So it's been a long time since a normal news post, and I should fill everyone in.

First I'm going to talk about all the graphics work that has been done. I tend to do many updates regarding shaders and graphical effects. That's because I've found my primary interest that I will focus on from now on in mod/game development: graphics programming. I love it and I love to share what is being done in that area for Radium. Radium is starting to look really gorgeous, with only a few things missing that I'd like (K.D., if you're out there, I have a few questions!).

We have a variety of Ambient Occlusion methods, recently added colored specular lighting, FXAA, SMAA, a dedicated weapons shader, and most recently pseudo-global illumination.

I should discuss what it is and what it isn't. First of all, it's more reliable and looks a lot better than GSC's solution, however it's not true global illumination: it's changing all lights from static to dynamic. This definitely comes with a performance cost, but it looks fantastic should you choose to turn it on. Lights are cast in a far more realistic fashion with this enabled.

Moving away from graphics, let's talk about the engine as a whole. As you know we've been working on Open Xray, or at least an early version of it that was modified heavily by Alundaio and Avotishin for Call of Chernobyl. Recently we have shifted the work over to lm-dex's repository, as it's more in line with what we want, and it runs blazing fast. We will still use Avotishin and Alundaio's work where needed, but without some of the unnecessary Open Xray stuff.

I am also removing all the dumb middleware I was adding, so this means no HBAO+, and a couple other things are gone now too. This is for the best.

There will be two renderers: DX9, and DX11. DX9 will still have it's three variants, and will be for those looking for the most performance, but I'll be sure and throw some eye candy in there too for those who want it on DX9.

We were planning on a 64-bit build, which would be easiest on this new repository, but likely it will not make first release, but perhaps later on down the road.

Radium is going to be an on-going project. I think the first version that is released will not be called "1.0" due to the fact that in order to get things rolling quicker, some things are simply going to have to be added later, especially now that we do not have a scripter.

The first release will be focused almost entirely on the following: graphics, sound, and weapons. That's all. The rest of the content will start being streamed into the mod as it progresses in releases as we've simply kept you all waiting for too long. But don't worry, ddraig's work on the gameplay will not go to waste, but in order to do it correctly it needs to be delayed longer than I want to wait to release Radium.

So when will the release actually be? I plan on having an answer to that once I discuss things with my team soon. Until then it'll still be "To be determined". I don't intend to make people wait too long for an answer though.