Changelog

v3.0.0-alpha.1 — 2026-05-07

First public alpha of v3. Multi-loader release across Fabric, NeoForge, and Forge on MC 1.20.1, 1.21.1, and 26.1.

New bracket-markup syntax ([]) for message-level styling, backed by a registrable MessageAttribute system.
New MessageEffect framework for animated message-level transforms — ships with rock and breathe.
Gradient, pulse, and ✨ effects rewritten with multi-stop palettes and cleaner parameter names.
Loader support extended to MC 26.1 (Fabric + NeoForge).

Message-level markup tags moved from <> to []. Removed: the angle-bracket forms of bg/background, bggradient/backgroundgradient, scale, offset, anchor, align, the global form of shadow, and the in=/out= form of fade. Migrate to [bg color=red], [scale 2], [offset x=10 y=5], [anchor TOP_CENTER], [align LEFT], [shadow], [fade in=20 out=10].
Removed the <shake type=wave|circle> compatibility shim and the <charshake> case. Use <shake>, <wave>, <circle> directly.
Per-character forms <shadow x= y= c=> and <fade a= f= w=> are unchanged.
✨Effect parameters renamed: f → speed, w → phase.

MessageAttribute interface + MessageAttributeRegistry for registering custom message-level attributes that apply to the whole message.
Built-in attributes: bg (solid and gradient via from/to), scale, offset, anchor, align, shadow, fade.
MessageEffect framework + MessageEffectRegistry for animated whole-message transforms. Ships with rock and breathe.
NBT and FriendlyByteBuf round-trip for both messageAttributes and messageEffects on ImmersiveMessage.
MarkupParser.parseFull produces a separate messageAttributes list applied directly to ImmersiveMessage; per-character spans no longer carry message-level state.
Positional shorthand for single-value tags: [scale 2], [anchor TOP_CENTER], <color red>, <font norse>. Numeric positional args supported in bracket tags.
ColorPalette value type and ColorParser.parseToRgbaFloats (alpha-aware).
Palettes parser for multi-stop color specs.
Loader modules: neoforge-26.1, fabric-26.1.

GradientEffect rewritten: multi-stop palette, configurable angle, animates by default with smooth pingpong cycling. timeOffset bounded to preserve float precision.
PulseEffect rewritten with an optional color-palette mode.
ColorEffect accepts 8-digit hex (RGBA) and no longer guards on isShadow.
Shadow inherits the wrapping effect's color on MC 1.20.1 and 1.21.1.
Built-in presets updated to use the new grad/pulse/✨ parameter names.
Effect-tag param parser strips surrounding quotes from values.
License metadata corrected across all loader poms and mods.toml to "Ember's Modding Licence v1.2" (was incorrectly reporting GPL-3.0).
README support matrix and badges updated to include MC 26.1.

TextSpan.globalXxx* fields and their getters/setters (internal API).
Empty SoundEffect enum stub. The real sound system is tracked in TODO.md and will land in a later release.

Bracket-only markup is now routed through fromMarkup in test commands.
Bracket tag parser accepts numeric positional arguments.
Invalid bg gradient colors emit a warn-level log instead of failing silently.
emberstextapi:sdf font providers are hidden from the vanilla FontManager parser to silence boot-time warnings.
Forge 1.20.1 mod constructor no longer takes the removed FMLJavaModLoadingContext parameter.
NeoForge 1.21.1 initializes effect registries on common setup so server-side parsing sees them.

forge-1.20.1 moved to a standalone Gradle 8.8 build (ForgeGradle 6 cannot run on Gradle 9). The root project delegates via forge1201* Exec tasks (forge1201Build, forge1201RunClient, etc.).
NeoForge moddev plugin standardized at 2.0.141 across neoforge-1.21.1 and neoforge-26.1.
fabric-1.20.1 and fabric-1.21.1 stay on fabric-loom-remap (vanilla fabric-loom rejects Mojang mappings in this multi-loader workspace); documented inline.
Publish workflow adds forge-1.20.1 to the matrix (*-all.jar is the distributable, with LWJGL FreeType embedded to avoid a JPMS resolution failure on dedicated servers).
mc-publish version-type is derived from the tag suffix (-alpha* / -beta* / release).
v3.0.0-alpha.0 is reserved as a dry-run tag — its workflow run skips Modrinth and CurseForge publishing while still updating Maven and creating a GitHub Release.