PATCH NOTES • 0.3.299

Creature AI

• Camping enforcement • Creatures that spend a long time around a hiding spot now retreat far away instead of lingering. So many of you reported being trapped in a cabinet or closet while a creature just refused to leave • this is the biggest fix in this update.

• No more wallhack retargeting • Creatures no longer switch targets to teammates they cannot actually see or hear. They have to detect you for real, which removes a lot of unfair ambushes through walls.

• Retreat behaviour feels less deaf • Creatures that are walking away can be interrupted by close-range player noise or sight. After a failed attack or after a player hides, they alert for a short window before disengaging instead of freezing in place.

• The Wretch and the Hound • Both stop camping around downed or hidden players, and properly leave the area when they lose track.

• The Smiler attack now reliably knees you • Several of you reported the Smiler reaching you, fully playing its attack, but the player never going down. The kneel is now guaranteed at the moment of the attack.

Level 0 (the Lobby)

• Exit door reachable for clients • The big one. Multiple reports of being unable to walk through the exit because invisible walls were still there client-side. The destruction of those walls is now replicated to every player, so the host and clients see the same opening.

• Hiding spots cleared on every client • Cubbies in the lobby are now unblocked for everyone, not just the host. No more "this hiding spot is blocked by a wall I can't see."

• No more falling out of the map • The wall-destruction pass was being too aggressive and could remove a structural wall next to a destroyed placeholder. Each pass now removes exactly one wall, the right one.

• Exit door always at the right position • Fixed a regression where the exit door (and the quantum room portal inside it) could spawn at the world origin, leaving a hole in the wall opening to nothing.

Level 26 (Fun)

• Partygoers use the plastic tubes again • The crawl tunnels were essentially being ignored by the AI, forcing creatures into long detours. Many of you reported partygoers stuck at the entrance or refusing to follow through • that is fixed.

• Doors no longer block AI permanently • When a door opens, the navigation around it now updates correctly so creatures can actually walk through. A handful of "creature blocked at a doorway" reports came from this.

• Partygoers can ambush from the pipes • A data error meant partygoers were silently rejected from pipe spawn points, so they never dropped from the pipes in Fun. Now they do.

Multiplayer & Co-op

• Co-op pressure spreads out • When a partygoer ambush triggers, the target player rotates fairly across the team. Previously the player nearest to the spawn point caught everything; now creatures pick the least-targeted player on the team.

• Hand-placed walls clear for everyone • Walls placed by hand in the level (not just spawned at runtime) now also disappear consistently on every client.

Balance & Tools

• Smiler appears closer • The Smiler now spawns at a tighter range during the blackout, which gives you less time to react but makes the encounter feel intentional rather than telegraphed from across the room.

• Fog horn pops balloons in front of you • The fog horn now actually pops balloons in a forward cone, and grants a small mental relief when it does. Useful when you're being mobbed.

• Balloon contact pop costs mental • A balloon popping right next to you now bursts a small chunk of stress (scaled by distance and difficulty), so the trade-off between popping and dodging actually matters.

Shipping Persistence

• Custom level config sticks in Shipping • A memory-cleanup issue could cause Shipping builds to silently revert custom mission/level overrides back to baseline. Anyone hand-tuning a level for testing was hitting this.

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Thanks again!