BLOODSTATE — PERFORMANCE, AI AND COMBAT UPDATE

Thank you to everyone continuing to play the BLOODSTATE demo and share feedback.

This update contains a broad range of improvements across performance, loading, enemy spawning, zombie behaviour, animation, audio, controls, weapon handling, damage reactions, ragdolls and corpse cleanup.

Much of this work focused on making large encounters run more smoothly without sacrificing the atmosphere, movement or responsiveness of the infected.

PERFORMANCE AND STARTUP PREPARATION

• Added a startup preparation system for frequently used combat effects.
• Muzzle flashes, bullet impacts, blood, smoke, explosions and other configured effects are prepared before gameplay begins.
• Preparation now runs alongside the opening sequence instead of adding another separate loading period.
• Added a visible progress display so players can see when combat effects are still being prepared.
• The final opening screen remains visible if preparation requires additional time.
• Reduced first-use stutters when combat effects appear for the first time.
• The system focuses on effects used by the game instead of processing large collections of unnecessary graphics data.
• Effects shared by multiple weapons are processed only once.
• Different weapon-specific muzzle effects are still prepared individually.
• Completed preparation can be skipped on later launches when the game and system configuration remain unchanged.
• Preparation automatically runs again after relevant changes, including a new game build, graphics hardware, graphics driver, rendering mode or quality setting.
• Removed several repeated background searches and unnecessary per-frame calculations.
• Reduced synchronized enemy checks during large encounters.
• Continued optimizing animation, audio, navigation and physics costs across large zombie groups.

OPENING SEQUENCE

• Opening images can now be skipped consistently using the Continue button, keyboard or mouse.
• The optional trailer supports the same skip controls.
• Added input protection to prevent one button press from accidentally skipping multiple screens.
• The first opening image appears immediately while preparation continues in the background.
• Loading information disappears when preparation finishes while the remaining opening sequence continues normally.
• The game will not enter the next scene until required preparation has finished, even when the opening sequence is skipped.
• If preparation finishes first, the opening sequence continues without keeping unnecessary loading information on screen.
• If the opening finishes first, the final image or trailer frame remains visible until the game is ready.

DISPLAY, MUSIC AND MENUS

• First-time display settings now detect the active monitor and select a suitable supported resolution.
• The resolution menu now uses display modes supported by the current monitor.
• Saved display settings are restored during later launches.
• Added a safe fallback when the monitor configuration or available resolutions change.
• Loading and menu music now has more variation.
• Music selection avoids immediately repeating the previously played track.
• Improved mouse-wheel and scrollbar behaviour in the map-selection interface.
• Corrected inverted scrolling behaviour between the map list and its scrollbar.

ENEMY SPAWNING

• Large initial enemy populations now enter in smaller staggered groups instead of appearing simultaneously.
• This spreads the workload over time and reduces sudden performance spikes when a new section becomes active.
• Nearby manually placed idle zombies are spawned first and immediately.
• This reduces visible enemy pop-in when the player quickly enters a newly activated area.
• Remaining roaming, volume-based and hidden enemies continue entering gradually.
• Regular reinforcements wait until the initial population has finished spawning.
• The intended total number of enemies remains unchanged.
• Added additional position validation for automatically placed zombies to reduce spawning inside walls, props, vehicles and other blocked spaces.
• Automatic spawns retry other suitable positions when the first selected position is obstructed.
• Automatically generated positions are prevented from moving too far vertically onto roofs or another floor.
• Deliberately authored special spawn slots remain at their intended position, even when placed close to furniture, walls or other assets.
• Manual special spawns now preserve their authored direction while correcting their height to the floor.

DISTANT ENEMY OPTIMIZATION

• Distant, unaware and hidden zombies can now suspend unnecessary behaviour until they become relevant.
• Walls and level geometry are considered when determining whether an enemy is visible.
• Looking at an enemy through a weapon scope can still activate it at longer distances.
• Unrelated cameras no longer keep distant zombies active unnecessarily.
• Zombies that are chasing, attacking, climbing, crawling, falling or performing other important actions remain fully active.
• Enemies specifically spawned to pursue the player continue doing so regardless of distance.
• Nearby zombies retain more accurate movement and crowd avoidance.
• Distant enemies use lighter movement processing to reduce their performance cost.
• Roaming zombies remain active enough to continue travelling instead of walking in place.
• Stationary idle enemies can enter a deeper performance-saving state.
• Distant sleeping enemies suspend unnecessary facial, climbing and inaudible audio work.
• Sleeping enemies wake correctly when attacked from a distance.
• Distant death reactions now refresh the enemy’s current pose before entering ragdoll.

ZOMBIE VISION AND AWARENESS

• Zombie vision is now less immediate and unnaturally precise.
• Detection depends more naturally on distance, viewing angle and how long the player remains visible.
• Zombies take longer to recognize distant or partially obscured players.
• Players near the centre of an infected’s view are detected more quickly than players near the edge.
• Awareness fades gradually after the player moves behind cover instead of disappearing immediately.
• Loud sounds can still cause an immediate response when appropriate.
• Vision checks are distributed over time so large groups no longer search for the player simultaneously.
• Visibility checks avoid unnecessary repeated work and memory usage.
• These changes make stealth and distant encounters feel fairer while reducing background processing.

ZOMBIE MOVEMENT AND NAVIGATION

• Improved blending between idle, walking, chasing, turning and directional movement.
• Improved acceleration and deceleration so zombies no longer switch instantly between stationary and full movement.
• Direction changes now carry more inertia.
• Improved transitions when enemies reverse direction or recover from another action.
• Movement slows more naturally before attacks and other full-body actions.
• Zombies that walk into an obstacle can step back, turn and continue instead of repeatedly pushing against it.
• Improved recovery when navigation rejects a zombie’s movement.
• Fixed an optimization conflict that could leave distant roaming zombies playing a walking animation without actually moving.
• Roaming zombies can continue receiving the movement updates they require while still benefiting from other distance optimizations.
• Removed an unused roaming routine that could select a destination without actually using it.
• Nearby enemies continue using more accurate obstacle avoidance and movement behaviour.

INFECTED ANIMATION POLISH

• Expanded movement smoothing across regular zombies, Crawlers, female infected and larger infected.
• Roaming, chasing, pack movement and stopping transitions now blend more naturally.
• Improved transition timing between movement and attacks.
• Improved movement recovery after attacks, roars and hit reactions.
• Female infected full-body attacks now remain active long enough to enter and complete correctly.
• Female infected attacks are less likely to be cancelled because the player moved slightly during the animation.
• Female infected now blend back into movement more cleanly after an attack.
• Crawler movement now slows correctly instead of retaining forward movement while stopping.
• Crawler roaming, chasing and sprint transitions now use smoother acceleration and deceleration.
• Larger infected have heavier ordinary stopping and turning without delaying attacks.
• Larger infected still stop decisively when beginning an attack, roar or hit reaction.
• Improved attack-to-movement transitions for larger infected.

ZOMBIE AUDIO AND FACIAL DETAIL

• Facial expressions now activate only when an infected is close enough for the player to see them.
• Distant infected no longer calculate facial movement that cannot be observed.
• Facial expressions reset cleanly when leaving their active range.
• Distant footsteps, body movement, head impacts and ragdoll collisions are no longer requested when the player cannot hear them.
• Zombie voices retain a longer range than footsteps to preserve distant ambience.
• Voices fade naturally before distant voice processing is suspended.
• Voice playback fades back correctly when the player approaches.
• Contact sounds share audio resources where appropriate instead of creating unnecessary duplicates.
• Voice, movement and impact sounds are separated more cleanly so they can overlap without interrupting one another.
• Enemy voice playback no longer creates unexpected sound sources or filters during gameplay.
• Reused enemies correctly restore their audio when returning from the pool.
• Fixed configuration problems that prevented additional voice clips from being assigned correctly.

DAMAGE AND DIRECTIONAL DEATH REACTIONS

• Reworked bullet-driven death reactions so bodies respond to the location and direction of the final hit.
• The exact struck body area is remembered before death begins.
• Head, arm and leg impacts can lead the movement of the body in the direction travelled by the bullet.
• A frontal shot pushes the struck area backward instead of pulling the body toward the shooter.
• Side impacts can pull the struck side across and cause the rest of the body to follow.
• Central body hits retain a stronger controlled whole-body response.
• The rest of the body follows the struck limb more naturally instead of every enemy collapsing directly forward.
• Reduced forward movement inherited from running animations when death begins.
• Death reactions begin more quickly, making weapon impacts feel more immediate.
• Removed unnecessary delays before the directional reaction is applied.
• Different ammunition types produce appropriately different reaction strengths.
• Smaller ammunition creates more restrained movement.
• Heavier rifle and sniper ammunition produces a stronger reaction.
• Bullet reaction strength no longer increases simply because the target was farther away.
• Added damping and movement limits to keep bodies feeling heavier and prevent unstable launching.
• Damage dealt to arms and legs now contributes correctly to the infected’s total health.
• Headshots remain lethal.
• Fixed body-part hits occasionally applying the same damage twice.
• Separated ordinary bullet reactions from shotgun-specific corpse launching behaviour.

RAGDOLLS AND CORPSE CLEANUP

• Fixed an impact-audio issue that could lift, move or launch an entire corpse during a collision.
• Fixed positional snapping when climbing enemies entered ragdoll.
• Dead enemies now receive enough time to fall and settle naturally.
• Extended the settling period so bodies are less likely to freeze before finishing their fall.
• The settling timer begins only after ragdoll movement becomes active.
• This prevents delayed death animations from consuming the body’s settling time.
• Once settled, unnecessary animation, collision, effects, sound and physical movement are stopped.
• Corpses remain visible for their configured lifetime before sinking out of view.
• Expired corpses return to the existing enemy pool for reuse.
• Improved corpse cleanup during later sections and longer play sessions.
• Fixed corpse timers continuing incorrectly after pooled enemies were reused.
• Fixed old section enemies interfering with the active section’s population counters when dying later.
• Expanded the updated corpse system across additional infected variants.
• Reused enemies now restore their required body movement and collision state.

CRAWLER IMPROVEMENTS

• Fixed Crawlers occasionally returning from death in a broken or unanimated pose.
• Resurrected Crawlers clear their previous movement, dodge and roaming states before selecting another target.
• Crawlers can pursue the player or select a closer valid zombie target when appropriate.
• After killing a zombie, a Crawler prioritizes collecting and dragging the body instead of immediately attacking another target.
• Crawlers carrying a body no longer search for additional victims.
• Several attack and leap states can no longer incorrectly overwrite the decision to drag a corpse.
• A Crawler only begins the feeding sequence after the corpse has attached successfully.
• Corpses reserved by a Crawler no longer disappear while being dragged, carried or eaten.
• Normal corpse cleanup resumes after the Crawler releases the body or finishes feeding.
• Flashlight reactions now interrupt dragging and cause the Crawler to release its body.
• The correct flashlight reaction animation can play after the body is released.
• Crawlers return to pursuing the player after the flashlight pressure ends.
• Improved navigation recovery when a Crawler’s route becomes blocked while travelling with a body.
• Improved route validation before committing to a feeding destination.
• Fixed a spawning-time navigation error that could occur while pooled Crawlers were being created.

SPECIAL INFECTED OPTIMIZATION

• Expanded distant-enemy optimization and corpse cleanup to additional infected variants.
• Female infected now follow the same distance, audio and corpse-performance rules as regular zombies.
• Fixed female infected remaining in an unnecessarily expensive movement state while far away.
• Fixed female infected running in place after being incorrectly treated as a sleeping idle enemy.
• Chase-focused female infected are no longer mistaken for inactive enemies.
• Larger infected now participate in distance-based navigation and audio optimization.
• Larger infected corpses now settle, sink and return to the pool consistently.
• Mutated infected now participate in the shared distance-optimization system.
• Active Mutated encounters remain awake so combat behaviour is never suspended unexpectedly.
• Zombie dogs now expose a consistent death state for encounter and cleanup systems.
• Improved death-event reliability for special infected.
• Pooled special infected restore their required movement, animation, audio and behaviour more reliably when reused.

WEAPON HANDLING

• Weapon inspection now stops correctly when the player starts running.
• Improved timing between individual semi-automatic shots without slowing fully automatic weapons.
• Individual weapons can use their own timing between separate shots.
• Improved synchronization between firing, recoil and weapon animations.
• Improved firing behaviour for weapons that use their own dedicated firing animations.
• Weapons recover more reliably after long or multi-stage reloads.
• Entering tactical sprint interrupts reload animations more cleanly.
• Prevented camera and aiming errors when the player temporarily has no valid active weapon.
• Improved reliability when weapons are dropped, destroyed or removed from the inventory.

SPRINTING AND TACTICAL SPRINTING

• Sprint and Tactical Sprint now share one control instead of requiring separate bindings.
• The separate Tactical Sprint binding has been retired from the normal control layout.
• Holding the Sprint control begins regular sprinting.
• Double-pressing the same Sprint control while moving transitions into Tactical Sprint.
• Toggle Sprint resets when the player stops moving, allowing the player to return to walking normally.
• Improved double-press detection when using Hold Sprint.
• Releasing Hold Sprint still ends sprinting correctly without cancelling a valid Tactical Sprint transition prematurely.
• Pressing Aim during Tactical Sprint now immediately transitions into regular sprinting while aiming.
• The player no longer needs to stop completely before aiming after Tactical Sprint.
• Aiming begins as soon as Tactical Sprint has been lowered into regular sprint.

CONTROL OPTIONS AND STANCES

• Expanded saved control preferences for actions that support Hold, Toggle or Double Press behaviour.
• Removed the redundant Press option from player-facing dropdowns.
• Aim, crouch, peeking, stance, jump and other supported actions now respect their selected behaviour.
• Hold actions remain active only while their assigned control is held.
• Releasing a held Aim, Crouch or Peek input returns the player to the normal state.
• Toggle actions remain active until the control is pressed again.
• Control preferences are saved between sessions.
• Inventory, pause and night vision remain simple fixed actions.
• Movement directions and menu-navigation controls are not given unnecessary behaviour dropdowns.
• Toggle Stance cycles between Normal, Low Ready and High Ready.
• Double Press Stance advances to the next ready position.
• Hold Stance temporarily enters the player’s preferred ready position.
• Releasing Hold Stance returns the weapon to the normal position.
• While using Hold Stance, the preferred Low Ready or High Ready position can be changed without permanently leaving the hold behaviour.
• Melee attacks and firearm weapon bashes now share one control.
• The equipped item determines whether that control performs a melee attack or a firearm bash.

HOLD BREATH AND FLASHLIGHT CONTROLS

• Hold Breath is now restricted to Hold behaviour to avoid confusing toggle states.
• Hold Breath activates only when the player is sufficiently aimed and able to steady the weapon.
• A breathing sound now plays when Hold Breath genuinely becomes active.
• The sound does not replay every frame while the control remains held.
• Repeatedly spamming Hold Breath causes the player to cough.
• Coughing interrupts breath control and introduces a short recovery period.
• Flashlight controls distinguish between a quick press and a held input.
• Quickly pressing the flashlight control continues cycling through its normal flashlight and laser modes.
• Holding the control while the flashlight is off provides temporary illumination.
• Releasing the held control returns the flashlight to its previous off state.

ITEMS AND INTERACTIONS

• Grenade pickups now use one clear interaction.
• Pressing the standard Interact control picks up and automatically stores the grenade.
• Removed the conflicting choice between separately picking up or storing the same grenade.
• Prevented multiple pickup systems from competing over the same grenade.
• Interaction prompts now more accurately describe the action that will occur.

DEMO AND MENU IMPROVEMENTS

• Updated the demo-completion message to explain what happens after reaching the end zone.
• Entering the end zone returns the player to the menu.
• Players can select Restart to replay the available demo map.
• Clarified that the current demo contains one playable map and does not continue into a second level.
• Added a clearer invitation to wishlist BLOODSTATE.
• Added clearer information about sharing feedback through the official Discord.
• Fixed unsupported punctuation appearing as missing characters in the demo-completion message.

STABILITY AND COMPATIBILITY

• Resolved several graphics compilation and compatibility issues affecting vegetation, billboards, interior surfaces and splash effects.
• Reduced the chance of missing or fallback materials appearing in builds.
• Improved compatibility between older environment assets and the current rendering version.
• Fixed several pooled-enemy reset problems that became visible after progressing through multiple sections.
• Improved restoration of animation, movement, behaviour and audio when enemies return from the pool.
• Fixed several death events being missed by shared cleanup systems.
• Fixed a camera update error that could occur when no valid weapon was available.
• Fixed several control preferences being saved by the menu but ignored during gameplay.
• Fixed configuration problems that prevented additional voice clips from being added correctly.

This update focuses on keeping large encounters responsive while making combat, awareness, movement, animation, controls and death reactions feel more natural and consistent.

A considerable amount of work also went into systems players normally do not see directly: ensuring enemies wake correctly, corpses clean up reliably, pooled infected return in a valid state, and large groups do not perform unnecessary work in the background.

Thank you for playing BLOODSTATE and continuing to help improve the demo.