# Change Log
This update focused primarily on improving respawns, round transitions, streaming reliability, and overall multiplayer stability.
## Death and Respawn Fixes
A number of changes were made to make eliminations and respawns more reliable:
* Added recovery handling for cases where a player temporarily loses their character after elimination.
* Added a five-second fallback recovery spawn when a valid character is not assigned correctly.
* Prevented duplicate spawn events from causing players to redeploy more than once.
* Prevented eliminated players from being accidentally redeployed during the same round.
* Team assignments are now preserved during delayed and recovery spawns.
* Improved elimination event handling to prevent the same character from being subscribed multiple times.
* Added timeout protection when routing players back to the lobby so they cannot remain stuck indefinitely.
* Removed the previous sequential respawn delay, which could cause increasingly long waits when several players were respawning.
* Added additional recovery handling for players who reach the lobby without a valid character.
## Round Transition Improvements
Round transitions have been reworked to make the move from one battle to the next feel much faster and smoother.
* All 48 combat spawn pads are now configured for gameplay only.
* All 12 pregame spawn pads are now reserved for the pregame phase.
* Removed older logic that temporarily disabled combat spawn pads during configuration checks.
* Round resets now make greater use of Fortnite's native spawn system.
* Spawn behavior was adjusted so players can remain positioned correctly during round transitions.
* Post-game spawning still returns players to the pregame area.
* Players who are no longer participating continue into spectating as intended.
The goal of these changes is to eliminate, or at least greatly reduce, the brief return to the lobby that could occur between rounds. Players should instead transition much more directly into the next active arena.
## HUD and Announcements
The round transition messaging has also been simplified.
* Removed the **"NEXT BATTLE: <POI>"** announcement.
* Neutral transition and round-result messages remain.
* The next battle location is no longer revealed before the round begins.
This keeps the next arena a surprise until players actually enter it.
## Streaming and Loading Improvements
The map received a larger streaming audit to identify anything that could cause arenas, devices, or player spawns to load incorrectly.
The audit checked:
* 3,526 actor descriptors.
* All 48 combat spawn pads.
* All 12 pregame spawn pads.
* 8 legacy team spawn pads.
* Gameplay managers and round-control devices.
* Item granters.
* Teleporters.
* Cameras.
* Island Settings.
* The main Verse controller.
No invalid actor bounds were found during the audit, and all tested spawn pads had valid bounds and were configured to remain available when needed.
Several gameplay-critical devices were also changed so they remain loaded regardless of player location, including:
* Frostline storm controller.
* Neon storm controller.
* Wilds storm controller.
* Sunset storm controller.
* Team 1 starting barrier.
* Team 2 starting barrier.
* Team 3 starting barrier.
* Team 4 starting barrier.
* Team selection battle countdown.
* Private-session portal.
The surrounding buildings, terrain, scenery, and other environmental assets will continue using spatial streaming to help keep memory usage under control.
Only devices that are important to active gameplay are being forced to remain loaded. This allows the Verse systems to communicate with them even when players are currently fighting in another part of the map.
## Testing
Testing has included fresh UEFN sessions with two connected players.
So far:
* Both players successfully returned to gameplay after Round 1.
* Team assignments remained intact when entering the following round.
* Server logs were checked for Verse errors, timeouts, and failed device references.
* No Verse build diagnostics were reported after the latest changes.
* Round 1 successfully sent the first player directly into combat using the new spawn configuration.
* Streaming and loading behavior has been checked after the latest device changes.
The main remaining test is another complete two-player session on a published/private version of the island using both Switch accounts.
That test will verify that the respawn recovery system, direct round transitions, arena streaming, team persistence, and map loading all work correctly together outside of the editor.
## Current Status
The project currently builds successfully with **zero reported Verse diagnostics**.
The major systems are working during editor testing, and the next priority is completing another full multiplayer test on the published/private island to confirm that the changes behave the same way in a live Fortnite session.