Momentum Mod
Momentum Mod Dev Q&A Stream #3
Just like last time, you may ask us questions to be answered and or discussed live in our Discord server, inside the #qna-live channel! Note that while we may take some questions during the stream, it is better to get your questions in beforehand in the #qna-live channel in the Discord.
We hope to see you there, but just like last time, if you can't make it, we will be uploading the VoD with timestamps to our YouTube channel!
Cheers,
Momentum Mod Team
Momentum Mod Dev Q&A Stream #2
Just like last time, you may ask us questions to be answered and or discussed live in our Discord server, inside the #qna-live channel! Note that while we may take some questions during the stream, it is better to get your questions in beforehand in the #qna-live channel in the Discord.
We hope to see you there, but just like last time, if you can't make it, we will be uploading the VoD with timestamps to our YouTube channel!
Cheers,
Momentum Mod Team
0.8.8 Release - Bring the Chaos
Why, hello there! :)
The last 4 months have been massive for the project. With getting access to the Source Engine’s inner demons, the team has been hard at work porting the game to the Chaos Source engine, and we have some pretty big news regarding it, so strap on in!
Bring the Chaos
0.8.8 marks the first build of Momentum Mod on the Chaos Source engine branch. For those that may have missed the previous blog post about it, the Chaos Source engine branch is a CS:GO-based Source project being worked on by the Chaos Initiative team, which Momentum joined upon obtaining the engine license. Having an engine license opens the door for Momentum to be the best game it can be, and the team is very excited at what’s to come! But let’s talk about what we have, starting now, shall we?
Full Range of Map Compatibility
Momentum Mod can now load maps from Counter-Strike: Source, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, all in one game. Momentum automatically mounts these four games as players have them installed, but as a reminder, they are not required to play the game!
We will, in the future, update our map selector to show exactly which games would need to be installed to play maps that may use the assets from them. This can help players filter out maps made with assets from games they do not have installed. We will also have some tools to help condense the mounted games into tight VPKs to help reduce the need to have the full game installed, so stay tuned for that!
DirectX 11 Renderer
Resulting from the immense work of SlidyBat on the team, the Chaos engine (and therefore, Momentum) will be moving to a full DirectX 11 rendering backend by 1.0.0. In fact, 0.8.8 even has the initial version of this rendering backend implemented! Playtesters can opt-in with the launch parameter “-shaderapi shaderapidx11”.
This is going to be a Windows-only feature for now as we work towards getting DXVK working for the engine, which aims to replace the ToGL abstraction layer for Linux. It is also expected to have some bugs to iron out on our way to 1.0.0!
But what does DX11 really mean for the game? Well, for one, Chaos shaders can take advantage of a more up-to-date rendering API, including things like tessellation. Being on Shader Model 5, our shaders have updated limits and can take advantage of more modern features. For reference, the DX9+ToGL implementation in regular Source limits Windows to Shader Model 3, and Linux to Shader Model 2.0b. Working on things like the PBR shader started to become extremely limited, especially when trying to maintain cross-platform compatibility!
Also, it’s no secret that the graphics debugging workflow for DirectX 9 (what every Source 1 game, including CS:GO, runs on) is pretty lackluster. The Chaos team is greatly looking forward to using more powerful graphics debugging tools like Visual Studio’s Graphics debugger (seen above), or RenderDoc to be able to quickly and effectively find bottlenecks or issues in the graphics pipeline! Tools like this have even helped Slidy find bugs in the DX9 renderer while comparing the new renderer to the old one!
On the downside, Momentum Mod might not be able to run on your toaster anymore. In seriousness, while we understand the GPU availability situation nowadays, we will only be requiring players to have a graphics card from the last 12 years (GTX 400 / Radeon HD 5000 series and up) to be able to play. I’d like to reiterate that we understand Momentum is a game about speed, and we will not be going (too) crazy with making the game look incredible, especially not to the significant detriment of performance. High FPS deeply matters to us!
Panorama UI
Source 2 has enjoyed a much better UI system, called Panorama, than Source 1 has had over the years, called VGUI. CS:GO tried to get away from VGUI and even implemented Scaleform, a Flash-based UI system, before moving over to Panorama. With our access to the CS:GO engine, we now have full access to Panorama, and will be re-designing and re-implementing all of our VGUI-designed UI in this new framework. Below are only some of the mockups done by our UX designers TraZox and Isabella:
Panorama is a web-like UI framework that allows us to iterate on our User Interface design, implementation, and functionality much much, much more quickly than VGUI ever had. 0.8.8 ships with the first version of the framework, but lacks the proper design and implementation of the main menu, which is coming in the next (0.9.0) version!
About That Hammer I Owe Ya!
As I talked about in our previous changelog blog post, SCell has worked on a ton of valuable Hammer features, now included by default with Hammer for Momentum Mod, some of which are listed below:
Momentum Mod Dev Q&A Stream #1
You can ask us questions to be answered live in our Discord server, in the #qna-live channel! We plan to make these a regular, monthly thing, so make sure to join even if you don't have any questions for now!
We hope to see you there, but if you can't make it, we will be uploading the VoD with timestamps to our YouTube channel.
Cheers,
Momentum Mod Team
0.8.7 Release
Read the full blog post here:
https://blog.momentum-mod.org/post/637078284151275520/087-changelog
Make sure to join our Discord server to stay completely up to date with the development of the game!
https://discord.gg/n4v52uv
Cheers,
Momentum Mod Team
0.8.6 Release
You can view the changelog here: https://blog.momentum-mod.org/post/632882635256004608/086-changelog
Consider joining our Discord to stay up to date with the game's development: https://discord.gg/n4v52uv
Cheers!
Momentum Mod Team