VEIN Weekly: Underwater & Above Ground

Hi everyone! Welcome to another VEIN weekly. It's been mostly new feature updates, so you can expect most of what's in this weekly update to be in 0.023. There have been a few bug fixes as usual as we continue to regularly push hotfix updates.

As usual the contents of this weekly update are not in the game yet and are just to update you on what we've been doing internally over the last week.

Bugfixes

We've fixed a few issues with multiple-utility-cabinet setups. We fixed an issue where two utility cabinets interact with each other to defend each other, and fixed an issue where utility cabinets would take resources for the same built object.

We fixed the kerosene heater not burning kerosene, and fixed a bad notification ("you need a lighter to ignite this") when you extinguish a forge or kiln. We adjusted where items go when you drop them to prevent you from dropping them inside yourself and getting flung. We fixed vehicles getting stuck in water and glitching out when the water freezes around them.

We've tweaked AI pathfinding so they very much avoid water. Zombies will try very hard to find a path to you that does not involve swimming or getting wet (so if there's a bridge, like to Werrenrath Island, they'll use that instead of swimming to you). They will of course follow you into the water if there's no other way.

We found a major issue with RAM usage. Specifically, the physics for road and road barrier meshes were being loaded incorrectly, even for meshes across the entire map. We've fixed this issue and noted that RAM usage in a new game has, in my own tests on my PC, decreased from 13.5 GB (peak 16 GB) to 7 GB (peak 10 GB). This will also solve some RAM usage problems on dedicated servers. Expect this to be in a hotfix soon.

We applied a fix for a memory leak for Vulkan users found in Unreal 5.6. If you don't know what Vulkan is, it's software built into your graphics driver that translates Unreal data onto your graphics card, similar to how DirectX or OpenGL work. It's primarily used by Linux users (including Steam Deck users). This fix will be in the next hotfix and is likely the cause of a lot of crashes for Linux and Steam Deck players.

We expect all these to be in a hotfix soon.

Experimental and 0.023

We've added a changelog for the Experimental Steam beta branch. You can view it here. It can sort of be considered like a work-in-progress 0.023 changelog, but there are notes in there that are specifically for players playing on the Experimental branch.

As usual we'd like to remind you that the changes here aren't in-game yet and will come when Update 0.023 releases.

Foliage

I've been hard at work on the new foliage systems. After frustrations working with Unreal's default foliage tooling, I decided to write our own tools for this so we have complete creative control over how foliage is rendered in VEIN. Our system is lighter on RAM and VRAM than the default Unreal system, and is lighter on networking load (chopped trees consume far less bandwidth than we needed to get our tree chopping systems working with the default Unreal foliage system). We also have some custom performance-related tech I wrote now running on them for dynamic cull distances, so it should perform that much better.

All in all, they should look way better than our launch foliage, while performing better as well. A variety of regional tree species are now in, such as oak trees, ash trees, pine trees, and spruce trees. Various ground coverings, like fallen leaves, stumps, flowers, etc. have been set up. Underwater foliage is implemented and the entire setup is easy to profile, optimize, and update as we need.

A picture's worth a thousand words, so here's a few of the new forest regions.

Underwater Caves

Azi has been hard at work on some new underwater points of interest in the Early Access region map. In these, you'll be able to find very rare materials and resources that you won't be able to easily find elsewhere. However, obviously, you need diving equipment and an air supply to get down there.

We wrote some tools for this, so now lakes can have underwater caverns. These air pockets have a finite supply of oxygen that runs out as you breathe it (but replenishes over time if you're not inside or are using a breathing apparatus), so if you plan to make a base in an underwater cavern, have an adequate oxygen supply or you'll suffocate.

To aid in this, I've created a new item, Oxygen Detectors, which add an element to your HUD indicating how much air is remaining in the environment that you can breathe. They also give you an audible alarm when the supply becomes dangerously low.

Miscellanea

Some of you were concerned about time passage and how it works for a lot of systems. Plants didn't grow when you slept, and some systems didn't respond to different timescales (e.g. if you have shorter day passage turned on, things took the same amount of real-life time). We've added some code across the board to manage this and to try to unify timescales, and account for time skips (sleeping or otherwise). There may still be stuff we're missing from these, but at the bare minimum the framework is there to fix issues now.

Double doors are in and ready to go. We had some questions about why we're doing this of all things. There are a number of reasons, most of them bug-related:

• Locking double doors without both doors being closed isn't intended behavior.
• Double doors will have one key that opens them instead of two.
• There have been bugs where you can see through a crack in the doors due to placement error that will no longer happen.
• There have been bugs where zombies could get stuck on one of the two doors.
• There have been bugs where fortifying one door would destroy the other. We fixed this with workaround code that we can now remove, making the game faster.
• There have been & are currently bugs where double doors open in opposite directions.
• You will now only have to build a trap on one door instead of both, for when that's finished.

A buildable ramp has been added. When you drive over it, it adds driving XP and is a method to train your driving stat faster than just driving.

Some preliminary code has been written for replacing fishing with a better, less random minigame. Fishing rods will have replaceable reels and line, and bait of various types will be able to be attached. Each of these parts can be damaged from fishing and will need eventual replacement and upkeep. This is a part of our planned hunting updates, but we want to get the mammal hunting part finished first.

We've changed how scavenging works for the next update. Formerly, scavenging had a random amount of XP awarded when searching a container, with a 30-second cooldown. Now, we're granting you XP per-item searched; nerfing the amount of XP; and removing the cooldown. Our estimates for how XP is awarded is based on how we assume people play the game, and how we personally play the game, so sometimes the balancing is way off. Although we don't collect XP-related information right now, opting into telemetry is a way to help us figure these things out in the future.

We've improved the algorithm for how you exit chairs and vehicles. A bug was reported where exiting a vehicle that was flipped 90 degrees on its side would sometimes place you under the world where you'd fall into water. We've improved the algorithm so there are more possible exit locations with increased precision on how we detect if a vehicle exit is viable.

Yan is continuing to work on hardening the saving and loading systems in the game.

Finally, we've added some custom skill magazine art into the game. We're planning on replacing a lot of our placeholder art over the coming months and years of development.

So that's what we've been doing on the game itself for the last week! I hope it was insightful.

We're moving forward rapidly on localization of the game. We're in talks with a localization team on doing some comprehensive localization and translation of the game, and I'm going to be updating text in the game over the next few weeks to get that ready. For the first set, we're going to be adding German, Russian and Japanese to start, as these are our top three most popular non-English-speaking countries on Steam, by wishlist count. We do have plans to localize VEIN to various other languages, so if you're not a speaker of those three, don't worry as it's very likely that we already have plans to localize to your language.

The holiday season is now upon us and so work might be slow for the next week or two. As always there will be a weekly update for the next couple weeks, but they may be light on content.

Our lawyer is slowly getting us to the point where we can formally hire people but as I wrote, the holiday season is now here, so we'll probably start hiring properly in 2026. We don't want to rush into anything and make mistakes in hiring, as that's an easy way for us to waste a lot of time and money. If you'd like us to hold onto your resume or portfolio, please don't hesitate to email jobs@ramjetstudios.com.

Thanks for reading, and we'll see you next week!