ElHombreAlex--FTL-Faster-Than-Light-VR/CHANGELOG.md

# Changelog

## Combat, results and controller corrections — source update, 2026-10-05

- Make every enemy hull pip represent one native hit point, including enemies whose maximum hull differs from the player's 30-point scale.
- Render artillery from a separate native factory list, including the Flagship's individual artillery mounts and shot origins.
- Propagate native shield shutdown state and include it in the cached shield state; drive cloaking from the actual native ship flag. Native shield ellipse geometry is unchanged and checked against the game.
- Keep missed projectiles moving forward through their native pass-by path without a reversal or invented impact.
- Place both beam endpoints freely on the enemy deck plane, including gaps between rooms; preserve native aim, length and damage rules.
- Restore the complete native 2D screen for defeat/victory results and clear tabletop ships, combat effects, target marks and controller panels during results.
- Reduce the HUD's collision clearance from 8 cm to 5 cm. Map Steam Frame's physical right Pause/Menu button to pause/resume and left View to controller-panel hide/show.
- Isolate native targeting graphics from the supplemental HUD pass and detect the native GameOver window through bounded read-only state. Existing installations must rerun [hook resolution](docs/INSTALLATION.md#4-resolve-the-local-executable-hooks) with the matching `CombatControl.zhl`, `GameOver.zhl` and `FocusWindow.zhl` files.

Verification: 46 Python tests and twelve Godot suites pass, including four graphical Vulkan suites. Copied-profile native checks verify 4/3/2 Flagship artillery factories, first-phase cloaking, unchanged shield ellipse geometry and exact off-center/gap beam placement into native queued-shot state. Native Victory/credits and defeat retain the full opaque screen with inspected Vulkan tabletop cleanup; defeat returns cleanly to the actual main menu. Recorded geometry and rendered fixtures verify shield containment, one-HP hull pips and forward missed-shot cleanup without invented impacts. Live native beam/miss outcomes remain unverified because the tested factories queued shots without emitting live projectiles.

Local delivery passes: restored production state, development and both standalone setup/readiness and desktop Vulkan launch/exit, clean logs, preserved campaign/executable hashes and regenerated hooks. The 127-file source-only package passes publication checks with zero failures/warnings. Local source folders are updated; the verified source snapshot is recorded in Git history. No physical Steam Frame or stereo-performance result is recorded for October 5.

## Targeting, jump and drone refinements — source update, 2026-10-03

- Display the player's native placed weapon targets as persistent numbered room locks, red for a single volley and yellow for autofire. Preserve real beam endpoints/direction and native flak radius; keep marks attached during pause and encounter transforms, and clear them when native targets or the encounter end.
- Stretch surrounding stars along the player ship's bow only while FTL reports an actual jump. Restore normal stars on arrival and arrival-dialog opening.
- Reset each action-wheel opening to the weapons/drones category; event dialogs retain their choice wheel.
- Refine procedural drone armor and family silhouettes, distinguish Combat/Beam/Defense Mk II variants, and reuse immutable meshes/materials. Native drone bullets leave visible muzzles in their current render space; their launch point stays fixed as the drone moves, while continuing beams remain connected to the emitter.
- Make the native intruder warning's backdrop transparent within its HUD region, retaining the warning glyphs, faint shadow/fringe coverage and neighboring controls.
- Import eight owner-local placed-target PNGs for slots 1–4 and their yellow/autofire variants. Existing installations must rerun [asset extraction](docs/INSTALLATION.md#5-extract-local-presentation-assets) with the current extractor against their original owned archive.

Verification: 44 Python tests, eleven Godot suites and inspected Vulkan target/jump/drone fixtures pass. Twelve actual native warning blink captures preserve glyphs and ordinary HUD ink while correcting the dark fringes. A fresh copied profile verifies actual room targeting/clearing/autofire and a real connected-beacon jump through its arrival dialog. Production saves and executable fingerprints are preserved. These checks make no new physical Steam Frame or stereo-performance claim.

## HUD clearance and menu correction — source update, 2026-10-03

- Reduce the HUD's collision clearance above the ship/shield from 14 cm to 8 cm. Headset-following priority is unchanged.
- Show native in-run Ship, pause-menu and Options windows only on their floating world panel, preserving the status/crew HUD. Initial and hangar menus remain head-relative.
- Resolve and require `MenuScreenOnRender` and `OptionsScreenOnRender` hooks to isolate native menus from the supplemental HUD capture. Existing installations must rerun [hook resolution](docs/INSTALLATION.md#4-resolve-the-local-executable-hooks).

Verification: 40 Python tests, focused Vulkan HUD/input checks and native before/after captures passed. The duplicate pause-menu/Options pixels disappeared from the HUD; complete world-panel captures remained unchanged. Physical headset comfort and stereo performance still need the maintainer's playtest.

## HUD, wheel and launch corrections — source update, 2026-10-03

- Gameplay HUD follows the headset at a fixed readable size. It clamps above the transformed hull/shield only when its movement would intersect the ship; full menus remain head-relative.
- Weapon slots survive an empty native drone-equipment collection. The bridge normalizes optional lists and the wheel accepts empty/malformed collections safely.
- Remove all room-floor health/status bars and counters. Native room-role icons, permission-aware condition colors, fog, fire and breach effects remain.
- Launch wrappers retain failures on screen and forward command-line options. Setup finds a real Python interpreter, rejects the Windows Store alias and keeps runtime configuration, dependencies and extracted assets local and ignored by Git.

This source passed 38 Python tests and nine Godot suites in the prepared folder. The desktop and VR wrappers passed combined launch/exit in desktop smoke mode, including the GitHub Desktop checkout's FTL-VR alias. VR preflight passed; a copied campaign verified equipped weapon entries in the rendered wheel without changing the original campaign hashes. Physical headset comfort and stereo performance remain to test. See [Project status](docs/STATUS.md) for evidence and limits. Earlier test counts and native checks below refer to their respective revisions.

## Gameplay refinements — preceding source update, 2026-10-03

- Compact original status/crew HUD above the ship; the lower strip is replaced by dedicated Power/Shortcuts/wheel access while full native menus remain available.
- Dpad Up toggles System Power, with a direct System Power button on Navigation.
- Reactor free power excludes environmental cap loss; unavailable bars and battery availability are displayed separately.
- Wheel slots show localized equipped names, weapon-family silhouettes and actual ammo-cost hints, with bounded names and unchanged-content rendering.
- Native permission-aware room condition colors and detailed health bars supplement system role icons.
- Native evasion produces a short MISS cue and pass-by trajectory; breach holes use shallow black crosses with oxygen-dependent air wisps.

This revision passed 27 Python tests and nine Godot suites. Focused native storm power, localized equipment/ammo, enemy damage/repair, breach tiles and forced missed-event checks passed. Combined production Vulkan smoke passed with clean logs, no bridge errors, backed-up campaign hashes preserved and no remaining owned game/client processes; physical headset checks remained pending. Historical results below belong to previous revisions.

## 0.1.0-alpha.1 — prepared source snapshot, 2026-10-03

The first standalone community source package. This records the current prototype; it does not claim a completed public release.

### Core prototype

- Live FTL campaign connected to a Godot OpenXR tabletop presentation through Hyperspace and fingerprinted native hooks.
- Controller pointing, crew movement, weapon/system targeting, door controls, native HUD and contextual navigation.
- Floating events, complete shop/ship panels, an action wheel, illustrated controller Help and QWERTY renaming.
- A dedicated System Power page and native Shift/Ctrl support.
- Procedural crew/weapon/drone models, shields, weapon charging, room hazards and surrounding environments.
- Isolated Steam-derived lab, VR save prefix, pre-launch backups and coordinated save/exit.

### Latest gameplay revision included

- Faster Tactical delivery through reduced raw RGBA frames and independently captured native HUD.
- Full-resolution maps/windows, reused textures and crops synchronized to newly opened panels.
- Lighter FTL-style controller UI with locally imported native bitmap fonts.
- Viewer-facing occupied crew, thin upgraded doors and refined drone families.
- Original enemy hull-bar presentation lowered toward the ship.
- Jump projection anchored above/ahead of each ship's actual piloting room.

### Standalone packaging

- Portable environment/launch helpers and an example local configuration.
- Community installation, controls, architecture, troubleshooting, development and status guides.
- GitHub issue forms and Windows Python-test workflow.
- Generated assets, dependencies, configuration, game copies, captures and saves excluded from Git.
- MIT source license preserving the universal-modder notice, external dependency notices and versioned license-reference documents.

### Open verification

Clean-machine setup, latest physical headset ergonomics/frame pacing, full campaign/boss coverage, hacking attachment, the complete GOG route and additional hardware compatibility.