Not every major engine change is immediately visible to the player.

For many years, StepMania and Project OutFox relied on OpenGL’s fixed-function pipeline. In OutFox, this rendering path is known as Glad-FFP.

Fixed-function rendering comes from an older generation of graphics hardware, when much of the rendering process was controlled through a predefined set of operations. It served the engine well, supported years of community content, and helped StepMania run across a remarkably broad range of systems.

It is also increasingly distant from how modern graphics hardware is designed to work.

To provide a stronger foundation for current and future systems, we developed Glad-Prog, OutFox’s fully programmable OpenGL rendering path.

Glad-Prog replaces the assumptions of the fixed-function pipeline with a qualified shader-pair system. This gives the renderer a cleaner and more maintainable architecture, while providing the control needed for future graphics work.

This is not simply about adding prettier effects.

A programmable pipeline allows rendering behaviour to be defined more precisely, removes limitations inherited from the older path, and gives our mod-file and gimmick communities a more stable foundation for building visual effects.

Compatibility has remained central throughout this work.

Themes, noteskins and other community content built around the established StepMania rendering behaviour still need to function correctly. Glad-Prog has therefore been developed to preserve that behaviour while moving the underlying renderer onto modern graphics architecture.

Glad-FFP has not been removed.

Project OutFox continues to support it for older graphics hardware and legacy systems that cannot use the programmable renderer. Modernising OutFox does not mean discarding working hardware simply because it is old.

Glad-FFP remains part of our compatibility path.

Glad-Prog is the foundation we will build on from here.