rivencraft/ports/mc263/RELEASE_NOTES_26.3.0.1.md

Rivencraft 26.3.0.1

For Minecraft 26.3, NeoForge 26.3.0.99 and Java 25.

This regular release collects the player-validated .137–.142 development slices since 1.0.1.136-beta.1. Versions now use the Minecraft version followed by the release slice and its iteration: 26.3.0.1. The JAR is rivencraft-26.3.0.1.jar. The existing Minecraft 1.21.1 release is unchanged.

Live destination views with Immersive Portals Reborn

• Optional live rotating destination views in Linking and Descriptive Books, including books on stands. Reborn streams the actual destination chunks.
• Crystal portals show a continuous live view across each coplanar opening, masked to its shape, with the crystal frame remaining in front.
• Linking Book views use the written destination/facing; Descriptive Book portals preserve the traveler's facing. Views anchor standing eye height to the opening's floor, so taller frames do not shift arrival height.
• Rivencraft retains control of portal travel, Disarm, momentum and arrival safety. The native view cannot independently teleport or interact remotely.
• Preview sessions release their chunk streams on close, logout, invalidation or expiry. Remote book-preview audio is suppressed and the player camera restored after rendering.
• Portal maintenance restores views after restart and removes them when the book is removed or the frame is shut down.
• Tested with Immersive Portals Reborn 7.0.12 for NeoForge 26.3. Use one portal fork per instance. No optional mod is bundled or required.
• The renamed Seamless fork also receives runtime Age dimension/metadata synchronization; this release's live rendering is enabled for Reborn.

Random Ages, pages and book descriptions

• New random-Age and library-page allowlists/blocklists accept short paths such as sky/static, as well as full namespaced IDs.
• Blocklists take precedence. An allowlist restricts only the categories it mentions. Existing Ages and manually authored books remain usable.
• Required empty categories use safe defaults; optional empty categories can be omitted. Native preset biome pools and necessary biome minimum fallbacks can bypass individual biome-page exclusions.
• Random-Age Descriptive Books show Legacy glyph descriptions of their public traits, beneath the readable Age name/author. Seed and instability scores remain absent from these descriptions.
• Optional portal-engine dimension IDs and native metadata synchronize before the Rivencraft catalog acknowledgement permits travel.

Configuration

In config/rivencraft-local.toml:

• random_pages.allowlist and random_pages.blocklist: default empty.
• book_previews.reborn_live_views: default true; disable locally for animated book panels.
• book_previews.reborn_crystal_live_views: default true; the server controls live crystal surfaces. Disabling retains animated surfaces and travel.

The built-in Legacy animation remains available without optional renderers. Dynamic Dimensions and Bad Packets are not required by the 26.3 line.

Validation and known limits

The user passed the included slices in game. Disposable checks covered random policy resolution, description/catalog serialization and persistence, native dimension IDs and packet formats for both portal forks, preview rendering and chunk-lease cleanup, all three crystal portal plane axes, both sides, destination eye/facing transforms, fallback toggling and full restart restoration. A real dedicated server/client displayed the live crystal view and crossed into its Age. The no-optional-mod server also started successfully. Temporary fixtures/worlds were removed and the production JAR contains no test or optional-engine classes.

Known issue #116: with Reborn active, a Static Sky Age can render its sky outside the book GUI. Use the animated book panel option if affected.

26.3 is now published on the regular release channel at the user's request. This is not a claim that every 1.21.1 behavior or the final expanded-catalog two-client regression is complete. The remaining multiplayer, parity and shared follow-up issues stay open. Preview exploration controls and Create/Ponder scenes are not included in this release.

Use matching client/server JARs. Back up worlds, keep the Minecraft tracks and saves separate, and do not downgrade worlds containing newer data.