Hotfix: menu text was blank in the last release

Hotfix for pointer-lighting: that release left every menu and save text blank. Use this one.

• Menu, title and save text show again. The pointer change that caused it is off; it brought Kokiri's better lighting, which will come back once it no longer breaks text.
• Languages: language.txt now works even when Notepad saves it with a BOM, and a stray line no longer silently leaves the game in English (#75). French, German and Spanish were checked to show their text.
• Everything from lighting-fix stays: no dark characters or holes in the ground, thinner fog, and the AMD movie fix.

Fewer crashes on 4-6 GB laptops, 100% resolution fix, builder fixes

Back up user\save, or build over the same folder with the same .nup: it skips re-reading the game (a rebuild over the same folder took under 6 minutes here). Includes everything from amd-shared-memory.

• Laptops with 4-6 GB of VRAM (#96, #132): the renderer keeps fewer GPU-side copies of game memory on cards with 8 GB or less, and none when VRAM is nearly full. Before, it could run past what the card allows and the GPU timed out (black screen or "device lost").
• Resolution 100% set before starting no longer gives black 3D (thanks to vzeol, PR #102).
• Builder:
  • a different .nup now replaces both the old game files and code, instead of mixing old assets with new modules (thanks to monsterlag, PR #129);
  • game file paths can't escape the output folder (PR #128);
  • builds from a source checkout without the hot profile work (thanks to klimovich008, PR #74).

Still being worked on: missing leaves and grass (the game's foliage culling now produces draw counts, the leaves don't show yet), AMD black screens (please test amd-shared-memory or this one and report), GTX 10xx noise.

Kokiri's lighting back, with menu text; faster second starts

Back up user\save, or build over the same folder with the same .nup: it skips re-reading the game.

Kokiri's lighting is back, with menu text

• The shaded forest from pointer-lighting is back, and menu, title and save text show (#92, #93). That release blanked the text because the change also ran in shaders that had no access to the game's memory. Text was checked in English, French, German and Brazilian Portuguese.

Faster second starts

• Shaders that read the game's memory used to change every run, so the graphics driver recompiled them at every start. They are now the same each run, and from the second start on they come from the driver's cache. This should help most on AMD cards, which took 5-6 seconds per shader on a first start (#82, #97).

Fewer black screens

• On 4 GB cards, a full VRAM no longer leaves the screen black; textures that don't fit go to system memory instead (#96). Slower, but drawn.
• Fixed a GPU crash ("device lost") that could happen when entering Kokiri Forest.

Builder

• "stdio.h not found" with Visual Studio installed (#89): the Windows SDK is now found even when it was installed separately, and the message names the right component.
• undefined symbol: __iob_func at the end of the compile (#80): an old Visual Studio's C library was being used. The builder now ignores it and catches this before the 40-minute build.
• Builds that sat at 0% CPU (#87): the builder now keeps the PC awake and stops Windows from throttling the build, and shows the build's output as it happens.

Still being worked on

• Tree leaves, grass and ferns are still missing (#35, #46, #61, #78, #84).
• GTX 10xx cards show noise (#98).
• Shader stutter in new areas on a first visit (#69).

Fix .nup support

Fix .nup support

Another .nup fix hopefully last one

title

Lighting fixed: dark characters and white fog; AMD movies

Back up user\save, or build over the same folder with the same .nup: it skips re-reading the game.

Lighting

• Fixed dark or black characters, black ferns and pots, streaked ground and holes in the terrain. The game's first work for the GPU was being lost while shaders were prepared, which hit first launches hardest.
• Much less white fog. Skies in Kokiri are pale blue instead of a white wall, and characters are properly lit.

AMD and cards without the matrix unit

• The opening movie and title background should no longer be black (reported on the last release). It now uses a shader. I tested this path by forcing it on an NVIDIA card, not on a real AMD card, so please report back.
• The rainbow noise on these cards is gone (confirmed on an RX 7900 XTX), and they use a fast upscale in play.

Still being worked on

• Tree leaves, grass and ferns are still missing in Kokiri Forest (#35, #46, #61). I found the likely cause, the game's foliage culling reading empty data, and I'm working on the fix now. The forest stays too bright until the canopy is back.
• Green movies: install the AV1 Video Extension from the Microsoft Store.

less stutters and warning for missing extension (fixes green screen)

title

Fixes older versions of Windows SDK failing build

read title

Builder: real error messages instead of 'could not be read'

Every release includes all the fixes from the releases before it: always take the newest one. This one is small-vram with builder fixes only; the game itself is unchanged.

• "The game files could not be read" / "something went wrong": when the builder hit an error it didn't expect, it hid the reason. It now shows the actual error, and the full text is under Show details. If you still get stuck, please post that text in an issue so it can be fixed.
• A failed step is named again (it said "-u stopped", #154).
• A leftover code chunk from an earlier build no longer breaks the link with "duplicate symbol" (thanks to leonidasmark, PR #155, #153).
• Output with non-English letters in file names can no longer crash the builder.

Windows Defender / antivirus warnings: the builder is a new, unsigned program that starts other programs (Python, the compiler, the game), which is what Defender's generic "Trojan" verdict reacts to. It's a false positive; all of the source is in this repository. You can report it to Microsoft at https://www.microsoft.com/wdsi/filesubmission ("Incorrectly detected as malware").

Brighter scenes (game's own exposure), less VRAM

Back up user\save, or build over the same folder with the same .nup: it skips re-reading the game. Includes everything from pointer-lighting-2.

• Brighter, as the game intends (#103): an old workaround darkened every scene to 65% of the game's own exposure. It was there for the washed-out look that the lighting fix solved, and now it only made things too dark. Kakariko is sunlit again.
• Less VRAM (#105, #106): the texture cache now uses at most 6 GB. On 16 GB cards it used to fill most of the card, which looked like a leak.
• AMD testing switch: if you get a black screen on AMD, start the game with the environment variable RX_VK_NO_FOLLOW=1 set and tell me whether the picture comes back. This turns off the newest lighting change.