Hi everyone,

a week has passed since the release of the public beta, and we are genuinely thankful for the overwhelmingly positive reception you have afforded us. Thank you!
Of course, this being a beta, a lot of work still lies before us, so let's get right to it: the second quality of life update is now live on Steam.

Ladder climbing

We have received a lot of feedback from players struggling with ladders in the game, and to some extent that is down to our failure of properly explaining how immersive ladder climbing is supposed to work.

To alleviate this issue, we have updated the HUD hints for ladder climbing. We also added a visual indicator that shows the currently active dismount point - once you see the indicator, simply let go of the ladder, and you will be safely teleported to the highlighted spot.

Furthermore, the search for a viable dismount point has been tweaked to work more reliably, and regular stick movement controls and jump have been disabled while holding onto ladders - use of these controls caused players to fall and was never intended.

If you have trouble even grabbing onto some of the ladders, try to grab slightly in front of the ladder - due to the way that ladders are implemented in the base game, the grabbable volume is actually slightly in front of the ladders (and, in rare cases, a bit disconnected from the visible ladder).

Finally, if you are using stick-based climbing, you can use your triggers on ladders to safely mount and dismount them.

Rocket launcher

Admittedly, the rocket launcher is one of our lesser polished weapons right now, and its complete lack of indication of fire readiness caused players to struggle a lot with reloading the rocket launcher. To make things a little clearer, there is now a primitive animation that will show the rocket going into the launcher on successful reloads. There is now also a distinct sound effect for reloading. Finally, the guiding laser will turn off after a fired rocket exploded and will only turn back on once the launcher has been reloaded, signalling its readiness.

This is by no means the final form of the rocket launcher, but we hope that these changes will make using it a little easier in the meantime.

New launcher

A small percentage of players was having issues with launching the game through the hlvr.bat launcher. To fix this, the game now ships with a dedicated launcher. If you might changes to the hlvr.bat file in the past (e.g. to adjust the window resolution), these changes will no longer be active if you launch the game through Steam. Instead, either add relevant parameters to the Steam launch options (e.g. -w 1920 -h 1080), or launch the hlvr.bat manually.

Miscellaneous changes and fixes

• Slightly expanded the area from which you can grab new ammo over your shoulders.
  
• Slightly tweaked the trigger conditions for quick reload so that the reload should trigger more easily and consistently.
  
• Potential fix for the "Zombie Chopper" achievement unlocking for anyone completing Ravenholm: if you got the achievement without actually fulfilling its conditions, you know you owe it to yourself to do it for real now :)
  
• Potential fix for the "Hack Attack" achievement not recording any progress.
  
• Stop missiles from exploding with items held in the off-hand. Due to the low resolution collision detection, this could cause premature explosions even when the items were not held in front of the barrel.
  
• Implemented Alyx-style quick weapon swap: if you quickly press the weapon selection button, it will alternate between the empty hand and your previously selected weapon.
  
• Prevent weapons from continuing to fire if the menu was brought up while the trigger was pressed, and then the trigger was released before closing the menu.
  
• Uneqip any weapons held in the off hand if the dominant hand setting is changed.
  
• New reload sound effects for pistol, revolver, shotgun and RPG.
  
• Gordon's bare hands are now properly cut off at the wrists.
  
• Fixed fire/reload animation for the crossbow.
  
• Added a HUD hint for the first few times when crouch is activated to remind the player how to exit crouch.
  
• Added preliminary hand poses for the SMG magazine during reloads.
  

Known issues

We have a collection of known issues and possible workarounds that you may wish to check out if you have issues with the game: Known issues