v1.2.0

What's new in 1.2.0

The OpenGL ES / ANGLE render backend is now a real alternative to Vulkan. Until now, DXVK-over-Vulkan was the only path that rendered the game correctly, so a device whose driver can't run DXVK had nothing to fall back on. This release makes the GLES path usable end to end and adds an in-app Render Backend picker (Vulkan / GLES / GLES+ANGLE) to the Setup screen, so you can switch without a rebuild.

GLES rendering fixes (all confirmed on a real Mali-G76 device)

• Framerate: 12-17 fps to 55-60 fps. Dynamic vertex/index buffer locks forced the GPU to drain its queued work before nearly every UI draw. D3D8's lock flags (DISCARD / NOOVERWRITE) are a synchronization contract, and they are now translated as one instead of being ignored.
• Textures disappearing after a restart on Medium and Low detail. D3DRS_ZENABLE was never seeded with its documented D3D8 default, so the depth test was off for the whole scene and water, drawn last, painted over the terrain.
• Grey and flickering build icons in the command bar: the MULTIPLYADD texture-stage operation the icons use was silently approximated as MODULATE, and a texture-less stage was collapsed for both colour and alpha at once.
• Aircraft shadows rendering as dark slabs at High detail and above: a signed cast clamped the stencil reference value to 0, and a STENCILMASK of 0 ("compare no bits") was being read as "unset" and replaced with a default.
• Pink/magenta terrain on GPUs that do not expose S3TC (issue #18): DXT1-5 textures are now decoded in software instead of falling through to a magenta placeholder.
• See-through strip along the right and bottom edge of the screen.
• Upside-down picture on some devices (Redmi Note 8 Pro): ANGLE's surface pre-rotation is now disabled.

Beyond rendering

• The game-folder picker now detects truncated or corrupted .big archives and shows the result prominently, instead of silently accepting a half-copied folder.
• GeneralsOnline sign-in reports the actual network/HTTP error instead of a blanket "login failed".
• Dynamic LOD also drops shadows at the lowest FPS tier.
• Richer DXVK adapter logging at startup (vendor/device ID, Vulkan API version, BC texture support).

Notes

Vulkan remains the default and the recommended backend where it works. Pick GLES or GLES+ANGLE in Setup if Vulkan gives you a black screen or a driver crash on your device.

Full Changelog: v1.1.5...v1.2.0