# 📢 Update 0.4.1-alpha — Home & Horizons

**Release Date:** 11/4/2026
**Version:** 0.4.1-alpha
**Development Stage:** Alpha

## 📋 Overview

The world is becoming more immersive than ever! This update completely rebuilds the lighting system, introduces thunderstorms, expands the calendar and achievements, and improves how weather interacts with buildings and terrain. New customization options, visual refinements, and gameplay fixes round out the update.

## 💡 Lighting Overhaul

- Completely rebuilt lighting to respond to individual blocks and environmental exposure rather than elevation or camera position.
- Natural lighting now depends on exposure to the surface, while artificial lighting depends on the paths available from light sources.
- Light color now varies by source and conditions:
  - Daylight
  - Sunrise
  - Sunset
  - Moonlight
  - Torchlight
  - Overcast rain and snow
- Blocks now cast shadows and obstruct light.
- Reduced the minimum ambient light level, allowing completely unlit areas to become darker.
- Changes to the environment, including opening and closing doors, dynamically affect lighting.

## ⛈️ Weather

- Added thunderstorms.
- Rain and snow are now blocked by overhead structures, keeping covered areas sheltered.
- Fixed precipitation rendering over menus.
- Fixed rain failing to fall in areas exposed by removing terrain blocks.

## 📅 Calendar & Birthdays

- Added an in-game calendar.
- Players can now select their character's birthday when creating a world.
- Birthdays are marked on the calendar.
- New worlds begin on the character's birthday in Year 1.
- Added a Randomize button for birthday selection.
- The default birthday is Spring 1 if no date is selected.
- Existing worlds automatically receive Spring 1 as their character's birthday.

## 🏆 Achievements

Added six new achievements:

**🏠 Home Sweet Home**
Place a bed inside an enclosed structure with walls and a roof.

**🪴 Interior Designer**
Place a chest, bed, door, and flower pot within the same enclosed structure.

**📦 A Place for Everything**
Store an item inside a chest.

**🌱 Like Watching Paint Dry**
Plant a sapling and watch it grow into a tree without the sapling leaving your screen.

**🦋 Did You See Something?**
Encounter all four atmospheric animal types: birds, butterflies, jumping spiders, and fish.

**🏜️ Desert Refugee**
Enter a desert while precipitation is occurring in nearby non-desert terrain.

### Achievement Improvements

- Added progress trackers for achievements with countable requirements.
- Changed **Fully Equipped** to require maxing out one tool instead of all three.
- Fixed **Rock Bottom** (reach bedrock) being impossible to unlock.

## 🎮 Gameplay & Controls

- Added an optional setting allowing left-click mining to break background blocks without holding Shift.
  - Disabled by default.
  - Existing foreground-first mining behavior remains the default.
- Removed the "Can Gather" list from the Tools interface.
- The inventory now moves to the top of the screen when the player reaches the bottom of the world, preventing it from obstructing mining near bedrock.

## 🌍 World Generation & Wildlife

- Reduced both the minimum and maximum Plains biome lengths by 50%, creating more frequent biome transitions.
- Atmospheric animals can now spawn around the player immediately upon entering a world, rather than requiring exploration before they appear.

## 🎨 Updated Textures

- Small Rock
- Bird
- Glass
- Fish
- Butterfly

The original Small Rock texture remains available through the **Original Game Textures** pack.

## 🔄 Item Changes

- Removed the Small Rock → Stone crafting recipe.
- Breaking a Small Rock now directly yields 1 Stone.
- Removed Small Rock from the Creative catalog.

## 🐛 Fixed

- Fixed precipitation appearing on top of open menu interfaces.
- Fixed rain passing through covered structures.
- Fixed rain not appearing in areas where terrain had been removed.
- Fixed the Rock Bottom achievement not unlocking when reaching bedrock.
- Fixed atmospheric wildlife not appearing around newly spawned players until exploration began.

## ⚡ Improved

- Reworked environmental lighting and shadows for more realistic interactions between terrain, buildings, and light sources.
- Improved lighting contrast between illuminated and unlit areas.
- Improved achievement visibility through progress tracking and new building-focused milestones.
- Improved mining accessibility near the world's lower boundary.
- Refined biome variety, wildlife spawning, and several environmental textures.