v2.0.0-alpha-rc4

• 2.0.0-alpha

This is a major version change that encloses major rewrites of many core
systems. Being an alpha release comes with the caveat that several core
engine systems are broken and in the process of being ported or having bugs
ferretted out. See Future Work at the end of this Changelog entry

Notable feature improvements are as follows.

• Terrain Generation now happens on the GPU
  This was a pretty big change. I was initially motivated by performance,
  however the real value of the feature is in having terrain gen in regular
  glsl shaders. More info and instructions for operating the terrain
  generation pipeline is available in docs/

• Editing now happens on the GPU
  Following terrain generation, editing also had to be ported to work on the
  GPU. This is not necessarily for performance or usability, but for
  maintainability. I did not want to maintain a GPU terrain generation
  pipeline, and a CPU editing pipeline.

  The editor capabilities have also been significantly upgraded.
  Comprehensive documentation for the editor is WIP, but what's been started
  can be found in docs/

• World storage is octree-based
  As a more robust answer to LoD, the world is now stored hierarchically as an
  octree. This unlocks huge view distances for a stable, linear cost in
  performance.

• Many smaller improvements, optimizations and fixes
  This update is way too large to address every change; it took many months,
  hundreds of commits and and tens of thousands of lines changed.

• Future work
  Several systems remain broken or unstable in the wake of this large change.
  Notable systems include:

  • Asset Loaders
  • Collision Detector
  • Shadow Mapping
  • Transparent and Emissive materials

  These systems are slated to be finished in priority order as listed here.