Cepheus Protocol HQ

The new map is finally in active testing, and evacuation is getting very close behind it. San Francisco North is now playable internally in an early blockout state. It’s massive compared to everything before, with long travel times, dense street grids, and tons of viable base locations. Right now it’s being used for co-op playtests to dial in pathfinding, performance, and overall flow before it’s...

This update pushes the game closer to full civilian evacuation, with major systems finally coming together. New civilian variants are being finalized and added, including scientists and security units, with player feedback directly shaping their design. These will start appearing in gameplay very soon as the team prepares for full-scale testing. Balancing is getting a serious pass, especially for...

This update completely changes how you manage civilians, with new systems that can help you survive—or tear your run apart. The new evacuation system introduces transport buses, overpopulation mechanics, and autonomous security teams you can hire and equip. Managing flow between zones now matters, and poor planning can lead to chaos fast. Militia uprisings are now a real threat. Kill too many civi...

A massive shift is coming to how you survive and control the city, and it changes everything about mid to late game. Civilian evacuation is getting a full overhaul with intake systems, zone routing, and automated transport. Buses, depots, and population flow now define your strategy, letting you move thousands efficiently while managing capacity and safety. New and reworked maps are rolling in, in...

Civilian evacuation is finally coming—and it’s set to reshape how every match plays. The new system introduces full zone-to-zone population control, letting you move, contain, or eliminate civilians depending on your strategy. Buildings now matter more than ever, with purge and condemn mechanics directly affecting reputation and long-term stability. DNA gameplay is being overhauled with drops, col...

A massive new gameplay system is coming, and it completely changes how you fight the outbreak. Calypso is nearly ready for release after a public playtest exposed several pathfinding and gameplay issues. The level itself is functionally complete with dense hills, cities, and defensive chokepoints designed to create new base-building strategies and flanking routes. Once the remaining issues are fix...

This episode focuses on major gameplay changes that reshape how matches flow from the opening minutes to the late game. A new dedicated balance lead has joined the team to focus entirely on weapon impact, doctrine costs, and time-to-kill across the entire progression of a match. The goal is to make infantry builds viable into the mid and late game so players aren’t forced into armor or air strateg...

This week’s update changes how matches flow from the first minutes all the way into late game, with a major rebalance to pacing, base planning, and multiplayer performance. Treasure Island and Half Moon Bay got important zone updates, including redrawn layouts and higher turret limits per zone. The goal is to open up base building again while keeping defenses tied to smarter placement instead of e...

This week’s update adds powerful new ways to control difficulty while laying the groundwork for bigger systems coming soon. The biggest addition is expanded custom game options. You can now control the infection spread multiplier and override the infected attack interval with minimum and maximum timers. Want a relaxed run where the infection spreads slowly, or constant pressure with attacks every...

Summary: Saving is finally in your hands, and it unlocks the fastest way for the team to squash the nastiest bugs. This episode starts with the new save system rollout across all branches, what’s still on the to-do list, and the plan to wrap the remaining issues by Monday and Tuesday so saving feels rock solid. Next, it’s all about vehicle pathfinding. A community Discord session turned into a liv...

A dev stream focused on two big near-term upgrades: an early save/load system (currently via console commands) and a major vehicle pathfinding overhaul aimed at getting trucks and armor to drive like humans instead of bulldozing entire city blocks. The host demonstrates saving in-game (including screenshot-based save thumbnails), explains multiplayer limitations (host-only saving, loading from the...

Episode summary: After a short hiatus, the dev team returns with a rapid-fire status update on what’s shipped, what’s broken, and what’s coming next. They recap the January build flip and the launch of a deeper doctrine tree (including airstrike support like A-10/AC-130 and gas canisters), then address the biggest immediate gap: the in-progress save system, currently being tested to ensure all new...

Summary: This episode dives deep into the massive rebuild and overhaul of vehicle systems, from fixing longstanding physics bugs—like tanks endlessly reversing—to laying the groundwork for more realistic formations and interactions. The devs share how new logistics systems are reshaping supply chains with fuel, ammo, and repair variants, and walk through the first iteration of the targeting comput...

Episode summary This episode is an unfiltered deep dive into the hardest remaining system in the rebuild: vehicle pathfinding and convoy behavior. Robert walks through days of live playtesting, debugging, and iteration on the Ajax, Striker, and Mule, showing exactly where vehicles succeed, where they fail, and why that last 10–20% of polish is the most time-consuming part of development. The team...

Episode summary This episode is a deep dive into one of the rebuild’s hardest problems: making vehicles work reliably in dense, living cities. Robert and Derek walk through the current state of the Ajax, breaking down why vehicle AI is so difficult at scale and what’s actively being done to fix it. From higher-speed handling and smarter braking to predictive turn logic, obstacle detection “antenna...

Episode Summary:This episode is a massive dev drop packed with updates from the last two weeks. The team walks through the ongoing overhaul of vehicle systems, focusing on the Ajax transport. Derek covers the migration of vehicle AI from Blueprints to C++, including new pathfinding behaviors, formation syncing with infantry, braking logic, and adaptive driving based on terrain. Vehicles now stop s...

Episode summary This episode is a deep development check-in focused on restoring legacy maps while pushing core systems forward. The team details ongoing work on Treasure Island—collision fixes, navigation cleanup, removable objects, and visual polish—while setting expectations for Calypso’s return in the coming days. Calypso’s remaining work centers on zone borders, helicopter navigation, tree re...

Robert delivers a dense, no-nonsense progress update covering two weeks of rapid development, bug triage, and content rollout. Treasure Island is now fully playable, serving as the foundation for the larger Bay Area world, while Alcatraz continues to receive structural and visual polish. Calypso—a fan-favorite legacy map—is being ported back in as a compact, corridor-driven scenario, giving player...

Episode summary: Robert and Michael walk through a packed week of development focused on making combat feel fairer, clearer, and more satisfying—especially under pressure. Michael breaks down a new “kill cone” concept that rewards aggressive play by boosting damage at close range, then shares a full weapon range pass (shotguns through snipers) designed to make each class feel distinct instead of “...

🎙️ Episode Summary:This week’s update is a no-holds-barred breakdown of Pandemic mode’s evolution, centered around the rebuild of Treasure Island and a total systems overhaul. Robert walks through the new layered rollout strategy for map expansion, beginning with a playable slice of Treasure Island set to launch around Halloween. With Unreal Engine 5’s precision fixes, the team can finally realize...

This week’s deep dive delivers a massive progress update on the overhaul of the Pandemic mode, featuring an all-out push to bring full replayability back online. Robert and Michael walk through newly added helicopters—including the Apache, VTOL, Merlin, and Osprey—complete with functional weapons, revised helipad mechanics, and incoming fixes to air-to-ground UI and landing validation. The team sh...

Episode Summary:This week’s episode is a deep dive into the latest updates for Pandemic mode, focused on the evolving map rollout, AI behavior, and helicopter mechanics. The team walks through the layered reintroduction of major locations like Treasure Island, Angel Island, and Alcatraz, emphasizing a staggered approach to avoid overwhelming both devs and players. There's a detailed breakdown...

Episode Summary:This week’s deep-dive walks through major updates to helicopter systems and the expanding pandemic mode. Robert, the project director, demonstrates new helicopter features like garrisoning, virtual interiors, unit rappelling, and multiplayer syncing—all while grappling with quirky bugs, AI edge cases, and polish work. The team also previews operator integration, showcasing players...

Summary:This week’s update dives deep into the return of Pandemic mode and the intensive push to make it co-op-ready by next week. Robert walks through key development milestones, from redesigned infection systems and new AI logic to hands-on live playtesting with players. The team showcases progress on rebuilding San Francisco North, transforming Treasure Island with real-world accuracy, and depl...

Episode Summary: This week's CERC HQ dives deep into the latest overhaul of the helicopter AI and the foundational work on the Pandemic game mode. The dev team details how helicopters now dynamically form protective bubbles around infantry, throttle to match formation speed, and navigate urban environments with improved object avoidance—all while still ironing out bugs like formation desync an...