Major Travelers Playtest Update

Hey everyone,

The last public playtest update was on May 28, so it has been almost three months. I did not disappear — I went too deep into development and ended up rebuilding and expanding a huge part of Travelers.

This is a major playtest update, not a finished release. Its purpose is to put the new systems and content into your hands so you can test them, break them and tell me what needs more work. Bugs, unfinished animations and balance problems are expected im rebuilding the hole animationssystem right now i know there is much work ...

The build contains hundreds of changes across enemies, combat, gore, inventory, looting, animation, quests, UI, the world and performance. The playtest also has a new beginning and multiple new playable areas to explore. The project has moved to Unreal Engine 5.8 and received its first complete Shipping cook with the new content.

Here is what has changed.

New Enemy: Procedural Spiders

Spiders are now a full enemy family instead of a simple creature prototype.

[*]Procedural eight-leg movement with planted feet, joint limits, body weight and a moving abdomen

[*]Wall and ceiling crawling without requiring a baked navigation grid

[*]Smoother transitions across floors, walls, ceilings, corners and ledges

[*]Improved edge gripping, climbing recovery and navigation around convex surfaces

[*]Bite attacks, readable wind-ups, dodges, hit reactions and ragdoll deaths

[*]Head-first pounce attacks with corrected in-air facing

[*]Individual leg hitboxes: damaged or severed legs affect movement and cause visible limping

[*]Kicks and heavy hits can launch or knock spiders down

[*]Purple spider blood and spider-specific hit effects

[*]Improved pack spacing, searching, last-known-position behavior and less combat flip-flopping

[*]120-degree vision, additional vertical awareness and reduced detection range while the player is crouching

[*]A giant spider variant with increased size, health, speed and damage

Human Enemies and NPC AI Overhaul

Human NPCs received one of the largest upgrades in the project so far.

[*]New melee, ranged and boss combat archetypes

[*]Faction logic for bandits, friendly NPCs, quest NPCs and zombies

[*]Randomized weapons, armor and loot that remain visually connected to what the NPC actually carries

[*]Ranged NPCs now use proper aiming, recoil, muzzle effects, reload behavior, fairer accuracy and visible bow/quiver equipment

[*]Finite ranged ammunition: an archer who runs out of arrows can fall back to melee

[*]Smarter combat spacing, circling, sidesteps, feints, flanking and last-known-position searches

[*]Four temperament layers create more variety in aggression and reactions

[*]Wounded NPCs can visibly limp, slow down, flee, fall, stay down or recover depending on their condition

[*]Quest givers, traders and other human NPCs now share the full human locomotion and combat animation foundation

[*]More natural ambient behavior, curated idle animations, drinking and the foundation for day/night schedules and sleeping

[*]Navigation and climbing support were expanded so NPCs can handle more vertical combat spaces

Zombie behavior was improved as well: better first-contact screams, flanking, spacing, pounce behavior, combat sidesteps, jump-down support and fixes for dead zombies continuing to attack or make sounds.

Combat, Animation and Impact

Combat has been reworked to feel heavier, clearer and less random.

[*]Charged sword attacks with clearer audiovisual feedback and improved damage payoff

[*]Expanded shield combat with blocking, parrying, stamina pressure, guard breaks and shield bashes

[*]Player kicks now use a short sampling window instead of relying on a single frame, making hits more reliable

[*]NPC attacks received corrected hit timing and capped hit windows so damage follows the visible blade more closely

[*]Root-motion attacks now use motion warping more consistently to reduce attacks missing or sliding past their target

[*]Improved hitstop, micro-knockback, camera feedback and attacker reactions when a hit is blocked

[*]New combat stances, harassment feints, active sidesteps, counterattacks and pose-matched four-direction get-ups

[*]Dozens of combat reactions and montages were added, converted or retuned

[*]Inertial animation blending and improved montage transitions reduce hard snaps between locomotion, attacks, reactions and recovery

[*]Ragdoll recovery was rebuilt to remove visible idle flashes, random twisting and fly-in artifacts during stand-up

[*]Downed characters no longer begin recovery in mid-air, spin unnaturally or hover above the ground

The torch is also a real weapon now. It uses the sword combo flow as a blunt fire weapon, does not slice limbs, holsters correctly and can move into the off-hand when another right-hand weapon is equipped.

Expanded Gore and Dismemberment

The gore system has moved far beyond the previous fixed effects.

[*]Runtime skeletal slicing at the actual hit height

[*]Independent upper and lower ragdoll halves with filled cut surfaces

[*]Severed arms and other limb cuts are integrated with the newer slicing system

[*]Directional blood spurts follow the weapon swing and wound direction

[*]Blood pools form around the actual wound or stump after bodies and body parts settle

[*]Human armor and clothing can receive blood and follow the sliced body correctly

[*]Human wounds now use the intended deformation and blood appearance instead of incorrect pink or stretched materials

[*]Cuts can produce wounded or downed enemies instead of every limb hit acting as an instant kill

[*]Animal and spider gore received their own material and effect support

[*]Numerous fixes for floating hats, reappearing clothing, duplicated limbs and blood disappearing after later hits

Inventory, Equipment and Corpse Looting

Inventory and looting were rebuilt around a proper footprint-based grid.

[*]Items now have grid footprints, weight and rotation rules

[*]Drag-and-drop movement with a visible drag ghost

[*]Press R while dragging to rotate supported items

[*]Expanded inventory width and clearer slot presentation

[*]The hotbar and holster systems are connected, so equipped gear is represented on the character

[*]Armor can be moved between the player and corpse inventories

[*]Corpse inventories support Tarkov-style rearranging inside their own grid

[*]Green and red placement previews show whether a transfer will fit

[*]Loot overflow handling prevents items from silently disappearing when a container is full

[*]Player and corpse inventory layouts were visually aligned and given clearer headers, silhouettes and equipment slots

[*]New 3D character and corpse previews make it easier to see who and what you are looting

A New Beginning and New Playtest Areas

The opening of the demo/playtest has been moved to a new prison start inside the main world. This is the foundation of the revised beginning and gets the player into the setting from a completely different location.

Multiple new and reworked playable areas have also been added across the demo region, including new routes, interiors and exploration spaces around the castles, settlements, caves and dungeons.

There is considerably more of the playtest world to discover than in the previous public build.

UI, Visuals and Quests

[*]A broad pixel-fantasy UI pass across the lobby, menus, inventory, crafting, map, options and skill screens

[*]Improved navigation, framing, typography, parchment and gold styling, and general readability

[*]Expanded video options, including direct Lumen on/off control and four shadow-quality tiers

[*]A new comic-ink outline post-process with solid black close-range lines and a distance-based fade into the fog

[*]Foliage-aware outline controls prevent grass from turning into excessive visual noise

[*]Large additions and revisions to castle, village, dungeon and showcase areas

[*]The demo quest flow was expanded with improved reward handling, four rune items, rune tracking and the mage rune gate

[*]Quest requirement and reward exploits were fixed, including incorrect multi-stack item removal

[*]A directional player dodge and agility roll were added

[*]A first version of the wall-ballista recall and signal-flare system is included

Major Performance Work

The game was heavily CPU-bound when many full NPCs were active at once, so AI cost has been attacked at several levels. but we still not finished my goal is 200 fps on a 3080 but we will see

[*]Distance-based spawn limits stop the world from keeping unnecessary enemies alive everywhere

[*]AI LOD now reduces expensive movement, controller, path-following, animation and widget work for NPCs the player cannot observe

[*]Inactive, unseen NPCs farther than 50 meters can fully hibernate until movement, combat, damage or visibility wakes them

[*]NPC nameplates and information widgets update only when they are actually useful

[*]Unused NPC preview captures no longer tick on every character

[*]Large debug-print and logging sources that ran every frame were removed

[*]Navigation, minimap, health-bar, RVO and animation update costs were reduced

[*]World Partition HLODs were built for the main showcase world

ON THE START for every player In an internal standalone stress test with 119 NPCs fighting continuously, median performance on the development PC increased from roughly 44 FPS to 87 FPS. if you wonder what this means just a bunch of npcs fighting around you at the start... i would love to have some feedback on your systems and your fps

This was a deliberately extreme CPU test, so results will vary depending on hardware, location and how many characters are visible at once — but it gives an idea of the scale of the optimization work.

Fixes and General Polish

This update also includes a large number of smaller fixes:

[*]Ragdoll stand-up popping, twisting, floating and stale-pose issues THIS WILL BE OVERHAULED SOON AGAIN I HAVE FOUND WONDERFULL STUFF NEW GAMEANIMATIONSAMPLE FOR UE5.8 look it up awesome

[*]NPCs getting stuck in incorrect combat, wounded or death states

[*]Arms reacting to trigger volumes as if they were solid walls

[*]Attack counters and reactions being blocked by incorrect animation gates

[*]Dead or downed enemies remaining active or untargetable in the wrong state

[*]Corpse loot, equipment, holster and 3D-preview inconsistencies

[*]Container deposit failures caused by hotbar-space checks

[*]UI clipping, dead render transforms, mismatched panel sizes and missing decorative frames

[*]Numerous spider climbing, leg stability, edge transition and combat bugs

[*]Multiple migration, packaging and cook blockers that only appeared in a real Shipping build

Known Issues and Work in Progress

I want to be transparent about the parts that are still being worked on:

[*]The combat logic and hit reactions are not final. Some reactions and transitions can still look rough or behave incorrectly

[*]I am working as fast as possible on the next animation pass, including Motion Matching and new combat animations

[*]Wounded and downed states can still become bugged in certain situations

[*]The new opening currently uses the wrong starting NPC. This NPC is a temporary placeholder and will be replaced

Please Break It

This is an active playtest and this update touches almost every major system in the game. I expect there will be rough edges and regressions hiding in a build this large.

That is exactly what the playtest is for.

If you test it, the most useful feedback is on the new opening and areas, combat feel, inventory transfers, corpse looting, spiders on walls and ceilings, NPC ragdolls, multiplayer behavior and performance in crowded locations.

Thank you to everyone who has followed the project, tested builds or sent feedback. I am a solo developer, and the game is still very much in progress, but this is the largest step forward Travelers has made so far.

See you beyond the wall.