2026-07-21 SHIPPED July 21, 2026

Latest Release – 2026-07-21

### 🔐 Authentication & Accounts (New) 
– WordPress login required to play – Hosting or joining a game now requires signing in with a WordPress account (JWT auth against terravox.servegame.com); players without an account are directed to sign up on the site 
– "Stay logged in" option – Optional session persistence so returning players skip the login screen 
– Account-tied display names – In-game name is always the player's real WordPress username, resolved server-side from the validated token and never taken from the client, preserving the account's actual capitalization. Closes a real impersonation hole: the previous register_remote_player RPC accepted any_peer, so a modified client could previously rename/impersonate any connected player by calling it directly – it's now authority-only 
– Server-side token validation – Switched to WordPress's own wp/v2/users/me endpoint after discovering the JWT plugin's own /validate route 404s on this install; this also doubles as the source of truth for the account's real username/email 
– Auth diagnostics logging – Dedicated server now logs each join's validation outcome (token present, WordPress result, kick reason) instead of failing silently 
– Fix: signal-leak "already connected" error – Rejoining after a disconnect could fail validation with an engine error because a one-shot signal connection from the previous attempt was never cleaned up when it didn't fire

### 🐧 Linux Export Fixes (Round 2) 
– Fix: custom skins broken again on Linux – An earlier fix for a scene parse-error crash had accidentally deleted the [editable path="PlayerModel"] marker instead of correcting its (already-invalid) syntax, silently reintroducing the original Linux skin-dropping bug 
– Fix: recipe book empty / nothing craftable on Linux – DirAccess directory scanning of resources/recipes/ returned zero entries on the exported Linux build; recipes now load by an explicit deterministic filename list, the same working pattern ItemData already used for items 
– Fix: hard parse-error crash in player.tscn / remote_player.tscn – A stray invalid editable token was breaking scene parsing on every platform, not just Linux

### ⚡ Performance 
– Cut a hot-path allocation in get_block()/set_block() – chunk_manager.gd's block lookup (the single most-called function in the game – every collision sweep, raycast step, and mob AI check) was allocating a throwaway Dictionary on every single call; now allocation-free on the miss path

### 🎮 UI & Quality of Life 
– GUI Scale slider – Added to the pause menu (75%-200%), applies live like Minecraft's GUI Scale option, persists to settings.cfg

### 📦 Build & Release 
– GitHub Actions export pipeline – Windows Desktop, Linux Desktop, and Linux Dedicated Server now build automatically on every push to main (or on demand), replacing manual local exports 
– Tag-triggered GitHub Releases – Pushing a vX.Y.Z tag cuts a proper Release with raw, runnable binaries attached (not zipped) and auto-generated release notes 
– Fix: release step failing on tag re-runs – already_exists errors when re-triggering a release for the same tag are now handled by updating the existing release in place

### Commits in this release 
1. Attach raw binaries to releases instead of zip archives (b48940d) 
2. Fix release step failing with "tag already exists" on re-run (c9b70ec) 
3. Add GitHub Actions workflow to auto-export Windows/Linux builds (bcc2ad1) 
4. Fix "already connected" error on peer_id reuse during auth validation (e1f4201) 
5. Add GUI scale slider to the pause menu (bcc0c84) 
6. Fix recipe book empty on Linux: stop scanning res:// dir at runtime (f40d64c) 
7. Restore Linux editable-children marker; cut a per-call alloc in get_block (ca5556d) 
8. Fix token validation endpoint: use wp/v2/users/me, not plugin's /validate (3c23350) 
9. Add server-side logging for WordPress auth validation (f15c77d) 
10. Add WordPress-based login gating for host/join (af0b5f7) 
11. Fix custom player skins not showing on Linux builds (bab913c)

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