0.3.36 - A story told through places

Update the complete host package, including web, and matching clients. Exact version matching is enabled by default. Preserve configuration and data, restart, and refresh browser tabs.

• New Viking and server sagas generate up to six connected story scenes in the same request as the biography. Each scene carries its own title, passage and validated evidence references; the full chapter consists of those passages. Target three to six scenes, fewer for sparse evidence.
• Selecting or replaying a scene changes the story passage and recorded biome/boss artwork. Rounded marker frames echo the story panel; boss-kill scenes have larger, double-bordered major markers. Chapter buttons identify the Viking or server.
• All map locations and boss status come from server records. Unavailable/private scene evidence hides the scene and breaks the trail. The AI never supplies coordinates. Existing chapters remain unchanged: no conversion, regeneration or additional provider calls.
• Generation remains queued and cached, with existing credentials and routing controls. Output allowance rises from 1,000 to 2,000 tokens for the structured story; paid opt-in and OpenRouter preset/account pricing behavior stay unchanged. Invalid scene output is rejected; a valid text-only response can remain readable without scene fabrication.
• Add a working saga screenshot at the top of both release READMEs. Its example story/events are labeled. No test database, seeded saga, game assets or development host ships.

0.3.34

Install the complete package, including web, on the host and use matching client/server versions. Preserve configuration and data, restart, and refresh browser tabs.

• Replace numbered boss cards with eight original transparent illustrations, layered ornamental SVG frames and static, weighted mist over unrevealed silhouettes. Kall uses a symbolic frozen monument, preserving his appearance as a mystery. No game assets are bundled.
• Reveal a trophy when a shared victory becomes known, with a brief transition that respects reduced-motion settings. Ordinary refreshes do not replay it.
• Keep trophy unlocks independent of the selected period, using permanent known-boss receipts plus retained shared victory evidence. Private profiles do not unlock public trophies.
• Add highest-star encounter records with their own team/date/duration. Ties prefer the shortest valid duration at the highest star tier; absent durations stay absent. Overall fastest fights remain separate. Kall phase-only timing stays excluded.
• Reorganize Viking comparisons into distinct portrait columns, centered measure labels, larger values and responsive layouts.
• Bundle eight alpha-preserving 1024x1536 WebP illustrations (about 5.2 MiB total), served locally with lazy loading. No CDN, API key, runtime capture or new dependency is required.
• Animated saga journeys and dedicated chapter pages remain planned; existing recorded chapter map links are unchanged in this release.

0.3.35 - Follow the saga

• Curate each journey to six meaningful highlights, favoring boss encounters, rare discoveries and biome variety over repetitive records. Preserve privacy and journey breaks through omitted moments. Separate crowded markers with location spokes, move playback above navigation, and fit the chapter into the clear map area. Moment artwork follows its recorded biome and boss, clearing boss art when moving on.

• Journey connections now form gentle, zoom-stable curves; the replay arrow follows their tangent. Curves remain clipped to explored terrain and preserve recorded endpoints and breaks.

• Sagas toolbar selection follows the open tray rather than remaining highlighted when its layer is enabled.

• New independent Sagas atlas layer with chapter markers, an ornate framed story panel, original local boss/biome imagery, chronological recorded moments and a full chapter journey page. Open a chapter from the map or either Viking/server saga.

• Gold journey replay supports play/pause, restart, scrubbing, speed selection, a participant perspective and optional camera following. Manual panning releases camera following. Replay pauses offscreen or in a hidden tab; reduced motion removes the moving arrow.

• Animation uses its own transparent canvas, not a terrain redraw on every frame. The separate chapter index is lazy, paged and capped; each journey contains up to six curated highlights from retained shared locations.

• Privacy is enforced in the server endpoints and stale browser responses are discarded. Different Vikings, hidden/missing event gaps, intervals over 30 minutes and jumps over 1,200 metres break connections. Connections indicate recorded event order, not a tracked walking path. Imagery and story excerpts remain distinguishable from event evidence; no new provider calls are required.

• Install the complete matching package on clients and server, including the new journey.js and journey.css website files. Refresh open website tabs. This release does not change gameplay capture hooks or require any optional loot/zone mod.

0.3.33

Install the whole package on the host, including web, then restart and reload browser tabs. Keep configuration/data. Server and clients must match because version enforcement remains enabled by default. Updating only DLLs can leave the old slow website renderer running.

• Preserve the existing scalable atlas renderer; load world/presence/terrain independently of historical statistics. Show individual feed status and keep last-known terrain during transient failures.
• Add server/website version and JavaScript-integrity checks, a browser mismatch banner and one host startup warning for stale/mixed web files.
• Reuse bounded cached retained history with incremental new events, exact period counts, retention invalidation and fresh sharing checks. Bound event coordinate checks to displayed events and reuse discovery masks.
• Add a World adventure recap, per-browser/world visit bookmark, new chapter links and notable recorded moments.
• Add Trophy hall and Compare Vikings views inside the Hall of Renown, using its existing time filters. Show recorded first teams and eligible fastest times without inventing solo credit or incomplete fight durations.
• Link saga chapters to shared, explored recorded event locations. Narrative prose never determines coordinates.
• Guard delayed statistics/profile responses against overwriting newer presence or reviving revoked profile data; bound overlapping detail requests.
• Moments integration investigated and planned, not shipped: a capture-time identity/consent export interface is required in Moments. No new captures or mandatory mod dependencies. Host diagnostics downloads, epithets and Steam achievements are excluded.

0.3.32

Upgrade warning: Update the server and every joining client to the same Sagas version, then restart. RequireMatchingVersion now defaults to true; missing or mismatched clients cannot join. Clients without the new handshake may only see Valheim's generic incompatible-version error—check the server log for the Sagas requirement. A host can explicitly set RequireMatchingVersion = false to permit mixed/missing clients, with potentially incomplete telemetry.

Website setup change: New dedicated-server configs with a blank ListenPrefix listen on all interfaces using WebsitePort; public viewing remains the default. Existing saved listener overrides and privacy choices are preserved. Clear an old ListenPrefix only when intentionally switching to the new port-based setup. Sagas does not open firewall/panel ports. Relay/crossplay joins may still need an explicit WebsiteUrl.

• Give future Viking and server sagas a stronger narrative arc, selective memorable moments and fewer loot/stat lists. Remove the repeated "Fictional embellishment:" prefix, including on existing chapter displays; saved stories and recorded evidence remain intact, with no automatic regeneration or extra API requests.
• Require an exact Sagas version match before joining by default; hosts can disable RequireMatchingVersion. Missing/mismatched versions are rejected before world admission, with named version errors where the client supports them.
• Fix Shudnal ConfigurationManager S/C labels: draw ownership indicators at the row entry point, before its unsynchronized-setting visibility filter. Keep host settings locked and secrets unsynchronized.
• Add WebsitePort for simplified dedicated setup. A blank advanced ListenPrefix binds all interfaces for dedicated servers and loopback for local hosting; existing overrides remain unchanged.
• Resolve Ctrl+Home using an explicit WebsiteUrl first, then an advertised host or direct-IP connection plus the web port. Relay/join-code connections without a routable host receive clear custom-URL guidance; no external IP-discovery service is used.
• Log effective website port, listener readiness, private/public mode and override/loopback setup issues. Hotkey failures distinguish disabled, starting, failed and invalid-URL cases.
• Automated checks do not replace the dedicated version-handshake/crossplay and in-game F1 verification listed in IN-GAME-TESTS.md.

0.3.31

• Default personal map-pin sharing on for new configurations; preserve existing saved choices and the independent browser layer toggle.
• Clarify public/private website settings, optional shared viewer credentials, dedicated wildcard binding, and the OpenRouter daily request-count limit. No configuration keys are renamed or removed.

0.3.30

• Fix severe website map stalls when zoomed out over large explored worlds. Terrain now uses cached overview chunks with bounded, on-demand close-up detail instead of repeatedly decoding thousands of individual tiles.
• Stream exploration in small incremental pages; unchanged terrain is no longer downloaded every five seconds. Existing map records are indexed gradually, without changing worlds or character saves.
• Preserve exact exploration checks for icons and events. Overview fog is conservative at partially explored edges; detailed terrain restores precise edges as it loads. Sharing changes reset cached map data.
• Coalesce drag/wheel redraws, reuse SLS paths and fog masks, and cache heat-map gradients and event grouping. Keep pin clustering, player colors, separate layers and existing zoom limits.
• Synthetic full-world benchmark (76,648 tiles): 1,000 markers improved from roughly 43 seconds per redraw to a 5.5 ms median. With 40,000 SLS squares and 5,000 events, median 9.1 ms / maximum 24.8 ms in the measured run. These are headless-browser timings, not dedicated-server or in-game acceptance.
• Update the host's plugin and refresh open website/Steam-overlay tabs to load the matching website and API. No configuration changes are required.

0.3.29

• Fix Sagas loot-tracking metadata preventing InventorySlots from stacking otherwise identical items. New provenance stays on the ground item's network object and is not copied into inventories or player redrops.
• Automatically remove only obsolete sagas.origin / sagas.source tags as inventories load and items enter inventory checks. Preserve all other item metadata, including enchantments, sockets, quality, and large-stack data. Existing ground items migrate their provenance when loaded by their owner; no offline save editing is required.
• Keep server-side loot deduplication and quantity limits. Ground stacks with uncertain mixed provenance remain ordinary pickups instead of inflating earned loot.
• Includes 0.3.28 concurrent browser logins and compressed map uploads. Update the server and all Sagas clients together, then restart. In-game multiplayer stacking validation is still required.

0.3.28

• Allow up to32 concurrent personal login credentials per character/world. Issuing a code no longer invalidates another browser; Ctrl+End explicitly revokes all. Server stores hashes only.
• Remember browser logins across tabs/restarts, synchronize same-browser tabs, and recover from rejected tokens: public viewing retries anonymously; private viewing returns to login. Chrome and Steam still require separate initial sign-ins.
• Losslessly compress upload payloads on a worker before bounded V4 fragmentation. Bound decompression output; retain global pacing, per-lane byte allowances and gameplay pressure gates. Requires server and clients updated together.
• Run bounded map capture independently from the three-second profile tick, alternate nearby/history scans, and limit unchanged partial-tile work to prevent one edge tile blocking history import.

0.3.27

• Fix dedicated-server identity resolution using the ready peer's owned Player ZDO; reject mismatched ownership, non-player objects and conflicting IDs. Apply consistently to logins, telemetry, presence and Nemesis lookup.
• Return explicit personal-login identity/service/storage errors and log credential-free shortcut notices. Dedicated login persistence runs off the game thread. Website URL requests no longer depend on player metadata.
• Guard the not-yet-created world during client startup without repeated exceptions.
• Send telemetry in bounded, interleaved fragments instead of large RPC bursts; keep global pacing, per-lane budgets, durable event acknowledgments and privacy cancellation. Bound assembly size, lifetime, concurrency and receive rate.
• Distinguish Steam pending data from ordinary acknowledgment backlog; retain strict pending/delay/total gates and conservative non-Steam fallback. Report actual queue details and recovery.
• Requires 0.3.27 on server and clients. No configuration migration required. Dedicated multiplayer performance is pending real playtest.

Changelog

0.3.26

• Refresh the README atlas image with the day/night dial and real-time countdown visible (labeled example clock on recorded offline playtest data).

• Cap atlas zoom at 20 m on the 100-pixel scale bar across wheel, buttons, keyboard and cluster zoom.

• Spread nearby pins around 40 m and gather them at 50 m, with separate thresholds to avoid flickering. Manual cluster opening, exact-position lines and close-pin selection remain available.

0.3.25

• Move default shortcuts away from Moments and Valheim function keys: Ctrl+Home opens the Steam website, Ctrl+Insert copies a personal login, Ctrl+End revokes it. One-time migration changes only the old default combinations; custom bindings are preserved.
• Remove EnableLootNotifications. Earned enchanted/socketed pickup notices are always enabled, retaining provenance checks, deduplication, freshness and rate limits.
• Show Epic Loot rarity/bounty panels only for shared profiles reporting Epic Loot; add Jewelcrafting equipped-gem and socket-capacity rankings and overview/profile highlights. These use latest loadouts, exclude hotbar duplicates and containers, and are not combat-power scores. SLS Nemesis panels remain host-capability gated.
• Replace persistent pin crosshairs with a fading location halo. Small groups fan out with exact-position leader lines, double-click/zoom controls, automatic high-zoom separation and animated gathering on zoom-out. Neighboring icons reserve space; dense groups retain an accessible scrollable picker. Reduced-motion preference respected.
• Cache the map background during brief pin animations; no extra game capture or network polling. Refresh the README atlas screenshot from an isolated playtest copy with colored personal pins and a fanned group.

0.3.24

• Optional Smoothbrain Jewelcrafting support: socketed gear/hotbar tooltips, gem icons and configured power ranges, extra equipped ring/necklace slots, jewelry armor, item colors and portrait change detection. No hard mod dependency.
• Preserve socket metadata in actual drop/collection records, map inspection, offline snapshots and saga evidence. Special creature equipment spawns use existing provenance/deduplication; opt-in Sagas notifications include earned socketed pickups.
• Keep Epic Loot rarity/effects alongside Jewelcrafting sockets. Configured ranges are not reported as rolled/effective totals; gem-bag/fusion-box contents are excluded.
• Installed 2.0.10 API inspection, synthetic present/absent adapter tests, persistence/media/privacy checks and desktop/mobile browser coverage. Real gameplay verification remains pending.

0.3.23

• Configurable Ctrl+F10 Steam overlay website shortcut, local listener fallback, dedicated host public URL and personal override. Explicit authenticated/rate-limited URL request; credentials never sent in URLs. Steam browser login remains separate.
• Move Online Vikings below the atlas and Recorded Vikings to the bottom of World.
• Cluster crowded visible map pins with count badges, a scrollable location picker and an exact-position crosshair. Preserves discovery, ownership and personal pin consent; no extra telemetry.
• Installed Steamworks API inspection, URL validation checks and synthetic desktop/mobile map regression coverage. Actual in-game Steam overlay and dedicated-host URL exchange still require playtesting.

0.3.22

• Fix duplicated portraits in Online Vikings and Recorded Vikings after the directory update.
• Share one online/syncing/offline badge across World rosters, search cards and character profiles. Fix status disappearing when revisiting the same Viking through search by clearing the cached markup consistently.
• Reorganize search cards around the character and an excerpt from their saved saga/biography, clearly labelled AI fiction. Show an honest empty state when no generated saga exists.
• Add an eight-boss checklist and completion total from authoritative lifetime receipts; skipped bosses remain 0/1. No additional generation requests or polling endpoints.

0.3.21

• Keep automatic game icons in their original colors. Color by Viking applies to personal pins, Viking markers and names.
• Make Vikings a search directory for everyone, with three featured profiles ranked by recorded progression and recent boss victories. Add saved head portraits, achievement/presence cards, keyboard navigation and avatar previews in header search.
• Add Kall Fimbulbringer to boss progression and leaderboards using the installed final-phase prefab. Exclude early phases from boss wins; omit phase-only times from fastest full-fight rankings. Backfill retained final-phase progression on upgrade and keep the Deep North backdrop after victory.

0.3.20

• Make the atlas full width with compact Terrain, Vikings, Activity and Icons trays; retain map position/zoom while changing options, with keyboard close and mobile layouts.
• Replace ambiguous adventure filters with an explicit Statistics & heat maps drawer and active scope summary. Terrain, live positions and icon ownership remain independent.
• Label host-owned and personal settings in Shudnal ConfigurationManager. Lock local hosting controls during remote sessions; never synchronize host secrets. No new required mod or network feed.
• Confirm both history-retention defaults are zero/unlimited; preserve existing configured retention values and document how to change them.

0.3.19

• Increase game map icons from 28 to 36px; add optional matching Viking colors for pin rings, player markers and names, plus independent per-Viking icon checkboxes. Store world-specific server-owned colors once and choose separated new colors without recoloring existing players. Preserve all sharers on deduplicated game locations.
• Shared personal annotations now appear above fog, including undiscovered coordinates, only with ShareMap and SharePlayerPins consent. Automatic game/mod locations remain personally exploration-gated.
• Include sprite-backed custom Minimap pin types, including inspected Epic Loot bounty/treasure pins. Unknown saved custom pins require personal consent; separate drawing overlays need adapters.
• Replace static phase text with real-time estimates until day/night, honoring host day length/time scale and showing paused, skipping or overdue states. One-second browser countdown does not reload the map.

0.3.18

• Add separately loaded discovered game pins and opt-in personal map pins, runtime game sprites, browser layer toggles and hover/tap/keyboard-list inspection. Enforce owner sharing and personal fog on the server; exclude copied cartography pins. Preserve offline pins, deduplicate shared game locations, atomically replace multipart snapshots and retry lost acknowledgements.
• Bound pin scanning to 16 entries per frame, encode snapshots off-thread, share existing upload budgets and capture at most one item/map icon per frame across both queues. No proprietary map artwork is bundled.
• Add two original host-synchronized daylight graphics (sun/moon dial and horizon) and None, with persistent per-browser preferences and stale/unavailable states.
• New automated privacy, persistence, multipart, HTTP, API and browser checks. Real in-game pins, icon appearance and frame-time impact still require playtesting.

0.3.17

• Reduce website SLS zone outlines to at most 20% opacity, respecting lower host values. Composite the layer once so shared/overlapping boundaries do not become darker; preserve level colors, hover/tap details and fog rules. In-game SLS settings are unchanged.
• Resolve initial SLS and Epic Loot metadata inside each registered plugin assembly instead of searching all loaded assemblies. Add limited world/equipment startup phase logs to distinguish remaining initialization costs; real startup timing gains still require a fresh playtest.

0.3.16

• Construct host storage and website services on a worker. Keep local telemetry pending until adoption; retire abandoned startup and drain active storage off-thread before reopening the database.
• Read the coherent world atlas asynchronously in bounded strips, avoiding the full-image synchronous GPU readback and 64 MB main-thread copy. Export only complete, personally fog-masked tiles; pending capture never publishes temporary fallback tiles. Preserve explicit degraded terrain fallback on unsupported/failed readback.
• Queue uncached item icons and render at most one per frame, outside equipment snapshots and active portrait/map preparation. Equipment can arrive before its icons.
• Log atlas setup/readback, icon batch maximum, outbox startup and per-phase portrait costs. Startup timing improvements still need a fresh game session; individual Unity render calls remain on the main thread.

0.3.15

• Spread portrait preparation, bone copying, equipment effects and visibility/framing passes across frames. Freeze the character pose before preparation; retain native skinned rendering and weapon effects.
• Replace synchronous portrait pixel readback with bounded asynchronous GPU requests. Copy callback data into detached arrays, then reconstruct transparency and encode PNGs in the background. Keep GPU resources alive until callbacks finish, including cancellation and partial submission failures. Unsupported graphics devices retain the saved portrait instead of falling back to blocking readback.
• Capture only after appearance changes settle: two-second debounce and ten-second minimum cooldown, with no periodic refresh. Defer seated/attached poses until standing and settled; keep the last shared portrait during deferred capture and upload. Profile privacy revocation still removes access.
• Add per-frame capture-work timing. Automated checks cover scheduling, resource lifetime, pixels, persistence and installed APIs; real GPU appearance and frame-time improvements require a playtest. Individual Unity render operations still execute on the main thread.

0.3.14

• Refresh portraits after settled equipment/cosmetic changes, with a two-second debounce, ten-second capture cooldown and ten-minute safety refresh instead of rebuilding every minute. Failed captures retry no faster than once per minute.
• Move final-resolution transparency reconstruction, size-limit fallback, PNG encoding and hashing to a single background job using detached pixel arrays and Unity's thread-safe array encoder. Keep rendering/readback synchronous on the game thread; no async GPU readback or multi-frame render preparation.
• Retain the last good portrait during processing; reject outdated results after appearance, character, world or consent changes. Preserve normal 1024x1536 output and body visibility checks.
• Log preparation, visibility/framing, final render/readback and background processing timings separately. In-game appearance, orientation and frame-time confirmation remain required.

0.3.13

• Address periodic game-thread stalls: cache Epic Loot and SLS reflection metadata instead of repeatedly searching assemblies and members. Runtime item effects, rarity colors and settings are still read fresh.
• Capture SLS zones incrementally (up to 128 zones per frame with a 2 ms target), publishing only complete detached snapshots. Run snapshot validation/copying on a bounded background task; Unity/mod reads stay on the main thread.
• Add separate portrait timing warnings to distinguish occasional image capture from equipment work. Preserve upload backpressure and pacing.
• This is a performance fix candidate; a new in-game and dedicated-server playtest is still required.

0.3.12

• Group page layout and owner-only Viking scenery in a compact Appearance popover, with clear personal-view versus public-profile labels. Keep the small trigger beside profile tabs on mobile and use a clean scenery selector with a compact save action.
• Replace saved setups with Saga Profiles, each containing its own encrypted OpenRouter key and model/preset. Switching profiles switches credentials; deleting a profile removes its credential.
• Keep paid opt-in, request limits, HTTPS key submission and server storyteller defaults.

0.3.11

• Replace the signed-in Login button with a saved-portrait account icon and a compact Saga Settings / Log out menu. Preserve anonymous public browsing and shared-token read-only access.
• Separate token login from storyteller settings. Start with Server storyteller or My own storyteller, reveal personal key/model controls only when needed, and place saved setups/request limits under advanced options.
• Preserve existing setups and spending controls, add clearer errors and keyboard/focus behavior, and clear unsaved secrets when dialogs close.

0.3.10

• Add host AllowPaidModels opt-in for direct models and OpenRouter presets, funding default Viking and shared server sagas with the host key. Free routing remains the default.
• Preserve paid preset pricing/provider settings by omitting Sagas provider overrides; manage monetary limits in OpenRouter, with the existing shared daily attempt budget in Sagas.
• Keep personal-key price ceilings, persistent chapters, retry queues and server-only credentials. Document setup in both publication READMEs.

0.3.9

• Clarify the existing MIT license, Pendulumgames attribution and third-party content boundaries in the public READMEs and packaged notices.

• Use the configured Valheim server name when the website DisplayName override is blank; retain the world name as a fallback.

• Document dedicated-host wildcard listeners (http://*:PORT/), allocated TCP ports, advertised game addresses, and troubleshooting for missing player markers.

• Pace client telemetry with separate byte allowances and a shared packet interval; pause uploads when Valheim's socket send queue is busy.

• Send one terrain tile per packet, keep at most two map batches pending, and remove immediate duplicate map sends. Retry unacknowledged events/maps/media after 30 seconds.

• Preserve portraits during upload, capture at most once per minute, and allow longer assembly time for deliberately paced high-resolution transfers.

• Log slow collector stages and network backpressure at most once per minute per stage. Dedicated-server multiplayer validation is still required for the reported Steam send-limit incident.

0.3.8

• Add optional host SLS zone outlines using its live bounds, levels, palette, transparency and fog setting; show zone levels above 1 on hover/tap.
• Display consented latest Nemesis scores on map tooltips and the portrait corner, using the host-observed player ZDO rather than client snapshot claims.
• Track distinct Nemesis boss deaths and team credit in filtered player metrics and leaderboards; preserve classification through retention and feed factual context to sagas.
• Keep Nemesis encounters out of ordinary progression/scenery unlocks and normal boss-speed rankings.
• Verify both SLS and Epic Loot remain optional, with independent detection and no hard assembly references.

0.3.7

• Expand personal and server saga evidence with career, equipment, effects, resistances, exploration, boss teams, bounties and loot context while preserving consent and narrative continuity.
• Require host OpenRouter configuration for story generation. Hide legacy template stories; leave failed generation pending instead of inventing fallback prose.
• Add encrypted personal OpenRouter keys and named model/preset choices, explicit paid opt-in, token-price ceilings and daily attempt limits.
• Unlock scenery progressively from recorded boss credit, beginning with Meadows. Public viewing and full-screen scrolling scenery are defaults for new settings; preserve existing preferences.
• Replace unexplored atlas background with a procedural textured brown parchment treatment without distributing game textures.
• Prepare a shared Thunderstore/Hexium package, original package icon, public documentation and recorded-playtest website screenshots.

Earlier previews

Established standalone telemetry, provenance-aware loot, runtime terrain, portraits and gear icons, character/server sagas, leaderboards, personal login, responsive biome scenery and isolated Gale Test installation workflows.