v0.54.3 - Bug Fixes & CI/CD Overhaul

XP Distribution Reset Fix

Custom team XP distribution settings (e.g., 12% player, 22% per companion) were silently overwritten to an even split after every combat. The AutoDistributeTeamXP function was supposed to only auto-distribute when all teammate XP slots were at 0% (i.e., teammates just joined and had no distribution set), but it unconditionally redistributed every time. Players' custom settings were wiped after every fight.

• Custom distributions are now preserved across combat — AutoDistributeTeamXP only kicks in when all teammate slots are at 0%
• Dead teammate share redistribution — if a teammate dies mid-combat with a custom distribution, only their share is moved to the player instead of resetting everything

Children Sent to Orphanage When Player Offline

Player characters' children were incorrectly sent to the Royal Orphanage whenever the NPC parent (e.g., Sir Galahad) temporarily died during world simulation combat — but only when the player parent was offline.

Root cause: IsParentDeadOrMissing() checked GameEngine.Instance?.CurrentPlayer to detect player parents, but in the MUD server's world sim thread, CurrentPlayer is always null. The code fell through to the NPC lookup, didn't find the player there (they're not an NPC), and concluded "parent not found = dead" — orphaning the child.

• Player parents now detected by ID format — NPC IDs start with npc_, player IDs don't. If the other parent has a non-NPC ID, they're a player character and always considered alive.

Food Buff Lost on Logout

Inn meal buffs (Dragon Steak, Honey Bread, Iron Rations, Mushroom Soup) were lost on logout. The food buff properties (FoodBuffType, FoodBuffCombats, FoodBuffValue) were explicitly marked as "transient, not serialized" and never added to the save pipeline. The daily meal counter (MealsToday) was also not serialized, so it reset on login — players could eat unlimited meals by relogging.

• Food buffs now persist across sessions — all 4 food buff properties added to SaveDataStructures, SaveSystem serialization, and GameEngine restore
• Daily meal counter persists — MealsToday now saved and restored, preventing the relog exploit

CI/CD Pipeline Overhaul

Complete rewrite of the GitHub Actions workflow (1,275 lines to 763 lines) with 10 improvements:

• Parallel platform builds — 6 platform builds now run concurrently via matrix strategy instead of sequentially in one job
• Eliminated redundant Steam rebuilds — Steam builds are a separate matrix, no longer duplicating the 6 plain builds
• Deduplicated WezTerm downloads — shared cache key between desktop bundling and Steam packaging (was downloaded twice independently)
• Automated server deploy — new deploy-server job runs on release or manual workflow_dispatch, uploads tarball via SCP and restarts services
• Gated Steam builds to releases only — steam-prep no longer runs on every push to main
• Removed fake report job — printed hardcoded "SUCCESS" regardless of actual results
• Removed test existence guards — unnecessary if [ -d "Tests" ] wrappers on every test step
• Fixed macOS Info.plist version — was hardcoded "1.0", now uses release tag
• Checked in GPL/README files — dist/GPL_NOTICE.txt and dist/README.txt replace 20 inline echo commands
• Removed stale Steam release notes — hardcoded "21 Major Phases / 4 classes / 300 tests" text deleted

Files Changed

• Scripts/Core/GameConfig.cs — Version 0.54.3
• Scripts/Core/Character.cs — Removed "transient, not serialized" comment from food buff properties
• Scripts/Core/GameEngine.cs — Restore FoodBuffType, FoodBuffCombats, FoodBuffValue, MealsToday on load
• Scripts/Systems/CombatEngine.cs — AutoDistributeTeamXP preserves custom distributions; only auto-distributes when all teammate slots are 0%; dead teammate share goes to player
• Scripts/Systems/SaveDataStructures.cs — Added FoodBuffType, FoodBuffCombats, FoodBuffValue, MealsToday
• Scripts/Systems/SaveSystem.cs — Serialize food buff properties on save
• Scripts/Systems/WorldSimulator.cs — IsParentDeadOrMissing detects player parents by non-NPC ID format; no longer requires CurrentPlayer to be set
• .github/workflows/ci-cd.yml — Complete rewrite: matrix builds, automated deploy, deduplicated downloads, removed dead code
• dist/GPL_NOTICE.txt — NEW — GPL compliance notice (checked into repo)
• dist/README.txt — NEW — Distribution readme (checked into repo)