Hi everyone,

a quick update on the modern renderer experiment I posted a while ago.

This time I wanted a fair comparison, so I played a real online match (on The Classic Submarine) and recorded it twice: once with a stock 0.2.9 client spectating me, once with the new renderer. The video alternates between the two, side by side and on their own, and both show exactly the same moments of the same round.

How it works now

Gameplay is still untouched. The original engine (0.2.9.1.1) runs as usual — networking, physics, rules, AI — with a small patch that streams the game state to a Godot 4 front end over a local socket. The front end only draws and handles input; a turn goes from keypress to the engine and back in about 1–2 ms. So it connects to the normal servers, with the normal rules, and the classic client is always there as a fallback.

What's new since the first post

• Trails as energy-glass walls that actually light the floor and nearby bikes, with heat haze, sparks and a shatter effect
• Arena: wet PBR metal floor with reflections and rain ripples, a stadium with stands and light towers, a procedural 3D city around it
• Light cycle: my own design, generated from a Blender script, with a rider; it reflects the city on its paint
• Lens: anamorphic streaks on bright lights, motion blur, HDR with AgX tonemapping
• Camera: I compared my camera with the original one frame by frame on this match and found I had copied the source code defaults instead of the values the game actually ships with (turn speed 4, not 40). Fixed: it now settles after a burst of quick turns instead of chasing each one, like the classic client.
• New HUD and radar, and a completely new sound design

Numbers

On an Intel Arc integrated GPU (Arrow Lake laptop) it runs at around 60–70 fps with the 3D rendered at about half the screen resolution and upscaled (the resolution adapts on its own to hold the frame rate), even in power-saving mode. Most of the frame goes to the floor (metal lighting, reflections, indirect light).

Questions for you

• Does the new side still read clearly when the arena gets busy, or is it too much?
• Anything from the classic client you'd miss (camera modes, HUD info, sounds)?

Still a work in progress and Linux-only for now. Thanks to everyone who built Armagetron: none of this would exist without the engine.

— Pietro

Hi everyone,

I've been experimenting with Armagetron Advanced's graphics for a while, initially with higher-resolution textures and some additional PostFX.

Recently I started going a bit further and I'm experimenting with replacing parts of the old rendering pipeline with a more modern GPU-based renderer.

The goal is to keep the actual game untouched — gameplay, physics, AI and networking remain the same — while experimenting with things like:

• HDR rendering
• more advanced trail lighting
• modern materials
• screen-space reflections
• improved neon/emissive effects
• better performance than stacking more and more PostFX on top of the old renderer

It's still very much a work in progress, so I'm not ready to call it a proper release yet. I'm mainly posting it here because I'd be interested in hearing what people who know the engine think.

The renderer can still fall back to the original rendering path, so this is being developed as an alternative rather than a complete replacement at this stage.

If there's interest, I'll post some technical details and benchmarks as it develops.

— Pietro

Hello,

It's been a long time, Tron community! Thinking about my highschool days and discovering Armagetronad.net, I decided to take a crack at creating an in browser version of the game with my own spin on things. It's been probably 10+ years since I last played, but I remember the fun times I had with the ~"XzL. Clan, Sinewav, CompGuyGene, Durka, etc.

Pure nostalgia made me want to create my own spin on the game from what I remember back in the day. High Rubber used to be king, and then sumo/fortress took over. I also remember the first race track maps that someone made, which was very interesting. It's always been a fun, small community, and I love that.

I made tronad.net to run in the browser without an .exe for convenience sake. It's also mobile friendly and I plan to turn it into an app to be downloaded on the app store soon. I have created several servers that stay online 24*7, with the ability for users to make their own servers and configure their settings in the browser before launching. No more individual configs or host .exe to deal with.

Map making is also super easy with my map creator. Users can get super fancy with their maps. The map editor will be made public for people to use soon.

The Racetrack currently has 9 maps featuring tunnels, boosts, jumps, death zones, lava pits, item cubes, and more!

I have more features to come, this project is only a week old and this is my first time advertising it anywhere.

Let me know what you think :)

Hey y'all, I saw some YouTube videos by kronkletron recently and thought wow, this game looks awesome. But, I can see the complexity is huge and the learning curve must be really steep.

Does anyone have suggestions for building fundamentals and strategy quickly for a total beginner? Any Discord server / forums besides here for active community discussions?

Started playing yesturday thanks to a YT video randomly coming up on my feed. Already learnt how to triple keybind and speed up on grinds. I roughly know the roles in fortress and how to hole. Any other tips?

Are the forums down? I notice the game and the site are still up, but I get a 403 every time I attempt to read the forums :(

Redownloaded and played with 3 other people, mostly just 1 guy 1v1 me. But two other people join for 1v1v1. Forgot how much I love this game, such a classic

Sign-ups are now open for the 4v4 War Sumo Tournament, November 26 2023

I used to play this when I was younger as it was about the only game I could get to run on my parents ancient Linux laptop, I downloaded it on Steam not long ago and finally got around to playing it again today, after being put through the tutorial level I clicked onto multiplayer and was a bit sad to see all the servers that popped up were completely empty. Looking at the Steamcharts for the game it seems to only get single digit player numbers.

Do people play this game on services other than Steam, or has this game sadly had its time? I can remember the community maps being fun, and people being pretty accommodating when I was bad at the game the last time I played, it'd be a shame if that's all gone.

Commentator - Sylla.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Gym_Fp4yo&ab_channel=screally

Highlights: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/746269007

I started using reddit, days ago. Although my account is old. License to post a link to a video I made about retrocycles. Feel free to delete if I'm breaking any rules on this channel. https://www.reddit.com/user/pha_biano/comments/ions38/supertron_retrocycles_under_darkness/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Is it just me or did something change this behavior recently (past week?). I've looked at direct linux dependencies, I was guessing a libxml pkg causing it, but I don't see any recent such changes. 0.2.9.0-1 didn't affect this either.

In case someone doesn't know what I am talking about, it is the order of the menu items and how do you move up down on them. In the past the movement was circular (1,2,3,4,1,2... and 4,3,2,1,4,3,2 ..) Now you can go from 1st to last down and last to 1st up, last to 1st down arrow doesn't work or 1st to last up arrow doesn't work.

It is not throwing any errors or warnings on terminal that I could associate this behavior with.

Armagetron is coming to Steam as Retrocycles!

If you have a Steam account, click this link and wishlist it right now so it gets good promotion on launch day (22nd of July)!

Zman is uploading tron to steam 😃 here is the forum post, if you think you can help please read.

https://forums3.armagetronad.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=32273&start=15

I want to set up a server to play with my friends and I want the same settings other servers have, such as more rubber time, instant moves or infinite trails. Thank you.