The developers are deep into livestock and biofuel work, with cows and sheep getting a much more complete gameplay loop while the biofuel generator fills out with actual mechanics. Elsewhere, the Air Wolf helipad repair system is taking shape, character customization keeps moving, and a lot of cleanup is happening under the hood.
Livestock development continues
Livestock continues to come together as one of the larger new systems in development. Cows and sheep now have more defined harvesting yields, breeding rules, transport behavior, selling rewards, dung production, and a growing set of food uses. Wild cows are prevented from breeding, aging, or producing resources, while pregnancy requires at least 60% condition. Current harvest values have cows providing 30 cloth, 100 leather, 100 bones, 20 beef, and 40 fat. Sheep provide 10 cloth, 20 leather, 50 bones, 12 mutton, 20 fat, plus any wool they are carrying.
The rest of the system is filling out quickly too. Leading animals now has a visible rope, livestock can be loaded into supported vehicle mounting slots, and cows require the large flatbed. Animals are removed from vehicles if they roll or become submerged. Sheep shearing has working persistence, harvesting, visual progress, and wool drops, with dedicated shears art also in progress. Mutton pies speed up bonding and can keep bulls from charging, while beef pies temporarily increase how much food a player can hold. Rich cream versions of the pie lineup are also being worked on with stronger buffs.
Hunting trophies now support bulls, cows, and sheep, and the wider animal work includes crab swarms, jellyfish, frog animation updates, plus sound passes for squirrels, rabbits, and turtles. There is still plenty left to finish, but the livestock system is shaping up into a pretty substantial new addition.
Biofuel generator coming together
Development on the new biofuel generator continues, with the core gameplay loop starting to take shape. Food calories now affect both processing time and low grade fuel output, with even low-value food producing at least one unit of fuel. Dung also produces one fuel. The generator requires power and needs to be stirred as it processes, with the current setup calling for another stir after 60 fuel worth of processing and a 30-minute interval between stirs. Adding more food resets that requirement.
The feedback side is getting fleshed out as well. Indicator lights show when the generator is processing, finished, empty, or waiting to be stirred, and there is an electrical output specifically for the "needs stirring" state so players can wire up their own warning circuit. The display has received more status text, stirring has its own animations and progress bar, and crafting cost plus tech tree setup is in place. Art, sounds, LODs, flies, gibs, deployment, pickup behavior, and a pile of edge-case fixes are also being worked through.
Still very much in development, but the biofuel generator is looking more and more like a complete new system rather than an early prototype.
Air Wolf helipad repairs
The repairable Air Wolf helipad has received its broken stages, updated art, code support, and current resource requirements. Repairing it currently calls for 30,000 wood, 10,000 metal fragments, and 100 rope. An AIRWOLF CCTV feed has also been added.
The helipad itself has gone through prefab cleanup, torn tarp and mesh work, repair requirement adjustments, and support for the latest art. The basic idea is pretty simple: it starts busted, players dump a pile of resources into it, and the helipad gets put back together. Apparently Air Wolf has outsourced maintenance to whoever happens to be carrying 30,000 wood.
Character customization moves forward
Character customization continues to get its underlying systems and presentation pieces connected. Appearance data is now being passed when the client becomes ready, saved in a proper character appearance format, and checked for ownership. There is also support for restricting race or gender changes based on the player's predefined Steam ID appearance, although exactly how those restrictions will be used in the final system is still being worked out.
On the visual side, the creator now has a full-body starting view, smoother crossfades, cleaner category handling, and a walk-out animation before the ground pose. Hair and eyebrows have had override problems fixed, and orbiting around the character no longer drags the creator windows around with it. Still very much work in progress, but the pieces are starting to look like an actual character creator instead of backend plumbing.
Underground trains get more variety
Work continues on the underground train network update, mostly around stations and randomized side rooms. The medium train station has new signal lights, while several small random rooms are getting environmental passes with pipes, wires, decals, and layout work.
Random room G has progressed, room I has a pipe and wire pass, and room J is also under construction. There still is not enough in the commits to say exactly how the finished network will play differently, but the direction is clear: more variation and more detail underground.
Base visibility work gets stress tested
The building visibility system is getting a serious workout. The developers are testing it against hundreds of additional real base layouts and have added tools to split full server saves into individual bases for repeatable testing. The underlying room checks are also being optimized with a spatial grid so the server does not have to test every nearby room every time something changes.
A bunch of ugly base-layout cases are being handled too. Bases can now account for multiple disconnected exterior sections when necessary, high external walls are excluded from room occlusion, and several issues involving doors, deployables, exterior TCs, and large structures have been fixed. Remote turrets, drones, and cameras are excluded for now. The same system is intended to help anti-ESP later, but the developers are keeping remote-controlled entities out until the remaining distance restrictions are dealt with.
Animations and throwables get cleaned up
The third-person animation overhaul keeps spreading across more held items. Hammers, pipe wrenches, medical tools, the megaphone, mobile phone, keycards, grenades, projectile weapons, and several other items have been moved onto the newer third-person animation system, allowing a pile of older animation setup to be removed. Fractional reloads on the mini crossbow were fixed along the way. Turning animations also have new crouched blends instead of snapping, while grenade drop timing, grenade pin visuals, and the machete refresh are getting polish.
Thrown explosives are getting a more substantial networking pass as well. Client-side thrown projectiles can now be corrected against the server position, then replayed and smoothed between movements, with velocity and tumble information included in the correction. That should make the local simulation line up much more closely with what the server actually sees. C4 and satchels also stopped trying to match their rotation while flying because, according to the commit, everyone agreed it looked worse.
Other Stuff
The in-game store is being slimmed down so images and store assets load on demand and unload when they are no longer needed, cutting unnecessary memory use. Several broken image, carousel, empty-inventory, and overlay cases were fixed in the process.
Steam skin bundles now have better client support, including bundle contents in descriptions, Steam gallery images, duplicate item warnings, ownership warnings, and fixes to purchase notifications.
All four ladder hatches have been rebuilt for the skin system, with updated art, LODs, sounds, workshop previews, and more collision work on the armored triangle hatch.
The small heavy fuse box at Power Plant was moved so players can add up to five fuses without needing a green keycard first.
Fuse boxes now display the actual inserted item model, including a heavy fuse instead of always showing the regular fuse.
The Oil Rig oil pump mechanic has a 15-minute start delay added on top of its existing rig timer.
An Oil Rig save and load edge case was fixed so radiation does not restart while the locked crate is still untouched after a server restart.
A Radtown crate was moved away from a window gap so it cannot be looted through the opening.
Nuclear Missile Silo loot room power requirements and loot spawn types were adjusted, along with a bad Harbor topology fix.
The distant-view version of Nuclear Missile Silo was fixed so above-ground structures show correctly again instead of only the rocks.
Map generation optimization testing cut topology radius scans from about 8.76 billion to 2.12 billion in the test runs, saving roughly 8 to 12 seconds on size 3250 maps, around a 3% improvement overall.
Muzzle flash cleanup avoids spawning flashes for distant gunshots and stops updating lights and particle effects once flashes have faded. A 20-bot AK test showed around 1 ms in savings.
The newer render pipeline received fixes for low-quality shadow acne, shadow limits, underwater color grading, a dark paintable window, debug shaders, and several rendering math issues.
More texture size reductions are being tested for apartment assets, Floating City pieces, Ziggurat assets, and LOD textures.
Data parsing work was cleaned up to avoid unnecessary memory allocations, with tests added to make sure it stays that way.
Waterwheel melee protection is being increased by roughly four to five times.
Composters no longer get permanently bricked when splashed with water.
Loadouts now preserve item positions, and shields plus diving tanks display correctly in the backpack slot.
A possible Deep Sea transfer issue was fixed where players standing too close to a wall could be left behind when their boat transferred.
Player boats should no longer keep sailing away if the sails are lowered and the player jumps off at just the wrong moment.
Door controllers on external gates are preserved more cleanly when upgrading, and single-door controllers no longer rotate 90 degrees after a reskin.
Chicken eggs are placed flush with the terrain with physics disabled when possible, which should help stop them falling through the map and being killed out of bounds.
Fire arrows no longer remain stuck to the third-person bow for other players.
Swapping between pool cues no longer breaks first-person cue quality.
Sandbag skins now carry onto their destroyed pieces properly, and sandbag barricades can be upgraded on player boats.
A prevent-building volume was added around the sandbag pillbox.
Several items that cannot actually lose durability no longer use item condition, including the diving mask, prisoner hood, sunglasses, Geiger counter, metal detector, RF pager, and mobile phone.
Computer Station identifier text no longer disappears at certain resolutions, and a vending machine purchase UI font-size mismatch was fixed.
Floating City boat vendor dialogue was corrected so it points players in the right direction to find their purchased boat.
Audio muffling is being added to the prisoner hood, although less aggressively than the heavy plate helmet so voice chat remains mostly understandable.
Terrain deformation testing now includes building rules, with deployables allowed some height tolerance and foundations able to cover shallow deformation while being blocked over deeper cuts.
The Halloween decor pack is being prepared for Steam, including bundle setup, skin list work, descriptions, and wallpaper texture updates.
Early Diesel Generator work includes LODs and a work-in-progress collision shape.