Howling Moon Expanded Changelog

Base: Howling Moon 0.9 by Razmenwolf for Minecraft 1.12.2.
Target version: 0.9-expanded.8.
Platform: Forge; Java 8-compatible bytecode.

This changelog covers the cumulative changes from the original mod. Fixes from intermediate releases are included in the current version. The original foundation is preserved: this is not a complete rewrite or a port to another Minecraft version.

Expanded configuration and migration

• Added a JSON configuration organized into entity spawning, world generation, recipes, stats, abilities, silver, diet, progression, administration, and performance.
• Included 285 expanded configuration options in the current version.
• Added defaults, numeric limits, and validation of types and IDs.
• Added automatic updates to existing configuration files while preserving their values and keys outside the schema.
• Added backups before migrating configuration contents.
• Invalid JSON files are reported instead of being silently replaced with defaults.
• Removed creation of the redundant expanded CFG. Existing legacy configurations of that type are imported when applicable and archived.
• Kept two active configuration files: the original CFG and the expanded JSON. Backup files are not active configurations.
• Organized help by section and removed repeated explanations from individual stats and abilities. Specific explanations remain where needed.
• Added synchronization of server gameplay rules to clients. Configuration changes require a restart.

Stats, abilities, and balance

• Added individual enable switches and multipliers for all 14 stats: Strength, Rend, Protection, Movement, Jump, Fall, Knockback, Knockback Resistance, Hunger, Regeneration, Clarity, Exhilarating, Resistance, and Dexterity.
• Made the unarmed damage bonus per Strength point configurable.
• Added fractional calculations to continuous formulas so multipliers below one are not prematurely rounded to zero. Integer limits remain where required by the mechanic.
• Added separate multipliers for stat-point and ability-point budgets.
• Disabled stats are locked in the menu, with a red bar and an OFF indicator.
• Added an extra check when allocating points, including when a player still has an earlier selection open on screen.
• The server also rejects purchases of disabled stats.
• Disabled stats no longer contribute point-based bonuses. Saved investments are preserved and reserved, preventing the same points from being spent twice when the stat is enabled again.
• Disabling Protection does not remove independent defenses provided by level, form, or other mechanics.
• Added selection, acquisition, and execution checks for disabled abilities and forms.
• Added active ability settings for cooldown, exhaustion, duration, damage, and additional effects, as applicable to each ability.
• Added passive ability options for activation and additional damage, incoming damage, movement, armor, and effect bonuses.
• Added specific duration handling for Howl spirits and Ram stun, preserving original behavior where applicable.
• Added an explicit check for disabled Regeneration so unwanted base healing does not remain active.

Progression, experience, and persistence

• Preserved leftover experience after leveling up, allowing multiple level gains from one experience award.
• Made the base level cap and the extra levels from completing the savage branch configurable.
• Made the werewolf experience multiplier and experience cost per level configurable.
• Preserved fractional experience between awards and saves.
• Added persistent tracking of point grants, point losses, and administrative immunity.
• Prepared inclination and progression before loading the level to avoid incorrectly truncating saved advanced levels.
• Created independent copies of stat, ability, basic option, and color maps when cloning a player.
• Saved and restored ability cooldowns, including across player entity replacement on respawn.
• Persisted hunger for tamed entities and hunter healing timers.
• Preserved compatibility when reading older data without the new fields.

Optional Single Alpha system

• Added one Beast-form owner per server world, shared across dimensions.
• Disabled the system by default.
• The first eligible candidate who transforms into Beast form claims a vacant title. Selecting the form without transforming does not reserve it.
• Requires completion of the relevant ritual, represented by quest progress of at least 5.
• Logging out preserves the title; death releases it.
• Added title transfer through /werewolf alpha PlayerName, available to administrators and the current Alpha.
• An Alpha without administrative permissions gains access only to that transfer, not to other administrative commands.
• The former owner loses Beast-form access and Alpha transfer permission. Their active form is corrected when necessary, including upon reconnecting.
• Added two compensation stat points for candidates blocked by another Alpha and for former owners, once per UUID. No ability points are awarded.
• Previously received compensation is retained when becoming Alpha. Repeating rituals or transfers does not grant another two points.
• Compensation is not multiplied by the general point multiplier. Resets and penalties do not erase the receipt record or allow it to be claimed again.
• Saved ownership and compensation records in world data. Corrupted data is not silently reset.

Werewolf diet

• Added a master switch and independent controls for food rules.
• Prevented new Hunger from registered raw or rotten meat eaten by a werewolf in human form. Existing Hunger from other causes is preserved.
• While transformed, registered raw meat provides half the hunger restoration and actual saturation of its cooked equivalent.
• Added configurable raw-to-cooked pairs, using nutrition values read from the cooked item.
• Added fallback hunger restoration and saturation values for meat without a valid cooked equivalent, including rotten flesh.
• Cooked meat retains its original nutrition and can grant optional regeneration while transformed, with configurable duration and amplifier.
• Added configurable reductions in hunger restoration and saturation for vegetables, bread, and registered foods in that category while transformed.
• Added configurable nutrition reductions and Hunger and Poison effects for sweet foods while transformed. Each effect duration can be disabled by setting it to zero.
• Added specific support for slices of vanilla cake placed in the world.
• Added separate lists for raw meat, cooked meat, vegetables, sweet foods, and exclusions.
• Added variant selection using mod:item@metadata, including pairs between food variants.
• Included vanilla meats, fish and salmon variants, Mystical World foods, and TConstruct bacon and jerky. TConstruct slime variants are not classified as meat.
• Excluded Ice and Fire dragon flesh to preserve its nutrition and special effects.
• Registered rules can allow foods that the original dietary restriction would block. Disabling a rule restores the applicable original behavior.
• Respected hunger and saturation limits; fractional hunger restoration values are rounded down.
• Corrected incorrect potion and nutrition API references that caused interrupted eating or crashes in intermediate versions.
• Expanded 8 fixes the crash when finishing vegetables such as beetroot while transformed, along with the same incorrect call when looking up cooked meat nutrition.

Silver recognition, combat, and contact

• Added explicit ID lists for external silver weapons/tools and armor.
• Added optional integrations for Ice and Fire metallic silver tools and armor, and Mystical World silver items.
• Preserved recognition of the native silver sword even when its recipe is disabled.
• Corrected ingredient matching through the ore dictionary.
• Made recipe detection more precise: a recipe alternative that accepts iron or another material no longer automatically marks all of its output as silver.
• Resolved recipe recognition during loading instead of scanning recipes on every hit.
• Restricted silver weapon effects to direct melee hits. Switching the held item no longer causes an arrow or another indirect damage source to count as silver.
• Added configurable damage and Silver Poison when holding silver items or wearing recognized armor, both in human werewolf form and while transformed.
• Checked the main hand, off hand, and all four armor slots, with independent controls.
• Items elsewhere in the inventory do not cause contact effects. Multiple pieces do not generate separate pulses in the same interval.
• Made the interval, damage, poison duration, and application to Creative players configurable. Spectators are excluded.
• Added a death message for silver contact.
• Added brief Silver Poison when a werewolf strikes a mob or player wearing recognized silver armor with an empty main hand, with an enable switch and configurable duration.
• This reaction requires a direct hit dealing positive damage and an empty main hand. It does not apply to canceled hits, projectiles, or attacks with an item in that hand.
• Silver-colored dragon scales are not treated as metallic silver armor.

Hunters, werewolves, and world generation

• Made natural spawning enable switches, weights, acceptance chances, and group sizes configurable.
• Added separate control of the daytime hunter spawn entry.
• Added configurable attributes for hunter and werewolf mobs: health, damage, movement speed, armor, armor toughness, knockback resistance, and additional damage reduction.
• Reapplied configured base attributes when loading entities, clamping current health to the corresponding maximum.
• Rechecked lycanthropy when continuing a pursuit: hunters stop maintaining their hunt task once the target is cured.
• Cleared the cured player's target, path, and retaliation state from affected hunters loaded in that player's world when using the lycanthropy or immunity commands.
• This fix does not grant general protection from future retaliation if a human attacks a hunter.
• Added optional armor equipment for newly spawned hunters, disabled by default.
• Added optional automatic integration with Ice and Fire metallic silver armor, plus separate ID lists for helmets, chestplates, leggings, and boots from other mods.
• Made the chance per hunter and base drop chance per piece configurable.
• Missing items and items for the wrong slot are ignored. Existing equipment is respected, and equipment is not rolled again when an existing entity loads.
• Added silver ore generation controls for activation, vein size, and frequency.
• Added controls for wolfsbane flower generation and hunter lodge frequency/spacing in new terrain.
• Added switches for the mod's recipes, the silver sword, silver ingot smelting, and wolfsbane potion brewing.
• World generation settings do not remove existing content or replace the original test dimension.

Administration and hardcore

• Expanded /werewolf, with /were and /howlingmoon aliases.
• Added help, autocomplete, player targeting, and status queries.
• Added commands to add, remove, or set the total stat-point or ability-point budget.
• Added persistent infection immunity that can be granted or removed. This immunity does not provide damage invulnerability.
• Added commands to add or remove lycanthropy. Immunity must be removed before an immune player can be converted.
• Added stat, ability, and full progression resets, plus administrative level and progression changes.
• Added lycantrope and lycanthrope aliases. Omitting the boolean argument with these aliases toggles the state.
• Added configurable administrative permissions, checked both when dispatching and executing commands, including /werelevel and /wereprogress.
• Logged administrative operations. Preserved the original client controls and commands.
• Added optional hardcore rules, disabled by default, with two modes:
  • Stat-point loss: removes free points first, then invested points, while also reducing the budget so lost points do not return as available points. This mode does not reduce levels.
  • Progression reset: resets the base level to 1, experience and points to zero, and clears abilities, quests, and advanced forms while preserving lycanthropy and the Minecraft inventory.
• Applied penalties only once per werewolf death clone, without affecting humans or return travel from the End. Dying without points does not create negative budgets or point debt.

Multiplayer validation and internal fixes

• Validated progression requests on the server: client data can no longer freely replace levels, points, infection, or quest state.
• Rejected arbitrary vanilla experience and self-infection requests.
• Checked ability ownership, activation, cost, and cooldown before executing actions.
• Validated targets, range, visibility, world, living state, and PvP rules for targeted actions.
• Made Leap impulse calculation server-authoritative and added climbing/falling checks.
• Validated preference, model, and ability-slot indices.
• Added guards against empty passenger lists and incorrect entity types in messages.
• Corrected the owners of synchronized data parameters for wolf spirits.
• Cleared auxiliary transformation state when leaving a game and remote policy state on disconnect.

Performance, resources, and interface

• Replaced full candidate sorting with a linear nearest-target selection in two AI paths that only need one target.
• Added a configurable interval for repeated hunter path requests to the same target, with an immediate response when the target changes.
• Added a configurable tracking particle budget per world and tick.
• Used weak-reference caches to avoid unnecessarily retaining entities, navigators, villages, and worlds.
• Fixed texture cache rebuilding: old entries are cleared, null listings are handled safely, and ordering remains stable.
• Removed an unnecessary file open when checking existence and restricted texture paths to the appropriate directory.
• Added a HUD guard when no player is available and restored OpenGL color/alpha after drawing.
• No FPS, TPS, or memory improvement percentages are claimed: comparative performance benchmarks have not been measured.

Verification and release scope

• Added a reproducible build based on the hash-identified original JAR, with checks for patch locations and bytecode structure.
• Preserved all 168 original classes; the final JAR contains 192 classes. Build tools and test doubles are not included in the mod.
• Ran 281 named automated checks, including persistence, permission, diet, contact, and progression simulations, plus 5,000 inherited point-loss scenarios.
• Cross-checked the nutrition method signatures corrected in Expanded 8 against independent bytecode from the supplied mods.
• The project owner has confirmed that the current version works without problems in their test playthrough. This does not certify compatibility with every modpack or dedicated server.
• Development simulations do not replace a real Minecraft run, and performance changes do not yet have comparative benchmarks.

Credits and compatibility

• Original mod: Howling Moon, by Razmenwolf.
• Unofficial continuation; original credits are preserved.
• Install Expanded in place of the original JAR, and use the same version on the server and all clients.
• Does not include a port to modern Minecraft versions or silver detection based on the internal materials of Tinkers' Construct/Construct's Armory items. TConstruct food integration is a separate feature.