SVERASvera Defense

File 10 — patch log · field dispatches

Notes from the wall.

Every change we've cut on the road from 0.9 to the 1.0 beta — what's new, what we sharpened, and what we rebalanced. Newest dispatch up top. The launcher pulls these automatically; this is the long-form for anyone who wants the whole story.

Log index — 37 dispatches

Dispatch 0.9.38 — 17 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Field Manual

v0.9.38

— the big polish pass: menu, storage, lobby teams, guns, sound, network, trees and weather.

New
  • New main menu. One clean column — PLAY, HOST, JOIN, STORAGE, CAREER, LEADERBOARDS, OPTIONS, QUIT — with your callsign and build in the corner, over a reworked night cinematic: moonlit fog, a low mist layer and a slow drift on every shot.
  • The SVERA NETWORK loading sheet. Map and mode, a rotating field note drawn from the game's real mechanics, and before a match starts the curtain waits for the map's assets to finish preloading.
  • STORAGE is your character. Wear gear and slot weapons on the main-menu page and you spawn with them; the page shows everything you have on, a carry-in meter, sort and filter, an inspect card and a right-click menu. What you wear and hold when you extract or die now goes to your stash.
  • Lobby teams. In a Versus lobby, pick BLUE or RED right on the roster. Sides stay even, the host can move anyone, the roster marks the host, and VERSUS YARD is on the map list next to VERSUS ARENA.
  • Standings in-game. The sveradefense.online leaderboard is readable from the menu — deepest waves, most kills, level, prestige, latest runs — with your own row stamped.
  • Nine new guns. The Herrington 11-87 Police, plus a suppressed AK-105, a TR-15 DMR, a canned Mk14 EBR, a sixteen-shell tactical 12-gauge, a suppressed MKR-9, a canned WK-11, an assault MX-68 and a magnum-load R08 — each its own row with its own stats, finish and price.
  • Flip magnifier. Red-dot sights can take a 3x magnifier: press [ to swing the glass in behind the dot and again to flip it out. The flip is replicated, so teammates see it too.
  • Paper pause sheet and co-op scoreboard. Escape opens a torn-paper pause sheet (host-only rows marked, works on a pad); U shows the paper scoreboard in co-op as well as versus.
  • Field-manual gun cards. Cartridge, fire modes, magazine and Pack-a-Punch mark stamped under the name on the HUD card, the inventory, the shop and the mod view; weapon portraits draw as ink sketches.
  • Real trees, one sky, shared weather. Poplars, pines and cypresses with leaf canopies on six outdoor maps, one physically lit sky with volumetric clouds per outdoor map, and weather states — clear, overcast, rain, storm, fog — that every player sees the same way.
  • New map: COMPOUND. A walled compound that is different every raid. Buildings full of rooms, real doors you open and can break down, courtyards with wind-blown trees, streets of cover, and loot you have to go inside for. One extraction, always a long way from where you land, and host and client build the same compound from the same seed down to the last crate.
  • New sidearm: the Pit Viper. A compact seventeen-round 9 mm, tier two, held one-handed.
  • Search and Destroy is thirteen rounds. First to seven, sides swap at half time, and a closing ring you can finally SEE: a wall that comes in around the fight, identical on every machine. Some boxes are armour caches and some are trinket hoards, and they move every round.
  • Fear you can feel. As composure breaks your hands and arms shake with a real physiological tremor and your aim wanders off true. Monsters frighten you specifically: how close they are, how big, whether they have turned to look at you and whether you can see them. Shouldering the weapon steadies the picture but moves the fear into your aim, so a fight is still winnable, you just have to work for the shot.
  • Monsters can take a limb. A heavy enough blow to an arm or a leg tears it off, with gibs and a wound that stays. The limb is gone from your body for everyone in the lobby and gone from your own hands in first person. Lose an arm and you can only carry a pistol or another one-handed weapon. It does not grow back.
Fixed
  • Stay signed in. The SVERA NETWORK sign-in is remembered and signs you in by itself the next time you launch, so the board and your records are there without typing anything. Untick REMEMBER ME, or sign out, and it is forgotten on the spot. Your session no longer expires out from under a long run.
  • Shotguns reloaded forever. They now load one shell at a time from the ammo you actually carry; a full tube or an empty reserve refuses the reload.
  • Snipers that looked like pistols. The L115A3, SV-98, Mosin and their kin no longer come up as a scoped pistol in first person — they are rifles again.
  • Doubled magazines. The VSS and the Svera AK, FAL, HK and MK18 family no longer carry a second, floating magazine; the VSS shows its own body in your hands.
  • Upside-down scopes. Scopes and every other rail attachment now mount upright and facing forward on the TR-15 family and the SRM-12.
  • Floating pistols. Third-person pistols are placed in the hand instead of half a metre in front of it.
  • Version mismatch said "lost connection". Joining a host on a different version now says UPDATE REQUIRED, the connection-error dialog names the real reason (lost, timed out, closed by the host, turned away), and the room browser tells you how many rooms it hid because of a version mismatch.
  • Host-only gun sound. The host now hears and sees every other player's gun.
  • Host-only pickup chime. Health and points pickups now chime for every player, not just the host.
  • Dead players kept talking. A player who died went on calling for a medkit from the spectator camera; the squad heard it from empty air across the map. The dead are silent now.
  • "0 BOSSS" on the end-of-match sheet. The tally counted correctly and spelled the plural wrong. It reads BOSSES.
  • Grey boxes in three maps. The electric trap was untextured engine primitives on Arena01, Arena02 and Hanford. It is galvanised steel with a gunmetal head and a hazard-yellow panel now.
  • A hitch at the start of every match. The heads-up display rebuilt itself while it was still being drawn, costing about a second and a half on the first frame.
  • Spectating. You always watch a real player, you can cycle teammates, you see their name, and in Versus you can no longer watch the enemy team.
  • Props only the host could move. Barricades and props you carry, break or shove now move for everyone in the match.
  • Barricades made the dead lose you. Nailing a doorway shut used to blind every zombie behind it, and those that kept coming stood around for up to seventeen seconds before wandering off to chew a plank on the other side of the map.
  • Rockets were glowing balls. Launchers now fire the PG-7 round the launcher is actually loaded with, grenade rounds are 40 mm, and rifle and sniper shots are tracers.
  • The suppressor was not on the barrel. The suppressed AK-12's can now screws onto the barrel with a cap on its far end, and the muzzle flash leaves the cap instead of the middle of the can.
  • Shotguns that were not shotguns. The SRM-12 family and the Auto Shotgun wear a 12-gauge body again, in three distinct finishes, and the Police 11-87 shows its own body in third person and on the ground.
  • Untextured zombies. The base and stalker types rendered as flat grey. They wear their own skin again, gibbed chunks are wet meat instead of glowing red blocks, and a looted corpse keeps every part of its body art.
  • Snipers fired a pistol. Every bolt-action rifle in the game was using a 9 mm handgun recording as its gunshot. They sound like rifles now, and pistols sound like their own calibre.
  • The cryo weapon's sound never stopped. Its shot used a looping steam sound played through a call that cannot be stopped, so it stacked up for the rest of the match.
  • The dead skated. Most of the dead have stopped sliding: walk and run are matched to the ground actually covered, on the host and on every client, where it used to be worst. A zombie that turns now steps through the turn, a zombie with a leg blown off no longer slides along in a jump pose, and a monster that swung once no longer freezes mid-punch.
  • The horde hit you anonymously. Nearly every blow the common horde landed arrived with no record of who threw it, which quietly broke the damage direction indicator, one perk's retaliation, and where hits landed on your body.
  • The lobby roster ran off the screen. Names, ranks and team tags were cut off at the right edge, the player count read "of 0", and a greyed-out DEPLOY button never said why. It now tells you that someone still has to pick a character.
  • Controller: rebinding broke your shortcuts. Remapping a key used to silently break the pad shortcut that opens the same screen, leaving the Field Journal, Career, Controls, Skill Tree and Options with no way in on a controller at all. They follow your bindings now.
  • Controller: the Trader page ignored the pad. It now starts with the cursor on a button, changes stash tabs with the bumpers, and closes with B.
Changed
  • Audio mix. Zombies are quieter and muffle with distance, a dead zombie goes silent, squad voice lines sit above the horde and the horde ducks while someone talks; rooms add room or hall reverb and outdoors stays dry; the headshot squelch is levelled with the crunch and placed in the world; the hit tick, common pickups, the MG and shotgun turrets, grenade bounces, crate opens and zombie deaths now use real recordings.
  • Network audit. Barricade nails and breaks, props at rest, kills, points, health and the weather read the same on the host and on a joined client; carried props stream at 30 Hz while held; barricades, doors, traps, elevators, chests and the versus arena are pinned for replication and late joiners.
  • Performance. Assets now warm in small slices behind the loading screen instead of in one long stall, and texture memory follows your quality preset (Low 600 MB up to Epic 2 GB); a fresh install starts on a real High preset.
  • Paper everywhere. Chat, spectator, nameplates, the scoreboard and the settings menu use the paper inks and faces; HUD hints sit on their own scraps.
  • Tidier Join sheet. The Join Game sheet no longer shows a second Host button or a password box that nothing read.
  • Barricades are an obstacle, not a wall. The dead see you through the boards, walk straight to them and start tearing, and the moment a barricade gives way they drop it and come for you.
  • Search and Destroy rounds never ended. The old match reset both scores to zero at five and started again, forever, with no round count and no side swap.
  • Gunfire at distance. Shots now dull and echo as they travel instead of cutting off at twenty-five metres, and a body standing between you and the shooter no longer muffles his gun. Only walls do that.

Dispatch 0.9.37 — 16 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Open Fire

v0.9.37

— in versus, bullets hit the other team again.

Fixed
  • Versus players couldn't damage each other. On Versus Yard your shots went straight through the other team: the guns only hurt a player when versus mode had switched on the shooter's player damage, and the new round system had stopped switching it on. Every player is armed for player damage from the moment they spawn, every round.
  • Joining players were unhittable for a minute. You can't be hurt while your loading screen is up, but the game only told the server when a joining player's loading screen went up, never when it came down, so the protection ran its full 60 seconds after every map load. It now ends the moment your screen clears.

Dispatch 0.9.36 — 16 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Sound Off

v0.9.36

— the survivors finally talk, and the gun smoke finally looks like smoke.

New
  • Survivors talk. 49 kinds of callout and 141 recorded takes: reloading, last mag, out of ammo, taking hits, bleeding, going down, a teammate going down, calling for a medkit, confirming kills, spotting the horde, reacting to what's in a chest, answering squad orders — and some nervous chatter when it goes too quiet. The server decides who speaks, everyone within about 34 metres hears it from where the speaker stands, and a subtitle drops onto the paper strip.
  • Nobody talks over anybody. One line per survivor at a time, a cooldown on every kind of call — some shared by the whole squad, so five people don't all shout "reloading" — at most five voices at once, and the urgent calls (going down, out of ammo) cut through the chatter.
  • Versus Yard. A new versus map for up to 12 players, laid out from modular pieces: walls, cover, crates, trees, chests and trinket caches, with the two teams starting on opposite ends of the yard. Three rounds with a closing ring; weapons and trinkets are dropped across the yard every round, and the fallen are back at their own end for the next one. Torn-paper versus HUD, and the scoreboard on U.
  • Pick your side. Choose BLUE or RED on the PLAY sheet when Versus is selected; your pick is saved. Sides stay even at every size from 1v1 to 6v6: if your pick would put your side two players ahead, you join the other one, and two players who want each other's side swap between rounds.
  • Safe spawns. You spawn at your own end, never within 2,000 units of a living enemy and never on top of a teammate. If every spawn is covered you wait — "WAITING FOR A SAFE SPAWN" — until one clears.
  • No respawns mid-round. Die during a round and you spectate until the next one starts. Anyone who joins mid-round waits for the next round too.
  • A versus budget. Everyone starts a versus match with 50,000 points to spend at their team's arsenal crate — there's one at each base. It's granted once per match: what you don't spend carries into the next round, and kills still pay nothing.
  • Your limbs, top right. The ammo card is gone from the corner; all seven limbs take its place — health, bleeding, fractures and blackouts — with your nails and Pack-a-Punch line underneath. Press ; to check your magazine: the rounds in it and your spares.
  • Hallway01 is a real map now. Four zones behind four buyable doors (750, 1,000, 1,000 and 1,250), eleven spawners, and the empty west hall opened up with a mezzanine and Pack-a-Punch on top. Three different perk machines (it had two Juggernauts), shotgun and SMG wall-buys, an extraction point, trinket caches, cover, and a sky, a moon and climbable roofs over the yard.
Fixed
  • Gun smoke was a stack of flat discs. Every shot now leaves soft puffs that push out of the barrel, slow down, spread, rise and thin out, lit by the room they're in. If the effect ever fails to load it draws nothing at all instead of a shape.
  • Sprinting with a pistol wasn't a sprint. The pistol's sprint animation was a copy of its jog — and you spawn holding a pistol. You now lean into a real sprint with the pistol held low in both hands.
  • Feet skated. No walk or run animation followed how fast you were actually moving: rifle walks slid about a fifth, pistol walks ran over half again too fast. Playback now matches your speed, on every screen that sees you.
  • Diagonal sprints slid sideways. Holding forward and a strafe ran the legs straight ahead while the body travelled at 45°. The body now turns toward where it's running.
  • Pistol-armed survivors walked in silence. None of the pistol animations carried a footstep. Your steps sound again; the rifle keeps its own.
  • The stamina bar lied about sprint. A hidden timer stopped your sprint after about two seconds while the bar still showed most of it full. The bar is now the limit: about nine seconds of sprint from full, a short breather before you can go again, and the bar says when you're winded.
  • The health bar showed the wrong number. It added up your limbs instead of reading the health that actually decides whether you die. It reads the real value now; limb damage lives on the limb sheet.
  • Armour said "no plate" over armour you had. It shows your plate tier and gear condition now, and the mind bar shows a number instead of just a word.
  • The magazine check also toggled a debug camera. The engine had its own camera on the same key; that moved to Ctrl+; and ; is yours.
  • Zombies wedged in walls or outside the map held rounds open forever. Anything with no way back to the fight for a few seconds is now put down through the normal death path, so the wave still ends.
  • Hanford's yard trees were ghosts you could walk straight through, one of them beside a spawn. They're solid trees now, the map has trinket caches, and the handcar extraction pad is no longer pitch black.
  • A versus match against nobody was over in 25 seconds. With one side empty, every round counted as a wipe the moment it started. Round 1 now waits — "WAITING FOR AN OPPONENT" — until both sides have a player.
  • Scoreboards showed your computer's name. The versus board, the lobby roster, the party list and the match-end sheet now show the name you chose, or your Steam name — never the desktop name.
Changed
  • The vitals card moved to the bottom right and got a proper torn-paper sheet: health, stamina, armour and mind with their numbers always showing, and a one-line summary of your bonuses. In versus it no longer sits under the versus HUD.
  • Hallway01 got a coat of paint. Concrete, asphalt and rust instead of brushed-nickel boxes, yard lights that no longer blow out white, and fog with some colour in it.
  • The versus HUD drops the zombie pieces. No co-op points list, +points pops, wave banner or zombie counters in versus; your own budget shows instead, and the teams read BLUE and RED.

Dispatch 0.9.35 — 12 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

The Third Zone

v0.9.35

— Riverside's south half is now something you pay for.

New
  • Riverside gets its third zone. The building's south half is now a locked area: a new wall closes its open west edge onto the landing, another fills the gap in the interior divider, and a fifth buyable door in that divider sells the room for 1,000.
Changed
  • Measured, not guessed. The new wall is carved into the zombies' navigation — the route from the landing into the south half now goes the long way round, 7.4 times the straight line — and wave one still reaches you. The shipped build reports five doors and three zones, all wired correctly, with all four spawners on the navmesh.

Dispatch 0.9.34 — 12 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Take Cover

v0.9.34

— Riverside stops being an empty floor.

Changed
  • Riverside gets cover. Thirty-nine pieces now stand through the building hall and across the outdoor ground that 0.9.33's doors sell, so fights run along lanes instead of across open floor.
  • Nothing in the way. Every piece sits on real ground, clear of the doors, the spawners and the player start, and the zombies' navigation still covers all four spawners.

Dispatch 0.9.33 — 12 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Muzzle Flash

v0.9.33

— you can finally see your gun go off.

Fixed
  • You couldn't see your gun fire. The weapon pack's muzzle-flash effect draws nothing in this game — on every gun — while its sparks and smoke draw fine. Each shot now also fires the game's own flash and light at the muzzle, sized to about the width of the barrel.
  • A grey checkerboard ball hung at the muzzle after every shot. The barrel smoke had no material, so it drew the engine's placeholder for most of a second. It uses the proper smoke now, and would rather hide than ever show a checkerboard again.
  • A disc floated over your optic while hip-firing. The scope glass now hides unless you're aiming; the sight picture still appears when you do.
  • Riverside had no doors at all, so every zone was open from wave one. Four buyable doors, 750 each, now sit on the building's four exits and sell the outdoor field. The building's interior stays free.
New
  • Hallway01 has a courtyard. A walled yard north of the corridor, reached through one new opening, with cover, lights and its own spawner. No door — the map stays open on purpose, like Bellows.
Changed
  • Muzzle lights follow your Effects quality. On Low you still see the flash, just without a dynamic light for every bullet.

Dispatch 0.9.32 — 11 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Volume Down

v0.9.32

— also 0.9.31, which was built but never published. The guns finally hear the slider.

Fixed
  • Turning the volume down left the guns at full blast. Every gunshot, reload and explosion lived in a sound group no slider was wired to. The effects slider now reaches them — without overriding the voice slider on the way.
  • You could be hurt while the loading screen was still up. Your character is in the live world for a moment before the screen lifts, and zombies don't wait. The server now refuses damage to you until it lifts — for a capped time, so nobody can use it to hide.
  • Three doors took your points and unlocked nothing. On Arena01 and Versus01 the cheap door beside the start room now opens the south room, and the containment door opens the containment room — which now has zombies in it. On Arena02 the 1,200-point door opens the west side, which has zombies now too. Each was settled by measuring what's actually behind the door, which also corrects where 0.9.29 pointed the containment door.
Changed
  • Trinkets no longer glow all the time. They flash small and brief, and only when there's something to answer: defensive ones when you take a hit, offensive ones when you fire. What they do is unchanged.

Dispatch 0.9.30 — 11 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Use Means Use

v0.9.30

— two fixes, and one of them is a whole map.

Fixed
  • Choosing Use on a packed turret did nothing. The inventory's right-click Use row was hard-wired to quick-use a medical item. It now does what the item needs — for a packed turret, unpack it and shoulder it.
  • The PvP map barely had navigation. Eleven of Versus01's thirteen spawn zones — its whole north room and the Belows annexe — sat outside it, so zombies spawned there could never move toward anyone. It was missing a navigation volume the main arena already has for the same rooms. All thirteen are covered now, checked in the shipped game.

Dispatch 0.9.29 — 11 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Packed & Placed

v0.9.29

— turrets go in your bag, and the loading screen stops being a window.

Fixed
  • A turret could never be an item. Buy or order one now and it arrives in your bag as a packed crate: unpack it from the grid, shoulder it, and set it down with the placement ghost that was already there. Ordered turrets no longer appear pre-placed in a ring around the supply crate.
  • The loading screen was see-through. You could watch the level load behind it — and walk around back there, and get bitten. It's fully opaque now and holds your movement and aim until it leaves.
  • The bottom-left HUD flickered for the first several minutes of every match. The food and water rows folded in and out every 8 to 12 seconds because slow, passive decay was being mistaken for you eating or drinking.
  • Versus01 had four spawn zones with no name, so they could never spawn anything. They're named after the doors they sit beside, and doors that took your money and unlocked nothing were pointed at real zones (more on that in 0.9.32).
  • The three deployable station items had blank icons. They're photographed from real props now.
Changed
  • The game now knows which room you're in — measured by walking distance, not straight lines, so walls count. An even split of the horde between the rooms players occupy is built, but ships switched off to keep today's pacing.

Dispatch 0.9.28 — 11 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

One Lobby

v0.9.28

— three things that made the game feel broken, because they were.

Fixed
  • Two lobbies on screen at once. A newer paper lobby sheet was opening itself on top of the real lobby, so you got two map pickers listing the same maps. The original lobby is the only one again.
  • Rounds that never ended. The zombie counter is set to the whole wave's quota before anything spawns, so a single failed spawn left the round waiting forever with nothing to kill. A watchdog now ends a stalled wave through the game's own path — intermission, sounds and boss check included — after 12 quiet seconds, and never while a zombie is alive.
  • Your first match froze for three and a half seconds. That was the one-time hardware auto-detect, not shader compilation. It now runs behind the loading screen on your first launch: worst frame 3,605 ms → 25 ms, and zero hitches.
  • Some spawners could never wake up. On several maps the door and zone names didn't match, so a zone no door could open stayed dead all match. Those zones now come alive on their own and every mismatch is reported by name — while maps whose door progression already works (Arena03, Hanford) are left exactly as they are.
Changed
  • The loading screen waits for the level to be ready — shaders, streaming, textures, the asset preload and fonts — instead of dropping early. Every wait is capped, so it can never hang.

Dispatch 0.9.27 — 11 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Two Crashes

v0.9.27

— both were already in the live build. We found them by testing the next one.

Fixed
  • One launch in three never reached the main menu. The loading screen's movie player drew on its own thread into a window the game was swapping out underneath it. Twelve launches before the fix: four crashes and one hang. Twelve after: none. If your game "just closed" on startup, you were right.
  • The shipped game couldn't load Arena01. Since the foliage update on 22 Aug, a tree model carried an editor-only note that dragged a tree-authoring asset into the download, and loading that asset crashed the game. The note is gone, the trees and their wind are unchanged, and all eleven maps now load in the shipped game.
  • Danger warnings could go missing. The Spitter's hiss, the Howler's scream, the Charger's wind-up and the Armored and Juggernaut smashes could be lost to a bad packet while the blow itself still landed. They're sent reliably now.
  • Danger rings were drawn at 80% of the real radius, so standing just outside the light still got you hit. They're drawn at the true radius.
  • The Hive Mother went quiet at range. Her roar, slam warning, phase change and death cue never reached anyone beyond 120 m. She's heard out to 400 m now; the common horde keeps its short range.
  • Recruits kept showing FOCUS TARGET after the target died, and could pick a target at the edge of their range that they then refused to shoot — choosing and firing measured distance differently. One measure decides both now.
  • Recruits built barricades standing perfectly still. They now swing whatever they're holding, on the same arc as your melee.

Dispatch 0.9.26 — 11 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

They Flinch

v0.9.26

— the forty things you actually shoot finally feel it.

Fixed
  • The common horde didn't react to being shot. Only the special zombies had stagger and knockback. The commons now take the same weapon-class shove, so the stagger and knockback on your skills, charms and gear finally reach them — and a shotgun blast spends one shove, not eight, so light bodies don't turn into cannonballs.
  • Melee never moved in your hands. There is no authored swing for it, so the chop is procedural: a 95° arc in 0.3 seconds, fast down and slower back, played on every machine at once.
  • Shotgun crits made no spark. The rifle half of this fix made 0.9.25; the shotgun half missed that build.
  • The arsenal grid showed the sticker price while charging the discounted one, so Bargainer and Economy players saw one number and paid another. The grid shows what you'll pay.
  • A stray teleporter pad sat about 150 m outside Arena01, linked to nothing. It's gone; the three working pairs are untouched.
New
  • The RPG-7 homes. Lock a target and the rocket steers onto it — only a target the server agrees you've locked, and never one that's already gone.

Dispatch 0.9.25 — 11 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Through the Glass

v0.9.25

— 0.9.24 promised working scopes. This is the build that has them.

Fixed
  • You couldn't see through any scope. Three faults were stacked, which is why every single fix failed: the scope's camera pointed along the wrong axis, the glass could divide its picture by an exposure of zero, and a performance switch turned the picture off. With all three gone you get a magnified sight picture with the reticle on it.
  • The crosshair ignored your accuracy. Bullets used your modified spread — perks, attributes, attachments, trinkets, prone bracing, statuses — while the reticle drew the raw one. They agree now.
  • Players who joined had no ADS zoom and no sniper overlay on any weapon. Those settings only ever reached the host.
  • Crits were silent on hitscan guns. They now spark and show on the hit marker (rifles now, shotguns in 0.9.26).
  • Zombies wouldn't spawn where they should. 0.9.24's rule against spawning behind you covered the whole space behind a player out to 25 m — most of a room. It now covers 9 m, in a narrower cone.
  • Co-op had blind spots. Turret and recruit roster rows went blank past 150 m, the boss enrage showed on no machine, armour breaks showed nothing to anyone else, acid puddles drifted away from their own damage, Wraith blinks arrived unreliably, the pet's loot magnet never picked anything up, and a storage crate could stay "IN USE" forever.
  • More that went wrong quietly: XP was paid again on every seamless travel, a joining player's ranked rating never saved, and a scoped rifle rendered the whole world twice every frame for the entire match.
  • Pressing ORDER during its cooldown did nothing. The buttons now grey out for exactly as long as a press would be refused. Weapon previews also stopped rendering white.
Changed
  • The server checks more. Shot spread has a server-side floor, where a shot starts is checked, and lock-on range, prestige and purchases are all verified by the server.

Dispatch 0.9.24 — 11 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

The Big Overhaul

v0.9.24

— extraction, PvP, air-dropped orders, and a long list of things joined players never saw.

Fixed
  • Players who joined were playing a different game. Their fire-mode choice never reached the server and snapped back to semi after every attachment; they never saw an intermission or the between-wave countdown; they spawned with an empty deploy bag; and in PvP the score, clock and round state were invisible, while anyone who joined by invite or mid-match wore a Silver rank badge. The host also lost their own supply-drop confirmation whenever anyone joined.
  • Zombies swung at you from across the room. Their attack check never actually measured the distance to you — it always read zero — so any zombie with a target swung at any range. It measures now, and leaves about three-quarters of a metre between you at the swing.
  • Keyboard and gamepad did nothing on the main menu and lobby — only the mouse worked. And the server browser refused every join after any disconnect that wasn't a clean exit to the menu, until you restarted.
  • Guns looked like white plastic, and gloves were grey. The gun finishes were rebuilt and all 86 retuned to dark metal with readable sights. The glove material was missing a setting — on all fifteen survivors, in every build.
  • Your volume settings only worked while the audio menu was open. They now apply in matches, and the Voices slider — which controlled no sounds at all — now controls the voices.
  • Three maps had navigation holes. On Hallway01 no zombie could path all the way to you and the big specials couldn't fit through its doorway; Bellows had three unreachable spawners; Arena03's north half had no navigation and its ceiling was too low for the big specials. All fixed, and Arena03 gained a ramp — though some of its upper-floor spawners still can't path the whole way.
  • Foliage let you nail props in mid-air on Hanford, because one foliage actor counted as something to nail against, everywhere on the map. And every hull quake leaked a looping wind sound that never stopped, in four maps.
  • The head-start bonus paid once per session, not once per match, and four wonder weapons equipped as guns with no stats.
New
  • Extraction on Arena01. A booking desk near spawn, and an exit across the map.
  • PvP. A Versus mode on the new Versus Arena, with balanced teams and friendly fire. The lobby's MODE button switches between Siege and Versus, and POOL picks solo, duo, trio or quad.
  • Orders. Air-dropped weapon orders from a torn-paper sheet: five categories, a live 3D preview, and a tier rolled when the crate lands.
  • Switch sights in the field. Tap Left Alt to cycle through the optics your gun owns (hold Alt to free-look), or LB + RB on a pad. Switching never buys or sells anything.
  • A treeline on Arena01's skyline — 260 trees, visible from about a third of the map.
Changed
  • A heavier pace. You walk, crouch and sprint slower, your jump is a short, realistic hop that peaks around 66 cm, and you have half the steering in the air. Fall damage follows how hard you land — a bad landing can fracture a leg. The horde slowed down with you, to 78% of its old speed.
  • Sprinting plays a real run in third person, for you and for teammates watching you.
  • Aim sway answers to your build. Mastery, skills, perks and trinkets all steady (or unsteady) your sights.
  • New spawn rule: nothing spawns within 8 m of a player or in the space behind them. The rear guard turned out far too wide; 0.9.25 fixes it.
  • Keys: B switches fire mode, and the shop is on I everywhere.
  • Zombies stop standing still. Every spawn is checked against navigation first, and a zombie stuck on an ordinary crate or car now works its way past instead of giving up.
  • The loading screen counts what it's loading, and shows hints while it does.

Dispatch 0.9.23 — 06 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Through & Through

v0.9.23

— ten weapons join the damage system, and the rifle keeps its sight.

Fixed
  • Projectile weapons ignored almost every damage bonus. All ten of them — rockets, grenades, the laser, Tesla and the rest — fired raw damage, skipping Pack-a-Punch, affixes, perks, trinkets, statuses, mastery, crits and headshots. They now run through the same damage chain as every other gun, splash included.
  • Penetration charms and affixes did nothing. Bullets already passed through bodies at a flat falloff. Now how many bodies a round crosses depends on the weapon family — none for pistols, up to three for marksman rifles — and the three penetration trinkets and the Piercing and Overpressure affixes add to it.
  • The starting rifle never got its sight. You spawn holding the R08, and factory kits were only fitted to the gun in your hands. Stowed guns get theirs too now.
  • The inventory paperdoll hid your character behind its own sheet. The layers were in the wrong order. The portrait's background was also re-tinted to match the paper.

Dispatch 0.9.22 — 06 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

The Perk Web

v0.9.22

— forty-six perks, and captions that finally stay on their cards.

New
  • The perk web. F4 now opens a constellation of 46 perks across six branches and five tiers, joined by prerequisite paths. Walk it with the D-pad or the arrow keys; the server checks every purchase for its prerequisites and level.
Changed
  • Perk cards are readable. Captions were rendering above and outside their cards, locked text was nearly the colour of locked paper, and long names were cut short ("LUCKY CHARM" read "LUCKY"). All three are fixed.
  • Heads-up: perks you buy still last one life, so after a death you rebuy the chain. That's a design question we haven't settled.

Dispatch 0.9.21 — 05 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Up to Speed

v0.9.21

— the space guns catch up. Factory sights were still missing; 0.9.23 fixes that.

Fixed
  • Laser, Tesla and Cryo weapons fired at about a fifth of bullet speed. Their bolt inherited a placeholder speed and never set its own. They fly as fast as bullets now.
  • The WK-11 Viper's shop card showed a pistol. It shows the rifle.
  • Semi-auto pistols aimed into the camera. The M1911, Mk23, Deagle and MP443 sit in front of you again when you aim.
  • Twenty-one attachment mounts were rotated on the wrong axis.

Dispatch 0.9.20 — 05 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

F Is for Fixed

v0.9.20

— a hotfix, ninety minutes after the build that needed it.

Fixed
  • Pressing F opened the arsenal menu everywhere. Lifting the buy-anywhere restriction in 0.9.19 made the interact prompt believe an arsenal crate was always in front of you, which blocked looting, doors and every other F prompt. Buying and upgrading from anywhere still works.

Dispatch 0.9.19 — 05 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Now You See Them

v0.9.19

— attachments that actually draw, and pistols that stop pretending to be revolvers.

Fixed
  • Attachments never appeared on your first-person gun. Optics, suppressors and grips on seven of the eight pack guns were set up hidden and could never draw. 0.9.18 said they mounted; this is the build where you can see them.
  • Four pistols drew and reloaded like revolvers. The M1911, Mk23, Deagle and MP443 now have a real semi-auto with a magazine reload.
  • Snipers looked like a small lump in third person. They use real rifle models now.
  • Two survivor bodies had nowhere to sling a gun, so stowed weapons hung from the body's origin.
  • A recoil error fired several times a second while you shot.
  • "I can't upgrade anything." The shop opened anywhere but refused every purchase unless you stood at an arsenal crate — and there often wasn't one nearby. You can now buy and upgrade from anywhere.
New
  • Six new guns, including the Ridgeline bolt-action rifle (with an audible rechamber), a full-auto machine pistol and a 210-point snubnose.
  • 43 factory loadouts, so variants look different at a glance.
  • Right-click upgrades. Right-click any trinket, weapon or squad member for an upgrade menu with the price on the button.
  • Arsenal rarity. The arsenal sells guns from Uncommon to Legendary, with rolls that scale.
Changed
  • Rooms and halls echo.

Dispatch 0.9.18 — 05 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

Every Gun Speaks

v0.9.18

— one voice per gun, at last.

Fixed
  • 58 guns shared 11 gunshot sounds. Each now fires its own recording.
  • Gunshots didn't fade with distance. Not one gun sound had any distance falloff; they all do now.
  • Gun fixes: the R08 is a proper 8-shot revolver, the WK-11 Viper scopes correctly, the Herrington 11-87 is a true semi-auto without its silent pump stall, and bolt-action snipers no longer count as quick-draw pistols.
  • Controller: looting and the inventory take focus when they open, the D-pad reaches every control, and item actions work without a mouse.
New
  • Suppressors matter. Suppressed shots are quieter and carry a third of the distance — the same distance zombies hear them from.
  • Reload and draw sounds keep pace with your reload and draw speed.
  • Rails on the pack guns. Seven of them gained mounts for optics, suppressors and grips — though, as 0.9.19 found, the pieces were set never to draw.
Changed
  • The arsenal is sorted by tier, and the new guns carry their proper names.

Dispatch 0.9.17 — 05 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

New Hands

v0.9.17

— first person, rebuilt from the grip up.

New
  • First person, rebuilt. A new first-person rig and animation set (KINEMATION) replaces the old arms: hands and weapon placed properly on every gun, aim down sights, inspect, magazine check, a ready pose, fire-mode switching, attachment toggles, lean and a pistol quick-draw. Picking things up plays a real animation, reload and draw speed follow your trinkets and mastery, and you now start with the pistol.
  • Nine new guns: the AK-105, TR15, Mk14 EBR, SRM-12, Herrington 1187, MKR9, WK11 Viper, MX68 and R08.
  • Real acid and impacts. Spitter acid is a bile glob in flight, a splat on impact and a lingering puddle, and the spitter charges at its mouth rather than its chest. Every impact, hit flash and monster warning runs on new particle effects; the old glowing spheres are gone.
  • Prone and provisions. Press Z to go prone. Food and drink are items you use from the bag — and an energy drink gives you a rush, then a crash.
  • Loot containers. Crates, footlockers, medical cabinets, weapon cases and caches spawn around the map and roll their loot when opened; some take a few seconds to pry. A paper loot sheet has TAKE ALL.
  • Trinkets stack and upgrade. Stack a trinket up to 25, with diminishing returns, and upgrade eight of them through three tiers for points plus materials.
  • Options for every machine: quality presets including Potato, upscaling, and NVIDIA DLSS rows (active when the DLSS plugin is installed). The whole options sheet works with keyboard and controller.
  • A loading screen with real progress on map travel.
Changed
  • A leaner HUD. Vitals rows fold away when they have nothing to say, medal toasts are compact paper strips, the XP strip folds to a thin band when idle and stamps on level-up, and the HUD dims while the inventory is open. Damage numbers actually appear now — the HUD was missing the piece they draw on.
  • One inventory, many tabs. Loadout, Trinkets, Skills, Attributes and Journal share one page, with a row for your four weapon slots, reworked gear cards around a framed portrait, and limb health in its own region.
  • Zombies are scarier up close — dread, screeches and a lunge shake — and small, fast zombies no longer ice-skate: their stride matches their real speed.
  • Squad limits. Caps per unit type (soldiers, mechs, upkeepers, medics) plus a total, shown in the hub and refused cleanly when full. Ordered units place barricades properly in doorways, on stairs and in gaps between props, and the squad page finally works on a pad.

Dispatch 0.9.16 — 02 Sep 2026 · channel: alpha

The Squad Wheel

v0.9.16

— hold C, and your squad finally listens.

Fixed
  • Your squad had seven orders and no way to give them. Hold C for a torn-paper order wheel: Follow, Hold, Patrol, Repair, Weapons Free, Stand Down and Fortify. It reads your mouse properly too — a sensitivity mix-up meant a flick could never reach a wedge.
  • The motion blur toggle did nothing. A project setting always won. The toggle is in charge now.
  • Carried props flipped sideways.
  • Ctrl+E, Ctrl+H and Ctrl+J also fired squad orders.
New
  • Four new guns: the AK-74, HK416, MP-443 and M16A4, with real models and authored recoil. The AS VAL gets its own model.
  • Recruits keep busy. Between waves they fortify, haul and patrol on their own — your orders still come first — and on a defensive footing they weld barricades mid-fight, using nails from your supply.
  • More from the bag and the stash. Assign items to hotbar slots 1–4, deposit to your stash, sell and buy back from the stash, read trinket synergies, and respec your attributes (with a confirmation).
Changed
  • Zombies got smarter. They flank as a pack, sprint when enraged, search where they last saw you, and go for the barricade that's shielding you — up to three on one barricade.
  • Big specials path like big specials. The Abomination, Behemoth, Demon and Bloated have their own, roomier navigation, and navigation was rebuilt on every map.
  • Controller comfort: focus rings on every menu, a new cursor, and quick menus you open by tapping View and then pressing, instead of a two-thumb chord.
  • Shader caching is on, and weapon icons were re-shot from the real gun bodies.

Dispatch 0.9.15 — 26 Aug 2026 · channel: alpha

A New Face

v0.9.15

— Lutte joins the roster, and prestige learns to keep things.

New
  • Lutte, a new playable survivor with a modular wardrobe, on the character-select board.
  • Permanent perks. Each prestige rank opens a slot for a perk you keep for good (swap it whenever you like). At prestige you can also sacrifice your gear and stash for bonus unlock points — 3, plus one per rank — behind a second confirmation, so a single click can never wipe a stash. The panel gets its proper paper styling in 0.9.16.
  • Fortify on the command key. Order a recruit to barricade a doorway.
Changed
  • Monsters no longer glow in the dark. They were lighting themselves; the world lights them now.
  • Guns sit in the hand on every body. Where a body has no grip socket, the game now adds one instead of hanging the gun from the wrong spot.
  • Your third-person body is no longer bent out of shape by the first-person rig.
  • Recruits carry their rifles, and spitter acid is a green spray instead of a placeholder sphere (a proper acid effect follows in 0.9.17).
  • Shooting has more weight: each shot kicks the camera, and tired arms sway more when you aim.

Dispatch 0.9.14 — 25 Aug 2026 · channel: alpha

Rain on the Roof

v0.9.14

— every readout said it was raining. Now you can see it.

Fixed
  • Rain never showed up. Every weather readout said it was pouring, but the rain rode on a part of the game the engine keeps hidden, so nothing drew. It renders now — and the drops stop on the roof above you while the storm keeps falling outside, so stepping into a doorway no longer deletes the weather.
  • Rain fell through solid roofs. An earlier workaround let some rain through cover on purpose. It's gone.
  • You couldn't pick up or nail anything in third person. Reach was measured from the camera, which sits well behind you, so it ran out before it got past your own back. Reach counts from you now, in both views; first person is unchanged.
  • The skill tree's fourth lane was out of reach. The sheet only scrolled up and down, so Economy sat off the edge. It scrolls sideways now.
  • 43 weapons dropped as a wooden supply crate. They drop as themselves.
Changed
  • Heavy rain costs less. Drops colliding with the world were the entire cost of rain, so fewer drops are drawn — the storm's strength in the game is unchanged.

Dispatch 0.9.13 — 24 Aug 2026 · channel: alpha

Banked at Last

v0.9.13

— your end-of-match XP was going missing. It isn't any more.

Fixed
  • End-of-match XP never reached you in real matches. The save was hooked to a map-change event that seamless travel skips — and every real match travels seamlessly (our test sessions didn't, which is how it hid). XP and loot banking now catch seamless travel too.
  • Your lobby character stood empty-handed. The display rifle is back in their hands.
  • A floating "Test Block" hovered over your lobby character. It was a placeholder nameplate; the lobby hides it now.
  • Three trinkets couldn't be unequipped, so a bought Surveyor's Fob stayed stuck in your bag — and the Divining Pin couldn't find the very charms it advertises.
  • The supply-drop banner showed an empty box all the time.
  • The F3 hub's right-hand tabs were off the edge of the sheet. The tab row scrolls now.
  • The RPG-7 was held backwards.
New
  • Prestige insignia. Prestige ranks 1 to 10 now show an emblem under the level on your nameplate.

Dispatch 0.9.12 — 21 Aug 2026 · channel: alpha

Real Recoil

v0.9.12

— the navigation, the kick and the icons all come back from the dark.

Fixed
  • An entire wing of Arena01 had no navigation. Zombies spawned where they could never path out, and the pathfinder sent the other wing chasing a phantom. Blocked-zombie events went from 124 to 0.
  • Guns barely kicked. The starting rifle had no vertical recoil at all and snipers kicked less than pistols; twelve other weapons were corrected too. Recoil now climbs through a burst and recovers — an LMG burst climbs about 20° over 21 shots, then settles.
  • Shell casings flew off the wrong side at absurd speed. They copied the muzzle's orientation and scale. They now eject right, up and slightly back.
  • 127 item and weapon icons were black on black. The icon camera was four to five stops under-exposed; the art had been there all along.
  • Mech module slots now actually mount modules, and refund them when removed.
New
  • PSX filter. A Video setting that turns the whole screen low-fi: pixelation, colour crush with dither and a flat grey distance wash.
  • A new main-menu cinematic — 42 seconds, four shots.
  • Item tooltips show attribute rolls.
Changed
  • Recruits wear a real soldier body.
  • The game carries its own Visual C++ runtime, so a PC that's missing it can still start the game.

Dispatch 0.9.11 — 20 Aug 2026 · channel: alpha

They Can See You

v0.9.11

— also 0.9.10, which was built but never published. Hanford opens.

Fixed
  • Zombies hunted where you'd been, not where you are. Their sight reached 16 m; it's 35 m now, and any common zombie that can see you comes straight for you.
  • Zombies ignored your squad. They now attack your recruits and mechs too — though a player still wins a tie for their attention.
  • Laser, Tesla and grenade-launcher sights buried your view in the receiver. They aim properly now.
  • Runners couldn't be headshot, and fell into a broken pose when they died. Both fixed.
  • Your own gear blocked your view in first person. Backpacks and pouches now hide properly, while thigh pouches stay visible.
  • Third-person muzzle flashes appeared away from the gun.
  • Hanford had holes you could fall through. A full scan found them and they're patched.
  • Fourteen controls couldn't be rebound, Fire, Aim and Reload among them.
New
  • Hanford. A ten-zone reactor facility — a night rail yard, the reactor hall, a flooded fuel basin, a bunker warren, a sub pen and a sealed wing — with photoreal surfaces, moonlit nights, lore documents to find, two ways out that need the power on, wave 8 reached and either a key or the sealed wing opened, and every spawner able to reach you.
  • Weapon mastery. Seven weapon families level up as you use them, with a Mastery tab in the journal and a toast at each new tier.
  • The Remantler. Reforge a weapon's rolls — including the gun in your hands — using ammo from your bag as fuel, and craft at the same bench.
  • The field manual. The 49-skill tree finally has a screen, with specializations to choose.
  • A mech you can buy. A walking turret platform that joins your squad, takes orders and mounts turret modules.
  • Supply drops, announced with a banner and a marker in the world.
  • Password-protected games, with torn-paper multiplayer screens to host and join them.
  • RTX mode in graphics settings, on ray-tracing hardware.
Changed
  • A 48-minute day, with storms. Four matches in ten now open in one.
  • Shooting feels heavier. Aiming zooms, sprinting pushes the view, recoil springs back, and you get head bob, a landing dip and a shake on every shot.
  • First-person legs are back, and your shadow is a full body holding your gun.
  • Your equipped trinkets show on the HUD — that row had never appeared before.

Dispatch 0.9.9 — 09 Aug 2026 · channel: alpha

Open House

v0.9.9

— hosting works, and the right mouse button finally listens.

Fixed
  • Hosting a game was impossible. Steam never started for the game itself — a small app-id file was missing beside the executable — so hosting failed and dropped you back at the menu without a word. Every build now ships that file.
  • Hosting after a failed join crashed the game. The half-finished connection made the new session think it was a client ("Couldn't spawn player"). A leftover connection attempt is now cancelled as soon as a map starts loading.
  • The server address box came pre-filled with 127.0.0.1, so confirming it hung for 20 seconds. It starts empty, with a hint.
  • Right-clicking items took several tries. Nothing claimed the right mouse button on the way down, so the release only arrived by luck. The inventory now holds on to it, and the menu opens for the item you actually aimed at.
  • Five weapon perks did nothing on the guns you shoot. Steady Aim (recoil and spread), Double Tap (fire rate), Steady Hands (rechamber time), Deep Mags (magazine size) and Bandolier (reserve ammo) now reach them.
  • Headshots on the common horde and the boss relied on a check that didn't work. They use the proper head test now.
  • Arena01's common zombies could freeze in place. The map threw its navigation away on every load; it's rebuilt and saved with the map now.
  • The F4 perk menu ignored the gamepad — it couldn't take focus at all.
New
  • A Controls page in Settings, with keyboard-and-mouse and Xbox controller diagrams.
  • A proper hit marker: an inked paper X that turns red on headshots and kills.
  • Trinket tooltips say what the trinket does, including the total for a stack.
  • Interface sounds — 55 of them across twelve screens, all under the UI volume slider.
Changed
  • Corpses clear after two waves. At the start of each wave, bodies from two waves back are removed, along with anything still on them.
  • First-person legs, the weight-based speed curve and movement inertia are switched off for now.
  • Status chips moved to the top right, above your weapon card.
  • Stuck zombies vault at most once every eight seconds and keep walking in between — and they won't vault across a closed door.

Dispatch 0.9.8 — 06 Aug 2026 · channel: alpha

Into the Vault

v0.9.8

— everything since 0.1.9, including the 0.2.x alpha builds that already ran as 0.9.8.

Fixed
  • Joined players couldn't open doors, use the mystery box, buy wall ammo or trip electric traps. Those interactions only ran on the host's machine. All four now go through the server, so co-op works past the first door.
  • Ten of the fourteen survivors held their rifle at their feet. Their body models had no hand sockets at all, so the gun sat at the model's origin. They carry the same fourteen sockets as every other body now.
  • Every kill caused a hitch. Each kill wrote your profile to disk on the spot — up to twenty blocking saves per wave. Progress now saves in batches every few seconds.
  • Carried props jittered and spun. Two systems fought over a held prop every frame. One drives it now, it keeps the rotation you give it, and physics returns when you let go.
  • Corpses kept breathing. Bodies that couldn't ragdoll kept their animation running. They lie still now.
  • Your career and After Action Report were always empty. Finished matches were never recorded.
  • Sign-in results were invisible. The status line shipped hidden, so success and failure looked the same. The menu chip now shows your callsign once you're in.
  • Crates and the mystery box spawned into the main menu and lobby.
New
  • A rebuilt main menu. Title top-left, your Steam name on a status chip, the version stamp, a JOURNAL button for your career sheet, a looping cinematic behind it all, and an original menu theme.
  • A persistent stash. What you carry out is banked when a match ends and kept in a grid stash you can open from the main menu. It grows as you prestige.
  • Riverside, a siege map. One big multi-room building with loose planks and plywood staged at its openings, perk machines, Pack-a-Punch and an arsenal crate inside — and the horde outside.
  • Bellows, a submarine map. Random hull quakes, leaks that flood the deck, sliding doors and an elevator.
  • Three new turrets and two new barricade tiers. Heavy (900), Scorcher (1,100) and Suppressor (1,400) turrets; Steel and Diamond barricades above metal, gated by your hammer's tier.
  • New guns: the FAL, SV98 and RPG-7. Most guns moved to realistic models, 28 got new gunshot recordings, and spent casings now eject.
  • A right-click item menu: Use, Equip, Rotate, Split Stack, Quick Move and Drop, with refusals explained right in the menu.
  • The bag is a true grid. Eight by five big cells, and items take their real shape — a rifle 4×1, armour and backpacks 2×2, a pistol 1×2. Old layouts re-pack themselves; nothing is lost.
Changed
  • Loot is on G. Carrying stays on F.
  • Tarkov-style movement. Lean with Q and E (melee moved to X), a smooth crouch, first-person legs, weight that slows you in steps, and a touch of inertia.
  • Strength decides what you can lift. A prop that's too heavy says NOT ENOUGH STRENGTH, with both weights. Nailing is quicker, and the Carpenter perk speeds it up.
  • Attributes do what they say. Walk speed, carry capacity, incoming damage, status resistance and Wits repair speed were skipping some of their modifiers; they use all of them now, and Luck adds a melee crit chance.
  • Escape closes open menus.

Dispatch 0.1.9 — 26 Jul 2026 · channel: beta

The Horde Learns to Knock

v0.1.9

— your barricades finally mean something to the common dead.

Fixed
  • Regular zombies could not attack barricades at all. Their entire attack test was "is the player within reach" — a barricade was never even considered. Blocked by a cade, they stood there with their arms out while the player stayed safely out of range. Only the special zombies could break wood. The common horde now looks for whatever is blocking it and swings at that, for the same damage it deals players.
  • Zombies ignored anything below them. A prop underfoot or on a lower step has almost no horizontal bearing, and the "is it in front of me" test threw those out — so a cade beneath a zombie was invisible to it. Anything essentially on top of them now counts as blocking.
  • Big barricades were unreachable. Attack range was measured to a prop's centre rather than its surface, so on a long plank stack or a wide crate a zombie could be pressed flat against the wood and still be "too far" to hit it — and physically unable to get closer, because the cade blocks them.
  • The free arsenal crate spawned in your face. It was dropped at a fixed distance in front of the spawn point and simply seated on whatever the ground trace found — and a ground trace happily lands on the top of a prop. On Arena01 there is a waist-high prop directly ahead of the first spawn, so the crate perched on it at head height, under a metre from your eyes, while you stood on the floor a metre below. Crates now have to land on the same floor you are standing on.
  • The resupply box floated in mid-air. It is placed beside its arsenal crate with no ground check of its own, so it inherited the crate's height — including when the crate was up on that prop. It now picks a side that shares the crate's floor.
  • A carried crate trapped you. While shouldered it was set to "query only" collision, which stops physics but not the movement sweeps a character walks with — so you collided with the crate you were holding and slid to a halt every few steps. The crate now ignores its own carrier and nobody else, so it still blocks zombies normally.
  • A carried crate blocked the whole screen. It was attached behind you at head height, which is exactly where the third-person camera looks from.
  • You could not put a crate down at all. Shouldering set a state that no "place it" path ever checked, so every press fell through to the pick-up trace. There was no key in the game that could set a shouldered crate down.
  • The leaderboard listed you once per run. Two runs meant two rows on a board that is supposed to rank operators, not attempts. One row per survivor now, showing their best.
  • Your rank counted runs, not people. A rival logging five good runs pushed you down five places on a board that only displayed them once. Rank and table now agree.
New
  • Monthly standings. The board is now a calendar-month season and rolls over on the 1st. Nothing is deleted — every run stays in your record and in the all-time totals.
  • Arsenal crates place like turrets. Pick one up and it lifts off as a preview that follows your aim — green where it will sit, red where it will not. Press E to set it down. A red spot refuses and leaves the preview up so you can re-aim instead of dropping a shop kiosk inside a wall.

Dispatch 0.1.8 — 25 Jul 2026 · channel: beta

Ghosts in the Ranks

v0.1.8

— the squad was always there. You just couldn't see it.

Fixed
  • Soldiers, upkeepers and drones were invisible, not missing. Every automation unit spawned, registered, walked, shot and hauled correctly — with no mesh assigned. They were invisible capsules the whole time. All of them have bodies now.
  • Drones were never on sale. The drone had no entry in the purchasable unit list at all, so the buy request was refused before it ever cost you a point. Now purchasable at 1,200, with its own button on the squad tab.
  • Zombies stopped chewing barricades mid-siege. Attack reach was measured to the barricade's origin instead of its surface — so on a long cade a zombie could stand flush against the wood, physically unable to get closer, and never swing. Crowded zombies drifted out of range and quietly gave up. Reach is measured to the surface now: if it's touching it, it's hitting it.
  • The Support shelf was unreachable. Nails, the medic tool, the portable arsenal and the deployable arsenal crate all existed and were priced correctly — but the shop's tab rail wrapped at 11 tabs while the shop had 13, so you could never scroll to them. Both Legendary trinkets were stranded on the same dead tab.
  • "RESTOCKING" on things that were in stock. The buy button read its state from a hand-built classifier that returned "not for sale" for every priced support and armour card. It reads the real catalogue now.
  • Carried crates blocked your view. Anything you picked up was pinned at eye level, dead centre. Large props — the arsenal crate especially — filled the screen. Carried objects now ride at chest height and clear the camera by their own size.
  • The repair drone sat inside you. Its hover height was zero, which parked it at your chest and left nothing to stop it occupying your body while it followed you.
  • Navmesh was built for the wrong body. Pathfinding used a 35×144 agent while every character in the game is 176 tall — so the AI would route through gaps nothing could actually fit through.
New
  • Squads scavenge. Order your soldiers to fetch loose loot and haul it back to you. They pick a mote, carry it, and deposit it straight into your bag — anything that doesn't fit lands at your feet. A courier that dies drops what it was carrying rather than deleting it.
  • Squads share what they see. Units feed a common threat picture, so one soldier spotting something lets the rest act on it — and targeting now weighs what's attacking your barricades and what's hurting you, not just what's nearest.
  • Maintenance is coordinated. Repair and resupply work is handed out from a shared queue instead of every worker scanning independently, so two upkeepers stop converging on the same turret and an emergency barricade repair outranks a routine ammo top-up.
  • 20-player lobbies. Raised from 8.
Changed
  • F3 → ACTIVE now lists only the perks you actually have; F4 remains the full catalogue you unlock from. They used to show the identical 36-perk list twice.
  • Squad rows show real numbers — type, damage, rate of fire, range, doctrine, morale, and a live line for whatever a soldier is currently hauling.
  • Purchased units deploy further out, so nothing spawns in your lap.

Dispatch 0.9.7 — 24 Jul 2026 · channel: beta

Straight & True

v0.9.7

— see the hit, trust the count.

New
  • Hit markers. Every round that connects now stamps a marker over your reticle — instant confirmation you're landing shots, even when the horde's stacked three deep.
  • Damage-direction indicators. Take a hit and a marker flares on the edge of the screen pointing dead at whatever's chewing on you, so you can wheel on the threat instead of guessing where it came from.
Improved
  • Native systems rebuild. Progression and XP, the After Action Report and the limb-vitals system now run on a rebuilt native (C++) backend — the same features you already know, re-platformed onto native code for stability and now guarded by an automated test suite that catches regressions before a build reaches you.
Fixed
  • Survivors no longer T-pose. Four survivors — Black, Blue, Cyan and Green — could spawn frozen in a T-pose; they now drop in fully animated.
  • Match XP is no longer granted twice — every kill, revive and objective pays out exactly once, so your post-match total is honest.
  • Double Points now actually doubles your score for the full duration of the powerup instead of paying out at the normal rate.
  • Electric Trap damage is now server-authoritative — the host decides the kills the trap earns, not each client, closing a desync where players could see different results.
  • Closed a teleporter case that could drop players off the map.

Dispatch 0.9.4 — 22 Jul 2026 · channel: beta

Blood & Iron

1.0 beta candidate

— the last big cut before we call it 1.0.

New
  • Per-caliber gun audio. Pistols, rifles, LMGs, snipers and launchers each fire with their own report, tail and mag-swap foley — you can hear what's shooting at you before you see it.
  • Real blood. Hits now throw directional blood bursts and the horde wears every wound it earns.
  • Med auto-target. Bandages and splints automatically pick the limb that actually needs treatment, so you patch the bleed instead of splinting a healthy leg mid-fight.
Improved
  • Corpse looting reworked. One clean prompt per body and loot windows open first-try, every time.
  • Interact pass. Doors, wall-buys, crates and downed teammates all read off one reliable prompt — no more fighting the reticle to press a button.
Fixed
  • Corpses no longer spawn twice on client machines.
  • Closed a menu deadlock that could freeze the pause and After Action screens.
  • Damage numbers now match the damage actually dealt.
  • Closed a prestige exploit that let players roll over without meeting the requirement.
  • Looting a body no longer occasionally emptied the wrong container.

Dispatch 0.9.3 — 19 Jul 2026

Build & Defend

v0.9.3

— give the wall some teeth of its own.

New
  • Tiered nailable props. Barricades now upgrade through wood, reinforced and plated tiers — the Carpenter skill builds them faster, Preservation makes them last longer.
  • Auto-repair turret. A deployable turret that suppresses a lane and patches its own plating between waves so you can hold two doors with one crew.
  • Trading, stash & market. A persistent stash, player-to-player trading, and a between-round market for spending the scrip you fought for.
Improved
  • Turret power pass. Turrets now draw from the room's grid — overload it and its defenses brown out, so place your hardware with intent.
Balance
  • Retuned prop HP curves so early barricades hold long enough to matter without trivializing the late waves.

Dispatch 0.9.2 — 16 Jul 2026

Many Hands

v0.9.2

— nobody holds the line alone.

New
  • Steam friend rooms. Invite friends straight through Steam and drop into co-op together — no port forwarding, no IP-swapping in a group chat.
  • VPS server instances. Spin up dedicated instances and find them from the in-game server browser.
  • Server browser. A live list of official and community servers with ping, mode and open slots.
Improved
  • Self-healing headless servers. Dedicated hosts now recover from a crashed match and re-open on their own — no babysitter required.
Fixed
  • Fixed join failures when a host migrated mid-lobby.

Dispatch 0.9.1 — 13 Jul 2026

For the Record

v0.9.1

— every run leaves a mark now.

New
  • XP & levels. Every kill, revive and objective pays out XP with CoD-style pop-ups that stack up as the wave heats.
  • Accolades. End-of-match ribbons for killing sprees, multikills, clutch revives and more.
  • Level-up banners. Stamped, on-screen promotions the moment you rank up.
  • Prestige & calling cards. Hit the cap, prestige, and unlock calling cards to show for it.
  • After Action Report. A full post-match breakdown of your run — damage, kills, accuracy, medals.
  • Career tracking. Lifetime stats, medals and prestige saved to your account and shown on Standings.
Improved
  • Killing sprees & multikills. Chains now stack into accolade bonuses instead of firing once and resetting.

Dispatch 0.9.0 — 10 Jul 2026

Enlistment

v0.9.0

— sign in, patch up, hit the wall.

New
  • The auto-updating launcher. One click checks the manifest, patches only what changed, and launches the game — no reinstalls between builds.
  • Cloud profile sync. Sign in once and your XP, level and prestige follow you to any machine.
  • Accounts & sign-in. Enlist a survivor account for the launcher, the community boards and your saved progress.
  • Settings menu. Audio, video and gameplay options with sensible presets out of the box.
Improved
  • First-run flow now walks new operators from download to first wave without a wiki.

Last word

Builds before 0.9.0 predate this public log. Pre-release means sharp edges — if something here isn't behaving, file it on the Field Reports board and it'll land in a future dispatch.

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