A developer of Iris showed that Horizon's shader pack code was written from
Iris's source. This removes it: the horizon-shaderpack crate, Java pack
loading and its render stages, Horizon's own WGSL packs and the example
packs, the Shader Packs screen and its option, the launcher's shader pack
browsing and installing, and the docs about them. Shader packs may come
back later as a clean-room rewrite.
The vanilla renderer and its post-processing (resolution scale, FXAA) are
unchanged. Options files that name a pack load and drop the key; the
launcher reads manifests that list a shader pack, and files in
`shaderpacks/` are never deleted.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ludovic's decision (2026-10-23): no more Alpha and Stable. release.yml
publishes every game release as the release and GitHub's latest instead of
a pre-release that promote.yml made stable once a day. The checks that
gated a promotion run in the release itself: `decide` holds the train while
an issue labelled release-blocker is open (forced runs too), and the publish
job runs `release_train.py gate` right before publishing: the Mac mini's
smoke-test.json must be there and show a world was drawn, and no blocker may
be open. Otherwise nothing is published.
Notes cover everything since the last release that is not a pre-release, so
the first single-channel release lists all of it since v0.2.0. promote.yml,
tools/release_channels.py and its tests are deleted. The cadence is
unchanged (5 minutes of settling, 20 at most, release-now at once).
Docs and site: one channel in release-flow, versioning, security, the FAQ,
install, the home page and the Releases page (Game / Launcher filter); no
player-facing Alpha wording left.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The home page's "At a glance" list gets a fifth row with how many play right now, read from
https://telemetry.playhorizon.dev/v1/live (3 s timeout, again every minute while the tab is
visible). It stays hidden while nobody plays or the server doesn't answer. The FAQ no longer
says the "I'm playing" ping is off: the server is live since #1276.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The whole of Horizon is in beta, so the channel that installs every build as
soon as it is built is called Alpha; Stable keeps its name. The launcher's
Settings, the update-channel command, the MCP tool, the release notes footer
and the docs say Alpha. update_channel is saved as "alpha"; "nightly" and the
old beta_builds switch still read as Alpha.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Mods page (launcher 0.17) replaces "a mod browser is planned"; the Horizon
shader format is no longer called planned; Nightly-only things say Nightly.
The "I'm playing" ping has no server (DEFAULT_ENDPOINT is None), so the FAQ and
the privacy page say it is off instead of sent. The channel switch says it
needs the launcher release after 0.17. The README says what deploys the site.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The launcher's "Beta builds" switch becomes an Updates choice of two channels,
stored as "update_channel": "stable" | "nightly" (an old "beta_builds": true
reads as nightly). The CLI (update-channel) and MCP (update_channel) show and
set it, and list each release's channel as stable or nightly.
Nightly ships constantly: the release train waits 5 minutes for a merge wave to
settle (20 at most) instead of 15 (an hour). Stable moves once a day:
promote.yml runs at 19:00 UTC (retries until 20:37) and promotes the newest beta
that had been out 6 hours by 19:00, so late runs and retries pick the same one.
The stalled-promotion issue waits 30 hours. Release notes, docs, the website's
install and FAQ pages say Stable and Nightly.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The game sends an anonymous ping once a minute while it runs (a random
session ID kept only in memory, the version, the platform, whether a LAN
or friends world is open). The telemetry server counts sessions seen in
the last 2 minutes, in memory only, with its own per-address rate limit
and a session cap, and serves rounded counts at GET /v1/live. The
launcher shows "N playing now" on the Play page when the count is
reachable, and tells players what the ping holds on the first-run
question, in Settings, and once on the Play page for players who
answered before. docs/telemetry.md and the privacy page say the same.
Like the rest of telemetry, nothing is sent until HORIZON_TELEMETRY_URL
is set or DEFAULT_ENDPOINT gets a server.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
.github/release-line.txt = 0.2: the release train's next runs publish v0.2.0 (a beta, as always)
and launcher@0.2.0 at once, "the first release of 0.2" (docs/versioning.md). Merge it only after
the bridges (the last dated game release, made stable, and launcher-v0.17.0) are out: the go-day
steps are in docs/versioning.md.
Also, because they say 0.2 is out: the site's FAQ explains the numbers, Install says an old launcher
updates twice, hosting.md gives the one command for a server that says it is up to date, and the
launcher's Cargo.toml says 0.2.0 so builds from source (packages) are on the 0.2 line.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
/docs has a left navigation and eleven pages written for players first, then
hosters, then contributors: what Horizon is, install, settings, multiplayer,
logs and bug reports, hosting (the launcher's Servers page and the command
line), modpacks, mods and data packs, performance, contributing and the FAQ.
/server redirects to /docs/hosting. The build checks every link between the
pages and every image.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ludovic Marie