Changelog

Release notes

What’s changed in each build of Focus Forge.

v0.3.4

pre-alpha current July 22, 2026

Canvas minimap: the whole tree as a constellation in the corner, with your viewport marked — click or drag it to jump anywhere. Big trees stop being a scroll marathon.
Hover a focus to light up its entire ancestry — every prerequisite path back to the roots, OR-groups included. See what a capstone really demands at a glance.
Structure raw script: convert raw reward script into editable reward cards — per focus in the inspector, or the whole project at once from the "…" menu (all-or-nothing per focus, so the exported mod stays identical; one undo restores everything).
Stats and the political-power economy now understand raw-script rewards too.
Smarter validation: idea references are checked against the game/MD's real idea list (no more false alarms on base-mod ideas), and a new structural check catches unbalanced braces or quotes in raw script before they corrupt an export.
Opening a project shared from another computer now cleans up machine-specific paths it carried, instead of exporting to a folder that doesn't exist here.
New in Settings: Copy Diagnostic Report — app, project, and recent event log in one paste for bug reports — plus an event log the app keeps automatically.
Fixed a hidden canvas bug that spammed hundreds of paint warnings every time a big tree was fitted to the window.

pre-alpha July 21, 2026

Redesigned inspector: the selected focus shows as a dossier card — its icon in the canvas-style bracket frame, title and id edited in place, position and cost chips (cost shown in in-game days), and a live validation dot. The Idea and Event editors open with the same card.
New command bar: buttons grouped into labeled banks with a single green Export button; rare and destructive commands live under "…". The toolbar no longer clips off-screen on smaller windows.
Focuses list: every row shows its focus icon, id, and a validation dot — and warnings are clickable, jumping straight to the offending focus.
Stats tab: headline tiles plus branch-length and reward-mix charts, so you can see at a glance if your rewards lean too hard on one effect.
Welcome screen: recent projects are cards with a constellation thumbnail of each tree’s real shape.
Dragging focuses on big trees (500+) is about 3× smoother.
Export safety: exporting one project can no longer overwrite a different mod’s folder. Destinations are remembered per project, mismatches warn first, and Export As offers to create a proper mod folder (descriptor included) so the mod actually appears in the HOI4 launcher.
Retitling an existing focus updates its auto-generated id again.
New validation warning when two same-row focuses sit close enough to overlap in-game.
New reward presets: doctrine cost reduction, corruption, national budget lines, and ideology popularity.

pre-alpha July 19, 2026

Auto-update no longer trips over "Setup was unable to automatically close all applications" — the installer now waits for Focus Forge to finish closing before touching files.
Fixed a repeating crash when a focus listed itself as mutually exclusive; it is now a normal validation error.

pre-alpha July 6, 2026

Focus tree shortcuts — the clickable branch bookmarks big trees show in the bottom-left in-game. Add them from the toolbar or by right-clicking a focus; they export and re-import like vanilla MD.
Author OR-group prerequisites in-app: chips show a group as "a | b", and right-clicking a connection switches it between required (AND) and an OR alternative (drawn dashed on the canvas).
Custom leader descriptions, and vanilla MD party descriptions now load into the Politics tab.
Multi-select works properly: Ctrl+click to extend, rubber-band a group, then drag, copy, duplicate or delete them all together.
A full-audit bug sweep: 27 fixes across saving, undo precision, export edge cases (names with ":", quotes in leader names, non-Latin portraits), and a batch of crash bugs.

pre-alpha July 6, 2026

Focus Forge now updates itself — it checks for a new version at startup and offers to download and install it, release notes included. Downloads are integrity-checked before they run.
Choose Later or Skip this version; a status-bar notice stays so you can grab it whenever. On-demand check in Settings → Updates.

pre-alpha June 12, 2026

Fixed a crash that could make a project unopenable (malformed prerequisite link, usually written by the AI bridge). Affected projects repair themselves on next open.

pre-alpha June 12, 2026

Large trees (USA, China, 700+ focuses) are now smooth — the canvas redraws only what changes, and focus art decodes in the background while the app stays responsive.

pre-alpha June 12, 2026

Full decision creator — cost, timers, cooldowns, missions, conditions, effects, AI weighting and custom categories, with custom or in-game decision icons.
Undo & redo across everything (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y, 50 steps), plus copy, paste and duplicate for focuses that keep a branch’s layout and internal links.
New Stats tab — branch lengths in days, political-power economy, tree depth and size at a glance.
Exact-date and bypass conditions, per-focus AI priority, hover tooltips on every reward and condition, and smarter validation (broken conditions, missing ideas/events, unresolved icons).
AI Bridge security hardening: connections need a one-time secret only your own machine can read.

pre-alpha June 12, 2026

Every reward and availability preset audited against Millennium Dawn’s actual files — a dozen fixes, plus new News Event, Puppet Country and Annex Country rewards.
Crash-safe saving: projects and exported mods are written atomically, so a crash or full disk can never truncate your work.
Much snappier on big projects, and corrupt game files can no longer crash the app.

pre-alpha June 11, 2026

Events can fire on an exact date — the export generates the HOI4 plumbing (date trigger + on_actions) for you, and Validation flags malformed dates.
UI consistency pass across every editor and dialog; scrolling no longer accidentally changes dropdowns under the cursor.

pre-alpha June 10, 2026

Import your own focus icon — auto-scaled to the in-game 100×88 size, shown on the canvas instantly, and exported as a .dds with its sprite definition (shine included).

pre-alpha June 9, 2026

Import focus trees (and their custom icons) from any custom mod folder.
Custom event pictures, party logos and portraits — all imports auto-scale to the correct in-game sizes.
The AI Bridge is bundled into the installed app — no separate Python install.
Startup launcher (New Submod / Open / Recent), autosave, "Load MD parties", a "Put Leader in Power" reward, and flag previews for every country.

pre-alpha June 7, 2026

AI Bridge: connect an AI assistant (Claude) over a local MCP connector and build or edit your tree by asking in plain English — focuses, ideas and events appear live on the canvas.
In-app Help tab: searchable, categorized how-tos and gotchas.
Robust Steam auto-detection for HOI4 + Millennium Dawn across any drive or custom library.
Country editor: real MD leader portraits, categorized traits with bonus tooltips, MD starting popularities and flags.
Project & export metadata validation, with the blocking issues listed before export.

pre-alpha June 5, 2026

First packaged release: one-folder build + Windows installer (per-user, no admin).
Visual node-graph editor with drag-to-connect prerequisites and WYSIWYG, in-game-accurate focus nodes.
Real in-game .dds focus icons via a built-in pure-Python decoder, plus a searchable icon picker.
Byte-identical HOI4 exports from an editable .focusforge.json project.
Structured rewards & availability builders, idea creator with ~1000 modifiers, submod scaffolding, and tree import.