Version 1.952 of SilverLining is now available from our download page. This new revision adds the methods Atmosphere::Serialize() and Atmosphere::Unserialize(), which you can use to save and restore SilverLining’s complete state to any STL iostream. This is particularly handy not just for saving conditions to disk, but for handling device reset events in Direct3D 9 – when you lose the device, you need to delete and re-create the Atmosphere object, and these methods make doing so a lot easier.

There are other improvements for DirectX9 in version 1.952 as well – we fixed a few bugs that manifested themselves when using the debug runtime, and eliminated the warnings about pixel read-back on surfaces without lockable backbuffers coming from our Glare class when glares are disabled (which they are by default.) In 1.952, the fixed function pipeline is no longer used at all under DirectX 9, which allows us to avoid a lot of problems. This version also restores compatibility with older video cards that only support Shader Model 2.0.

We’ve also got a new version of the SilverLining / Gamebryo Lightspeed integration available both here on our website, and on http://pulse.emergent.net. This new integration supports Lightspeed version 3.1.1, and includes bug fixes as well as new dimmers for the ambient, specular, and diffuse components of the SilverLiningDirectionalLight entity model.

As always, let us know if you have any trouble with this new release, or if you have ideas for new enhancements to SilverLining.