Reel Talk 0.2.3 — Update 2026-10-21

Reel Talk 0.2.3 — Update 2026-10-21

Hey Reelers!

New stuff AND bug fixes in this one — here's what changed.

What's New

• Vendor CC0 ambience + whoosh transitions (ReelTalk) (#727)
• Play the transition whoosh on scene change (ReelTalk) (#728)
• Big-catch cinematic framing (ReelTalk)
• Preview-before-apply for saved outfit slots (#536)
• Plumberry villagers + DetailedAnimal critters (#738)
• Navigable tunnel to a second biome, piloted by boat or skiff
• Cut the scratch card system (#581)
• Remove the mystery box shop items (#581)
• Make Light pixelation the default (#582)
• Clone the hub landmass into a second biome, and push the noise ring out (#739)
• Give the second biome a tropical palette (#739)
• Move care package contents from reveal-time roll to schedule-time choice (#581)
• Host-side care package scheduling and site selection (#581)
• Fly the care package delivery plane (#581)
• Care package falls, floats, and pays out to everyone present (#581)
• Signal smoke for the care package drop (#581)
• Give the hub a real sky, a real sun, and upright trees
• Make the core loop legible -- live bobber, real gates, honest readouts
• Let the islanders remember you, and stop cutting them off mid-sentence
• Play the sounds that already shipped, and let dialogue cut through
• Make traversal feel deliberate instead of frame-rate dependent
• Fix what the HUD was hiding, showing, and failing to say
• Let players see each other fight a fish
• Host-side arbitration for a fish too big for one rod
• Shared primitives for the audit fixes
• ReelMinigame, a node-free model of the reel fight
• Let night reach the unshaded world, the water and the sky
• Make the world audible — 3D listener, footsteps, loops, beds, and levels
• Make the water answer the float and the fish
• Hang the bite "!" over the float; put the fish on the catch card
• Let other players hear a cast and see its float land
• Haul the catch into view, a fish-shaped shadow, a visible aim, nibbles you can read
• Draw name tags, chat and prompts crisp over the pixelation
• One source of truth for open panels, cursor and controller focus
• Gameplay and Accessibility tabs, help footer, honest controls
• One Play button, More Ways to Play, save slots and first-run creator
• Pause that pauses, a HUD that steps aside, prompts for any device
• A controller can reach everything in the journal, and keeps its place
• Every reward cosmetic can be earned, or isn't shown
• Every wearable is drawn on the character
• Eyes placed on the head, rounder roster bodies, glasses that fit
• Bought eyes, mouths, noses and face markings are drawn
• A skill-based reel fight — keep the fish in your zone
• Make the secret fish catchable where the design says
• A rod shop beside spawn, rods only, priced as a progression
• Ask before sending analytics, and make the opt-out real

Quality of Life

• Vendor Phantom Camera (v0.11.0.3) + LRD cinematic camera addon
• Wire the big-catch cinematic beat to the local player (#732)
• Build the metal detector treasure loop end-to-end (#733)
• Build the consumable item loop end-to-end (#734)
• Granular chalk/chat scope on the host content purge (#735)
• StyleBox expand_margin hover on journal fish tiles (#736)
• Widen lrd_vehicle_system with aircraft, submarine, hovercraft
• Add generated .uid files for the new tunnel scripts
• Tools: benchmark the chalk GPU and CPU rasterizers (#584)
• Tools: measure the chalk purge rebuild path (#586)
• Add generated .uid files missing from main
• Pin the UIDs for nine scripts that were committed without them
• Drive the fight through ReelMinigame; fix loop edges
• Cut per-frame work on every player copy; drop dead appearance code
• Screenshot the live hub at any hour through the real boot flow
• Render the 3D world at the resolution the pixelation keeps
• Benchmark the hub's render cost; shoot it pixelated
• Shoot_hub --no-fog and --menu
• Screenshot every beat of the fishing loop
• Shoot_fishing — the haul, the flight, and aim diagnostics
• Journal off olive, settings/pause onto theme variations
• UIDs
• Main main overlay and play with friends panel

Squashed Bugs

• Resolve three dead-code issues: DebugLogger, orphan HUDs, superseded menu panels (#731)
• Call the EventBus notification function that exists (#762)
• Retire fish_bite, the signal nobody was listening to
• One streak HUD, legible pronouns, honest empty hotbar slots
• Stop clients absorbing host catches, and other loop defects
• Stop the catch display eating the next cast
• Stop the stripped fishing rod framing the character preview
• Settle what the demo ships, and enforce it in one place
• Close the loop edges the audit deferred (#775)
• Make the cat's head follow its own head bone (#679)
• Keep tinting the head after it moved onto the head bone
• Let a joiner ask again when the host never heard them
• Stop clients pricing and paying for their own fish
• Make the co-fishing bonus visible, and an invitation
• Catalog loads in exported builds; demo lock only in the demo
• Enforce bans/kicks and authenticate LAN joiners
• Host ledger is seeded, client income is checked, spends grant on confirmation
• Validate on the host, filter per recipient
• Remote purchases and care-package loot land in the recipient's inventory
• Host-authoritative placement, late-join state, disconnect cleanup
• Fish sales credit the seller, and only once they clear
• Pace the shared bar, key cooldown by identity, wire peer-left
• Drive vehicle late-join from scene-ready, relay rank-ups
• Fragments persist and stay the finder's; dig at the host's view; clients see treasure
• Drink buffs outlive the vending panel; effects relay through the host
• Drop the cut slot-machine loop; one wallet, one XP counter, one title list
• Load the fish database in exports and roll rarity by tier
• Host-authoritative hot spots, only on real water
• Leavers stop granting luck; stale floats stay hidden
• Host-authoritative catches, session-long records
• Make the coordinator the sole recorder of a tandem catch
• Atomic writes everywhere, one write per frame, and save slots that own all their data
• Smooth, validated player sync; emotes, respawn and ground fixes
• UI clicks no longer cast the rod; emote grid drives the local player
• Live sensitivity + invert Y, render-rate follow, tree/prop collision
• Close the seams between the four audit branches
• With no multiplayer peer, only ids 0/1 are the local finder
• Make the effects that compiled but never reached the screen render
• Point the passage tunnel east, through a real mountain range, on one ocean
• Let the tunnel's fog engage in a scene that authors its own
• Load GameRoot's scenes on one dedicated thread, not the worker pool
• Show the catch from the front, stop the swing dragging the aim, keep the float in view
• Menu dead-ends, placebo settings and the controller pause menu
• Chat that can't be styled, mutes that stick, reports that leave the PC
• Sales that can't vanish, secrets that can't be bought, shops that say what they mean
• Readouts that agree with the game, banners that don't pile up
• Readable over the world, day and night
• Settings that don't stick, a Play screen with no way out, eyes that drift
• The cat's Fur colour reaches its body
• The cat gets sleeves, the moth's shirts close, sashes cross the chest
• Creator face markings sit on the face, never over the eyes
• Theme the checkboxes, tabs and lists; stack the depot; calm the chips
• Unblock a new player's first session (tutorial, shop, Play, Steam)

Thanks for playing and for being part of this community — it means the world to us. If you run into anything weird or have ideas, drop by our Discord or leave a comment below.

— HeartCoded & the Lost Rabbit Digital team

v0.2.2 · Build a276965 · Full changelog on GitHub