Z-buffering

Enhanced z-buffering was a major graphical update released on the 15th of September, 2010.

Uses

 * The z-buffering update made RuneScape run faster for many people in most areas of the game.
 * Dropped items are now even with the ground. Before, items were not tilted to match the angle of the ground, even if the ground was slanted.
 * The updated scimitar animations make use of Z-Buffering.

Glitches

 * Though it has been confirmed that male skillcapes would be "fixed" along with the z-buffering update, the fix was to shorten female skillcapes instead of lengthen male skillcapes. Due to this, many people complained on the official RuneScape forums.
 * Shortly after the update, when a player received a message in clan chat, all public usernames became the same colour of the clan chat. This was fixed in a system update shortly after.
 * As of the 15th of September, 2010, most summoning scrolls glitch. An example of the fruit-bat scroll is shown on the right side.
 * Various inventory icons, like those of potions, became glitched after the update. This has been fixed.
 * After this update, some players found their chat partially disabled. (Unable to chat 50% of the time)
 * This update brought along a glitch in the music. Any song that interrupts the jukebox music (i.e.: level up music) will not play for a second and then start playing in the middle of the song. This has been fixed as of the 12th of October, 2010.
 * After the update, some computers experience random glitches which causes the graphics to distort. This has yet to be fixed.
 * After the update, a glitch caused the puzzle in Monkey Madness to look as if it had missing parts, this has yet to be fixed by Jagex. Though it cannot be seen, a player can complete it by using a hint taken from the crate north of it.

Trivia

 * According to Jagex, due to the z-buffering changes, the Wilderness ditch no longer looked right (in fact, they said it looked rather unsightly). As such, Jagex replaced the ditch graphic with a low wall.
 * Gunnar's Ground was the first quest to take advantage of z-buffering. It is used during the cutscene where Gudrun hugs Dororan.
 * The Faint emote was the first emote to utilise Z-Buffering. Others include Puppet Master, Taskmaster, and the Snowsplosion emote from the Heimland Games Souvenir.
 * The z-buffering update caused many bots to have to be partially re-developed, causing a large drop in the number of bots online when bots consisted of a significant portion of RuneScape's online players.