It has been a long time since Hexterminate has had a release, and given the size of the changes I think it justifies a 2.0 release! I’ve added native Linux support, done an overhaul of the resources and energy systems, as well as many other improvements.
Tag: Hexterminate
With holidays and birthday season out of the way, it’s time to let you know what’s been happening in HEXTERMINATE land.
Engine upgrades
Linux support & Proton
Being stuck on holiday with a laptop that only runs Linux Mint, I thought I’d try to get the game running on it, as the majority of the code was meant to be portable anyway.
That was the theory.
In practice, it required quite a substantial amount of work to get the game compiling, nevermind actually running. Right now it does run and it is playable, although there are some graphical artefacts and sound doesn’t work. However, this led to some interesting discoveries which will affect everyone, leading to better performance and fewer memory issues.
Currently, native Linux support is scheduled for Build 19 (so, not this one but the one after), but the many fixes that have been done to the engine will likely allow the game to be run through Proton in Build 18, rather than just displaying a black screen.
With HEXTERMINATE having been out for a while and the bulk of the issues resolved, it is time to talk about what will happen to the game in the long term.
Although the game is has been released, development will be carrying on for a long time to come: HEXTERMINATE is one of my two hobby projects and one that has an ever-growing list of things I’d like to do.
Before we go any further, let me just make one thing clear: these will all be free updates and available to anyone who has bought the game.
So, lets have a look at the backlog for a broad overview of where development time is going.
Engine updates
The engine HEXTERMINATE uses is homegrown and was started a very, very long time ago (a cursory look shows the first copyright notice in it dating back to 2014, but the first files were probably created in 2006 or so). Over the years it has been updated as necessary and chunks have been rewritten to allow for easier development.
One of the systems that needs some love is the renderer. Although sufficient for what the game currently does, it is quite primitive and had large chunks of OpenGL boilerplate code which is completely unnecessary nowadays. Previously using OpenGL 2 and relying on extensions, the engine has now been updated to use OpenGL 3.3. This is unlikely to cause any issues to anyone who has bought the game, as most cards this side of 2010 will support it, while considerably simplifying any work which touches the rendering system.
These first updates will be available in the upcoming release, Build 16.