Hi everyone, and welcome to another VEIN Weekly. It's more of the same this week as we continue pushing towards 0.023, which should be coming out in the next few weeks.

This update has taken far longer than we expected, and I think it's because we've been sort of in-between a lot of different work. Some players urgently want multiplayer to work perfectly; some players just want bug fixes and optimization; some want new content; some want better graphics; some want new features; and some want new hardware (such as Steam Deck or gamepad support). Obviously, we want all of these too, and we will get there, but we have to prioritize when we can. At the same time, we have to hire people who can get us there in a timely manner, set up banking, and pay bills and taxes; all this while releasing 18 different hotfixes.

In the interest of getting 0.023 out soon, we've decided to delay gamepad support and Steam Deck support for 0.024+, as it's taking too long right now. They're still a priority but as of right now we're doing mostly polish and bugfixes for our first major Early Access update.

At this point, there will probably be no more hotfixes as we get closer to the main 0.023 release; we will roll bugfixes into that.

Updates

So what did we do this week? From the top, we've done more foliage optimization as usual, as we want this release to feel smooth. We've removed a bunch of ugly stump assets that were in the experimental Steam beta branch that happened to appear in the middle of roads for some reason. I've also worked on improving save game stability for foliage saving.

Yan has updated his save game refactor code to be able to be integrated with our current codebase. We will be implementing it shortly after 0.023 releases. We don't want to add it before the update in case it breaks things badly. Your save games are forward compatible, meaning you won't need to start a new save game to use 0.024+ (your save will be upgraded to the new system when it's loaded).

Fish are finally ready to be collected, complete with wildlife descriptions. We are still planning to rewrite how fishing rods function in terms of parts and maintenance, as well as rewriting how the fishing minigame works. Parts of the development of this system are set up such that we can then transfer some of this work into new hunting systems. Entrepreneurial players on experimental have noticed that a new item, Meat Bait, is in the game, which will be used when trapping animals.

There's some new menu stuff as a consequence of our gamepad support updates. Menus are now cached, so there will be much less hitching/stuttering when opening UI menus. In addition, the state of most menus are saved, meaning that when you open e.g. the construction menu, it will open to the last tab and selected item you had open. The same goes for things like crafting menus. This change broke a lot of UI for experimental players over the last week that I've been fixing up.

In addition to foliage optimization, I've been working on some changes for how distant stuff loads in when you move. I've optimized some streaming distances, so you should notice a slight performance increase.

We did some experimentation for about a day with an Unreal Engine 5.6 feature, the Fast Geo plugin. This was meant to speed up world loading and unloading. Unfortunately, as with most experimental features from Epic, it caused crashing in just about everyone's game, so we shelved it for now.

For the last couple days, I've been adding Ani's new .38 animations to the game. This involved setting up a newer animation rig and some new features we didn't have prior, such as camera animations. The new animations are stunning, but I still have work to do, particularly on reload animations. During this time I also worked on procedural aim-down-sight (ADS) animation, so hopefully in the coming weeks weapon attachments such as optical sights will be upgraded to work as intended. Finally, we've added support for impact melee animations.

Finally, we've added a bone hammer to the game, the first of many nature-based tools for after scavenged tools run out (and for players that want to live off the grid).

Fixes

In terms of bugfixes, we've fixed a couple vehicles' collision meshes so that you properly walk on top of them. We also undid a change we made months ago, which was meant to freeze vehicles in ice; that had the consequence of freezing vehicles that touched ice, so we've undone it until we can find a suitable solution.

We reduced the sensitivity of barbed wire fences. You should no longer be cut by walking through gates with barbed wire on them.

There were a few fixes applied to fluid sources, such as washing machines and sinks. We fixed being able to drink out of these when disconnected or after loading a save game.

We fixed radiators making a strange cyclical sound.

On the UI side, we fixed some issues that I mentioned above with regards to the "saved" windows. I also fixed some miscellaneous flickering issues with the UI.

I think I've fixed fans disappearing after being moved, but I'm not sure yet. It's a weird bug because by all accounts they should work fine. We have to test it more.

I tweaked a setting for the low performance preset that should fix rain and snow falling through roofs. It will still happen for some buildings, but this should fix most of them that are caused by the low performance preset being selected.

I've fixed some tutorial soft-locks to do with dismantling items. I wish people would stop trying to dismantle stuff in the tutorial, but I guess it doesn't matter now because we will give you a new one if you manage to break e.g. a screwdriver or car battery.

Zombies will no longer spawn underneath cliff rocks.

Finally, we've fixed some admin menu issues, from being able to break the UI by kicking yourself, to mis-labeled self collision options, to teleporting making you fall through the ground, to teleport points getting you or other players stuck in the ground.

That's about it for this week!

We are still collecting resumes and portfolios for all positions; the more the better. We're currently sorting through and organizing over 300 artist portfolios we've received. We are going to hire a character artist soon to author higher-quality character and zombie art, so this is your last chance to send a portfolio to jobs@ramjetstudios.com for that role. For other roles, please feel free to send anything in, as we do hold on to every email we receive.

Thanks for reading, and see you next Wednesday!