Hey folks! Time for a quick progress update on the game. Things are moving forward, though not without a few "buts" along the way.
Here’s the lowdown:

1. More Updates Than Expected
   Turns out this "multi-update" is growing bigger than I’d planned. What started as a tweak snowballed into a full-on overhaul—classic gamedev, right?
2. Level Loading: Fixed! (Mostly)
   As teased last time, I rewrote how levels load. Good news: it works! Instead of heavy standalone levels, everything’s now split into lightweight sub-levels (Unreal’s streaming levels). Smoother transitions, less lag—win!
3. The Save System Tango
   Of course, changing level loading meant reworking saves too. The game now has to track every active sub-level when you hit "save." Took some head-scratching, but it’s stable now.
4. NavMesh Nightmares… Solved!
   Ran into cursed NavMesh bugs where NPCs forgot how to pathfind. Solution? A trusty 3 a.m. YouTube tutorial. Never underestimate the power of a 10-minute video saving your sanity.
5. Ambient Sound
   Added that missing ambient audio layer (wind/birds whispers). It’s crazy how much moodier everything feels now.
6. Menu + First Level = One Shared World
   Big structural shift: The menu and first level now share the same environment. No more loading a duplicate world! But—oddly, the game’s final build size increased despite lighter individual levels. Still investigating why. 🤔
7. The "Is This Thing Loaded?" Checker
   Since Unreal loads assets async, I built a helper class to verify everything in a sub-level (scripts, NPCs, etc.) is truly ready before gameplay starts. No more half-baked levels!
8. GitLab? More Like Git-Lost
   Somehow, the project detached from GitLab. I’ve ignored it to focus on updates (priorities…), but I’ll reconnect it soon for proper version control.