v0.5.0

Zod's first playable online multiplayer. This is the milestone v0.5.0 is named for: a dedicated server, a match browser, a ready-up lobby, matchmaking, and N-player maps with bots filling the empty seats. Point your client at the public server and play — no setup.

Multiplayer (new)

• Play online out of the box — Multiplayer connects to the public server (z.0f.ee) by default. Pick a match, join, and play.
• Match browser + create — see open matches with their map and player count (N/cap), Join one, or Create your own.
• Map picker with player counts — every map is labelled with how many players it holds; filter the create list to just the size you want (e.g. 4-player maps).
• Waiting-room lobby + ready-up — joining drops you into a lobby; the match starts when everyone clicks I'm Ready, not on a fixed timer.
• "Play with someone" matchmaking — one click drops you into a shared open match and waits for an opponent.
• Countdown → fill with bots — on a bigger map than the humans present, once everyone's ready a ~30s countdown runs; if no one else joins, bots fill the empty forts and the game starts.
• Practice vs Bots — start solo against bots for testing or warm-up.
• Dedicated server image — a slim (~67MB) multi-arch (amd64 + arm64) Docker image on GHCR (ghcr.io/fenio/zod-server) runs a process-per-match orchestrator, so anyone can self-host.

Online multiplayer is brand new — expect rough edges, and please report what breaks. The 2-human ready-up and countdown paths especially need real-world testing.

Gameplay & rendering

• Wrecks render underneath — exploded vehicle wrecks draw as a ground-debris under-layer instead of painting over the units and buildings on top of them (#206).
• Forts hit on the facing side — buildings are attacked on the side facing the shooter rather than dead centre (#208).
• Eject in classic mode — eject from a cannon/vehicle via left click when classic mouse mode is on (#106).
• Smarter enter orders — ordering a unit into a building/transport routes to a reachable approach tile instead of the exact (sometimes unreachable) tile; unreachable orders are logged (#220).

UI

• Loading progress on the splash — a progress bar + percent while the game loads its assets (#72).
• Menu scaling refinements — building/factory overlays scale with the menus (1.5x vs the 2x menus); the glitchy 3x option is gone and the scale env is now ZOD_MENU_SCALE (#207).

Android

• Easier touch commanding — wider touch slack when commanding flags/objects, not just selecting units (#205).

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Windows and Android (arm64) builds attach automatically once their CI jobs finish. The dedicated-server Docker image (ghcr.io/fenio/zod-server) is built for this tag too.