Zombie Mode
- We rewrote almost everything here. Zombies now actually find you, follow you, and don’t get lost in corners, usually. The AI is faster, cheaper to run, and gets better as waves go on.
- Zombies now use new behavior trees from Lyra, which means they’re smarter about finding players.
- Added a wave system. You’ll get breaks between waves now instead of instant respawns. If you die, you come back either 60 seconds later (if a teammate is still alive) or at the start of the next wave. Whichever comes first.
- The game now checks if everyone’s dead. If so, the round ends. No more infinite spawning. (Seems to not register with certain listen-server configurations.
- We added new logic to let doors and walls update the nav mesh. Zombies will find new paths when the map changes.
- Added a way to control spawners from blueprints. Zombies spawn close to you wherever you are on the completed side of the map.
- Scoring is tied into Lyra’s stat system now. You’ll get points for kills and assists, and they are supposed to carry over to EOS leaderboards.
- It runs a lot better now too. We cleaned up the old tick system and moved some of the combat to client-side to save bandwidth. You can get a lot more zombies on screen before the game starts to complain.

Gameplay and Balance
- Sprinting no longer traps you in the animation. You can stop and change direction again.
- Fixed an issue where the interact ability wouldn’t always trigger.
- Aiming and recoil feel smoother now. We adjusted them for both controller and mouse.
- Controller aim assist has a new sensitivity table (heavy aim assist for touch screens and a slight aim assist for controllers.) Should feel more natural.
- Wave counter and “All Players Down” messages are now visible in Zombie Mode.

Framework and Engine Changes
- Fully rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5.6. This fixed a ton of lighting bugs and performance problems.
- All materials and shaders were recompiled. No more black skeletal meshes or moveable objects due to old reflection captures.
- Integrated Lyra Framework across everything. Abilities, input, and animation are now using Lyra systems.
- Switched to Epic Online Services for matchmaking. Cross platform support soon?

UI Updates
- Keybinding widgets now update correctly when you change controls.
- Keyboard, mouse, and controller prompts should swap properly now. (Interact Widgets are still incorrect.)
- Added zombie wave and player status indicators to the HUD. Along with GREENDALE DOLLARS! (Greenbucks for short)

Performance and Networking
- Rewrote replication for death and respawn events.
- AI replication priorities now focus on nearby zombies instead of everything at once.
- Fixed some small memory leaks when reloading maps.
- General network cleanup and crash fixes.

Known Issues
- With a lot of zombies (200+), some AI might stutter a bit.
- EOS invites can take a few seconds to appear on some setups. Steam Invites may hang an show join failed on previously joined games.