ORION: Prelude | Version 10x (Changelog)

DANKIE

Oct 22, 2026

VERSION 10x

ORION: Prelude has a massive new version scheduled for release on October 25, 2026 . This is a FREE update for ALL existing owners.

NEW UPDATE

The new version of ORION: Prelude features massive revamps to core systems including:

First-Person Gameplay
Third-Person Gameplay
Physics & Vehicles
Dinosaurs & AI
Graphics & Lighting
Performance & Optimization
Menus, UI & UX
Bug Fixes & Polish

PLAY EARLY

This version is currently in Open Testing ( via Discord ) on the First Preview.

The goal of this pre-release period is to capture any additional issues and bugs and add further polish ahead of the larger Steam Release.

Join now to play early:

CHANGELOG

The changes go from oldest to newest as you scroll down.

VERSION 9.0.01

[ RELEASED MAY 27, 2026 ]

• A new experimental patch to establish The Baseline.

• Known issues and WIP.

VERSION 9.0.02

[ RELEASED MAY 28, 2026 ]

• Fixed Crash on End Game for Map Next Load.

VERSION 9.0.03

[ RELEASED MAY 28, 2026 ]

• Fixed Ultimate Edition DLC linkage. Including Cosmetic Items & Progression Skills.

VERSION 9.0.04

[ RELEASED MAY 28, 2026 ]

• Minor map reference fixes needed from the Ultimate Edition DLC patch (9.0.03)

VERSION 10.0.00

[ RELEASED SEPTEMBER 30, 2026 ]

In Late 2025 I decided to revisit and research ORION: Prelude. This process officially commenced in May 2026 when active development started on ORION: Prelude.

There were many critical issues to address including the fact that ORION: Prelude didn't run properly on today's Steam. It crashed on Conquest, the source hadn't been built since 2016 and a decade of logic sat and waited .

This preview document lists all of it: new systems, feel passes, revived modes, and the dozens of bugs that date back to 2016 and have finally been fixed. It's long on purpose .

[ Headline Features ]

NEW 64-bit client. ~ Steam now offers a 64-bit version automatically, with a 32-bit fallback. It comes with a new movie player, borderless windowed mode and a monitor picker. NEW Game-feel overhaul. ~ Procedural weapon sway and recoil, hipfire bloom, resumable reloads, smooth ADS, a modern third-person camera, dodge-roll rework, head look, sprint remembrance and camera shake. NEW Vehicle feel passes across the entire lineup ~ Including on the Penguin buggy, Gladiator Buggy, Cobra Tank, Minotaur Mech (with Tank Mode), the Griffin hoverbike and the Vulture VTOL. NEW Dinosaurs that fight better and run faster. ~ improved hordes, crowd separation, big dinos that path properly and no longer trap you inside their bodies, raptor pack roars and flinches and a heavy AI performance pass. NEW A brand-new Menu System. ~ The ageing Flash (Scaleform) interface was replaced end to end: 30+ new screens and it has full mouse, keyboard and controller support. NEW A modern Player HUD ~ With a Dynamic Crosshair, damage numbers, hit indicators, a radar, a killfeed and a killcam. NEW Squadmate bots rebuilt. ~ Buddy bots now move and fight like people, use their class abilities and grenades, and follow your radio orders: Follow, Go Go Go, Hold, Retreat, Need Medic. FIX Long-standing bugs from 2016 fixed . ~ Including invisible big dinos for players in vehicles, unkillable "ghost" raptors, dead directional damage indicators, missing wave notifications, a settings wipe on every patch, the Insane difficulty typo and many more.

[ Survival Mode ]

General Mode

NEW: Survival Mode now has Respawns. You no longer need to wait potentially minutes to get back into action.
ADJUSTED: During the Boss-kill slow-motion event, Players and Vehicles now move at half speed while enemies crawl at quarter speed.
ADJUSTED : Difficulty Ladder for Game Creation. Hard is unlocked at Level 5, Insane at Level 10, Redik at Level 15 and Prehistoric at Level 20.
FIXED: Insane has it's 60-second generator timer; a previous typo meant it never applied.
FIXED: An issue affecting Match Defeat logic; ensures it now ends the match the moment the countdown hits zero regardless of other game states (between waves, side objectives).
FIXED: Removed a hidden 20-minute match clock that could hand co-op players a sudden, unearned Victory.

Waves + Objectives

NEW: Wave and Side Objective Dinosaurs no longer pop-in in front of you.
NEW: Side Objective Swarms can attack the players on their way.
NEW: REPAIRING, CAPTURING and TEAM CAPTURING progress bars.
NEW: Holding E to repair a generator holsters your weapon and redraws it when you let go.
ADJUSTED:Between-waves base beacons for WEAPONS, AUGMENTS and VEHICLES / AIR TOWER, with a distance readout.
ADJUSTED: Shop terminal name tags fade in within 25 m instead of stacking across the map.
ADJUSTED: Improved Rham flight pattern to get stuck as often.
FIXED: Fixed issues with Queued dinosaurs (including Side Objective Bosses) not spawning under certain circumstances.
FIXED: Side Objectives missing their green flare on certain maps and outposts.
FIXED: Issues with Outpost Doors & Indexing towards the intended door.
FIXED: Rhams no longer drift off into the sky.
FIXED: Stegosaurus and Triceratops behavior that had them orbit their spawners more than the objective.
FIXED: Issue with Rhams swooping in and dealing zero damage.
FIXED: Issues with a quick E-tap on a client no longer leaves the server repairing the generator indefinitely.

[ Weapon & Combat ]

Gunplay

NEW: Hipfire blossom where accuracy degrades as you hold the trigger and recovers when you stop. The first shot is always accurate, and ADS is unaffected.
NEW: Resumable reloads where reloads interrupted by a melee swing or a dodge-roll picks up where it left off. There's also a commit point: past 65% of the reload, the new magazine is already in.
NEW: Jumping now costs accuracy.
NEW: Smooth ADS on every weapon eases in and out, which removes the T99/TREK13 aim "pop".
NEW: Procedural first-person weapon motion so weapons sway as you move, trail your mouse turns with a slight roll, lag on jumps with a landing dip and pull in when you crouch. ~ All of it is softened in ADS.
NEW: Procedural recoil kick layered on top of every fire animation, with an ADS override so the sight climbs to screen center.
NEW : Per-state weapon poses so weapons shift into hand-tuned poses while sprinting, reloading and meleeing.
NEW: Input remembrance so held fire and sprint are no longer dropped. The gatling and flamethrower resume firing if you're still holding the trigger and sprint resumes as soon as you stop firing.
FIXED: Sprinting at the exact moment the gatling or flamethrower starts firing no longer bypasses their movement slow.
FIXED: Grenades no longer hang in your hand for 0.6 s before each throw.
FIXED: Reload Camera Animation settles smoothly instead of replaying or clipping out of sync.

Sights + Scopes

NEW: Reflex sights on both CV-10 Pistols, the M40 Magnum, RNC-9 Auto Pistol and T-12 Combat Shotgun.
FIXED: Attachments no longer float off the gun or reappear before the gun mid-roll.
NEW: The Sniper Scopecrossfades in instead of popping, uses a clean lens mask with no letterbox bars at any aspect ratio.
NEW: Sniper zoom retune so the LongShot and Laser Rifle are the "Farther" (about 3x), and the TREK22 is "Far"" (about 2.25x) and rifles like the FNC-30 and X-48 are "Mid".
FIXED: Guns no longer clip into the camera in ADS (the camera near clip was tightened). TREK12, CV-10 and RNC-44 use a fixed ADS zoom regardless of your FOV setting.

Weapon Specific

NEW: Deployable turret can now be placed on any flat floor (not just terrain), needs line of sight (no more shooting through walls), aims smoothly and holds fire until it's on target.
NEW: Medic-family heal beams (Medic, Utility, Supply and Repair guns) now come out of the barrel you see and arc along your aim. Each gun has its own muzzle glow, and the self-heal beam is stable at any angle.
NEW: Suit flashlight (F): The new flashlight that works on any weapon, day or night, and other players can see its beam. It replaces the old automatic per-weapon night light.
NEW: CV-10 Standard Pistol was retuned with a faster fire rate, 16-round magazines.
NEW: Hip and ADS positions reworked on nearly all weapons and gear along with muzzle flashes resized to match.
NEW: Laser rifle kills ragdoll so victims no longer freeze in a stiff pose. The body flops with a shove while it burns away, with an instant burn, a brief slow-motion flop and an energy burst. The beam is also thinner and the muzzle snappier.
ADJUSTED: Longbow arrow-switch animation plays twice as fast.
ADJUSTED: Longshot has an improved muzzle flash.
FIXED: The bow aims properly while you're airborne (an original-game bug) and it also stopped over-zooming on sprint.
FIXED: Arms no longer lag or separate from the gun on the CV-10, Egg, FNC-30, TREK12 and TREK22.
FIXED: Knife and sabre melee polish along with sprint resumes after a swing.
FIXED: Sabre damage for online clients: client light and heavy sabre swings did no damage at all.
FIXED: Longbow weapon now has proper first-person equip animations.
FIXED: Longbow smoothly enters into view after a roll instead of an instant frame snap.
FIXED: Gatling Gun spin fix where re-pressing fire near end of spin-down no longer causes a longer-than-cold-spin-up.
FIXED: Quick tap on Gatling Gun no longer stands the gun mid-spin-down.
FIXED: Stale timers no longer push a holstered Gatling Gun into firing.

[ Game Feel ]

Movement

NEW: Tactical movement retune so things feel more grounded, punchy and gritty.
NEW: Sprint remembrance where holding Shift keeps you sprinting through ledge drops and bumps and sprint auto-resumes after firing, aiming, crouching, rolling or melee.
NEW: Clutter glide so knee-high rocks and debris no longer snag your movement (they still stop bullets), and soldiers ease smoothly up and down small steps.
NEW: The third-person camera lifts to follow jetpack and power-jump climbs, and tightens slightly during melee.
NEW: Vehicle get-in camera: it starts from where your head was half a second before entering, arcs over the bodywork, and keeps live mouse look during the blend.
NEW: Seated players' heads hold their turn past the rear limit instead of bouncing back to forward, and this works for remote players too.
ADJUSTED: Walkable slope amount slightly increased.
ADJUSTED: Jetpack has been adjusted to three seconds of thrust and a faster recharge.
ADJUSTED:Dodge-roll modernized with new leap-roll animations in four directions, a tighter travel distance and smoother blends. Your weapon properly re-draws after a roll instead of popping back.
ADJUSTED: Sabre-block and bow-draw movement speeds set to 200 and 275.
ADJUSTED: Sprint FOV is a flat +5 in first person at any FOV setting (it used to be about +20), eased over half a second.
ADJUSTED: Dodge-roll travel cut from a flat 600 to 400 (straight) or 300 (diagonal).
ADJUSTED: The third-person sprint zoom, which zoomed the wrong way at any FOV other than 90, was removed and replaced by a camera pull-away.
FIXED:You no longer get wedged on small rounded rocks.
FIXED: You now spawn facing the way the map maker intended.
FIXED: The bow draw also stopped rubber-banding for online clients (the server and client disagreed on the speed).
FIXED: Jetpack takeoff no longer makes the gun snap as if you'd landed, and igniting mid-air no longer punches the camera.
FIXED: Jetpacking right after a vault no longer uses a broken flight-speed cap.
FIXED: A wobbling client can no longer sprint through the wobble.
FIXED: The shoulder-pad sprint fix now shows on other players' characters too, not just your own.
FIXED: The death cam restores your own FOV afterward instead of the class default.
FIXED: Falling out of the world: the death cam parks above the exit point and tracks the body instead of spinning in the void.
FIXED: Being killed by a soldier or bot no longer parks the death cam at the world origin. It now frames the killer.

Camera

NEW: Third-person camera has been rebuilt; now smooth damped follow instead of animation jitter, easing out after bumping a wall, a slight pull-back at sprint speed and a tighter frame during melee. Guns now kick in third person, and barrels line up with your crosshair.
NEW: Your torso keeps aiming while you reload in third person. Heavy weapons (rocket launcher, flamethrower, gatling) keep their pose and live aim while sprinting.
NEW: Procedural head look so soldiers glance at nearby dinos, teammates, loot crates and vehicles. Drivers and gunners look where they aim and passengers look around.
NEW: Procedural camera shake so Raptors, Compies, Rhams, Dilos and Pteras give a light punch, big dinos give a heavy jolt -- you feel a Rex, Spino or Dein coming through a proximity rumble before you see it. All of it respects the Screen Movement setting.
NEW: Death-cam pull-back in co-op so the camera smoothly pulls back over your body instead of bolting to the killer's jaw.
FIXED: The right shoulder pad no longer collapses into the torso while sprinting as Assault class.
FIXED: FOV fixes including FOV above 100 no longer pops on every weapon swap, leaving a vehicle no longer resets your FOV, and your FOV now survives game patches instead of snapping back to a default value.
FIXED: A 180° camera spin after map travel was fixed.

[ Enemy AI ]

The Horde

NEW: Larger hordes are better supported.
NEW: Crowd separation so Raptors steer apart on the ground instead of lifting each other into the air when they crowd.
NEW: Raptor combat feel where Raptors roar when they pick you as a target and a pack staggers its roars into a call-and-response.
NEW: Raptors visibly flinch when shot (at three strengths) and sidestep when you aim straight at them.
NEW: Smarter navigation so dinos steer around rocks and trees, reroute along canyon edges instead of freezing, slow down for tight turns, ease up and down rock steps and lean into real slopes.
ADJUSTED:Base raptor health halved (700 to 500), and Rham health halved (300 to 150).
ADJUSTED: Every Compy is bigger (1.25x).
ADJUSTED: Raptors and Compies now bite the mech, and dinos notice and switch to a mech driver.
ADJUSTED: Rham dives skim head height, so their damaging bump lands without them flying too low.
FIXED:AI dinos (especially the T-Rex) no longer float in mid-air after turning on a rock.
FIXED: Dino ragdolls no longer launch into the sky when killed near slopes or objects. Big dinos still topple forward dramatically and flyers carry their dive momentum into the ground.
FIXED: Flyer corpses (Rham, Ptera) killed high in the sky now fall all the way down instead of freezing in mid-air.
FIXED: Rhams stuck on rocks or perched on a player's head now burst upward and try again.
FIXED: AI dinos never played their turn animations, because the turn-speed input always read zero. They now turn with proper turn-in-place animations.
FIXED: A dino stunned by an EMP now recovers on clients on its own instead of potentially staying frozen in the stun pose.

Boss Dinos

NEW: T-Rex AI pass where rock throws are slower, rarer and never open a fight. The Rex roars when it spots you, plays idle detail animations, walks at 350, ramps up to a 500 run over 4 seconds, and only shoves you when a bite actually lands.
NEW: T-Rex fidelity pass where it leans into turns, centers itself in canyon corridors, no longer whips 170° instantly, watches you from far away, and no longer trips on tiny rocks.
NEW: Procedural tails on big dinos swing through turns and fade smoothly in and out.
NEW: Big-dino anti-clip where you can no longer get stuck inside a biting Rex's head or wedged in a Trike's or Steg's body. A soft cushion steers you around them instead.
NEW: Big-dino pathing so Trikes and Steggo no longer spin in place in gaps they fit through, don't bulldoze into knee-high walls, glide along walls, back out of corners and shoulder small dinos aside instead of standing on them.
NEW:Driving into a big dino corpse makes it lurch and bogs your vehicle down.
ADJUSTED: Big dinos with no clean path walk as far toward you as the terrain allows instead of hopping randomly. Objective-guard dinos stay much closer to their outpost.
ADJUSTED: T-Rex bite and nose-lift reach raised from 150 to 250 and its turn rate raised.
ADJUSTED: Big-dino bites are banded: 200 damage up close, falling to 140 at range.
FIXED:T-Rex ragdolls no longer explode "to space" when pinned against rocks and in multiplayer every player now sees the Rex ragdoll properly.
FIXED: Stegosaurs could freeze forever mid-turn when a turn animation was missing.

Behavior Performance

NEW: AI performance overhaul so distant dinos think and animate at lower rates.
NEW: AI Performance where up to 12 nearby dinos keep full-rate AI.
NEW: AI Performance where off-screen animation is culled.
NEW: AI Performance where small corpses freeze after settling (capped at 16).
NEW: AI Performance where network updates scale with distance and a 50-alive ceiling prevents worst-case pile-ups.

[ Squadmate Bots ]

Teammate Updates

NEW: Buddy bots have rebuilt from the ground up: they escort the nearest human, jog instead of permanently sprinting, ease to a stop, turn at human speed, keep personal space, strafe while shooting and aim imperfectly at fresh targets.
NEW: Buddy bots now use class abilities and grenades: Recon bots cloak, Assault bots jetpack-hop, and Support bots heal hurt humans. Bots throw class grenades (frag, smoke, EMP) with a "Fire in the hole!" call.
NEW: Squad Leader System so Buddy Bots respond from the radio: Follow Me, Go Go Go (charge where you aim), Cover Area, Retreat, Stay Here, Need Medic (the Support bot heals you, shields included) and Need Back Up. A bot answers "Affirmative!" and the HUD shows how many acknowledged.
NEW: When a player leaves, their bot slot is refilled within about 2 seconds. A bot giving its seat to a joining human teleports out with a sound effect, and never mid-revive .
NEW: Head tracking on bots, visible to every player.
NEW: Class fill where Buddy bots take the classes humans aren't playing, spawn seconds into the match and step aside as humans join.
FIXED: Buddy Bot grenades, arrows and bullet traces no longer start at world origin.

[ Vehicles ]

Penguin (Scout Buggy)

NEW: Weight-style handling overhaul over five tuning rounds: a retuned top speed and launch torque, softer suspension and a rear-end wiggle.
NEW: Real handbrake that actually brakes and swings the tail out (this applies to every vehicle with a handbrake).
NEW: Airborne leveller: the buggy auto-levels toward its predicted landing surface and lands wheels-down, with a landing camera punch and a heavy-landing crunch sound.
NEW: Tires throw dust from all four wheels, scaled by speed.
NEW: A vehicle-wide landing spin cap and rise-speed cap stop landing spikes.
ADJUSTED: Players can no longer walk through the Penguin's big rear tires.
ADJUSTED: The Gladiator's physics body was updated to go with its heavier gravity.
ADJUSTED: Holding fire through a mech/tank transform or a stomp keeps firing with the new form's weapon.
FIXED: No more surprise ice-drifts in corners and no more spin-outs on landing or boost. A Rex nose-lift now actually flips the buggy.
FIXED: The headlight beams are subtler and no longer flicker behind grass.
FIXED: Exiting a vehicle with E now works on the first press for Clients. The request used to be dropped over the network.
FIXED: The mech minigun barrels now spin for online clients. They never did before.
FIXED: The mech stomp lockout had never worked, so you could fire during a stomp.
FIXED: Online mech drivers can now hear their own rocket and grenade fire, and exit placement was widened.

Gladiator (Combat Buggy)

NEW: Gets the Penguin's handling kit (air leveller, landing punch, lower center of mass, no more "ice in corners" or pogo suspension), a 950 top speed, a heavier chassis and stronger gravity.
FIXED: Turret gunner bots aim correctly for online clients instead of freezing with their arms pointing at the sky.

Cobra Tank

NEW: The turret faces forward on entry instead of pointing at world north
NEW: Tank now has a subtle turbo boost.
NEW Arcade steering: a weighty, smoothed turn that works reliably at idle, while moving and on slopes.
NEW: Obstacle bumper: the tank no longer climbs vertical rock faces, cubes or walls, and glancing wall hits let it slide along.

Minotaur Mech

NEW: Full feel pass: a heavy damped camera, footstep thumps and shake, a torso that leads the legs, stride-synced walking with no foot-skating, visible hull suspension, smooth step-ups and a sprint camera pull-away.
NEW: New controls: right mouse / left trigger to aim, rockets on the grenade key (even mid-minigun burst), omnidirectional sprint and stomp.
NEW: Tank Mode integrated for the first time where CTRL transforms between mech and tank. The tank form has twin flamethrowers, a grenade launcher that now actually explodes, engine sound and tread fixes.
NEW: The mech walks straight through raptor packs instead of being carried or stopped by them. Its rocket pods alternate sides again, and pod muzzle flashes now show for everyone.
FIXED: Online mech fixes: clients can exit again.
FIXED: Online Mech no longer has wrong-way tracers and muzzle flashes.
FIXED: No damage shots are fixed.
FIXED: Dinosaurs no longer often ignore client-based Mechs.

Griffin Bike

NEW: Hoverbike now has a trailing camera with roll and an eased boost FOV kick.
NEW: Hoverbike feel pass including procedural banking into turns and strafes.
NEW: Ground levelling, a nose dip on throttle and a nose-over in the air.
ADJUSTED: Hoverbike now has a heavier chassis.

ALL Vehicles

NEW: Seamless get-in and get-out: a smooth camera glide from where you were standing instead of a hard cut.
NEW: The vehicle camera pulls back with speed, snaps in on impacts and pulls in while reversing.
NEW: Vehicle health rebalance: Mech 750, Tank 1000, APC 1000, VTOL 500, Gladiator 400, Penguin 300, Hoverbike 200.
FIXED: No more "sent to space": ground vehicles are no longer flung skyward on entry or when a wheel catches a rock.
FIXED: Driving into raptors or Dilos no longer pops them into the air. They're shouldered aside, roadkill still works, and small dinos hop off your roof.
FIXED: Boosting or swapping seats no longer leaves the camera zoomed out, and leaving a VTOL restores your on-foot FOV.
FIXED: For online clients, bot passengers' guns are now visible and their aim tracks properly.

[ New Menus ]

The old Flash menus were replaced by a brand-new interface built directly in the engine. The old pause menu alone was driven by a 14,855-line class and a binary Flash file. The new pause screen is 78 lines.

The Front End

NEW: Rebuilt main menu in the original category layout.
NEW: Full mouse, keyboard and controller navigation everywhere, with an ultrawide-safe layout.
NEW: The new software cursor has adjustable speed and acceleration and remembers where you left it.
NEW: "Create Game" screen with mode descriptions, solo launch, the 7-difficulty ladder and per-mode tips.
NEW: "Settings", rebuilt with live sliders and real apply, and reorganized into clear categories. There's an aspect-ratio filter for the resolution list.
NEW: "Keyboard Layout" (Movement / Combat / Comms / Misc) with press-a-key capture, SAVE and RESET. Keyboard rebinds now actually save properly.
NEW: "Controller Layout" with button icons. Rebinding swaps buttons so nothing is left unbound.
NEW: "Achievements" screen with all 251 achievements and their icons fetched live from Steam. It opens instantly, with no more click-freeze.
NEW: "Leaderboards" (Top 1000 / My Score / Friends) and STATS (world rank, class levels, personal stats).
NEW: "Progression" (Unlocks) screen showing achievement milestone rewards and each class's perk ladder.
NEW: "Server Browser" with filters, and a LOBBY room with chat, a player list, host START, a host settings editor, password-locked lobbies and host kick.
NEW: Text fields with a real caret, click-to-position, drag-select, select-all, Ctrl+V paste and a password reveal toggle.
NEW: Loading screens: a new default loading movie, loading-screen tips (31 hints, one pinned per load instead of strobing).
NEW: New splash art and a new intro video.
NEW: Menu art pass: 20 background artworks, a different one for each screen.
NEW: UI art: weapon and gear icons, class-augment icons, vehicle icons, controller button icons, hero-select portraits, radar art, radio wheel icons and a hit-indicator graphic.
NEW: Chat vote commands work with the new UI: !votemap, !votemode, !votedifficulty, !votescramble, !votekick, !votepop, !revote.
NEW: The pause menu's VOTE row pulses a red ACTIVE badge while a vote is running.
NEW: Kicked players now get a KICKED dialog, and a stale kick can no longer eject someone who rejoined.
ADJUSTED: Controller rebinding cancels with Escape or a 6-second timeout, for gamepad-only players.
ADJUSTED: The left stick drives every menu, including solo menus (hero select used to be D-pad only).
ADJUSTED: Keyboard layout: a new FLASHLIGHT row, dead rows removed (SWAP FIREMODE, HUD AWARENESS, RADIO #2/#3), and X cycles the radio wheel pages. The melee tip used to say "Press [1]".
FIXED: In-game settings changes now stick. Before, a menu object left over from the old UI silently reverted them when you returned to the main menu.
FIXED: !votedifficulty had never worked for clients and !votescramble errored. FIXED: Volume and HUD-transparency settings now load your saved values correctly. FIXED: Connection errors (for example a wrong password) now show a dialog. Before, you were silently ejected.

In-match screens

NEW: Armory, Augments and Garage / Air Tower shops rebuilt as card grids with icons, stats and tabs, drawn over the live game world.
ADJUSTED: Vehicles have clearer names (HOVER BIKE, SCOUT BUGGY, COMBAT BUGGY), and terminals close cleanly on EMP, death or leaving the building.
NEW: "Choose Class" with hero portraits and a 30-second auto-pick.
NEW: Pause menu (Return / Vote / Accolades / Options / Disconnect) and a VOTE screen (map, mode, difficulty, scramble, kick) that works with a gamepad.
NEW: Live scoreboard, and a spectator bar with D-pad target cycling.
NEW: Kill Cam: see who killed you, plus the damage and hits they landed this life, over a red vignette.
NEW: Confirm dialogs that work over menus and in game.

[ New HUD ]

Updates the Player Heads-Up Display.

NEW: A brand-new HUD replacing the 5,861-line Flash HUD, with corner-anchored panels for health and shield chunks, ammo, grenades, the ability meter, credits and a 1-5 weapon slot strip.

NEW: Dynamic crosshair that grows and shrinks with your real accuracy ( crouch, move, jump, ADS, bloom ) and pulses per shot.
NEW: Hit indicators (white / yellow / red) and 3-tier hitmarker sounds (body, headshot, kill), on by default.
NEW: Stacked damage numbers under the crosshair that merge rapid hits.
NEW: Kill-Feed with credit chips.
NEW: Radar with a rotating dial, ping pulses and orange / red dino blips.
NEW: World markers for generators and capture points, overhead tags for players and vehicles with shield and health mini-bars and shop terminal tags.
NEW: Boss health bars, and a "last 5 dinos" locator so the final stragglers can't hide.
NEW: Wave and objective banners, a WAVE counter with dinos remaining, the POWER GENERATOR meter, a NEXT WAVE IN timer and VICTORY / DEFEAT screens with a pinned scoreboard.
NEW: Revive meter (FIGHT TO SURVIVE / REVIVING) and downed teammate tags with a bleed-out timer.
NEW: Interaction prompts with keyboard keycaps or controller button icons, plus input hints that show the controls for your current mode or vehicle ("*" marks a hold input).
NEW: Radio wheel: one key replaces the old three-key radio. Hold it, aim at a line and release. It has three slides: red radio, squad orders and blue radio.
NEW: In-game chat panel (T / Y, Tab to flip team or all) that word-wraps.
NEW: Tutorial tips are back, with a setting for once per match / only once / objectives only / disabled. Tips queue instead of overwriting each other.
NEW: Directional damage arcs: blue for shield, red for health.
NEW: The HUD fades out while the scoreboard or killcam is up.
NEW: The full-screen hit flash is cyan while your shield is up and red once it's down.
NEW: Out-of-bounds warning: leaving the play area shows OUT OF BOUNDS (TURN BACK with a red countdown, a grey fade and a ticking beep).
NEW: Shield chunks per class: Recon 2, Assault 3, Support 4, boosted by the medic gun, jetpack and armor augments. A critical-health icon shows at 25 HP or below, and a cracked-shield icon when your shield is broken.
NEW: Chat names are color-coded (say blue, team green, spectator yellow), and messages hold for 9 seconds. T/Y no longer need two presses to reopen chat.
NEW: Damage numbers: up to 10 lines, hits within 0.25 seconds merge, and headshots are yellow.
NEW: Generator and objective markers show distance in meters.
NEW: Vehicle tags show occupancy, for example [1/4 PENGUIN].
NEW: Interaction prompts: ENTER, HOLD – ACTIVATE / HEAL, OPEN CRATE, PICK UP TURRET, EAT RAPTOR, and PICK UP <weapon>.
NEW: The radio wheel adds a FIRE IN THE HOLE slot, the crosshair hides while the wheel is open.
NEW: Kill feed: up to 5 rows with a 6-second hold, and suicide chips in red.
NEW: Kill hit markers are red and 1.4x larger.
NEW: "Last 5 dinos" markers pin to the screen edge when off-screen and point the way to turn.
NEW: The RESPAWNING IN countdown is a red strip above SPECTATING, with normal beeps then urgent beeps for the final stretch.
NEW: Join and leave lines go to chat instead of the objective area, and boss health bars lost their outline.
NEW: Enemy spotting: seeing an enemy soldier through clear air marks them for your team for 2.5 seconds. Smoke blocks it and cloak hides you.
FIXED: The directional damage indicator had been dead code for every player since launch. It now works and points at your attacker.
FIXED: Rifles, SMGs and other hitscan guns pulse the crosshair per shot for the first time in any mode. The pulse only ever fired for projectile weapons.

[ Graphics + Audio ]

Updates the Game Rendering, Audio and Visual Effects.

NEW: Dynamic lights on projectiles: rockets glow orange, explosions flash, and flamethrowers light the scene with a flicker. Grenades and tank shells glow in flight and the mech's flamethrowers light up their surroundings.

NEW: Acid pools glow green with a breathing pulse, bubbling goo and splashes, replacing the old flat decal.
NEW: Announcer lines no longer cut each other off, and announcer volume follows the ANNOUNCER slider.
NEW: Custom cosmetics (armors, hats, capes, taunts) are opt-in by default for a cleaner battlefield. Anything you re-enable stays enabled.
NEW: Character Model setting: choose the original Gen1 hero models (the default) or the later Gen2 models. Gen1 camos now paint the correct body regions on Recon and Support.
ADJUSTED: Raptors now cast shadows again. Small-dino shadows had been switched off for performance and now have a distance-fade.
FIXED: Lighting System V1 issues on Steam now matches the editor, ending a months-long "looks rich in the editor, flat on Steam" hunt.
FIXED: Broken lightmap channels destroying map lighting at runtime.
FIXED: Muzzle flashes, explosions, trails and loot beams no longer disappear behind grass and each weapon's third-person flash was resized.
FIXED: Weapons no longer "pop" in from the world origin the first time you equip them. This affected every weapon and was most visible on OSOR and Utility gun.
FIXED: A heal-loop sound no longer keeps playing after alt-tabbing mid-heal.

[ Weather System ]

Updates the Dynamic Lighting & Weather System V2.

NEW: A full day/night cycle: a 24-minute day by default. Designers can freeze time at a set hour, speed time up or slow it down, and set sunrise, sunset and how long the dawn and dusk color blend lasts.

NEW: Lightning that looks like lightning: a punchy 4x flash over 0.6 seconds that fades smoothly.
NEW: Night fog no longer crushes to near-black, thanks to a brightness floor that leaves daytime fog untouched.
NEW: Grass follows the sun: unlit grass dims at night with a minimum brightness, and a separate day brightness stops it looking dull at noon. The timing is synced across multiplayer.
NEW: Weather Tunables so Mission Designers can lock the weather: force rain or snow at a set intensity, force a fog level, stop the random cycle, tune transition and hold times and lightning frequency and override the skybox. All of it is set by the server and synced to every player.
ADJUSTED: Random weather cycle through fog, cloud, rain and freeze states, with snow on arctic maps and rain everywhere else. The frost overlay only appears on arctic maps.
ADJUSTED: Rain drips and frost scale with the weather. They fade in with rain or snow intensity, show in every camera view including spectating and the death cam, and only appear on maps with weather.
FIXED: The sun no longer swings toward the bolt, so god rays survive the strike.
FIXED: "Black frost": from the second match in a session, the screen could be covered by a black frost artifact. Rain drips also never appeared on Conquest maps that use a post-process volume. Both are fixed.
FIXED: Sun shadows that only appeared during lightning. A full-strength ambient sky light was washing out every shadow. Separate day and night sky-light strengths now give sunlit scenes real shadow contrast.

[ Display + Settings ]

Updates the User Settings, Configs, Display & more.

NEW: 64-bit client: one of the community's top requests after the July announcement. Steam now offers it automatically, with a 32-bit fallback and installs the 64-bit runtimes for you. It should end the out-of-memory crashes on big maps.

NEW: New movie player on both 32- and 64-bit plays the boot logo and loading screens.
NEW: Screen type: Fullscreen, Windowed or Borderless Window, plus a monitor picker for multi-monitor setups.
FIXED: Patches no longer wipe your settings and keybinds. The engine used to regenerate your config files whenever a patch touched the defaults.
NEW: New sensible defaults (hit sounds and damage numbers on; on gamepad, Reload on X and Grenade on RB), applied once and only if you hadn't customized them.

[ Multiplayer + Netcode ]

Updates the Online & Replication Theory.

NEW: Host Migration is now integrated: if the host of a lobby game quits, crashes or drops, a HOST MIGRATION panel appears, the next player re-hosts the same map, mode, difficulty and password and everyone rejoins. The match resumes at the same wave and base with credits, upgrades, augments and abilities intact, even mid-side-objective . ~ Partial Support for PVP.

NEW: Join overhaul: joining a friend's lobby no longer dumps you back to the browser.
FIXED: Third-person jitter pass: removed falling buzz, jetpack shake, sprint-strafe camera "breathing" for clients in 3rd Person.
FIXED: Mech warping as a Client in an online game.
FIXED: The first-person camera sinking when sprinting uphill as a client.
FIXED: Password-protected lobbies now send the right password where the old code had potential to fail.
FIXED: Dinos never attacked clients or buddy bots unless the host was looking. Fixed.
FIXED: Invisible big dinos (an original 2016 bug): online clients driving a vehicle couldn't see Steggo or Trikes, so an invisible Trike could destroy your mech. Big dinos and anything within about 30 m now always stay in sync.
FIXED: "Invisible" raptors: late joiners, or players returning to an old battlefield, saw frozen, unkillable phantom raptors (sometimes headless). Corpses now clean up properly for clients and ragdolls no longer launch skyward.
FIXED: Crosshair and hit markers for clients: the dynamic crosshair was stuck at zero spread for online clients and hit markers now flash and ding reliably.
FIXED: Missing first-person arms after exiting a vehicle is fixed, along with a host crash when a downed client bled out.
FIXED: Connection chokes: several per-frame messages could flood a client's connection (VTOL controls, enemy spotting, sabre direction, cloak) -- fixed across the codebase.
FIXED: Hit effects no longer go missing for online clients under load and reload-resume works for clients.
FIXED: Customized shop terminals and power generators now look the same for clients as they do for the host.
FIXED: Late joiners no longer see the NEXT WAVE countdown restart at 1:00.

[ Stability ]

Improving the game foundation and ease-of-use.

FIXED: A menu crash at the splash-to-main-menu handoff (Flash null reference).

FIXED: A crash or hang on the score screen when the next map loads at the end of a match.
FIXED: Client crash right after a map change (end of match, or after host migration). This was a stock engine bug.
FIXED: The long-hunted 64-bit "FViewport::Draw" crash that shelved the first 64-bit attempt.
FIXED: A listen-host hard crash when first-person arms were rebuilt at the wrong moment.
FIXED: Loading-screen flicker between two loading screen and a frozen mouse after loads.
FIXED: Over 50,000 warnings per match from bots and turret seats were silenced.

[ Performance ]

Improvements and adjustments to improve the overall gameplay experience:

NEW: The AI performance overhaul (see Dinosaurs) roughly halves the cost of large hordes.

FIXED: Achievement unlock hitch: unlocking an achievement mid-match no longer freezes a frame, and horde kills cost about 10x less CPU for stat bookkeeping.
FIXED: The HUD no longer scans every actor in the world three times a frame and the menu character preview no longer runs all match.

[ Platform ]

Steam-related developments.

NEW: New Achievements, Leaderboards and Stats screens (see New menus).

FIXED: Leaderboards work again (Total Dino Kills, Overall Leaders, Slaughter Times), with historical data visible, and no more all-zeros on a cold start.

v10.0.00