Hey, GZW Community,
Patch 0.3.5.0 is now live. Download the update and jump in!
This Patch represents over four months of daily development and fine-tuning, introducing major improvements such as the Unreal Engine 5.5 upgrade, performance enhancements, AI aiming and vulnerability improvements, a complete recoil and weapon sway overhaul, shooting sound tweaks, and much more. Check out the full changelog below.
A huge thank-you to everyone who participated in the Public Testing and helped us refine this Patch. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the new changes in the comments!
CHANGELOG
Bugs fixed: 70
Changes based on community feedback: 10
Crashes fixed: 120
Bugs discovered by the community fixed: 18
Key Changes and Focus Areas
Performance improvements
Updated to Unreal Engine 5.5, allowing us to parallelize rendering, significantly increasing performance on mid- and lower-end CPUs
Reduced VRAM usage by about 400MB on all systems
Reduced RAM usage by about 2GB on all systems
Updated to AMD FSR 4
Various performance, RAM, and VRAM optimizations
Added an internal benchmark tool to suggest optimal settings based on the player’s hardware
Focus on reducing hitching during gameplay
Numerous crashes fixed
AI
AI aiming has been completely reworked to simulate human-like aiming behavior that adapts dynamically based on multiple conditions:
AI difficulty level
Distance to target and the weapon’s effective range
Weather effects such as fog and rain intensity
AI health status and suppression level
Target movement
Duration of target lock
Several actions can now break or modify AI’s target lock, including:
Target leaving line of sight
AI switching to a new target
AI reloading, getting hit, becoming suppressed, or stunned
The result is more believable, less robotic AI behavior, with reactions and accuracy that depend on the situation, weapon, and environment.
Audio
Shooting sound has been tweaked for all weapons, with improved directional perception of shooting enemies and realistic behavior of sonic crack and shot sounds for all weapons.
Animations
Optimizing first-person movement animations in various ways:
Reduced the impact of several animations on the first-person perspective to minimize excessive character movement and animation blending. First-person hand movement is now smoother and without glitches
The weapon sway was adjusted, making it more responsive when the player moves.
Weapon Recoil Overhaul
A completely new recoil formula has been implemented to simulate the behavior of real firearms more accurately.
This system adds the need for precise player input, greater weapon balance flexibility, and a more authentic feel during weapon customization.
Full-auto firearms now use unique recoil patterns tied to each weapon’s lower receiver.
Recoil is now calculated using real physics and recoil energy computation.
Introduced Gas Factor to simulate differences between weapon types and barrel lengths.
Muzzle brakes, suppressors, and gas blocks now feature new efficiency behavior, reducing the impact of Gas Factor.
Recoil control parts can further reduce remaining recoil.
Aiming and movement states now affect recoil dynamically — ADS, crouch, and prone reduce recoil, while movement increases it based on speed.
Gameplay & Design
Added a new and improved death sequence from the first-person perspective. Upon death, the player’s view now turns toward the approximate direction of the incoming shot.
Improved the bullet penetration through the skull and bones. Headshots are now more lethal, and the increased bone penetration reduces cases where AI NPCs absorb hits with their arms. Additionally, increased blood spatter makes non-vital hits more impactful, reflecting greater direct blood loss.
Balanced rewards for Strike missions in Blue Lagoon, Ban Pa, Pha Lang Airfield, Sawmill, YBL-1, and Hunter’s Paradise to reflect the difference in the area difficulty
A new server region for Mainland China
Added a new server region, Mainland China, aimed at improving network quality for players in the area. The goal is to reduce latency and packet loss, providing a smoother experience with less rubberbanding.
The initial results look promising, and the region will undergo an extended testing phase to evaluate the performance and viability for long-term deployment.
Most Important Community-Requested Fixes
Fixed a bug that caused the key drop frequency in Fort Narith to be incorrectly low
Fixed an issue where the sonic crack sound could play after the actual gunshot
Fixed an issue causing very dark nights with the global illumination set to medium or higher
Fixed an issue causing black borders on the bottom half of the screen when using NVGs
Fixed an issue where FSR frame generation was disabled on RX 580 graphics cards
Fixed an issue where lasers were not working correctly in specific locations, such as YBL-1 and parts of Midnight Sapphire
Fixed an issue where players were unable to hand in task items in COPs
Fixed a rare issue where blood regeneration would stop after healing all wounds
Fixed an issue that caused audio to cut out in the Tiger Bay Mall
Fixed ambient noise transmission in some parts of YBL-1
Improved scope visibility under specific weather conditions where the image appeared overly dark
Improved collision detection on the ground to help prevent players from falling through the ground after getting revived
Performance optimizations
Fixed an issue in Unreal Engine's pre-caching system that caused frequent shader compilation hitches
Fixed numerous hitches caused by the missing pre-caching of specific shaders
Fixed periodic hitches caused by cloud and reflection rendering calculations
Customized Unreal’s graphic resources allocator to significantly reduce hitches caused by resource allocation
Optimized asset streaming to reduce CPU load when traveling to new locations
Fixed hitches caused by a character spawned by the network
Fixed periodic hitches caused by updating the Sun/Moon lights in the day/night/weather cycle
Fixed hitches caused by loot spawned by the network
Fixed hitches caused by bullets traveling over long distances
Fixed hitches when certain environmental particles spawned
Fixed hitches that occurred when capturing a COP
Fixed hitches occurring when vending machines were streamed in
Optimized the VFX for barrel fire, campfire, explosive grenades, flashbang grenades, and mortar explosions to improve performance
Optimized muzzle particle effects on all weapons to improve the framerate during full-auto fire
Various other under-the-hood optimizations
Gameplay
Fixed an issue where players always died if they got into a coma while in a helicopter
Fixed an issue where using the splint did not prioritize the most damaged bone
Fixed an issue where the player's weapon can become invisible after examining another player with a grenade in hand
Fixed the RIS II 12 Handguard setup to correctly prevent its use with shorter barrels
Fixed an issue that allowed players to remove a scope from the SVD while loading the magazine into the weapon
Fixed a minor animation glitch when starting to run with a knife while in dynamic crouch
Fixed an issue where AI NPCs sometimes did not turn on their flashlights at night
Fixed a very rare issue where an AI NPC would keep the player as a target indefinitely
Fixed an issue that caused players to be unable to scope zoom while slow walking
Fixed an issue where footsteps sounds disappeared when the player turned their back to a moving character
Reduced the visual range of flashlights on AI NPCs
Added the missing FDE AK Handguard to the military firearms box loot table
Added the missing HP Bunker key to the Hunter's Paradise Boss loot table
Adjusted the extraction range for the Squad Strike mission ‘Fragile Goods’ from 2.5 m to 25 m
World
Fixed several locations where players could get stuck:
Tiger Bay Wrecking Yard at 195, 130
Fanny Paradise - between a house and some pallets at 189, 121
In rocks near Sabai Lake Restaurant at 204, 152
In rocks near Inthavong Farm at 159, 133
Near Sawmill, between logs and a container at 138, 143
Outside the Nomad COP at 189, 157
Fixed an issue where the rooftop of the Crusader COP was not recognized as part of the COP area
Fixed a missing collision on a wall near the Tiger Bay Central Southeast entrance
Fixed an incorrect collision around fountains in Midnight Sapphire that caused grenades to bounce off
Fixed a visual discrepancy between the sky and the environment during specific weather conditions on low settings.
Fixed the position of the interaction box for the laptop in the Shepherd COP
Disabled lights that were unintentionally active during the daytime
Adjusted terrain and objects in the Spielberk COP to prevent players from climbing onto the roof
Removed an unused interaction option from a light switch in YBL-1
UI
Fixed an incorrect ‘joined squad’ notification when a player was promoted to squad leader
Fixed a missing notification that the squad had been disbanded after the squad leader, who created the squad, left
Fixed an issue where a messenger channel would get stuck in the pinned section after unpinning
Fixed an issue where the messenger window would fail to display when sending a message through the player interaction panel
Fixed the incorrect text wrapping in the feedback form window
Fixed an issue causing the weather forecast in the main menu to be out of sync with the in-game one
Fixed an issue where the tracking tag icon disappeared from the map if the tracked item was looted from a player's body and then placed back
Fixed an issue where the cursor did not appear after pressing Alt+F4 outside of the friendly area
Fixed an issue where pressing Backspace when inputting a safe code did not delete the numbers
Fixed an issue where the conflict zone detail text did not update when changing the game language
Fixed the incorrect size of the maintenance notification widget in the main menu and unified its position across various resolutions and screen sizes
Fixed an issue where the character level was displayed as 0 instead of 1 after a wipe
Fixed incorrect text on the End Deployment button when outside of friendly areas
Fixed a missing icon in the hair selection section of the character creation screen
Fixed the incorrect DLC message wrapping in the Czech localization
Fixed the conflict zone detail text in the Spanish localization
Changing settings now lists each changed setting item, along with the original value. Players can revert each of the changed settings
Removed the option to invite offline friends to a squad from the friends list
When reporting a player for a faction kill, the reason is now pre-selected in the report window
Custom Servers
Fixed an issue where the player count was not greyed out when a custom server was running
Fixed an incorrect text label in the player list on custom servers
Fixed an issue where players who joined a custom server for the first time had ‘Nickname’ displayed instead of their username
Fixed an issue where the player's rank was not set correctly on custom servers when using the ‘Everything Unlocked’ preset
Fixed a crash on custom servers when the invisible free-cam character was shot
Fixed an issue preventing elite operators from starting a custom server in the central US region
Implemented support for gamepad control for the free cam on custom servers
Other changes
Improved the visuals of glass reflections in scopes
Fixed a visual movement glitch that caused a sudden bump after stopping while in dynamic crouch
Adjusted the lighting on low settings to balance the overall darkness
Technical and rendering fixes
Fixed an issue that could cause the game to freeze when closed with ALT+F4
Fixed an issue where the foliage might flicker and disappear under specific circumstances
Fixed an issue that caused the Load Friends Failed error if a player accumulated over 100 friends
Fixed an issue where Steam friends data failed to load after 60 minutes in the main menu
Fixed an issue where players were unable to join the server as a squad leader under specific circumstances
Fixed a rare issue that caused players to connect to a full server, resulting in a connection error message
Fixed the Twitch Drops rewards distribution system for players who were unable to claim them until now
Fixed an issue where light artifacts appeared on buildings during nighttime
Fixed an issue where the inside of a bunker in Fort Narith got too dark if global illumination was set to low
Fixed a rare issue where the suppression blur effect would persist on the player's screen after death
Reduced flickering of various smoke effects in shadows
Players can now choose whether they want to reconnect to their original server, if within a reconnection window, or to abandon it and join a new one
Added a recommended driver version pop-up that appears when starting the game after an update if outdated graphics drivers are detected
Technical Updates
Updated to Unreal Engine 5.5
Updated the NVIDIA DLSS plugin to version 8.1.0
Updated to AMD FSR 4
Upgraded Wwise to version 2024.1.8
Updated Oodle to 2.9.14 to reduce crashes related to specific Intel CPUs
For a quick summary of what's new in Patch 0.3.5.0, see the Community Briefing video:
If you encounter any issues, please contact our support team. Your continued feedback is invaluable and helps us make Gray Zone Warfare better with every update.
Every Move Matters,
MADFINGER Games Team