Dear skippers,
Update B129 Preview 11 is now ready to download on the public testing branch.
This update brings fixes to the most frequently reported bugs and issues, as well as adds some general improvements. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more.
Changelog
Periscope:
- Update of the ship measurements presented in the identification book to better match the actual dimensions of the ships.
Crew management:
- Food stored on the u-boat is no longer consumed when the u-boat is stationing at a port.
- Improvements to crew pathfinding, that should result in less traffic jams on the u-boat, for example when a sailor sits on the bunk and blocks the passage.
- Fix: Crew members were becoming stuck in the toilet, if they tried to block a leak inside.
- Fix: It was possible to move in FPP to the u-boat's deck, order a dive and stay there.
- Fix: After loading certain game states, there was a permanent alarm enabled on the u-boat.
Graphics:
- Improved lighting in the skipper customization scene.
- Fix: After initiating an interaction with a lifeboat, camera was sometimes appearing inside a nearby ship's hull.
- Regression fix: One of the haircuts was having gaps when viewed from a distance.
- Regression fix: NPC crew on C3 ships was moving outside the ship.
Optimizations:
- Optimizations to crew pathfinding, that should slightly improve the performance, when a high time compression is being used.
- Removed a per-frame memory allocation, that was affecting performance.
- During loading, there is now an increased time budget for various background tasks, that should result in a slightly faster loading time and a decreased need to continue some of these tasks after the loading is complete, which usually affects the performance.
- Increased the memory buffer used for uploading textures to the graphics card. It should slightly decrease the time it takes to load the game from the main menu, decrease framerate drops caused by background loading and possibly fix a related crash to desktop issue. This change costed an additional 40 MB of VRAM.
- Various other optimizations.
User interface:
- Improvements to how survivors are released. A list of survivors present on the ship is now opened along with specified rewards, to claim the rewards from there.
- There is now a warning on the screen that suggests to dive deeper, when player tries to use the hydrophone from the surface.
- It's now possible to manually enter a number of items to move between the storages instead of using a slider.
- Fix: Gun UI was sometimes displaying a fractional ammunition count.
- Fix: Survivors could be moved off the ship in a port without actually releasing them for a reward.
- Fix: After a milk cow was sunk by the enemy, it was still being displayed in the HQ. Note: We are going to add a notification that will inform about supply ships sunk by the enemy soon.
- Fix: Pulsating glow around mission markers was behaving erratically, if a high time compression was being used and there was an active mission with a time limit.
- Fix: There is now a scroll present near the officer portraits when a torpedo launchers UI is open and it takes some of the portraits space.
- Fix: It was possible to select survivors from sunk ships for various interactions and for HQ tasks.
- Fix: Improved positioning of various tooltips to make them appear near the hovered UI controls, instead of appearing on top of them.
- Fix: Auto-save settings were changing after loading another game state.
- Fix: Recently added button for changing the depth steers mode was sometimes not present in the TAB menu.
World simulation:
- Fix: During the patrol summary, penalties were assigned for sinking neutral ships in the enemy convoys - it wasn't intended.
- Fix: Swiss rubber transports had empty cargo holds.
- Regression fix: Path to the docking point at Bergen couldn't be plotted.
- Regression fix: Wrecks of ships were not spawning, if they were sunk at deep water.
Balance:
- Decreased ventilation capacity from 50 kg to 40 kg to match the weight of a full stack of potassium absorbers.
- Potassium absorbers are now consumed more slowly, but they are also less efficient at refreshing the air inside the u-boat.
- Fix: Decreased oxygen consumption on the dynamic travel system.
Localization:
- Complete Russian localization provided by Hard, based on his Workshop mod "RU advanced".
- French localization update by FvJ.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
Map:
- Fix: After performing an air reconnaissance and reloading the game state, one of the icons that mark each of the port defences would reappear in a slightly different location.
Interactions:
- There is now a different description displayed after searching the cargo hold, if the ship carries a military cargo.
- Fix: Items selected for the team after initiating an interaction were disappearing later, if they were manually equipped before starting the interaction.
- Fix: It was possible to start an interaction with a shot down aircraft for only one time. The button was stopping to respond later on.
- Fix: If a ship turns out to carry tea, but documents stated something else, there is now a different flow of the story that doesn't ignore this fact.
- Fix: After searching an abandoned ship, there was a mention of a sailor from the crew being present during the search.
AI:
- Warships behaviour is now improved when they attack non-submarine targets.
Physics:
- Fix: Probable fix for the issue where damage was inflicted to the conning tower, while the u-boat was travelling at the periscope depth in a shallow area and 140x time compression was being used. More testing is needed to confirm this fix.
Modding notices:
- There is now a logging added during story sequences / interactions, that should make potential modding of them easier to debug.
General:
- It's no longer possible to undock from a port with survivors on board.
- Added a new auto-save setting for saving the game state before leaving the game.
- Fix: Depth displayed on the map was sometimes positive for the sea, if it was beyond the sight range.
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the log files from the user reports.
Yours,
DWS