February 13, 2026
Communities Launch, Plus Ecosystem and Combat Polish
This week introduced Communities as a major new social feature, then followed up with ecosystem tuning and ranged combat improvements.
- Launched Communities with permissions and chat updates, plus invite flows so communities can grow by adding more players.
- Added mice ecosystem AI, rebalanced wildlife spawning, and tuned campfire wildlife-repel behavior.
- Improved planting lifecycle logic by persisting planted trees, fixing growth behavior, and disabling planted-tree regrowth loops.
- Added bow auto-aim, increased boar spawn weight, and reduced repeated messaging for community-locked gathering.
February 6, 2026
Performance Improvements, New Routes, and Server Refactors
This week focused on network efficiency, clearer frontend entry points, and long-term backend maintainability.
- Reduced state traffic with deduplicated input sends, delta-based entity updates, and more concise chunk/resource payloads.
- Added viewport-margin chunk loading, `chunk_data` batching, and realm stats API/page support.
- Introduced a landing page with dedicated `/play` and `/stats` routes, alongside broad HUD and panel cleanup.
- Completed major Rust modularization across gameplay, movement, building, inventory, store, visibility, and i18n systems.
January 30, 2026
Boats, Fishing, Crafting, and Better Onboarding
This week expanded progression paths and improved first-time player flow.
- Added boats and fishing, then hardened structure/chunk syncing and active-boat state handling.
- Introduced wooden axe and pick crafting, plus arrow crafting for ranged progression.
- Added gamepad input support with updated control hints.
- Shipped startup splash and improved name onboarding.
January 23, 2026
Core Gameplay Systems and Feedback Upgrades
This week strengthened early gameplay loops, visual readability, and player feedback across movement, building, and combat-adjacent systems.
- Added directional sprites, walk-cycle animation, feet-based z-ordering, and improved keyboard/touch movement handling.
- Introduced player naming, build menu and inventory systems, plus campfire/tent structures and better menu UX.
- Added client prediction/input sequencing, hearts-based HP display, and English/German localization support.
- Shipped audio toggles with MIDI playback and added the rabbit monster with timid hop behavior.
January 16, 2026
Launch Week: Multiplayer Foundations
This week established the first playable multiplayer baseline across server, client, world generation, deployment, and core interaction loops.
- Initialized the Rust + Axum server and PixiJS client with procedural terrain and chunk streaming.
- Added MongoDB persistence, Docker/devcontainer setup, production image pipeline, and protocol/docs pages.
- Implemented early world lifecycle and survivability basics, including HP regeneration and idle chunk eviction.
- Added touch controls, notifications, fullscreen support, and rendering upgrades for smoother visuals.