  • YieldRemainingFrameTime removed.
• AeGlobalClass for global code assets. AeSharedClass types are no longer cached.
• New imports available to asset scripts: Ae.Engine.Metadata, Ae.Engine.Sector, Ae.Engine.Effects.

Tools

• Asset Explorer:
  • Dark mode.
  • Asset templates for creating new assets.
  • Natural sorting in the tree: folders first, numbers in order.
• Image processing switched to ImageMagick.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/NTDLS/AxisEngine/compare/0.0.43...0.0.46

Please note, this is still an alpha release - there is nothing substantial to play.

This release represents a major architectural step forward for the engine, focusing on performance, asset-driven architecture, editor tooling, and foundational multiplayer/session infrastructure. Large portions of the engine were refactored to support a database-backed asset pipeline, metadata-driven gameplay systems, and significantly improved performance.

Major Architecture Changes

Asset-Driven Engine

A significant portion of the engine has been migrated to an asset database architecture.

• New asset package format
• Asset database reader/writer implementation
• Asset packing tools
• Project extraction and ingestion system
• Asset export and replacement capabilities
• Asset schema improvements and metadata pruning
• All assets now include metadata
• Weapons, sounds, animations, and sprites increasingly driven by metadata
• Major progress moving engine code and configuration into assets
• This work establishes the foundation for data-driven gameplay and tooling.

Sprite System Refactor

The sprite system received a major internal reorganization.

• Major SpriteBase refactor
• Sprite creation and lifecycle management improvements
• Simplified sprite attachment creation
• Sprite direction is no longer tied to movement vector
• Sprite attachment orientation and position modes (fixed and independent)
• Explosion attachment fixes
• Metadata optimizations for bitmaps and animations
• Split responsibilities within SpriteBase
• Sounds now derived from sprite metadata

AI System Improvements

• AI moved to a lower abstraction layer
• AI integration with the asset database
• Multiple observed objects for AI models
• Hostile engagement work in progress
• Debug enemy metadata support
• Example boss enemy added

Math and Physics Improvements

Mathematics and movement systems were significantly cleaned up and improved.

• Replacement of SiAngle with the more robust SiVector system
• Standardization of math utilities
• Simplified radian and vector handling
• Orientation and movement vector improvements
• Improved angular collision momentum propagation
• Improved collision propagation across sprites
• RecalculateOrientationMovementVector implementation
• Epoch timing now expressed in seconds

Performance Improvements

• High-efficiency bitmap implementation
• Extensive caching improvements
• Animation and sound caching
• Metadata caching improvements
• Major munition hit detection optimizations
• Reduced reflection usage
• Optimized asset loading
• Lazy starfield initialization
• Resolved redundant image loading
• Delegate thread pool caching improvements

Editor and Tooling

Asset Editor

• Asset explorer
• Property editor
• Metadata editing and saving
• Sprite viewer improvements
• Multi-tab editor interface
• Tree view icons and improvements
• Class picker constraints
• Asset folder creation, deletion, and export
• Metadata picker improvements
• Debug sprite explorer

Development Tools

• Debug interrogation system in the editor
• Debugger injection support
• Action buffer system
• Development mode improvements
• Manual compilation support
• NuGet compiler integration
• Installer updates
• Engine lobby integration with shared engine

Graphics and Visual Improvements

• New visual systems and improvements include:
• New explosion effects and customizable explosions
• Inflatable rigid body explosion effects
• Particle system improvements
• New particle types
• Random asteroid field generation
• Starfield improvements and restored stars
• Smoothed skyboxes
• New rendering shapes and modes

Gameplay Systems

• Highlights:
• Weapons driven entirely by metadata
• Weapon selection by asset key
• Improved munition creation
• Guided projectile fixes
• Better collision handling
• Improved hit detection
• Attachment tick behavior improvements

Networking and Multiplayer Foundations

• Session connectivity scaffolding
• Lobby system scaffolding
• Datagram communication work
• Early multiplayer support (WIP)
• Messaging system groundwork

Engine Infrastructure

• Logging improvements
• Engine configuration options
• Monitor settings
• Improved settings dialog
• Installer improvements
• Updated dependency libraries
• Upgrade to .NET 10
• Updated build scripts

Asset Pipeline Improvements

• Asset compression improvements
• Reintroduced compression to control asset growth
• Asset byte read/write utilities
• Asset schema cleanup
• Removal of oversized asset check-ins
• New asset packaging system
• Improved loading progress reporting

Bug Fixes

• Fixed guided projectile targeting
• Fixed metadata picker issues
• Fixed redundant image loading
• Fixed window-to-render coordinate mapping
• Fixed orientation event handling
• Fixed starfield parallax
• Fixed weapon classification issues
• Fixed sprite orientation offsets
• Fixed initial enemy angle handling
• Fixed asset loading paths in debug mode
• Fixed scaling issues

Miscellaneous Improvements

• Additional improvements include:
• New DM messenger system
• Theming support (night-friendly editor)
• Tree view improvements
• Metadata system cleanup
• Type guarding improvements
• Namespace cleanup
• Nullability improvements
• Standardized naming conventions

Development Notes

This release represents a large internal restructuring of the engine to support:

Asset-driven design

• Metadata-based gameplay systems
• Improved performance
• Expanded tooling
• Future multiplayer support

Many systems remain actively under development, particularly:

• Asset editor
• Multiplayer networking
• AI expansion
• Property editing tools