Livestock herds gain trust and tempers, grenades go client predicted, train tunnels expand

2026-W36 · 31 Aug to 6 Sept

Work on the livestock animals continued all week, with cows, bulls, sheep and calves picking up herd behaviour, ageing, overgrazing rules and a trust system that lets you lead animals home rather than beat them there. Thrown weapons are moving onto client prediction so grenades, flares and molotovs leave the hand where you expect. Elsewhere there was a pass on deploy guides and LOD chains, more randomised rooms for the underground train network, and fixes to scientist navigation.

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Branch work is not a promise: some of it ships in the next update, some of it never ships.

Commits
493
Developers
47
Branches
158
Merged to main
33

Livestock behaviour, trust and herds

Cows, bulls, sheep, lambs and calves gained a full behaviour pass covering herding, ageing, fleeing, breeding and death, alongside a first pass at capturing and domesticating animals through trust rather than force.

5 changes

Livestock_animals

  • Spending time near cows builds trust, which lets you lead them, and at high trust they will come and sleep near your tool cupboard on their own. Hitting them into your base still works.#630725
  • Bulls can kick and charge, position themselves between you and the herd, and turn neutral or protective once trust is high enough.#630222
  • Cows slow down and stay closer to home as they age, lie down to rest, regroup to sleep at night and die peacefully of old age instead of playing the combat death animation.#630346
  • Too many animals grazing one area depletes the grass, and animals standing in a depleted area show a label when you look at them.#624822
  • Added a shearing interaction and made animals eat from a trough in preference to grazing.#618687

Thrown weapons move to client prediction

Grenades and other thrown items are being rebuilt so the client simulates the throw locally and then realigns with the server. The work also fixes the throw origin so projectiles leave the hand rather than the centre of the screen.

4 changes

grenade_client_prediction

  • Predicted versions of the main grenades are now generated automatically, with pooling support.#630327
  • Thrown items now spawn at the hand position and lerp towards the screen centre instead of appearing to come out of the player's mouth.#630208
  • Added prediction support for flare and molotov effects, with the real entity's effects suppressed to avoid doubling up.#630259
  • Added a lerp system so the predicted throw realigns with the server result.#630361

Underground train network rooms

Work continued on the underground train network update, with new randomised small rooms and an updated small train station. Power wiring was run through the rooms built so far.

4 changes

underground_train_network_update

  • First pass on a randomised small room variant for the tunnels.#630384
  • Wiring pass across the four randomised small rooms completed so far.#630599
  • Updated the underground small train station.#630544
  • First pass on a second vendor layout for the randomised tunnel rooms.#630160

Deploy guides and LOD chains cleaned up

A long pass over deployable placement guides cut their triangle counts and draw calls by rebuilding them from lower detail meshes or single custom meshes. A separate sweep fixed broken LOD chains where props drew forever, popped out of existence or repeated their most expensive mesh at distance.

5 changes

prop_optimisations

  • The 21 heaviest placement guides, including furnaces, the computer station, the jukebox and the water purifier, dropped from 209,286 guide triangles to 89,540.#630233
  • The sail placement guide went from 25 renderers to 1 and 26 draws to 3, and the back of the sail fabric now shows in the guide.#630088
  • LOD fixes across 57 prefabs: six meshes now cull properly, a stone wall that showed nothing between 25m and 45m was filled in, and the Junkyard Bradley had no LOD0 at all.#630312
  • Twenty deployables had their guides moved to guide prefabs so materials, normal maps and cutouts survive on lower detail levels.#630744
  • The wind turbine guide was rebuilt as one mesh, dropping from 20.9k to 8.2k triangles and 20 draws to 8.#630219

Crystal Assault Rifle skin finished off

The Crystal Assault Rifle pack received final art, store images and a set of rendering fixes for its transparent parts. The skin cannot be broken down.

5 changes

glass_ar

  • World model rebuilt with more realistic pieces including ejection port, magazine and handguard, plus updated glass materials.#630287
  • The glass parts no longer always render on top of rivers.#618654
  • Motion blur now works with the skin via a dedicated depth pass on the view model.#630369
  • Marked the Crystal Assault Rifles so they cannot be broken down.#620427
  • Deploy bolt movement split into separate sounds so swapping weapons quickly is less noisy.#624800

Controller driving controls and rumble

Controller support gained dedicated control sets for each vehicle type along with analogue throttle and steering. Rumble strength and duration are driven by weapon recoil values.

4 changes

vcc

  • Added separate control sets for car, boat, helicopter, submarine, horse and train.#619783
  • Analogue accelerate and brake mapped to the triggers for the driving set, with horn and seat swap bound, and steering disabled while the UI is open.#630194
  • Weapon recoil values now drive haptic rumble duration and strength.#630228
  • Added a look boost option with settings exposed in the options menu.#630375

Character customisation screen

The character creation screen received lighting, framing and icon work. Faces are now listed according to the body type you have selected.

4 changes

character_customisation

  • All faces now appear in the face selection, filtered by the selected body type.#630423
  • The preview camera can no longer be pushed into walls and props.#630540
  • Rendered preview tiles doubled from 256 to 512, with faces preloaded in the background when the page opens.#630515
  • Fixed an occasional ghost figure appearing in the creator, and restored sky reflections in the eyes.#630395

Scientist and animal navigation fixes

A set of navigation fixes addressed NPCs walking through doors they should not open and areas with no navmesh at all. Older animals were also ported onto the newer AI system without changing their behaviour.

Layout of Underwater Lab A
5 changes

ai_hotfixes_for_monument_blocker_patch

  • Scientists no longer walk through puzzle doors they cannot open.#630354
  • Fixed missing navmesh in underwater labs and parts of the underground tunnels.#630699
  • Fixed missing navmesh on Bandit Camp watch towers.#630358
  • AI no longer fails to update its position in the brain grid, which left some spatial checks working from stale data.#630347
  • Fixed boars chasing too fast and animals not fleeing properly when the player is stood on a foundation.#630085

Render pipeline work

Testing continued on the new render pipeline, with fixes for water, glass and post processing and a reduction in draws for the refraction filter. A case where the new pipeline was force enabled by default was corrected.

5 changes

render_pipeline_testing

  • Fixed missing underwater fog when looking out of submarine windows and similar water windows.#618694
  • Fixed water caustics and contact shadows not working with deferred rendering.#630199
  • Refraction filter combined blur and downsampling, cutting draws from 28 to 16.#630473
  • Fixed broken frosted glass.#630190
  • Fixed the new pipeline having been force enabled by default.#630257

Radioactive water sprinklers hit harder

Sprinklers filled with radioactive water now output considerably more radiation than before. The change landed in two steps.

2 changes

radwater_buff_2

  • Doubled the radiation output of sprinklers running radioactive water.#619788
  • Increased sprinkler radiation by a further 1.5 times.#621777

Weapon model and animation refreshes

Several weapons are being rebuilt with new view model animations and world models. The M92 Pistol, Nailgun, Machete and Flare all saw work this week.

4 changes
  • M92 Pistol world model set up, with placeholder sound events added to the new view model animations.#630618
  • Nailgun refresh prefab and animations set up, with latest view model animations exported.#630598
  • First pass at refreshed Machete animations.#630235
  • Flare igniting and throwing hooked up in third person, with the spawn position offset.#630209

Bow and crossbow arrow fixes

Several arrow display problems on bows and crossbows were fixed, including missing arrowheads on a pre-loaded crossbow. Arrows that break now produce gibs instead of vanishing.

4 changes

arrowhead_load_fix_2

  • Fixed arrowheads being missing when equipping an already loaded crossbow.#630263
  • Fixed reloading with a different arrow type causing the arrow to load before its head.#630523
  • The arrowhead now appears from the reload animation, landing on the same frame as the arrow.#622982
  • Arrows that break now gib properly rather than disappearing.#623408

New achievements

Three new achievements were added covering the Power Plant fuse puzzle, apartment rental and mortar kills. The work also fixed the analytics event for heavy fuse insertion sometimes crediting the wrong player.

Layout of Power Plant
3 changes

new_achievements_oct26

  • Added an achievement for inserting a heavy fuse into the Power Plant.#630637
  • Added an achievement for renting an apartment.#630638
  • Added an achievement for killing a player with a mortar shell.#630640

Half and three quarter height sandbag barricades

Two shorter versions of the sandbag barricade were built, sharing the original footprint and material so existing skins apply. Each has its own collision, deploy volume, navigation obstacle and building blocked box scaled to its height.

1 change

sandbag_barricade_variants

  • Added half height and three quarter height sandbag barricade variants, with the half height version getting its own gibs.#630333

Russian roulette table

Work continued on a russian roulette deployable for the high stakes pack, including models, gibs, icon and localisation. Its storage now restricts what can be placed inside it.

3 changes

high_stakes_dlc

  • Fixed what the russian roulette storage will accept, updated the prefab and localisation.#624745
  • Added gibs, a placement guide prefab and an updated icon.#619750
  • Added view model chain parts that connect to the guns on the table.#621691

Server console and admin commands

The Linux server console now behaves the same as the Windows one, and a large batch of client side admin commands can be triggered from the server. An indicator was added for infinite ammo.

4 changes

sv_clientadmin_exposures

  • Full server console implementation on Linux, matching Windows behaviour including logfile overriding.#628345
  • Exposed admin environment commands such as time, fog, wind, rain, clouds and underwater effects to be called from the server.#630205
  • Exposed nameplate commands including health display, team colouring and maximum display distance.#630192
  • Added an admin status indicator for infinite ammo.#618627

Also this week

  • Added new sounds for the animal fences. #630377
  • Work started on a Scrap King building skin, including its building grade, upgrade command and localisation. #630665
  • Paintball guns now apply the correct colour in first person, third person and on the overalls, and keep the last colour you applied. #630164
  • Fixed footsteps not playing when you are slowed by heavy armour, which affected full plate sets and diving fins worn on land. #618677
  • The heavy plate helmet now muffles in game voice as well, with the volume reduction increased. #618380
  • Fixed a typo that stopped sleepers being killed in safe zones after a server restart. #618581
  • The composter and stove no longer show pointless turn on and turn off menu options. #630409
  • Flashlights can no longer be attached alongside shields. #624820
  • All teas now spawn the kettle visual on the cooking workbench. #619745
  • Jukeboxes now snap when deployed. #618619
  • Modular cars show a message explaining the handbrake, up to five times when you first mount the driver seat. #624805
  • Fixed the layout issues affecting item pickup notices. #630811
  • Clients are no longer kicked for errors raised on background threads. #630789
  • Improved carvable pumpkin deployment. #618612
  • Possible fix for triangle hatch placement being blocked by nearby deployables. #629883
  • Fixed missing colliders on the attack helicopter frame that allowed unnecessary damage. #619743
How this digest was read

Read from Facepunch's public commit log: 31 Aug to 6 Sept, 493 commits.

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