Preview release v0.5.2

It's almost as if I have a monthly schedule, new preview release is available for download. Semi-exclusive research is a new feature and there have been a number of improvements and bug fixes.

Download Stareater v0.5.2

Semi-exclusive research had it's own post so I'd focus on under the hood improvements. I won't bore you with coding details this time, let's just say that the game is back to 1000 FPS. As usual whenever the game starts lagging it's my fault, I either forgot to remove debug info collection or performed steps in wrong order. This time it was order of the steps, text rendering was initialized during the scene rendering instead of before it, making invalid OpenGL calls. Unfortunately it didn't crash the program nor bugged out graphics (which it should), driver made an effort to control the damage so I didn't notice the issue right away. After playing a bit with GLIntercept, an OpenGL debugging tool, I've found the culprit and was relieved that the cause was my sloppiness instead of something in programming language + OpenGL + driver combination.

I've also made a bit of code clean up and some refactoring. I've decided to drop T4 text template technology because editor support is not on the level I'd like and it cumbersome to work with it. Once you make it work, it works but when you have to make a change it ends up taking whole week. So far I've reworked two "classes" of T4 dependent code but the final and the most complicated class still remains. I have a prototype of an alternative approach in making but it will take me some time to incorporate it. I'm most probably postpone it and focus on something else.

So in a mean time enjoy the preview and feel free to give feedback!