COGBox 0.4.6
- Games, title updates and DLC are now added only by dragging and dropping them onto the window.
- Your player name is on the library screen now (click it, or press Back / View, to change it), and ACHIEVEMENTS is
a full button next to PLAY and SETTINGS. - New installs start in borderless fullscreen with SMAA on. Your saved settings are kept.
- Gears 1: button prompts for PlayStation and other controllers (#214).
- Gears 2: ultrawide screens no longer get the 4:3 camera offset (#132).
- Gears 3 at 2x and higher: the big outdoor sun shadow is drawn at the game's own size, as the other shadows
are, instead of blocky (#212). - Library screen: pick a picture for your player badge (ICON in the name box) from your games' gamer pictures
and achievement icons; D-pad up reaches PLAYER, MUSIC, UPDATE ART and EXIT. New Gears 3 menu music. - Gears 3: no more freeze at the main menu. Picking a path with the mouse button on its side (thanks to
KiltedKernel, PR #206) is off in this release while it is fixed; it caused that freeze. - No sound on one output device: if the game is muted or at zero in the Windows volume mixer, COGBox sets it back
to full when the game starts (#203). - System Link: Gears of War co-op reported working on two PCs (thanks to LenzTRO, #209); the setting's
tip and this README say so. - Achievements in all four games (thanks to Flippage, PR #187): a popup when one unlocks (Xbox 360, Xbox or
PlayStation style, colour, position, sound), an Achievements page in the in-game menu (F7) and an ACHIEVEMENTS tab
in the launcher. - Ambient occlusion: AMD FidelityFX CACAO as a cheaper choice next to XeGTAO, and XeGTAO / CACAO in Judgment,
which also fixes its shadow flicker with DLSS; DLSS / FSR / XeSS get sharper textures when they draw the scene
below the output size, and Judgment's DLSS takes the finished picture with real depth (thanks to gmihaic,
PR #204). - COGBox's own text in the game (the in-game menu, the Achievements page, popups, shader notes) is in the
launcher's language. Korean, Chinese and Japanese use the fonts Windows has. - Launcher: simpler tabs with headings and the rarely used settings under ADVANCED, explanations as tooltips,
a MODS tab and an ABOUT tab, and Graphics API back in the main list. - Gears 3: depth of field can be drawn at the render resolution instead of 720p (Graphics -> Advanced, off by
default; #105). - Gears 3: "Unlock Insane from the start" (Gameplay; off by default; the other games are not done yet - #174,
thanks to Flippage's Gears 3 recomp). - Bloom can be turned off in Gears 2, 3 and Judgment, and Film grain in Judgment (from Xenia Canary's game patches
by boma). - Gears 1: Motion blur and Depth of field can be turned off (#179; from Xenia Canary's game patches by illusion and
boma). Depth of field off also softens the bloom. - A language or voice language your copy doesn't have now says so under its setting, with what the game uses
instead (#90). - A title update made for another release of the game is caught before the game starts, instead of the game
stopping at start (0xC0000409). - Crash reports also for the game's "fail-fast" exits (0xC0000409), and Windows is asked to keep a small dump.
- COGBox in a OneDrive, Dropbox or Google Drive folder: an "In a cloud folder" line says so (its tooltip has the
advice). - Mouse look when zoomed (#175), a clearer message for missing program files (#194), DLC found again after the
0.4.5 update (#193 / #201), Gears 3 TU6 mod campaigns with more than five acts in Select Chapter (thanks to
KiltedKernel, PR #205), the movie log (#103), screenshots saved at the size shown, the Vulkan pipeline cache read
up to 2 GB, and user folders with non-Latin letters for the shader caches (#177). - Frame-rate limit: the limit you pick is the limit. With Vsync it is no longer lowered to 3 under your screen's
refresh rate (60 stays 60); only a limit above the refresh rate is brought down to it. The quality presets no
longer change it. - Keyboard: holding the Walk key on Ctrl no longer stops W/A/S/D, and walking is slower (#196, thanks to KiltedKernel,
PR #197). - Mouse sensitivity in steps of 0.01 (#195, thanks to KiltedKernel, PR #198).
- Main menu: an Exit Game entry closes the game (thanks to Flippage, PR #168). It takes the place of Credits in
Gears 2 and of the Marketplace entry in Gears 3 and Judgment. - Mouse buttons 4 and 5 can be bound to actions (#208).
- Judgment default keys: Grenades on 4 (LB) and Tactical display on Tab (D-pad down) (#208).
- Gears 3: side-by-side split screen is set again at every level, not only the first (#208 / #136).
- Gears 3 Title Update 6: no more crash in the Act 1 jail cutscene (#207).
- Faster: textures the game draws into on the graphics card are no longer copied back and reloaded every frame
(about 12 a frame in Gears 2). - A crash right after a title update that doesn't match the game now says so (#183).
- Judgment: after a loading screen the 30 fps loading limit ends sooner (3 s after loading instead of 6, at most
8 s while the level streams in instead of 20). - XeGTAO High uses two smoothing passes instead of three (a little faster, slightly less smooth); Ultra chooses its
passes by itself (two without DLSS / FSR / XeSS, fewer the lower DLSS / FSR / XeSS draws the scene). - Language: packages stored compressed as a whole are now read when switching the voice language.
- Gears 1 launcher: says when the chosen Scene resolution can't be used at the render scale (#98).
- New logs and test switches for reported issues (#90, #105, #131, #132, #185, #193, #202), all off unless asked for.
- Launcher: shorter notices, one title-update notice after adding a game, the toolbar together at the top right,
at most three covers, a button legend with pictures for your controller or keyboard, HDR shown as
"HDR (experimental)".
Thanks to the contributors in this release
- Flippage: achievements in all four games (PR #187), the Exit Game menu entry (PR #168), and Unlock Insane via his Gears 3 recomp (#174)
- gmihaic: FidelityFX CACAO, Judgment AO and DLSS with real depth, upscaler mip bias, XeGTAO denoise (PR #204)
- KiltedKernel: Gears 3 TU6 mod campaigns' acts (PR #205), path choice with the mouse (PR #206, off in this release), the Walk key fix (PR #197), mouse sensitivity in 0.01 steps (PR #198)
- LenzTRO: tested and confirmed Gears of War System Link co-op (#209)
- boma and illusion: the Xenia Canary game patches behind the Bloom, Film grain, Motion blur and Depth of field switches (#179)
- Everyone who reported issues and sent reports - thank you.
Download COGBox-0.4.6.zip below, unzip it to a new folder and run CogBox.exe. The .sha256 file is its checksum.