Changelog

Unreleased

Development changes; not included in the published Build 8 release.

Development status

• No development changes recorded yet.

Build 8

October 5, 2026.

Connectivity

• Move the public website, game server, client update links, and automatic asset downloads to stilldawn.m45sci.xyz after the former domain became unavailable in DNS.

Build 7

October 4, 2026.

Controls

• The Woodland Outfitter now sells usable bows and arrows. Hold left-click while stationary to draw the original ranger-kit bow, then release toward the cursor. Release early for a nearby shot: range grows from roughly 4 feet to 22 feet halfway and 40 feet at the full 1.25-second draw. Movement cancels the draw and each released shot consumes one arrow. Rabbits fall in one hit and boars take 10 damage. Ranger, wizard, and rogue reuse the kit's bow attachment and actions, original UV texture, a drawn string, a fixed-length arrow aligned in the bow's plane, and matching baked shadows. Attacking preserves the cursor-facing direction.
• Released arrows fly from the actual partial or full draw pose in a gravity-shaped arc, turn along their flight path, land, remain for five seconds, then fade out over two seconds. Online releases use the server's draw strength and hit location without duplicate arrows from repeated snapshots; ammo and damage rules are unchanged.
• Spear misses reliably play one recorded whiff, including when movement resumes before the impact pose is shown or the confirmed miss result arrives late.
• Inventory has bold shaded group headers, ordered Tools, Weapons (including arrows), Clothing, Materials, Food, Other. The window fits its contents within compact screen bounds and scrolls for larger packs. Manual resizing persists until Reset layout.
• Manual spear strikes can continue while moving, with 3D thrusts layered over walking, running and crouching. Faster movement and higher-level targets reduce accuracy; spear skill offsets the penalties. Saved spear skill starts at 0 and grows through valid attacks, including accuracy misses. Equipment shows progress toward 100; empty swings give no practice.
• Hold Ctrl to crouch and move at 3 feet/second. Preferences offers Toggle crouch, plus Keybinds with two bindings per action, conflict messages and reset-to-default controls. Crouching includes grounded idle/walking poses and matching soft shadows for all three player models and their held items.
• Dev clients now remember preferences separately from normal clients, so compression survives dev restarts. Preferences labels V-sync as Recommended.
• Image compression is temporarily hidden in Preferences. Existing saved settings and -half-vram launch overrides remain supported.
• Stats uses four compact rows: estimated VRAM, actual FPS, frame Time in milliseconds, and RPS (CPU Draw throughput), with p95 timings and corresponding rates.
• Preferences adds V-sync, enabled by default and applied immediately. Normal launches remember it; -vsync or -vsync=false overrides it for one launch.
• Preferences offers an optional Shift walk toggle. Hold-to-walk remains the default; the option is remembered between normal launches.
• Panel shortcuts open and close their windows: I Inventory, C Equipment, P Players, M Map, L Login, O Preferences, and F10 Stats. Bottom tabs show these keys, and typing blocks panel shortcuts.
• Escape can close Map and Stats, one front panel at a time.

Networking

• Nearby harvested plants use compact identifiers, reducing snapshot bandwidth while preserving shared depletion, regrowth and packet-loss recovery.
• Larger snapshots use fast independent compression when it saves bytes. Movement inputs use tighter packing and repeated runs without reducing input history or changing attack timing.
• Servers can select full snapshot FEC (default), FEC for multi-packet snapshots only, or no FEC. Clients follow the negotiated policy. Protocol 41 requires matching clients and server.

Rendering and performance

• Bowstrings and arrow shafts now use antialiased shader lines for smoother thin edges. The original bow model, texture, animations, arrow dimensions, and body/scenery occlusion are preserved, with no extra render texture or higher 4K detail limit.
• World rendering draws directly into the frame instead of copying a second full-window image. Shared model textures and mipmaps are prepared during loading, reducing first-encounter CPU hitches while GPU materials stay lazy.
• Remove obsolete body/clothing sprite atlases and unpacked runtime copies. Mobiles use skeletal 3D; baked shadows, registration previews and floor reflections remain. Sprite comparison launch options are retired.
• A separate character3d command previews the ranger with triangle rendering, shader lighting, and skeletal idle/walk/run animation.
• Players, vendors, residents, rabbits and boars now use skeletal triangle rendering by default, with existing clothing colors, movement/action clocks, physical sizes, scenery ordering and soft shadows. 3D mode avoids loading the large sprite body/clothing atlases; Equipment uses a cached 3D portrait.
• Preferences adds Character anti-aliasing, enabled by default and applied immediately. Its fast edge filter smooths all 3D mobiles while keeping scenery and UI sharp. Normal launches remember the setting.
• 3D texture mip filtering reduces fine-detail shimmer, with alpha coverage preserved for rabbit fur. A depth precision correction closes tiny gaps between adjacent triangles.
• Fishing rods now render as small 3D meshes attached directly to each model's animated hand, with character lighting, body occlusion and anti-aliasing. Casting, bite bends, reeling and fishing rules are preserved; Equipment fits the full rod.
• Carrying a fishing rod uses a relaxed bent elbow when walking and a tighter grip when running, with restrained pole sway and tip flex. The free arm and original gait timing are preserved.
• Lake fish keep their backs upright as they turn, with correctly projected body depth, fins and world lighting instead of a rotating flat flank.

Build 6

September 30, 2026.

Town hall and conversation

• Enter the shared, disarmed town hall northwest of Lantern Green, with layered interior artwork and soft floor reflections.
• Keep shared artwork resident while traveling between areas for faster transitions.
• Speak to residents with E and see player chat in timed speech bubbles. Preferences offers light or dark bubble colors.
• Recover from a server disconnection by returning to Login and clearing temporary session state.

Rendering and memory

• Add opt-in Half VRAM compression and Low memory preferences, both off by default; compression takes effect on the next launch.
• Speed artwork decoding, filtering, shader lookups, and the town hall's floor and reflection rendering.
• Add the experimental -packed-characters mode, combining shading, clothing materials, and opacity in padded per-frame atlases. It is off by default.
• Preserve animation scale and anchors while reducing transparent texture storage, with no frame uploads during playback.
• Correct Equipment portraits when changing from packed world textures to their independent portrait pixels.

Movement and networking

• Use smaller binary gameplay snapshots with recovery data that adapts to snapshot size.
• Reduce repeated collision, entity-list, and server interest work while preserving movement and combat rules.
• Restore movement after returning from defeat when lost inputs filled the prediction queue.
• Keep equipment usable when a building transition overtakes an equipment change.
• Stop injured rabbits at the resolved spear impact position.

Local development

• Launch a temporary local server and client with freshly generated asset packs using build-scripts/dev.sh.
• Open Stats at startup with -stats and compare texture compression with -half-vram or -half-vram=false.

Release notes

• Browse numbered release notes from Login or Preferences, with older/newer navigation and a separate Unreleased entry.
• Backfill Builds 1–5 and generate the repository and website changelogs from the same notes.

Build 5

September 29, 2026.

Artwork and downloads

• Budget runtime artwork for a fixed 4K view, reducing excessive texture detail while preserving physical sizes, ground anchors, and animation canvases.
• Larger windows remain supported without allocating artwork above the 4K detail ceiling.
• Download a complete verified artwork and sound bundle of about 227 MiB. Build 5 does not use an asset patch route.
• Reuse verified local packs and reduce repeated artwork filtering during preparation.

Combat feedback

• Account for an animal's outward movement when approaching for an automatic spear thrust.
• Play recorded spear-whiff sounds only for confirmed misses, keeping successful-hit sounds distinct.
• Add a player-collapse sound and fade recovered bodies and their shadows together.

Setting

• Introduce Stilldawn's ocean-covered, tidally locked world and the fixed low sun near Lantern Woodlands.

Build 4

September 28, 2026.

Characters and equipment

• Choose ranger, wizard, or rogue artwork when creating a character, with saved skin and hair colors.
• Buy boots, shirts, pants, cowls, gloves, and bracers from the Woodland Outfitter. Equip six clothing slots independently, with each item's own color.
• Clothing adds armor. Equipment shows a rotating portrait, health, level, and total armor.
• Show live health in the bottom HUD and restore health after a quiet period out of combat.

Boars and recovery

• Add woodland boars that warn, pursue, attack, retreat, and sometimes fight back when cornered.
• Hunt boars for experience, meat, and skins, with species-specific sounds and loot.
• Fall at zero health and choose whether to return to Lantern Green for the displayed experience cost.
• Returning leaves items on your body. Recover them with E; your map marks unrecovered items and they persist across logins.
• Improve automatic spear approach and hit timing against moving animals.

Downloads and performance

• Rename the game to Stilldawn and move the public game and downloads to stilldawn.online.
• Use small client packages with verified artwork and sound downloaded automatically on first launch.
• Require an exact client/server build match, with a download link when the server has a newer build.
• Pack animation atlases more efficiently and reduce repeated rendering and simulation work.
• Add a Stats window with estimated GPU image memory, average frame time, and p95 frame time.

Build 3

September 26, 2026 (originally mmoPrototype).

Woodland

• Surround the island's scalloped dirt coast with water while keeping the inland paths and landmarks.
• Add shoreline detail, swimming decorative fish at Stillwater, and cracks, pebbles, and wear on paths and clearings.
• Give trees gentle branch and canopy movement with matching shadows; Preferences can disable the breeze.
• Improve merchant shadows and display copper with inventory artwork.

Fishing and merchants

• Add the Woodland Outfitter's open-front shop and fishing rods.
• Equip a rod, hold E near a bank to set cast distance, then release. Press E during a bite to catch a fish.
• Cancel a cast by moving or changing equipment. Fish remain in inventory; bows, arrows, and clothing are still unavailable in this build.

Rendering

• Prepare new artwork detail levels in the background during window resizing so the existing scene keeps drawing.
• Reduce repeated scene work and refresh the download-page screenshots and Build 3 packages.

Build 2

September 25, 2026 (originally mmoPrototype).

Accounts

• Use one public player name for both login and the character. Names are case-insensitive and displayed in lowercase.
• Create an account and enter the world directly, without a second character-name prompt.
• Existing characters adopt their login name while retaining progress.
• Remember the last successfully used player name for the next launch; passwords are never saved.

Artwork

• Replace the application icon with a ranger portrait lit by the woodland sunrise.

Build 1

September 25, 2026 (originally mmoPrototype).

Woodland and multiplayer

• Explore Lantern Woodlands with a following camera, minimap, painted scenery, and eight-direction ranger animations.
• Run with WASD or the arrow keys, hold Shift to walk, and chat with nearby travelers.
• Create an account and keep your character's position, inventory, equipment, copper, and experience between logins.

Hunting and trade

• Start with an equipped woodland spear. Aim a thrust with the mouse, or approach a rabbit to attack automatically.
• Hunt rabbits of three levels, earn experience, and see a golden effect and hear a choir cue when leveling up.
• Collect meat and skins from higher-level rabbits and sell them at the Butcher & Tanner.
• Pick blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries, watch shared plants regrow, and sell fruit to the Produce Merchant.
• Review an itemized total before selling all eligible items to a merchant.

Artwork and interface

• Add warm sunrise lighting, soft cast shadows, varied trees, and detailed water.
• Open Inventory, Players, Map, Login, and Preferences from compact controls around the game view.
• Hear surface-specific footsteps, spear impacts, rabbit calls, and coin jingles.
• Show a loading screen while artwork is prepared and identify matching downloads with a shared build number.