Changelog

0.4.0

The smoothness update: dynamic lights now hand off between blocks with the minimum possible visual change, plus major stability and performance work.

Added

• Predictive light anchoring — the light block leads slightly in your direction of travel (up to 1 block, derived from movement history), so light no longer visibly trails behind when sprinting. Vertical motion is ignored so jumping doesn't bounce the light.
• Ghost light cleanup — every light block the mod places is now recorded in world save data. If a chunk unloads mid-fade or the server crashes, the orphaned light block is automatically removed the next time its chunk loads. /ll purge also clears these records.
• light_update_interval config (default 1) — run the light engine every N ticks. Movement handoffs only shift light by one level per block, so 2 still looks smooth on busy servers.
• Instant equipment response — swapping a light source in or out of your hands/armor forces an immediate light update, even with a raised update interval.
• Persistent sound preferences — /ll sound on|off is now saved with the world and survives restarts.
• Dynamic light items now emit light from item frames.

Changed

• Reworked the smoothing algorithm. Moving light sources now use an "invisible handoff": the new light block spawns at the brightness that spot already receives from the old block, and the old block is removed the moment the new one covers it. Every affected block changes by exactly ±1 light level per block moved — the minimum possible with Minecraft's integer lighting — eliminating the pulsing trail and flicker when moving fast. Fade-in/fade-out still applies where it should: igniting, extinguishing, and light left behind corners.
• Smoothing is now enabled by default and moved out of the experimental config section (smoothing, smoothing_all_entities, fade_in_rate, trail_decay_rate are now top-level options; defaults for the rates are now 2). Old config files are migrated automatically and existing values are preserved.
• Fade rates no longer affect movement smoothness at all — they only control ignition, extinguish, and corner fades, so lower values are now purely cosmetic polish.
• The light level no longer flickers between two values while moving near the anchor block (distance penalty now has a 1-block dead-band).
• License changed to MIT.

Fixed

• Flickering and jarring light transitions when moving quickly with a light source.
• Light blocks left behind permanently ("ghost lights") after chunk unloads or server crashes.
• Moving through an area where another entity ignited no longer makes your light dip dark and fade back in.
• Per-entity caches are now tracked per dimension — a player in the Nether no longer has their light state wrongly purged by the Overworld's cleanup (this could break light_source_spacing outside the Overworld).
• The ignition sound cooldown is now the intended 0.5 seconds.

Performance

• Entity scanning now queries the entity index around each player instead of checking every loaded entity against every player each tick — a large win on servers with many entities.
  • The query radius is capped at 192 blocks: Valkyrien Skies rejects oversized entity queries (returning an empty list, which would disable all entity lights at high view distances). Light beyond that range is imperceptible. Note that VS support itself remains experimental and disabled by default (vs_support).
• Removed a per-source flood-fill that could never place any blocks (only runs for overgrown clusters now).
• Removed a per-position cluster scan from the fade logic; trail blocks are now removed the first tick they become redundant instead of ticking down individually, generating roughly one block update per block moved (also fewer client chunk rebuilds, especially with Sodium/Embeddium renderers).

Config migration notes

• experimental.smoothing, experimental.smoothing_all_entities, experimental.fade_in_rate, and experimental.trail_decay_rate move to the top level automatically on first load; your existing values are kept. Note: configs written by older versions always contain these keys, so the old default (smoothing: false) carries over — delete the keys or set smoothing: true to get the new default behavior.
• cluster_growing, cluster_merge_distance, max_influence_radius, and light_source_spacing remain experimental, as does Valkyrien Skies support (vs_support, off by default).

0.3.1

• Reworked smoothing logic and trail fading.
• Zombies can occasionally spawn holding torches.
• In-wall check for light placement and sound/particle spam prevention.
• Removed the old datapack reference; config fixes.

-initial public beta release-