v0.2.7: Minecraft 26.1.x Support, Smear Tool Overhaul & Magic Selection Enhancements

This release adds Minecraft 26.1.x Fabric client compatibility work, brings chunked GPU preview rendering to Minecraft 1.21.5 through 1.21.8, overhauls the smear tool into a true block-smearing tool, and adds Paper server quality-of-life improvements.

Changes

Minecraft 26.1.x Support

• Fabric client compatibility work for Minecraft 26.1.x
• Updated rendering pipeline for 26.1.x official namespace changes
• Fixed BlockPos and Vec3i type compatibility issues
• Updated ItemStack serialization for 26.1.x API changes
• Fixed hotbar save/load functionality with new ItemStack codec
• Fixed toolbox icon textures in the 26.1.x Alt menu
• Restored selection visuals, move-source glass overlays, and large GPU block previews on 26.1.x

1.21.5 - 1.21.8 GPU Preview Compatibility

• Added chunked GPU preview support for Minecraft 1.21.5
• Added chunked GPU preview support for the legacy 1.21.6 - 1.21.8 range, compiled against 1.21.7
• Large move, clone, stack, smear, and glass/origin overlay previews now use persistent per-section GPU buffers on these older ranges
• 1.21.5 uses its older direct-uniform GPU API with a manual draw path
• 1.21.6 - 1.21.8 uses the 1.21.7 DynamicUniforms path with manual per-section draws; multi-draw batching remains limited to newer versions
• 1.21.9 - 1.21.11 runtime-adapts the GPU preview path across the DynamicUniforms and render-pass texture-binding API differences in that range
• Fixed the release build flow so ./build-axion.sh all rebuilds each range with fresh Kotlin outputs and passes across 1.21.5, legacy, modern, and 26.1.x targets

Smear Tool Overhaul

• True Block Smearing: Smear tool no longer acts like a stacking tool. It now samples your selection and spreads blocks as you scroll the point away, allowing you to create staircases or roofs very quickly
• Intuitive Placement: The tool now behaves as expected - dragging away from your selection spreads the sampled blocks in the direction of movement
• More Reliable Confirms: Smear now resolves overlapping destination blocks more deterministically, matching nearest-source behavior and reducing corrupted-looking folded smears

Stack, Smear, and Undo Reliability

• Increased repeat limits for larger stack and smear edits
• Expanded large stack/smear previews to use the newer GPU renderer capacity
• Improved no-op smear feedback when a target path is blocked or contains no air
• Improved clipboard-derived edit behavior for folded stack/smear operations
• Fixed a regression where Stack ignored entities even when Copy Entities was enabled

Magic Selection Enhancements

• Expanded Tag Support: Added more ## tags including ##pressure_plates and others for easier block filtering
• Visual Feedback for Disabled Templates: Disabled templates now show a red outline instead of gray, making it immediately clear which templates are active vs disabled (previously disabled templates looked similar to enabled ones)
• Same Block Select: New toggle option that can be enabled alongside custom masks. When active, clicks outside your block mask will still pick up same blocks using your brush's radius
• Continuous Stroke: Middle mouse button can now be held down for continuous stroke painting, making large selections faster to create

Paper Plugin

• Added console-only /axion reload to reload config-backed options without restarting the server
• Reload refreshes policy/config state used by server-backed multiplayer edits

Supported Versions

1.21.5 through 1.21.11 & 26.1.x

Support and Feedback

• Issues: https://github.com/castledking/Axion/issues
• Wiki: https://github.com/castledking/Axion/wiki
• Discord: https://discord.com/invite/pCKdCX6nYr
• Website: https://castled.codes