• All-new persistent Lobby system supporting 2-4 players with host migration, real-time color sync, and AI bot fill for empty slots
• Draggable Party HUD overlay added with ready toggles, host controls, and a dedicated top-bar visibility toggle
• Overhauled social system featuring a unified notification center, right-click context menus, and smart push invites
• Added "Early Adopter" gold star icons and animated username gradients to chat, leaderboards, and lobbies for legacy players
• Unified match end screen featuring series replay browsing to save and favorite specific rounds from an online set
• Chat now strictly auto-hides during active gameplay, and browser autofill/spellcheck has been fully disabled on inputs
• Complete keyboard and gamepad navigation parity across all UI screens, including horizontal selectors and B-button mapping
• Massive CSS architecture rewrite, splitting a monolithic stylesheet into 30 modular files using native nesting and BEM naming
• Built a comprehensive E2E DOM testing infrastructure from scratch, achieving 413 passing tests across all UI flows

• Fix replay camera zooming to map center on old replays
• Add forgiving defaults for old replay format compatibility

• Full TypeScript migration — all 45 source files converted to strict TypeScript with shared type definitions and full annotations
• 119 automated tests across 8 test suites (utils, contentFilter, spatialGrid, replay, graphics, ai, onlineMatch, replayStore)
• ESLint with typescript-eslint for static analysis, internal any usage reduced from 197 to 19
• Online forfeit system — Escape no longer quits online matches; new pause overlay with Resume, Settings, and Forfeit buttons
• Online round protection — Escape between rounds no longer returns to homescreen
• Pregame info screen repositioned below match scoreboard
• Fixed replay camera zoom bug — death zoom FOV no longer persists between background replays, added null guards for old replay data compatibility
• Bike model preloading — home menu waits for GLTF model before starting demo
• Fixed errant border on Line Ride Assist toggle in settings
• Back button styling — increased icon padding and stroke thickness
• Firebase cache headers — no-cache for index.html, immutable for hashed assets, 30-day cache for models and music
• Changelog now stays open until explicitly closed

• Full codebase refactor — CSS design system (tokens, components, screens, animations), 12 UI modules extracted from main.js, game subsystem decomposition
• Online latency reduced ~30ms — 20Hz netcode (was 15Hz), 50ms interpolation buffer (was 80ms)
• Fixed false draws in online matches — only local player collisions checked, opponent death comes via netcode
• Fixed matchmaking race condition — failed createMatch now detects if opponent already matched you
• Fixed queue presence ordering — presence written before queue doc to prevent stale pruning
• Match callbacks registered before entering queue to prevent missed instant matches
• Playlist drag reorder no longer garbles play order — shuffle indices remapped instead of re-randomized
• Now-playing cyan highlight syncs across all track change sources (skip, auto-advance, click)
• Streak HUD repositioned below radar, follows radar drag, hidden during death screen
• FPS tooltip updates live while hovering, removed hint message
• Removed planet assets from arena skybox
• Anonymous users can access matchmaking without login redirect

• Neon palette overhaul — all 9 colors optimized for vibrant futuristic theme with better hue distribution
• WCAG luminance/contrast scoring for AI color selection — opponents are always visually distinct
• Anonymous users can now play casual matchmaking without signing in
• Fixed online match "waiting" hang — missing Firebase RTDB rules for loaded path
• Online match accept button animation — pulses cyan with "ACCEPTED" text on click
• Freecam mouse axes fixed (were inverted), ESC exits freecam back to overhead
• "PRESS ESC TO EXIT FREE CAM" toast on entering freecam mode
• Loading screen styled to match main menu — scanlines, vignette, gradient
• Fixed page load flash — body background matches loading screen color
• Loading screen uses real asset checks instead of arbitrary timeouts
• Fixed menu swap scanline flash — combined contentSlideIn + bgDrift animations
• Online opponent disconnect now handled during waitingOnline state
• signalLoaded retry on failure, listener setup before write to prevent race conditions

• ANNIHILATED the 0 FPS death lag — hunted down a brutal Three.js shader recompilation bug where hiding the player group nuked every light from the scene graph, forcing the GPU to recompile every single MeshStandardMaterial shader in the entire arena on the death frame. Deaths are now buttery smooth, zero stutter, zero mercy
• SpotLight headlight beam now properly managed — was created but never returned from bike builder, making it impossible to zero on death. Dragged it out of the shadows and gave it a proper killswitch
• Trail vibration segments no longer haunt you from beyond the grave — glowing wall segments that were vibrating near the player now properly reset when the bike dies, instead of frozen mid-jiggle for eternity
• destroy() now zeros all light intensities before ripping objects from the scene — prevents shader recompilation cascade during cleanup transitions
• Playlist selector overhaul — replaced the DEFAULT TRACKS / YOUR PLAYLIST tab bar with a clean arrow-style selector matching the settings UI pattern
• New PLAYLIST section header in the music overlay — sits below the volume slider, styled to match NOW PLAYING
• Speed rebalance — W-boost reduced from 60 to 55, dash increased from 93.5 to 98.5
• Dash VFX cranked up — bigger particles, wider electric arcs, higher opacity, longer burst timers
• W-boost sparks removed — ground FX now only activates during dash
• Camera zoom rebalanced — boost pulls 6.5% FOV (was 4.2%), dash pulls 12% (was 9.2%), transition speed boosted to 5.0
• Killcam smoothed out — frame-rate independent lerp replaces raw constants, direct blend orbit replaces jittery chase-lerp
• FPS counter in top bar — updates every 500ms, Orbitron font, lives left of the settings button
• Trail spawn point moved forward — now aligned with back of bike wheel frame instead of bike center
• Settings focus fix — collapsed section items no longer steal keyboard/gamepad focus highlight

• New bike model — Tron BlackGuard Bike by SpringSociety replaces procedural geometry
• Integrated rider — model includes full character, removing 280+ lines of procedural rider code
• Dynamic color tinting — emissive light strips on bike recolor to match player color
• Trail repositioned — now spawns from the back of the bike instead of center
• Bike light moved behind rider for better visual balance
• Lean reduced 15% for the new model proportions
• Credits screen — new About link in bottom bar opens credits overlay
• GLTFLoader added — bikes loaded from .glb models, preloaded during loading screen
• Spatial hash grid — O(1) trail collision and proximity queries replace O(n) linear scans
• InstancedMesh trail walls — thousands of draw calls reduced to ~4 per trail
• Partial GPU buffer uploads — only changed instance data sent to GPU, not the full buffer
• Glow lines merged — single pre-allocated BufferGeometry per trail instead of per-segment
• AI computation staggered — each AI updates every 3rd frame with cached results
• AI angle offsets reduced from 21 to 13, trap directions from 16 to 8
• Pre-allocated death particles — explosion system created at spawn, eliminating death-frame lag
• Merged proximity queries — wall repulsion, speed boost, VFX, and recharge share one grid lookup

• Real asset loading — progress bar tracks fonts and audio instead of faking it
• Loading status text — shows LOADING FONTS → LOADING AUDIO → BUILDING WORLD → READY
• Font preload — Google Fonts moved from @import to link tag for faster load
• First track preloaded — road runner uses rel=preload instead of prefetch
• Top bar font normalization — all text 11px, all icons 14px, consistent letter-spacing
• Music controls — zero-gap clickable regions, no dead space between buttons
• Scrolling track name — max 125px, long names marquee-scroll left to right
• Settings icon in top bar — dedicated cog between notifications and fullscreen
• Memory/ping moved to settings overlay — positioned top-right, out of the top bar
• Notifications bell dropdown — empty state with NO NOTIFICATIONS
• Navigation dedup — pressing the same screen button twice no longer stacks history
• Default volume raised to 30%

• Homepage keyboard/controller toggle — segmented KEYBOARD | CONTROLLER switch, auto-detects input
• Keybinds controller tab — Xbox-layout button icons for gameplay, menu, and replay sections
• Top bar reorganized — perf stats moved left, settings cog in perf section, notifications bell dropdown
• Top bar hover fix — hover highlight covers full vertical slice, not just icon
• Now Showing icon fix — film icon no longer renders as solid cyan block
• AI overhaul — smarter steering, trail-cutting, space denial, ambush maneuvers, escape logic
• AI demo 30s cap — menu demos reset instead of going in circles
• Shared drawing — mouse trails synced between all players via Firebase, fade over 8s
• Local trail color — matches selected bike color instead of hardcoded gradient
• New colors — Blue (#4488ff) and Orange (#ff8800) added to color picker
• Changelog popover closes on outside click
• Pause button desync fix — inner SVG clicks no longer break state
• Section label opacity bumped from 0.4 to 0.7, settings carets bolded

• Repeat/shuffle toggle fix — active state now applies correctly when clicking SVG icons
• Keybind keys restyled — purple theme with glow box-shadow on hover
• Top bar icons enlarged +2px, fullscreen gap widened, more spacing between controls
• Full-height click targets — top bar buttons activate from anywhere in their vertical column
• Quick start row toggles widened (+4px padding each side)
• Home screen buttons normalized to consistent width
• Playlist drag reorder — reduced magnetic snap with dead zone hysteresis
• Track name display no longer wrapped in quotes
• Announcement panel repositioned below volume slider

• Lucide icon pack — 36 inline SVG icons replace all Unicode/emoji icons across the entire UI
• Top bar normalization — consistent 11px font size and unified button opacity (0.45 base)
• SVG hover glow — filter:drop-shadow replaces text-shadow for crisp icon effects
• Replay keybinds — all replay controls added to keybinds tab (8 rebindable + 4 readonly)
• Menu font weight boost — headers and labels bolded for readability
• Zoom range increased ~75% for in-game camera and replay
• Changelog is now draggable — only X button closes it
• Dropdown padding and user submenu margin fixes

• Replay overhaul — full keyboard shortcuts (Space, Q/E, arrows, H, J/L, number keys)
• Reverse playback — -1x and -2x speeds with proper trail rebuilding
• Speed presets reordered — [-2x, -1x, 0.25x, 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 4x] linear progression
• Death markers on timeline — colored dots at elimination points
• Smooth camera transitions — 0.4s interpolation when switching camera modes
• Auto-pause at death — playback pauses on elimination with status text
• Gamepad replay controls — LB/RB cycle camera, LT/RT adjust speed, X play/pause, Y toggle UI
• D-pad skips time during replay instead of changing songs
• H key / Select / Y button hides all replay UI for clean viewing
• Free cam: left-click drag, slower turning, 20% faster movement, 15% more momentum
• Free cam: WASD disabled for menu nav, controller stick inverted to match expected direction

• Music overlay redesigned — chat-style tab bar replaces toggle for Default Tracks / Your Playlist
• Shuffle is now a toggle — when on, next track is random; current track keeps playing
• YouTube URL auto-detects on paste — no button needed, just paste a link
• Speaker icons replace checkmarks for track enable/disable (matches top bar audio)
• Drag-to-reorder handles on all playlist items with smooth animation
• Custom playlist tracks now have mute toggle and remove button
• Music overlay now has all playback controls: prev, play/pause, next, repeat, shuffle, mute
• Default track order: Road Runner, Start The Engine, Rainbow Dance lead-in; rest randomized
• Rommii link uses magenta color pulse instead of bounce
• Audio error recovery — resume instead of skip when track already playing
• Drag grab offset fix — item stays pinned to cursor position
• Settings section carets doubled in size
• Settings toggle fix — proper box-sizing and flex-shrink

• Navigation stack — unified menu system with dynamic back buttons, open any screen from anywhere
• Removed 9 hardcoded back buttons, replaced with stack-driven dynamic injection
• Centralized screen hooks for enter/exit logic (radar preview, keybind listeners, data loading)
• ESC and gamepad back now use single navigateBack() instead of per-screen handlers
• Announcement panel more transparent and subtle
• Skip button glyphs no longer overlap (letter-spacing fix)

• Expanded default playlist — 9 tracks including 4 new Rommii songs
• Default tracks list in Music submenu — disable/enable individual songs with checkmark toggle
• Disabled tracks are skipped during playback with dimmed strikethrough appearance
• Static playlist lead-in: Road Runner, Rainbow Dance, Start The Engine, Valor play first
• Shuffle button in top bar audio controls
• Announcement panel on home screen — top-left, changelog-styled, auto-hides on game start
• Rommii credit announcement with glowing animated link
• Replay exit button repositioned with equal padding from top bar

• Line Ride Assist — course correction gently aligns you with nearby trails for boost gathering
• New Gameplay settings section with Line Ride Assist toggle
• Distant galaxies added to skybox with procedural spiral arms and music-reactive glow
• Star twinkle effect across the sky
• Brighter spectator camera lights
• Discord invite link added to loading screen and bottom bar
• Galaxies now glow through arena walls correctly

• Music overlay title restyled to match stats/leaderboard (larger, bold, scanline effect)
• Music EQ anchored to bottom of panel like home screen
• Your Playlist section now full width
• Improved AI wall avoidance with speed-scaled multi-distance lookahead

• Killcam slow-motion — 0.5s slow-mo before orbiting the crash site
• Death-frame lag fix: deferred particle creation, pre-warmed materials, pre-created flash lights
• Music panel restyled — larger labels, better spacing, chat-style thin scrollbar on playlist
• Audio-reactive equalizer added to music overlay
• Volume slider grows on grab with sparkle particle effects
• Smoother settings collapse/expand with cubic-bezier easing and rotating caret
• All settings groups collapsed by default
• Audio controls glow cyan on hover
• Countdown number centering fix ("1" no longer off-center)
• Top bar dropdowns no longer clipped
• Removed username dropdown caret and settings gear from top bar
• Settings section headers reduced 25%, carets match arrow selectors
• Keyboard/gamepad nav skips hidden match options when panel is closed
• Overlays no longer overlap bottom bar
• "ENEMY" → "OPPONENT" in controls hint

• All overlay menus scroll and never overlap the top bar
• Top bar frosted glass with blur, radial gradients, and scanlines
• Settings gear icon in top bar (left of username)
• Changelog tab sized to content instead of full-width
• Removed Match History button from Stats (already on home screen)
• Main menu nudged upward 15px

• Graphics quality settings — 4 presets (Low/Med/High/Ultra) with GPU auto-detect
• Per-setting overrides: bloom, render scale, arena detail, rave lights, audio react, trail glow, player VFX, lighting
• Quality preset as segmented toggle [LOW|MED|HIGH|ULTRA]
• Control toggles restyled — frosted glass, cyan glow, menu-button depth
• Tooltips on all graphics and camera settings
• Collapsible settings sections with animated expand/collapse
• Settings panel vertically centered, scrollable, 15% wider
• New SERVER settings section with Auto Submit
• Changelog restyled to match chat panel — tab header, scrollable body, draggable
• Color allocation optimized — reusable THREE.Color instances in palette functions

• Replay scrub preserves play/pause state
• Loop button for replay playback
• Freecam starts positioned near first visible character
• Compass resize handle flipped to bottom-left
• Timer bar moved to top as drag handle for compass
• Radar UI refactored to match chat panel style

• Google Analytics integrated
• Volume and playlist dropdowns open downward with configurable direction
• Top bar UI scaled up ~20%, pushed closer to screen edges
• Mute button always shows speaker icon
• Compass drag-to-resize synced with settings slider
• Killcam spin slowed 20%, extended 0.5s
• Playlist mode swap updates music overlay
• First custom track auto-plays on add
• Replay controls widened, all buttons on single row

• Music files included in build (fixed missing audio after deploy)
• Audio error recovery no longer rapid-cycles through all tracks
• Audio controls moved left of track name in top bar
• Menus disabled during game transition — no more multi-start on spam click

• Fixed audio not playing on click to start
• Fixed countdown beep missing on "3"
• Volume slider dropdown on top bar mute button
• Removed playlist settings from settings overlay (now in Music)

• Frosted glass blur on all menu backgrounds
• Normalized menu system — only one screen visible at a time
• Smooth fade/slide transitions between menus
• Previous track button + playlist dropdown in top bar audio
• Unified dropdown styling across all menus (20% larger rows)
• Background auto-switches to replays if player has any
• Fixed time played formatting (days support, centered)
• Fixed changelog popover opening off-screen

• Resizable chat with drag handle, viewport clamping, size persists
• Right-click CHAT toggle resets position
• Invite button disabled with Coming Soon tooltip
• Fixed gameplay blur — stripped CSS filter/backdrop-filter from loading transition
• MediaSession API — keyboard media keys control music player
• Track metadata shown in browser/OS media controls
• Lowered EQ sensitivity for YouTube simulation and real audio

• Cinematic focus-in polish — loading text fades instantly, canvas unblurs over 2s with saturation sweep
• Fixed chat drag — switched from pointer capture to window mouse events
• Gentler momentum — lower friction, softer bounce, velocity cap
• Fixed min-width on perf stats to prevent top bar layout shift
• Player icon replaces username in time played section

• Cinematic focus-in — blurred 3D scene behind loading screen, smooth unblur on click to start
• Fixed user dropdown — hover bridge eliminates gap, inner wrapper for styling
• SVG trophy icon for leaderboard buttons (monochrome, matches UI)
• Player icon and globe icon in time played section
• Real-time seconds ticker on global time played
• Tooltips skip empty data-tip attributes
• Chat drag follows cursor in real time, reduced momentum 15%

• Top bar breathing room — wider padding, increased separators
• Username hover submenu — Friends and Sign Out on hover
• Polished chat drag with momentum, bounce physics, and edge snap
• Auto-scaling overlay panels for small viewports
• Memory and ping tooltips with detailed stats (heap, avg/min/max ping)
• Global time can never regress — monotonic transaction guard
• Fixed null classList errors, tooltip errors, ping using CDN HEAD

• Titan Panel top bar — full-width gradient bar with all items omnipresent
• Memory usage and Firebase ping in top bar
• Physics-based draggable chat with momentum and edge bounce
• Smart tooltip positioning and YT EQ boost
• Quickstart options panel shrunk — smaller arrows, labels, color dots
• Leaderboard column widths and paging refinements

• Omnipresent draggable chat with tab bar, close button, unread count
• Leaderboard — paging, wider columns, trophy icon, removed RANKED tab
• Smooth camera transition from menu to game start
• Audio & visual controls moved to top bar
• Friends moved to top bar (visible when logged in)
• Smart tooltips — auto-flip below when near top edge
• Boosted YouTube EQ simulation for visible equalizer animation
• Compass shows in-game position during settings
• Favicon added

• Omnipresent chat with tab bar and X close button
• Chat visible on all screens, not just main menu
• CHAT toggle and badge always in top bar
• Custom styled tooltips — Orbitron font, glow effect, smart positioning
• Replaced all native title popups with JS-powered floating tooltips

• Custom YouTube playlists with playlist import
• Music overlay on homepage
• Chat toggle in top bar with unread badge, persisted show/hide
• Loading screen version matches bottom bar glow style
• Replay panel: removed bottom EXIT, added SPEED/CAM labels
• Leaderboard query fix with client-side fallback
• Bottom bar audio overflow fix

• Server-synced time played — Firestore delta-based global counter
• Friends button moved below Character
• Online stats synced from Firestore leaderboard data
• Replay fav star uses purple secondary color
• Compass lowered 20px from top bar

• Bottom bar grid layout — center section always dead center, sides push outward
• Top and bottom bar visual parity — matching margins, separators, spacing
• Universal UI click sound on all interactive elements
• Replay panel raised 20px with backdrop, more padding and breathing room
• Keyboard controls moved below time section

• Friends system — add by username, accept/deny requests, real-time notifications
• Boost meter hidden on game over screen, resets to full before countdown
• Auto-submit no longer flashes button when enabled
• Replay fav star flush-attached like Quick Start

• Fixed game over screen not showing (broken #now-playing/#credit refs)
• Top bar (auth, online count, fullscreen) always visible
• Settings toggles redesigned as segmented OFF | ON controls
• Compass moved below top bar, max size doubled to 440px

• Submit to Leaderboard button on every post-game screen
• Auto Submit toggle in Settings for automatic leaderboard submission
• Global rank shown after submission (RANK #X)
• Centralized bottom bar (audio, visual, credit in one row)
• Fullscreen button inline with top-right auth bar
• Duplicate submission protection (client + server)
• Matchmaking promoted to full menu button

• Removed play icon from Quick Start
• Wider menu buttons

• Merged matchmaking & invite into Quick Start row
• Removed arrow icons from Main Menu buttons

• Deploy script with auto version bump, changelog & chat announcement
• Sound & visual icons replace NOW PLAYING / NOW SHOWING text
• Clickable now-showing row to cycle background modes
• Fullscreen toggle button (hover top-right corner)
• System chat messages for release announcements
• Match options panel flush-attached to quickstart button

• Leaderboard with wins, win rate, streak, fastest, and time metrics
• Per-settings filters (series length & opponent count)
• Post-match auto-submission to global leaderboard
• Click your entries to replay the match

• Private lobbies: invite friends via shareable link for direct matches
• NOW SHOWING toggle: switch menu background between AI matches & saved replays
• Glowing sweep animation on version number

• Live total time played counter on home screen (persists across sessions)

• Cinematic slow-mo death zoom on background replay with shatter effect
• Vignette & bloom surge during slow-mo for dramatic impact
• Consistent button widths & heights across all menu sections

• Code hygiene refactor: shared utility module for deduplication
• Fixed netcode using hardcoded dt instead of actual frame delta
• Fixed audio gain ignoring user volume setting on init
• Arena audio reactivity now uses real frame delta

• Background replay on victory screen with cycling camera views
• Music controls on pause & victory screens
• Controller support for settings menu & match options
• Quick start options dropdown with gear icon toggle
• Asset preloading on initial load
• B button / back closes dropdowns

• Fixed netcode death sync across multiple rounds
• Fixed matchmaking ghost queue entries
• Wireless controller detection & non-standard input support
• Camera zoom defaults increased, max range extended