Hey Parcel Inspectors! I've been working away on a bunch of fixes, optimisations and quality of life changes to improve the latest "New Warehouse" update. Thanks for all the messages and feedback as always, it's been super helpful for helping me understand the pain points in the game and to shape future updates! Here's a list of all the stuff in this update:
⭐ Quality of Life
You can now use Right Mouse Button to cycle backwards through the Country Diverter screens
Added the Country Calendar as a sidebar tab in the Inspection Tablet
Reduced the tier you unlock Pallet Build Mode to Tier 11
Reduced the tier you unlock Auto Pauser Conveyors to Tier 15, and reduced their price to $30k
Fixed collisions on a bunch of the undersides of conveyors, so picking up parcels that fall below them is easier (joiners, splitters, diverters)
📊 Performance and Optimisation
I've been working on a bunch of stuff behind the scenes to improve performance and FPS in-game. There's are dozens of changes and a lot more to it than just this list, but in summary for those interested:
Various changes to reduce unnecessary CPU calls on the game thread (changes primarily to conveyor belt logic)
Various changes to reduce draw calls and VRAM usage (optimisation updates to labels, parcels, conveyor arrows, and upgrades)
Moved a bunch of mesh objects (conveyor upgrade light bars, conveyor directional arrows, etc.) to a more lightweight decal-based render system. This does slightly change the visuals, but I think it's well worth it for the performance gains
Reduced stuttering when looking in the direction of each warehouse respectively by more sensibly culling hidden objects
🛠️ Fixes
Fixed the "parcel teleportation" bug, where parcels would sometimes teleport between completely disconnected, and far away, conveyor belts
Fixed the "I can't place a conveyor in this cell even though it's empty" bug by checking explicitly for conveyors in each cell on game load, and resetting them if there is nothing there
Fixes pallets being pushed through the floor when opening items on top of them upstairs
Updated the country calendar display to better indicate that you can switch to a non-random version
Immediately remove any spawned "conveyors" which are invisible to the player, clearing some instances of the grid system claiming empty floor space cannot have conveyors placed on it
Fixed a bug causing cells occasionally not allowing conveyors to be placed in them
Fixed auto pausers allowing other conveyors to be placed on top
Fixed texture issues on Speedway conveyors
Fixed shop unlocks pop up not appearing when unlocking the new warehouse
🔍 What I'm currently working on
Signs for Storage Racks
Faster buy/sell tooling so the process of taking down a full system is less laborious
Clear doors button to submit partially filled doors at the end of the day
Making it easier to both upgrade and paint a large quantity of conveyors
Further late game optimisations
Fixes to various bugs reported by the community
⚠️ Mod Users - Please Read
If you find any bugs in the game, primarily regarding countries, broken cells, invalid submissions, or anything of that description, please consider disabling or updating any mods you have enabled. Most mods should work fine still, but many mods made for the previous version(s) of Parcel Sim are not compatible with the New Warehouse update, and often cause things to break in weird ways. Mods are not officially supported as of yet and so the game can get rather confused when a mod incorrectly handles logic that has changed between updates. Thanks!
Also, if you missed them, the following is the list of features/fixes from the three updates last week:
You can now disable the randomised weekly Country Calendar (Options -> Gameplay). This will instead used a fixed Country Calendar which has a mix of Country availability throughout the week, but will not change between weeks. (This is pending translation, I just wanted to get it released for now.)
Added a very small save file backup system. Each time the game saves (sleep, exit, autosave) it now copies the previous version of your save to a SaveX_Backup.sav file. Can be restored by simply renaming the file,
Fixed the following achievements not being properly unlocked: reach day 30, unlock new warehouse, reach max tier for new warehouse
Elevators can now go down as well as up
Added a "None" option to the Country Diverter Conveyor
You can now scroll through the selected item in the pallet build mode 'inventory'
Added a sell items container outside the new warehouse
Made the warehouse door harder to walk into by widening the entry path, moving fences and adding a light above the door
Fixed an issue where you could unlock the pallet build mode achievement without actually using it
Added some missing translations
The shop basket now remembers which delivery destination you had selected between saves/sleeping
Fixed "Missing String Table Entry" from appearing on Country Diverters
If you have any more issues or feature requests you want to share, please do continue to use the in-game reporting tool (F7), the Discord server, community forums, or just reply to this post!
ℹ️ If you have issues and want to roll back to the previous version of the game, right click Parcel Simulator in Steam -> Properties -> Game Versions & Betas, and use the "previous-version" branch.
❤️ Thank you for 2500+ Steam Reviews!
As always, reviews are super appreciated and really help with understanding the pain-points in Parcel Sim as well as showing the game to more players on Steam! Please do consider leaving me one if you haven't already, thanks!
🌐 Links
Here are some links to social platforms where you can connect with me:
Thanks,
-- Dan
Screenshot credits: @gremlinlily