In development.

The new build is not live... I mean I did quietly push a few updates over the last month, but I am not super proud of them. Some of these updates had a few larger bugs. I like to quietly push updates, play with 2 or 3 people, and if all goes well I will put up a game for more later that week. This update still isnt really quite there yet, but I am close, so I would say we may be able to play this weekend or the following. I will post later this week if I think its ready for Sunday.

- Network stability was the primary focus over the last month. I would say I implemented host migrations, but that's only partially true. The way it was working was using excessive RPC calls and affecting performance. I am now working on optimizing the network traffic while still keeping it fully functional through migrations. This will be a big milestone once it's complete.

- Map performance... previous updates mainly focused on optimizing my scripts. While I had done some work on map optimization, this update has really pushed that a lot harder. I believe the 7-11 update was probably averaging 1,200 draw calls and 6 million polygons, while this one is a quarter of that in each metric. There's still a lot more I can touch here, but this takes time. I did make the map look better and added a lot of other new effects I'll go into more detail about below, so I wouldn't expect major performance wins this update, but it will run better and be a lot more featured. The previously mentioned networking optimizations, I believe, will allow it to scale to more players better, too. The host used to particularly lag due to what I now calculate was 1,200–1,600 RPC calls being done every second in a 10-person lobby. This has dropped to basically nothing. Last update, I was getting 90 FPS with 3 or fewer people, but 40–60 FPS when I was hosting a lobby with 9. These new wins, I think, should allow us to host lobbies with 10 people and hopefully still maintain a high framerate, even for the host.

- Added new weapons: M14 (DMR), AUG (AR), M590A1 (Shotgun), MK18 (AR), AKM (AR)

- Added ammo types:
  Most Weapons:
  * FMJ: Basically normal ammo
  * Armor Piercing: 50% more penetration, ignores body armor
  * Hollow Point: 80% less penetration, 15% more damage
  * Tracer: Basically just looks cool, points out the enemy

  Shotguns:
  * Buck Shot: Normal shotgun spread ammo
  * Slug: One single large bullet for shotguns
  * Dragon's Breath: Shoots 20% fewer pellets than normal shotgun rounds, but causes a quick, sudden flash of light when on the receiving end of the shots. It's not super disorienting, but it could be.

- Tear Gas + Gas Masks: Tear gas makes character models cough around it and distorts their vision unless that player is wearing a gas mask.

- Added the HK slap mechanic to the AUG. Basically, just slap it and it chambers. I will add this to other weapons as I add them.

- Added per-physics-material bullet holes, so now they match what you shoot.

- Added separate air-burst explosions and made all the explosions dynamic, so it's not the same thing every time. Damage radius has been adjusted, too, but it is not dynamic.

- Reworked the footstep sound system. Footsteps had a weird glitch in previous versions that was causing them to not sound correctly timed due to network frames not being... smooth. This has been redesigned so the footstep pacing is consistent.

- Added a visual distorted wave where bullets travel, so you can see their path. I can't really describe this one. It looks really, really cool and realistic. You will have to see it in-game.

- New lasers look way better than before.

- Added a layer of polish over all the weapons. Made sure their bullets are properly moving from the clip to the chamber as you pull the slide, and an empty casing animates out. Made sure the clips move properly when you eject a mag, went over their sound effects again... honestly, this still isn't 100% polished, but it's in a much better state now. I spent a full weekend just doing this part.

- Gotta say the generic "fixed a million bugs"... because I did. I fixed a million of them.

I have removed all testing roles, and made the download to the game publicly accessible instead: https://discord.com/channels/1475269695048257587/1475280589887242502
I recognize that I will still need to ping people to let them know when games are being played, so I decided to change the "tester role" for that.

Since you all have been removed from the testing role, please react here to start getting pinged about test games: https://discord.com/channels/1475269695048257587/1476700936465420329

This leads me to my next bigger announcement:

New update is live and its way more stable than the last one. So much so that I want to start holding bi-weekly to monthly test games, starting tomorrow (Sunday) at 9pm EST.
The new link will be the version we are playing. I did some 1v2 testing last night, and it was almost flawless. As far as system requirments, we had one player playing with a gtx 1080ti last night and said it did pretty well at medium settings.

Please join this event below if you are interested in trying it out.https://discord.gg/tWqg2Qbz?event=1525548897462779904
If we get more than 10, we can start two lobbies. The servers should support up to 100.

Heres the patch notes:

- Doubled to Tripled framerate from last build
- Added downing and reviving mechanic.  You can crawl arond and shoot at people while down.  You get back up automaticly after an amount of time porportional to how hurt you are.  A needle is required to gain back full movement speed, but you can stab yourself with one.  Full visability comes back over time, but takes several minutes to fully recover without a needle.
- Redesigned all the weapon audio to use proper loops in full auto.  Also got some much higher quality bullet impact sounds.  Fine tuned the audio occlusion and distance for footsteps, voices, gunshots, and impacts.
- Added an MCX Assault Riffle
- Made animations WAY smoother.  Players now properly lean when you lean IRL.
- Made throwing mechanics feel a little bit better, but to be honest, I still need another run at this.  Light throws are a little bit hard.
- Made UI look a little nicer.  There are some new added settings as well.

Download here: https://discord.com/channels/1475269695048257587/1475280589887242502

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Leaving an update note for this one feels futile, but let me try it:

- Added a bolt action sniper (L96A1)
- Added a belt-fed LMG (M249)
- Added a pistol (P350) + Inventory options for the secondary weapon + mags
- Added M203 launcher for frags + smokes (only on Mk16 right now)
- New test map (Slums)
- Added a height option and player scaling.
- New flashbang effects, which will now slow players down and literally disorient them.
- Added class based loadout selection + everything is now money based and runs against a budget:

   [Class specific traits:]
   - Assault: Basically normal everything
   - Heavy: 10% slower, recieves an extra utility on both utility slots
   - Scout: 10% faster, access to specialized weapons (boltys and such)
   - Medic/Engineer: No weapons have been added to this class, but they will recieve extra money.

- Drastically improved animations, added crawling and leaning (just lean in real life, its a pretty smart system)

- Added graphic options, as I recognize no one should be able to run this game at max settings.  I still have to go through and optimize texture resoltuions on stuff so for the mean time this game will be VRam heavy.  


+Heres a few tips on making it run well:

   [Performance Reccomendations:]
  - If you are maxing out vram, lower the MIP max setting and restart the game (A restart of the game is required for this to take effect). This may be the best way to improve performance, but will also be the most noticeable 
   - Keep refelction quality on low.  It doesnt need to be high at all for it to look great.  
   - I reccomend not upscaling the render resolution.  Keep it at 100%.  
   - Theres no need to increase shadow distance becuase there are no realtime shadows yet.  Keep that low (5 meters).
   - LOD bias... I don't expect this to have too much of an impact, but if you bring it in too much you will notice more "popping"
   - Turning off volumetric shadows may increase CPU performance.
   - Each setting has a "?" next to it, which you can hover on to explain that setting.

Besides this stuff, I fixed about a million bugs.  I do want to mention I will probably post another release within a week. There is actually a fair bit of small bugs with this version.  More than I care to write out, but so much has been added, that was sort of expected. Overall this is a massive upgrade from the last version, so figured I would share it.```

Edit: We tested with 4-5 players today, and while its playable, we did find a couple of larger bugs... which honestly was expected with an update this size.... but most of it was low hanging fruit.  Mainly I want to say that you shouldn't even try to play this on high settings.  Make sure you are playing somewhere between low and medium.   Theres a lot of low hanging fruit I can do to patch things up, so expect a polished version of this update later this week.

- Fixed frags killing people way out of range
- Made throwing feel better
- Added flip scope (but havent set it up to show on other players screens yet)
- Fixed head movement option
- Reduced momentum mechanic
- Fixed particle system on flash-bangs
- Fixed a few other bugs... spawning in with no utility does not cuase issues anymore, not sure if I got the proximity chat bug where proximity chat would randomly stop working.  I may have but need to test.```

@Discord-role Just wanted to mention I just released a new build. I try to tag you guys as little as possible, but this build is actually a big one so figured its worthy.

- Added support for multiplayer in explore mode.
- Added new game mode: Defuse - Team based game mode where players have defuse a bomb by reading a code off of it, and entering that into their tablet.  Defending team must prevent them.
- Added a tablet, which can show teammate positions and bomb location, and gives a medium for defusing the bomb.
- Added crawling animations
- New character models, and flashlight and laser models.
- Throwing utility feels way better now
- Fixed a million small bugs, and a few big ones.  Added a million small quality of life improvements not worth wasting your time reading about them, or my time remembering them.```

Download here: https://discord.com/channels/1475269695048257587/1475280589887242502

-left and right hands are swapped in settings, just pick the opposite of what you are
-these settings may not update in the main menu, but they will in game
-AK has not been made to work with the new network settings... stick to the MK.
-smoke grenade is off-center for lefties
-smokes stop dissipating smokes mid air for a second or two after release

These actually have really easy fixes, but I again I made this build by accident.

EDIT: 9:50AM EST June 6th - There was actually an issue with the server browser in this update, so I just released a new one with a fix, and I also added tablets. Crossed out items above are now fixed as well too.

- Lots of back end work on this one one, should be a lot more stable online in multiplayer lobbies.
- Added smoke grenades
- players names on the scoreboard will light up more on the board when they are talking
- Steam names are now pulled in from steamvr instead of "player 1"...
- Added an "exit lobby" button.

I actually wasnt planning on releasing this update, but I accidentally built one with my produciton build profile, and it was less buggy then the version I have out there now, so I guess why not?
The big change on this version is really about how networked objects are handled. Its made the game way more stable over the network.

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- Added a loadout system that incorporates money on equipment.  I plan on  having a lot more you can add before this is done, so for now there is no cap on money spent... for any game mode.
- New attachments: Scopes (with hybrid scope options), lasers, flashlights
- Adjusted momentum mechanics to be less impactful when crouched, and made the amount of momentum relative to your velocity... feels a bit more natural now, and less like ice skating.
- New minimap planner has been implemented.  Now there is a minimap in the waiting area, and you can draw points on it to show your team where you are planning on going.  These lines will actually move around on walkable areas only so it will draw lines on the fastest way to get from point A to point B. You can also watch players move around the map, and see where they are looking. (see video below)

I also ran a test with about 7 people, and it didnt go so great. (but to be fair, what else would you expect from the first real test lobby).  I learned a lot from this, so thanks to those of you that helped.  I learned that I cant just send network packets at 120 ticks a second... stuff gets lost, and the lobby gets confused.  You start to see weird things like guns that dont obey the laws of gravity.   I also learned that with the way I had everything set up, when the host quits, the game was bound to freeze for everyone else.  This ended up making me re-do a lot of the stuff ive set up, and the way a lot of it was coded... which... was a lot of work lol, but its good now.  Things are back to noramlish, and now, the game keeps on playing seamlessly when a host leaves.  It was worth it.

Even though the test above didnt go well for most of it, there were still playable moments where I got a glimpse into what this game will be like, and I wanted to share some video on that as well.```

@Discord-role Sorry for the ping, but I know some of you were asking for this. I pushed a new version (https://discord.com/channels/1475269695048257587/1475280589887242502/1475300879035928680)
I have also added a game mode called "Explore" where you can walk around and experiment with infinate ammo, mags, and throwables. This will let you guys test it by yourself without needing a lobby. Make sure to select this if you want to try it:

I want to mention ive done breif testing on this, and it had a bug where you get floating mags, empty bullet shells, and you cant throw anything. If that happens, just restart the game and that should fix it, and it wont happen ever again I believe.

EDIT: Just updated with a new version. This includes minimap planning, lots of optimization, and better grenade/flashbang thowing trajectories. (Maybe not perfect, but really close to it now)
The striked-out bug above should be fixed... for the most part. It will occastionally spawn you in still without a riffle, but this will be fixed later. If it happens, kill yourself with a grenade and restart the round and that will fix it.

I want to know if anyone still has the striked out issue. Please let me know.

Thanks!

I cant end it without some sort of screenshot or video, so ill tease this. This is the fastest you can jiggle peak in this game. Please ignore the messed up lighting, I am having an issue getting SH lightmaps to get included in the bundle, but obviously I will resolve that later.

Open attachment: 2026-04-26_00-40-25.mp4

First monthly update - This is starting to feel like a real game
- Added the first itteration of a loadout screen.  You can select different weapons and attachments.
- Made attachments... so far just silencers, holo sights, and foregrips.  Foregrips reducst recoil.. silencers reduce sound... holosights ... be holosights.
- Added an AK
- I really focused down on weapon and mag handling. I cant emphasize how much better this feels now.  Like, its perfect.  Nades are hosltering and unhosltering just as well, but the throwing still feels a little off.  This will be a focus next month.
- I added momentum to player movement.  0.2 second ramp up and ramp up time... this feels SOOOOO good. It prevents jiggle peaking 100%, and otherwise you wouldnt even notice it.
- Made loading screen much better.  Added background music to it.  Should this be elevator music? It feels like it should be elevator music.
- I brought in a level I made from when I was making custom maps for onward (Marketplace)  I also built a tool to convert this map over to a map for my game.  I have to re-design the shaders I was using, so one thing that still took a bit of work was re-doing a lot of the material settings to use my own shaders.  I have not really polished this up, but I will later.  Dont worry, things will look beautiful later. Another thing I want to say here is that Marketplace will NOT be a map in my game, but I may use assets from it.  This goes for all the custom content I made for Onward. I may add some of those levels in some capacity, but if I do they will be drastically different and way more polished than they were as custom content... if they see the light of day at all.  Many of these maps I made as I was learning unity, and I want my maps to have really well thought out layouts, and profesional quality control and optimization in my actual game. I just brought in Marketplace becuase I wanted to test performance on an already optimized level.
- I did a lot of work on animations this month too.  Players are now movign their feet while rotating, and shfiting to a crawl position when you move your head low enough.  This will need a few more passes before its perfect, but we are better off today than we were a month ago.  IK in genral is much better than it was last update.  Not just on the animations, but the IK itself.
- Adjusted recoil, and sound effects on weapons.  They are feeling much better now.
- Host migrations are working now, but there is an issue with host timeouts failing to trigger host migrations now.  Basically the host can quit, but they cant walk away from their headset.  More work to be done here.
- This is just the tip of the iceberg.  I guess these are the big ticket items I actually remembered working on. I am noticing my memory is not good enough to remember everything I fixed over the coarse of the month.  I am looking back at the last patch notes right now and thinking "what have I done since then?" and I feel like that update was a year ago.

Open attachment: 2026-03-29_23-56-21.mp4

- Added vignette and bullet whistle noises when someone shoots near you and misses.  They are reactive based on how close of a call it was.
- Added a paritcle system to flashes that lasts longer and moves with the flash after its gone off.  Also added realtime lighting to both flashes and grenade explosions.
- Added a togable full auto/semi auto firing modes to riffles.
- Made last bullet in a riffle have the option get locked back, and gave it an optional release using a button.
- I started adding prioritization rules and blocking rules to weapon handling, (i.e dont grab a nade off my chest if I am holding a nade already... prioritize pulling the pin on the grenade I am already holdling instead if its in range).  This way you will always grab the pin instead of a new nade accidentally.  I put a lot of these rules in to make things feel more natural.
- 1 handed recoil is now working
- There are things I have implemented to help lock down my code from hackers, but unfortunately I cant talk about those in patch notes.  All I can say is I worked on security.

I know I said I would focus on IK this week, and its like the only thing I didnt work on... but seriously... that will be a focus of next week.```

Open attachment: 2026-03-29_23-54-47.mp4

Bug fixes, new features, new equiptment.  I now am a registered steamworks partner too!
- Added flashbangs.  See Video, this is not the final result, it will need some fine tuning.
- Added heavy breathing when damaged that sorta repsonds to how you were hit.  I still need to add vignette when under fire or hurt.
- Added a inventory renderer, so you can see your inventory slots on a physical body (see video).  Circles now appear when you put an inventory item near its slot, letting you know it can be snapped in there.
- Added a killcam, so you can watch players playing from their point of view while you are in the waiting area.
- Fixed issue where holding a riffle while transitioning from waiting area to map at a round start would cause wonky behaviour.
- Fixed issue remote players couldn't re-hoslter their riffle.  Also holstering items is WAY more responsive now.
- Added 2-handed recoil... 1 handed comming soon

I would like to focus on IK for next week, and touch up a few other samll easy bugs I noticed.  I want to fine tune some sound effects button visuals and effects... there is work to be done everywhere, but we will get there.```

Open attachment: 2026-03-23_01-41-25.mp4

Open attachment: 2026-03-23_01-38-34.mp4

- I had issues with disaperaring players in lobbies with multiple people.  Weapons not spawning in if you were holding them in the tent... these sorts of bugs have been fixed.
- I started working on host migration paths.... What happens when the host leaves the lobby.  Is permission to start rounds transfered.... stuff of this nature.  Its not working yet, but this will likely be my focus for the next few days.  Its partially working now.
- Improved shaders 
- Improved sound occlusion
- Fixed glitch where grenades dont fly right if they are thrown while running
- Created a tool to apply friction + bounciness to surfaces for a map and apply it to everything so grenades will fly appropirately... TO DO here, make sounds on grenede bounces based on material type.
- Created a few new skins, and changed up spawns to apply random character skins for now.
- Made a fresh duplicate of the project on my test machine so I can test mulitplayer with a more in-line project. (before I was using version control, but not syncing the entire project)```

Sorry for the lack of release this week... I added too many features and didnt fix enough bugs. Stay tuned next week, I think thats when this is going to start feeling like a real game

Seems unlikely there will be a test this week. I got stuck compliing shader variants for the last 24 hours, so I didnt get the change to fix a few bigger bugs that came up last test run. I did add a bunch of new features, and wanted to keep track of them here:

-Made a start menu area, and added settings menu, create and join lobby buttons with a working server browser.  
-Now when you join a lobby, it loads a secondary asset bundle.  This is needed to make this stuff run on quest, and not make my entire game run load into memory, but rather load the bits and pieces you need for each level.  This was a big win
-I made the above process asynchronous, so it should able to throw a loading screen inbetween the two scenes, so the screen doesnt completely glitch out when you are loading a map, but rather shows a progress bar and such.  More work is needed to get this looking good though.
-I improved gun shot occlusion.
-Switched entire render pipelline from HDRP to URP for higher perfomrance, then I swapped out the shaders, and started using bakerys shaders, which include better customization to lighitng.   While it probably doesnt look as good as it did ion HDRP now, it performs WAY better, and by adding custom shaders, it probably looks really close to how it did on HDRP now.  HDRP will be deprecated next year.  Unity seems to be focusing on URP now.
-Added volumetric lighting to parts of test level.  This might hit perfomrance hard on quest, so more work to be done there on the quest side
-Created tags, that let me disclude certain things on the quest build to increase performance while also making PCVR still look as good as possible
-Made weapon handing feel a lot better.  This actually comes from two directions: 1- the gates controlling when you can grab/reload have been more fine tuned.  I am working on better grab points, for fingers that wrap around the gun instead of just in the general area.  You cant insert a mag if there is already one in the weapon now... stuff like this.... and 2- I fine tuned the sound effects that are made on various actions... like when you touch the charing handle, when you pull it back, and when you release and such.   I actually might redo some of this work later, as I just came accross a tool that will blend sound effects based on factors.  For example, I could have a sound play as you pull the slide back, and stop if you temporarily stop pulling it back and then continue to play if you continue pulling it back, then I can change the pitch and volume of this if you pull it back slowly etc etc etc.... I think this is going to be really cool.
-Added recoil, and made it really customizable.  I can control the fulcrum of the recoil force and the X,Y,Z recoil all independtnely for different weapons.
-Added footsteps which play more or less quietly based on speed, crouching, etc.
-Added sound occlusion to not only gunshots, but the impact points of the bullets now, as well as footsteps.
-Added a lobby area, where now instead of playing a free for all death match, we will be testing in last man standing scenerios, were we all spawn in at once, and last one left alive wins.  Everyone will be teleported to the lobby area on death, and host will be able to start game from there once there is a winner (this is still in testing and is the reason I am not releasing a version for test tonight)
-Added a scoreboard in the lobby area so we can see who has how many kills, deaths, and round wins (this is just showing "Player 1, Player 2, etc" until I can implement steamvr and oclulus login.```

I thought about doing another test run today, but I was able to try it in a 1v1 earlier and decided I want to wait a week to do next test run with more people. Theres a few quality of life bugs I would like to fix first. That said, ive added a lot in the last week, and I do have a new build you guys can try if you want. Just start a lobby and select "start host" if you want to fool around in it. I have updated the file in https://discord.com/channels/1475269695048257587/1475280589887242502

I will aim for next big test session next Sunday and hopefully have a lot more ironed out.

-All bugs from last week fixed (double gun, one hand issue, cant load weapon by bumping into holster, player auto-recentering, still able to shoot after death, host wont respawn at their death location anymore)
-Added sound occlusion on gun shots
-Better audio sounds for the weapons
-Added grenades
-Made weapon handling work a little more reliable and responsive to holster snaps and such.
-Created LODs for about 70-80% of the highest poly items
-Added physics materials for all prefabs on map
-Enabled realtime reflections + adjusted some other lighting settings
-Made weapons/ammo/utillity despawn 25 seconds after being killed to help with performance
-Made dead bodies rigid bodies get destroyed on respawn, so their physics are not constantly pegging performance.  Bodies will still be there, but they will not have physics around them.
-Added snap turning (move dominiat hands joystick to one side, then click it in)
-Added left hand mode (click in both joysticks for 5 seconds to change from right hnaded to left handed)

Heres a few notes on things that are acting a little glitchy and I havent had time to look into yet:
-Pulling a mag from your weapon appears to glitch out that mag.  Same with loading a mag while you already have one inserted.  
-Grenades do not throw at all accurately if you are running while you throw it.
-Bakery light volumes are new, but they are not working quite right yet.  Thats why im hesitent to add it as an udpate note.  Certain spots on the map they were flawlessly, but other places character models are black when they are standing in direct sunlight.  Ill need to play with this more, and I have been every time I bake lighitng, but since it takes an hour per test, this will take time to fix correctly.
-I suspect that gunshots are almost non-existent accross the map, but I really wanna test this out with other people first.  Sound occlusion is new, and I really need testers to really play around with the various settings I can control it with.
-The strike lever of the grenade is not comming off on start of cooking a grenade, that will be added later

Heres a sneak peak from todays 1v1:

Open attachment: 2026-03-01_17-14-21.mp4