SAND Development Update - April 2026

Servus Scavengers,

We're back with another development update, and this month we want to share some more information about the features we mentioned in our last update and how they're progressing so far!

All of the following items have now seen at least a basic implementation into the game and are in the testing/iteration phase, with many near or already final:

AI Mobs Improvements

• Upior behaviour has been significantly improved, with polished and upgraded response time, general behaviour and pathfinding

• Melee Upiors are now more agile and will try to dodge player’s shots

• Additional sounds for Upiors have been added as well. They now have more voiceline variety and have more vocal reactions for certain interactions

Server Physics Calculation Optimization

• Server performance has been increased following significant optimisation of the algorithms in which it handles all the physics calculations (these improvements are most noticeable in the large scale battles where the server tick rate suffered the most from excessive amounts of physics calculations)

• These optimizations will allow us to increase the maximum player count on the servers if needed or requested in the future

Overall Server Performance

• Thanks to the Public Playtest and closed playtest ING last year, we were able to spot key flaws in our databases on the master server and fix them. This will improve the general server response time and also now we have some fallback mechanisms that will allow us to quickly react if similar issues were to occur in the future

Client Performance Optimization

• Some Visual Effects were causing performance issues, specifically shadows and particle effects. We’ve optimized their performance so the client should be more stable and have increased performance on the machines that had issues with them. Shadows also had a visual overhaul and should look prettier

• Also the Client Side of the Trampler Movement was also optimized. Now the large amount of tramplers around the player has a noticeably smaller impact on the client’s performance

• Lots of core game systems were refactored and optimized further increasing the overall FPS on the client

• Because of all these optimizations, the performance on the low end machines should now be 30%+ better with a bit smaller percentage on the mid and high end machines

Disconnect handling Improvements

• The System was remade from the ground up with the direct emphasis on the stability and consistency. Now disconnecting from the game should feel way more consistent and robust. Players that often experience network instability will now have significantly better experience

Infantry Arsenal Expansion

• We have a new Revolver Type and one Modification for it. Meet the new EB "Vita" Police Revolver which features improved range and reload speed. This revolver allows the player to reload a whole drum at once!

• The Damage Falloff has been reworked for Rifles and Pistols

• Recoil was reworked for SA Pistol making them more consistent in terms of accuracy

• Custom Ammo has been added to further improve the gunplay and provide more utility tools for the player to outgun their enemies

• Character Armor Visual Overhaul: Rolled out three distinct tiers of armor with unique regeneration stats

• Since the 70mm and 40mm Cannons felt overpowered for a large part of the community we took some time to refine their interactions and balance them based on feedback

• 70mm Cannon now also features damage Falloff as all of the infantry weapons do. This will keep its devastating damage up close but will make it less viable on mid-to-long ranges

• All Cannons now have a recoil, but it’s most noticeable on the 40mm cannon. During the last playtest it felt like it was too easy to pick up. So we’ve increased the skill ceiling for this weapon a bit by adding a recoil to it. Now each shot will have a moderate kick to it that will require a player to compensate the turret aim to be able to hit the target consistently

• Custom Shells were added for all types of the turret to further enhance their strong sides and cover some of the weaker ones

Addressing The Tower Meta

• We’ve received A LOT of complaints regarding “Tower Tramplers” from the latest playtest and as a result, we’ve tried to develop a system that won’t harm the regular trampler builds and will delicately nudge the tower meta players from this meta by making the non-tower builds more viable

• Tramplers now have a vertical center of mass. If the trampler is being built the regular way, the player shouldn’t even notice the difference because there shouldn’t be any penalties

• But if the Trampler is being built in the Tower Meta Way (basically violating the laws of physics) at some point it will start receiving movement speed penalties. The more the build leans into towering without adequate amount of support from the lower parts the more its overall and max speed will get decreased

• This nerf should give the mobility advantage for the players that were caught off guard by such builds

• Also the 5th Building Level was removed from the editor since we’ve noticed that in the 90%+ of the builds this level was specifically used to leverage the tower meta benefits

Massive QoL & Anti-Cheat

• We Officially introduced an anti-cheat system to ensure a fair playing field, implemented an AFK system, added full controller support with aim assist, and rebuilt the loading screen system

World & Economy Expansion:

• A new island, Raumnadel, has been added and Contracts (Pawn Shops) have been reintegrated so you can trade items for coins and save space on a shelf in a long expeditions

• A few more POIs have been added with more to come, including the spaceport which we shared some in progress shots of over on our socials

General Gameplay Improvements:

• Because of your contribution in our playtest we’ve managed to find and fix a lot of bugs and balance and reiterate a lot of in-game systems for which we can’t thank you enough

Other focuses

PvE Expansion

• We are currently working to expand upon the PvE elements of the game,this work is still in development and we aim to have this in place by launch (if the ongoing tests are successful and overall implementation works well alongside the existing systems) and will share more details soon.

Server Slam

• We don't have a date set for the server slam at this time, largely because we would like to try and ensure the majority of what we've touched upon above are present for this playtest for feedback and testing.

  We are discussing potential dates as we speak and hope to share news on this in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for announcements.

Release date?

• Our primary focus is on finishing the work detailed above and getting the server slam started, following that, we will share the release date.

Click the links at the bottom of the page to follow our social media pages to keep yourself up to date with all the news and updates for SAND and join the discussion over on Discord now!

• Hologryph & tinyBuild Games