What's new

Notable changes to Orbrun, newest first.

0.2.1 — 2026-09-25

• Add a server has its own page: type an address, and the server lands on the list with the cursor on it. A server you added can be removed again.
• Logging in no longer shows a stale "Connection lost" when the connection had already come back.
• Looking at another server's login no longer leaves your account stuck on "connecting"; a player on this device always shows as ready.
• Your account and About & credits line up with the rest of the title screen menu.

0.2.0 — 2026-09-25

• Play on this device, with no server and no connection needed: under Add an account, pick This device, give your player a name, and play — the game runs in your browser.
• Everyone who shares the device can have a player of their own, each with their own game and saves.
• The game on your device keeps itself up to date: new versions download in the background and are ready the next time you press Play.
• Choosing a god at an altar works with the gamepad: Start joins, and the d-pad switches between the god's pages.
• Doors, statues and items no longer go missing on busy levels deeper in the game.
• Pressing up at the top of the title screen goes to your account; About & credits is one step right of it.
• Cleaner addresses you can share, like orbrun.app/watch/cdi/bob.
• Each server's own site is a click away beside it when you add an account, for its rules, code of conduct and donations.

0.1.8 — 2026-09-23

• Menus now use the same font as the game, and it comes with Orbrun, so it looks the same on every device.
• Small text in the menus is bigger and easier to read, especially on a Steam Deck.
• If your connection drops mid-game, Orbrun puts you straight back into your game, with nothing to press. If the network stays down, you land on the menu with your game saved.
• A button pressed while the server closes your last session no longer stops your game from starting.
• The Watch list no longer skips players as you scroll through it.
• The gamepad controls sheet now lives under Settings > Controls, in two columns.

0.1.7 — 2026-09-22

• Smoke and the other clouds now drift over the monsters standing in them, instead of disappearing behind whoever is in the cell.
• Everything that stands — monsters, items, doors, statues, your own shadow — is now drawn straight from the art by the graphics card, one draw for a whole crowd, instead of being built as a little model each. Their thickness and dark outline are worked out as they draw, so nothing is built ahead of them either.
• Walls on a big level go up faster: cells whose surroundings look alike reuse the shape already worked out for them.

0.1.6 — 2026-09-21

• Arriving on a level no longer stalls on its statues, trees and stairs: their outlines were being read back off the art one row at a time. Nothing in the picture changed.
• The home screen offers Quit when Orbrun runs in its own window — a kiosk browser on a Steam Deck, or an installed app — where the browser gives you no way out. In a normal tab it stays hidden.

0.1.5 — 2026-09-20

• Monsters now walk between cells instead of jumping one to the next, gliding after their step the way your own view does.

0.1.4 — 2026-09-18

• Exploring no longer hitches: a step relights the level instead of rebuilding it, a newly seen cell rebuilds only what changed, and a crowd of sprites uploads only the sprites that moved. Nothing in the picture changed.
• A screen you leave stops everything it started: its timers, its fetches and a tile download the server left hanging.

0.1.3 — 2026-09-16

• Crowded levels no longer stutter: sprite updates cost 93–98 % less CPU and draw 46 % fewer triangles.

0.1.2 — 2026-09-16

• Crowded levels draw far faster: a hall full of monsters and items costs a dozen draw calls a frame instead of one per sprite, so the frame rate holds up on weak graphics.

0.1.1 — 2026-09-16

• Movement now glides between cells and comes to a clean stop, with consistent pacing on diagonals and across frame rates.
• Turning or looking during movement is no longer undone by a delayed movement reply.

0.1.0 — 2026-09-10 — first public release

Everything before this was pre-release development, so this entry is the whole of what Orbrun does today.

• Play any public WebTiles server in first person: connect, log in or register, start a game or continue a saved one, or watch someone else's. Your account and your rc file stay the server's, honoured live, never cached or overridden.
• Everything the official client shows: menus, popups, prompts, --more--, the monster list, the stats pane, the message log, chat with spectators, the level map, the dungeon overview, and targeting.
• Full gamepad support: a contextual A button, tap-or-hold buttons, an action bar that always shows what each button does in the current mode, a menu per button (actions on LB, travel on Select, your gear on Y, your character and the game options on Start), an on-screen keyboard, and hints that teach the controls as you use them.
• Aiming on a controller: fire, examine, spells and wands open on the cell ahead, keep their heading while the d-pad walks the cursor, and repeat with repeated taps.
• Keyboard plays exactly as in the official client, with one exception: direction keys are relative to facing.
• A minimap, edge pips for monsters the camera does not frame (your own summons included), a wielded-weapon viewmodel, memory dimming, and threat and travel messages spelled the way crawl spells them.
• The front end stands in the Antechamber, a small hall built from the game's own tiles: main menu, accounts and servers, the Watch roster, settings, the changelog and about screens, and morgue files all read over it.
• Nothing version-specific is hardcoded. Enums, tile tables, and atlases come from the connected server at runtime, so stable and trunk both work.
• Multiple accounts across multiple servers, plus any server you add by URL. A dropped connection is reopened and logged back in on its own.
• Plays from your Steam library, on a Steam Deck, Windows, Linux or a Mac, as a non-Steam game that opens a kiosk browser on orbrun.app. The five steps, with artwork, are in STEAM.md and under About & credits.
• Hosted at orbrun.app: nothing to install, no Orbrun account, and tile data loads from whichever server you connect to.
• Anonymous page counts on the hosted site only — no cookies, nothing about your game — and nothing at all from local builds.
• Not yet: sound, the feel layer (sway, hit shake, vignettes), a desktop or Steam shell, offline play against a local engine. The top-down view exists but is not offered in this release.