Version history

What each build of Trade Routes Online changed, newest first. The game shows the same notes: in the installer while an update downloads, in a banner after you update, and under Settings, Release notes.

Version 0.5.2 2026-10-17

The free trial now lasts 5 days from the day you make your account (instead of 2 hours of play), the website offers the installer directly, and the title screen and settings show the days you have left.

All 80 changes

The animal panel now lists every animal in your caravan (food, water, stamina and whether it pulls the wagon or walks free), not just the lead one.
New Animals button and window: every animal you own with its feed, water and stamina, how it is doing, whether it pulls the wagon or walks free, your mount gear (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes), and Feed / Water buttons for each animal alone (feed at the stable for coin, or from hay you carry; water from your waterskin). The HUD animal panel now says which animal pulls the wagon.
Mileage: the game now counts how far each character and each animal has walked. A new craftable, the pedometer (smithy, smithing 2, worn on the new belt slot), lets you read it in the Animals window.
Town guards are stationed at the town hall door and at each town entrance, the rest patrol; every 5 min 15 s a patrolling guard walks up to a stationed guard, relieves him and takes his post, and the relieved guard goes on patrol.
Caravan rules: one wagon for every ten levels (level 10: 1, 20: 2, 30: 3 ...), up to 16 animals at level 20 (8 pullers and 8 more); the three wagon sizes are now a cart (1 animal), a wagon (2) and a covered wagon (4); all the animals on one wagon must be the same kind; the caravan travels at the pace of its slowest unit (a mule holds a riding horse back; shoes make an animal faster); a horse is faster than a mule, a mule carries more than a horse.
Mount gear is now worn by each animal (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes and the carrot on a stick): the Animals window has a picker for your animals with their pace, carry, feed and stamina savings and four gear slots to fill from your pack. Old worn mount gear moves to your first animal.
Now and then a patrolling guard walks into the narrow alleys between the buildings and looks about.
The Animals window shows what each animal, cart and wagon is carrying (your goods are shared out: you first, then the carts, then animals walking free), and what you carry yourself.
Five ledgers, worn in their own ledger slot (no longer the hand): 1 Merchant ledger +1 haggling; 2 Trend ledger shows a green up, red down or grey steady arrow beside every price; 3 Price ledger adds the price charts; 4 Route ledger adds a route book (what each road earns you per hour); 5 Bulletin ledger makes the notice board reach twice as far. Higher ledgers are crafted at the library (scribing) or are on the shelf only now and then. Old ledgers move to the new slot. Pedlars and Factors still start with the first.
Chat and the world log keep your scroll position; the world log shows when things really happened.
Purchase codes work however they are typed: dashes and spaces do not matter (253C-B328-F7DD, 253CB328F7DD and 253C B328 F7DD are the same code).
Tutorial: the "Buy this one" arrow now points at the market's row, not at the same good in your own pack (clicking your own row sold it back and sent you round the craft step again).
Bram speaks all of his tutorial lines (the last 34 voice files are in), and his line about ledgers matches the new ledgers.
Tabs: the Character window is now Character, Gear, Pack, Cargo, Skills (and Routes, Contracts when you have them); the town hall is Town clerk (charters), Rule, Notices and Contracts; the inn is Tavern and Travellers' talk; the stable, wagon builder, smithy, general store, clothier, apothecary and library each get Shop, Craft, Lessons (and Books) tabs; the Animals window has Animals and Carts and loads.
Benches: four benches round the well in every town square. Press E to sit (the view drops to seat height; moving or E stands you up). Sitting recovers fatigue 2.5x faster than standing in town (setting: Sitting on a bench), for up to 30 minutes a sit; the inn bed is still the best rest. Bots now sit on benches instead of paying for a bed.
Road benches: every road has a bench on each side at the halfway mark (50%). Stop within 4% of the middle and you recover fatigue at the full town rate (plain roadside is 35%), and your animals rest faster too. The road panel tells you when you are at the bench. Settings: Road bench reach / rest speed.
Buffs on the HUD: a glowing badge (with a tooltip) appears under your bars while you get a bonus, e.g. Resting on a bench or Resting at the road bench. The server sends the list (player_buffs in social.php), so new buffs are one block each. The prompt now says Stand up while you sit.
Fix: going into a building or onto the road while sitting on a bench no longer leaves you stuck sitting; every scene change stands you up.
Everyone starts with a pack mule and a cart hitched behind it (a little hungry and thirsty), 12 hay, and 300 coin (was 60): a real load from the first trade, so bigger purchases and bigger margins. Settings: Starting coins, Starting kit mule / cart / hay / mule fullness. The animal limit is one higher at every level up to 18, and one wagon is allowed from level 1.
Tutorial: a new chapter "Your mule and cart" after the well: Bram introduces the mule (HUD box, load, Animals button), then you water it from your waterskin and feed it hay. Characters part-way through the old tutorial skip these steps. The new lines (animal_1 to animal_5) have no voice files yet.
God panel: Start over / New character (Character tab) makes the god character brand new as after the tutorial: level 2, two trait points, starting kit, mule and cart, tutorial finished.
Mouse wheel zoom: scroll back to pull the camera out behind you and see your own character (walking, idle or sitting), scroll forward to return to first person. Works in town, buildings (a short way) and on the road.
Your log: the log panel has a World log / Your log tab. Your log lists what you did (bought, sold, drank, took a contract, travelled...), with times, from the server (so it also shows what a bot did for the character). Server keeps the last 300 lines per player.
Stream mode for admin characters (bots/botsim.py --watch --tokens FILE): a bot plays the on-screen character visibly: the window walks to the door, shop trader, gate, well or bench by itself and uses them like E would, then the bot trades. Not in the Steam/itch player experience (admin accounts only). Add #nogod to the game address to skip the god window.
Animals move: mules and horses swing their legs as they walk (diagonal pairs), nod their heads, flick their tails, and idle with a slow sway and now and then a grazing dip.
God panel: Bot mode on/off (Character tab). With the resident runner (bots/start_autopilot.bat) going, a bot plays the god character visibly while Bot mode is ON; OFF hands it back.
Tutorial: Bram's skills and books paragraph moved from the long tour (before the level-up) to his goodbye after you spend your points; the repeated 'press I' line is gone. New lines: animal_1 to animal_5; reworded: future_3, future_4, bye_1 (no voice yet; text shows, the voice is silent until recorded).
God Bot mode button now starts the bot runner itself (local machine) when it is not running, restarts it if the list of bot characters changed, and the I play button stops it when no other character is on Bot mode. The 30-bot simulation is a separate process and is never touched.
HUD: while you craft, a box under your bars shows what you are making, a progress bar with the percentage and the time left (and where to collect it when it is ready).
Road lamps and lamplighters: every road has lamp posts (about every 1.5 km). Every town owns at least one road (all 21 roads are covered; a town with several takes them in turn, one a night). At dusk the owner's lamplighter rides his road on a horse lighting the posts as he passes; at dawn he rides home putting them out. A lit road makes the bandit gang 40% less likely to stop you (setting: Lamps: bandit chance). Settings: rider speed, spacing, bandit effect. Test lamps.php.
Website: a Live page (live.html): a map with a dot for every traveller (no names, no coin; gold in towns, teal on the roads) and a feed of what each town needs or has plenty of, plus the world news. Reads the game's new no-login public_world action (cached 30 s).
Sit anywhere in a town: press X (or type /sit) to sit down where you stand, in the square or inside a building, and X, E or walking to get up. Sitting gives the rest buff (ground 1.8x faster fatigue recovery, a bench 2.5x; setting: Sitting on the ground) and shows on the HUD. /sit used to do nothing for you (it only showed other players a pose); now it is the same as X. Your own character is drawn sitting when you zoom out.
Sitting looks right: on a bench your character sits ON the seat at seat height, facing the way the bench faces (benches' seats are lower, 0.5 m, like the inn stools); on the ground they sit lower. Other players see you on the bench too (the server now says which bench).
Sound: crickets at night outdoors in towns and on roads (a procedural chirp on top of the forest bed), a louder market murmur (in the square near the market, inside the market, and the town's daytime crowd).
Sound: the town square now has the murmur of people all day (busy 8-19, an evening crowd to 23, a few voices early morning, nearly silent at night, a bustle at midday).
The bulletin clippings (fifth-tier ledger) now report every good, not only staples: who needs what (how many hours of supply are left) and who has plenty (how many in stock), in red and green, the same facts as the website's Live page.
World map: a scroll with a count on every town your open contracts deliver to, and a note under the town you are in saying how many contracts are on offer. (Your own accepted deliveries keep their gold ring.)
Company window: a warning when the rent falls due within two days and the bank cannot pay it (the halls will lock in N hours), and a rent balance check: the next rent after your standing discount, how many rents the bank covers, what dues bring in per rent period and the net.
Travel bell: a new craftable (smithy, smithing 1, 2 iron + 1 nails; famed at Ironhold), worn in its own Bell slot on the pack; it rings three times and flashes the window title when your walk along a road ends, so you can look away while you walk. AFK mode: after five minutes with no mouse or keys in a town your character sits down to rest (with the sitting bonus) and gets up when you move.
A riding crop in your hand with a beast on the road: the crack of a whip every 30 to 70 seconds (the crop already made your animal faster).
The XP curve now fits the pacing table exactly with a quartic term: level 1 costs 100, 5: 2,500, 10: 25,000, 15: 150,000, 19: 600,000 (the old cubic gave 288,000 at 19); the early levels are unchanged. New settings: XP curve Q and K.
Stream captions: in watch mode the bot says what it is doing and why on screen (a caption at the bottom for twelve seconds: the route it planned, why it is buying, what it sold for against what it paid, why it is sitting down).
Bram tells two more road stories on the first walk: looking after your mule (road_story_7) and the halfway bench and the lamplighters (road_story_8). No voice yet.
Ops: tools/ubuntu_backup.sh (a nightly database dump with 14 days kept, for the Ubuntu server), tools/check_https.py (certificate, http-to-https redirect, game server answer; the host certificate is Let's Encrypt, valid to 2026-11-25), and an http-to-https redirect (site/.htaccess, goes to tro/.htaccess on the host: keep any rules already in it).
Lamplighters in town: each dusk and dawn the lamplighter who owns tonight's road rides out of his town's gate from the stable; the one who looked after that road rides in at the far end and stables his horse (and the reverse at dawn).
Fog of war and exploring: a new character knows only the start town and the towns one road from it; the rest of the world map lies under dark clouds marked ?. Walking into a new town clears it for good and pays 15 XP (setting: Exploring). Characters made before this know the whole map. God panel: Map: reveal the whole map / bring the fog back.
Route planning: click a town that is several roads away on the map and choose Walk the whole route: you set off and, on reaching each town on the way, carry straight on without stopping (with a banner and a Cancel the route button; if you close the game you simply stop at the next town). Cartography: the regional map (library, scribing 2, 2 paper + 1 ink; famed at Greywater), a carried item you read once to bring the three nearest unknown towns out of the fog.
Carrier pigeons: a bird from the general store; in the tavern's Travellers' talk you send it to another town, it flies there and back (0.5 km/s each way), and the prices it saw go into YOUR ledger when it is back (Character window, Pigeons tab): private intelligence nobody else can read.
Animals and carts in the world: other travellers' mules, carts and wagons now walk the road behind them in the road view (they were only in town), and the stable yard has a 3D mule and horse at the rail that swish their tails and nod (replacing the flat picture).
Stream: add #stream to the game address for a recording layout (no side panel, no god window, bigger log and captions). bots/twitch_votes.py reads your Twitch chat for !go <town> votes (a minute at a time) and the watching bot walks to the winner; needs your own chat token (see the top of the file).
Pigeons, your own: launch one from your caravan anywhere in a town (Character window, Pigeons tab: pick a town, Launch it; no tavern needed). You see the pigeon take off from your caravan and fly out over that town's gate, with the sound of wings; when it is back it flies in and lands on your caravan (wings again) and the news is in your Pigeons tab. The HUD shows Pigeon out. If you try to leave town while it is still out you are warned that it will not be able to find you: wait for it, or leave and abandon it.
Gear you can see: what a character holds and wears is drawn on their model for everyone, and you see yours when you zoom out: a walking stick, riding crop, lantern, brass scale or quill in the right hand; your ledger (its colour shows the tier) in the left; a satchel, rucksack, pack frame or crate on the body; reading glasses; a pedometer and a travel bell at the belt. The server sends it with every player (worn). First version of the props: simple blocky shapes, more to come (clothes, hoods, belts).
Towns dressed with real models (free CC0 packs): barrels, crates, buckets and bags against the walls, a market stall and produce crates at the market door, parked carts by the stable and the wagon builder, firewood and barrels at the tavern, a banner at the town hall, an anvil at the smithy, a bucket at the well, signposts at the gates. Each town always looks the same; props never block a door, a gate or the way. Your cart is now the real two-wheeled cart model, and a carrot on a stick, saddlebags and a harness show on your animals.
Emotes (/dance etc.) print "Name dances" in everyone's town chat in an action colour (no toast); you see yourself emote; emotes end when you step; / focuses chat; /help; god Ride keeps the caravan; riders sit on their horse
Character and user names unique ignoring case/spaces/dashes; dev/admin-looking words reserved except for admin accounts; live name check on the creation screen
Reloading puts you back exactly where you stood (town or room); name refusals say only that the name is taken; no synthetic smithy bell while the recording loads, softer well drips
The smithy hammers on a timetable from the server clock, a few strikes every few seconds, so everyone near it hears the same hammering at the same moments
Every place sound (smithy, market, tavern, stable, well), thunder, dog barks and crickets are timed from the server clock: everyone in the same place hears the same thing at the same moment
Every sound is on the shared server clock: music (one playlist in step for everyone), ambience beds, hour chime, wagon creaks, whip
Sounds of what other people do nearby (coins at the counter, doors, crafting) are heard by everyone in the same town or room, louder when closer
**HUD overhaul.** Items are icon tiles (quality-coloured border and glyph, durability bar, count) with the words in a pop-up; every item has an icon. Vitals and animal bars on the left, a buff panel (icons with timers) down the right of the view, an action bar of four slots on keys 1-4 (right-click a slot to choose: right hand, drink, eat, bandage, fill, water animal, feed dog).
**Whip and riding crop.** Whip (craft at the stable, leatherwork 3): held in the right hand, use it from the action bar on the road: +5/10/20/40/60% speed for 10 s by quality, then 30 s rest. Riding crop moved to the off hand: a steady +1/2/3/4/5% for the horse you ride. They stack with each other and with horseshoes. Settings in the god panel (Items).
Whip and crop are drawn in the hands; the whip cracks; sound of nearby players' coins, doors and crafting are heard by everyone in the room
Towables: starter = walled farm wagon, middle = open Kenney cart, top = Kenney cart with rails and load. The smithy has a workbench with an anvil, and its smiths walk between the forges and the bench on a timetable from the server clock: everyone in the room sees the same smith at the same place at the same moment
Animals look about like real ones: every few seconds a new look (turn, tip, raise, lower, the odd long graze), eased, and the same for everyone because it follows the server clock
**Ledger on the road.** Your ledger writes down the prices of every market you stand in. From the trend ledger up you can read those notes anywhere (Character, Ledger tab): trend ledger = last three towns, with arrows and where your load sells best; price ledger = every town and charts of the day before you left; route ledger = best trades in your notes; bulletin ledger = who wants what. The plain merchant ledger only keeps notes. The price chart now opens beside the shop window instead of under it
Items table got an index on animal_id (every request scanned all items); `xp_mult_floor` setting so the XP pacing rate works at levels 1 to 4
Windows no longer freeze you: walk with the Character sheet, the Ledger or a shop window open. A shop window closes when you walk away from the merchant
The God mode button moved from the top bar into Settings (Game tab, admins only)
Stream mode: the bot now looks through its own screens like a player planning ahead: the map before setting off, and on the road now and then its map, gear, pack, skills, animals, ledger and route book, with a caption saying why
Admin site: restyled to match the game and the website; new pages Models (every model we own in a 3D viewer, including the ones the game ships), Sounds (every recording and named game sound, with play buttons), Icons (all 153 with credits) and Images. On the live server the Sounds and Images pages are lists only. New tools: tools/make_sound_index.py, make_icon_index.py, make_image_index.py, make_model_extras.py; web/api/reset_admin.php (command line) and tools/make_remote_reset.php (a one-use page for the host) reset the admin password
**Loads tab** (Animals window): an inventory for each container (you, each rolling cart or wagon, each animal walking free) with empty spaces and goods as icons; drag or click a stack to move it between them, and the arrangement stays as you set it. The Carts tab now lets you pick a cart and shows its condition as a bar. Bots mend their carts at a wagon builder when they are worn
Voice: 16 missing Bram lines, the new `future_8` and `controls_1`/`controls_2` cut from the ElevenLabs recording (`controls_3`/`controls_4` still to record)
Cart and wagon wheels turn as you travel (they roll with the distance covered; the small wagon's wheels were cut out of its single model so they can spin)
Pigeons moved to the Animals window; carts are numbered Cart 1, Cart 2; boxes around each cart, animal and container
**Cargo is drawn in the cart.** What a cart holds is piled in its bed, sized by how full it is and made of the goods' own models: fish, logs, planks, stone, bricks, rope, barrels and crates of fruit where we have them; sacks for grain, flour and the small things; boxes and chests for the rest. Everyone who looks at your cart sees the same load
**Hero character screen.** The Character tab is now one screen: your backpack (empty slots shown) on the left, you in 3D in the middle with what you wear around you (head, face, clothes, belt, feet; right hand, off hand, tool, pack, charm; ledger, bell, blanket, pillow, plush), and your level, traits, coin, bank and load on the right. Click an item for its details, double-click to wear it or take it off. The Gear and Pack tabs are folded into it
**Packing takes time.** Moving goods between you, your carts and your animals is now a job of a few seconds (1.5 s plus 0.12 s per weight, never more than 14 s) with a progress bar in the middle of the screen ("Packing 5 fish into cart 1"); you stand still while it runs, and on the road you must stop first. Carts can also store items (6 in a cart, 12 in a wagon, 20 in a covered wagon): drag items between your backpack and a cart in the Loads tab. Click an empty slot on the Character screen to see what you have for it, on you or in a cart (unpacking it first). All of it is server-timed and in the settings table
Character sheet: the backpack has its own Inventory tab; the traits (and trait points) moved to the Skills tab; the Character tab has experience across the top and you with what you wear. The 3D figure stops turning while you turn it and starts again 5 seconds after you let go
**More ways to be quicker on the road.** Travelling boots (you), spurs (a new Spurs slot, riding), carrots on a stick now speed the animal wearing them, axle grease (a pot, used on a cart from Animals, Carts and loads: faster and less wear for 80 km), endurance helps on foot, a fed dog speeds the whole caravan by 2% per level (it gains levels as it walks with you), travelling light, and roads you have run before. See SPEED_IDEAS.md for what else could come

Version 0.5.1 2026-10-17

A new home at traderoutesonline.com. Bots now shop for repairs and take townsfolk contracts before they spend on trade goods, books can be read and copied for better quality, crafted items sell cheaply to shops, carried water has weight, and fatigue recovers 20% faster.

All 80 changes

The animal panel now lists every animal in your caravan (food, water, stamina and whether it pulls the wagon or walks free), not just the lead one.
New Animals button and window: every animal you own with its feed, water and stamina, how it is doing, whether it pulls the wagon or walks free, your mount gear (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes), and Feed / Water buttons for each animal alone (feed at the stable for coin, or from hay you carry; water from your waterskin). The HUD animal panel now says which animal pulls the wagon.
Mileage: the game now counts how far each character and each animal has walked. A new craftable, the pedometer (smithy, smithing 2, worn on the new belt slot), lets you read it in the Animals window.
Town guards are stationed at the town hall door and at each town entrance, the rest patrol; every 5 min 15 s a patrolling guard walks up to a stationed guard, relieves him and takes his post, and the relieved guard goes on patrol.
Caravan rules: one wagon for every ten levels (level 10: 1, 20: 2, 30: 3 ...), up to 16 animals at level 20 (8 pullers and 8 more); the three wagon sizes are now a cart (1 animal), a wagon (2) and a covered wagon (4); all the animals on one wagon must be the same kind; the caravan travels at the pace of its slowest unit (a mule holds a riding horse back; shoes make an animal faster); a horse is faster than a mule, a mule carries more than a horse.
Mount gear is now worn by each animal (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes and the carrot on a stick): the Animals window has a picker for your animals with their pace, carry, feed and stamina savings and four gear slots to fill from your pack. Old worn mount gear moves to your first animal.
Now and then a patrolling guard walks into the narrow alleys between the buildings and looks about.
The Animals window shows what each animal, cart and wagon is carrying (your goods are shared out: you first, then the carts, then animals walking free), and what you carry yourself.
Five ledgers, worn in their own ledger slot (no longer the hand): 1 Merchant ledger +1 haggling; 2 Trend ledger shows a green up, red down or grey steady arrow beside every price; 3 Price ledger adds the price charts; 4 Route ledger adds a route book (what each road earns you per hour); 5 Bulletin ledger makes the notice board reach twice as far. Higher ledgers are crafted at the library (scribing) or are on the shelf only now and then. Old ledgers move to the new slot. Pedlars and Factors still start with the first.
Chat and the world log keep your scroll position; the world log shows when things really happened.
Purchase codes work however they are typed: dashes and spaces do not matter (253C-B328-F7DD, 253CB328F7DD and 253C B328 F7DD are the same code).
Tutorial: the "Buy this one" arrow now points at the market's row, not at the same good in your own pack (clicking your own row sold it back and sent you round the craft step again).
Bram speaks all of his tutorial lines (the last 34 voice files are in), and his line about ledgers matches the new ledgers.
Tabs: the Character window is now Character, Gear, Pack, Cargo, Skills (and Routes, Contracts when you have them); the town hall is Town clerk (charters), Rule, Notices and Contracts; the inn is Tavern and Travellers' talk; the stable, wagon builder, smithy, general store, clothier, apothecary and library each get Shop, Craft, Lessons (and Books) tabs; the Animals window has Animals and Carts and loads.
Benches: four benches round the well in every town square. Press E to sit (the view drops to seat height; moving or E stands you up). Sitting recovers fatigue 2.5x faster than standing in town (setting: Sitting on a bench), for up to 30 minutes a sit; the inn bed is still the best rest. Bots now sit on benches instead of paying for a bed.
Road benches: every road has a bench on each side at the halfway mark (50%). Stop within 4% of the middle and you recover fatigue at the full town rate (plain roadside is 35%), and your animals rest faster too. The road panel tells you when you are at the bench. Settings: Road bench reach / rest speed.
Buffs on the HUD: a glowing badge (with a tooltip) appears under your bars while you get a bonus, e.g. Resting on a bench or Resting at the road bench. The server sends the list (player_buffs in social.php), so new buffs are one block each. The prompt now says Stand up while you sit.
Fix: going into a building or onto the road while sitting on a bench no longer leaves you stuck sitting; every scene change stands you up.
Everyone starts with a pack mule and a cart hitched behind it (a little hungry and thirsty), 12 hay, and 300 coin (was 60): a real load from the first trade, so bigger purchases and bigger margins. Settings: Starting coins, Starting kit mule / cart / hay / mule fullness. The animal limit is one higher at every level up to 18, and one wagon is allowed from level 1.
Tutorial: a new chapter "Your mule and cart" after the well: Bram introduces the mule (HUD box, load, Animals button), then you water it from your waterskin and feed it hay. Characters part-way through the old tutorial skip these steps. The new lines (animal_1 to animal_5) have no voice files yet.
God panel: Start over / New character (Character tab) makes the god character brand new as after the tutorial: level 2, two trait points, starting kit, mule and cart, tutorial finished.
Mouse wheel zoom: scroll back to pull the camera out behind you and see your own character (walking, idle or sitting), scroll forward to return to first person. Works in town, buildings (a short way) and on the road.
Your log: the log panel has a World log / Your log tab. Your log lists what you did (bought, sold, drank, took a contract, travelled...), with times, from the server (so it also shows what a bot did for the character). Server keeps the last 300 lines per player.
Stream mode for admin characters (bots/botsim.py --watch --tokens FILE): a bot plays the on-screen character visibly: the window walks to the door, shop trader, gate, well or bench by itself and uses them like E would, then the bot trades. Not in the Steam/itch player experience (admin accounts only). Add #nogod to the game address to skip the god window.
Animals move: mules and horses swing their legs as they walk (diagonal pairs), nod their heads, flick their tails, and idle with a slow sway and now and then a grazing dip.
God panel: Bot mode on/off (Character tab). With the resident runner (bots/start_autopilot.bat) going, a bot plays the god character visibly while Bot mode is ON; OFF hands it back.
Tutorial: Bram's skills and books paragraph moved from the long tour (before the level-up) to his goodbye after you spend your points; the repeated 'press I' line is gone. New lines: animal_1 to animal_5; reworded: future_3, future_4, bye_1 (no voice yet; text shows, the voice is silent until recorded).
God Bot mode button now starts the bot runner itself (local machine) when it is not running, restarts it if the list of bot characters changed, and the I play button stops it when no other character is on Bot mode. The 30-bot simulation is a separate process and is never touched.
HUD: while you craft, a box under your bars shows what you are making, a progress bar with the percentage and the time left (and where to collect it when it is ready).
Road lamps and lamplighters: every road has lamp posts (about every 1.5 km). Every town owns at least one road (all 21 roads are covered; a town with several takes them in turn, one a night). At dusk the owner's lamplighter rides his road on a horse lighting the posts as he passes; at dawn he rides home putting them out. A lit road makes the bandit gang 40% less likely to stop you (setting: Lamps: bandit chance). Settings: rider speed, spacing, bandit effect. Test lamps.php.
Website: a Live page (live.html): a map with a dot for every traveller (no names, no coin; gold in towns, teal on the roads) and a feed of what each town needs or has plenty of, plus the world news. Reads the game's new no-login public_world action (cached 30 s).
Sit anywhere in a town: press X (or type /sit) to sit down where you stand, in the square or inside a building, and X, E or walking to get up. Sitting gives the rest buff (ground 1.8x faster fatigue recovery, a bench 2.5x; setting: Sitting on the ground) and shows on the HUD. /sit used to do nothing for you (it only showed other players a pose); now it is the same as X. Your own character is drawn sitting when you zoom out.
Sitting looks right: on a bench your character sits ON the seat at seat height, facing the way the bench faces (benches' seats are lower, 0.5 m, like the inn stools); on the ground they sit lower. Other players see you on the bench too (the server now says which bench).
Sound: crickets at night outdoors in towns and on roads (a procedural chirp on top of the forest bed), a louder market murmur (in the square near the market, inside the market, and the town's daytime crowd).
Sound: the town square now has the murmur of people all day (busy 8-19, an evening crowd to 23, a few voices early morning, nearly silent at night, a bustle at midday).
The bulletin clippings (fifth-tier ledger) now report every good, not only staples: who needs what (how many hours of supply are left) and who has plenty (how many in stock), in red and green, the same facts as the website's Live page.
World map: a scroll with a count on every town your open contracts deliver to, and a note under the town you are in saying how many contracts are on offer. (Your own accepted deliveries keep their gold ring.)
Company window: a warning when the rent falls due within two days and the bank cannot pay it (the halls will lock in N hours), and a rent balance check: the next rent after your standing discount, how many rents the bank covers, what dues bring in per rent period and the net.
Travel bell: a new craftable (smithy, smithing 1, 2 iron + 1 nails; famed at Ironhold), worn in its own Bell slot on the pack; it rings three times and flashes the window title when your walk along a road ends, so you can look away while you walk. AFK mode: after five minutes with no mouse or keys in a town your character sits down to rest (with the sitting bonus) and gets up when you move.
A riding crop in your hand with a beast on the road: the crack of a whip every 30 to 70 seconds (the crop already made your animal faster).
The XP curve now fits the pacing table exactly with a quartic term: level 1 costs 100, 5: 2,500, 10: 25,000, 15: 150,000, 19: 600,000 (the old cubic gave 288,000 at 19); the early levels are unchanged. New settings: XP curve Q and K.
Stream captions: in watch mode the bot says what it is doing and why on screen (a caption at the bottom for twelve seconds: the route it planned, why it is buying, what it sold for against what it paid, why it is sitting down).
Bram tells two more road stories on the first walk: looking after your mule (road_story_7) and the halfway bench and the lamplighters (road_story_8). No voice yet.
Ops: tools/ubuntu_backup.sh (a nightly database dump with 14 days kept, for the Ubuntu server), tools/check_https.py (certificate, http-to-https redirect, game server answer; the host certificate is Let's Encrypt, valid to 2026-11-25), and an http-to-https redirect (site/.htaccess, goes to tro/.htaccess on the host: keep any rules already in it).
Lamplighters in town: each dusk and dawn the lamplighter who owns tonight's road rides out of his town's gate from the stable; the one who looked after that road rides in at the far end and stables his horse (and the reverse at dawn).
Fog of war and exploring: a new character knows only the start town and the towns one road from it; the rest of the world map lies under dark clouds marked ?. Walking into a new town clears it for good and pays 15 XP (setting: Exploring). Characters made before this know the whole map. God panel: Map: reveal the whole map / bring the fog back.
Route planning: click a town that is several roads away on the map and choose Walk the whole route: you set off and, on reaching each town on the way, carry straight on without stopping (with a banner and a Cancel the route button; if you close the game you simply stop at the next town). Cartography: the regional map (library, scribing 2, 2 paper + 1 ink; famed at Greywater), a carried item you read once to bring the three nearest unknown towns out of the fog.
Carrier pigeons: a bird from the general store; in the tavern's Travellers' talk you send it to another town, it flies there and back (0.5 km/s each way), and the prices it saw go into YOUR ledger when it is back (Character window, Pigeons tab): private intelligence nobody else can read.
Animals and carts in the world: other travellers' mules, carts and wagons now walk the road behind them in the road view (they were only in town), and the stable yard has a 3D mule and horse at the rail that swish their tails and nod (replacing the flat picture).
Stream: add #stream to the game address for a recording layout (no side panel, no god window, bigger log and captions). bots/twitch_votes.py reads your Twitch chat for !go <town> votes (a minute at a time) and the watching bot walks to the winner; needs your own chat token (see the top of the file).
Pigeons, your own: launch one from your caravan anywhere in a town (Character window, Pigeons tab: pick a town, Launch it; no tavern needed). You see the pigeon take off from your caravan and fly out over that town's gate, with the sound of wings; when it is back it flies in and lands on your caravan (wings again) and the news is in your Pigeons tab. The HUD shows Pigeon out. If you try to leave town while it is still out you are warned that it will not be able to find you: wait for it, or leave and abandon it.
Gear you can see: what a character holds and wears is drawn on their model for everyone, and you see yours when you zoom out: a walking stick, riding crop, lantern, brass scale or quill in the right hand; your ledger (its colour shows the tier) in the left; a satchel, rucksack, pack frame or crate on the body; reading glasses; a pedometer and a travel bell at the belt. The server sends it with every player (worn). First version of the props: simple blocky shapes, more to come (clothes, hoods, belts).
Towns dressed with real models (free CC0 packs): barrels, crates, buckets and bags against the walls, a market stall and produce crates at the market door, parked carts by the stable and the wagon builder, firewood and barrels at the tavern, a banner at the town hall, an anvil at the smithy, a bucket at the well, signposts at the gates. Each town always looks the same; props never block a door, a gate or the way. Your cart is now the real two-wheeled cart model, and a carrot on a stick, saddlebags and a harness show on your animals.
Emotes (/dance etc.) print "Name dances" in everyone's town chat in an action colour (no toast); you see yourself emote; emotes end when you step; / focuses chat; /help; god Ride keeps the caravan; riders sit on their horse
Character and user names unique ignoring case/spaces/dashes; dev/admin-looking words reserved except for admin accounts; live name check on the creation screen
Reloading puts you back exactly where you stood (town or room); name refusals say only that the name is taken; no synthetic smithy bell while the recording loads, softer well drips
The smithy hammers on a timetable from the server clock, a few strikes every few seconds, so everyone near it hears the same hammering at the same moments
Every place sound (smithy, market, tavern, stable, well), thunder, dog barks and crickets are timed from the server clock: everyone in the same place hears the same thing at the same moment
Every sound is on the shared server clock: music (one playlist in step for everyone), ambience beds, hour chime, wagon creaks, whip
Sounds of what other people do nearby (coins at the counter, doors, crafting) are heard by everyone in the same town or room, louder when closer
**HUD overhaul.** Items are icon tiles (quality-coloured border and glyph, durability bar, count) with the words in a pop-up; every item has an icon. Vitals and animal bars on the left, a buff panel (icons with timers) down the right of the view, an action bar of four slots on keys 1-4 (right-click a slot to choose: right hand, drink, eat, bandage, fill, water animal, feed dog).
**Whip and riding crop.** Whip (craft at the stable, leatherwork 3): held in the right hand, use it from the action bar on the road: +5/10/20/40/60% speed for 10 s by quality, then 30 s rest. Riding crop moved to the off hand: a steady +1/2/3/4/5% for the horse you ride. They stack with each other and with horseshoes. Settings in the god panel (Items).
Whip and crop are drawn in the hands; the whip cracks; sound of nearby players' coins, doors and crafting are heard by everyone in the room
Towables: starter = walled farm wagon, middle = open Kenney cart, top = Kenney cart with rails and load. The smithy has a workbench with an anvil, and its smiths walk between the forges and the bench on a timetable from the server clock: everyone in the room sees the same smith at the same place at the same moment
Animals look about like real ones: every few seconds a new look (turn, tip, raise, lower, the odd long graze), eased, and the same for everyone because it follows the server clock
**Ledger on the road.** Your ledger writes down the prices of every market you stand in. From the trend ledger up you can read those notes anywhere (Character, Ledger tab): trend ledger = last three towns, with arrows and where your load sells best; price ledger = every town and charts of the day before you left; route ledger = best trades in your notes; bulletin ledger = who wants what. The plain merchant ledger only keeps notes. The price chart now opens beside the shop window instead of under it
Items table got an index on animal_id (every request scanned all items); `xp_mult_floor` setting so the XP pacing rate works at levels 1 to 4
Windows no longer freeze you: walk with the Character sheet, the Ledger or a shop window open. A shop window closes when you walk away from the merchant
The God mode button moved from the top bar into Settings (Game tab, admins only)
Stream mode: the bot now looks through its own screens like a player planning ahead: the map before setting off, and on the road now and then its map, gear, pack, skills, animals, ledger and route book, with a caption saying why
Admin site: restyled to match the game and the website; new pages Models (every model we own in a 3D viewer, including the ones the game ships), Sounds (every recording and named game sound, with play buttons), Icons (all 153 with credits) and Images. On the live server the Sounds and Images pages are lists only. New tools: tools/make_sound_index.py, make_icon_index.py, make_image_index.py, make_model_extras.py; web/api/reset_admin.php (command line) and tools/make_remote_reset.php (a one-use page for the host) reset the admin password
**Loads tab** (Animals window): an inventory for each container (you, each rolling cart or wagon, each animal walking free) with empty spaces and goods as icons; drag or click a stack to move it between them, and the arrangement stays as you set it. The Carts tab now lets you pick a cart and shows its condition as a bar. Bots mend their carts at a wagon builder when they are worn
Voice: 16 missing Bram lines, the new `future_8` and `controls_1`/`controls_2` cut from the ElevenLabs recording (`controls_3`/`controls_4` still to record)
Cart and wagon wheels turn as you travel (they roll with the distance covered; the small wagon's wheels were cut out of its single model so they can spin)
Pigeons moved to the Animals window; carts are numbered Cart 1, Cart 2; boxes around each cart, animal and container
**Cargo is drawn in the cart.** What a cart holds is piled in its bed, sized by how full it is and made of the goods' own models: fish, logs, planks, stone, bricks, rope, barrels and crates of fruit where we have them; sacks for grain, flour and the small things; boxes and chests for the rest. Everyone who looks at your cart sees the same load
**Hero character screen.** The Character tab is now one screen: your backpack (empty slots shown) on the left, you in 3D in the middle with what you wear around you (head, face, clothes, belt, feet; right hand, off hand, tool, pack, charm; ledger, bell, blanket, pillow, plush), and your level, traits, coin, bank and load on the right. Click an item for its details, double-click to wear it or take it off. The Gear and Pack tabs are folded into it
**Packing takes time.** Moving goods between you, your carts and your animals is now a job of a few seconds (1.5 s plus 0.12 s per weight, never more than 14 s) with a progress bar in the middle of the screen ("Packing 5 fish into cart 1"); you stand still while it runs, and on the road you must stop first. Carts can also store items (6 in a cart, 12 in a wagon, 20 in a covered wagon): drag items between your backpack and a cart in the Loads tab. Click an empty slot on the Character screen to see what you have for it, on you or in a cart (unpacking it first). All of it is server-timed and in the settings table
Character sheet: the backpack has its own Inventory tab; the traits (and trait points) moved to the Skills tab; the Character tab has experience across the top and you with what you wear. The 3D figure stops turning while you turn it and starts again 5 seconds after you let go
**More ways to be quicker on the road.** Travelling boots (you), spurs (a new Spurs slot, riding), carrots on a stick now speed the animal wearing them, axle grease (a pot, used on a cart from Animals, Carts and loads: faster and less wear for 80 km), endurance helps on foot, a fed dog speeds the whole caravan by 2% per level (it gains levels as it walks with you), travelling light, and roads you have run before. See SPEED_IDEAS.md for what else could come

Version 0.5.0 2026-10-17

Contracts from the people of the towns (with a forest walk and a cut scene to Old Hob's cabin in Oakmere), new equipment places (neck, finger and two keepsakes), one Loads window for all your cargo, a calmer top bar, one trait point per level, release notes in the installer and the game, a Twitch stream on the Live page, and account deletion.

All 89 changes

Release notes: the installer has a Release notes button you can open while the update downloads; after an update the game shows a What's new banner; Settings has a Release notes button for any version. Each release keeps its own notes file (release_notes/<version>.md). | client, installer | game zip + installer
Contracts from townsfolk: named people stand in every town square with a ! over their head (press E). They ask you to buy something at the market, carry a bundle to the next town, and so on. The town clerk and innkeeper give a daily contract to a neighbouring town, and new characters get three first lessons (a letter, eggs, a parcel). Characters above level 4 skip the lessons. Rewards come out of the lord's purse (never more than 2% of it, and 300 coins a day per town); failing costs a little standing, never coin. Settings: Contracts group.
Oakmere: a townsperson sends something up the forest path north of town to Old Hob, the hermit: a short forced walk (about 20 s, shorter with speed buffs), a cut scene at his cabin, a pay-out, and the walk back. A different townsperson and gift each visit.
Right-hand panel: one Contracts fold lists your accepted contracts and your delivery contracts, each opening to its details. Handing one in plays a coin sound. Dialogue uses the same text box as the tutorial.
Equipment places changed: neck (medallion, herb and owl charms), finger (signet ring), head (now also the reading glasses; the face slot is gone), two Keepsake places (sleep aids, travel bell, pedometer, brass scale, diplomat's quill, secret pocket), right hand (walking stick, whip, riding crop, lantern), left hand (ledgers, lantern). The whip and the crop share the right hand. Your existing gear is moved by the update. New hold positions for the stick, whip, crop, hammer, lantern and ledgers.
One place for cargo: the weight in the top bar opens a Loads window (you, each animal, each cart). The Cargo tab is gone from the character sheet and the Animals window no longer repeats cargo lists.
Top bar: Animals, Company and Settings are icons on the left (settings gear at the far right); the buttons on the right are gone. Your name and the Skills tab glow when you have trait points to spend.
Trait points: one a level, no automatic trait growth (both settings in Experience).
A town with a broke character in it always has a courier job open.
The animal panel now lists every animal in your caravan (food, water, stamina and whether it pulls the wagon or walks free), not just the lead one.
New Animals button and window: every animal you own with its feed, water and stamina, how it is doing, whether it pulls the wagon or walks free, your mount gear (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes), and Feed / Water buttons for each animal alone (feed at the stable for coin, or from hay you carry; water from your waterskin). The HUD animal panel now says which animal pulls the wagon.
Mileage: the game now counts how far each character and each animal has walked. A new craftable, the pedometer (smithy, smithing 2, worn on the new belt slot), lets you read it in the Animals window.
Town guards are stationed at the town hall door and at each town entrance, the rest patrol; every 5 min 15 s a patrolling guard walks up to a stationed guard, relieves him and takes his post, and the relieved guard goes on patrol.
Caravan rules: one wagon for every ten levels (level 10: 1, 20: 2, 30: 3 ...), up to 16 animals at level 20 (8 pullers and 8 more); the three wagon sizes are now a cart (1 animal), a wagon (2) and a covered wagon (4); all the animals on one wagon must be the same kind; the caravan travels at the pace of its slowest unit (a mule holds a riding horse back; shoes make an animal faster); a horse is faster than a mule, a mule carries more than a horse.
Mount gear is now worn by each animal (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes and the carrot on a stick): the Animals window has a picker for your animals with their pace, carry, feed and stamina savings and four gear slots to fill from your pack. Old worn mount gear moves to your first animal.
Now and then a patrolling guard walks into the narrow alleys between the buildings and looks about.
The Animals window shows what each animal, cart and wagon is carrying (your goods are shared out: you first, then the carts, then animals walking free), and what you carry yourself.
Five ledgers, worn in their own ledger slot (no longer the hand): 1 Merchant ledger +1 haggling; 2 Trend ledger shows a green up, red down or grey steady arrow beside every price; 3 Price ledger adds the price charts; 4 Route ledger adds a route book (what each road earns you per hour); 5 Bulletin ledger makes the notice board reach twice as far. Higher ledgers are crafted at the library (scribing) or are on the shelf only now and then. Old ledgers move to the new slot. Pedlars and Factors still start with the first.
Chat and the world log keep your scroll position; the world log shows when things really happened.
Purchase codes work however they are typed: dashes and spaces do not matter (253C-B328-F7DD, 253CB328F7DD and 253C B328 F7DD are the same code).
Tutorial: the "Buy this one" arrow now points at the market's row, not at the same good in your own pack (clicking your own row sold it back and sent you round the craft step again).
Bram speaks all of his tutorial lines (the last 34 voice files are in), and his line about ledgers matches the new ledgers.
Tabs: the Character window is now Character, Gear, Pack, Cargo, Skills (and Routes, Contracts when you have them); the town hall is Town clerk (charters), Rule, Notices and Contracts; the inn is Tavern and Travellers' talk; the stable, wagon builder, smithy, general store, clothier, apothecary and library each get Shop, Craft, Lessons (and Books) tabs; the Animals window has Animals and Carts and loads.
Benches: four benches round the well in every town square. Press E to sit (the view drops to seat height; moving or E stands you up). Sitting recovers fatigue 2.5x faster than standing in town (setting: Sitting on a bench), for up to 30 minutes a sit; the inn bed is still the best rest. Bots now sit on benches instead of paying for a bed.
Road benches: every road has a bench on each side at the halfway mark (50%). Stop within 4% of the middle and you recover fatigue at the full town rate (plain roadside is 35%), and your animals rest faster too. The road panel tells you when you are at the bench. Settings: Road bench reach / rest speed.
Buffs on the HUD: a glowing badge (with a tooltip) appears under your bars while you get a bonus, e.g. Resting on a bench or Resting at the road bench. The server sends the list (player_buffs in social.php), so new buffs are one block each. The prompt now says Stand up while you sit.
Fix: going into a building or onto the road while sitting on a bench no longer leaves you stuck sitting; every scene change stands you up.
Everyone starts with a pack mule and a cart hitched behind it (a little hungry and thirsty), 12 hay, and 300 coin (was 60): a real load from the first trade, so bigger purchases and bigger margins. Settings: Starting coins, Starting kit mule / cart / hay / mule fullness. The animal limit is one higher at every level up to 18, and one wagon is allowed from level 1.
Tutorial: a new chapter "Your mule and cart" after the well: Bram introduces the mule (HUD box, load, Animals button), then you water it from your waterskin and feed it hay. Characters part-way through the old tutorial skip these steps. The new lines (animal_1 to animal_5) have no voice files yet.
God panel: Start over / New character (Character tab) makes the god character brand new as after the tutorial: level 2, two trait points, starting kit, mule and cart, tutorial finished.
Mouse wheel zoom: scroll back to pull the camera out behind you and see your own character (walking, idle or sitting), scroll forward to return to first person. Works in town, buildings (a short way) and on the road.
Your log: the log panel has a World log / Your log tab. Your log lists what you did (bought, sold, drank, took a contract, travelled...), with times, from the server (so it also shows what a bot did for the character). Server keeps the last 300 lines per player.
Stream mode for admin characters (bots/botsim.py --watch --tokens FILE): a bot plays the on-screen character visibly: the window walks to the door, shop trader, gate, well or bench by itself and uses them like E would, then the bot trades. Not in the Steam/itch player experience (admin accounts only). Add #nogod to the game address to skip the god window.
Animals move: mules and horses swing their legs as they walk (diagonal pairs), nod their heads, flick their tails, and idle with a slow sway and now and then a grazing dip.
God panel: Bot mode on/off (Character tab). With the resident runner (bots/start_autopilot.bat) going, a bot plays the god character visibly while Bot mode is ON; OFF hands it back.
Tutorial: Bram's skills and books paragraph moved from the long tour (before the level-up) to his goodbye after you spend your points; the repeated 'press I' line is gone. New lines: animal_1 to animal_5; reworded: future_3, future_4, bye_1 (no voice yet; text shows, the voice is silent until recorded).
God Bot mode button now starts the bot runner itself (local machine) when it is not running, restarts it if the list of bot characters changed, and the I play button stops it when no other character is on Bot mode. The 30-bot simulation is a separate process and is never touched.
HUD: while you craft, a box under your bars shows what you are making, a progress bar with the percentage and the time left (and where to collect it when it is ready).
Road lamps and lamplighters: every road has lamp posts (about every 1.5 km). Every town owns at least one road (all 21 roads are covered; a town with several takes them in turn, one a night). At dusk the owner's lamplighter rides his road on a horse lighting the posts as he passes; at dawn he rides home putting them out. A lit road makes the bandit gang 40% less likely to stop you (setting: Lamps: bandit chance). Settings: rider speed, spacing, bandit effect. Test lamps.php.
Website: a Live page (live.html): a map with a dot for every traveller (no names, no coin; gold in towns, teal on the roads) and a feed of what each town needs or has plenty of, plus the world news. Reads the game's new no-login public_world action (cached 30 s).
Sit anywhere in a town: press X (or type /sit) to sit down where you stand, in the square or inside a building, and X, E or walking to get up. Sitting gives the rest buff (ground 1.8x faster fatigue recovery, a bench 2.5x; setting: Sitting on the ground) and shows on the HUD. /sit used to do nothing for you (it only showed other players a pose); now it is the same as X. Your own character is drawn sitting when you zoom out.
Sitting looks right: on a bench your character sits ON the seat at seat height, facing the way the bench faces (benches' seats are lower, 0.5 m, like the inn stools); on the ground they sit lower. Other players see you on the bench too (the server now says which bench).
Sound: crickets at night outdoors in towns and on roads (a procedural chirp on top of the forest bed), a louder market murmur (in the square near the market, inside the market, and the town's daytime crowd).
Sound: the town square now has the murmur of people all day (busy 8-19, an evening crowd to 23, a few voices early morning, nearly silent at night, a bustle at midday).
The bulletin clippings (fifth-tier ledger) now report every good, not only staples: who needs what (how many hours of supply are left) and who has plenty (how many in stock), in red and green, the same facts as the website's Live page.
World map: a scroll with a count on every town your open contracts deliver to, and a note under the town you are in saying how many contracts are on offer. (Your own accepted deliveries keep their gold ring.)
Company window: a warning when the rent falls due within two days and the bank cannot pay it (the halls will lock in N hours), and a rent balance check: the next rent after your standing discount, how many rents the bank covers, what dues bring in per rent period and the net.
Travel bell: a new craftable (smithy, smithing 1, 2 iron + 1 nails; famed at Ironhold), worn in its own Bell slot on the pack; it rings three times and flashes the window title when your walk along a road ends, so you can look away while you walk. AFK mode: after five minutes with no mouse or keys in a town your character sits down to rest (with the sitting bonus) and gets up when you move.
A riding crop in your hand with a beast on the road: the crack of a whip every 30 to 70 seconds (the crop already made your animal faster).
The XP curve now fits the pacing table exactly with a quartic term: level 1 costs 100, 5: 2,500, 10: 25,000, 15: 150,000, 19: 600,000 (the old cubic gave 288,000 at 19); the early levels are unchanged. New settings: XP curve Q and K.
Stream captions: in watch mode the bot says what it is doing and why on screen (a caption at the bottom for twelve seconds: the route it planned, why it is buying, what it sold for against what it paid, why it is sitting down).
Bram tells two more road stories on the first walk: looking after your mule (road_story_7) and the halfway bench and the lamplighters (road_story_8). No voice yet.
Ops: tools/ubuntu_backup.sh (a nightly database dump with 14 days kept, for the Ubuntu server), tools/check_https.py (certificate, http-to-https redirect, game server answer; the host certificate is Let's Encrypt, valid to 2026-11-25), and an http-to-https redirect (site/.htaccess, goes to tro/.htaccess on the host: keep any rules already in it).
Lamplighters in town: each dusk and dawn the lamplighter who owns tonight's road rides out of his town's gate from the stable; the one who looked after that road rides in at the far end and stables his horse (and the reverse at dawn).
Fog of war and exploring: a new character knows only the start town and the towns one road from it; the rest of the world map lies under dark clouds marked ?. Walking into a new town clears it for good and pays 15 XP (setting: Exploring). Characters made before this know the whole map. God panel: Map: reveal the whole map / bring the fog back.
Route planning: click a town that is several roads away on the map and choose Walk the whole route: you set off and, on reaching each town on the way, carry straight on without stopping (with a banner and a Cancel the route button; if you close the game you simply stop at the next town). Cartography: the regional map (library, scribing 2, 2 paper + 1 ink; famed at Greywater), a carried item you read once to bring the three nearest unknown towns out of the fog.
Carrier pigeons: a bird from the general store; in the tavern's Travellers' talk you send it to another town, it flies there and back (0.5 km/s each way), and the prices it saw go into YOUR ledger when it is back (Character window, Pigeons tab): private intelligence nobody else can read.
Animals and carts in the world: other travellers' mules, carts and wagons now walk the road behind them in the road view (they were only in town), and the stable yard has a 3D mule and horse at the rail that swish their tails and nod (replacing the flat picture).
Stream: add #stream to the game address for a recording layout (no side panel, no god window, bigger log and captions). bots/twitch_votes.py reads your Twitch chat for !go <town> votes (a minute at a time) and the watching bot walks to the winner; needs your own chat token (see the top of the file).
Pigeons, your own: launch one from your caravan anywhere in a town (Character window, Pigeons tab: pick a town, Launch it; no tavern needed). You see the pigeon take off from your caravan and fly out over that town's gate, with the sound of wings; when it is back it flies in and lands on your caravan (wings again) and the news is in your Pigeons tab. The HUD shows Pigeon out. If you try to leave town while it is still out you are warned that it will not be able to find you: wait for it, or leave and abandon it.
Gear you can see: what a character holds and wears is drawn on their model for everyone, and you see yours when you zoom out: a walking stick, riding crop, lantern, brass scale or quill in the right hand; your ledger (its colour shows the tier) in the left; a satchel, rucksack, pack frame or crate on the body; reading glasses; a pedometer and a travel bell at the belt. The server sends it with every player (worn). First version of the props: simple blocky shapes, more to come (clothes, hoods, belts).
Towns dressed with real models (free CC0 packs): barrels, crates, buckets and bags against the walls, a market stall and produce crates at the market door, parked carts by the stable and the wagon builder, firewood and barrels at the tavern, a banner at the town hall, an anvil at the smithy, a bucket at the well, signposts at the gates. Each town always looks the same; props never block a door, a gate or the way. Your cart is now the real two-wheeled cart model, and a carrot on a stick, saddlebags and a harness show on your animals.
Emotes (/dance etc.) print "Name dances" in everyone's town chat in an action colour (no toast); you see yourself emote; emotes end when you step; / focuses chat; /help; god Ride keeps the caravan; riders sit on their horse
Character and user names unique ignoring case/spaces/dashes; dev/admin-looking words reserved except for admin accounts; live name check on the creation screen
Reloading puts you back exactly where you stood (town or room); name refusals say only that the name is taken; no synthetic smithy bell while the recording loads, softer well drips
The smithy hammers on a timetable from the server clock, a few strikes every few seconds, so everyone near it hears the same hammering at the same moments
Every place sound (smithy, market, tavern, stable, well), thunder, dog barks and crickets are timed from the server clock: everyone in the same place hears the same thing at the same moment
Every sound is on the shared server clock: music (one playlist in step for everyone), ambience beds, hour chime, wagon creaks, whip
Sounds of what other people do nearby (coins at the counter, doors, crafting) are heard by everyone in the same town or room, louder when closer
**HUD overhaul.** Items are icon tiles (quality-coloured border and glyph, durability bar, count) with the words in a pop-up; every item has an icon. Vitals and animal bars on the left, a buff panel (icons with timers) down the right of the view, an action bar of four slots on keys 1-4 (right-click a slot to choose: right hand, drink, eat, bandage, fill, water animal, feed dog).
**Whip and riding crop.** Whip (craft at the stable, leatherwork 3): held in the right hand, use it from the action bar on the road: +5/10/20/40/60% speed for 10 s by quality, then 30 s rest. Riding crop moved to the off hand: a steady +1/2/3/4/5% for the horse you ride. They stack with each other and with horseshoes. Settings in the god panel (Items).
Whip and crop are drawn in the hands; the whip cracks; sound of nearby players' coins, doors and crafting are heard by everyone in the room
Towables: starter = walled farm wagon, middle = open Kenney cart, top = Kenney cart with rails and load. The smithy has a workbench with an anvil, and its smiths walk between the forges and the bench on a timetable from the server clock: everyone in the room sees the same smith at the same place at the same moment
Animals look about like real ones: every few seconds a new look (turn, tip, raise, lower, the odd long graze), eased, and the same for everyone because it follows the server clock
**Ledger on the road.** Your ledger writes down the prices of every market you stand in. From the trend ledger up you can read those notes anywhere (Character, Ledger tab): trend ledger = last three towns, with arrows and where your load sells best; price ledger = every town and charts of the day before you left; route ledger = best trades in your notes; bulletin ledger = who wants what. The plain merchant ledger only keeps notes. The price chart now opens beside the shop window instead of under it
Items table got an index on animal_id (every request scanned all items); `xp_mult_floor` setting so the XP pacing rate works at levels 1 to 4
Windows no longer freeze you: walk with the Character sheet, the Ledger or a shop window open. A shop window closes when you walk away from the merchant
The God mode button moved from the top bar into Settings (Game tab, admins only)
Stream mode: the bot now looks through its own screens like a player planning ahead: the map before setting off, and on the road now and then its map, gear, pack, skills, animals, ledger and route book, with a caption saying why
Admin site: restyled to match the game and the website; new pages Models (every model we own in a 3D viewer, including the ones the game ships), Sounds (every recording and named game sound, with play buttons), Icons (all 153 with credits) and Images. On the live server the Sounds and Images pages are lists only. New tools: tools/make_sound_index.py, make_icon_index.py, make_image_index.py, make_model_extras.py; web/api/reset_admin.php (command line) and tools/make_remote_reset.php (a one-use page for the host) reset the admin password
**Loads tab** (Animals window): an inventory for each container (you, each rolling cart or wagon, each animal walking free) with empty spaces and goods as icons; drag or click a stack to move it between them, and the arrangement stays as you set it. The Carts tab now lets you pick a cart and shows its condition as a bar. Bots mend their carts at a wagon builder when they are worn
Voice: 16 missing Bram lines, the new `future_8` and `controls_1`/`controls_2` cut from the ElevenLabs recording (`controls_3`/`controls_4` still to record)
Cart and wagon wheels turn as you travel (they roll with the distance covered; the small wagon's wheels were cut out of its single model so they can spin)
Pigeons moved to the Animals window; carts are numbered Cart 1, Cart 2; boxes around each cart, animal and container
**Cargo is drawn in the cart.** What a cart holds is piled in its bed, sized by how full it is and made of the goods' own models: fish, logs, planks, stone, bricks, rope, barrels and crates of fruit where we have them; sacks for grain, flour and the small things; boxes and chests for the rest. Everyone who looks at your cart sees the same load
**Hero character screen.** The Character tab is now one screen: your backpack (empty slots shown) on the left, you in 3D in the middle with what you wear around you (head, face, clothes, belt, feet; right hand, off hand, tool, pack, charm; ledger, bell, blanket, pillow, plush), and your level, traits, coin, bank and load on the right. Click an item for its details, double-click to wear it or take it off. The Gear and Pack tabs are folded into it
**Packing takes time.** Moving goods between you, your carts and your animals is now a job of a few seconds (1.5 s plus 0.12 s per weight, never more than 14 s) with a progress bar in the middle of the screen ("Packing 5 fish into cart 1"); you stand still while it runs, and on the road you must stop first. Carts can also store items (6 in a cart, 12 in a wagon, 20 in a covered wagon): drag items between your backpack and a cart in the Loads tab. Click an empty slot on the Character screen to see what you have for it, on you or in a cart (unpacking it first). All of it is server-timed and in the settings table
Character sheet: the backpack has its own Inventory tab; the traits (and trait points) moved to the Skills tab; the Character tab has experience across the top and you with what you wear. The 3D figure stops turning while you turn it and starts again 5 seconds after you let go
**More ways to be quicker on the road.** Travelling boots (you), spurs (a new Spurs slot, riding), carrots on a stick now speed the animal wearing them, axle grease (a pot, used on a cart from Animals, Carts and loads: faster and less wear for 80 km), endurance helps on foot, a fed dog speeds the whole caravan by 2% per level (it gains levels as it walks with you), travelling light, and roads you have run before. See SPEED_IDEAS.md for what else could come

Version 0.4.1 2026-10-15

Rooms dressed with real furniture and models, a Mount and Dismount button, new default volumes, a log that no longer gives prices away, and many smaller fixes.

All 106 changes

TOWN MODEL UPGRADE, rooms (first pass, for review): every room is dressed with real models, positioned against the walls with the doorway always kept clear. Inn: twin bed, keg, decorated tables with tablecloths and chairs, a chandelier, a shelf of bottles behind the innkeeper. Smithy: whetstone, log anvil, stacked boxes, a small table. Wagon builder: anvil, workbench, stacked boxes, small table, rope. Market and general store: goods on the counters, stacked crates and decorated boxes. Apothecary: bottles and potions on the counter and shelves. Bank: cabinets, cages, scrolls and coin piles. Library: real bookcases full of books. Stable: buckets and rope. Town hall: scrolls and a cabinet. Lit wall torches in every room. Liquid goods (ale, wine, honey) now use the Survival Kit bottles.
The interior exit door is the building's own outside door model (see above); the model loader now retries a failed download and forgets failures (before, one network hiccup made a model fail for the rest of the session). Dev tools: tools/add_props.py (copy models from the packs), tools/devserve.py (a test web server that does not refuse bursts).
Mount / Dismount button in the top bar beside your travel mode (shown when you have a horse that is not hitched to a wagon): Dismount makes you walk with your animals following, Mount puts you on the horse. In a town only (greyed on the road, with a tooltip).
The exit door inside every building is now the same door model the building has outside (same frame, same door, same style per building), instead of a plain box.
New default volumes (for anyone who has not set their own): Music 19%, Voice 100%, Effects 71%, Ambience 39%.
Your log no longer gives numbers away (it must not do the ledger's job): "Bought 6 Wool for 36 coin + 1 tax." now reads "You bought Wool.", sales read "You sold Meat.", and trips read "Set off for Oakmere." with no distance. Meals, water and the like keep their coin. Older lines are cleaned when shown.
The World log and the Bot log are not in the game window at all any more (they gave hints players are meant to discover): the game window has only Your log. Admins find both in the God panel, new Logs tab.
Settings > Account (bottom): a line saying when the game's files last changed and when this window started, and whether newer files are waiting (so a developer can tell at a glance that a restart is needed).
No map button in the side panel any more (town or road): the map opens and closes from the top bar's "where you are" button, or with M. The tutorial's tour now points at that top bar button.
Townsperson hint for poor characters: now "Down to your last coins? The clerk at the town hall posts small courier jobs. The town pays you on delivery."
The World log and the Bot log tabs are for god mode only (everyone else sees just Your log). No bot messages appear on the play screen any more (the on-screen bot caption is gone; the bot's words are in the Bot log tab). The map's zoom buttons only show while the map is showing.
ONE ITEM PER HAND: each hand holds one thing, and an item does nothing unless it is held. The five ledgers and the riding crop can go in either hand (the left is usual); a new ledger replaces the one you hold. Ledgers no longer have their own slot, so you only read a ledger (trend arrows, charts, route book, haggling) while it is in a hand. Equipping asks which hand ("Hold in right hand" / "Hold in left hand" / "Move to the other hand"). Worn ledgers are moved into the left hand (or the right, or the pack) when the server upgrades. The action bar now has a button for each hand (default bar: right hand, left hand, drink, eat); the left-hand button opens the ledger you hold.
The "Back to the road view (M)" button is gone too while the world map is open on the road (the top bar's "where you are" or M toggles it).
The "Back to the town (M)" button is gone from the side panel while the world map is open in town: the top bar's "where you are" button (or M) toggles the map.
Camera pivot: hold the MIDDLE mouse button and drag to swing the camera round your character (it pulls back so you can see yourself). Let go and the view STAYS where you put it until you press a movement key or use the normal look/steer drag, then it eases back behind you.
Guards: every town keeps a gate watch of at least 2 guards (new admin setting "Guards always on duty", 0 = none) however empty its guard pot is; the pot adds more on top. For show only: road protection still comes from the pot alone.
Townsperson hint for poor characters: dropped the trailing "No deposit, a small fee." from the line about errands at the town hall.
The top bar's travel item (Pack mule, horse, On foot) opens and closes the Animals window.
FIX: every looping sound bed was silent since 0.3.0: the market and square murmur, road footsteps, mule and horse steps, wagon roll, fire, wind, rain and the nature beds never started (a code comment swallowed the lines that start them). They play again. The hoofbeat bed that was added with them is one per animal.
The leather satchel is turned a quarter turn on the body so its wide face lies against the hip (needs an eyes-on check: the old sideways look was reported).
Stable shop text: the riding crop, the whip and the carrot on a stick now show their real edge by quality (crop 1 to 5% faster, whip a burst of 5 to 60%, carrot 2 to 8%) instead of the old base number. The numbers follow the admin settings.
Top bar is clickable: your name and your level/XP open the character sheet, the carry weight opens the Inventory tab (click again to close), and "where you are" shows or hides the world map.
The white dot in the centre of the screen is gone (the cross-hair mouse cursor is unchanged for now).
Well house and watchtower: they block only the one cell they stand on, so there is no longer an invisible wall about 3 m out from the building. Bigger works (granary, market hall, lamp row, paved road) still block their 3x3 block.
Website live map: a legend under the map (yellow dot = in a town, aqua dot = on the road), and travellers bunched together on a road fan out in a small ring with their names stacked, so labels no longer overlap.
Tools and notes only: test status window (tools/status.py), host bot scripts (bots/host_bots_setup.py, tools/pi/host_bots.sh), Pi batches night5 to night8, BUILD_LIST.md rewritten, old build folders and release zips cleaned out.
The animal panel now lists every animal in your caravan (food, water, stamina and whether it pulls the wagon or walks free), not just the lead one.
New Animals button and window: every animal you own with its feed, water and stamina, how it is doing, whether it pulls the wagon or walks free, your mount gear (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes), and Feed / Water buttons for each animal alone (feed at the stable for coin, or from hay you carry; water from your waterskin). The HUD animal panel now says which animal pulls the wagon.
Mileage: the game now counts how far each character and each animal has walked. A new craftable, the pedometer (smithy, smithing 2, worn on the new belt slot), lets you read it in the Animals window.
Town guards are stationed at the town hall door and at each town entrance, the rest patrol; every 5 min 15 s a patrolling guard walks up to a stationed guard, relieves him and takes his post, and the relieved guard goes on patrol.
Caravan rules: one wagon for every ten levels (level 10: 1, 20: 2, 30: 3 ...), up to 16 animals at level 20 (8 pullers and 8 more); the three wagon sizes are now a cart (1 animal), a wagon (2) and a covered wagon (4); all the animals on one wagon must be the same kind; the caravan travels at the pace of its slowest unit (a mule holds a riding horse back; shoes make an animal faster); a horse is faster than a mule, a mule carries more than a horse.
Mount gear is now worn by each animal (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes and the carrot on a stick): the Animals window has a picker for your animals with their pace, carry, feed and stamina savings and four gear slots to fill from your pack. Old worn mount gear moves to your first animal.
Now and then a patrolling guard walks into the narrow alleys between the buildings and looks about.
The Animals window shows what each animal, cart and wagon is carrying (your goods are shared out: you first, then the carts, then animals walking free), and what you carry yourself.
Five ledgers, worn in their own ledger slot (no longer the hand): 1 Merchant ledger +1 haggling; 2 Trend ledger shows a green up, red down or grey steady arrow beside every price; 3 Price ledger adds the price charts; 4 Route ledger adds a route book (what each road earns you per hour); 5 Bulletin ledger makes the notice board reach twice as far. Higher ledgers are crafted at the library (scribing) or are on the shelf only now and then. Old ledgers move to the new slot. Pedlars and Factors still start with the first.
Chat and the world log keep your scroll position; the world log shows when things really happened.
Purchase codes work however they are typed: dashes and spaces do not matter (253C-B328-F7DD, 253CB328F7DD and 253C B328 F7DD are the same code).
Tutorial: the "Buy this one" arrow now points at the market's row, not at the same good in your own pack (clicking your own row sold it back and sent you round the craft step again).
Bram speaks all of his tutorial lines (the last 34 voice files are in), and his line about ledgers matches the new ledgers.
Tabs: the Character window is now Character, Gear, Pack, Cargo, Skills (and Routes, Contracts when you have them); the town hall is Town clerk (charters), Rule, Notices and Contracts; the inn is Tavern and Travellers' talk; the stable, wagon builder, smithy, general store, clothier, apothecary and library each get Shop, Craft, Lessons (and Books) tabs; the Animals window has Animals and Carts and loads.
Benches: four benches round the well in every town square. Press E to sit (the view drops to seat height; moving or E stands you up). Sitting recovers fatigue 2.5x faster than standing in town (setting: Sitting on a bench), for up to 30 minutes a sit; the inn bed is still the best rest. Bots now sit on benches instead of paying for a bed.
Road benches: every road has a bench on each side at the halfway mark (50%). Stop within 4% of the middle and you recover fatigue at the full town rate (plain roadside is 35%), and your animals rest faster too. The road panel tells you when you are at the bench. Settings: Road bench reach / rest speed.
Buffs on the HUD: a glowing badge (with a tooltip) appears under your bars while you get a bonus, e.g. Resting on a bench or Resting at the road bench. The server sends the list (player_buffs in social.php), so new buffs are one block each. The prompt now says Stand up while you sit.
Fix: going into a building or onto the road while sitting on a bench no longer leaves you stuck sitting; every scene change stands you up.
Everyone starts with a pack mule and a cart hitched behind it (a little hungry and thirsty), 12 hay, and 300 coin (was 60): a real load from the first trade, so bigger purchases and bigger margins. Settings: Starting coins, Starting kit mule / cart / hay / mule fullness. The animal limit is one higher at every level up to 18, and one wagon is allowed from level 1.
Tutorial: a new chapter "Your mule and cart" after the well: Bram introduces the mule (HUD box, load, Animals button), then you water it from your waterskin and feed it hay. Characters part-way through the old tutorial skip these steps. The new lines (animal_1 to animal_5) have no voice files yet.
God panel: Start over / New character (Character tab) makes the god character brand new as after the tutorial: level 2, two trait points, starting kit, mule and cart, tutorial finished.
Mouse wheel zoom: scroll back to pull the camera out behind you and see your own character (walking, idle or sitting), scroll forward to return to first person. Works in town, buildings (a short way) and on the road.
Your log: the log panel has a World log / Your log tab. Your log lists what you did (bought, sold, drank, took a contract, travelled...), with times, from the server (so it also shows what a bot did for the character). Server keeps the last 300 lines per player.
Stream mode for admin characters (bots/botsim.py --watch --tokens FILE): a bot plays the on-screen character visibly: the window walks to the door, shop trader, gate, well or bench by itself and uses them like E would, then the bot trades. Not in the Steam/itch player experience (admin accounts only). Add #nogod to the game address to skip the god window.
Animals move: mules and horses swing their legs as they walk (diagonal pairs), nod their heads, flick their tails, and idle with a slow sway and now and then a grazing dip.
God panel: Bot mode on/off (Character tab). With the resident runner (bots/start_autopilot.bat) going, a bot plays the god character visibly while Bot mode is ON; OFF hands it back.
Tutorial: Bram's skills and books paragraph moved from the long tour (before the level-up) to his goodbye after you spend your points; the repeated 'press I' line is gone. New lines: animal_1 to animal_5; reworded: future_3, future_4, bye_1 (no voice yet; text shows, the voice is silent until recorded).
God Bot mode button now starts the bot runner itself (local machine) when it is not running, restarts it if the list of bot characters changed, and the I play button stops it when no other character is on Bot mode. The 30-bot simulation is a separate process and is never touched.
HUD: while you craft, a box under your bars shows what you are making, a progress bar with the percentage and the time left (and where to collect it when it is ready).
Road lamps and lamplighters: every road has lamp posts (about every 1.5 km). Every town owns at least one road (all 21 roads are covered; a town with several takes them in turn, one a night). At dusk the owner's lamplighter rides his road on a horse lighting the posts as he passes; at dawn he rides home putting them out. A lit road makes the bandit gang 40% less likely to stop you (setting: Lamps: bandit chance). Settings: rider speed, spacing, bandit effect. Test lamps.php.
Website: a Live page (live.html): a map with a dot for every traveller (no names, no coin; gold in towns, teal on the roads) and a feed of what each town needs or has plenty of, plus the world news. Reads the game's new no-login public_world action (cached 30 s).
Sit anywhere in a town: press X (or type /sit) to sit down where you stand, in the square or inside a building, and X, E or walking to get up. Sitting gives the rest buff (ground 1.8x faster fatigue recovery, a bench 2.5x; setting: Sitting on the ground) and shows on the HUD. /sit used to do nothing for you (it only showed other players a pose); now it is the same as X. Your own character is drawn sitting when you zoom out.
Sitting looks right: on a bench your character sits ON the seat at seat height, facing the way the bench faces (benches' seats are lower, 0.5 m, like the inn stools); on the ground they sit lower. Other players see you on the bench too (the server now says which bench).
Sound: crickets at night outdoors in towns and on roads (a procedural chirp on top of the forest bed), a louder market murmur (in the square near the market, inside the market, and the town's daytime crowd).
Sound: the town square now has the murmur of people all day (busy 8-19, an evening crowd to 23, a few voices early morning, nearly silent at night, a bustle at midday).
The bulletin clippings (fifth-tier ledger) now report every good, not only staples: who needs what (how many hours of supply are left) and who has plenty (how many in stock), in red and green, the same facts as the website's Live page.
World map: a scroll with a count on every town your open contracts deliver to, and a note under the town you are in saying how many contracts are on offer. (Your own accepted deliveries keep their gold ring.)
Company window: a warning when the rent falls due within two days and the bank cannot pay it (the halls will lock in N hours), and a rent balance check: the next rent after your standing discount, how many rents the bank covers, what dues bring in per rent period and the net.
Travel bell: a new craftable (smithy, smithing 1, 2 iron + 1 nails; famed at Ironhold), worn in its own Bell slot on the pack; it rings three times and flashes the window title when your walk along a road ends, so you can look away while you walk. AFK mode: after five minutes with no mouse or keys in a town your character sits down to rest (with the sitting bonus) and gets up when you move.
A riding crop in your hand with a beast on the road: the crack of a whip every 30 to 70 seconds (the crop already made your animal faster).
The XP curve now fits the pacing table exactly with a quartic term: level 1 costs 100, 5: 2,500, 10: 25,000, 15: 150,000, 19: 600,000 (the old cubic gave 288,000 at 19); the early levels are unchanged. New settings: XP curve Q and K.
Stream captions: in watch mode the bot says what it is doing and why on screen (a caption at the bottom for twelve seconds: the route it planned, why it is buying, what it sold for against what it paid, why it is sitting down).
Bram tells two more road stories on the first walk: looking after your mule (road_story_7) and the halfway bench and the lamplighters (road_story_8). No voice yet.
Ops: tools/ubuntu_backup.sh (a nightly database dump with 14 days kept, for the Ubuntu server), tools/check_https.py (certificate, http-to-https redirect, game server answer; the host certificate is Let's Encrypt, valid to 2026-11-25), and an http-to-https redirect (site/.htaccess, goes to tro/.htaccess on the host: keep any rules already in it).
Lamplighters in town: each dusk and dawn the lamplighter who owns tonight's road rides out of his town's gate from the stable; the one who looked after that road rides in at the far end and stables his horse (and the reverse at dawn).
Fog of war and exploring: a new character knows only the start town and the towns one road from it; the rest of the world map lies under dark clouds marked ?. Walking into a new town clears it for good and pays 15 XP (setting: Exploring). Characters made before this know the whole map. God panel: Map: reveal the whole map / bring the fog back.
Route planning: click a town that is several roads away on the map and choose Walk the whole route: you set off and, on reaching each town on the way, carry straight on without stopping (with a banner and a Cancel the route button; if you close the game you simply stop at the next town). Cartography: the regional map (library, scribing 2, 2 paper + 1 ink; famed at Greywater), a carried item you read once to bring the three nearest unknown towns out of the fog.
Carrier pigeons: a bird from the general store; in the tavern's Travellers' talk you send it to another town, it flies there and back (0.5 km/s each way), and the prices it saw go into YOUR ledger when it is back (Character window, Pigeons tab): private intelligence nobody else can read.
Animals and carts in the world: other travellers' mules, carts and wagons now walk the road behind them in the road view (they were only in town), and the stable yard has a 3D mule and horse at the rail that swish their tails and nod (replacing the flat picture).
Stream: add #stream to the game address for a recording layout (no side panel, no god window, bigger log and captions). bots/twitch_votes.py reads your Twitch chat for !go <town> votes (a minute at a time) and the watching bot walks to the winner; needs your own chat token (see the top of the file).
Pigeons, your own: launch one from your caravan anywhere in a town (Character window, Pigeons tab: pick a town, Launch it; no tavern needed). You see the pigeon take off from your caravan and fly out over that town's gate, with the sound of wings; when it is back it flies in and lands on your caravan (wings again) and the news is in your Pigeons tab. The HUD shows Pigeon out. If you try to leave town while it is still out you are warned that it will not be able to find you: wait for it, or leave and abandon it.
Gear you can see: what a character holds and wears is drawn on their model for everyone, and you see yours when you zoom out: a walking stick, riding crop, lantern, brass scale or quill in the right hand; your ledger (its colour shows the tier) in the left; a satchel, rucksack, pack frame or crate on the body; reading glasses; a pedometer and a travel bell at the belt. The server sends it with every player (worn). First version of the props: simple blocky shapes, more to come (clothes, hoods, belts).
Towns dressed with real models (free CC0 packs): barrels, crates, buckets and bags against the walls, a market stall and produce crates at the market door, parked carts by the stable and the wagon builder, firewood and barrels at the tavern, a banner at the town hall, an anvil at the smithy, a bucket at the well, signposts at the gates. Each town always looks the same; props never block a door, a gate or the way. Your cart is now the real two-wheeled cart model, and a carrot on a stick, saddlebags and a harness show on your animals.
Emotes (/dance etc.) print "Name dances" in everyone's town chat in an action colour (no toast); you see yourself emote; emotes end when you step; / focuses chat; /help; god Ride keeps the caravan; riders sit on their horse
Character and user names unique ignoring case/spaces/dashes; dev/admin-looking words reserved except for admin accounts; live name check on the creation screen
Reloading puts you back exactly where you stood (town or room); name refusals say only that the name is taken; no synthetic smithy bell while the recording loads, softer well drips
The smithy hammers on a timetable from the server clock, a few strikes every few seconds, so everyone near it hears the same hammering at the same moments
Every place sound (smithy, market, tavern, stable, well), thunder, dog barks and crickets are timed from the server clock: everyone in the same place hears the same thing at the same moment
Every sound is on the shared server clock: music (one playlist in step for everyone), ambience beds, hour chime, wagon creaks, whip
Sounds of what other people do nearby (coins at the counter, doors, crafting) are heard by everyone in the same town or room, louder when closer
**HUD overhaul.** Items are icon tiles (quality-coloured border and glyph, durability bar, count) with the words in a pop-up; every item has an icon. Vitals and animal bars on the left, a buff panel (icons with timers) down the right of the view, an action bar of four slots on keys 1-4 (right-click a slot to choose: right hand, drink, eat, bandage, fill, water animal, feed dog).
**Whip and riding crop.** Whip (craft at the stable, leatherwork 3): held in the right hand, use it from the action bar on the road: +5/10/20/40/60% speed for 10 s by quality, then 30 s rest. Riding crop moved to the off hand: a steady +1/2/3/4/5% for the horse you ride. They stack with each other and with horseshoes. Settings in the god panel (Items).
Whip and crop are drawn in the hands; the whip cracks; sound of nearby players' coins, doors and crafting are heard by everyone in the room
Towables: starter = walled farm wagon, middle = open Kenney cart, top = Kenney cart with rails and load. The smithy has a workbench with an anvil, and its smiths walk between the forges and the bench on a timetable from the server clock: everyone in the room sees the same smith at the same place at the same moment
Animals look about like real ones: every few seconds a new look (turn, tip, raise, lower, the odd long graze), eased, and the same for everyone because it follows the server clock
**Ledger on the road.** Your ledger writes down the prices of every market you stand in. From the trend ledger up you can read those notes anywhere (Character, Ledger tab): trend ledger = last three towns, with arrows and where your load sells best; price ledger = every town and charts of the day before you left; route ledger = best trades in your notes; bulletin ledger = who wants what. The plain merchant ledger only keeps notes. The price chart now opens beside the shop window instead of under it
Items table got an index on animal_id (every request scanned all items); `xp_mult_floor` setting so the XP pacing rate works at levels 1 to 4
Windows no longer freeze you: walk with the Character sheet, the Ledger or a shop window open. A shop window closes when you walk away from the merchant
The God mode button moved from the top bar into Settings (Game tab, admins only)
Stream mode: the bot now looks through its own screens like a player planning ahead: the map before setting off, and on the road now and then its map, gear, pack, skills, animals, ledger and route book, with a caption saying why
Admin site: restyled to match the game and the website; new pages Models (every model we own in a 3D viewer, including the ones the game ships), Sounds (every recording and named game sound, with play buttons), Icons (all 153 with credits) and Images. On the live server the Sounds and Images pages are lists only. New tools: tools/make_sound_index.py, make_icon_index.py, make_image_index.py, make_model_extras.py; web/api/reset_admin.php (command line) and tools/make_remote_reset.php (a one-use page for the host) reset the admin password
**Loads tab** (Animals window): an inventory for each container (you, each rolling cart or wagon, each animal walking free) with empty spaces and goods as icons; drag or click a stack to move it between them, and the arrangement stays as you set it. The Carts tab now lets you pick a cart and shows its condition as a bar. Bots mend their carts at a wagon builder when they are worn
Voice: 16 missing Bram lines, the new `future_8` and `controls_1`/`controls_2` cut from the ElevenLabs recording (`controls_3`/`controls_4` still to record)
Cart and wagon wheels turn as you travel (they roll with the distance covered; the small wagon's wheels were cut out of its single model so they can spin)
Pigeons moved to the Animals window; carts are numbered Cart 1, Cart 2; boxes around each cart, animal and container
**Cargo is drawn in the cart.** What a cart holds is piled in its bed, sized by how full it is and made of the goods' own models: fish, logs, planks, stone, bricks, rope, barrels and crates of fruit where we have them; sacks for grain, flour and the small things; boxes and chests for the rest. Everyone who looks at your cart sees the same load
**Hero character screen.** The Character tab is now one screen: your backpack (empty slots shown) on the left, you in 3D in the middle with what you wear around you (head, face, clothes, belt, feet; right hand, off hand, tool, pack, charm; ledger, bell, blanket, pillow, plush), and your level, traits, coin, bank and load on the right. Click an item for its details, double-click to wear it or take it off. The Gear and Pack tabs are folded into it
**Packing takes time.** Moving goods between you, your carts and your animals is now a job of a few seconds (1.5 s plus 0.12 s per weight, never more than 14 s) with a progress bar in the middle of the screen ("Packing 5 fish into cart 1"); you stand still while it runs, and on the road you must stop first. Carts can also store items (6 in a cart, 12 in a wagon, 20 in a covered wagon): drag items between your backpack and a cart in the Loads tab. Click an empty slot on the Character screen to see what you have for it, on you or in a cart (unpacking it first). All of it is server-timed and in the settings table
Character sheet: the backpack has its own Inventory tab; the traits (and trait points) moved to the Skills tab; the Character tab has experience across the top and you with what you wear. The 3D figure stops turning while you turn it and starts again 5 seconds after you let go
**More ways to be quicker on the road.** Travelling boots (you), spurs (a new Spurs slot, riding), carrots on a stick now speed the animal wearing them, axle grease (a pot, used on a cart from Animals, Carts and loads: faster and less wear for 80 km), endurance helps on foot, a fed dog speeds the whole caravan by 2% per level (it gains levels as it walks with you), travelling light, and roads you have run before. See SPEED_IDEAS.md for what else could come

Version 0.4.0 2026-10-12

Public works (lords have their townsfolk build wells, lamps, watchtowers and roads), five ledgers, benches and sitting, buffs on the screen, road lamps and lamplighters, your own log, a live map on the website, and a better ambience of sound.

All 81 changes

Public works (server): each town's lord picks ONE public work at a time (well house, lamp row, watchtower, paved road, granary, market hall) and the townsfolk build it as players bring the goods; the last item finishes it at once. Players are paid 60% of base price per unit out of the town purse (above a reserve). A finished work is permanent: granary (staple stock cap x1.5), market hall (town size +0.25), watchtower (gang chance -30% on its roads), paved road (trips -20%), well house (unrest growth -20%). All numbers are settings in the group Public works. New tables town_works and town_works_gifts (run setup/migrate), actions works_give / works_list, state.works, world.works.
The animal panel now lists every animal in your caravan (food, water, stamina and whether it pulls the wagon or walks free), not just the lead one.
New Animals button and window: every animal you own with its feed, water and stamina, how it is doing, whether it pulls the wagon or walks free, your mount gear (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes), and Feed / Water buttons for each animal alone (feed at the stable for coin, or from hay you carry; water from your waterskin). The HUD animal panel now says which animal pulls the wagon.
Mileage: the game now counts how far each character and each animal has walked. A new craftable, the pedometer (smithy, smithing 2, worn on the new belt slot), lets you read it in the Animals window.
Town guards are stationed at the town hall door and at each town entrance, the rest patrol; every 5 min 15 s a patrolling guard walks up to a stationed guard, relieves him and takes his post, and the relieved guard goes on patrol.
Caravan rules: one wagon for every ten levels (level 10: 1, 20: 2, 30: 3 ...), up to 16 animals at level 20 (8 pullers and 8 more); the three wagon sizes are now a cart (1 animal), a wagon (2) and a covered wagon (4); all the animals on one wagon must be the same kind; the caravan travels at the pace of its slowest unit (a mule holds a riding horse back; shoes make an animal faster); a horse is faster than a mule, a mule carries more than a horse.
Mount gear is now worn by each animal (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes and the carrot on a stick): the Animals window has a picker for your animals with their pace, carry, feed and stamina savings and four gear slots to fill from your pack. Old worn mount gear moves to your first animal.
Now and then a patrolling guard walks into the narrow alleys between the buildings and looks about.
The Animals window shows what each animal, cart and wagon is carrying (your goods are shared out: you first, then the carts, then animals walking free), and what you carry yourself.
Five ledgers, worn in their own ledger slot (no longer the hand): 1 Merchant ledger +1 haggling; 2 Trend ledger shows a green up, red down or grey steady arrow beside every price; 3 Price ledger adds the price charts; 4 Route ledger adds a route book (what each road earns you per hour); 5 Bulletin ledger makes the notice board reach twice as far. Higher ledgers are crafted at the library (scribing) or are on the shelf only now and then. Old ledgers move to the new slot. Pedlars and Factors still start with the first.
Chat and the world log keep your scroll position; the world log shows when things really happened.
Purchase codes work however they are typed: dashes and spaces do not matter (253C-B328-F7DD, 253CB328F7DD and 253C B328 F7DD are the same code).
Tutorial: the "Buy this one" arrow now points at the market's row, not at the same good in your own pack (clicking your own row sold it back and sent you round the craft step again).
Bram speaks all of his tutorial lines (the last 34 voice files are in), and his line about ledgers matches the new ledgers.
Tabs: the Character window is now Character, Gear, Pack, Cargo, Skills (and Routes, Contracts when you have them); the town hall is Town clerk (charters), Rule, Notices and Contracts; the inn is Tavern and Travellers' talk; the stable, wagon builder, smithy, general store, clothier, apothecary and library each get Shop, Craft, Lessons (and Books) tabs; the Animals window has Animals and Carts and loads.
Benches: four benches round the well in every town square. Press E to sit (the view drops to seat height; moving or E stands you up). Sitting recovers fatigue 2.5x faster than standing in town (setting: Sitting on a bench), for up to 30 minutes a sit; the inn bed is still the best rest. Bots now sit on benches instead of paying for a bed.
Road benches: every road has a bench on each side at the halfway mark (50%). Stop within 4% of the middle and you recover fatigue at the full town rate (plain roadside is 35%), and your animals rest faster too. The road panel tells you when you are at the bench. Settings: Road bench reach / rest speed.
Buffs on the HUD: a glowing badge (with a tooltip) appears under your bars while you get a bonus, e.g. Resting on a bench or Resting at the road bench. The server sends the list (player_buffs in social.php), so new buffs are one block each. The prompt now says Stand up while you sit.
Fix: going into a building or onto the road while sitting on a bench no longer leaves you stuck sitting; every scene change stands you up.
Everyone starts with a pack mule and a cart hitched behind it (a little hungry and thirsty), 12 hay, and 300 coin (was 60): a real load from the first trade, so bigger purchases and bigger margins. Settings: Starting coins, Starting kit mule / cart / hay / mule fullness. The animal limit is one higher at every level up to 18, and one wagon is allowed from level 1.
Tutorial: a new chapter "Your mule and cart" after the well: Bram introduces the mule (HUD box, load, Animals button), then you water it from your waterskin and feed it hay. Characters part-way through the old tutorial skip these steps. The new lines (animal_1 to animal_5) have no voice files yet.
God panel: Start over / New character (Character tab) makes the god character brand new as after the tutorial: level 2, two trait points, starting kit, mule and cart, tutorial finished.
Mouse wheel zoom: scroll back to pull the camera out behind you and see your own character (walking, idle or sitting), scroll forward to return to first person. Works in town, buildings (a short way) and on the road.
Your log: the log panel has a World log / Your log tab. Your log lists what you did (bought, sold, drank, took a contract, travelled...), with times, from the server (so it also shows what a bot did for the character). Server keeps the last 300 lines per player.
Stream mode for admin characters (bots/botsim.py --watch --tokens FILE): a bot plays the on-screen character visibly: the window walks to the door, shop trader, gate, well or bench by itself and uses them like E would, then the bot trades. Not in the Steam/itch player experience (admin accounts only). Add #nogod to the game address to skip the god window.
Animals move: mules and horses swing their legs as they walk (diagonal pairs), nod their heads, flick their tails, and idle with a slow sway and now and then a grazing dip.
God panel: Bot mode on/off (Character tab). With the resident runner (bots/start_autopilot.bat) going, a bot plays the god character visibly while Bot mode is ON; OFF hands it back.
Tutorial: Bram's skills and books paragraph moved from the long tour (before the level-up) to his goodbye after you spend your points; the repeated 'press I' line is gone. New lines: animal_1 to animal_5; reworded: future_3, future_4, bye_1 (no voice yet; text shows, the voice is silent until recorded).
God Bot mode button now starts the bot runner itself (local machine) when it is not running, restarts it if the list of bot characters changed, and the I play button stops it when no other character is on Bot mode. The 30-bot simulation is a separate process and is never touched.
HUD: while you craft, a box under your bars shows what you are making, a progress bar with the percentage and the time left (and where to collect it when it is ready).
Road lamps and lamplighters: every road has lamp posts (about every 1.5 km). Every town owns at least one road (all 21 roads are covered; a town with several takes them in turn, one a night). At dusk the owner's lamplighter rides his road on a horse lighting the posts as he passes; at dawn he rides home putting them out. A lit road makes the bandit gang 40% less likely to stop you (setting: Lamps: bandit chance). Settings: rider speed, spacing, bandit effect. Test lamps.php.
Website: a Live page (live.html): a map with a dot for every traveller (no names, no coin; gold in towns, teal on the roads) and a feed of what each town needs or has plenty of, plus the world news. Reads the game's new no-login public_world action (cached 30 s).
Sit anywhere in a town: press X (or type /sit) to sit down where you stand, in the square or inside a building, and X, E or walking to get up. Sitting gives the rest buff (ground 1.8x faster fatigue recovery, a bench 2.5x; setting: Sitting on the ground) and shows on the HUD. /sit used to do nothing for you (it only showed other players a pose); now it is the same as X. Your own character is drawn sitting when you zoom out.
Sitting looks right: on a bench your character sits ON the seat at seat height, facing the way the bench faces (benches' seats are lower, 0.5 m, like the inn stools); on the ground they sit lower. Other players see you on the bench too (the server now says which bench).
Sound: crickets at night outdoors in towns and on roads (a procedural chirp on top of the forest bed), a louder market murmur (in the square near the market, inside the market, and the town's daytime crowd).
Sound: the town square now has the murmur of people all day (busy 8-19, an evening crowd to 23, a few voices early morning, nearly silent at night, a bustle at midday).
The bulletin clippings (fifth-tier ledger) now report every good, not only staples: who needs what (how many hours of supply are left) and who has plenty (how many in stock), in red and green, the same facts as the website's Live page.
World map: a scroll with a count on every town your open contracts deliver to, and a note under the town you are in saying how many contracts are on offer. (Your own accepted deliveries keep their gold ring.)
Company window: a warning when the rent falls due within two days and the bank cannot pay it (the halls will lock in N hours), and a rent balance check: the next rent after your standing discount, how many rents the bank covers, what dues bring in per rent period and the net.
Travel bell: a new craftable (smithy, smithing 1, 2 iron + 1 nails; famed at Ironhold), worn in its own Bell slot on the pack; it rings three times and flashes the window title when your walk along a road ends, so you can look away while you walk. AFK mode: after five minutes with no mouse or keys in a town your character sits down to rest (with the sitting bonus) and gets up when you move.
A riding crop in your hand with a beast on the road: the crack of a whip every 30 to 70 seconds (the crop already made your animal faster).
The XP curve now fits the pacing table exactly with a quartic term: level 1 costs 100, 5: 2,500, 10: 25,000, 15: 150,000, 19: 600,000 (the old cubic gave 288,000 at 19); the early levels are unchanged. New settings: XP curve Q and K.
Stream captions: in watch mode the bot says what it is doing and why on screen (a caption at the bottom for twelve seconds: the route it planned, why it is buying, what it sold for against what it paid, why it is sitting down).
Bram tells two more road stories on the first walk: looking after your mule (road_story_7) and the halfway bench and the lamplighters (road_story_8). No voice yet.
Ops: tools/ubuntu_backup.sh (a nightly database dump with 14 days kept, for the Ubuntu server), tools/check_https.py (certificate, http-to-https redirect, game server answer; the host certificate is Let's Encrypt, valid to 2026-11-25), and an http-to-https redirect (site/.htaccess, goes to tro/.htaccess on the host: keep any rules already in it).
Lamplighters in town: each dusk and dawn the lamplighter who owns tonight's road rides out of his town's gate from the stable; the one who looked after that road rides in at the far end and stables his horse (and the reverse at dawn).
Fog of war and exploring: a new character knows only the start town and the towns one road from it; the rest of the world map lies under dark clouds marked ?. Walking into a new town clears it for good and pays 15 XP (setting: Exploring). Characters made before this know the whole map. God panel: Map: reveal the whole map / bring the fog back.
Route planning: click a town that is several roads away on the map and choose Walk the whole route: you set off and, on reaching each town on the way, carry straight on without stopping (with a banner and a Cancel the route button; if you close the game you simply stop at the next town). Cartography: the regional map (library, scribing 2, 2 paper + 1 ink; famed at Greywater), a carried item you read once to bring the three nearest unknown towns out of the fog.
Carrier pigeons: a bird from the general store; in the tavern's Travellers' talk you send it to another town, it flies there and back (0.5 km/s each way), and the prices it saw go into YOUR ledger when it is back (Character window, Pigeons tab): private intelligence nobody else can read.
Animals and carts in the world: other travellers' mules, carts and wagons now walk the road behind them in the road view (they were only in town), and the stable yard has a 3D mule and horse at the rail that swish their tails and nod (replacing the flat picture).
Stream: add #stream to the game address for a recording layout (no side panel, no god window, bigger log and captions). bots/twitch_votes.py reads your Twitch chat for !go <town> votes (a minute at a time) and the watching bot walks to the winner; needs your own chat token (see the top of the file).
Pigeons, your own: launch one from your caravan anywhere in a town (Character window, Pigeons tab: pick a town, Launch it; no tavern needed). You see the pigeon take off from your caravan and fly out over that town's gate, with the sound of wings; when it is back it flies in and lands on your caravan (wings again) and the news is in your Pigeons tab. The HUD shows Pigeon out. If you try to leave town while it is still out you are warned that it will not be able to find you: wait for it, or leave and abandon it.
Gear you can see: what a character holds and wears is drawn on their model for everyone, and you see yours when you zoom out: a walking stick, riding crop, lantern, brass scale or quill in the right hand; your ledger (its colour shows the tier) in the left; a satchel, rucksack, pack frame or crate on the body; reading glasses; a pedometer and a travel bell at the belt. The server sends it with every player (worn). First version of the props: simple blocky shapes, more to come (clothes, hoods, belts).
Towns dressed with real models (free CC0 packs): barrels, crates, buckets and bags against the walls, a market stall and produce crates at the market door, parked carts by the stable and the wagon builder, firewood and barrels at the tavern, a banner at the town hall, an anvil at the smithy, a bucket at the well, signposts at the gates. Each town always looks the same; props never block a door, a gate or the way. Your cart is now the real two-wheeled cart model, and a carrot on a stick, saddlebags and a harness show on your animals.
Emotes (/dance etc.) print "Name dances" in everyone's town chat in an action colour (no toast); you see yourself emote; emotes end when you step; / focuses chat; /help; god Ride keeps the caravan; riders sit on their horse
Character and user names unique ignoring case/spaces/dashes; dev/admin-looking words reserved except for admin accounts; live name check on the creation screen
Reloading puts you back exactly where you stood (town or room); name refusals say only that the name is taken; no synthetic smithy bell while the recording loads, softer well drips
The smithy hammers on a timetable from the server clock, a few strikes every few seconds, so everyone near it hears the same hammering at the same moments
Every place sound (smithy, market, tavern, stable, well), thunder, dog barks and crickets are timed from the server clock: everyone in the same place hears the same thing at the same moment
Every sound is on the shared server clock: music (one playlist in step for everyone), ambience beds, hour chime, wagon creaks, whip
Sounds of what other people do nearby (coins at the counter, doors, crafting) are heard by everyone in the same town or room, louder when closer
**HUD overhaul.** Items are icon tiles (quality-coloured border and glyph, durability bar, count) with the words in a pop-up; every item has an icon. Vitals and animal bars on the left, a buff panel (icons with timers) down the right of the view, an action bar of four slots on keys 1-4 (right-click a slot to choose: right hand, drink, eat, bandage, fill, water animal, feed dog).
**Whip and riding crop.** Whip (craft at the stable, leatherwork 3): held in the right hand, use it from the action bar on the road: +5/10/20/40/60% speed for 10 s by quality, then 30 s rest. Riding crop moved to the off hand: a steady +1/2/3/4/5% for the horse you ride. They stack with each other and with horseshoes. Settings in the god panel (Items).
Whip and crop are drawn in the hands; the whip cracks; sound of nearby players' coins, doors and crafting are heard by everyone in the room
Towables: starter = walled farm wagon, middle = open Kenney cart, top = Kenney cart with rails and load. The smithy has a workbench with an anvil, and its smiths walk between the forges and the bench on a timetable from the server clock: everyone in the room sees the same smith at the same place at the same moment
Animals look about like real ones: every few seconds a new look (turn, tip, raise, lower, the odd long graze), eased, and the same for everyone because it follows the server clock
**Ledger on the road.** Your ledger writes down the prices of every market you stand in. From the trend ledger up you can read those notes anywhere (Character, Ledger tab): trend ledger = last three towns, with arrows and where your load sells best; price ledger = every town and charts of the day before you left; route ledger = best trades in your notes; bulletin ledger = who wants what. The plain merchant ledger only keeps notes. The price chart now opens beside the shop window instead of under it
Items table got an index on animal_id (every request scanned all items); `xp_mult_floor` setting so the XP pacing rate works at levels 1 to 4
Windows no longer freeze you: walk with the Character sheet, the Ledger or a shop window open. A shop window closes when you walk away from the merchant
The God mode button moved from the top bar into Settings (Game tab, admins only)
Stream mode: the bot now looks through its own screens like a player planning ahead: the map before setting off, and on the road now and then its map, gear, pack, skills, animals, ledger and route book, with a caption saying why
Admin site: restyled to match the game and the website; new pages Models (every model we own in a 3D viewer, including the ones the game ships), Sounds (every recording and named game sound, with play buttons), Icons (all 153 with credits) and Images. On the live server the Sounds and Images pages are lists only. New tools: tools/make_sound_index.py, make_icon_index.py, make_image_index.py, make_model_extras.py; web/api/reset_admin.php (command line) and tools/make_remote_reset.php (a one-use page for the host) reset the admin password
**Loads tab** (Animals window): an inventory for each container (you, each rolling cart or wagon, each animal walking free) with empty spaces and goods as icons; drag or click a stack to move it between them, and the arrangement stays as you set it. The Carts tab now lets you pick a cart and shows its condition as a bar. Bots mend their carts at a wagon builder when they are worn
Voice: 16 missing Bram lines, the new `future_8` and `controls_1`/`controls_2` cut from the ElevenLabs recording (`controls_3`/`controls_4` still to record)
Cart and wagon wheels turn as you travel (they roll with the distance covered; the small wagon's wheels were cut out of its single model so they can spin)
Pigeons moved to the Animals window; carts are numbered Cart 1, Cart 2; boxes around each cart, animal and container
**Cargo is drawn in the cart.** What a cart holds is piled in its bed, sized by how full it is and made of the goods' own models: fish, logs, planks, stone, bricks, rope, barrels and crates of fruit where we have them; sacks for grain, flour and the small things; boxes and chests for the rest. Everyone who looks at your cart sees the same load
**Hero character screen.** The Character tab is now one screen: your backpack (empty slots shown) on the left, you in 3D in the middle with what you wear around you (head, face, clothes, belt, feet; right hand, off hand, tool, pack, charm; ledger, bell, blanket, pillow, plush), and your level, traits, coin, bank and load on the right. Click an item for its details, double-click to wear it or take it off. The Gear and Pack tabs are folded into it
**Packing takes time.** Moving goods between you, your carts and your animals is now a job of a few seconds (1.5 s plus 0.12 s per weight, never more than 14 s) with a progress bar in the middle of the screen ("Packing 5 fish into cart 1"); you stand still while it runs, and on the road you must stop first. Carts can also store items (6 in a cart, 12 in a wagon, 20 in a covered wagon): drag items between your backpack and a cart in the Loads tab. Click an empty slot on the Character screen to see what you have for it, on you or in a cart (unpacking it first). All of it is server-timed and in the settings table
Character sheet: the backpack has its own Inventory tab; the traits (and trait points) moved to the Skills tab; the Character tab has experience across the top and you with what you wear. The 3D figure stops turning while you turn it and starts again 5 seconds after you let go
**More ways to be quicker on the road.** Travelling boots (you), spurs (a new Spurs slot, riding), carrots on a stick now speed the animal wearing them, axle grease (a pot, used on a cart from Animals, Carts and loads: faster and less wear for 80 km), endurance helps on foot, a fed dog speeds the whole caravan by 2% per level (it gains levels as it walks with you), travelling light, and roads you have run before. See SPEED_IDEAS.md for what else could come

Version 0.3.1 2026-10-09

An Animals window with every animal in your caravan, mileage and the pedometer, guard patrols, caravan rules (one wagon for every ten levels), and mount gear worn by each animal.

All 31 changes

The animal panel now lists every animal in your caravan (food, water, stamina and whether it pulls the wagon or walks free), not just the lead one.
New Animals button and window: every animal you own with its feed, water and stamina, how it is doing, whether it pulls the wagon or walks free, your mount gear (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes), and Feed / Water buttons for each animal alone (feed at the stable for coin, or from hay you carry; water from your waterskin). The HUD animal panel now says which animal pulls the wagon.
Mileage: the game now counts how far each character and each animal has walked. A new craftable, the pedometer (smithy, smithing 2, worn on the new belt slot), lets you read it in the Animals window.
Town guards are stationed at the town hall door and at each town entrance, the rest patrol; every 5 min 15 s a patrolling guard walks up to a stationed guard, relieves him and takes his post, and the relieved guard goes on patrol.
Caravan rules: one wagon for every ten levels (level 10: 1, 20: 2, 30: 3 ...), up to 16 animals at level 20 (8 pullers and 8 more); the three wagon sizes are now a cart (1 animal), a wagon (2) and a covered wagon (4); all the animals on one wagon must be the same kind; the caravan travels at the pace of its slowest unit (a mule holds a riding horse back; shoes make an animal faster); a horse is faster than a mule, a mule carries more than a horse.
Mount gear is now worn by each animal (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes and the carrot on a stick): the Animals window has a picker for your animals with their pace, carry, feed and stamina savings and four gear slots to fill from your pack. Old worn mount gear moves to your first animal.
Now and then a patrolling guard walks into the narrow alleys between the buildings and looks about.
The Animals window shows what each animal, cart and wagon is carrying (your goods are shared out: you first, then the carts, then animals walking free), and what you carry yourself.
Five ledgers, worn in their own ledger slot (no longer the hand): 1 Merchant ledger +1 haggling; 2 Trend ledger shows a green up, red down or grey steady arrow beside every price; 3 Price ledger adds the price charts; 4 Route ledger adds a route book (what each road earns you per hour); 5 Bulletin ledger makes the notice board reach twice as far. Higher ledgers are crafted at the library (scribing) or are on the shelf only now and then. Old ledgers move to the new slot. Pedlars and Factors still start with the first.
Chat and the world log keep your scroll position; the world log shows when things really happened.
Purchase codes work however they are typed: dashes and spaces do not matter (253C-B328-F7DD, 253CB328F7DD and 253C B328 F7DD are the same code).
Tutorial: the "Buy this one" arrow now points at the market's row, not at the same good in your own pack (clicking your own row sold it back and sent you round the craft step again).
Bram speaks all of his tutorial lines (the last 34 voice files are in), and his line about ledgers matches the new ledgers.
Tabs: the Character window is now Character, Gear, Pack, Cargo, Skills (and Routes, Contracts when you have them); the town hall is Town clerk (charters), Rule, Notices and Contracts; the inn is Tavern and Travellers' talk; the stable, wagon builder, smithy, general store, clothier, apothecary and library each get Shop, Craft, Lessons (and Books) tabs; the Animals window has Animals and Carts and loads.
Benches: four benches round the well in every town square. Press E to sit (the view drops to seat height; moving or E stands you up). Sitting recovers fatigue 2.5x faster than standing in town (setting: Sitting on a bench), for up to 30 minutes a sit; the inn bed is still the best rest. Bots now sit on benches instead of paying for a bed.
Road benches: every road has a bench on each side at the halfway mark (50%). Stop within 4% of the middle and you recover fatigue at the full town rate (plain roadside is 35%), and your animals rest faster too. The road panel tells you when you are at the bench. Settings: Road bench reach / rest speed.
Buffs on the HUD: a glowing badge (with a tooltip) appears under your bars while you get a bonus, e.g. Resting on a bench or Resting at the road bench. The server sends the list (player_buffs in social.php), so new buffs are one block each. The prompt now says Stand up while you sit.
Fix: going into a building or onto the road while sitting on a bench no longer leaves you stuck sitting; every scene change stands you up.
Everyone starts with a pack mule and a cart hitched behind it (a little hungry and thirsty), 12 hay, and 300 coin (was 60): a real load from the first trade, so bigger purchases and bigger margins. Settings: Starting coins, Starting kit mule / cart / hay / mule fullness. The animal limit is one higher at every level up to 18, and one wagon is allowed from level 1.
Tutorial: a new chapter "Your mule and cart" after the well: Bram introduces the mule (HUD box, load, Animals button), then you water it from your waterskin and feed it hay. Characters part-way through the old tutorial skip these steps. The new lines (animal_1 to animal_5) have no voice files yet.
God panel: Start over / New character (Character tab) makes the god character brand new as after the tutorial: level 2, two trait points, starting kit, mule and cart, tutorial finished.
Mouse wheel zoom: scroll back to pull the camera out behind you and see your own character (walking, idle or sitting), scroll forward to return to first person. Works in town, buildings (a short way) and on the road.
Your log: the log panel has a World log / Your log tab. Your log lists what you did (bought, sold, drank, took a contract, travelled...), with times, from the server (so it also shows what a bot did for the character). Server keeps the last 300 lines per player.
Stream mode for admin characters (bots/botsim.py --watch --tokens FILE): a bot plays the on-screen character visibly: the window walks to the door, shop trader, gate, well or bench by itself and uses them like E would, then the bot trades. Not in the Steam/itch player experience (admin accounts only). Add #nogod to the game address to skip the god window.
Animals move: mules and horses swing their legs as they walk (diagonal pairs), nod their heads, flick their tails, and idle with a slow sway and now and then a grazing dip.
God panel: Bot mode on/off (Character tab). With the resident runner (bots/start_autopilot.bat) going, a bot plays the god character visibly while Bot mode is ON; OFF hands it back.
Tutorial: Bram's skills and books paragraph moved from the long tour (before the level-up) to his goodbye after you spend your points; the repeated 'press I' line is gone. New lines: animal_1 to animal_5; reworded: future_3, future_4, bye_1 (no voice yet; text shows, the voice is silent until recorded).
God Bot mode button now starts the bot runner itself (local machine) when it is not running, restarts it if the list of bot characters changed, and the I play button stops it when no other character is on Bot mode. The 30-bot simulation is a separate process and is never touched.
HUD: while you craft, a box under your bars shows what you are making, a progress bar with the percentage and the time left (and where to collect it when it is ready).
Road lamps and lamplighters: every road has lamp posts (about every 1.5 km). Every town owns at least one road (all 21 roads are covered; a town with several takes them in turn, one a night). At dusk the owner's lamplighter rides his road on a horse lighting the posts as he passes; at dawn he rides home putting them out. A lit road makes the bandit gang 40% less likely to stop you (setting: Lamps: bandit chance). Settings: rider speed, spacing, bandit effect. Test lamps.php.
Website: a Live page (live.html): a map with a dot for every traveller (no names, no coin; gold in towns, teal on the roads) and a feed of what each town needs or has plenty of, plus the world news. Reads the game's new no-login public_world action (cached 30 s).

Version 0.3.0 2026-10-08

Wells used at the well, the contracts you carry shown wherever you are, wagons that work as soon as you buy them, company halls that show their company, a much wider range of townsfolk looks, and guards at the gates.

All 43 changes

The well must be used AT the well: the server refuses to fill a waterskin from inside a building, and in the 3D town you press E at the well (a prompt appears within about 4 m) or the Fill button tells you to walk up to it
Fixed: the Settings window redrew itself every few seconds and wiped the text box you were typing in (feedback, purchase code, password); it now leaves the window alone while you type and keeps what you wrote
The contracts you carry are now shown wherever you are: a Your contracts block (what, where to, how long is left, how much of it you carry) in the town panel, on the road panel and on your character sheet, and a gold ring with Deliver: 18 Grain on the destination town of the world map (before this they were only listed inside a town hall)
A wagon now works at once: a bought wagon puts your free animals (mules first, never the horse you ride) in its harness, a bought mule goes into a wagon's empty place, and the god panel's Give wagon tops up the team so it is ready; the town panel and character sheet show a red Your wagon is not rolling note (not enough animals, broken, in the builder's yard, needs a driver) so missing space is never a mystery; the buy message says what is missing
A company hall now carries its company: its name and logo on the back wall, and a piece of furniture for each project it has built (strongbox, fund chest, notice board with the message of the day, crates growing with the storeroom level, benches growing with the workshop level, the tabard loom in the company colour, a hitching post). The Projects and Storeroom tabs of the Company window now show (they were hidden).
NPCs: townsfolk and shopkeepers get a wide range of looks (any outfit except the Knight set, any hair, skin and colours, extra pieces), and the town guards stand in the square in Knight armour, as many as the lord is paying for (the guard pot divided by 10 coin: 50 coin is 5 guards, fewer in a shortage, at most 12). New admin settings.
New characters start in rag-wrap boots and plain trousers, whatever outfit they pick, so every other boot or trouser is a visible upgrade.
The creation screen has no accessories any more: every new character starts plain (hoods, belts, capes and so on are for crafting later).
Character creation: nine hair colours (black to white, red and blond), characters start with no extras, and every outfit can wear any merchant extra (a prince can wear the hood); the belt button now works.
Nights are darker again now that people are bright by themselves; their own glow fades with the daylight.
New characters: Noble (merchant prince) and Scholar outfits join Peasant and Traveller, each in three colours, with three skin tones (deep, tan, fair: tan is the new default, so everyone looks lighter) and starting extras (hood, shoulder cape, chain of office). People are built from lighter textures and matte materials (the character files shrank from 118 MB to 36 MB) and are no longer dark. Players never get combat looks.
People are brighter: their shadow side no longer goes almost black.
New blocky clouds in the sky (Synty SIMPLE Sky meshes), and the sky greys over when it rains or a storm is on.
Company halls: every town has a Company Hall door; only company members may go in, and each company has the room to itself (you never see another company's members, or your own company's members in another town). The bank, materials, project work, the storeroom and dues are used inside the hall. Hall rent is charged per member from the bank (14 free days; unpaid rent locks the halls until the Master pays). Two more projects: Storeroom (a shared goods store) and Workshop (every member crafts 25% faster, anywhere). New members get a free first dues period; the Master can set automatic removal for members who fall too far behind. Every town layout gained a door; new table company_store and new company columns: the server upload runs setup.
Company benefits finished: the storeroom and workshop have upgrade levels 2 and 3; a stable yard project boards members' animals free; a mutual fund project pays a member back half when the gang robs them; the company earns standing in towns from members' contract deliveries and pays lower hall rent; the town hall clerk files Merchant Company charters. New tables and columns: the server upload runs setup.
Company tabards: a new company project, the tabard loom. When it is built every member can put on the company tabard (a toggle in the Company window) and others see them in it, in the company colour the Master picks (Manage tab). New columns: the server upload runs setup.
Companies are built by their members: a new company has only a roster and chat; the bank and the notice board are projects. Members bring materials (about 2,000 weight units for the bank: a team's worth of hauling) and then work on the project together; everyone working at once speeds it up (hidden man-minutes, shown only as a progress bar), and progress is kept when they stop or work from another town. The Master sets dues per member (0 lets a friend skate), posts a message of the day once the notice board is built, and sets bank rules. New Projects tab. Admin settings for the work and materials. New tables: the server upload runs setup.
Merchant Companies are founded with a charter: from level 10 you draw up a charter at a town hall (name and logo) and collect signatures from five other traders (level 5+, different players; your own other characters do not count); the fifth signature lets you found the company (5,000 coin). Signers become its first members; the charter never lapses and holds a backpack slot until used or torn up. The Company window has Today (who is online, news of the day), Members, Bank, Chat tabs, and the Master gets a Manage tab: dues, Officer bank limit, per-member allowances. New admin settings. New tables (company_charters, charter_signs): the server upload runs setup.
Top bar icons are now full-colour pictures (character, coins, satchel, star, map, a cart when you travel with animals, a compass on foot) from the Kibyra icon pack.
Place windows (shops, town hall, character sheet, trade, company) can be dragged by their title bar and remember where you left them on this device; double-click the title bar to put one back. A soft page-turn sound plays when a window opens.
Settings has Sound, Game and Account tabs. Sound: Music, Voice, Effects and a new Ambience volume, plus on/off switches for nature and water, weather, town life, animals and wagons, your footsteps, other people's footsteps, character voices and interface sounds. Other people (townsfolk and players) walking within 5 metres are heard, louder the closer they are. Townsfolk no longer walk backwards (they faced the camera as they strolled).
Footsteps: your own boots on the plaza stones in town (sand in sea towns, puddles in rain), on planks indoors, on dirt when you walk the road; the running recordings play when you hold Shift.
On the road every mule and horse in your caravan has its own hoofbeats (CC0 recording), each at its own point and pitch (mules lower).
A coin tinkle (coins landing in your hand) plays when you are paid: selling goods, items, animals or a wagon, delivering a contract, withdrawing from the bank, or finishing a player trade.
Rooms have people: patrons seated at the inn tables (and a few readers in the library), smiths at the forges (and the wagon builder), shoppers at the market stalls and general-store shelves. Every person now starts their animation at a random point and speed, so neighbours never move in step.
Real sound: about 88 recordings (Sonniss GDC bundle, commercial licence) replace the synthesised sounds. Day/night beds, wind, rain and storms follow the new weather (thunder in storms), a fire and crowd in the inn, a haggling murmur at the market, hammering at the smithy (also while you craft there), sandpaper for other crafting, the wagon rolling on the road with the odd creak, loading and unloading sounds on buying and selling, a lock when you hitch, one soft chime from the town clock on the hour in the daytime, a distant dog, and a gasp or tired breath at the right moments. The old synthesised sounds remain as a fallback.
Weather: every place has weather (clear, breeze, windy, drizzle, rain); a storm appears only where a "storm on the road" notice says so (that road and the two towns at its ends), so notice boards always match. Cosmetic: sound now, sky later; travel stays fast. Two admin settings.
Villagers no longer flash as flat 2D sprites while the game loads: they stay hidden until their 3D model is ready, and every character model is loaded during the loading screen.
Two more music tracks join the random playlist (three in all).
The wagon now shows what you actually carry: crates fill the bed in proportion to your load beyond what you and your animals hold (a quarter load is a quarter of the crates, a full wagon is stacked and gets its canvas cover). Seen by other players too.
Company hall rent now goes to the crown (one king, one rent, however many halls), and the rent cut comes from the company's best standing in any town.
GREAT contracts: now and then a lord posts a load no caravan can carry (700-1500 weight). A company with 3+ members and standing rank 2 in the posting town takes it (an Officer or the Master, deposit from the company bank); the load is so big and the deadline so short (half the time one caravan would need alone) that one trader cannot finish it, so it takes teamwork, however the members split the carrying; the payout is shared between the carriers and the bank, and a company that runs out of time gets a little for what arrived.
God panel reorganised into tabs (Character, Items, Travel, Companies, World, Settings, Testing); the old admin dashboard's game settings are now its Settings tab (no separate password); new company tools (list, bank, rent, build/remove projects, standing, join, disband), post contracts now, add to the crown. Fixed: List online / feedback showed nothing.
The animal panel now lists every animal in your caravan (food, water, stamina and whether it pulls the wagon or walks free), not just the lead one.
New Animals button and window: every animal you own with its feed, water and stamina, how it is doing, whether it pulls the wagon or walks free, your mount gear (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes), and Feed / Water buttons for each animal alone (feed at the stable for coin, or from hay you carry; water from your waterskin). The HUD animal panel now says which animal pulls the wagon.
Mileage: the game now counts how far each character and each animal has walked. A new craftable, the pedometer (smithy, smithing 2, worn on the new belt slot), lets you read it in the Animals window.
Town guards are stationed at the town hall door and at each town entrance, the rest patrol; every 5 min 15 s a patrolling guard walks up to a stationed guard, relieves him and takes his post, and the relieved guard goes on patrol.
Caravan rules: one wagon for every ten levels (level 10: 1, 20: 2, 30: 3 ...), up to 16 animals at level 20 (8 pullers and 8 more); the three wagon sizes are now a cart (1 animal), a wagon (2) and a covered wagon (4); all the animals on one wagon must be the same kind; the caravan travels at the pace of its slowest unit (a mule holds a riding horse back; shoes make an animal faster); a horse is faster than a mule, a mule carries more than a horse.
Mount gear is now worn by each animal (harness, saddlebags, horseshoes and the carrot on a stick): the Animals window has a picker for your animals with their pace, carry, feed and stamina savings and four gear slots to fill from your pack. Old worn mount gear moves to your first animal.
Now and then a patrolling guard walks into the narrow alleys between the buildings and looks about.
The Animals window shows what each animal, cart and wagon is carrying (your goods are shared out: you first, then the carts, then animals walking free), and what you carry yourself.
Five ledgers, worn in their own ledger slot (no longer the hand): 1 Merchant ledger +1 haggling; 2 Trend ledger shows a green up, red down or grey steady arrow beside every price; 3 Price ledger adds the price charts; 4 Route ledger adds a route book (what each road earns you per hour); 5 Bulletin ledger makes the notice board reach twice as far. Higher ledgers are crafted at the library (scribing) or are on the shelf only now and then. Old ledgers move to the new slot. Pedlars and Factors still start with the first.
Chat and the world log keep your scroll position; the world log shows when things really happened.

Version 0.2.4 2026-10-07

Caravans (animals, wagons, upgrades and a hired driver), delivery contracts, your standing in each town, regional crafting, shortage politics, Merchant Companies, famine relief and the feedback form. The tutorial now has a Guild purse and a fixed first trade.

All 25 changes

Tutorial fixes from a full playthrough as a new Pedlar: the arrow points at the exit door when the next step is elsewhere and you are indoors (Bram says so too); the tavern bite works at the eating step even at hunger 0; the craft plan respects what fits in the pack (a new Pedlar carries 8) and, when nothing can be bought and carried, Ansel's store of materials is on the workshop bench (once); the trade window shows the Guild's fixed first-lesson price (labelled) instead of the live price; the sale report no longer mentions tax
Sounds from the places in a town square fade with distance: the smith's hammer, market chatter and coins, tavern murmur and mugs, stable snorts, the well's drips (quieter at night, silent indoors, on the road and in menus)
Website How to play: the guided first ten minutes (Bram, purse, fixed first trade, level at the end, no repeat), controls (hold a button to look, both buttons walk and steer, clickable map), and the Update button
TUTORIAL RULES: a new character gets a Guild purse (setting tutorial_purse, 120 coin) when Bram first talks to them; the first trade uses FIXED prices for the marked good (guaranteed profit, first and only run); the tutorial never levels a level-1 character: Bram's finale gives level 2 with the fanfare, then asks for the trait points to be spent, then the last journal page and Bram's goodbye; NO REPLAY (the replay buttons and server action are gone); skipping asks first; six story beats on the first walk; Bram describes wagons (bought, expensive, upgrades crafted)
Tutorial: Bram recommends a trade by simulating the whole round trip (real buy and sell prices as the shelves move, both towns' taxes) and says honestly when nothing near pays; the craft step plans a craft you can really finish where you are (what is missing, what to buy, which button); the library step is gone; a closing talk on levels, mules and horses, the economy, lords, kings, rebels and weapons; arrow to the exit when the materials are missing
Tutorial: the first walk is to the NEAREST town that buys the bargain (about 90 s instead of 5 min); Bram tells four story beats during the walk; eating a ration counts for the tavern chapter (even when not hungry: nothing is used up); the Eat button stays usable during that chapter
The world map is clickable: click a town for a card (distance, time, tiredness) with a Walk there button, or a route through the next town when there is no direct road; the tutorial rings the town to click; the tutorial scrolls the side panel to the highlighted road and labels wide rows at their right end
Renamed everything called flipgame to tro (ping now says tro-api; local aliases/database renamed); two_players test runs in a calm world
Caravan: any mix of mules and horses (each with its own feed, water, stamina, stall); wagons bought at the wagon builder (small 1 animal / medium 2 / large 4, level-gated, 50% resale); you choose which animal pulls which wagon; only horses can be ridden; animal and wagon limits grow with player level (admin settings); wagon builder building and interior in Stonebridge and Kingsreach; stable and wagon builder windows
Shortages have political effects: a town out of wood (as well as out of staple food) gains unrest, charges extra tax and keeps fewer road guards; three new admin settings (`unrest_wood_gain`, `shortage_tax_raise`, `shortage_guard_penalty`)
Regional crafting: every recipe has one or more famed towns (e.g. Ironhold mail and horseshoes, Stonebridge swords, Tanwick harness, Kingsreach signet rings, Greywater cloaks, Oakmere satchels); a famed workshop crafts 25% faster and rolls quality as if the maker were 2 skill levels higher; workshop windows show a famed-here star or where an item is best made; two admin settings
Delivery contracts: a town short of a good (with coin in its lord's purse) posts a timed contract at a town that has plenty ('bring 40 planks to Stonebridge in a day for 520 coin'); take it at the town hall board (10% deposit, back on delivery), deliver at the other town hall; goods go onto the destination's shelves and the payout comes from the lord's purse (no coin created); late or abandoned contracts lose the deposit; level 2 for small, level 10 for big (mule trains, wagons); up to 3 at a time; new `contracts` table; 20 admin settings
Wagon upgrades and wear: six upgrades (reinforced axle, canvas cover, strongbox, extra bed, brakes, livery) each level 1 to 5, built at a wagon builder for materials plus a builder's fee over real time (famed towns: Stonebridge axle/strongbox/brakes, Kingsreach cover/bed/livery); quality tier multiplies the effect; wagons wear with distance and load and will not roll at 100 wear until repaired; resale drops with wear; 26 new admin settings
Tutorial polish: the Talk to Bram prompt (and E on him) only appears on the talk step, so pressing E mid-tour no longer restarts the tour
Hired driver for the second wagon (hire at a wagon builder, travels with you, wage per leg between towns, release in any town) and stable boarding (animals standing in a town cost a few coin a day, nothing on the road); contract generation no longer posts two contracts for the same route and good
Crafting needs you in the workshop (stay-and-work, like a profession cast): walking out, entering another building or setting off on a road before the work is finished stops it and returns the materials; if it is finished when you go, it is completed for you; a Stop work button; a craft left behind (teleport, collapse) is cleaned up on your next request; wagon upgrades stay a commission (the builders do the work over hours)
The tutorial's lesson trade is made on Bram's behalf: the Guild pays for the marked goods and keeps what they sell for, the player's purse does not change, the goods are on loan and go back when the tutorial ends or is skipped; new traders (below level 3) cannot give coin, goods or items to others (setting `trade_give_min_level`)
Repeat-route XP decay: arriving by the same road again within 4 hours pays 10% less XP each time (down to 40%), for the trip's travel and trading XP; a different road starts fresh; three admin settings; new table `route_runs`
Your caravan also walks the road behind you in the road view (placeholder models)
API rate limits: a player token or log-in session, and an address, that asks too often in a minute are refused (code RATE_LIMITED); log-in, register and redeem tries are limited harder; localhost is exempt; four admin settings; new table `rate_hits`
Standing (reputation) in each town: trading earns points there, delivered contracts earn them at both ends; ranks Stranger, Known, Trusted, Respected, Honoured; a medium wagon needs Trusted and a large one Respected in the wagon builder's town, and upgrade levels 3 to 5 need Known, Trusted, Respected; shown in the wagon builder and town hall windows; god command `standing`; 17 admin settings; new table `standing`
Housekeeping: finished lord traders (older than 6 hours), old closed trades and stale rate counters are deleted (the traders table had grown to 17,000 rows with 84 live); wood-shortage unrest and guard loss softened (1.5 and 0.35) so a town that always runs short is not pushed to rebellion; `xp_ref_rate` retuned 250 to 125 (a Pedlar trader reaches level 10 in about 44 hours and can then afford the small wagon)
The capital no longer starves: a lord whose town has under 2 hours of a staple food or wood on the shelves sends traders for it before anything else and may spend the part of the purse normally held back (before this, exports of made goods took every trader slot and Kingsreach sat at zero meat, eggs and grain with unrest 100)
In-game feedback: Settings now has a Send feedback form (bug, idea or other, up to 1000 characters, 5 an hour); notes are stored with the player, level, town and version and read by the admin in the god panel (command `feedback`); new table `feedback`
Merchant Companies (stage G1): found a company at a town hall (level 5, 500 coin to the town), choose a premade logo, invite and accept, Member/Officer/Master ranks, hand over, remove, a company bank (Members pay in, Officers take out up to 200 a day after a week, the Master freely), a log of every coin movement, company chat, disband shares the bank; a Company button in the top bar opens the window; 6 admin settings; 6 new tables

Version 0.2.3 2026-10-06

The game now tells you when a new version is out, all 39 voice lines, the longer tutorial (market, tavern, road, workshop tours), a level-up fanfare, walking with both mouse buttons, and the lamplighter.

All 10 changes

UPDATING: the game compares its version with the server's. A different MAJOR.MINOR blocks play and shows an Update now button; a newer patch shows an optional Update button. The button closes the game and starts the installer copy kept in the game folder (TRO_Installer.exe), which now relaunches itself from a temporary folder so it can replace the folder it was in; it also says plainly if the game is still running
The game keeps working when one part of the screen fails to draw (and says which), retries read-only requests, times out after 20 s, and shows what the server sent when it was not valid data
All 39 voice lines (Bram and Ansel) are included in the game
TUTORIAL stages 2 and 3: chapters 3 to 8 (market tour with a real bargain marked, tavern tour, road tour, the sell report with your real profit, workshop/trainer/library arrows, town hall tour and the closing journal page), arrows to doors, gates, traders and goods, a bargain that a neighbouring town really buys, one-time hint popups (Settings: on/off, show again, replay the tutorial)
Level up fanfare: trumpet sound, big gold LEVEL banner with sparks, the level counter glows
Hold BOTH mouse buttons to walk forward and steer with the mouse (like WoW); releasing one button keeps looking
The lamplighter strolls the square and chats beside groups of townsfolk between his two walks; the four townsfolk that kept lapping the well are gone
The Reload button is gone from the player screens; it is in the god panel (Shift-click forgets the slot's player)
New tools: `tools/stage_host.py` (a ready-to-upload copy of the host tro folder in C:/xampp/htdocs/tro; release.py runs it), `tools/make_vo_script.js` now writes Bram and Ansel scripts
Website: the home banner is shown whole with the text and buttons below it (they overlapped the picture)

Version 0.2.2 2026-10-06

The guided opening, The Merchant's Road, with Bram as your 3D guide, and no more half-made ghost characters.

All 2 changes

TUTORIAL stage 1: "The Merchant's Road" guided opening: Bram (3D guide NPC), dialogue box, 3D arrow + edge arrow, glowing HUD/UI parts with callouts, journal replaces First steps, chapter letters, skip and replay, voice-line hook (assets/audio/vo/<id>.mp3, Voice slider); server step machine with new actions tutorial_event/seen/skip/replay
Creating a character that fails part-way no longer leaves a half-made ghost character in the list

Version 0.2.1 2026-10-06

A fix for the "Server error" when making a character after an update, and music on the title and login screens.

All 2 changes

FIX "Server error." when creating a character on a host updated from an older version: the server now migrates its own database once per version (`migrate.php`, marker `schema.lock`); setup.php uses require_once
Music plays on the title, login, sign-up and character screens and carries on into the game (Electron autoplay switch + first-click fallback in a browser)

Version 0.2.0 2026-10-06

A companion dog, price charts for ledger holders, the king and the crown, music and ambience, the first-steps tutorial, and numbered releases so the game can tell you when an update is out.

All 34 changes

Companion dog (buy at the stable, feed daily; columns `players.dog`, `dog_fed_at` added automatically; settings `dog_*`; actions `buy_dog`, `feed_dog`)
Price graph for players holding a merchant's ledger (`price_history` action now open to ledger holders in their own town)
Versioned releases: `VERSION`, `release.py`, CHANGELOG, server reports its version and an out-of-date game is told to update
Ambience: wind, birdsong, town murmur, crickets, all made in the browser, following where you are and the time of day
The king and the crown (new `kingdom.php`, table `kingdom` added automatically, settings `crown_*`, `king_*`; king shown at the town hall and in the news)
Random music from a playlist (`playlist.js`, `tools/make_playlist.py`, folder `assets/audio/music/`)
First steps tutorial (new `tutorial.php`, column `players.tutorial` added automatically, setting `tutorial_xp`, `tutorial_hide` action)
Sound effects made in the browser (`sfx.js`)
Provider food and remedies (hardtack, jerky, herbal tonic); website chat, friends and emotes section
**Balance pass 1**: walking pace UNCHANGED at 0.2 km/s; price band 0.7 to 1.4, sensitivity 0.2, market margin 7%, Haggling 0.5% per point, mule 350, horse 2,100 (all admin settings; the dashboard shows your current values, which override these defaults if you changed them), new settings `price_min_mult`, `price_max_mult`
Emotes (`emote` action; columns `players.emote`, `emote_at`, `emote_spot` added automatically)
Three trade classes (Teamster, Factor, Provider); catalogue items craftable only by their trade
Soulbound catalogue (11 items, `fx` effects, Face slot, level gates) and study time for books (new table `studies`, settings `study_base_secs`, 22 item settings; `read_book` now starts a study that finishes by itself)
XP curve (cubic) and level cap 20, XP per deed scales with level (settings `xp_cubic_*`, `level_max`, `xp_hours_*`, `xp_ref_rate`; `xp_level_base` and `xp_level_exp` removed): existing characters keep their level and xp
Crafting takes time, Tool slot and three crafting tools (new table `crafts`, settings `craft_*`, `item_*` for the tools; `collect_craft` action)
Townsfolk who talk, stroll and pause (`fpv3d.js`; `world` sends each town's `tier`)
Whispers and friends (`social.php`; new table `friends`, columns `messages.to_id`, `to_name`, all added automatically; setting `friends_max`)
Notice board at the town hall (`board` action, settings `bulletin_reach_km`, `bulletin_chance`); well roof underside and posts fixed; website crafting page shows item benefits (rebuild with `php tools/make_site.php`)
Street lanterns and the lamplighter (`fpv3d.js`; `world` now sends `night` hours)
Curvy roads (`road3d.js` `curveFor`, `ribbon`; `fpv3d.js`)
Sun, moon, stars and clouds from the server clock (`sky.js`); price history table `price_history` and admin-only `price_history` action (settings `price_history_minutes`, `price_history_days`)
**Public website** (`site/`, built by `php tools/make_site.php`): home with trailer and itch.io links, how to play, commodities, crafting, towns and map, development; goes at the root of `tro/` on the host from the server zip
Night lighting less dark outdoors (people stay readable); well roof left as originally built
Indoor lighting no longer inherits the night setting (people inside looked black)
Traders on the roads, market reports (Travellers' talk at the inn), ruler max term 12 days, god-mode test player (new tables `market_reports`, column `players.is_bot`, added automatically; settings `ruler_max_days`, `market_report_hours`)
Lords: personalities, rulers no longer have a timed term (setting `tax_term_hours` removed, `unrest_tenure_gain`, `unrest_hunger_gain`, `lord_effect_scale` added), town hall shows the lord and hunger
Older characters get the starting kit once (new column `players.kit_given`, added automatically)
Pack button renamed "Character & pack (I)" and the I key opens it
Step 3: living economy (new `economy.php`; tables `town_state`, `traders` added automatically; markets no longer regenerate; 15 new settings; first world sweep seeds the traders)
Road fixes: map toggle on the road, character sheet opens on the road
Step 2: starting kit, supplies (water, bandages, rations, rucksack), L1 safe from robbery, animal stamina and stable upgrades, HUD, standard trade window (markets, shops, players), drop item/goods; 31 new mechanics; new DB columns `players.horse_stamina`, `players.animal_tier` (added automatically)
Release docs: the installer can also be hosted at `tro/download/TRO_Installer.exe` (link for testers)
Town hall window: two boards now labelled "Trade notices" and "News of the realm" (were both "Notice board")
Fix: hunger/thirst update could overwrite a just-set notice (robbery/level-up message lost, rare)

Version 0.1.0 2026-10-05

The first tester build: first-person 3D towns, twelve towns joined by roads, trading, lords and elections, the bandit gang, and accounts with a free two-hour trial.

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First tester build: first-person 3D towns, twelve towns and roads, trading, lords and elections, the bandit gang, accounts with an itch.io free trial, god mode, the downloader installer and the host install package.

Download the installer (Windows)How to play