TriAevum v0.8.0-beta.1.2 - The Grass Learned to Stay Put (and So Did the Credits)

TriAevum v0.8.0-beta.1.2

The Grass Learned to Stay Put (and So Did the Credits)

Warning

Still a beta. One developer, two NVIDIA machines, one AMD machine
drafted into service since the last version, and your reports, which remain
the only test lab with real coverage. If something breaks (or works), please
open an issue with your
GPU, driver version, operating system, the console output and
logs/oot3d_native_game.log (Windows: next to TriAevum.exe; Linux: inside
TriAevum's data folder, for the Flatpak under
~/.var/app/io.github.coccofresco.TriAevum/), plus what you were doing right
before it went wrong. "It crashed" is a feeling; the log is evidence.

Beta.1.2 is what happens when you publish a beta and people actually play it.
Every item in the first section below is somebody's bug report, and the rest is
the grass, 4K and input-lag work that had been waiting for a release to ride
on. Windows and Linux, as usual.

You reported it, we fixed it, you get to check

• The pause map forgot how stairs work (#89): in dungeons, the D-pad and
  the circle pad change floor again. Jabu-Jabu's belly is navigable once more,
  which is more than Jabu-Jabu can say.
• Holding A turned the lights off (#91, #95, #99): with Roll Dash on,
  holding A to run flickered the lighting, the shadows and Navi's hat into the
  "no scene" state, as if Link had sprinted out of the game world. The dash
  hook had been clobbering the game's own idea of which scene it was in. It
  keeps it now; Navi enters the hat only while Link actually dashes, and the
  scene identity survives the whole run.
• "Won't launch from a long folder" (#92) and "crashes on
  installation" (#103): same culprit, Windows' 259-character path limit,
  which the game's title files were cheerfully exceeding under any deep folder
  (OneDrive, Documents\Games\... and friends). The game and Forge keep their
  files within the limit now. If your folder path is very long, it works; if
  it is absurdly long, Forge tells you exactly how many characters to give
  back instead of letting Windows find out for you.
• Crash on the very last scene (#104): the end credits asked the DSP to
  flush and invalidate its data cache, two commands the host had never
  implemented, because who finishes the game? The reporter did. Both commands
  are served now and the credits roll to the end.
• Video memory growing until it crashed (#98): textures that no draw has
  sampled for a while are released, the grass refuses buffers past its VRAM
  budget and frees them after the frame, and the texture-pack cache no longer
  keeps the previous pack as a souvenir. The budget is read through the Vulkan
  loader at run time, so the executable still starts on a loader older than
  Vulkan 1.1 (the 0xC0000139 reports of the first beta, #12 and #35, stay
  fixed; the release audit caught the import before you could).
• Barinade, round two (#76): the precompiled Enhanced shader library is
  recorded again on this exact runtime, on both machines, and a release
  refuses a library that does not match its own source, or a recording made on
  a runtime that decides shaders differently. From an empty cache, the fight
  still compiles zero shaders. Round three is not planned.
• AMD (#78, #84, #93): this is the first release qualified on an AMD GPU
  (Radeon, Mesa RADV, Linux), because there is finally one in the room. Forge
  installed from the ROM, the game booted to the file select with zero shader
  compiles, twice, from both the AppImage and the Flatpak. Windows AMD drivers
  remain untested by us; please keep the reports coming.

Ocarina Reframed's file selection

The file select is now Ocarina Reframed's: Link stands beside the three files
on the upper screen, with the copy and erase confirmations, all drawn by typed
code at the game's own block boundaries. The title logo is drawn as a layer
over the resolved scene, and the file select has its own scene lighting
identity, so starting a new game and loading a save look the same, instead of
one of them looking like a different game.

SingleScreen 3.1 and the HD interface

• Sheikah Stone Visions list on the upper screen (3.1): play, complete and
  cancel without losing the game (#83 asked for the 3.1 update; here it is).
• HD interface by language: Forge offers the HD UI texture pack for the
  language your ROM boots in, downloaded with your consent and never bundled,
  and ships the SingleScreen HD font (with its author's permission). The
  SingleScreen 3.1 archive is preselected when you drop it beside Forge.
• Vanilla+ Link (optional): a local RomFS overlay in mods/ remodels Link
  without touching the ROM. Your ROM stays yours; Link gets a tailor.

Grass, 4K and input lag

• Grass that stays: its placement and residency now live within a VRAM
  budget; when the budget is tight the visible grass is thinned evenly instead
  of vanishing by cluster order in one camera direction. Hyrule Field no longer
  mows itself when you turn left. Whole blades draw with early depth, as
  camera-facing ribbons by default, and two more surface rules find grass
  where the first ones missed it.
• 4K without an upscaler: water reflections and ambient occlusion run at
  half resolution with a depth-aware upsample, which is where the 4K frame
  went. On an RTX 3060 at 3840×2160, Kokiri Forest goes from about 19 to 18 ms
  and Hyrule Field with the river from 26 to 18 ms per frame, with the same
  image and a lot less heroism from the GPU.
• Input lag: input is sampled after the previous frame ended and the
  presentation cadence was fixed; at 60 Hz with interpolation the time from
  button to screen goes from about 33 ms to 9 ms on the development PC. Link
  now jumps when you press the button, not shortly after.

In-game menu

Esc (or R3) opens a settings menu in the game's own UI renderer, with a photo
mode tab and an aspect ratio picture. F1 stays for everything else, because
some habits deserve respect.

Windows package layout

The ZIP's root holds TriAevumForge.exe, README.md and LICENSE; Forge
puts TriAevum.exe at the root when it installs, with its DLLs in runtime/.
Launch the game from the root as before. Fewer files to stare at, same game.

Updating

Back up your saves first; it is still a beta.

• Windows: extract the ZIP to a new folder and run TriAevumForge.exe.
  To keep your progress, copy the data\savedata folder of your previous
  folder into the new one before starting the game. The first installation on
  a machine prepares the larger shader library and takes a few minutes; later
  ones take under a minute.
• Linux: replace the AppImage, or install the new Flatpak bundle with the
  same flatpak install --user command; saves stay where they are.

Use your own decrypted EUR/USA .3ds or .cci dump (original or Rev 1);
Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese releases are not supported yet. The previous
notes: beta.1.1, beta.1c,
beta.1b, beta.1.

TriAevum v0.8.0-beta.1.1 - The Mod Moved House, So It Lives With Us Now

TriAevum v0.8.0-beta.1.1

The Mod Moved House, So It Lives With Us Now

Warning

Still untested in the wild. One developer, two NVIDIA machines, and a
growing pile of reports from PCs that politely disagree with both. Thank you
for every one of them: this version exists because of them.

Your feedback is the test plan. If something breaks (or works), please
open an issue with your
GPU, driver version, operating system, the console output and
logs/oot3d_native_game.log (Windows: next to TriAevum.exe; Linux: inside
TriAevum's data folder, for the Flatpak under
~/.var/app/io.github.coccofresco.TriAevum/), plus what you were doing right
before it went wrong.

It is called beta.1.1 and not beta.1d because beta.1d sounded like a vitamin.
It is the update for everyone: Windows and Linux, beta.1b and beta.1c.

Forge installs again

• No download, no archive, no TopScreen 2.1.1 (#81, #82, #86, #88). The
  author of TopScreen replaced version 2.1.1 on GameBanana with its successor,
  SingleScreen 3.0, so Forge's pinned download received a web page instead of
  a ZIP and every new installation stopped at "Could not prepare TopScreen
  textures". Hosting someone else's mod on a random drive is not a plan, so:
  with the author's permission, the two SingleScreen 3.0 files TriAevum needs
  (the low-resolution UI atlas and Link's extra animations) now ship inside the
  package. Forge needs your ROM and nothing else. All rights in those files stay
  with M-1 (rlgcarrot), the author of
  SingleScreen; see
  LICENSES/SingleScreen-3.0.md.
• HD interface, if you want it. Place the official SingleScreen 3.1
  (singlescreen_31_989c3.zip) or 3.0 (singlescreen_30_25aeb.zip) archive
  beside TriAevumForge.exe, in mods/ beside it, or in data/downloads/:
  Forge verifies it and imports its HD UI atlas and HD fonts. Without it you
  get the native resolution, as on a 3DS.

TopScreen grows into SingleScreen 3.0 and 3.1

TriAevum's TopScreen profile is now a port of SingleScreen 3.0 with the 3.1
fixes, written as typed code at the game's own block boundaries. None of the
mod's code or patches is executed.

• Items page with the four-row shortcut column: circle pad and D-pad
  navigation, reordering, the in-page D-pad picker (hold A, also from the Gear
  page) and held-X clearing.
• View Model: X on the Gear page, or Y in the D-pad picker, shows the
  item's 3D model; the circle pad turns it, X and Y zoom, the D-pad pans it, B
  closes it. Yes, you can now inspect the Hylian Shield like it owes you money.
• Gameplay options: quick put away, landing roll, roll dash and the aiming
  reticle, plus 3D rain.
• SingleScreen 3.0's HUD: its button circles, D-pad cross and labels, its
  placement of the A and button groups, the rupee counter, the C-stick aim
  speed, the Items hint and the D-pad cycle marks, the cutscene rules (no HUD
  during cutscenes) and the pause page titles. Compared side by side with the
  real mod running in an emulator, not eyeballed.
• SingleScreen 3.1 fixes: the landing roll breaks the Deku Tree's floor
  web again, as any self-respecting landing should; leaving a scene while
  objects were still loading could
  corrupt memory, and no longer can; room changes wait for their files the
  same way; the roll dash cross-fades its animation.

One TopScreen layout for everyone

The maintainer's layout is now the standard: HUD at 70 %, its margins, every
gameplay option and 3D rain on. F1 → Display → TopScreen HUD offers one
choice, Native (100 %) or Optimized (70 %, the default), and the
SingleScreen credit. The HUD tab is gone; the TopScreen sections of Controls
(shortcuts, gameplay options, C-stick aiming, free camera) stay where they
were. Fewer sliders, fewer ways to make Link's hearts sit on his head.

Fewer crashes

• AMD Radeon cards dying during preparation (#78, #84). When the driver
  refused a Vulkan pipeline, NVIDIA's NRI library called DebugBreak(), which
  outside a debugger simply means "close the game". A refused pipeline is now
  retried as a whole pipeline and reported in the log
  (TRIAEVUM_NRI_PIPELINE_CREATE_FAILED), and the game carries on. There is no
  AMD GPU in the test lab, so this is unverified on AMD hardware. The access
  violation inside amdvlk64.dll reported later in #84 may be a different
  problem: if it still happens, the console output and a crash dump would help
  a lot.
• Changing the window or display settings on the title screen no longer
  closes the game (#87), and runs with the TopScreen profile no longer end
  after a minute with "native PICA display transfer source has no Vulkan render
  target". Resizing during parallel presentation also kept its GPU copies
  instead of reaching into the running game.
• SELECT opens Save/Quit again (#80), as in TopScreen.
• "Cannot query the playable runtime: Expecting value" (#85): the cause on
  the affected machines is still unknown. Forge now saves everything the
  runtime printed in TriAevum-preflight-error.json and ignores lines another
  program prints before the answer. If it happens to you, please attach that
  file.

Faster, and no shader compiling in the middle of a boss fight

• Barinade stops stuttering (#76). The Enhanced graphics preset relies on a
  library of precompiled shaders, and that library had quietly fallen behind
  the renderer: from an empty cache, the boss fight compiled shaders on the
  spot, for about 22 seconds in total. The library is now rebuilt from recorded play, every scene
  of the game under both the default and the maintainer's settings, plus boss
  fights, storms, a game over, a cutscene and the boot to the file select. A
  release now refuses a library that does not match its own source code. With
  an empty cache, the Barinade fight compiles zero shaders.
• 4K is faster. At 3840×2160 without an upscaler, the water reflections
  searched every pixel for a pond that was not on screen. They now look only
  where water can be: on an RTX 3060, Kokiri Forest goes from 37 to 55 fps, the
  opening scenes from 52 to 54, with the same image.
• Grass is cheaper: its selection runs on the GPU, entering Hyrule Field
  stalls less, and trees, bushes, rocks and signposts shadow the grass again
  (their shadows are cached instead of redrawn every frame).
• Texture packs reach the TopScreen HUD (#73): with Henriko's 4K pack the
  hearts, item icons, rupees, button rings and digits are upscaled too.
• A video memory leak is gone: each change of the texture pack setting
  kept about 15 MiB of the previous textures until the game closed.

For Intel Arc on Linux

The noise reported in #72 is not confirmed fixed: two kinds of behaviour
that Vulkan leaves undefined, and that only some drivers forgive, are gone
(a texture level computed from log2(0), and upload buffers that were never
flushed). The log now starts a fresh file at every launch and keeps the
previous ten, so attaching it no longer means scrolling through a week.

Updating

Back up your saves first; it is still a beta.

• Windows: extract the ZIP to a new folder and run TriAevumForge.exe
  (under a minute on the development PC). To keep your progress, copy the
  data\savedata folder of your previous folder into the new one before
  starting the game.
• Linux: replace the AppImage, or install the new Flatpak bundle with the
  same flatpak install --user command; saves stay where they are.

Use your own decrypted EUR/USA .3ds or .cci dump (original or Rev 1);
Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese releases are not supported yet. The previous
notes: beta.1c, beta.1b,
beta.1.

Qualification record: v0.8.0-beta.1.1-qualification.md.

TriAevum v0.8.0-beta.1c - Save States Found a Place to Live (Linux hotfix)

TriAevum v0.8.0-beta.1c

Save States Found a Place to Live

A Linux hotfix for beta.1b. Windows players can stay on beta.1b: on Windows
this version changes nothing.

• Save states work in the AppImage and the Flatpak (#61). Pressing F5 (or
  F1 → Game → Save states → Save state) failed with "Save state failed: cannot
  create the folder (Read-only file system)": the default folder sat next to
  the game's executable, inside the read-only package. On Linux, save states
  now go beside your save data:

  • AppImage: ~/.local/share/TriAevum/data/savestates
  • Flatpak: ~/.var/app/io.github.coccofresco.TriAevum/data/TriAevum/data/savestates

  A folder you chose with Browse... in that tab is still used as before.
  On Windows, save states stay in the savestates folder next to
  TriAevum.exe.

Warning

Still untested in the wild, as beta.1b. If something breaks (or works),
please open an issue
with your GPU, driver, operating system, the console output and
oot3d_native_game.log.

Updating: back up your saves first; it is still a beta.

• Linux: replace the AppImage, or install the new Flatpak bundle with the same
  flatpak install --user command; saves stay where they are.
• Windows: nothing to do. If you install it anyway, extract the ZIP to a new
  folder, run TriAevumForge.exe and copy the data\savedata folder of your
  previous folder into the new one before starting the game.

Everything else is beta.1b:
release notes.
Use your own decrypted EUR/USA .3ds or .cci dump (original or Rev 1);
Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese releases are not supported yet.

TriAevum v0.8.0-beta.1b - The Upscaler Has Left the Building (and Came Back Properly Dressed)

TriAevum v0.8.0-beta.1b

The Upscaler Has Left the Building (and Came Back Properly Dressed)

Warning

Still untested in the wild. Same story as beta.1: one developer, two
NVIDIA machines, and now a growing list of PCs that disagree with both. This
update exists because the first testers broke things within hours. Thank
you, and please keep doing exactly that.

Your feedback is the test plan. If something breaks (or works), please
open an issue and attach:

• your GPU, driver version and operating system;
• the console output: run TriAevum.exe from a Command Prompt on Windows, or
  the AppImage/flatpak run io.github.coccofresco.TriAevum from a terminal
  on Linux, and copy everything it prints. It now starts with
  TRIAEVUM_VULKAN_DEVICE and TRIAEVUM_UPSCALERS lines that name your GPU
  and what it can run;
• logs/oot3d_native_game.log (Windows: next to TriAevum.exe; Linux:
  inside TriAevum's data folder, for the Flatpak under
  ~/.var/app/io.github.coccofresco.TriAevum/), which now records the GPU
  and any error that closes the game;
• what you were doing right before it went wrong.

Check back often over the next hours and days. Fixes keep shipping as
reports arrive.

A hotfix for beta.1. Same game, same data, fewer ways to leave it.

• DLSS actually ships now. In beta.1, choosing NRI Upscaler on an NVIDIA
  GPU picked DLSS, which had nothing to run with, and the game closed; since
  the choice was saved, it closed at every launch after that. DLSS now comes
  with NVIDIA's own runtime in a separate module, and it works. Your saved
  DLSS setting from beta.1 simply starts working.
• No upscaler can close the game any more. F1 offers only the upscalers
  your machine can really run, and greys out the rest with the reason. If one
  still fails mid-game, you get the picture unscaled and the option is
  withdrawn, instead of a goodbye.
• FSR works on Windows (its runtime was missing too). On Linux FSR is not
  offered: AMD's runtime for it exists for Windows only.
• Too-old graphics drivers get a straight answer. A GPU whose driver
  stops before Vulkan 1.2 is no longer picked, and the message names the GPU,
  its Vulkan version and the fix (update the driver from the GPU maker's
  site), instead of vkCreateRenderPass2.
• Better crash reports. Errors that close the game now reach the log file,
  and a crash on Windows lists each frame's module and offset instead of the
  same wrong name.
• The item description no longer stays on screen after closing the
  Items menu with START at the wrong moment (#60). Closing it while the game
  was still preparing the description now closes both; closing it a moment
  earlier, while the item's icon was loading, could also crash the game, and
  no longer does. That crash is also the one behind pressing START over and
  over (#67).
• The START menu opens without the wait. The first START of a session
  froze the game for one to two seconds, and every later open or close
  stuttered: the scene drawn behind the page made the grass rebuild itself
  each time. Now nothing is rebuilt, and START opens the page directly, the
  way TopScreen 2.1.1 does, about a tenth of a second sooner than before.
• TopScreen catches up with 2.1.1. On an open Items or Gear page, SELECT
  shows the item's description over the page, like the 3DS mod; START
  reopens the page you left (Items, Gear or Map); L and R hints sit beside
  the page tabs; the Navi prompt sits in its 2.1.1 place and also shows with
  View unmapped or the D-pad icons hidden; the horse-stamina row and the
  dungeon key counter follow 2.1.1.
• Dungeon maps show their markers again with TopScreen. The boss skull
  and the chests (with the compass) were missing from the dungeon map page,
  because the minimap layout of the HUD also moved them; it now leaves them
  alone while a pause page is open, as TopScreen 2.1.1 does.
• The TopScreen FOV setting works. It never changed the view: it watched
  the wrong camera value. Release builds also skipped the TopScreen steps that
  sit in the middle of the game's code, such as the FOV, the scene guards
  behind the pause pages and the touch-button rule. The title module now
  starts a block at each of them, and the game refuses a title module that
  does not.
• The Items page uses the full width of the upper screen, as in
  TopScreen 2.1.1: the grid and the ZR/X/Y/ZL column move outward and the
  right stone edge gives way to the column. Dungeon maps widen the same way,
  with the map, compass and key icons on the left and the floors on the
  right.
• The Save page shows the game behind it, as in TopScreen 2.1.1, instead
  of the brown pause background and stone edges.
• No more thin lines across empty Gear slots. The Gear page samples its
  textures the way 2.1.1 does.
• Link no longer flattens when he turns round at 60 or 90 FPS. Between
  two game frames, a model turning to face the other way was squashed for a
  frame; it is now shown turned part of the way.
• No more freezes on scene changes with Extended draw distance (#69,
  #74). With the option on, the game drew more characters and objects than
  its per-frame lighting space holds. The overflow spilled into the queue
  that loads scenes and writes saves, so a door, a scene change or a save
  could hang or crash the game. Extended draw distance now adds only as many
  extra actors as that space has room for. Savestates made after an overflow
  may already be damaged: load an in-game save instead.
• New default grass, for everyone. The default grass profile now has 25
  maps that decide where grass grows, up from 6; Lon Lon Ranch gets its grass
  back. A configuration from beta.1 takes the new maps once, at the first
  start of this version, and keeps every other grass setting (density, draw
  distance, performance and the rest).
• One lighting standard for outdoor areas whose time is set on entry.
  Lon Lon Ranch no longer ships a lighting profile of its own, so it follows
  that group's standard, which has a new sun direction. Kokiri Forest keeps
  its own daytime profile.
• Smoother motion at 60 or 90 FPS. The frames drawn between game frames
  move each character as one piece (Link's hand stays on his arm, the Iron
  Knuckles stop trembling), and scrolling textures such as the clouds no
  longer jump for a frame. Motion vectors follow each actor by its own
  identity, so a repeated model no longer borrows another one's motion.
• DLSS with frame interpolation no longer loses the GPU after a scene
  change (the game closed with VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST).
• A resolution or display mode that crashes no longer locks you out (#65).
  If a launch ends within its first minute, the next one starts with the
  default resolution, window mode, anti-aliasing and upscaler, says so in the
  log, and keeps everything else.
• The AppImage starts more than once (#66). It used to remember where it
  was mounted the first time and could not find its own files afterwards
  ("OTR file not found"); an installation from beta.1 repairs itself on the
  first start of this version.
• The AppImage runs on older Linux systems (#72). It now carries the C++
  runtime it was built with and uses it only when the system's own is older,
  plus libdecor for SDL. On Intel GPUs with Mesa, graphics pipeline libraries
  are off by default, both in the game and in Forge: they made the process
  grow past 27 GB. TRIAEVUM_NRI_PIPELINE_LIBRARIES=0 now turns them off
  in Forge too, on any GPU.
• Controllers in the Flatpak (#71). The Flatpak asked only for the input
  devices permission that Flatpak 1.15.6 introduced; older Flatpak versions
  ignore it, so the game saw no controller at all. It now asks for device
  access the way emulators on Flathub do.
• Cleaner licensing. NVIDIA's NGX SDK no longer sits inside the GPL
  runtime: it lives only in the separately licensed DLSS module, next to
  NVIDIA's signed runtime and NVIDIA's licence (LICENSES/). Upscaling by
  NVIDIA DLSS. NVIDIA and DLSS are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of
  NVIDIA Corporation; TriAevum is not sponsored or endorsed by NVIDIA. The
  Linux packages list the licences of the system libraries they carry, with
  a link to their sources, in LICENSES/linux.

OptiScaler users: DLSS 5 neural rendering still attaches to TriAevum's DLSS
(docs/TRIAEVUM_OPTISCALER_DLSS5.md); nothing of OptiScaler is shipped.

Updating: back up your saves first; it is still a beta.

• Windows: extract the ZIP to a new folder and run TriAevumForge.exe, as for
  beta.1 (about 3 minutes on the development PC). To keep your progress, copy
  the data\savedata folder of your beta.1 folder into the new one before
  starting the game.
• Linux: replace the AppImage, or install the new Flatpak bundle with the same
  flatpak install --user command; saves stay where they are.

Everything else is beta.1:
release notes.
Use your own decrypted EUR/USA .3ds or .cci dump (original or Rev 1);
Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese releases are not supported yet.

TriAevum v0.8.0-beta.1 - Hyrule Gets Its Lights Back On (untested, reports wanted)

TriAevum v0.8.0-beta.1

Hyrule Gets Its Lights Back On

Warning

Untested in the wild. This beta has been qualified on every PC its single
developer owns: one Windows machine and one Linux box, both NVIDIA. Yours is,
statistically, neither. AMD and Intel GPUs, laptops with two GPUs, older
drivers, remote desktops and other creative setups have not been tried, and
the first early reports already include an AMD driver crash and a GPU too old
for Vulkan 1.2 (native PICA requires Vulkan vkCreateRenderPass2).

Your feedback is not optional: it is the test plan. If something breaks
(or, shockingly, works), please
open an issue and attach:

• your GPU, driver version and operating system;
• the console output: run TriAevum.exe from a Command Prompt on Windows, or
  the AppImage/flatpak run io.github.coccofresco.TriAevum from a terminal
  on Linux, and copy everything it prints;
• logs/oot3d_native_game.log (Windows: next to TriAevum.exe; Linux:
  inside TriAevum's data folder, for the Flatpak under
  ~/.var/app/io.github.coccofresco.TriAevum/);
• what you were doing right before it went wrong.

Check back often over the next hours and days. Fixes will ship as fast as
reports arrive, so the build you download at breakfast may be the old one by
dinner. One developer, one desk, an unknown number of PCs out there: you are
the QA department now. Congratulations on the promotion.

The first beta. Hyrule now has weather in its lighting, fire that actually
lights things, and water that knows it is water. The grass is still there. We
checked.

• Two lighting models. Native keeps the 3DS look. Modern lights every
  pixel: a key light that follows the scene's own sun, a rim light, ambient
  occlusion, and shadows. Fresh installs start on the tuned Enhanced preset.
• Scenes come with their own light. Day and night environment profiles,
  per scene or per group of scenes, blend on the game's own clock. This release
  ships the profiles authored so far (Temple of Time included) as read-only
  defaults. Edit any of them in F1 and save your own; Use group standard
  brings back the default.
• Fire lights things. Torches while lit, the Poe sisters' torches, fire
  Keese, flame traps, fire walls and other flames light the Modern scene.
  Interior lamps and doorway daylight become real lights, prepared by Forge
  from your own RomFS. Place your own sun, spot, point, surface and omni lights
  from F1; surface lights have a spread to aim them.
• Shadows everywhere they should be. Point lights cast cube-map shadows,
  contact shadows add the small ones, smooth surfaces stop shadowing their own
  facets, and the sun reaches into interiors through their openings.
• Water. Reflections from the game's own water bodies, flow from the
  texture scrolling, ripples, white water where rivers step down.
• MXAO. iMMERSE MXAO by Pascal Gilcher joins GTAO and CACAO, with face
  normals and temporal accumulation. It is a separately licensed module
  (triaevum_immerse), used with the author's permission; TriAevum runs
  without it if it is removed.
• DLSS reconstructs the frame upright, with the transformer model on
  Enhanced. OptiScaler users can try DLSS 5 neural rendering on their own;
  see docs/TRIAEVUM_OPTISCALER_DLSS5.md. Nothing from OptiScaler is shipped.
• F1 reorganized into seven tabs, with your own graphics presets and a
  save-state tab. Save states hold the game moment, not your graphics
  settings, and are compressed.
• Faster where it counts. The precompiled title is profile-guided, shader
  programs are prepared ahead from recorded game sessions, and the title intro
  runs above 60 fps at 2160p on the development PC. Results vary by hardware;
  this is not a promise of zero stutter.

First setup: after reading your ROM, Forge prepares this GPU's pipelines
once; the rooms' interior sunlight and light sources come precomputed with the
release and are matched to your own ROM's rooms. On the development PC (12
threads) this part takes about 3 minutes; slower PCs take longer. Later
launches reuse the work. The first frames show a short preparation screen.

Before updating: back up saves and settings. Prefer normal in-game saves.
Global illumination is still experimental and not offered by this build. The
game's simulation remains 30 Hz; 60/90 FPS modes interpolate visuals. Android
and macOS are not included in this release.

Windows: extract the portable ZIP and run TriAevumForge.exe. Linux: make the
AppImage executable and open it; use --forge to return to setup. Or install
the Flatpak with flatpak install --user TriAevum-v0.8.0-beta.1-Linux-x86_64.flatpak
(the Freedesktop 25.08 runtime comes from Flathub) and start it from the
menu or with flatpak run io.github.coccofresco.TriAevum; it updates an
alpha.2 Flatpak in place, keeping its saves. Use your own
decrypted EUR/USA .3ds or .cci dump (original or Rev 1). Japanese,
Korean and Taiwanese releases are not supported yet: Forge declines them.

Special thanks to Pascal Gilcher (Marty's Mods)
for MXAO and the permission to use it, to rlgcarrot, whose
TopScreen mod is reimplemented here
(please consider supporting their work), and to
Sion (999sian) for the Linux foundation; see
the contribution record.
And thank you to Ship of Harkinian, Azahar, NRI, Godot, FidelityFX, and the
other donor projects. The lights did not place themselves; well, some of them did.

[BROKEN - WITHDRAWN] TriAevum v0.6.0-alpha.3b

TriAevum v0.6.0-alpha.3b

BROKEN - WITHDRAWN. Do not use this release. Downloadable packages have
been removed pending further verification. The original notes below are
retained for historical reference, not as a current reliability claim.

Start Means Start

• Fixed #48: pressing Start during the title sequence no longer ends your
  adventure before the save menu. An ambitious speedrun category, now retired.
• The same renderer composition fix is included on Windows and Linux.
• Everything else from alpha.3 stays: TopScreen, HD fonts, configurable graphics,
  and an entirely unreasonable quantity of grass. Save formats are unchanged.

Windows: portable ZIP. Linux: AppImage. Back up saves/settings before updating;
prefer normal game saves over savestates made during Sheik's revelation flashback.
Steam Deck remains a compatibility target, not a hardware-tested certification.

Thanks to rlgcarrot for TopScreen,
reimplemented here (support their work),
Sion / 999sian for their PR contributions, and Ship of Harkinian, Azahar,
NRI and the other donor projects.

[BROKEN - WITHDRAWN] TriAevum v0.6.0-alpha.3

TriAevum v0.6.0-alpha.3

BROKEN - WITHDRAWN. Do not use this release. Downloadable packages have
been removed pending further verification. The original notes below are
retained for historical reference, not as a current reliability claim.

Sheik Can Finish a Sentence

More game, fewer arguments with the window. Still an unreasonable amount of grass.

• Linux travels lighter. One AppImage replaces Flatpak, with Forge included.
  Prepare in Desktop Mode, then add the AppImage to Steam for Gaming Mode.
  Steam Deck is a compatibility target, not a hardware-tested certification.
• TopScreen gets its bearings. Centered, proportion-preserving HUD, minimap
  and contextual-menu fixes, and Game Over choices that actually show up.
  The game may defeat you; the menu should not.
• Sharper words. TopScreen HD fonts are prepared by Forge and used
  automatically at 480p and above. No magnifying glass DLC required.
• Controllers cooperate more. Unified SDL routing, improved mouse/stick
  aiming and automatic motion aiming on supported controllers. Gyro affects
  aiming, not free camera. Virtual/third-party sensor support still varies.
• Cutscenes can finish their business. Sheikah Stone Visions playback and
  the Temple of Time revelation now progress through their previously blocked
  paths. The latter returns to gameplay on Windows and Linux.
• Renderer housekeeping. Improved frame pacing, grass visibility work and
  native shader infrastructure, plus the black-background/toon correction.
  This is not a promise of zero stutter or a universal FPS increase.

Before updating: back up saves and settings. Prefer normal in-game saves;
restoring a savestate made during the revelation's flashback remains unreliable.
F1 keeps the established settings menu. 60/90 FPS modes interpolate visuals;
game simulation remains 30 Hz. Android/macOS are not included in this release.

Windows: extract the portable ZIP and run TriAevumForge.exe. Linux: make the
AppImage executable and open it; use --forge to return to setup. Use your own
decrypted EUR/USA .3ds or .cci dump. Existing Flatpak data is not migrated
automatically: keep it backed up and separate from the new AppImage installation.

Special thanks to rlgcarrot, whose TopScreen mod
is reimplemented here: please consider supporting their work.
Thanks to Sion (999sian) for the Linux foundation
and PR contributions informing display, shader preparation and TopScreen support;
see the contribution record
for individual PRs and integration scope. And thank you to Ship of Harkinian,
Azahar, NRI, and the other donor projects. The grass did not write itself.

v0.6.0-alpha.2c: Fullscreen, Not Full Stop

Alpha 2c: Fullscreen, Not Full Stop

A small maintenance update for Windows and Linux. Same game, fewer window dramas.

• Fixes a reproduced crash when minimizing or restoring the game around
  fullscreen transitions: the runtime now waits for a valid graphics frame
  instead of submitting to an unavailable window surface.
• Keeps window events responsive while the display surface is being recreated,
  without advancing game time during the pause.
• Adds repeatable checks for fullscreen/windowed transitions, resolution changes
  and automatic rollback of unconfirmed settings.

USA/EUR ROM support, Forge's bundled shader preparation, TopScreen and save
formats are unchanged. No title recompilation or SDK is needed.

Back up your saves and settings before updating. Windows users should extract
the ZIP into a fresh folder and keep their previous installation until the new
one is working. Linux users can install the Flatpak over the previous version;
application data remains outside the package.

This fixes a concrete reproduced failure, not every possible driver or fullscreen
issue. Physical Steam Deck testing and unrelated Windows loader investigations
remain outstanding.

Thanks to Sion (@999sian) for the Linux, compatibility, cache and TopScreen
contributions retained from alpha.2; individual PR credits.
And to rlgcarrot for the TopScreen design reimplemented here, plus Azahar,
Ship of Harkinian, libultraship and NRI for the foundations.

TriAevum v0.6.0-alpha.2b - USA Is Back on the Guest List

Alpha 2b: USA Is Back on the Guest List

Small packaging fix, same excessive grass.

• Restores USA ROM import and equivalent EUR/USA dump recognition accidentally
  omitted from alpha.2, on both Windows and Linux.
• Adds a release audit that rejects packages missing these qualified input
  contracts. A matching Program ID alone is still not enough: Forge checks the
  actual decrypted content.
• Keeps the tested alpha.2 game, Forge, renderer and bundled shader preparation
  unchanged. No compiler or SDK is needed, and no new Flatseal permissions are
  required to fix this particular rejection.

Use your own decrypted EUR/USA .3ds or .cci dump. If alpha.2 rejected it,
update and run Forge again. Windows users should extract into a fresh folder;
keep the previous installation and back up saves/settings before moving data.
Linux users can install this Flatpak over the previous version; application
data remains outside the package.

Verified with real frozen Forge installations and 300-presentation intro runs
on Windows and Linux, including a logically equivalent repacked USA input on
Linux. This is not a full-game compatibility claim; physical Steam Deck testing
is still outstanding. Unrelated Windows loader failures remain under investigation.

The packages retain the exact corresponding source for their unchanged alpha.2
binaries (source freeze 72e4c37). The input-coverage correction is b1702ea,
with verification recorded in fb8161c and this release's tagged source.

Thanks again to Sion (@999sian) for the Linux, compatibility, cache and
TopScreen contributions incorporated into alpha.2; see the
contribution record
for individual PR attribution. And to rlgcarrot for TopScreen, whose
single-screen design is reimplemented here, and Azahar, Ship of Harkinian,
libultraship and NRI for the foundations.

TriAevum v0.6.0-alpha.2 - More Hyrule, less housekeeping

TriAevum v0.6.0-alpha.2

More Hyrule, less housekeeping

The renderer obsession continues. This time, a little more attention went to
the part where you actually play the game.

Special thanks to Sion (999sian) for the Linux
foundation (#6), display feedback
(#14), and contributions informing
shader preparation (#11) and
TopScreen fixes (#13,
#18). These were selectively
integrated or adapted, not blindly merged. Thanks also to
Pablo Souza for the capture work from
#16.

• Linux joins the party. One Flatpak for Linux desktops and the Steam Deck
  target, with Forge included. Windows stays portable: unzip, prepare, play.
• Forge does more homework. The bundled shader corpus is prepared
  automatically for your GPU during setup. No extra files to choose; missing
  variants are still learned and cached while playing.
• Grass has learned some restraint. Adaptive clusters, better distant
  coverage, and closer matching to the terrain's color and lighting. Still grass.
  Just less determined to occupy your entire GPU.
• TopScreen gets a tune-up. Fixes for item slots, ocarina guidance, HUD
  flickering, mounted layouts, minimap markers and ammunition placement.
• Fewer arguments with the controls. A clearer F1 binding interface,
  press-to-bind controls, and fixes for mouse aiming and camera recapture.
• Less window wrestling. Resolution/fullscreen fixes, clearer display-error
  feedback, ROM-aware language selection in Forge and F1, and Linux presentation
  and shutdown fixes.

Still an alpha, not a full-playthrough certification. Steam Deck hardware and
Gaming Mode have not been tested directly. Android is not part of this release.
Shader coverage is not complete, and first encounters can still compile shaders.
60/90 FPS modes interpolate presentation; game simulation remains at 30 Hz.

Use your own decrypted EUR or USA dump in .cci or .3ds format. On Windows,
extract the entire ZIP to a writable folder and run TriAevumForge.exe. On
Linux, install the Flatpak and open TriAevum; Forge handles the first setup.
For the Steam Deck target, prepare in Desktop Mode before adding it to Steam.
Back up saves and settings before updating. F1 configures the renderer; F2
temporarily disables the main graphical additions without discarding settings.

In pictures

Actual alpha.2 framebuffer captures, using the default graphics profile.

TriAevum would not exist in its current form without rlgcarrot's TopScreen
mod, whose behavior is reimplemented here. Please consider
supporting their work. Thank you to Ship of
Harkinian, Azahar, NRI, and all the other donor projects and contributors.
See the contribution record
for the exact integration scope and attribution.