Szymek's Star Wars (SSW)

# SSW beta.46 — cumulative changelog since beta.18

This release combines every change introduced after beta.18, covering beta.19 through beta.46.

## Force and progression

- Rebuilt the skill tree around five separate paths displayed together on one screen: **Guardian** (blue), **Scholar** (green), **Sentinel** (yellow), **Balance** (purple), and **Dark Side** (red).
- Reduced progression costs to **5 XP levels for major skills** and **2 XP levels for minor nodes**.
- Added **Force Repulse, Force Heal, Force Dash, Force Wave, and Force Lightning**, expanding the ability roster to eleven powers.
- Expanded and migrated the saved ability hotbar so existing players keep their previous ordering while new powers are appended automatically.
- Reworked Force Repulse into a defensive 360-degree blast that pushes nearby entities and deflects projectiles.
- Reworked Force Wave into a wide directional attack capable of hitting, slowing, damaging, and pushing multiple targets.
- Rebuilt Force Lightning as an animated, branching lightning arc emitted from the player's hand. Higher levels can chain to additional targets, while Force Drain restores Force from successful hits.
- Clarified the Balance path as a true balance between the Light and Dark sides, with its strongest bonuses available near neutral karma.
- Improved Force Pull and Force Choke animations so the raised hand follows the held target. Holding Pull suspends a target, while **Alt + the assigned Pull key** starts Force Choke immediately.
- Improved Force Barrier with a visible translucent energy sphere, projectile reflection, a two-block exclusion zone for mobs, outward-facing raised arms, 50% movement speed, and restrictions on attacking, mining, building, and interactions while active.
- Force Falling after Force Leap can now be cancelled by holding Shift.
- Fixed Force ability state cleanup and multiplayer synchronization for temporary poses and visual effects.

## Meditation and interface

- Rebuilt the meditation screen around a compact central holocron, clearer Force progress, meditation time, cooldown information, and progression controls.
- Replaced the old single-path skill view with five independent, colour-coded columns visible at the same time.
- Rebuilt the ability ordering screen into a compact two-column layout.
- Replaced the large kyber colour buttons with a compact colour bar and a live 3D crystal preview. Selection supports clicking, dragging, arrow keys, A/D, and Enter.
- Added detailed Saber Workbench tooltips explaining every hilt and internal component slot, including missing and currently installed parts.
- Added an in-game SSW client configuration screen through the optional **Mod Menu** integration on Fabric.
- Added live controls for blade emission, bloom, environmental light level, range, and falloff, plus a **Restore Defaults** option.
- Removed blur from the SSW configuration screen and kept Cancel/Done behaviour safe and predictable.

## Lightsabers and rendering

- Thickened the main blade and added a restrained two-layer edge bloom without restoring the old oversized transparent shell.
- Rebuilt first-person blade rendering to preserve the bright emissive surface, correct depth, and proper bloom when shader features such as Subtle Hand Sway are enabled.
- Fixed cases where clouds, fog, late shader passes, or the base blade surface appeared in front of the glow.
- Matched first- and third-person emission more closely while keeping the blade itself bright and the light cast onto the environment subtle.
- Added a unique LabPBR emission marker used by the supplied Complementary Unbound compatibility edit. The shader now recognizes modular SSW blades in both hand and entity render passes.
- Added configurable blade glow and environment-light settings in `config/ssw-client.properties`; changes apply without restarting the game.
- Fixed the multiplayer animation bug that could leave another player's saber arm held straight forward after activation or deactivation.
- Renamed the **Fulcrum** hilt family to **Snips** and **The Negotiator** to **The Protector**, including their item and sound-profile identifiers.
- Added migration for existing sabers using the former family names, preserving their model, crystal, sound profile, and remaining data.
- Retained missing-part handling for genuinely invalid or incomplete sabers: they cannot activate and can be repaired component by component in the Saber Workbench.

## Villagers, quests, and economy

- Added the **Quest Broker**, a rare village villager variant that assigns hostile-mob, raider-hunting, and village-defence quests.
- Quest rewards grant **3–5 Imperial Credits** and are tracked separately for each player.
- The Quest Broker exchanges **5 Imperial Credits for 1 Beskar Plate**.
- Renamed Beskar Plaque to **Beskar Plate** and updated its identifier, model, textures, translations, tags, and creative entry.
- Reduced the physical and held size of Imperial Credits.
- Added the **Beskar Furnace**, a dedicated fuel-powered workstation that smelts only Beskar Plates.
- Added **Beskar Ingots**. One plate produces one ingot after 200 ticks and grants 1 XP.
- Updated all four **The Dark Sword** hilt-part recipes to require Beskar Ingots.

## Compatibility and release changes

- Simplified release numbering to the `beta.xx` format.
- Current releases target **Minecraft 1.21.1** on **Fabric** and **NeoForge** only.
- Fabric requires Fabric API. Mod Menu is optional and only provides direct access to the client configuration screen.
- The mod requires **Java 21** and does not require Architectury API at runtime.

## Important migration notes

- Existing Fulcrum and The Negotiator sabers migrate automatically to Snips and The Protector.
- Existing ability hotbars are expanded automatically without deleting their previous order.
- `beskar_plaque` was replaced by `beskar_plate`; this is an intentional identifier change made while the mod is still in beta.