s&box

Field kit hotbar [1-4]: flashlight, VHS camera, droppable glowsticks and your role item
Role signature equipment: return tape (Navigator), signal meter (Scientist), bait flares (Guard), flash bulbs (Cameraman)
Equipment shelf in Field Preparation — take your role kit before descending
Operation checklist HUD with a live guide beacon that flies to your next station
Station numbers 01-04 and role-specific tutorial hints for first-time investigators
Field protocol on the main menu and a controls sheet on pause
Personal depth records — push past your best, but only extraction keeps it
Longer directives that pull investigators deeper: section surveys, depth probes, anomaly documentation
The Presence now has a proximity heartbeat, is drawn to bait flares and can be stunned by flash bulbs
Branded loading screen
Functional Like & Favorite buttons (opens the official package page)
Staging complex finishing pass: baseboards, cornices, pilasters, cable trays and CC0 props

Interaction prompts now show a consistent [E] key chip
VHS camera handling: role-based shot cooldown and weight while filming
Cameraman shoots faster, Navigator carries more glowsticks, Scientist reads anomalies further
Glowsticks glow saturated green and return tape lays hazard-striped segments readable on carpet
Lobby lighting, wayfinding signs and zone numbering

Joining a game in progress no longer breaks the host (black screen / teleport)
Loading screen fell back to a gray background (missing media)
Like/Favorite buttons were cosmetic and did nothing
World seed was pre-generated at startup — now rolls fresh and random only when the LPMDS opens
The Presence could walk on ceilings in pit rooms
Pause menu (ESC) would open but not close with the cursor visible
Chat panel could hide entirely and voice bind threw input errors

Resonance portal objective — extraction is returning to your entry threshold with the evidence
Weekly deterministic seed (now cosmetic only; every expedition is a new layout)

Private expedition sessions and the 32-player public lobby are still in development — groups currently share one session
Joining is only allowed while the team is in staging, not mid-expedition
The Presence uses a provisional visual form
On 6GB VRAM GPUs prefer the Optimized preset to avoid crashes on long sessions

Async Operations 0.11 9 July 2026

- 🏢 Added the complete expedition flow: Social Sector → Field Preparation → LPMDS → Level 0.
- 🛗 Added a four-seat Async deployment elevator with dynamic crew detection and a 10-second dispatch sequence.
- 👥 Added multiplayer expedition foundations with shared readiness, team objectives and synchronized LPMDS states.
- 🧭 Added four field roles: Navigator, Scientist, Documentation Lead and Security.
- 💬 Added shared team chat with a configurable key bind.
- 🎙️ Added push-to-talk voice communication, voice volume and configurable key binding.
- 📋 Added daily Field Directives with objectives and Research Value rewards.
- 📁 Added incomplete research files and evidence caches left behind by previous expeditions.
- 📷 Added typed evidence records, team claim arbitration and detailed extraction reports.
- ⚙️ Added complete settings categories for audio, controls, image, performance and communications.
- 🏚️ Added more procedural spaces, including research remnants, red rooms, pits, cubicles and vertically expanded chambers.

- 🏭 Rebuilt the Async complex with a larger, more logical late-1980s/1990s scientific-industrial layout.
- 💡 Improved lobby lighting, exposure and visibility throughout the Social, Preparation and LPMDS sectors.
- 🪑 Repositioned furniture, workstations, lockers, benches, equipment and signage around clear circulation paths.
- 🚪 Improved the LPMDS activation sequence, door behavior, return beacon and extraction flow.
- 🔦 Improved Level 0 exploration rewards by placing research evidence deeper inside uncommon rooms.
- 📸 Improved the camera shutter sound with cleaner audio and reduced static.
- 🗺️ Improved procedural generation with more believable room divisions and fewer empty open spaces.
- 💾 Settings now persist automatically and older dark visual presets are migrated to the new defaults.
- 🎮 Optimized and Realistic presets now coexist with individual graphics controls.

- 📷 Fixed the camera flash occasionally leaving the entire screen permanently white.
- ⏸️ Fixed ESC only opening the custom menu without closing it again.
- ⚡ Reduced the delay and hitch produced when opening or closing the pause menu.
- 🚪 Fixed unstable LPMDS door behavior when investigators entered or abandoned deployment.
- 👥 Deployment no longer requires four players; it adapts to the connected crew.
- 🕳️ Fixed visible void gaps between the Async complex and generated Level 0.
- 📍 Fixed coordinate-error deployment placing investigators back at the normal entrance.
- 📺 Removed the permanent VHS-style screen noise during normal gameplay.
- 🌑 Reduced excessive darkness caused by old exposure, vignette, contrast and ambient-occlusion defaults.
- 🧱 Fixed several misplaced, floating or illogically oriented lobby props.
- 🔊 Fixed excessive static and volume imbalance across camera and environmental audio.

- 🧪 Multiplayer authority and synchronization still require extended real two-client testing.
- 👁️ Some distant procedural rooms may still contain lighting or prop-placement inconsistencies.
- 🎥 Spectator behavior after an individual investigator becomes MIA is still under development.
- 🔄 Host migration during an active expedition is not yet considered fully production-ready.

Building the Unknown 0.04 1 July 2026

🧩 Reworked procedural generation — more varied rooms (pillar halls, sunken carpet pits, cubicles, red-lit rooms) and more of them the deeper you wander.
🧱 Removed the giant empty voids — common rooms are now subdivided into believable spaces instead of one endless open floor.
🏛️ Pillars now form wide "+" clusters, and 🕳️ sunken pits drop into the floor reusing the carpet, so they read as part of the building.
🔧 Fixed walls that could float above sunken pits — every wall now meets the floor it sits on.
⚙️ Fully redesigned Settings, grouped into clean cards: a complete Image / post-processing section (exposure, contrast, saturation, bloom, sharpness, ambient occlusion) plus audio, sensitivity, FOV, brightness and an Optimized / Realistic preset.
📺 Animated glitch title on the main menu — it briefly flickers into other games (S&box, Minecraft, GTA, DOOM…) and snaps back to Back&rooms, with a glitch sound effect and a real font per title. The pause (ESC) menu keeps the clean title.
🪂 Reworked the Game Start animation into a longer free-fall dive into Level 0, with a more realistic fall speed.
🚀 Performance pass — boots in the Optimized graphics preset by default (fewer shadow-casting lights, tuned view distance).

🗺️ Procedurally generated, infinite Backrooms-style map with distinct room types (common rooms, cubicles, corridors, pillar halls, pits, red-light rooms).
📉 Distance-based architectural degradation — the building starts intact and breaks down the deeper you go.
💡 Realistic shadowed lighting, fluorescent panels and gray liminal fog.
🖥️ Animated main menu with glitch title, news panel and full Settings.
🎚️ Optimized / Realistic graphics presets.
🪂 Reworked introductory Game Start animation.

🗺️ Movie-faithful generation — coherent and solid near spawn, gradually degrading with distance.
💡 Realistic shadowed lighting with 🌫️ gray liminal fog that hides the far edge of the world.
🚪 Bigger open rooms, rare corridors, no more endless identical halls.
⬛ Removed the black void in the distance.
🎚️ Settings with an Optimized / Realistic quality preset.
⎋ ESC opens the custom Back&rooms menu.

🚧 Some areas may appear unfinished or lack detail.
💡 Visual and lighting inconsistencies can still be found throughout the map.
🧭 Pillars, pits and red rooms only emerge deeper in, away from spawn, so they take some exploration to reach.