Patch Notes Page 7

v0.54.0

Added first-pass Android gameplay touch controls.
Live gameplay now shows a scalable virtual movement stick plus touch buttons for dash, interact/use, consumables, hotbar actions, abilities, ultimate, and pause.
Touch controls feed the existing action system and stay hidden while menus and major overlays are open so regular RmlUI taps remain available.
The virtual movement stick is about 15% larger than the first pass and now captures one movement finger with a deadzone plus smoothed axis output to reduce touch jitter while moving.
Improved Android phone resolution handling.
Android now treats the SDL renderer drawable size as authoritative and ignores saved desktop window sizes that could leave the game letterboxed inside the phone surface.
Android now enters immersive sticky fullscreen on create, resume, and focus regain so the status bar and gesture/navigation bar stay hidden during menus and gameplay.
Installable debug APKs now build the native C++ stack with Release CMake optimization for device performance testing while keeping debug signing for easy sideloading.
Android package metadata now reports 0.54.0-android.0 for the refreshed APKs.

Fixed Android startup closing immediately on Pixel 7.
The APK now stores the packaged content archive under a dedicated asset path before copying it into app-private storage, avoiding a path collision that could truncate wardens_content.wpk to zero bytes during startup.
Android startup diagnostics now report the copied byte count and fail early if the content archive copy is empty.
Android package metadata now reports 0.53.2-android.0 for the refreshed debug and unsigned-release APKs.

Fixed Android APK compatibility for 16 KB page-size devices.
Android native shared libraries now link with 16 KB ELF segment alignment, covering the game library plus SDL2, SDL2_image, SDL2_ttf, SDL2_mixer, RmlUi, and dependent shared objects.
Android package metadata now reports 0.53.1-android.0 for the refreshed debug and unsigned-release APKs.

Added the first native Android APK test build path.
The Android Gradle/NDK project now compiles the shared C++20 engine/game stack with SDL2, SDL2_image, SDL2_ttf, SDL2_mixer, RmlUI, and the base content archive for arm64-v8a and x86_64.
Android startup copies wardens_content.wpk from APK assets into app-private storage so the existing VFS/content archive path can load authored assets/ and data/ without broad storage permissions.
Steamworks, Steam Input, Steam Cloud, Steam leaderboards, Steam Workshop, and Discord native integrations are disabled for Android builds while local gameplay/progression fallbacks remain documented as parity work.
Staged Android test artifacts.
Client-Android now carries a debug APK for install testing, an unsigned release APK, a fresh Android content pack, and SHA256/timestamp evidence.
Physical-device validation currently proves APK install, SDL native library loading, and a live process on Android; full touch gameplay, lifecycle, persistence, and visual unlocked-device validation remain tracked in the Android parity matrix.

Removed Intro Chronicle overlay cutouts.
The opening cinematic now returns to the generated parchment panel artwork without the added transparent overlay images.
The cinematic layer system remains available for future authored art, but intro_tutorial.json no longer references assets/cinematics/overlays/.

Refined Intro Chronicle overlay motion.
Overlay cutouts now sit mostly along the left and right edges of the cinematic viewport.
Positioned overlays now slide in from the nearest edge during fade-in and slide back out during fade-out.

Added layered Intro Chronicle overlays.
The opening cinematic now uses transparent overlay art from assets/cinematics/overlays/ across all seven panels.
Cinematic layers can now be positioned and scaled with normalized data fields while retaining parallax, drift, and fade behavior.

Smoothed Intro Chronicle music transitions.
The cinematic score now fades down with the final fade-to-black instead of stopping at full volume.
Normal game music now fades in after the cinematic completes or is skipped, avoiding a hard music start when gameplay appears.