Bots Learn the Item Game
Bots put their learned routes to work, Duel opponents time the big pickups, career TrueSkill replaces wins on the boards, and game servers start in about a second.
Knowing the Jump Was Only Half the Job
Last release taught bots a route to the Red Armor. This one makes them take it.
Learned movement scripts now run in live play, including the wall jump above the teleporter on DM2. Every armor and the Mega Health is reachable from every spawn. The route is no longer just a line in a navigation report.
Each Mode Has Its Own Shopping List
Item choices now depend on the mode. A Duel opponent values controlling the major pickups, while other modes weigh them against their own goals.
Duel bots time the Mega Health and armors instead of simply noticing them when they happen to be nearby. Movement, routing and item choice start to meet in the same decision: what is worth reaching next?
A Rating Is More Than a Win Count
The leaderboard, podium and profile switch to career TrueSkill, with separate Public and Private pools, provisional status and rated-match counts. The last-30-days view filters active players without resetting their career skill.
Profiles get gameplay totals and match history. A result shows its committed before-and-after rating or a readable reason it was not rated.
Underneath, finished matches have verified reports, a replayable results journal and durable delivery. Retries do not award a result twice. A killed match server does not manufacture a finished match.
Bot skill is still pending calibration in this release. Private bot games keep their records and stats, but the calibration registry ships empty until human pilots establish strengths. That limitation changes in v0.9.29; it is part of the story here.
Thirty-Five Seconds Was Too Long
Game-server startup falls from roughly 35–45 seconds to about one second. The startup screen also waits until it is actually ready before asking for the click that starts the game.
Bots are invited into private lobbies. FFA can start with two ready players without losing its eight-player capacity.
The lobby gets a player cap and an explicit Servers are full screen with automatic retries and a Try now action. Waiting for room should not mean wondering whether the page has stopped working.
Measurements Are Still Measurements
Material-clone setup is batched to avoid repeated renderer scans. The first-person weapon-candidate filter remains an opt-in experiment, disabled by default. Adding a switch for a benchmark is not the same thing as proving it belongs in everyone's game.