15 Sep 2026Developer post

VEIN News: Ragdoll Impact

Hi all, and welcome to another VEIN News update! We are really close to 0.025 and will hopefully be getting it out very soon, barring any major bugs (and if there are unforeseen bugs, we can always release a hotfix as usual). We've got our heads down doing last minute bugfixes an

Hi all, and welcome to another VEIN News update! We are really close to 0.025 and will hopefully be getting it out very soon, barring any major bugs (and if there are unforeseen bugs, we can always release a hotfix as usual). We've got our heads down doing last minute bugfixes and testing mostly, but we do have a couple of feature updates that we want to put out there. Let's get into it!

As usual the below isn't on the main release of VEIN yet. It's accessible on the experimental Steam beta branch, which you can opt into via the game properties in Steam. We discourage people from playing on it as if it were a regular run, as stuff frequently breaks – it is bleeding-edge and what we use internally for testing, so you're seeing features and content before we've even tested it. However, in the interest of transparency, you can access it at any time.

Bugfixes

Here are some of bugs we've identified and found. As we said in the last update there will be no more 0.024 hotfixes as we are incredibly close to the 0.025 update.

We fixed some procedural aim-down-sights and animation code. Some of the newer weapons, like the 870 or Fifty-Seven pistol, had misaligned ADS code. We also fixed some issues like an infinite reloading animation on the double-barrel shotgun.

We did some work on performance, specifically with distant rendering of buildings/terrain/foliage (aka. HLODs). I also fixed some issues with them appearing sporadically or vanishing.

We fixed font rendering for signs when the game language doesn't use the Latin alphabet (e.g. Cyrillic, most Asian languages, etc.)

We did a bunch of work on networking to improve the speed at which things load in in multiplayer. It's still work-in-progress, as always, but we are moving towards stable multiplayer. The most impactful reason multiplayer is like it is, is because the world of VEIN is fully dynamic: you can move everything, dismantle everything, etc. which is unlike most games written with this engine, so we are fighting the engine a lot.

It's not an impossible problem though; it just takes time and programmer-hours to fix. I wrote a proof-of-concept for buildings already which seems to be holding up quite well in testing.

We fixed some yard decorations being indestructible. Some yard props were just stuck-in-place when they were meant to be salvageable, like everything else in the game.

We fixed some issues with zombie behavior. They had a logic error that caused them to not be able to climb fences or guard rails when stuck, and they can now do just that. We also changed it so zombies can't block each other from hitting you (so if two zombies are attacking you, one zombie won't block the other's swings).

There's been a few UI fixes here and there for polish.

We fixed a big multiplayer issue with vehicles and hitching, specifically handbrakes desyncing. This seems silly, but desynced handbrakes means that if you disengaged the handbrake and started towing a vehicle, on your screen it might work, but on the server the handbrake would still be engaged, meaning there'd be a ton of stuttering between movements and the towed vehicle is likely to 'rear-end' you on the server, causing damage.

Features

8z has finished and integrated his ragdoll systems. In VEIN, you could be conscious, go unconscious, or die, and there was no in-between. He's reworked it so that players and zombies can fall over and get back up, sort of like in Grand Theft Auto games. If you get hit by a car, or a zombie gets hit by a car, it's no longer an instant death sentence. Zombies will slow down your car if you hit them, and running over zombies causes damage to your vehicle. Unless you're moving fast enough, it's more likely that hit zombies (and players) are still alive and will get back up. This makes it a lot more hazardous to try and ram zombies with vehicles.

There are some other uses as well. Exiting your car at a high speed will ragdoll you, and things like crashing your motorcycle will fling you out of the vehicle as well.

You can also knock over zombies in combat depending on your weapon, strength, etc. The system still needs a bit of testing and tuning but it's pretty great.

Zoe's done some refreshes of Redford and Saranac to add detail. Yard decorations, fences, etc. are being added to bring the exteriors up-to-par with the rest of the world. After that, she'll be working on the new areas of the Champlain Valley intended for the next update.

I finished up adding support for the new decorative props, so you can now build raised platforms on fences and wood slats using support beams. These should work fine as roofs while we work on standalone buildable buildings for the next update.

I've also set up most furniture and containers in the game to be able to crumble when destroyed, but it needs testing to make sure it doesn't impact performance.

We updated DLSS to 4.5 for the next update.

Yan's been working on smaller features. He's added some prompts to confirm exiting the game and to remind you if you've saved or not. He's also added the ability for admins to teleport to custom map markers and improved the new Utility Cabinet flag placement system. Watching TVs with a custom movie will reduce your stress now, and the map can be zoomed in and out with PgUp and PgDown. Finally, he's added a "no damage (except players)" setting to permission zones in multiplayer, so admins can set up fight clubs or combat arenas without risking damage to props.

Zombies can now have strength stats. Stronger zombies do significantly more damage to you and your fortifications. They can also appear shirtless (if male) and their musculature is visible if they're strong. Zombies near fitness centers tend to be stronger.

I found some major breakthroughs when it comes to gamepad/Steam Deck support, so I've started preliminary work on that. You can now operate the main menu, character creation, etc. with just a gamepad. It's not even close to where we'd like it to be but this will make it significantly easier for us to continue towards gamepad support.

Adam's continuing work on removing that cursed taped box from crafting items. He's finished a couple of metal sheet pieces that are now in experimental.

Skyler's continuing to work on new character hair. We're hoping to preview some of their work in 0.026. There's still a ton of work to do before we get the new character art in (like clothing and zombies), but we want the code side of things to be ready for when the art is.

801 has finished the new set of props for standalone buildables. These are going to be houses or cabins you can build out of fortification tiers. You'll be able to finish and paint the interiors as you like. They have features like stairs, hatches, ladders, etc. We're aiming to get these in for 0.026, but as usual, that's just a goal.

We're still thinking about how to prevent people from building mansions in the middle of the road in towns, but a server option or special permission zone settings should be sufficient for multiplayer players and admins looking for a more realistic/immersive experience.

So that's about it for this update! Like I said, 0.025 is right around the corner.

We're currently hiring an experienced programmer and UI/UX designer, so if you are looking for work and have the skills for it, please don't hesitate to email [email protected] with your portfolio or resume.

If you're not and still want to contribute, there are other ways to help out. If you're bilingual and see translation errors in the game (or want VEIN in your own language), please visit https://crowdin.com/project/vein where we have a community translation system set up. Otherwise, the official VEIN wiki is located here https://vein.wiki.gg/ and can always use volunteers.

Thanks for reading and best of luck in the Champlain Valley!

Original post

01 Sep 2026Developer post

VEIN News: Mountain View

Hi all, and welcome to another VEIN News! We have a lot to cover in this one. First off, we've just released Hotfix 7 and 8. It includes a bunch of the fixes mentioned in this post, as well as a few more. You can check out the whole changelog on Steam here . Some of the bigger ch

Hi all, and welcome to another VEIN News! We have a lot to cover in this one.

First off, we've just released Hotfix 7 and 8. It includes a bunch of the fixes mentioned in this post, as well as a few more. You can check out the whole changelog on Steam here. Some of the bigger changes include networking and dedicated server fixes. It'll be our final hotfix until 0.025.

We're also happy to announce we're participating in the Steam 2026 PvE Survival Crafting Fest, on now. If you don't have VEIN yet (or want to get some good deals on similar survival games), now is the time!

As usual, the stuff we're going to talk about is only on the experimental Steam beta branch or work-in-progress, and won't be in-game until 0.025 comes out.

In the last couple weeks, we've done a lot of polish on gameplay, the world, and networking, as well as working towards a few new features that will most likely be added in the next update or two.

We fixed some issues such as AI audibility (there was a bug where zombies were way too quiet when running from behind), issues with VOIP, hats and glasses remaining on beheaded characters, condition UI issues, some misc. item related issues, some furniture collision and art issues, and a lot more.

Zoe has done a lot of work on rebalancing and setting up weapon stat requirements for effectiveness as mentioned in the last update. Most larger weapons now have stat effectiveness requirements, and without them you do around 2-3x less damage-per-second. We also added some missing crafting schematics to the world, such as for weapons like the claw sword and combat shovel.

We're happy to announce that the new map region is complete for 0.025. It's inside Franklin County geographically, and includes the new areas of Mountain View, Owl's Head, and Duane. We don't want to spoil the contents of it but there are a handful of new unique areas to explore. We're going to be updating the detailing on some of the older areas (such as Redford) while planning the next map expansion.

We did a lot of work over the last two weeks on server performance and lag. We did a lot of fixes on character movement, so rubberbanding is now minimal in multiplayer (if you have low enough ping). There's still a bunch of rubberbanding in other places, like vaulting, so there's more work to do, but we're moving in the right direction.

We also did a lot of work on dedicated server performance. We used an underpowered PC to test this on low conditions. We've managed to take our test server FPS from 11 FPS to 23 FPS. More server frames means smoother networking and processing, which means less desync and faster responses. We have a lot of work to do on this but we're happy we're making progress. We'd like to apply some of what we've learned to single-player as well so we can bump up the default zombie count. There's still a lot more we can do though and we'll be working on it over the next little while.

We did a bunch of work on HLODs, again as mentioned in the last update. They should be better performing and more consistent now, and are almost ready for the 0.025 update.

We added support for screen readers, but had to remove it in Hotfix 8 because it was causing Windows Smart App Control to block the game from running for some players. We'll be adding it back as a toggle for players that need to use it.

New winter textures have been created for the game, and we've done some work on the new map region's features, such as adding a rideable sled and ski lifts.

Yan has been working on inventory networking and throwing improvements. Inventory networking and vehicle networking are the two highest bandwidth users in the game, so getting that minimized will help a lot with multiplayer lag reduction.

8z is working on ragdolling. Specifically, zombies and characters can get knocked over and get back up. We're really excited to implement this in a bunch of different areas. We can now stop zombies from instantly dying when hit by cars; they'll be able to slow down cars when they're hit, and will be able to get back up. Same for falling from heights or just during combat. We were thinking about adding seatbelts to cars so that when you're not wearing one and hit an obstacle you go flying through the windshield.

Adam has been working on some new replacements for the taped box placeholder. He's so far done metal pipes and scrap metal pipes.

Boon has finished a set of animations for our Fifty-Seven pistol. We'll be integrating them soon.

Watch on YouTube

Astro is doing some work on making some smaller props come alive; they're starting with curtains, which you will be able to open and close. There's technically functionality for opening them a variable amount, but we'll see what feels best gameplay-wise.

Skyler's been continuing work on new character hair and has completed a couple new textured hair types. We're hoping to get a prototype of the new character in-game soon.

Remancer has finished and released Vol. 3 of the VEIN soundtrack. Have a listen here. It's also included in the soundtrack on Steam.

801 has been continuing work on independent base pieces for standalone fortifications. In the same way you can build fortifications for existing buildings, you'll be able to build standalone buildings yourself if you like. You'll also be able to add e.g. drywall to them, flooring, etc. and paint them if you like. It's still a bit away but having the visuals done is an important step.

They're also proceeding with visual remakes of the bus, pickup truck, hatchback, SUV, semi truck, and camper van. They'll have separate parts like the sedan proof-of-concept we've been working on from the last update. We want you to be able to e.g. remove the seats and furniture from inside the bus and camper van respectively so you can outfit it with a mobile base. They're still in pre-production though so don't expect too much in the next couple months.

In addition, they're working on replacement roads for our current low-resolution ones. The higher resolution ones will be drop-in, and there will also be some extra art for larger towns with sidewalks, intersections, etc.

Finally, we've added new language support for Portuguese (Brazil), Ukranian, Polish, Swedish, Chinese (Traditional), Spanish (Spain), Dutch, and Thai. These will be in 0.025.

That's about it for updates for the second half of August. We're continuing to march towards 0.025; should be soon.

See you in a couple of weeks!

Original post

31 Aug 2026Developer post

VEIN 0.024 Hotfix 7

Drastically reduce rubberbanding in multiplayer Drastically improve dedicated server performance Faster server browser Don't show the death marker in permadeath mode Death marker clears when you get close to it Add some dev/debug console commands Do not group crunchy and smooth p

15 Aug 2026Developer post

VEIN News: Stunlocks & Speedometers

Hi everyone! Welcome to another bimonthly update. We've mostly been working on visual related features, but have done a few gameplay changes here and there, as well as some changes to zombies. We're hoping to get out a final hotfix for 0.024 out in the next little while, so that'

Hi everyone! Welcome to another bimonthly update. We've mostly been working on visual related features, but have done a few gameplay changes here and there, as well as some changes to zombies.

We're hoping to get out a final hotfix for 0.024 out in the next little while, so that'll probably be the focus for us on the gameplay side of things, but we continue to march towards 0.025's release.

As always the changes described in this post aren't in the main game yet. They'll be on the experimental Steam beta branch, but it's heavily work-in-progress.

First off, bugfixes. We've actually done quite a bit over the last two weeks, but usually we omit bugfixes from these updates because a lot of them are irrelevant to most people, and there's no point wasting time. However, here are some of the selected bugfixes from the last two weeks:

We've fixed a bunch of issues with permadeath games, such as respawning UI, the death screen not fully working, your dead character's location getting stuck on the HUD, etc.
We've significantly improved the intelligence of zombie pathfinding inside and through buildings. Zombies that previously got stuck trying to enter buildings have a much easier time navigating to you.
A lot of UI bugs have been fixed, such as group menu UI issues, the medical menu jittering, and item key-values on the selected item screen not wrapping properly.
We refactored and did quite a lot of work on positional VOIP in-game. We're very close to the point where it's properly usable. We've added buffering and quality improvements to it. We also removed beeps from the handheld radio when receiving voice, and improved the handheld radio audio quality.
We fixed an issue causing you to float if you sat or lied down while crouched (e.g. in tents).
We only display other players on the map when you're a host/admin if you have "See All" toggled on in the admin settings.

Like we said in the intro, we're going to be doing a lot of these over the next couple weeks.

8z has finished his new greenhouse systems. The greenhouses that you see dotted around backyards are now functional and will work to keep plants growing throughout the winter, so long as the glass is intact on them. We're hoping to allow you to build your own greenhouses soon enough.

I've been doing some work on HLODs. If you don't know what these are, they're like whole-map stand-ins for unloaded, very-far-away buildings/trees/mountains. They're working right now on the experimental Steam beta branch. HLODs mean we can significantly reduce how much of the world is loaded without sacrificing visual quality, which means way better performance. This especially applies to dedicated servers or in local multiplayer, simply because the host has to load less stuff.

Zoe has been working on adding building maintenance components to every building. These are how you check the status of, and repair, buildings. They may take up existing space where your stuff was, so apologies if that happens – you can move your furniture out of the way despite this.

I've finally finished adding round-by-round reload support to the .38 Special, so you don't have to play the entire reload loop from zero.

A lot of work has been done on the new vehicles. To start off, there's a new, much less grating car horn sound. Also, sounds like impacts, horns, and car alarms are properly muffled when inside a car. We've started integrating the new car art, which has an openable trunk/hood/glove box, animated gear shifting, an animated steering wheel/speedometer/tachometer, and more. Doors are open and closeable. It's still heavily work-in-progress though.

We did a few changes to zombies to make them smarter. They no longer prioritize animals as much as humans. They no longer collide with each other like players, so they can get closer to each other to squeeze through doors and windows easier. They also no longer stagger or stunlock each other when swinging at a target. We're continuing to improve their pathing.

Zoe's worked on some loft buildables. A lot of players are using items or pallets (or similar furniture) to build multi-level bases. While we are mid-development on art to allow this officially (with multiple tiers of self-built bases), we've added a few replacements for pallets that should be ready to be built soon.

She's also poking around save files submitted using the in-game feedback reporter for ideas for creative/decorative structures you guys have put together in your bases, such as walls and dividers.

We've redesigned map location markers to be higher contrast and more visible on the world map despite the map details in the background.

Some support has been added behind the scenes for weight-variant items. In 0.025 you'll be able to wield e.g. dumbbells as melee weapons, which have different damage and swing times based on their weight. We also added melee effectiveness: you need a certain Strength stat to effectively wield some heavy melee items. If you don't meet it you can still use the item as a weapon, but it'll just swing twice as slow and do half the damage.

Remancer is wondering what kind of radio station music you'd like to hear next. Here's a survey, be sure to check the boxes for what you'd like when you have a chance!

Watch on YouTube

Ani has finished work on a set of bladed melee animations (specifically for machete-styled weapons). They're continuing on to work on an animation set for the double-barreled shotgun.

Boon's melee animations for long & blunt melee weapons is integrated into the game! I still have to do some work to add them to similar weapons, which will be a process, but we're happy to have them. They're moving on to animations for the Fifty-Seven pistol.

We've done some work on the landscape material during winter. Different regions (like forest floors or grassy areas) will have some variation in the snow material.

8z's finished his work on physical stress and structural supports. If you stack things on top of each other too high without any sort of support, it'll collapse the entire structure. In addition, strong enough vehicle impacts will detach things from the vehicle.

Zoe has been continuing on map work for 0.025. She's been finishing up unique point-of-interest interiors, items, and furniture. She's currently doing exterior detailing for the new area (such as fences, parking lots and streetlights).

Finally, in other news, we've opened up community translations for the game. A lot of non-English players have expressed concern that our translations are incomplete, apparently AI-translated, using wrong words, etc. We don't use AI in any part of development, and do use a translation agency for translations. However, they do sometimes miss context as they aren't active players of the game. There were also some errors (for example, in the settings menu, "No" was translated as "Yes" in Russian for some reason). In any case, this should help correct some of those; we'll be updating it regularly. You can find the Crowdin page here.

That's about it for this week! We're hoping to get 0.025 out soon as usual but there are a number of incomplete features that have to be rounded out before we do.

Did you know there's an official VEIN wiki? It's located here: https://vein.wiki.gg/. If you want to help out, there's a lot of incomplete info here.

If you'd like to help on the game itself, we're going to be hiring another intermediate-level programmer and a UI/UX designer soon, so if you have those skills, please send an email to [email protected].

See you in September!

Original post

01 Aug 2026Developer post

VEIN News: Sokudo Commute

Hi everyone, and welcome to our bimonthly news update. We've been making steady progress towards integrating some of the new art, doing some 0.025 work, and as usual, bugfixes. As is normal, the updates in this column are not live but are in the experimental Steam beta branch. Le

Hi everyone, and welcome to our bimonthly news update. We've been making steady progress towards integrating some of the new art, doing some 0.025 work, and as usual, bugfixes.

As is normal, the updates in this column are not live but are in the experimental Steam beta branch. Let's get into it.

This week we dropped Hotfix 5/6. These had a host of bugfixes, which you can read in the Steam announcements here and here. Our main reason for releasing these was just because we had a host of bugfixes piled up in the month since the last hotfix, and figured we may as well push it out. We also found a compression method for game content that worked significantly better than the one we were using, so the game content filesize has been cut in half losslessly.

We're continuing to work on controller support. We've separated gamepad and keyboard/mouse keybinds in the settings menu, and added slider and focus support to a lot of UI elements. We still have a lot of work to do though before gamepad support is up to parity with other modern games. There is a lot of UI in Vein.

I've done some work on HLODs. These are low-render-quality blobs that look similar to buildings or mountains that are meant to stand in for far-away details. If you're far away we show the HLOD to save on performance, and if you get close enough they're hidden and replaced with the real thing. We've been doing something similar to show distant mountains, but these are much more accurate to the real image and can include things like trees and buildings. If we do these correctly we should be able to have dense forests and landscape viewable from far away without performance cost.

Zoe has been continuing work on the north section of Westwood and has been working on detailing some unique interiors for the new buildings.

I've done some work on utility cabinet performance. For singleplayer, this doesn't really affect much, but it should definitely help with multiplayer server performance. Whenever anything was built or destroyed, all UCs would have to recompute if they're 'covering' the built or destroyed thing, so that the thing would decay. On a dedicated server with dozens of UCs, this performance cost added up quickly and we noticed it was a major bottleneck. It should be fixed for the next update. Having the server perform well is a preliminary step in improving desync and rubberbanding.

Zoe has done design work on the vehicles in preparation for replacing all of their art. All the vehicles in the game now have real-life analogues; some have been renamed to support this. I've been working on getting the new vehicle art ready to integrate. In case you missed it, the new vehicles have animated dash readouts and steering wheels, glove boxes, hoods, trunks, gas covers, doors, removable seats, etc. but this all takes a bit of time to integrate into the game itself. They also have dynamic rust/dirt/scratches that will build up over time.

8z has been working on some structural support and physical object work. We've said in a previous weekly update that we're going to be adding standalone buildings, e.g. you can build a cabin in the woods if you like. However we want to avoid the Rust effect of having silly towers built up in the middle of a town that detract from immersion, without just telling you 'you cant do that'. So placed objects now have physical load bearing ability that when exceeded will cause the structure to collapse. It's still work-in-progress but will be in 0.025 if nothing changes.

Included in the physics changes are physical objects on vehicles, so now if you crash your vehicle into something we won't destroy the attached furniture; it simply becomes physical.

Zoe has done some work on damage profile rebalancing. To be specific, what zombies can and can't damage has been audited and rebalanced properly. We've also done some work on auditing zombie behavior in general and have a cleaned up to-do list for them (at least before the new character art is done and before we have the necessary new animations for them that we want).

I've done some work on integrating the new character. We've cleaned up some hair/clothing code for when the new character is ready, and I've been working on porting over weapon attachment positions (otherwise, things will float in the general vicinity of your hands instead of being held).

We've added a bunch of new zombie variants. There are about thirty zombie types now. You'll see zombies wearing sports equipment, zombies that worked specific jobs, various outdoor clothing types, etc.

8z has done some work on greenhouse functionality. Greenhouses with intact glass will keep temperatures warm throughout the seasons, and plants can grow relatively well inside of them. You can't build greenhouses yet, but the pre-existing ones should function well.

I've continued work on the new building maintenance systems. A building's dirtiness/mold buildup is now caused by its maintenance quality. You'll be able to maintain buildings by repairing them with salvaged items.

Watch on YouTube

Boon has finished his set of blunt melee animations. These are much nicer and more impactful than the placeholder ones we were using. He's moving on to doing new animations for our Fifty-Seven pistol.

That's about it, thanks for reading! See you in a couple weeks.

Original post

28 Jul 2026Developer post

VEIN 0.024 Hotfix 6

Correct firefighter helmet position Correct medical menu displaying the wrong HP-per-second Fix ResetVehicleParts not working for some vehicles Fix crystal item having no bottom Fix fire finders from giving the wrong notification if you've discovered the locations already Fix som

27 Jul 2026Developer post

VEIN 0.024 Hotfix 5

Fix containers not blocking chair exits Fix being able to attach two attachments to the same gun Fix police car physics being incorrect Fix water source labels always reading "Water" Fix gun store glass Fix school bus insignia Add vein.Conditions.Hypothermia.* convars Fix weird p

15 Jul 2026Developer post

VEIN News: Vehicle Parts

Hi everyone, and welcome to the new update! The start of July was a lot of bugfixing primarily as we're trying to reduce some of the more critical bugs while also keeping on track for 0.025. For bugfixes, we fixed a bunch of physics issues and issues with misshapen prop physics.

Hi everyone, and welcome to the new update! The start of July was a lot of bugfixing primarily as we're trying to reduce some of the more critical bugs while also keeping on track for 0.025.

For bugfixes, we fixed a bunch of physics issues and issues with misshapen prop physics. We fixed the placement angles of some weapons, fixed moving furniture resetting its scale (for example, moving larger flags) and fixed some flag placement issues. We fixed schematic 'not-high-enough-level' notifications sometimes being wrong, and fixed some issues with UI to do with firearm attachment UI, item weight displays, and performance issues. We fixed an infinitely looping sound from full sinks, fixed shot arrows being cleaned up regardless of being near a Utility Cabinet, and fixed some other miscellaneous crashes.

In terms of big fixes, we fixed the settings menu not always saving if you weren't using English or had a translation mod installed. This had been reported a lot, but reporting the language you use the game in is pretty rare when it comes to bug reports about settings.

We also fixed an issue causing vehicle parts and container contents to sometimes vanish. This was due to a fix issued for legacy saves sometimes having an incorrect ID in the save system, but the code inadvertently included an error in itself, so some legacy saves were affected by it. This would not have affected new saves. While it would be easier for us to just issue wipes with save-format-changing updates, we do try to keep save forward-compatibility whenever possible.

8z has been working diligently on more medical and condition refactors in the name of difficulty balance. It's one of many areas we're trying to improve to get balance working better. His changes are now live on the experimental beta branch on Steam. To complement this, we've added ice packs and suture packs for use with the new medical changes. I've also added some console variables for server owners to make hypothermia deadly as opposed to just causing frostbite and other condition effects, as requested by the community.

Yan continues work on overhauled vehicle networking.

Watch on YouTube

I've done more work integrating Ani and Boon's new weapon animations. The Mosin-Nagant and bow/arrow now have appropriate high-level reload and use animations. I've also finished integrating the new 870 reload and inspect animations, and cleaned up some errors with it.

Zoe has been hard at work on the new map area. Some caves have been added, and work continues on exterior detailing and filling out buildings in the region. As a reminder, the new area will be smaller than the Franklin County area added in 0.024, with the purpose of getting updates with new locations out faster and more consistently. It's to the north of the existing Franklin County area. As part of this, I've been doing some support work on the side on a simple ski lift system.

I've done some minor changes on the feature side as well, such as significantly increasing the GPS' battery life, and adding notification grouping to prevent walls of notifications when receiving multiple similar ones (e.g. hunting results or dismantling results). 8z added a console command, ResetVehicleParts, to fix up vehicles missing parts from the save issues. I've done some behind the scenes work-in-progress work on procedural ADS for firearms, which will finally allow for weapon sight attachments to work. I've also added the ability to enter and exit box trucks from the side door.

We've increased the resolution of, and replaced some, low-quality building textures. This is work-in-progress. Our building textures have been the same since we started VEIN in 2022 and even then they were a few years out-of-date so hopefully we can upgrade them to be up to modern graphical standards without affecting performance. Zoe's integrated some new higher-resolution fences to replace our old placeholder ones as well.

I've done some sky lighting tweaks, specifically around dawn/dusk and night, to improve the appearance of fog and moonlight, as well as cloud coloring.

I've done more work on building maintenance. For 0.025, we want buildings themselves to require maintenance for upkeep; buildings degrade over time and will cause issues like brownouts, poor insulation, degraded water quality from sinks, etc. They'll require some small amount of scrap items to be maintained. Contrariwise, you will be able to scavenge materials from buildings that you're not using. We're also going to be using this system for custom-built buildings, which we're hoping to have in soon.

I've done some major performance work on vehicles. They're one of the primary contributors to bad dedicated server performance, and I've managed to decrease their performance impact by a factor of 3x. We still have to test to see how performance is affected on dedicated servers, but it should be ready to go in 0.025.

Remancer continues to work on the soundtrack and has produced two new night-themed tracks.

We're continuing work on upgrading our art. Our test vehicle, the Sokudo Commute sedan, has some new art we're integrating now. Our goal is to replace all of our vehicles with fully animated and modular ones: openable trunks, glove boxes, and hoods; animated steering wheels and gauges; removable seats, headlights, etc. We're in the process of going full throttle with this, starting with around 6 vehicles (including the school bus and RV).

We're also getting some new art in in the next little while; specifically for some unique buildings coming in the next few map updates. We're keeping a lid on what they are specifically though.

Watch on YouTube

Ani is now working on double-barrel shotgun animations as well as some new bladed melee animations, and Boon is now working on blunt melee animations. We intend to replace most if not all of our melee animations with custom high-quality ones.

Skyler continues to work on new character art, and in particular, some new hair types. We're in the preliminary stages of integrating the new character into the game, which in and of itself is a very tedious process, but we're getting there.

Finally, we've started on updating translations for the game for the next update, as well as adding translations into Spanish (Spain), Dutch, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Swedish, Thai, Ukrainian, and Traditional Chinese.

That's about it for news – time for us to get back to work!

Original post

01 Jul 2026Developer post

VEIN News: Bows & Belltowers

Hi everyone, and welcome to another news update. This has been a very eclectic two weeks, as we've released three hotfixes and continue to work on new features for 0.025. We've been super busy but we're definitely making progress. Let's get right into it. Also, if you don't alrea

Hi everyone, and welcome to another news update. This has been a very eclectic two weeks, as we've released three hotfixes and continue to work on new features for 0.025. We've been super busy but we're definitely making progress. Let's get right into it.

Also, if you don't already have VEIN, we've discounted 20% for the Steam Summer Sale, which is on until July 9th.

Hotfix 2

We did a ton of bugfixing for the first week and change. We made newly built containers mark as empty. We fixed windows closing when holding down the button to open them (e.g. searching other players). 8Z has implemented a bunch of icon visibility fixes for floating use icons. We fixed the Lifebringer perk not working, and immortal plants due to Lifebringer are now correctly showing in multiplayer. 8Z fixed some issues related to fluid dispensers (sinks, etc.) when connected to barrels, and fixed some balance issues: converting a nail into a screw is now properly 1:1, and the chances of getting iron when dismantling screws have been reduced.

I fixed some encumbrance issues with this update. Giving ammo via the admin menu won't care about encumbrance; cloning a key when encumbered will drop it instead of the iron just vanishing; and reloading while overencumbered will now drop the magazine instead of it vanishing.

We fixed some objects showing the wrong placeholder when being moved, and fixed some UI issues related to equipped item indicators.

Dropped and thrown items now automatically clean themselves up after an hour. We assume if you drop something you no longer want it. This doesn't occur if something is dropped inside someone's base/utility cabinet area.

Hotfix 3

Before getting into this, I want to clarify how hotfixes work for us behind the scenes. When we have two successive hotfixes, it usually doesn't mean we forgot something or were hasty with the last hotfix. Our development process involves us working on bugs and new features simultaneously.

We put bugs towards hotfixes and new features towards major updates like 0.024 or 0.025. If there's something really broken that we find and fix (e.g. crashes, core game functionality not working) or we have a really big list of fixes, we arbitrarily will release a hotfix.

Generally we want the game as stable as possible, so we release them as frequently as we can without doing daily updates. That's why there are major-feature fixes alongside a bunch of random minor ones; we just got a fix in for something minor and figured, why not, let's ship it too.

Anyways, for Hotfix 3, we added a small button for admins to teleport to selected locations in the map menu if they have god-mode active. We also added a button to the admin menu to remove all items in a radius around the player (similar to removing built actors, etc.)

We modified the content structure of the game to better split up content, so updates via Steam should occur slightly faster. We have work to do on this though. Unreal Engine content is generally non-deterministically/unpredictably packed, so Steam has trouble downloading only changed parts of the content.

We fixed issues with group invites not showing and with the group menu UI in general. I fixed a UI bug with Mortar & Pestle schematics being named 'Schematic: Hammer' in the inventory. I also fixed a bug with map markers sometimes referring to the wrong location in the map menu.

Standalone things, like junk piles and loot bags, weren't saving when destroyed; we fixed this. I believe this had been an issue since 0.024 released a month ago.

We fixed some issues with bed spawnpoints not resetting when destroyed a while ago, but were recently alerted to that happening with camper vans if you go too far away from them, so we've fixed that.

We fixed solar panels not working in multiplayer. That was due to an optimization we did in Hotfix 2 to prevent weather and time-of-day updates impacting performance too much on dedicated servers. However that had the effect of causing the server to always think the sun was down, so no solar panels functioned. Also on dedicated servers, we fixed sprays and persistent corpses not working properly.

Finally, among the smaller fixes, we fixed inconsistent milk item weights; fixed the school bus gas tank location being incorrect; fixed apple trees spawning in home planters; fixed some visual issues with the player's location on some sofas and chairs; fixed the roadmap link on the main menu and pause menu, and finally fixed some exploits and collision issues with the prison.

Lastly, we released a patch, Hotfix 4, which fixed a last-minute issue that caused crashes when destroying persistent corpses.

All while doing hotfixes, we also did a ton of feature work for 0.025.

I've been working on more controller support. As we've said before this is a gigantic task but we're steadily making progress.

Zoe has been working steadily on the new map area, to the north of the existing Franklin County area. The new area is still technically Franklin County, so we'll have to figure out a name for it later. We're hoping to get it in for 0.025. One of the biggest attractions is the ski resort, with a functional chairlift.

I've started and finished up a new utility cabinet system. In 0.024 and previous, utility cabinets either formed a circular area around them if placed outdoors, and if indoors, they formed an area based on the perimeter of the building they're in. In 0.025, utility cabinets will use flags to define their area.

You can place flags to create a boundary for your base. The boundary can be as large or small as you like. Your utility cabinet maintenance cost will be scaled by the area covered by the base perimeter, so if you don't need the entire space created by the 0.024 utility cabinet, you can scale your base down to save on maintenance cost, whereas if you have a larger base and were previously using two intersecting utility cabinets, you can just have one and give it a larger area.

We did this in preparation for new utility cabinet placement programming behind the scenes, and to simplify how utility cabinets work. In 0.024 utility cabinets' covered area seemed unpredictable and arbitrary, and many players would have to set up 2 or more utility cabinets to cover their entire base; now you should only need one.

In addition we're planning on letting you attach utility cabinets to moving things soon, so e.g. you can claim an RV, bus, boat, helicopter, train, whatever to be your base and get additional permission/security/fortification benefits for it.

There are some fixes we've also made for the next hotfix (if there will be one before 0.025). 8Z fixed exiting chairs being blocked by containers among other things. I fixed being able to attach two attachments to the same weapon, causing one to be eaten. We fixed the names of sinks or similar telling you they're filled with water when they're not. I fixed a couple collision issues with the police car/being able to use some of the interior elements of the car from outside.

Yan continues to work on vehicle networking optimizations.

I've started work on the new building maintenance systems. Right now all buildings decay at the same rate: after about an in-game year, everything gets dirty and has mold on it. VEIN is about having the entire world be malleable and changeable, so we're modifying this to be something more dynamic. You'll be able to maintain and repair parts of buildings, such as the electrical wiring, plumbing, insulation, and cleanliness. If you neglect these, you'll suffer things like brownouts, damage to the power box, water sources running dirty, weather effects from insulation, mold causing increased sickness chance, etc. You will also be able to salvage items from buildings, degrading them but receiving crafting items for use in standalone buildings/constructions. It's very work-in-progress though.

8Z has been working hard on continuing medical item and condition rebalancing. We started this for 0.024 in the aim of making the game more punishing if you make mistakes, and we're continuing with the planned list of changes.

Zoe has been doing some game design work. She's increased the requirement of rubber on some more advanced buildables and repair requirements, such as engine parts, solar panels, advanced workbenches, etc. Rubber is considered an advanced crafting requirement: one major source of rubber is shipwrecks, for example.

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Boon has finished a set of Mosin-Nagant animations. For years we've received weekly emails and messages telling us the Mosin-Nagant's bolt in fact is required to operate the weapon, which we are well aware of, so finally it's represented in-game.

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Ani has finished a set of bow and arrow animations. Like the Mosin, we get a lot of feedback telling us there's no arrow on the bow. We typically don't bother doing a ton of work on placeholders that are going to be replaced, which is why we haven't fixed it. Thankfully now we don't have to worry about it!

In addition I added a quick Inspect ability on equipped items and weapons (L by default).

Finally while working on the new Mosin art, I added the console variable vein.Appearance.MannyArms which when set to 1 will use the Unreal Engine default arms. This is because the placeholder arms we currently have for new weapons is poorly rigged and has animation deforming issues. We're very excited for the new character art to be in!

Speaking of which, Skyler has been working on more hair for the last couple weeks. I think we're close to getting an alpha version of the new characters soon on the experimental beta branch.

Remancer has finished a new night-themed music track for the Lyon Mountain area.

We've received some prototype artwork for the vehicle art replacement. In case you missed it, we're planning on replacing all of our vehicles for consistency and modularity. For example, everyone wants to remove the seats from buses or have better RV functionality. The new vehicles will have openable doors, trunks, and hoods; openable glove boxes; animated speedometers and fuel gauges; and animated steering wheels. All of these are detachable as well.

Finally we've received some new church art variations, so we can stop using the same church for every location in the game. The belltowers are accessible via ladders so you can set up sniper nests up there.

That about wraps up this update! Like I said at the beginning we've done a ton of work and are excited to continue working on new features for 0.025. We have a lot planned but as the team steadily grows we have more resources and ability to get VEIN closer to where we want it to be.

Thanks for reading! See you in a couple weeks.

Original post

24 Jun 2026Developer post

VEIN 0.024 Hotfix 4

Fix crash when destroying corpses

24 Jun 2026Developer post

VEIN 0.024 Hotfix 3

Fix minor issue with automatic dropped item removal Add 'remove items in radius' buttons to admin menu Restructure game file structure to make future update downloads faster Fix group invites not showing in group menu Fix 'no invites' showing all the time in group menu Fix standa

20 Jun 2026Developer post

VEIN 0.024 Hotfix 2

Improve mass state networking (corpses) Improve player groups networking Fix lumen making underground caves bright Fix some couch/chair positions Fix basmati and wholegrain rice being considered the same Increase size of spacebar and control icons vein.Appearance.HideStrength onl

Improve mass state networking (corpses)
Improve player groups networking
Fix lumen making underground caves bright
Fix some couch/chair positions
Fix basmati and wholegrain rice being considered the same
Increase size of spacebar and control icons
vein.Appearance.HideStrength only affects you
Make workbench searchbar clearable
Sawmill is buildable (but requires a schematic)
Fix sawmill disintegrating into nothing
Buff Adrenaline Junkie perk
Fix not being able to remove stuff from backpacks when overencumbered
Fix inconsistent refilling from wells
Fix exploit with item containers
Fix firepit thumbnail
Fix corpse inventories having infinite capacity
Add 5-second cooldown to code locks
Fix not being able to destroy fences that have had other fences snapped to them
Fix foraging respawning way too fast
Fix placement of gun rack from Meacham's Gun Shop
Upgrade DLSS to 4.5
Fix military hat having a bad nameplate location
Fix "Retain Items On Death" not working
Fix some containers loading in with no lock on them being locked
Fix physics for dining table
Fix map being visible through journal with no map item
Fix loot bags being predicted on the client
Fix overflowing items from workbenches creating way more items than they should
Fix some fluid mixing errors/bugs
Fix being damaged from walking under barbed wire gates
Fix controller issue on radial menu
Preliminary work on gamepad UI navigation
Detect and show a warning if you have mods installed
Fix "console enabled with ~" setting
Newly built containers are marked as empty for the builder
Correct spraypaint sound in multiplayer
Fix holding down E on a container closing the window shortly after it opens
Add force gamepad UI console variable
Fix plant immortality not being reflected via Lifebringer perk
Correct exploit from nail/screw scrapping and crafting
Give Ammo admin command/cheat does not care if you are overencumbered
Cloning a key will drop the key if you are overencumbered
Fix placement position of some moved furniture
Fix equipped indicator in inventory not refreshing if you change equipment and close the inventory window quickly
Dropped items not in a base are removed after a delay of around two hours by default (use vein.Items.DroppedItemRemoveTime to change)
Crash fixes

Original post

15 Jun 2026Developer post

VEIN News: Planks, Pylons, and Patches

Hi everyone! It's the 15th, which means it's time for our news update. We released Hotfix 1 shortly after our last news post, and we're currently working towards Hotfix 2, which should come soon. There are quite a few fixes in it, such as correcting zombie inventories being infin

Hi everyone! It's the 15th, which means it's time for our news update.

We released Hotfix 1 shortly after our last news post, and we're currently working towards Hotfix 2, which should come soon. There are quite a few fixes in it, such as correcting zombie inventories being infinitely large, fixes for some settings glitches, correcting sawmills giving way too many planks when full, a fix for forage-able plants respawning too fast, etc. as well as a couple fixes for issues that have existed for a while, such as the inability to destroy fences that have had other fences snap to them. There's also some network optimizations coming in Hotfix 2 as well.

Speaking of which, we'd like to welcome 8z to the team, our newest programmer. 8z will be helping out with bug fixing and some feature work down the line.

The programming team (including myself) has been mostly focused on bugfixes for the last while, as we want to get the hotfix out before working on new features and content.

Yan is continuing work on the a new vehicle networking system. It's being written from scratch, as vehicles are one of the biggest reasons for networking delay and desync right now. It's very close to being finished and we hope to have it in for 0.025. He is also working on fixing furniture placement desync (e.g. placing furniture in multiplayer not always 'going through', or positional desync of furniture placed on vehicles). After this he will be working on inventory networking (the second biggest reason for networking issues/lag) and then on rubberbanding/movement desync.

Some new custom churches are being developed to replace our current church, which is used repeatedly. These new ones have different layouts, sizes, and interiors, and have an accessible bell tower as well.

Remancer has finished work on the new radio station for now and will be adding more music to the main game as usual.

Skyler and Astro have been working together on the new character. The base character is rigged now thanks to Astro, and hair is in development by Skyler. It'll still be a few months before we see them in-game as there's a lot of animation work that has to be redone for the new character. I think everyone in the community knows how bad the current character/zombies look, and the new characters will be a welcome change.

Here's a default male character. In total there are 24 face presets as shown in the last news update. Believe it or not, there are about 1/4 as many polygons in this character as there are in our current unoptimized one, so performance will be improved when they're implemented in-game.

Boon has been continuing work on animations for the Mosin rifle.

Watch on YouTube

For Hotfix 2, we've upgraded Nvidia's DLSS to the newest version (4.5).

I've worked a bit on getting Ani's new 870 shotgun animations in-game. It's work-in-progress; please ignore the warped wrist/forearm as like we've said above, the new characters are coming soon.

Watch on YouTube

We've been working on the new utility cabinet system coming in 0.025. Currently utility cabinets control a radius around them, or if they're in a building, they cover the building and a bit of the area bordering it. In the new system, you manually put down flags or pylons to mark the area, and your maintenance cost is scaled by the area (so claiming a smaller area will reduce the maintenance cost).

The problem we're trying to solve with this is that a lot of players need to put down two utility cabinets to cover their entire claimed house and yard, and the boundary of a utility cabinet is difficult to determine at a glance. We're hoping this makes utility cabinets a bit easier to figure out.

I've also been working a bit on controller/gamepad support, and have made significant progress towards this, so hopefully it will be ready for 0.025. We're not promising anything though.

That's about it for this week - thanks for reading, and we'll see you next time!

Original post

03 Jun 2026Developer post

VEIN 0.024 Hotfix 1

Fixes: Fix things detaching from cars in multiplayer Add some extra log info for bad item spawns in the world Reduce verbosity of some spammy logs Fix not being able to use antidepressants or charcoal tabs from medical menu Fix moved, unlocked containers becoming locked after mov

01 Jun 2026Developer post

VEIN News: Head Presets

Welcome to the first news post since 0.024 dropped. So far the reception's been pretty good despite the bugs, which we're actively working on for the first hotfix. Hotfix 1 For the last couple weeks on the programming side, we've been doing more or less just bug-fixing in prepara

Welcome to the first news post since 0.024 dropped. So far the reception's been pretty good despite the bugs, which we're actively working on for the first hotfix.

Hotfix 1

For the last couple weeks on the programming side, we've been doing more or less just bug-fixing in preparation for this release, and we're continuing to do so for the upcoming Hotfix 1.

We fixed a bunch of issues with stuff detaching from vehicles in multiplayer.
We also fixed a bug on legacy saves where spawning a new vehicle would remove it when you leave and come back, including default vehicles in the new region.
Some medical menu issues have been fixes (like not being able to take anti-depressants or charcoal tabs through the UI), and issues with forges transferring more than what's required for some specific recipes. The admin menu UI received a couple fixes for filtering menus.
We restored the keybinds menu for Steam Deck players.
There were a few minor visual and gameplay issues we've fixed, like rain on some interior windows and moved containers becoming locked after being moved.
We also fixed plants dying incredibly fast; we switched a bunch of stuff over from using real-life time to using in-game time, so advancing time by e.g. sleeping would cause plants to grow, but didn't properly rebalance damage times for them.
Extension ports should now decay without a Utility Cabinet present.
Large makeshift batteries should now charge properly when daisy-chained towards a generator. The "Disconnect All" button should now properly work in multiplayer.
We've fixed all the vehicle sounds being incredibly loud and discordant.
We fixed singleplayer players being able to see all players on their map (they are technically an admin in singleplayer).
We fixed time advancing for all players on listen (locally hosted) servers when someone sleeps, if the 'advance time when sleeping' setting is on.
We fixed antidepressants doing nothing.
The A-frame door glass should now be properly coverable with newspaper and cardboard.

These will arrive in Hotfix 1 coming soon.

Overall the bugs in this update (save for multiplayer ones) are pretty benign so we're probably going to be working on 0.025's new content/features/upgrades/optimizations/bugfixes pretty soon while still balancing the development of 0.024 hotfix/performance-fixing patches.

There is noticeable desync in multiplayer with 0.024 compared to 0.023 that we're going to be looking into as well, but it'll be over the next couple hotfixes as it's a more complex issue.

Works-In-Progress

In terms of world work, Franklin County's been released in 0.024. We will be patching any map-related bugs with hotfixes.

The actual scope of the county is the entire western side of the map. The next map update will be expanding north of the existing Franklin County area. It may or may not be in 0.025 depending on how fast we can get our planned features for 0.025 in. It'll be smaller in size than the 0.024 update, as we want to better organize updates and get future updates out a bit faster.

On the art side, Skyler's been working on head presets and setting up basic clothing, and is moving onto creating some new hair.

Astro has started on the rigging process for the new character, which is the first step of getting them in-game by adding functionality to the character to be animated.

It's probably going to be at least months before we get new characters in-game. This isn't because the actual art is going to take a long time, but because moving from one "character type" to another isn't a simple process, especially when we've worked on character art-related stuff in the game for a long time. Simple things like where a weapon attaches in a character's hand, or wearing a hat, or how players and zombies run and walk, etc. all need to be redone.

We also have considerations to make for future character uses, like emotions being displayed on faces and lip syncing for when NPC characters start being developed.

It doesn't need to be done overnight though. There's going to be a period of time where creating clothes that fit the new character, creating a set of new zombies from these characters, etc. is in an intermediate phase.

We'll let you all know the details when we're closer to that point.

For weapon animations, Ani has finished a set of pump shotgun animations to replace our current very broken ones. They're moving on to a set of bow and arrow animations.

We'd also like to welcome Boon to the team, who's also helping out on weapon animations. Boon's currently working on a set of Mosin Nagant animations, so we can finally have a functional bolt on the rifle.

We're going to be integrating these animations and possibly more into the experimental branch and subsequently 0.025 over the next few weeks.

On the audio side, Remancer continues to finish up some new music for the in-game radios.

On the art side, we're almost finished receiving a new church set so we can break up the exact same church being used over and over again in every town.

0.025 Plans

With 0.024 out the door, I think it might be a good idea to post a bit about what we're hoping to get in for 0.025. This isn't an exhaustive list, but just some things we're thinking about fixing up and adding. This also isn't a set of promises; occasionally tasks get moved back due to higher priority or time constraints coming up, so I want to make clear that none of these are finalized nor will definitely be in 0.025. These are just things we've been discussing behind the scenes.

We're planning on adding a system to build standalone houses/shacks. We were initially against this, but we've decided to try it out. We're hoping to avoid Rust-style castles built for no reason, but there's been a lot of requests for this. We've started preliminary work on an set of walls/floors/ceilings/ladders/stairs/etc. for it. It'll use the same tiers as our fortification system, but you'll be able to customize it a bit by adding flooring and wall materials, adding wallpaper, etc. In multiplayer, admins will have a lot of control over this by e.g. setting maximum build heights or turning it off altogether.

We're hoping to get in a system for building/house maintenance as well. Buildings will degrade gameplay-wise over time, causing things like brownouts/power outages/starting fires/affecting water quality/mold growth. Currently they visually decay, but we'd like more of a gameplay effect to it as well.

We're thinking about redoing how Utility Cabinets cover ground. Currently they cover a circle, or a radius around the building they're in, but we were thinking about having some sort of pylon or flag system where you specifically draw out how large you'd like of an area to cover, with a larger area costing more upkeep. We'd also do a small change where things on vehicles aren't covered by any Utility Cabinets not also on the vehicle (to allow for mobile bases).

I want to take a look and see if I can fix VOIP. It's never really worked super well, had lots of clicks and dropped voice, etc. so it would be nice to have it working seeing as we have a fully spatialized VOIP system in-game right now. Did you know hand radios/walkie talkies actually work? We'd like ham radios to work as well, and have some sort of intercom/speaker system you can build in your base.

We'll be continuing towards full controller support. We've finished most of the controller support outside of UI in prior updates, but we'd like to focus a bit more on it with 0.025.

We'll also be continuing with the conditions/medical and zombie difficulty rebalancing. It's a tenuous line to walk because we don't want to make the game too hard if you don't want it to be, so we try to avoid drastic changes and test these especially frequently.

Yan is continuing work on new vehicle networking and will be moving on to new inventory networking. These two components take up 90%+ of bandwidth in multiplayer and are two of the primary causes of server lag/desync, not to mention bugs with vehicles where collisions can be fatal. There should be at least some improvement in 0.025.

So that's about it for this news post! Hopefully everyone's enjoying 0.024 so far. Thanks for reading, and see you next time!

Original post

29 May 2026Developer post

VEIN 0.024

VEIN 0.024 is now live on Steam. The first major map expansion (with over 60 new locations), condition rebalancing, spawnable furniture and containers, sub-inventories and inventory management, work on addictions, buildable extension ports, plantable trees, foraging, and more are

VEIN 0.024 is now live on Steam.

The first major map expansion (with over 60 new locations), condition rebalancing, spawnable furniture and containers, sub-inventories and inventory management, work on addictions, buildable extension ports, plantable trees, foraging, and more are all included in this update!

Watch on YouTube

Changes:

New major map update: Franklin County
Increase fall damage
Code quality improvements (blueprint -> C++)
New music (ambient, radio) - thanks Remancer
Couch Potato uniqueness rebalance
Scent Volumes can now depend on environment cleanliness
Add foraging system, new foragable plants, foraging recipes and medicines, Forager perk
Add Copy Location to Clipboard in admin menu
Add medium-skill .38 reload animation, thanks Ani
Background mountains
Fluid tanks will now prefer pulling from filled contents over the tap
Sink fill time is proportional to the quantity already in the sink
You can't sleep when panicked
CreateExplosion console command
Move all conditions into C++
Add claustrophobia uniqueness
Panic condition rebalance/difficulty balance
Tired condition rebalance/difficulty balance
Add agoraphobia uniqueness
Stress condition rebalance/difficulty balance
New golf-related items and weapons
Many different asset placeholder replacements and texture upgrades, thanks Mood
Pseudostacking/items are visually stacked in the inventory UI
Unify singleplayer and multiplayer sleeping; can advance time in multiplayer if everyone sleeps at the same time on a locally hosted server
Singleplayer beds/respawn points do not have a cooldown timer
You can have nightmares from sleeping, causing stress and panic
Add dreams
Thirst condition rebalance/difficulty
Antibiotics treat bacterial infections
Add sawmill workbench
Stimulated condition rebalance/difficulty
Well Fed condition rebalance
Add radio volume slider in settings menu for radio music
HP readout in medical menu
Selected item UI adjustments
Poisoned condition rebalance
Add anti-anxiety pills, caffeine pills, sleep gummies
Add Retain Items On Death setting
Add apple seeds, plantable trees, perennial plants
Don't show zero-effect conditions in the medical menu
Suture item grants medical XP on use
Add the ability to gut fish
Admins can now see all players on the map
Add meth addiction
Add uniquenesses to start addicted to stuff
Add thumbnails to spawn regions in character creation
Add unique post processing for weather
Fish satisfies hunger relative to its weight
Variant parcel meshes
Add item container items. You can add items into backpacks, bags etc. by dragging and dropping items onto them.
Furniture and containers spawnable from admin menu
Bandages will get dirty over time and require replacement
Add the ability to hide nameplates from dropped items
Different sterilizers sterilize wounds to different degrees, e.g. ethanol is a worse quality sterilizer than rubbing alcohol
The infection of cut wounds has a percentage severity
Add extension port build objects (like an extension cable but for any resource)
Add vein.Appearance.HideStrength setting
Respirators block smells
Screws now dismantle into one metal scrap
Add Save ID to admin menu for debugging
New vehicle sounds, vehicle sounds are muffled inside vehicles
Preliminary bot characters
Slightly improved vehicle networking
Add Ignore Construction Restrictions setting
Add Sleep Advances Time setting
Move some settings to new Construction settings category
Improve persistent corpse performance, networking
You now keep bandages that you remove
Add Energy Crash condition for after caffeine wears off
Exerted condition rebalancing
Lifetime stat performance improvements
New save game system, thanks Cyn; your saves will automatically back up in the save directory just-in-case
Add RemoveUniqueness cheat
Add Chinese (simplified), Spanish (LatAm), French, Turkish translations
Add Foliage Pop-In Scale setting
De-hardcode radio stations; new radio music, thanks Remancer
Add message to inventory screen if you have a search query that filters all items out
Make chat window blurrier when displaying chat commands
Street signs no longer block the third person camera
Keys only dismantle into one scrap now
Improve tree networking
Reduce default clear-day fog amount
Add vein.ItemActorSpawner.MinPlayerCloseness, vein.ItemActorSpawner.MaxPlayerCloseness

Fixes:

Damage type fixes, fix damage forces not appearing on multiplayer clients
Fix some food item heat changes on stoves swinging wildly out of range at low FPS
Fix some tooltip and context menu (right click menu) bugs
Fix pump shotgun check ammo animation lasting forever
Fix not being able to punch people sitting in chairs
Fix addictions not working at all :~)
Fix chat filters not working correctly
Fix incorrect model viewer rotations
Fix objects (thrown cans, e.g.) not making noise to zombies
Fix respirator thumbnail
Fix bathroom stall doors all opening at the same time
Fix flat tarps being unmovable
Fix rain indoors at weather station
Fix some overlapping fire alarms
Fix go-kart gas tank location
Fix collision on some buildings
Fix item uses not refreshing in multiplayer on inventory change
Corrected keybind icons displaying code text for nonstandard binds
Fix crashes not being written to logs
Fix being killed a lot from hitching vehicles in multiplayer
Fix EBS not showing on TVs
Fix Cyrillic titles not rendering
Fix Werrenrath siding material in winter
Fix firearm attachments highlighting firearms they can't be attached to when dragging
Prevent infinite loop on tutorial if you manage to fill up your inventory
Correct loading screen tip - "recently acquired" was reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes
Fix some sleep positions for some cots/beds
Fix radio messages vanishing when in a different chat tab
Fix pet brush, pet leash descriptions and names
Fix being able to open the map from a turned off phone
Fix firehose glass material
Fix some furniture not attaching to vehicles properly
Fix bar soap smelling bad
Fix mattress character sleep position as well as some other beds
Fix inconsistent visual for worn book item
Fix pharmacy cabinet door opening the wrong way
Fix chat command prompt staying up when chat box is manually closed
Fix bad wall physics in pizzeria
Fix crash with fluid tanks
Fix meat slicer not being marked placeholder
Fix slider values in settings menu being incorrect
Fix riot helmet label being way above it
Fix fishing bait not being consumed
Fix a bunch of improperly networked furniture
Fix built stuff and small props (tent e.g.) not blocking rain
Fix difficulty presets not setting start time selector properly
Fix some items being stuck inside building walls when placed on walls
Fix portable toilets not smelling like waste
Fix performance for visuals for many things on the map
Fix not being able to wear a shirt and winter jacket at the same time
Item thumbnail fixes
Fix some placeholder item art not being marked as placeholder
Fix discarding settings sometimes not working properly
Fix crash, exploit when merging item stacks
Fix military cot collision underneath the bed
Fix some lighting issues underground (e.g. basements)
Fix fluorescent light hum sound popping
More accurate collision for water tower
Fix nature sounds not being attenuated indoors for some river/pond/lake sounds
Fix Saranac courtroom chairs having really weird seat positions
Corrected train speed readout
Fix not being able to place things in certain dome warehouses
Some minor controller fixes
Typoes
Performance fixes
Crash fixes

Known priority bugs, to be fixed in hotfix:

Things placed on vehicles will sometimes detach if you go away and come back
Vehicles spawned from the admin menu may vanish if you go away in multiplayer

Original post

15 May 2026Developer post

VEIN News: Loon Lake

Hi everyone, and welcome to our regular VEIN News update! We're very close to 0.024, so most of the work in the last couple weeks has been polish and bugfixing as we are extremely close. Every update usually has this pattern - we try to reduce as many bugs as possible closer to u

Hi everyone, and welcome to our regular VEIN News update! We're very close to 0.024, so most of the work in the last couple weeks has been polish and bugfixing as we are extremely close. Every update usually has this pattern - we try to reduce as many bugs as possible closer to updates to minimize hotfixing.

As usual, the contents of this post aren't in the main game branch yet and will be in for 0.024. They are in the experimental branch, however.

Specifically, some of the bugs we've fixed in the last couple weeks include:

Werrenrath Island's house had some visual bugs in the winter, so we've corrected these.
We fixed a lot of sleep animations for beds and couches that caused your character to clip below the bed.
A few issues regarding chat UI sticking onscreen have been fixed.
Some item names and art that were incorrectly set have been corrected.
We did some fixes regarding furniture attaching to vehicles correctly.
Soap smelled bad and portable toilets had no scent – all fixed.
We fixed some cabinets opening the wrong way.
We rebalanced a couple metal scrap exploits (e.g. you were able to craft some items for one metal scrap and dismantle them for 2-3).
Some UI fixes have been made to the settings menu displaying incorrect settings.
We fixed some problems with fishing where bait wasn't consumed.
We've been working on reducing network bandwidth for a few costly methods.
We fixed things like tents or objects you build not blocking wetness from rain.

There are others, such as crash fixes and more minor fixes, but they'll be available in the changelog once 0.024 drops.

Yan and I integrated the new save system. Outside of force killing the game, it is not possible at this point for a save to not fully write to disk. It's also faster, future-proof, and will probably be the way we handle saves forever. Your save games are future-compatible and you won't lose any data.

Yan is moving on to work on vehicle and inventory networking, the two major reasons for desync and lag. After that, he will be working on rubberbanding and character movement. As his specialty is networking, we are very excited for his incoming work!

New languages (Chinese, Spanish, Turkish, French) are integrated for the next update. We also fixed an issue with Cyrillic titles not rendering.

Zoe has been progressing with work on the Westwood/Loon Lake area. Exterior details, forests, street details, an apple orchard, docks, hunting stands, and various configs (zombie count, animal count, sounds, etc.) have been set up. We are very close to finishing the area and it will be in 0.024. I introduced a bug into the editor tools that I'm trying to fix that causes trees to appear on roads, so I have to fix that before the area is truly ready to go.

We added a restriction to console commands to disallow them executing if run by someone connected to multiplayer who isn't an admin. They wouldn't do anything anyways; for example you could give yourself an item but it would only be on your own PC, and trying to use it would do nothing but desync you and make you look crazy to anyone else. Regardless people were getting nervous about this sort of thing so we've just blocked it.

We added a "foliage pop-in" setting to the visual settings of the game. If you have a strong PC then you can crank this up to reduce tree pop-in.

I've done some polish on perennial plants and trees; they now have distinct art for having fruit vs. being fully grown vs. being a sapling.

I've de-hardcoded radio stations, which should be nice for modding in the future. We also added a new radio station with some of Remancer's new music.

Skyler has been continuing work on the new character art. They're creating preset head shapes and faces. We're still pretty early in the process but they're definitely coming along!

I wrote a tool to downscale textures that have a large memory cost that don't have enough data in them to justify it. So far it's saved around 5.5 GB of texture memory; I have yet to measure its impact on in-game VRAM usage. This should help for players with lower-end hardware.

So that about wraps up this update. Like I said, we're heads-down and are working as hard as we can to get the update out soon. There are a few more bugs to patch out but once that's done, the update's dropping.

See you next time!

Original post

01 May 2026Developer post

VEIN News: Save Systems

Hi everyone! Welcome to our newly-bimonthly news post. Like we said last time, we're reducing the frequency of updates to bimonthly due to the time they take to write. We want to spend as much time as possible working on the game, but also want to balance community updates – a lo

Hi everyone! Welcome to our newly-bimonthly news post. Like we said last time, we're reducing the frequency of updates to bimonthly due to the time they take to write.

We want to spend as much time as possible working on the game, but also want to balance community updates – a lot of what we do is opaque until updates come out (outside of these updates), and we've been trying to be as transparent as possible throughout VEIN's development process.

Anyways, let's get into it!

I've been working on sub-inventories. These are essentially bags that can store items. They're now fully functional (for the next update). You can put items in them, drop the item, have someone else pick it up, and they'll see the contents. We've added a Zip Bag, named for copyright reasons, that can store one item and is waterproof; the idea is that if you want to take a flashlight or cell phone underwater, you can put it in this and it'll be safe. Backpacks and paper bag items now have the same functionality, so if you want to better organize your inventory or trade multiple items simultaneously, you can now do so.

I've done some work on waterfalls; in particular, the visual effects and interaction with the VEIN world. I wrote some code to prevent waterfalls from existing in winter, as well as some audio code; these are being utilized in the new Westwood area, coming hopefully with the next game update.

We've created a new buildable: extension ports. These are used to wire things greater distances. They're meant to be used like an extension cable, but we didn't want to name them that because they can also transfer water, gas, internet, etc. You should be able to wire two things together that are physically across the entire game world now by jury-rigging multiple extension plugs. We're excited to see what the community does with these!

We've integrated Mood's new art updates. These are branding and in-universe art changes to replace our marketplace assets. They include new assets for batteries, the staple gun, the broadcast radio, trauma bandages, bloodmeal and bonemeal, compost, the Wolfram 17, the Fifty-Seven, the jigsaw, many medical items, and more. These seem like really inconsequential changes, but immersion is cumulative, and all of these cement VEIN as existing in a real world. When you see a marketplace asset, it takes you out of the world, and this helps a lot with our preliminary worldbuilding that will transition into actual stories and characters.

Some small changes in the last couple of weeks have been a console variable to hide your character's muscularity for roleplay purposes (vein.Appearance.HideStrength), respirators now blocking smells, and screws being changed to only dismantle into one metal scrap. That's an exploit currently – you can get more metal than you put into crafting screws – so thank you to the players who reported it.

Remancer has composed some new music, this time for night-time in forests. He's currently working on some more radio station music for driving or working to.

I've started replacing all of our vehicles' sounds. We've had this on the todo list for a while and I've finally gotten around to it. They now all have unique (or nearly unique) engine sounds.

I started work on bot characters. These work like bots in any other game (except instead of actually doing anything right now they're quite stupid). The point of this is to start testing and fixing networking and multiplayer issues that require a ton of online players to test, such as server performance with 50+ players.

We did some work on generating HLODs, which are stand-ins in the distance for clusters of meshes (buildings, landscapes, whatever). In plain English they keep visual quality and allow us to render distant stuff while loading less into memory. That means faster level loading and unloading, reduced RAM use, and better multiplayer server performance. It's still very early on though as generating them takes a very long time. I've also been working on some tools for PSO generation; this reduces hitching and stuttering.

Yan has finished the new save systems, which I'll be integrating soon. This yields a ~50% filesize reduction while being way more hardened against engine changes. It in theory should prevent data loss when the game exits during a save. We want to be very clear and say that your saves are compatible with the new update; we've carefully included code to upgrade them to the new format.

Once integrated, Yan is going to be working on multiplayer optimization and better networking across the board, which is something that has been sorely needed for a while. We have some ideas of what's causing lag and rubberbanding, such as vehicle networking and inventory networking, so we'll be starting there.

I've started on some technical art that would block snow and rain under awnings dynamically. It's still work-in-progress.

Zoe has been hard at work on the new map. Work's been done on a golf course and golf items, some more caves, and general exterior work that gets applied to all locations, such as fences, signs, etc. The new region is nearly done and we're going to include a large chunk of it in 0.024.

Some new gameplay settings have been added for the next update. We added Ignore Construction Restrictions that allow you to e.g. place things normally on the ground on walls, like god mode; a Sleep Advances Time setting, which toggles if sleeping in a bed will move time forward, including in multiplayer; and moved some existing settings to a new Construction category.

Finally, for fixes, we've done a lot of bugfixing, thanks to Noname's QA work. We fixed chat filters not working properly; objects not making noise to zombies; incorrect rotations of item thumbnails; bathroom stall doors all opening simultaneously; some un-moveable tarps, rain indoors in some areas, overlapping fire alarms, the go-kart gas tank location, hitched vehicles in multiplayer not syncing properly/injuring you, the EBS not playing on TVs, persistent corpses on servers not syncing, etc. We also moved a bunch of blueprint code (visual scripting) to C++, which makes it less likely to break if we change stuff under the hood.

Skyler has been hard at work on the new VEIN base character which is coming along quite well. It'll still be a while until it's in-game as we have to still rig the character (give it bones that can move around) and re-compute animations for it, but they're doing a great job.

We're in the process of redoing our first vehicle. Unlike the way they function currently, vehicles will be completely modular and have moving parts, with breakable glass, openable trunks, etc. We're taking it slow and only have one being made right now as just like the new character it'll take a bit of programming time to set up the new features.

I've been doing some work on erosion maps, which add detail to the landscape for very little performance cost. It's still work-in-progress but will yield a more visually interesting terrain.

Translations have been completed for Chinese (simplified), French, Turkish, and Spanish (LatAm). We're continuing to localize the game into different languages based on outstanding wishlist counts from each region. These will be in 0.024.

That's about it for this update! We'll hopefully have 0.024 out soon. We need to thoroughly test it and fix any bugs with the new features we've been working on as hotfixes are never fun for anyone.

Thanks for reading!

Original post

16 Apr 2026Developer post

VEIN Weekly: A-Frames

Hi everyone, and welcome to another VEIN Weekly. It's been a relatively slow week for us as we work on more backend fixes and behind-the-scenes improvements, so this is going to be a small one. We've been adding a bunch of new art assets in preparation for the new region of the C

Hi everyone, and welcome to another VEIN Weekly. It's been a relatively slow week for us as we work on more backend fixes and behind-the-scenes improvements, so this is going to be a small one.

We've been adding a bunch of new art assets in preparation for the new region of the Champlain Valley. This means we have to go through art, check that it's configured properly, and fix performance problems with it for every object that gets added to the game.

I fixed some bugs with trees that caused planted trees to not harvest properly. I also added the ability for plants to be perennial (growing back every so often).

We've done some more work on weather based visual effects to make them blend in more with the environment you're in. They no longer have effects indoors.

All the levels have been updated to no longer reference missing runtime grids, which improves level loading speed behind the scenes.

Zoe has been working on more buildings in the new map area, Westwood.

I've been working on some online connectivity work which will allow servers to have priority join queues and improved ping readouts in the server browser. It's still preliminary work but it's coming along.

One of the biggest changes we've added this week is the ability to spawn furniture and containers from the admin menu. This has been requested for a long time from the community and we're happy to add it. It may have bugs, but it seems to work alright for now. I think in the future we'll improve the UI for spawning these as well as items by making it more visual.

We've been working on some new features related to sleep and dreaming. We're keeping them secret because we don't want to reveal anything too early.

I did some work on the medical systems. Bandages will now get dirty while worn, and will need to be changed, or the risk of infection severely goes up. Condition effects like this now have the ability to have a percent of severity, so an infected wound or sterilization of wounds now has that attached. Different sanitizers have different sterilization effects, so liquor is less effective at sterilizing wounds than an actual sanitizer.

Skyler continues to work on characters, in particular texture maps and skin tones. They've also been working on female characters.

Yan continues to work on integrating the new save game systems, which will be much more robust than our current save game systems.

That's it for this week. Again, this has been a pretty slow week as a lot of the work has been internal and behind the scenes.

Also, we're going to be reducing the frequency of these updates to biweekly, because they (usually) take a lot of time to write and produce; time which would be better spent working on Vein. They'll now be posted on the first and 15th of each month.

See you next time!

Original post

09 Apr 2026Developer post

VEIN Weekly: Apple Seeds & Addictions

Hi everyone, and welcome to another VEIN Weekly! We have a decent amount to present this week, and we hope you enjoy it. As usual the changes in this post are not in the base game yet and will be in the next major update. We've done a bunch of work on sleep. Multiplayer and singl

Hi everyone, and welcome to another VEIN Weekly! We have a decent amount to present this week, and we hope you enjoy it. As usual the changes in this post are not in the base game yet and will be in the next major update.

We've done a bunch of work on sleep. Multiplayer and singleplayer sleep systems are now unified. You can have multiple bed spawnpoints in singleplayer now, like in multiplayer. In multiplayer, you can now set a duration to sleep for. In addition, on locally hosted ("listen") servers, if everyone on the server is in bed, time can advance, similar to Minecraft. We also added an option for this behavior on dedicated servers, but it's off by default as an abusive player could exploit this to advance time significantly.

I've done more work on pseudostacking since our weekly update last week. You can now drag entire stacks, drop entire stacks, double/shift click stacks, etc. I also fixed some bugs cropping up from it. The selected inventory UI has received a small change, overlapping text on the icon, which allows for more space for use buttons and key-value info.

We've been hard at work rebalancing conditions. Stress, thirst, stimulated, well-fed, and poisoned conditions have all been rebalanced to be more difficult. Antibiotic items will now treat bacterial infections (rather than just preventing them). We've also added a few new medicines you can find – anti-anxiety pills, caffeine pills, and sleep gummies. We're looking forward to hearing feedback as we continue to balance the condition difficulty in the game.

Medical effects from foraged plants have been set up across the board. Most of these can now be crafted/cooked into salves, soups and teas, which have a much stronger effect. Some foraged plants are poisonous, but most are designed to be late-game replacements for medical items.

You now receive medical XP for suturing. Alongside our condition rebalance, we're also going to be treating injuries more seriously. Bandages will require more maintenance and will be subject to getting infections easier, which itself will be more difficult to treat.

The medical menu has also received a dedicated HP bar, where you can view the actual HP numbers of your character. This will also let you view temporary max. HP reductions, which are coming to a few different conditions as punishment.

The map has been receiving updates as we continue to work on Westwood, what we're calling the new area. Most of the unique buildings and houses have been assembled and are almost ready to go in. We think you guys will enjoy setting up bases in the new A-Frame houses. I've personally been working on some new waterfall systems for use in this area.

We added a sawmill workbench for use in the new map region. This simply rewards you with double the planks from logs that you get from a normal workbench (8 planks per log instead of 4).

The settings menu has been updated with a radio volume slider, so you can turn up or down in-game radio music.

We added a gameplay setting, "Retain Items On Death", that allows for you to keep all your items when you die. It's intended for more sandbox-y players who are more interested in the creative side of things.

We've added plantable trees. You can now plant apple trees via apple seeds; these do not need a planter to be planted. We're going to add a few different types of these over time.

You can now gut fish to get a fish guts item, which itself can be used as bait. Fish now also satisfy hunger according to their weight.

Admins can now see other people on the map, a community suggestion that was submitted on our Discord. Note that you won't be able to see literally everyone; we don't network things to you that are distant from you as a performance optimization. We intend to formalize being able to see your friends in multiplayer via the upcoming cell phone/internet systems.

We fixed addictions! Yahoo! They haven't worked in a long time because of a missing line of code, and now they're functional. You can be addicted to alcohol, caffeine, meth, cocaine, opioid painkillers, and nicotine. In celebration we've added 6 new uniquenesses which start you addicted to these and give you some basic drugs to satisfy the addiction. Addictions go away over time, but it takes a while and you need to suffer through withdrawal first.

We added spawn region thumbnails to the character creation screen.

Weather now affects post processing and mood of the world. Precipitation now causes the sun to dim much more, and it becomes more difficult to see at distances.

Parcel items have received a new set of artwork to replace the old one.

Skyler has been working hard on our new character art. We intend on a large variety of preset character types without sacrificing the creative control over what your character looks like.

Finally, we've started work on item container items. These are like bags which can hold other items. They can be waterproof and have a capacity limit, but you can drop/move the whole bag to quickly transfer multiple items.

So that's it for this week! We're hoping we can get 0.024 (and future updates) out faster than we did 0.023. Hopefully it'll only be a few more weeks before we can release it.

Are you interested in working with us? Please email [email protected]. We've received a lot of email over the last few weeks that we're getting through, but we do try to respond to everyone that mails in.

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

Original post

Updates & announcements

Bugfixes

Features

Hotfix 2

Hotfix 3

Hotfix 1

Works-In-Progress

0.025 Plans