First up, after a massive hunt through my code to try and understand why the audio falloff was so rapid that it made the audio sound like it was washing across your ears, I discovered that, actually, my code was fine.
Another indie dev suggested that it was actually openAL defaulting to an overly rapid crossfade, and sure enough it was. It may have taken over 9000 years to find this out, but it was a 2 line fix in a 1kb file. ːnotsohappychappyː
So that should save your audio balance, especially when using headphones.
And the second part of this update is a peak at a future engine upgrade. This upgrade should fix the occaisional loading jitter when newly networked objects arrive to the client - I currently have a custom preload group for each level to try and minimize this - but will also include PBR (physical based rendering), better known as fancy reflections for metal and shiny objects.
Behold the high poly version of the playable cosplaying catgirl Southern Hospitality using metalness and roughness maps in PBR.
And what's a PBR material test without a Cornell Box!
So that's all to come later.
If anyone finds any bugs, please report them in the forums with a description of what was happening - eg: "I was getting a Swag parcel on level 4 whilst being swarmed by a million enemies and the game made an oof sound and died" - these reports are very helpful and appreciated, cheers. ːsteamhappyː