The Hush — v1.1.0

Features & Interface Updates

• Creative Mode Lore Access: Creative mode players can now interact with the Cursed Page to read the lore, making testing and administration much smoother.
• Improved Ledger Usability: You can now close the ledger screen by pressing your inventory key (default E). Additionally, if you take damage from any source while reading the ledger, the screen will instantly force-close so you can defend yourself.
• Atmospheric UI Redesign: Menu navigation buttons have been visually overhauled with bespoke thin dark-red borders, deep black/red backgrounds, and active blood-red hover effects.
• Cursed Page Drop Fix: Fixed a bug where Cursed Pages would never drop. Instead of dropping on death (which conflicted with the creature's vanishing mechanics), the page now has a 15% chance to drop upon a successful retreat, provided corruption mechanics are enabled.

AI, Stalking & Combat Behavior

• Targeting & Chase Tracking: Fixed an issue where the Hush would walk to outdated positions or freeze mid-chase when tracking a player. It now continuously updates its path correctly during active combat states.
• Intelligent Pillar Breaking: The Hush will no longer get stuck in a loop trying to break blocks underneath or above you if you "pillar up" out of its reach. It now properly checks its maximum vertical reach (8 blocks) and will reject the pillar if it cannot reach it, resolving severe server lag spikes.
• Ice Traction Momentum: When performing combat strikes or lunges on ice-like blocks, the Hush will no longer have its velocity aggressively scaled down or wiped out by ice friction. It now retains its full intended attack momentum.
• Submerged Movement Overhaul: Fixed a critical issue where the creature's pathfinding would completely shut down every 2 seconds while underwater, causing it to stutter or freeze.
• Multiplayer Awareness (Sabotage Gating): Sabotage behaviors—such as stealing items, mimicking sounds, or setting traps—are now blocked if any nearby player is looking at the creature. Previously, it only checked if its primary target was looking, allowing it to commit these actions in full view of a second player.
• Stalking Distance & Transitions: Fixed a bug where the early stalking phase would accidentally degrade into a direct, un-stealthy approach. The distance bands have been corrected so it maintains its eerie, preferred stalking distance.
• Enraged Chase Fixes: Enraged Hushes will no longer stutter or freeze mid-chase if you look directly at them or stand completely still. The stalking mechanics now properly hand over total control to its aggressive chase programming.
• Invisibility Gaze Interactions: The Hush will no longer trigger gaze penalties (like stare-punishment, seen-freezing, or ambush cancellations) while it is actively invisible or fading out. It must be genuinely visible to the player for these mechanics to apply.
• Lunge & Corner Escalation:
  • The creature will no longer out-of-nowhere lunge at a player who hasn't noticed it yet during the stalking phase, unless it is actively hunting/enraged or the player gets within a 4.5-block panic range.
  • It now requires an active hunting status to charge at players who are backed into room corners.

Audio, Visuals & Animations

• Dynamic Hearing Mechanics: Hearing is no longer locked to a flat 32-block radius. The creature’s detection range now dynamically scales based on the volume of your actions (clamped between 12 and 48 blocks). Quiet footsteps carry significantly less distance, while loud actions (like setting off a chest-theft alarm) will draw it from much further away.
• Ledger Soundscape Overhaul: Opening the ledger now triggers eerie cave rumbles and book openings, page turns feature randomized audio effects, and a repeating, subtle heart-thump audio cue plays while the screen is open to build horror tension.
• Audio Clutter Fix: The proximity hunt ping and the client-side heartbeat effect will no longer awkwardly override or stack on top of each other.
• Locomotion & Procedural Physics:
  • Natural Athletic Sprint: Replaced the rigid, shaky arm jitter with a fully keyframed, natural, counter-phase arm-pumping motion that matches its running stride.
  • Dynamic Forward Lean: The torso now realistically tilts forward based on how fast the entity is moving.
  • Weighty Body Sway: The pelvis and shoulders now roll and yaw in opposite directions during movement to simulate realistic weight transfer.
  • Waist Vertical Bobbing: Sinks the waist dynamically on foot strikes to remove a "floating" feel and ground the feet.
  • Predatory Gaze Stabilization: The head will counter-rotate against body twists, keeping its eyes locked firmly onto the player even while its body snakes beneath it.
• Animation Layering Fixes: Fixed a structural bug where the model's core animations were being erased every single frame. Hushes crawling on ceilings will now correctly render upside-down, breathing animations will play smoothly, and attack clips will no longer look stiff.
• Fluid Hit Reactions: Removed the clunky full-body flinch animation when the creature takes damage, replacing it with a brief, jarring head snap. This adds physical weight to your attacks without interrupting or breaking its active combat flows.
• Clean Emerge & Vanish Sequences:
  • Spawning Hushes now cleanly unfold into existence with an uninterrupted 1.1-second unfold animation before they can move or attack.
  • Vanish animations are now strictly locked to the despawn phase. The creature will no longer awkwardly pop back to full size for a split second right before disappearing; it will freeze at scale zero and dissolve cleanly.
• Biting Attack Animations: Added dynamic jaw-opening keyframes to lunges, slams, steals, and head snaps so the creature actively bites with an open mouth instead of a shut jaw.
• Visual Adjustments: Enlarged the entity's shadow radius from 0.5 to 0.9 to accurately fit its imposing 3-block-tall model.

Gameplay Fixes & Rebalancing

• Stolen Item Recovery: Items stolen by the Hush are no longer deleted from the game. Stolen items are cached by the creature and will drop as physical items inside the cobweb pile left behind when it successfully retreats. The original owner will receive a short action-bar notification when this happens.
• Weapon Theft Prevention: When stealing items directly from a player's inventory, the Hush will now prioritize your main inventory slots first, your hotbar slots last, and will completely skip your currently selected slot so it doesn't yank a weapon straight out of your hands mid-fight.
• Smarter Environment Checking: The daytime retreat mechanic now checks actual sky light levels rather than a raw vertical height map. This prevents the Hush from thinking it is outside in direct sunlight and retreating while inside a well-covered cave or base built above Y=50.
• Combat Burst Protection: Combat lunges, wall slams, and ambush drops now properly respect and trigger the global smart-attack cooldown. This prevents players from being hit by multiple massive physical bursts and fear procs within a few ticks.
• Dynamic Water Physics:
  • The Hush now obeys standard water gravity and friction, stopping it from building infinite upward velocity or floating erratically in pools.
  • It now applies a steady upward swim impulse when chasing a target above it to prevent bouncy surface oscillations and turns smoothly to face you while submerged.
  • Removed passive surface-bobbing code so the entity can now properly dive underwater to pursue targets.
• Smart Door Interactions: The Hush can no longer manipulate iron doors (respecting redstone-only mechanics). When it does toggle a wooden door, the action is correctly attributed to the creature—meaning nearby sculk sensors will no longer falsely blame the player for the door opening.
• Server Claim Protection: The cobwebs placed by the creature during its retreat phase now properly check safety filters, preventing world mutations from bypassing protection and town-claim mods.
• Expanded Gameplay Configuration: Added 4 new independent config toggles under GameplayConfig to give server owners precise control over individual behaviors:
  • enableInventoryStealing (Respects Server Safe Mode)
  • enableFurnaceStealing (Respects Server Safe Mode)
  • enableMimicSounds
  • enableChokeHold
• 1-Block Squeezing Fix: Fixed a navigation bug where 1-block-high gaps were marked as completely impassable to the AI pathfinding engine. The creature can now successfully plan paths through tight corridors and crawlways, dynamically dropping into its squeezing pose when it reaches the opening.