While working on different parts of the source for “Phase 2” I also took a look at the rendering method for the 3D models and decided to totally rewrite those functions. They now (together with other changes) render models sorted by materials, which gives a huge performance improvements (texture changes are very expensive, and rendering sorted by materials removes a lot of them) that will be included with “Phase 2”. Though the improvement will depend on your hardware it should boost performance across the board, starting at lower-end hardware to high-end systems.
On my Radeon HD3850 it gave me a boost of 100 fps at 1280x800 (windowed) in the main view, and for the new hex battles (you’ll get new screenshots soon) performance doubled. Just check the screenshot to see the improvement, left is old renderin method, the right part shows the new one.