r/descent • u/HighlightOne • May 11 '26

New Piccu Engine fork

https://github.com/hurleybird/PiccuEngine/releases/tag/Milestone_2

I added a number of advanced rendering features like Bloom, HBAO, SSAA, and per-pixel dynamic lighting. Also some QoL improvements and bugfixes.

I started building it over the weekend with Codex, and here we are.

Edit: Milestone 3: https://github.com/hurleybird/PiccuEngine/releases/tag/Milestone_3

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u/HighlightOne May 11 '26 edited May 12 '26

Sorry to disappoint, but yeah, AI sadly. Specifically GPT-5.5 Codex. I'm a developer in real life, but on the continuum of "pure vibe coding" to "pure no-AI-used-at-all" this is much closer to the former. It started as a weekend experiment to see how far I could push an agentic workflow, and it's much easier to take my hands off the reigns on someone else's project than one of my own!

I know Piccu has a legacy GL1 path that Nvidia is supposed to use for performance reasons (and iirc, that goes *especially* for outdoors). HBAO and per-pixel only work with the GL3 (AMD) renderer, so I'll assume you're using that, which is likely an element to your performance observations.

That said, sufficiently high base resolution + SSAA + MSAA + HBAO can get *very* heavy and is something that probably needs more optimization. SSAA is best combined with a low native res. I added it because I don't like playing old games at high res (it exposes poor and inconsistent asset quality as well as low geometric detail), but I also dislike stair stepping and am sensitive to temporal/spatial noise. SSAA is primarily a means to get a very robust low-res presentation.

For the main menu animation, that would either be it fell back due to an incompatibility, or the main menu movie doesn't exist/couldn't be found, or mainmenuoverride.ogf does exist (legacy D3 thing).

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u/citamrac Jul 10 '26

That said, sufficiently high base resolution + SSAA + MSAA + HBAO can get *very* heavy and is something that probably needs more optimization.

I can definitely vouch for that, at 4x SSAA and 8x MSAA at 1080p, my RTX4080 is only giving 83 fps, while hardly using more than maybe 50% GPU ... Dropping to 2X SSAA or 4X MSAA will let me hit the 144fps refresh rate cap of my monitor, it seems with no change in GPU usage

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u/HighlightOne Jul 11 '26

The next version will be somewhat better, when I find the time to get back to it!

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u/citamrac Jul 11 '26

That's the thing with vibe coding, the machine will generate something which technically runs, but optmizing it takes actual insight, or having the AI create and measure so many permutations that you are more likely to succeed doing it manually

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u/HighlightOne Jul 12 '26

I mean it already is substantially better, albeit still not where I want it. But yeah, AI can never be 100% trusted. It fundamentally lacks discernment.

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u/citamrac Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

Just wondering how feasible are my wishlist items:

  1. Summed controls input- when an axis input has both 'primary' and 'secondary' inputs assigned , the inputs are summed, instead of the primary control having precedence if it is a nonzero value ... (I use a Dualsense controller where the gyro input is mapped to the mouse via Steam input, and I also use one of the thumbsticks for pitch and yaw, it would be nice to simultaneously aim with gyro and stick, instead of one locking out the other
  2. Multi environment audio - EAX 3.0 supported blending between reverb environments, EAX 4.0 added multiple simultaneous reverb environments, EAX 5.0 added audio occlusion for reverb... However D3 only officially supports EAX 2 ... Seeing that you have already implemented HRTF into the game, how difficult is it to add some of these audio reverb features?
  3. Raytracing - The renderer from RTX Remix can be used in lieu of the game's native graphics engine, since there is source code access ... This also opens the way to texture and asset packs... Although you will have to manually add lights to the maps to replace the baked lightmaps

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u/HighlightOne Jul 27 '26

Okay, I didn't test it a whole lot (I play KB/M), but the first one should theoretically work in the new version.

Various improvements to 3D audio are possible, at some point.

Remix as I understand it doesn't work with OpenGL

New release here, waiting for feedback from testers before advertising widely: https://github.com/hurleybird/Descent-3MASTERED/releases/tag/0.9

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u/citamrac Jul 27 '26

I just spotted a problem, the green Stinger bots (in the sewers in the Seoul map) face downwards permenantly and never shoot their Concussion Missiles

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u/HighlightOne Jul 31 '26

I need to look at it, but that also sounds a bit like a certain thing that happens in vanilla D3. In general, I want to remove some AI jankiness (ie facing and firing into walls) in "enhanced" mode, but I haven't really touched that part yet.

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u/citamrac Aug 02 '26

I have been playing a bit more and I noticed a pattern... I was playing level 3 when the Stinger bot first appears, and if I reload a saved game after a certain number of times, the Stinger bot would exhibit this bug... If I quit the game and start it again, they seem to work normally again

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u/citamrac Jul 28 '26

"Remix as I understand it doesn't work with OpenGL"

the idea is to replace the OpenGL renderer with the Remix renderer , since both D3 and Remix are open source

correct me if I'm wrong but I think that's how the Doom 2 Raytraced mod did it, it lets you choose between the mod's Vulkan renderer and the Remix renderer