bigmak94/AstroQuest v0.23

AstroQuest 0.23

on GitHub

No more white lines on NVIDIA cards, a frame for every refresh of the headset, finer frame pacing, R1 for the throwing stars on a DualSense, and a word from the launcher when a newer release is out. Most of the PC changes come from evertec82's fork (#30), with work by elliotttate: thank you both.

Fixed, on the PC

• The white lines across the title, and ragged letters, on NVIDIA cards (#30). The game draws into pictures of one colour sample with a depth buffer of several. On NVIDIA cards both triangles of a quad blended the pixels along the edge they share, so every glowing or see-through quad showed a thin bright line along its diagonal, at its own place in each eye: across the title's logo, in the sky of the levels. Each pixel is now drawn by one of the two. And the menus' letters had speckled edges: values the pixel shader reads at the edge of a triangle were taken outside it, which read the font's picture outside the letter.

Added, on the PC

• A frame for every refresh, the new default (#30): "Full" in the launcher's window (fps=full). The game makes as many frames as the headset shows, and is never dropped to a frame every other refresh. The size of the picture still follows the graphics card; it now also grows to the size you chose on a PC whose processor is what keeps frames from coming sooner. On a Ryzen 7 9800X3D with an RTX 5070 Ti at 2880x3072 an eye, with a simulated headset: 90 frames a second at 90 Hz, 112 to 119 at 120 Hz. If Full judders on your PC, choose 60 with the headset at 120 Hz: the console's own pace, as before. A settings.txt brought along from an earlier version keeps the frame rate chosen there: choose Full in the launcher's window to try it.
• Frames flipped sooner: the emulator looks for a finished frame 32 times a refresh, with a high-resolution timer, and waits up to 3 ms for a frame that is a little late instead of showing the last one again.
• The window on the PC shows the headset's picture 60 times a second at most, which spares the graphics card work at 90 and 120 Hz.
• Two larger sizes: 3960x4224 and 4320x4608 an eye.
• The launcher says when a newer release is out (#41). It asks GitHub once as it starts and prints a line with the link. update_check=0 in pc-vr\settings.txt turns that off.
• A crash in the game's own code says where (#40). The log names the place in the game, what was read or written where, and the game's calls that led there.

Added, on the PC and the Quest

• R1 swipes forward on a DualSense or DualShock 4 too (#43), once for each press: the throwing stars of the last boss want swipes faster than a thumb makes on the pad. A finger on the touchpad still comes first.

Files

• AstroQuest-0.23-Quest3.apk: the app for the Quest 3 (adb install -r; it installs over 0.20 and later and keeps your saves).
• AstroQuest-0.23-PC-VR-Windows.zip: the PC version. Unzip it into a folder with a short path and start Play Astro Bot VR.bat. Updating: keep your games folder and pc-vr\user (your saves).

How to install and play is in the README.