🎨 Emage 1.1

🎉 Major Release - GIF Support & Performance Overhaul

This release introduces animated GIF support, distance-based FPS scaling, advanced compression, and numerous performance optimizations.

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✨ New Features

Animated GIF Support

• Full GIF animation support with frame synchronization
• Proper disposal method handling (none, restoreToBackground, restoreToPrevious)
• Variable frame delay support
• SyncGroup system for synchronized grid playback

Distance-Based FPS

• 60 FPS when player is within 20 blocks
• 20 FPS when player is 21-48 blocks away
• Animations pause when no players nearby
• Configurable distance thresholds

Quality Modes

• --fast / -f - No sharpening, fastest processing
• --balanced / -b - Medium sharpening (0.5 strength)
• --high / -h - Strong sharpening (0.8) + edge enhancement

Image Processing

• Unsharp mask sharpening
• Laplacian edge enhancement
• Floyd-Steinberg dithering with serpentine scanning
• Progressive downscaling for large images
• Bicubic interpolation

Storage Management

• /emage cleanup - Remove unused map files
• /emage stats - View storage statistics
• /emage migrate - Convert legacy formats
• /emage perf - View performance status

Update Checker

• Automatic update notifications
• /emage update command
• Clickable download links (GitHub, Modrinth, SpigotMC)
• Admin join notifications

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🚀 Performance Improvements

Animation System

• SyncGroup system - single calculation for entire grid
• Proximity tracking - only update for nearby players
• Adaptive throttling under heavy load
• Frame skip detection with auto-throttling

Compression

• Palette-based compression (1/2/4/8 bits per pixel)
• Delta encoding between frames
• Sparse encoding for similar frames
• Spatial delta (adjacent cells as reference)
• Temporal delta (previous frames as reference)
• 70-90% file size reduction

Memory

• Byte array pooling
• Int array pooling
• Reduced garbage collection
• Efficient buffer reuse

Processing

• Parallel GIF frame processing
• Async image downloading
• Background file I/O
• Progressive image scaling

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📁 File Format Changes

New Formats

• .emap - Single static map (palette + compressed)
• .esgrid - Static grid (multiple maps, delta encoded)
• .eagrid - Animated grid (temporal + spatial delta)

Legacy Support

• Automatic detection of old formats
• /emage migrate for conversion
• Backwards compatible loading

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🔧 Configuration

New Options

performance:
  max-render-distance: 48
  max-fps: 60
  min-fps: 20
  adaptive: true

animation:
  close-distance: 20
  far-distance: 48
  close-fps: 60
  far-fps: 20

quality:
  max-gif-frames: 200
  max-grid-size: 15

memory:
  use-pool: true
  pool-size: 100
  max-usage-mb: 256

check-updates: true