VEIN's Bimonthly Update Brings HLOD Terrain, Controller Progress, and a Halved Install Size

VEIN's August bimonthly dispatch covers work currently sitting in the experimental Steam beta branch, not yet pushed to the general release.

What changed

• Hotfix 5/6 released — a backlog of bugfixes accumulated over roughly a month were bundled and pushed. Full notes are linked in the Steam announcements.
• File size cut in half — a new compression method for game content reduces the install footprint losslessly, with no quality loss.
• Controller support in progress — gamepad and keyboard/mouse keybinds are now separated in the settings menu; slider and focus support has been added to many UI elements. The developers note that parity with other modern games is still a significant distance away, citing the volume of UI in VEIN.
• HLOD terrain rendering — High Level of Detail proxy objects now stand in for distant buildings, mountains, trees, and other landscape features, swapping out for full geometry as the player approaches. The intent is to allow dense forests and detailed landscapes to be visible at range without a performance cost.
• Westwood north section — artist Zoe has been detailing unique interiors for new buildings in that area.
• Utility cabinet performance — optimizations applied here are described as having limited impact in singleplayer but meaningful benefit for multiplayer server performance.

Taken together, the update reflects a project still in active construction — broadening hardware accessibility, trimming overhead, and filling out its world — while being candid that several of these threads remain unfinished.