Dev log

Weekly notes from building the game, written up from the project's progress log. 24 posts, newest first.

Week of 15 June

Stealth, heals and a superweapon

21 June 2026 · weekly

A busy week: a dozen new meat units and buildings, and multiplayer that holds up.

• The first full two-machine multiplayer matches. Bandwidth cut a lot by sending movement intent instead of positions 15 times a second.
• New meat units: the Grafter (heals one ally at a time), the Lamprey (stealth), the Parasite (steals buildings), the Teratoma (burrows underground), the Gristle Spewer and the elite tier.
• New defenses: Eye Tower (detects stealth), Bile Geyser, Bonethrower, Maw-Pit and Gristle Spire.
• The Plague Bloom superweapon, and the AI uses it.
• Video quality presets, and big hordes got a lot cheaper to target.

Week of 8 June

Multiplayer begins

14 June 2026 · weekly

Every player action now goes through one command path, ready for the network.

• The Intestine Heptapus's tentacles sway, done in a shader because the model has no rig.
• Multiplayer is planned: the host runs the simulation and everyone else watches its state.
• Every order, build and sale now goes through a single command bus, so the host can check it before it happens.
• A first lobby, and the code that copies the host's units to the other players.

Week of 1 June

Group outlines and a GPU hang

7 June 2026 · weekly

Selection gets one outline, and rocket troops stop freezing the GPU.

• Selecting a group draws one merged outline around everyone instead of a pile of overlapping circles.
• The Bone Launcher holds its tube properly and has sounds now.
• Fixed a full GPU hang when lots of rocket troops fired at once. Every rocket trail and impact was spawning a brand new particle system.
• Skirmish maps can be flagged as test maps and filtered out.

Week of 25 May

3D cursors and blood trees

31 May 2026 · weekly

The cursor moves into the world, and the trees start bleeding.

• The mouse cursor is now a 3D object sitting on the ground, and it changes shape for move, attack and plain pointing.
• Attack clicks snap to the nearest target within about a tile, so you don't have to pixel-hunt a zombie.
• Trees sway in the wind. A new blood tree has glossy wet foliage and a bone trunk.
• Drag-select no longer grabs harvesters along with your army.