## About The Pull Request
**Alternate title: "Fix blind people getting so blind they become deaf
when going down a flight of stairs"**
So 'bout half a week to a week ago I overheard a friend complaining
about blind people not seeing runechat on lower multi-z levels. Asked a
bit, apparently they'd reported this about half a year ago, and it's
still an issue.
So in my never-ending hubris I decided to just go and fix it!
Now, admittedly? I really _really_ do not get the rendering system we
use.
The simple options were right out: we can't allow the fullscreens plane
to be offset, as this causes issues with looking up/down, or disallow
runechat from being offset, which causes issues with runechat from other
levels.
After poking our very cool and smart rendering guy several times over
the course of the last week, this is what we got to:
### The technical bits
We simply make the rendering relays for non-offsetting plane masters
point to the highest rendering plane that matches the target.
We do this by offsetting the rendering relays in place, by adjusting
their plane and layer values to match the new offset, with a new
`offset_relays_in_place(new_offset)` proc called in
`/datum/plane_master_group/proc/transform_lower_turfs(...)`.
Importantly, we compare the current layer values to what they should've
been, so we don't accidentally override relays with custom-set layers.
This fixes our issue (as tested on wawastation):
<details>
<summary>Images</summary>
</details>
## Why It's Good For The Game
Fixes#80376.
## Changelog
🆑
fix: You can see runechat above fullscreen overlays on lower multi-z
levels again. Rejoice, blind players. Please report any weird rendering
layering issues.
/🆑
## About The Pull Request
It's kinda hacky, but it is nearly the same as just rendering one z
layer.
We allow people to ENTIRELY REMOVE most plane masters from their screen.
This has the side effect of disabling most visual effects (AO is a big
one) which saves a LOT of gpu.
We rely on planes being essentially layers to ensure things render in
the proper order. (outside of some hackyness required to make parallax
work)
I've kept parallax and lighting enabled, so visuals will still look
better then multiz pre plane cube.
It does also mean that things like FOV don't work, but honestly they
didn't work PRE plane cube, and FOV's implementation makes me mad so I
have a hard time caring.
Reduces gpu usage on my machine on tram from 47% to 32%, just above the
27% I get on meta.
I'm happy with this.
Oh also turns out the parallaxing had almost no cost. Need to remove it
as a side effect of what I'm doing but if I could keep it I would.
There's still room for in between performance options, like disabling
things like AO on lower z layers, but I didn't expect it to make a huge
impact, so I left things as is
Also fixes a bug with paper bins not respecting z layer. It came up in
testing and annoyed me
## Why It's Good For The Game
Ensures we can make multiz maps without running into client performance
issues, allows users to customize performance and visual quality.
## Changelog
🆑
add: Adds a new rendering option to the gameplay preferences. You can
now limit the rendering intensity of multiz levels. This will make
things look a bit worse, but run a LOT better. Try it out if your
machine chokes on icebox or somethin.
/🆑
Co-authored-by: Mothblocks <35135081+Mothblocks@users.noreply.github.com>
MrMelbert