Runic Races

[1.4.0] — 2026-07-02 — Immersion & Visual Identity Overhaul

A six-phase presentation overhaul: every race now looks, sounds, and moves like itself — signature actives, minute-to-minute ambience, visible weaknesses, articulated wings, and a rebuilt HUD/screen-cue layer.

Added — signature presentation (every active)

• All 37 actives now route through SignatureRegistry (26 new keys), each with a shaped, family-grammar recipe: Human snap / Elven rise-implode / Dwarven ground-burst / Bestial lunge / Faeborne swirl-pop / Undead sink-drain / Draconic exhale. Power JSONs swap their banner/sound/particle actions for a single signature_presentation.
• Shaped VFX: SignatureEntry.VfxSpec gains RING, RING_IN, RING_ORBIT, HELIX, DOME, LINE (caster→target streams), and SPOKES; showcase pieces include Arachnid's web spokes, Deep One's seismic pulse ring, Kitsune's orbiting foxfire, Reaper's inward soul stream, Changeling's freeze-frame mirror shift, and Sprite's blink-out implode.
• 7 new identity particles (web_strand, leaf_petal, feather_down, shadow_wisp, foxfire, arcane_glint, bone_chip) — physical matter is world-lit, magic stays emissive — plus 10 more curated sound events with subtitles, 4 new RaceColors, and a WIND_STREAK edge cue for dashes and leaps.
• Dormant screen cues finally wired: MOON_GLOW (Moon Elf veil), HEARTBEAT_FLASH (Blood Elf frenzy), FREEZE_FRAME (Changeling mirror).

Added — ambience & weakness feedback

• Per-race ambience registry: ClientRacialAmbienceHandler becomes one AmbienceRoutine per race (shared rate limiter, density-scaled). 24 races gain minute-to-minute identity — Magi arcane glints off enchanted gear, Kitsune foxfire tail on night sprints, Wraith sneak shadow trail, Sea Serpen bubble wake, Terra Drake dust footfalls, Feline campfire purr, and more.
• Glide wingtip trails (config wings.glideTrails, per-race particle) and landing dust rings scaled to wing size.
• Every fragile race tells you when it hurts: victim-side fragility procs with a shared 3s debounce — High Elf rings like struck crystal, Arachnid chitin-crack, Skeleton bone chips, Avian feather-burst on bad landings, Sprite sparkle-scatter, Demon gold flash + bell toll on holy damage. Blood Elf lifesteal is now a visible crimson siphon line.
• New state flags + runes + banners: RAVENOUS (Canine, low food) and COLD_IRON_GRIP (Faerie holding iron); SUBMERGED_WEAK extended to Iron One / Sky One; Nymph gets the DRY_SLUGGISH rune; Volt Drake short-circuits on submerge; Dark Elf / Reaper sizzle when the sun first finds them.

Added — articulated wings

• WingModel rebuilt as one 64×64 bake with three silhouettes toggled per race: MEMBRANE (wyvern + drakes), FEATHERED (Avian), GOSSAMER (Sprite/Faerie).
• Cascaded tip lag: wingtips chase the arm with per-race lag and overshoot, so flap snaps whip through the downbeat and settle; gossamer hindwings run a lazier chase, and fast flutter renders a faint ghost pass as motion blur (reducedMotion-gated).
• generate_wings.py paints all wing islands from the hand-made base art. Resource-pack note: wing texture layout changed 64×32 → 64×64.

Changed — HUD & screen cues

• Screen cues upgrade from flat rects to tinted textures: real radial vignettes, frost dendrites, and a three-strip wobbling heat shimmer; effects.simpleCues restores the flat-rect path.
• FOV kicks (effects.fovEffects): breath heat and wind rush push the FOV out, impacts and the freeze-frame punch in — eased, intensity-scaled, clamped to ±6%.
• State rune HUD: letter-boxes replaced by a 14-glyph thematic rune atlas with family-accent frames and fade-in labels when a rune first lights.
• Ability HUD icons upscaled to shaded 32×32 (Scale2x + gradient/rim pass); frost breath gains rime motes, water breath churns with bubbles.
• Badge pilot: Fire Drake's breath carries an origins:badge keybind hint to verify in-game before batching badges to all actives.

Added — tests & docs

• AmbienceCoverageTest (every race has a routine or is explicitly quiet); StaleAssetTest gains overlay-texture and rune↔RaceStateFlags parity checks.
• CLAUDE.md documents the signature-shape system, 13 particles, 23 sounds, wing silhouettes, new config keys, the overlay/rune generators, and the badge pilot.

[1.3.0] — 2026-07-02 — VFX & Race Presentation Pass

Foundation release for the presentation overhaul: custom particle/sound registries, per-race wing textures, responsiveness fixes, and a test-coverage push.

Added

• ModParticles registry with 6 custom identity particles (rune_glyph, soul_wisp, fae_sparkle, ember_scale, frost_mote, venom_drip) behind RunicParticle behaviors.
• ModSounds registry with 13 sound events curating vanilla audio via "type": "event" in sounds.json — bespoke audio can drop in without code changes.
• Per-race wing textures replacing shared family sheets.
• Ability deny/ready cues: the HUD pulses red when an active is used on cooldown (AbilityDenyHandler), and plays a ready ding when it comes back.
• Submerged/dry state flags for water-bound races.
• Six new test classes: AbilityIconCoverageTest, ParticleAssetTest, RaceScaleRangeTest, SignatureCoverageTest, StaleAssetTest, WingCoverageTest.

Changed

• New config knobs: ambient.particleDensity and effects.screenCueIntensity.
• Pehkui height sync now reacts to config reloads.
• Breath cone polish pass.
• Wings respond instantly to race switches — WingRenderLayer resolves the wing type per-frame (RaceHelper memoizes per tick) instead of caching for up to 5 seconds.
• Per-family ability-ready ding pitch (FamilyAccent.readyPitch()); per-element breath and per-tier flap subtitles (previously one shared string each).
• generate_icons.py source-art path is no longer hardcoded to a specific home directory.