Version 1.6 Changelog

Release Summary: Version 1.6 is a massive update centered around a brand-new Modding Architecture, runtime asset hot-reloading, developer CLI tooling, and rendering polish for widescreen and texture filtering.

🧩 Modding Engine & Infrastructure

📁 Mod Categories & Launcher UI Overhaul

• Categorized Mods Sheet: Replaced the legacy Mods card with a full-window, scrollable sheet grouping mods by category (Gameplay, Assets, Installed, Samples & stubs).
• Collapsible Sections & UI State: Added collapsible headers, persistent checkbox selection states, and suppressed horizontal scrolling for better layout stability.
• Launcher Mod Manager: Added a dedicated MODS tab in the launcher to seamlessly discover, enable, or disable installed mods from the mods/ directory.

📦 Declarative Assets & Disc Overlays

• Declarative Manifests (mod.json): Introduced the ModAssets schema, enabling asset packs to be declared cleanly in mod.json for auto-registration.
• Non-Destructive Disc Overlay System: Replace or add disc files transparently without modifying original .bin/.cue files. Features automatic virtual LBA reassignment for oversized replacements and allows asset-only mods without compiling C# code.
• PNG → BGR555 Texture Replacements: Real-time PNG decoding with nearest-neighbor scaling for runtime texture replacement, hooked directly into VramTransfers and HLE GPU buffering.
• Asset Catalogs: Added fingerprinting (SHA256) and JSON-backed catalog systems (Levels, Textures, Sounds) with support for loose file overrides.

🔄 Runtime Hot-Reloading & New Mod Events

• Asset Hot-Reload: Introduced runtime asset hot-reloading (FileSystemWatcher) for texture replacements and disc overlays without restarting the executable. Includes new UI controls and a GameConfig.AssetHotWatch toggle.
• VRAM Transfer Hooks (VramTransferEvent): Enables mods to observe and mutate GPU image transfers (LoadImage, StoreImage, MoveImage) before committing to VRAM or the HLE backend.
• SPU DMA Audio Hooks (SpuDmaEvent): Allows mods to intercept and perform in-place mutation on main-RAM to SPU RAM audio uploads.

🎨 Graphics & Rendering Improvements

• Gameplay-Only Widescreen: Widescreen aspect ratio expansion is now locked exclusively to gameplay. Title screens, world maps, and cutscenes correctly retain their native 4:3 aspect ratio.
• Texture Filtering Gating & Artifact Fixes:
  • Added tileTap logic in GLSL to bound bilinear filtering inside 16x16 UV cells, preventing green grid lines and atlas bleed artifacts.
  • Texture filtering is automatically suppressed in UI and cutscenes to preserve visual integrity while keeping dedither and dejitter active.

🛠️ Developer Tooling & Modding API

• ModTools CLI (tools/CrashBandicoot.ModTools): New CLI utility to scaffold mod projects, export disc files from a raw .bin file (export-disc), and package captured textures.
• Runtime Texture Capture: Built-in VRAM texture capturing (captures/textures/*.png + metadata) via PNG encoding (via StbImageWriteSharp).
• Documentation & Sample Mods:
  • Complete rewrite of MODDING.md detailing the new event pipeline, catalog hooks, and asset layout.
  • Added comprehensive example stubs: vram-transfer-stub, spu-dma-stub, disc-overlay-stub, catalog-stub, texture-replace-stub, and asset-pack-stub.

⚙️ UI, UX & Text Polish

• Widescreen Clarity: Updated UI descriptions to clarify that widescreen logic stretches/adjusts 4:3 frames (specifically Crash 1 pre-rendered backgrounds) rather than rendering extra hidden 3D geometry.
• Standardized Tooltips: Cleaned up and standardized help strings across settings for dither, dejitter, integer scaling, VRAM warnings, and restart notifications.