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Changelog
What changed in each LanOrbit release. The app keeps itself up to date in the background — this is the history.
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- A room whose password the host changed now asks you for the new password when you open the room. It used to let you in, then refuse you at the VPN connect with "wrong password" — because the app was still quietly using the password you had typed earlier, and only found out it was wrong at the last step.
- The in-game overlay no longer shows a 1v1 as "mm-59b141bcd98ba46c57". It now says who you are playing — "viorel vs lolz" — because the room is named after the match id, which told you nothing.
- Rooms you could never actually enter no longer appear in the room list. Every group chat on the server was being listed as a joinable room, including leftovers of chats nobody had been in for days, so clicking one could only fail.
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- A server you are kicked or banned from disappears from your list right away, with a note saying so. It used to sit there, apparently normal, until you signed out and back in.
- Deleting your account now really does remove your data: your profile, preferences, memberships, stats, uploaded files and your messages, across the app database, the chat server and storage. It used to leave most of it behind.
- Threads and posts you wrote on a forum stay, because other people are still reading them, but your name on them becomes "[deleted]". The Delete account screen says so now instead of promising that everything disappears.
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- Fixed the in-game overlay: it was drawing the entire application — titlebar, server rail, sidebar, a channel — crammed into a small transparent window, instead of the overlay card. The overlay window was falling back to the app's start page because its own page could not load.
- The profile card is bigger: wider overall, taller, with more room on the left for the avatar, name and details, so the tabs on the right no longer feel cramped.
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- The in-game overlay shows your voice channel: everyone in it, with a green ring around whoever is talking and a mark on anyone muted.
- It also lists the other voice channels that have someone in them, so you can see where people are without leaving the game.
- Mute, share your screen and disconnect straight from the overlay.
- New switches under Settings > Games for each of those panels, plus "Only show who is talking" to keep the overlay small during a busy call.
- The overlay refreshes once a second instead of every three, so the speaking indicator keeps up.
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- The member list stays open. Whether the right-hand panel showed was recalculated from the window width on every launch and never remembered, so opening it was forgotten each restart — and an app zoom above 100% hid it even on a wide screen. Your choice is kept now; the width only decides the very first run.
- Ladders is in the sidebar under Play. The per-game standings existed but could only be reached from a profile card, so most people never found them.
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- Profile cards now show "Member since" for everyone. The join date was only ever filled in for your own account, so on anyone else's card that row was simply missing.
- A profile's username, join date, pronouns and current status are grouped together as Details instead of each sitting under its own heading.
- Settings is sorted into Account, Privacy & safety, App, Voice & gaming and Advanced. Appearance, voice, notifications, keybinds, games, language and the rest used to share one catch-all group.
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- General and Europe behave like real channels at last: slash commands, the emoji picker, stickers, file uploads, reactions, mentions, link previews and threads all work there. They were running on a separate, stripped-down chat that supported none of it.
- The online list in General and Europe is the same width and spacing as a server's member list, instead of being squeezed into a narrow column.
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- Fixed the forum: the "All threads" and "New thread" buttons were being laid out as a tall column beside the forum, taking a third of the width. They sit in one fixed bar above it again.
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- Six slash commands that answered "not available yet" now work: /slowmode, /lock, /purge, /nick, /sticker and /thread.
- /slowmode takes seconds, or 30s / 5m / 1h; 0 turns it off. /lock toggles posting for everyone but moderators. /purge deletes the last N messages for everyone, and each one keeps its undo window.
- /nick sets your nickname on the current server. /sticker sends a sticker by name. /thread posts the title and opens a thread on it.
- Commands that need a permission now say which one is missing instead of quietly doing nothing.
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- Emoji come from the full Unicode set now (1958 of them, up from about 520 kept by hand), so recent emoji are no longer missing.
- Emoji search actually searches: typing "lol" finds the laughing face. It used to match only the category name, so most searches found nothing.
- New setting under Settings > Appearance > Emoji size, from matching the text size up to Huge. A message that is only emoji is shown larger.
- Typing :) and friends covers far more shapes, including the nose and eye variants (:-], =), XD).
- Family, flag and keycap emoji no longer get split apart mid-character.
- The emoji picker's "Recent" row is the emoji you actually picked; it used to be a fixed list.
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- New message settings under Settings > Appearance: turn link previews, inline images/videos and emoji reactions on or off, and have :) sent as an emoji.
- Admins can publish news from inside the app: News now has a "New post" button with a form for the title, category, tag, summary, body, cover image and pinning.
- Messages in General and Europe now stay there: those channels are archived like any other, but the app never loaded that history, so every restart looked like an empty room.
- Members in General and Europe get the same nameplate treatment as the server member list.
- News now reads as a grid of cards with a proper cover image, and the category filter sits above it.
- The member list shows each player's clan tag next to their name.
- Members who set a profile banner get it as a subtle nameplate behind their row.
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- The forum header no longer changes as you move around: the same title and the same "All threads" / "New thread" buttons stay in one place on the list, inside a thread and on the new-thread form. "New thread" no longer also appears beside the filters.
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- Fixed the room notifications never arriving: the app only watched the room list while you were inside a room, so it could not tell when a friend opened one. It now watches while you are signed in, so "a friend opened a room" and "someone joined your room" actually fire.
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- Notifications now carry the LanOrbit logo as the toast image, so the notification is recognisable at a glance.
- Notifications now say what happened on the first line and the content on the second: "Message from Alex" / the message, "Alex mentioned you in #general", "Room invite from Alex", "Alex opened a room", "Incoming call from Alex". Previously the first line was just a name, which read like the text was printed twice.
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- Desktop notifications now go through Windows directly, so they show the LanOrbit name and icon with no stray third-party image.
- Room folders are cleaned up: each connect starts from a fresh peer key set (a leftover key from an earlier session could make the tunnel reject a player's traffic), and room folders untouched for a week are deleted instead of piling up with old private keys.
- Far less noise in the VPN log: the per-player ping no longer restarts a tinc helper every 15 seconds, so the harmless "metadata socket" errors stop burying real ones.
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- Desktop notifications now show "LanOrbit" and the LanOrbit icon (instead of the raw app id and a generic icon). The app now refreshes its Start Menu shortcut so Windows attributes toasts correctly.
- Fixed notifications appearing twice: an exact-duplicate notification fired within a moment of the first is now collapsed into one.
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- Top bar cleaned up: Forum removed (Home / Blog / Top), and clicking the LanOrbit logo now takes you Home.
- New notification options under Settings > Notifications > Rooms: get notified when a friend opens a room, and when someone joins a room you host or are connected to (both on by default, turn off any time).
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- Desktop notifications now show the LanOrbit logo.
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- Desktop notifications now actually appear. The toast was being sent with a duration flag that this notification helper does not support, so every toast failed and nothing showed. Removed it; the toast now pops with the LanOrbit icon.
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- Fixed in-app updates failing with "Access is denied" while backing up LanOrbit.exe. Windows can refuse to replace the running app, so the updater now stages the new app and completes the swap on the next launch, after the app has closed.
- More reliable notifications: the app now gets window focus straight from Windows, so background messages are detected even when the browser focus check would miss them.
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- Fixed desktop notifications not showing on Windows. The toast was sent under an app id that did not match the installed Start Menu shortcut, so Windows silently dropped every notification. It now uses the correct app id, so background messages, mentions and room invites pop a real Windows toast.
- Desktop notifications now show the LanOrbit app icon (the toast was looking for the icon in the wrong place and showed none).
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- Notification sounds and taskbar notifications now work when the app is in the background. The app now tracks the real window focus instead of relying on a browser check that wrongly reported the window as focused, so messages you get while looking at another window or PC actually ping and flash the taskbar. Sound is also unlocked on first click so it can play for background messages.
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- A room invite in chat is now a clickable "Join room" link instead of raw text, so an invited friend jumps straight into the room.
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- The in-room latency dots now refresh every 15 seconds instead of every 4, so they stop spamming the VPN log with harmless tinc "metadata socket" errors.
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- The Home workspace layout is now the default (switch back to the classic Home any time in Settings > Appearance).
- The close button now minimizes to the tray by default, so LanOrbit keeps running in the background (turn it off in Settings > Notifications to quit on close instead).
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- Fixed the window growing by a pixel or two every time you reopened it from the tray. Showing the app from the tray no longer nudges its size, so it stays exactly where you left it.
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- The member list on the General and Europe channels now looks like a server's member list: avatar with status, name and current activity.
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- Pick your avatar from a gallery of generated styles, and build a profile banner right in the app (design an SVG, or point it at your own image link).
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- A per-player latency signal (green / orange / red) next to each member in a room, for players connected to the VPN.
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- Switching forum categories in the Home Forum channel now stays on the same page instead of jumping away.
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- Clicking a thread in the Home Forum channel now opens it inline, on the same page.
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- The full community forum is now embedded in the Home Forum channel, not just a preview.
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- A handful of UI fixes: News links underline on hover, the avatar status dot shows over decorations, the VPN log is collapsible, a button copies the game launch command, and the in-game Back button returns you to the room.
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- The X button always minimizes to the tray, and the app retries its executable backup when a file is briefly locked.
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- "Show window" from the tray now recreates the window if it had been closed, so the app always comes back.
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- The tray menu now shows the version and an About entry, with more reliable click handling.
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- Groundwork for reliable tray "Show window" behaviour on Windows.
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- The VPN auto-retries transient connection failures, and each player's current game is shown.
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- Compact tunnel stats in the room, and a per-player "in game" badge.
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- Remember me and auto-login at startup; matchmaking no longer gives up on the match room too early.
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- More reliable window restore from the tray on Windows.
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- Rooms ask for the password on entry; kick and host transfer confirm in-app; a friendlier VPN connection error.
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- New mini-game: Blast Arena (beta) — an original grid bomb game. Drop bombs, blow up the soft blocks, grab power-ups (extra bombs, bigger blasts, more speed) and be the last one standing against the bots. Single-player for now (WASD or arrows to move, Space to drop a bomb); multiplayer is coming. Find it in Mini-games.
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- Fixed the window not coming back from the tray: "Show Window" (and clicking the tray icon) now un-minimizes, shows and forces the window to the front on Windows, even when it was hidden to the tray while still in a minimized state. The earlier fix didn't cover that case.
- In Library, games that aren't installed are now greyed out (dimmed and desaturated, brighter on hover) so the installed ones stand out.
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- Six new avatar decorations, all original art drawn in CSS: Comet (a sweeping trail), Bloom (a pink-green floral ring), Void (a dark pulsing aura), Hearts, Snow and Bubbles.
- Reorganized the left server rail: Home and Direct Messages are pinned at the top, your servers scroll in the middle, and Create server, Join server, Communities and Settings are pinned at the bottom.
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- Fixed the Home workspace rail being far too wide: it now uses the normal sidebar width (and is resizable) instead of stretching to fill the space.
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- Home workspace (beta) reworked so the new left menu now stays on EVERY page. The workspace rail (Play — Host a game, Versus; Browse — Rooms, Join by IP, Library, Mini-games, Tournaments; and your chat Channels) is now part of the app layout: it stays framed on the left while you browse rooms, open a game in the Library, create or join a room, and so on — the content just changes beside it, each page keeping its own header and Back. The far-left server rail keeps only Home, DMs, Communities, your servers and the create/join buttons. Classic Home is unchanged; switch between them in Settings → Appearance → Home workspace.
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- New "Home workspace" layout (beta, opt-in from Settings → Appearance). When it's on, Rooms (Browse / Join by IP), Library and Mini-games open right inside Home — the Home rail stays put and the section's pages show as horizontal tabs, instead of switching to a separate page, so it feels like you never left Home. It's off by default; flip it on to try it and switch back to the classic Home any time. (More sections and a tidied server rail are coming in the next steps.)
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- Many more avatar decorations: the set grew from ~15 to 30+ — new colour-themed rings (Ruby, Sapphire, Amethyst, Sunset, Ocean, Toxic, Lava, Royal, Mint, Rose Gold, Chrome, Aqua, Violet, Bronze, Candy, Crimson, Ice), new glow rings (Shadow, Electric, Venom) and premium ones (Nebula, Solar). The picker is now also in Settings → Profile, not only on the profile card.
- 8 new colour palettes in Settings → Appearance: Amoled (true-black, for OLED screens), Crimson, Forest, Rosé, Cyberpunk, Coffee, Ocean and Monochrome — each with its own dark and light variant.
- More profile banner presets (mesh gradients, holographic, aurora and patterns), and Settings and the profile card now share the same set.
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- Redesigned Home as a full-height "server"-style hub: the "Home / Your LanOrbit at a glance" bar is gone and the chat now fills the height to the very top. A left rail — framed like a server's channel sidebar — holds the LanOrbit brand, a "Play" section (Host a game, Versus, the shortcuts and your installed games) and the channels (General, Europe, News), all in one continuous frame. The selected channel's chat renders seamlessly (no card border) with the online members beside it. On narrow windows the rail becomes a strip above the chat.
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- Avatar decorations are now easy to find: open your profile card → "Customize", and "Avatar decoration" is the first section (it used to be hidden below the banner presets). Picking one applies it everywhere right away.
- Auto-connect on Start: when the host presses "Start", everyone already in the room is connected to the VPN automatically — no need for each player to click "Connect VPN" first. The host signals the room, players connect while the slots are still open, then the slots close. The version check and room password still apply, so a mismatched build or a locked room surfaces the usual message instead.
- Fixed the window sometimes not coming back to the front after you minimized it: "Show Window" in the tray menu (and clicking the tray icon) now reliably un-minimizes and focuses the window, instead of staying minimized.
- Avatar decorations: pick a ring/effect that frames your avatar everywhere (chat, online members, profile), like Discord. 15 to choose from — Neon, Gold VIP, Prism, Flames, Frost, Aurora, Orbit, Pulse, Retro, Emerald, plus premium Galaxy, Phoenix and the animated Halo and Sparkle. Choose one from your profile card → "Customize" (next to the banner). They're free, drawn in CSS/SVG (and lightweight Lottie for the animated two), and other players see your pick too. Honours "reduced motion".
- Online members on Home: right-click a member for the full user menu (message, mention, add/remove friend, call, invite to a server, copy, report) — left-click still opens their profile. The list also shows what each person is playing.
- Fixed the Home page layout being broken after 0.1.41: the new channels "server" view used the same CSS class name as the app's server pill, so it inherited the 48×48 pill styling and squashed the channels rail, chat and members into a thin column. The Home server now lays out correctly (channels rail on the left, chat full-height, members on the right).
- The default colour palette for new installs is now Midnight (was Guilded Gold). Your own choice in Settings → Appearance is unchanged.
- Home is now a chat "server": a channels rail on the left (General first, then Europe, then News), the selected channel filling the full height in the middle, and the online members beside the chat. Host a game, Versus and the other shortcuts moved into a compact quick-start bar across the top, so starting a game is still one click. On narrow windows the channels rail becomes a strip above the chat.
- Fixed the "Create account" button on the register screen staying greyed out when the username had a capital letter (sign-up lowercases it anyway), and a disabled button now shows a "Still needed: …" line so it's never a mystery what's missing.
- The room's connection stat tiles (Virtual IP, Gateway, Latency, …) are a bit more compact.
- English cleanup: translated a batch of leftover Romanian labels that were still showing on the English interface — the room page (Settings, Version check, Access, version-badge messages), Settings → Profile (Pronouns, Custom status, Network adapter), the room Network page, Library and game pages (Status, Playtime, Installation, reviews, Buy…), notifications panel (Unread) and the "join by link" server dialog.
- Home now shows the General chat right next to the quick-start panel in a split view (instead of a separate tab), so you can start a game and keep an eye on the global channel at the same time. On narrow windows they stack.
- The General chat now has an "Online" members list beside it — see everyone in the channel (and what they're playing) at a glance, and click a name to open their profile.
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- New "General" tab on Home: a global chat channel where everyone on LanOrbit is together. You're joined automatically — open Home → General to see who's around and chat. Shows the live online count, and your messages send with Enter.
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- The update window now matches the rest of LanOrbit: a branded dark window (WebView2) with the changelog and a smooth progress bar, instead of the old plain Windows dialog. It falls back to the simple window only if WebView2 isn't available, so an update is never blocked.
- Regular updates are no longer forced: you get the polished in-app update card and can keep using LanOrbit while it installs. (Forced updates are now reserved for the rare release that truly requires it.)
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- Version check for rooms, so everyone in a match runs the same build: LanOrbit hashes your game's files and compares them with the accepted versions set in the catalogue. A room's game now shows a badge — "Versiune verificată" (with the build name), "Versiune diferită", or "Fișiere joc negăsite". When a game is set to enforce the check, a mismatched or missing install is blocked from creating or joining that room (otherwise it's just a warning). Works for normal rooms and 1v1/2v2/3v3 matchmaking alike.
- Richer player profile card: it now shows an "acum joacă" (now playing) card with the game's art when someone is in a game, and a "Game ranks" section with each game's tier, K/D and win rate (CS 1.6, Chess) read from the real per-game stats — with a shortcut to the full stats page. The Stats tab lists every game's rank, not just the Versus MMR.
- Room → Setări joc now has a "Verificare versiune" section with a "Copiază hash exe" button, so you can read the SHA-256 of a known-good install and add it to the catalogue as an accepted build.
- Your stats page now shows your form at a glance: a K/D trend chart over your recent matches (with your last-10 win/loss strip) and a per-map win-rate breakdown, all from your real match history.
- The quick search (Ctrl/Cmd+K) can now jump to My stats, Match history, Mini-games and Home too.
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- Reworked the "Choose a game" picker in Versus: smaller, more compact game tiles so more fit on screen, a search box, a genre filter, and pagination when there are many games.
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- Fixed matchmaking (1v1 / 2v2 / 3v3) dropping the host out of their own match room seconds after it was created. The app no longer acts on the first "slot gone" heartbeat while the server is still catching up with a freshly created room — it confirms the room is really closed before ending the session, so the host stays in.
- A host kick is now a short cooldown instead of a permanent lock-out: the kicked player is removed right away but can rejoin after a couple of minutes, and the host can lift it instantly from the kicked list. Matchmaking rooms no longer show a kick button (you can't lock your opponent out of a match).
- Fixed times shown in the stats pages (and the forum) being off by your timezone — match and post times now display in your local time correctly.
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- Fixed matchmaking rooms (1v1 / 2v2 …) showing "Room not found — it may have been closed by the host" a few seconds after the match started, and the VPN staying connected after the room vanished. The room list no longer drops the room you're actually in; only a real close/kick ends the session (and now also drops the tunnel).
- Fixed game icons showing the generic placeholder on the Home page right after launch (they appeared only after switching pages). Covers now load as soon as the session is ready, no page change needed.
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- Fixed direct peer-to-peer (hole punching): the VPN now generates and registers its Ed25519 key correctly, so matches can use a direct low-ping path instead of always relaying through the server.
- New "Rebuild VPN key" button in Settings → Advanced — rotates your VPN identity and re-registers it, for the rare case the key gets stuck (leave the room first).
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- Prepares direct peer-to-peer connections (lower ping between players): the VPN now sets up Ed25519/SPTPS keys and uses them automatically once the servers support it. Until then it runs exactly as before — no action needed.
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- Updated the bundled VPN engine (tinc) to 1.1pre18 — the first step toward direct peer-to-peer connections (lower ping between players). For now it runs compatibly with the current servers; the new engine ships automatically, no action needed.
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- New "How to play" button in a room: opens a per-game guide (video, images and text) curated in the game's documentation. Shows a friendly note when a game has no guide yet.
- "View logs" in a room now shows the full service and tinc log (the same as Settings > Advanced), not just the recent connection events.
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- The in-room game Settings now let you change more: the game's location (.exe), a per-game default map used when you host, and the Play launch command as an editable override (room host/join keep their own map/connect args).
- Room host settings: you can now edit the room's display title (shown in the server browser), alongside capacity and password.
- "View logs" in a room opens the connection log in a modal instead of navigating away.
- The room chat is shorter so its message box stays visible without scrolling the page.
- Hosting a game from a shortcut no longer shows the previously selected game for a couple of seconds before switching to the correct one.
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- Redesigned the Home "Joaca" tab: a cleaner hero with Host a game and Versus (matchmaking), a "Ways to play" grid (browse rooms, join by IP, mini-games, tournaments, leaderboard, match history, library), and installed-game tiles that show the full game title instead of cutting it off.
- Creating a room no longer briefly flashes "You already have a room open" for a leftover room it reclaims automatically; the limit warning now shows only for a room that really blocks you.
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- New Home: a "Joacă" tab with a big quick-start panel (Host a game, Quick match, Browse rooms, and one-click host for your installed games) so it's obvious how to start fast; news and the forum moved to a "Noutăți" tab.
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- More compact room page: the VPN/ping/gateway panel takes less space and the connection log is scrollable, so the room chat is visible without scrolling.
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- You can now open a game's basic settings (in-game name, personal launch arguments, display mode and the full launch command) right from inside a room, without leaving it.
- Fixed room create/leave/destroy sometimes reporting an error ("Could not create the room", "bad destroy-room response") even though it worked, which could leave you stuck "already have a room open" or still connected. The app now handles empty/non-JSON gateway replies correctly.
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- Fixed being blocked by "You already have a room open" even for a normal leftover room: a stale/unreachable room you own is now reclaimed automatically when you create the next one.
- The Stop-game confirmation is now a proper in-app dialog.
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- Fixed being stuck with "You already have a room open" after a matchmaking game: leftover match rooms are now torn down automatically, and an old stuck one is reclaimed when you create the next room.
- Clearer wording when you stop a running game.
- Safer updates (the installer no longer risks a half-applied update), correct voice-channel capacity, and the Counter-Strike stats listener now only accepts data from your own PC.
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- Updates now install from inside the app in a modern window that matches the rest of LanOrbit: it shows what's new and a live progress bar, installs automatically, then one click restarts into the new version. No more classic update dialog for regular updates.
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- The update window is now cleaner and more professional, shows the changelog ("What's new"), and installs the update automatically with a live progress bar - no clicks needed.
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- Added Settings -> Advanced -> About, showing the exact version and build you're running.
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- The main program is now named LanOrbit.exe instead of the generic app.exe.
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- Fixed the VPN network adapter not being renamed correctly on some PCs, which prevented LAN game rooms from connecting. You can also repair it any time from Settings -> Profile -> Network adapter.
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- Reliability fixes for setting up the VPN network adapter.
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- Groundwork for a more robust network adapter setup.