I still remember playing Soldat a year after it came out and even then it felt like an institution. There’s still little since that has nailed the 2D run and game deathmatch formula with the sense of speed in a way I’ve been able to connect to.
It’s been over 13 years since the first major build of Soldat was published, but the game’s still kicking along. It’s just gotten another hefty patch, which least of all introduces an immense performance boost that should please many.
The announcement on the forums breaks the release of Soldat 1.7 into three major areas, the most important of which is the introduction of OpenGL. Soldat has been running off a DirectX 8 renderer for God knows how long, and moving onto a new renderer allows the game to run significantly more smoothly. So much more, in fact, that the developers published this screenshot showing a stark improvement in the frame rate.
The new version of Soldat also brings native support for resolutions up to 4K (3840×2160), presumably thanks to showing DX8 the door. The team has also redone the weapons, maps, UI, effects, textures, models and backgrounds to make them a lot cleaner and more viewable in higher resolutions.
I’m not 100% sold on the outlines; there’s something just a touch off about the outline. It looks a little too cartoonish, perhaps. I can’t really put my finger on it. Here’s a comparison so you can see what I’m getting at.
On top of those two, tools for modders have been improvement, borderless fullscreen support has been added and the quirky netcode present in Soldat 1.6.9 has been reverted to the previous version to correct the issues people were having.
If you want to download the full package of Soldat — it’s free-to-play, remember — you can do so from the site. It’s still a fantastic game for LAN parties or a quick session, although if you try and play online these days you’re probably going to have the Quake problem where your opponents combined experience is probably hovering in the double digits.
Comments
7 responses to “Soldat Gets A Massive Performance Boost And A HD Coat Of Paint”
Good ol’ Soldat, miss those days… and Liero.
If it wasn’t for Soldat, Liero, Elasto Mania, and UFO Enemy Unknown, I probably would’ve gotten a higher OP…
I would probably have done a lot better in uni if we couldn’t play liero on the computer lab pcs 🙂 good times though.
The worst part is that years later they tried to remake it into something better (Liero X), but it became much worse. Sometimes simple games are the best.
YYYEESSS! thank you! i’ve been trying to remember the name for Liero for the last few years and i just couldnt remember what it was called.
Talking about a blast from the past.
Oh wow, I had no idea it was still kicking around. I remember being so blown away when I first came across this – “it’s like Worms but in realtime!” Not sure I ever played it against anything but CPUs though 😛
Ah, good old Soldat… Spent way too much time playing that game 😀
So many good memories though!
Back in the day I was helping run the official forums, and my interface (Cabbage) shipped with the game, hehe 🙂
Miss it!