Range Engine 1.6 LTS Is Officially Released!

19 January 2025

After almost a year of hard work we are proud to announce the long-awaited launch of the Range Engine 1.6 LTS. This version has faced numerous challenges and setbacks during its development. Despite these difficulties, our dedicated team has worked tirelessly to bring this version to life.
Today we proudly present the result of all this work we've been doing for so long.

The development:

Range Engine 1.6 began with the intention of implementing small features and incremental improvements. However, the lack of proper planning and the absence of a clear roadmap led to a series of challenges for the development team.

As the project progressed, new features and improvements were added without a clear vision of priorities. This resulted in a backlog of tasks and an overload for us developers, who began to feel the effects of burnout.

Some new features:

Logic:

Input System
New key mapping system has been added to this version. More flexible and with more options than the old system (logic.keyboard...).
MeshBuilder
MeshBuilder allows you to create meshes in real time.
Python 3.11
Comments and Colors in Logic Bricks
Rewrited Particle System
New system to create particles, now EasyEmit has been implemented in Range, completely rewritten and optimized, bug fixes and much more.
Invisible Object LOD state
Decal Support
Custom Object Collision
Custom Collider allows you to swap the collision mesh for another object, without actually having to duplicate it.
Custom Mouse Cursor In-Game
Set Action Layer Speed Function
New Bounding Box Function

Graphics:

Realtime Viewport Shading
Custom Material Shaders (Vertex and Fragment)
Now it's possible to apply custom shaders to Range materials.
Atmospheric Sky
A new PBR-based sky rendering system was added to the engine with more accurate simulation of light scattering (Rayleigh and Mie)
Exponential Height Fog
Height Fog was introduced to the engine, the behavior of fog is influenced by height and depth.
Penumbra Shadows
New Subsurface Scattering Shader
New Foliage Shader (with origin lock for grass)
Halo Material

Post Processing:

Bloom
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
Screen Space Reflections
Light Scattering
Tonemaps: Filmic, ACES, AGX, Uncharted (With Exposure and Gamma Control)

Sound:

Reverb Effect
Low/High Pass Effect
Updated OpenAL

See all the changes with gifs and examples in the Release Notes

Conclusion

We still have a lot to show in the next weeks, the engine wasn't the only thing we've been working on and planning to the future of Range Engine, so as always, thank you all and stay tuned!