Photo and replay repairs, weapon lighting and the announcement trailer
Work repaired photo-mode crashes, screenshot colors, frozen texture state and surface-memory pressure, refined mech attachments, and added experimental lighting from weapon effects. Corrected in-game camera captures now feature in the published announcement trailer and the website's new Mechs and Gameplay sections. The work preserves original gameplay while modern rendering and tools continue through testing.
Campaign materials, moving water and replay performance
Work expanded the lighting and normal-mapping previews across original mechs and Campaign 1 scenery, added moving water and cloud detail, and refined roads, shorelines, structures and vehicles. A replay-performance investigation also led to making background video recording opt-in. These changes remain in the development previews while broader gameplay and visual checks continue.
Big Lake lighting, restored performance and terrain CPU investigation
Big Lake's expanded replacement-model setup now has a verified performance repair. A matched route improved from 43.1 to 82.1 average FPS after restoring configuration caches, with scene pixels and original draw records preserved. Terrain CPU removal was investigated separately: a bounded prototype passed its tested visual comparisons but delivered no speedup, so it remains outside Play. Bushwacker skin and shoulder work also progressed.
Big Lake sunlight, rendering benchmarks and campaign investigation
An isolated Big Lake test now renders directional sunlight and ambient fill on terrain, hills, buildings and replacement mechs. Matched tests measured a 2.7 percent average frame-rate cost for the new lighting. Campaign investigation and model previews continued alongside it, with unresolved gameplay defects and offline visual work kept separate from verified native rendering progress.
Native Mech Lab repair, Pirate's Moon menu and MW3 playtest progress
Today's work advanced MW3 campaign playtesting, repaired the native Mech Lab's ultrawide canvas, and brought Pirate's Moon to a native Vulkan menu. HUD, zoom and fog fixes improved the local Remaster build. Model and texture work continued alongside GPU geometry experiments, with failed comparisons kept separate from the playable build.
Native Remaster: ultrawide views, a broader HUD, and local music
The native MW3 development host gained a faster rendering path, true ultrawide presentation, broader original HUD coverage, and file-backed music. These are development milestones; full-game fidelity and a portable release still need more work.
The native host reaches live menus, Training, and Instant Action
The integrated native host executed the animated menu and live MW3 scenes through Vulkan. User and scripted sessions reached Training and Instant Action, while the separate Vulkan wrapper, launcher, and high-resolution texture work continued alongside recompilation.
Connecting the native host and evaluating a Vulkan compatibility path
Work advanced the application startup path while a separate D7VK investigation tested a practical Vulkan route for the original executable. The native integration session crossed into October 13; its confirmed live menu and gameplay results are recorded in the following day's summary.
A clearer direction: faithful gameplay with modern services
The project adopted its execution-first modernization strategy: preserve the original game logic through recompilation, connect it to modern platform services, and advance toward a live native menu and Training. This kept the work focused on bringing the original game forward.
Stronger startup evidence and more faithful graphics replay
The selected startup checklist reached its retained 131-of-144 acceptance point. Graphics work focused on the ordering of surface operations and on understanding the original HUD rather than treating a plausible image as sufficient proof.
Seeing the original renderer and expanding startup coverage
The graphics work gained a live trace of the original game and a standalone Vulkan viewer for captured scenes. In parallel, reviewed startup coverage continued to grow and the first GitHub repository snapshot brought the project-authored tooling together.
Native helper bridges, Vulkan direction, and textures in Training
Development tested compiled native helpers inside the original game's execution path and selected Vulkan as the graphics direction. Local play also confirmed that the first texture integration was reaching the intended Training assets.
Real game-code proofs and the first modernization experiments
The early recompilation work moved beyond authored examples into a small real MW3 function and a bounded game subsystem. Alongside that work, local texture, material, effects, and video experiments began exploring what optional modernization might look like.
Building the recompilation foundation
Development began with a reproducible research and build foundation for MW3. The first goal was to prove that small pieces of original-style x86 behavior could be translated, compiled for modern Windows, and checked against an independent reference.