Sins: Remastered v0.92 Beta Released
We are very pleased to announced that an all new updated version of Sins: Remastered is now available for download. It's been a while coming, but I think it was worth the wait.
Fixes & Tweaks
Textures
If you looked closely at the old release, you may have spotted a few egregious dark spots on some objects. We found a few objects where the baked ambient occlusion was causing some problems like that so that has now been fixed up. Of course, make sure to let us know if we still missed something!
Tweaks
An adjustment has been made to the implementation of subsurface scattering. The effect is available and it's purpose remains the same but you may notice a slight difference in shading now on objects that make use of it. Jon felt that the original implementation was too strong and a new more balanced algorithm is now in place.
Radeon GPUs & Particle Effects
With the help of some feedback from users, we discovered that there was an incompatibility with the new custom shader code for some particle effects and (at least some) ATI/AMD Radeon video cards. Some adjustments have been made and we're happy to report that Radeon users should now be able to enjoy the full compliment of particle effects in Sins with the corrected shaders.
Asteroids & Shaders
Now we come to the major content addition with this update. We're happy to say that asteroids and other objects that also use their shaders now enjoy new PBR shader support of their own. What's more, instead of just updating the old original Sins asteroids to PBR format, Jon has gone all out and created brand new high-detail meshes and textures for asteroids in Sins: Remastered!
This includes large planetoid and resource asteroids.
Asteroid planetoid and metal asteroids
To the smaller debris type asteroids commonly floating around in gravity wells as well.
Small asteroids in an asteroid field
There's also a brand new refraction effect especially for crystalline structures as found on the crystal resource asteroids.
Crystal asteroid with refraction
Lastly, other planetoid style object such as the Shattered Moon, Pirate Base and Ship Graveyard (Outpost and Derelicts) that also use the asteroid shaders have had their textures converted to PBR format as well.
Shattered Moon
We think they look great and we hope that you all enjoy the new visuals they provide.
E4X & Star Wars: Interregnum
We're also very pleased to let you know that both the Enhanced 4X & Star Wars: Interregnum mods now have fully Sins: Remastered compatible versions available for download and play. This means that you can now enjoy Star Wars content in Sins: Remastered PBR in addition to as Stargate content from Stargate Races and as yet unreleased future versions of Stargate Invasion.
Here's a taste of what you'll see in the Sins:Re version of Star Wars: Interregnum:
We invite you go check out these new releases and give them a try for yourself. There's plenty of quality mod content to be enjoyed in E4X by itself and in conjuction with Interregnum.
Feedback
As always we encourage you to let us know what you think of the mod as well as report any bugs and issues you run into while using it. We suspect that the next major content update of Remastered may be a ways off as we're hoping to see some features added to Sins itself in upcoming patches that will be helpful in the next phase of the Sins: Remastered project. Until then, feel free to leave a message and share your thoughts.
