Environment & Retro Effects

VEX provides a global Environment system that controls the rendering pipeline's aesthetic. This system allows you to toggle specific "retro" features, such as vertex jitter, affine texture warping, and color quantization, to achieve an authentic PS1-era look.

These settings are stored in the vex::environment struct and are applied globally to the active scene.

• You can easly change them in VEX Editor

WARNING

Overwriting them in code persists as long as new scene isnt loaded. When new scene is loaded it loads its own environment settings.

Accessing Settings

The environment settings are managed directly by the Engine class. You can retrieve the current configuration, modify specific flags, and push the changes back to the engine.

// 1. Get current settings
vex::environment env = GetEngine().getEnvironmentSettings();

// 2. Modify settings (e.g., disable texture warping)
env.affineWarping = false;

// 3. Apply changes
GetEngine().setEnvironmentSettings(env);

Retro Aesthetics

These settings control the geometry and pixel-processing stages to mimic early 3D hardware limitations.

Property	Type	Description
passiveVertexJitter	bool	Enables vertex jitter even when the camera is static. Useful for a constantly ""alive"" unstable look.
vertexSnapping	bool	Snaps vertices to a lower-precision grid during movement. This causes the classic ""wobble"" effect seen in PS1 games.
affineWarping	bool	Disables perspective-correct texture mapping. Textures will appear to warp or distort at extreme angles.
screenQuantization	bool	Reduces color precision across the entire screen, creating banding artifacts typical of lower bit-depth displays.
screenDither	bool	Applies a dithering pattern to smooth out the banding caused by quantization.
ntfsArtifacts	bool	Enables CRT/NTSC-style signal artifacts (composite video noise/bleeding).

Example: "Ultra Retro" Mode

This example enables every retro feature to maximize the nostalgic aesthetic.

void Game::EnableRetroMode() {
    vex::environment env = GetEngine().getEnvironmentSettings();

    // Geometry Instability
    env.vertexSnapping = true;
    env.affineWarping = true;
    
    // Color/Video Artifacts
    env.screenQuantization = true;
    env.screenDither = true;
    env.ntfsArtifacts = true; // Enables composite signal artifacts

    GetEngine().setEnvironmentSettings(env);
}

Lighting & Shading

In addition to retro artifacts, the environment struct controls the global lighting model.

Property	Description
gourardShading	When true, lighting is calculated per-vertex (Gouraud). When false, it may default to flat shading depending on the shader.
ambientLight	The base color vec3 of the scene's shadows/darkest areas.
sunLight	The color vec3 of the main directional light.
sunDirection	A vec3 defining the direction of the ""sun"" light source.
clearColor	The background color used if no skybox is present.

Example: Day/Night Cycle

You can animate these values in your Update() loop to create dynamic environmental effects.

void MyGame::Update(float deltaTime) {
    vex::environment env = GetEngine().getEnvironmentSettings();
    
    // Simple Day/Night cycle based on time
    float time = GetEngine().GetCurrentFrame() * 0.001f;
    float brightness = (sin(time) + 1.0f) / 2.0f; // Oscillate 0.0 to 1.0

    // Update ambient light strength
    env.ambientLightStrength = 0.1f + (brightness * 0.4f);
    
    // Change background from Black (Night) to Blue (Day)
    env.clearColor = glm::vec3(0.0f, 0.0f, brightness * 0.5f);

    GetEngine().setEnvironmentSettings(env);
}