With a month of teasing by the development team leading up to this update, everyone can now finally test it out for themselves as TurboPixel Studios have just pushed version 0.36 for icon_rflx Reflex to Steam. The biggest change this update brings for players is of visual nature, namely the new weapon models and art assets including a fully themed version of bdm3 (Screenshots can be found below).

For mappers this update brings fully customizable, Lua-based UI for the editor including an in-game content browser. They have also unified their lighting system to allow for faster build times and a more consistent look across all brushes and meshes.

Game:
  • No longer play character pain sounds on < 10 damage
  • Tweaked IC hit sound (again)
Bug fixes:
  • Player now removed from editor state on disconnect (fixes bug where you see menu playback in editor mode)
  • Fixed crash dialog interrupting very slow loads (slow loads will be somewhat addressed in .37)
  • Fixed crash bug when the .light file didn't provide all reflection probes
  • Fixed previous optimisations to be DX10 compatible
  • Fixed colour override workflow -- if you override a material & not colour within an effect, the default colour will now come from the new material (instead of the default colour on the effect).
Source.
Game:
  • Added alternative IC hit sound. This is a somewhat less painful alternative until we implement our new sound system
Tech:
  • Loading improvements
    • Adding loading screen to prevent blocking on load (work in progress -- it'll be nicer in 0.37)
    • Replays are now streamed in as they play
    • Thumbnails now generated iteratively
    • Static batching bake can now be done iteratively
  • Memory usage
    • Static batching re-written to use substantially less memory. (from 1040mb VRAM to 773mb VRAM @ medium quality)
    • Reduced the system memory Reflex uses by about half (from 920mb to 488mb @ medium quality)
    • Favour non-Intel cards (should fix many reports we're getting on people having Reflex default to integrated graphics)
Bugs:
  • Lua scripts now report "Plasma Rifle" instead of "Chain Gun"
  • Fixed bug where cameranode keyframe wasn't being set properly on game start
  • Fixed bug with being updating the camera in replays.
Source.
Bug fixes:
  • Fixed crash bug on launch for DX10.0 cards
  • Fixed bug with teleporter mesh click detection
  • Dropped pickups no-longer save into maps
  • Vote counters work again
Engine:
  • Added r_mesh_quality
  • Removed high-vis option from UI (cvar still exists)
  • cl_weapon_offset* now set to defaults on builds <= 0.36.0
Art:
  • Darked default reflection cubemap (improves look on lower end card)
  • Removed accidental RL from bdm3
  • Scaled up grenade by 150% (should be more like the old one)
Source.

Full Change-log

  • Content browser for effects/meshes/materials
  • Entirely Lua powered now, so get customizing.
  • All meshes & brushes can now have their material type and colour overridden
  • Meshes can now be uniformly scaled up and down.
  • Prefab system (EntityPrefab, me_createprefab, me_breakprefab, me_updateprefab, me_destroyprefab -- full docs soon)
  • Increased UI mouse scroll speed
  • me_snapangle is now a float
  • Pickup positions now always exposed in replay
  • Changed respawn & teleporter sounds -- many more will be coming with our updated sound engine.
  • Added industrial ambient sounds
  • Removed a heap of profiling sections so cl_show_profiler 1 is no-longer useless
  • Added r_profiler 2
  • CPU & Memory optimizations for servers
  • Added weapon land impulse
  • Added weapon bob (see cl_weapon_bob)
  • Added ultra quality settings
  • Added static batching
  • Removed lightmapping (we're now 100% probe-lit)
  • .probe files are now redundant -- all baked lighting is saved into .light
  • Can now load un-matching .light files (no more lightmap stomping the second you change anything)
  • Added support for multiple reflection probes (requires DX10.1+)
  • Added SMAA x1
  • Added quality levels for FXAA
  • Implemented NVIDIA ShadowWorks HBAO+
  • Implemented LOD system
  • Restored UV rotation commands
  • me_getmaterial now works again when no faces are selected.
  • Weapons no-longer rotate around crazy when building lights, much to newborns disappointment.
  • Fixed rotation on meshes when doing group rotations
  • Editors can no longer select/delete/created player, grenade, rocket, cell, burst, stake, temp, cameraPath, vote or damage entities. We kept that bug secret for ages!
  • Quad & resist effects no-longer seen on weapons on 3rd person players
  • Several server bugs fixed
  • Disabled stake launcher (for now)
  • Lua functions: nvgFillImagePattern(), nvgLineCap(), nvgLineJoin(), nvgMiterLimit(), nvgGlobalAlpha(), nvgTextLetterSpacing()
  • Lua vars: providing selected entity properties, providing selected brush properties
  • me_activematerial and me_createtype are now vars not commands (they'll be saved to config / are query-able from lua)
  • Added me_setentityproperty
  • Added me_activealbedo and hooked it up to UI
 
Art
  • Added industrial theme. It's only a single bullet point, but it includes about a hundred assets and will include more over time.
  • Added first-pass weapon art -- still some polishing to do.
  • Revised carnage effect
  • Updated hostile to match the new art style.
  • Optimized some effects
  • Fully themed BDM3

Thanks to Bonuspunkt for providing the screenshots

Links: icon_rflx Official Reflex Website, icon_rflx Official Announcement Thread, icon_irc #reflex