Fellow Officers,
our team is currently hard at work on the next big update: The Quality-of-Life Update, currently scheduled to be released at the end of July – with an Open Beta launching earlier.
Today, we want to share a quick update about the current state of development, how things are progressing, and a first look at some of the work we have already finished.
Let's take a closer look!
More Convenience
As we have previously announced, the next update is centered around making your overall gameplay experience smoother, more convenient, and more reliable.
Over the past few months, we've conducted several community surveys to better understand how we can improve the game in various aspects - from minor inconveniences to major revisions. Thank you so much for your participation!
One of the features being introduced with The Quality-of-Life Update is the ability to finally skip conversations – so you won't have to listen to citizens complaining that their fine is too expensive when you're in a rush. Based on our own experience… well, this will speed up things quite a bit.
We’re also resolving several issues on the Highway: Vehicles will no longer spawn in front of accidents and some graphical issues with trees and grass will be improved. In addition, multiple crashes related to Assistance Vehicles have been fixed to ensure greater game stability – and we'll enable the option to switch to a free rotating camera on foot!
Further improvements are still in progress, and we will announce more details shortly before release.
Code of Conduct Points
We’re also refactoring the entire Conduct Points Systems to allow for greater reliability in the future. This way, we want to ensure no unintended loss of Conduct Points can happen anymore as this has previously been the case under a few circumstances. The team is currently still busy working on the overhaul, but we’re already very optimistic about the improvements!
What’s in your bag?
Apparently, a new supermarket has opened and the citizens of Brighton will carry around multiple new items inside their bags – no worries, they’re still addicted to good-ol’ damp raisins. The screenshot above shows just a few of them!
What about Ninja Stars? Previously, we have announced that they will finally be classified as an illegal item. That is indeed still the intention, but work on the underlying system still needs a little bit more time. At this moment, we’re still not completely confident that they will make it into the next update – but hopefully soon afterwards!
Brighter Lights
You all love the new blue-and-red lights, but want to have them even brighter? No worries, we’ve put some touches on the entire system to improve the lighting – primarily concerning the front lights.
What about spotlights?
In one of the most recent updates, we have temporarily removed the spotlights on all patrol cars as we plan to ship them as a proper gadget in the future. This way, you can enable them during your shift independently from the Matrix Sign and also have an additional customization option.
However, we’re currently not confident enough that we will be able to ship the spotlights as a gadget just in time for The Quality-of-Life Update. As we still need to put some finishing touches on them, we currently estimate that they will ship a little bit later – but definitely as soon as possible.
No more stranded NPCs
After you helped a fellow citizen who’s involved in a car accident, previously it would result in their car being towed and them becoming, well, stranded. As a service-oriented Police Department, we could not longer tolerate this and instructed our Tow Trucks to take care of the citizens – by providing them with a passenger ride out of courtesy.
The video above shows the new mechanic in action – which will become especially useful on the Highway!
A new Patrol Car
We heard your feedback loud and clear: A new patrol car is coming, available as an optional paid DLC and for free to everyone who owns the brand-new Season Pass!
Say hello to the Adventurer Police Vehicle, resembling one of the most popular and common police vehicles in the United States. Whether you're patrolling the streets of Brighton or going offroad in the wider state of Franklin, the APV offers a truly unique experience.
Even more options!
We’re also pleased to expand the Catpaw Skin Collection with four additional liveries – this time inspired by New York, Georgia, Los Angeles and West Virginia – and once again created in close collaboration with ricobrzenska and Kittyraww who provided some fantastic support!
These beautiful skins will be included for free with The Quality-of-Life Update inside the garage. Above, you can see them being lined up on the parking lot of our development build – the implementation only happened a few moments ago 😉
Some final words
Next to general gameplay improvements, we’re also highly focused on once again fixing as many bugs as possible. Our team is currently still busy tackling dozens of bugs while our QA is already verifying claimed fixes in parallel. More details will follow closer to release!
Please keep reporting issues that you encounter, the more detailed and reproducible the problems are the easier they are for us to address.
Our experienced group of community beta testers will also been given early access to the development build very soon, and they are already providing a lot of feedback towards the final version. For the first time in almost two years, there will also be a public beta again: Very soon, all of you will be granted access to the latest build on a dedicated beta branch. You can find more information about that in our last blog post.
Thank you so much for your support and we hope you’re already excited for The Quality-of-Life Update when it launches this July!
Your Police Simulator Team