OUT NOW: The Traffic Management Update!

13 Jul 2022Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

Fellow officers,

Taking control over something is always the best way to approach things. And now, you can be the master of traffic - with your cones, barriers, gestures and much more. Wait, did I just spoiler things? I hope not! Welcome to The Traffic Management Update!

Now available to all players of Police Simulator: Patrol Officers!

Watch video on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Introducing: The Traffic Management Update

Safety first. We always pledged that. And that's why the Brighton Police Department invested heavily into new tools and guidelines to help all officers in their craft.

Check out the trunk of your patrol car - new goodies await you! Use your cones and barriers to block off individual lanes, entire streets, secure accident sites, or annoy other drivers! The latter one is a joke, please don't do that. Some of you did that in the beta and we received some complaints...

Use your commands!

Why do you have hands? Yes, to carry things from A to B. But more important: You can use them to perform gestures & issue commands!

With The Traffic Management Update, you receive a variety of options just for that!

You can now order...

NPCs to stop and wait
NPCs to walk to a different location and wait there
NPCs to not use the sidewalk at all
NPCs to turn around and use a different route
NPVs to wait
NPVs to turn around and use a different route
NPVs to reverse drive

We highly recommend using a combination of tools and manual commands to redirect traffic in a way that suits your present needs.

Mod your ELS!

Oh lord, never ever could we have anticipated the huge amount of mods you would create! It was clear to us that you really want to receive even more options to modify, personalize and optimize the game.

That's why we couldn't wait to introduce ELS Modding which enables you to adjust both sirens and blipping, customize all lights on all patrol cars, change the frequency, switch up the brightness and variate the colors.

Of course, we've both updated the official mod kit and written a guide to help you with your creations! Check it out here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2808924041

A smarter AI

While we give you a bunch of new options to direct traffic yourself, it was crucial to optimize the AI at the same time. We're shipping a bunch of AI improvements that include a smart reaction to sirens, a better approach to intersections, an advanced lane switching behavior... and more. If you want to take a closer look at the changes, we've created an article with a few example videos:

https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/997010/announcements/detail/3337742851856313742

Bug fixes, performance improvements & other new features

As with the last updates, the team put a tremendous focus on fixing a bunch of longstanding bugs. A huge 'thank you' to everyone that helped us in the last few weeks of beta! You can take a closer look at them in the patch notes further down below.

We also resolved a bunch of crashes - and improved performance plus framerates across the board. In addition, you can now adjust the spawn density of NPCs and NPVs while fleeing has become an official arrest reason!

Time to go on patrol again!

If you haven't seen it already, we released a new episode of #ONPATROL a few weeks ago! If you want to learn more about the development of this update and receive some exclusive behind-the-scenes insights, we can only recommend taking a look:

Watch video on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Save 30%!

For a very limited time, you can save 30% when purchasing PS:PO on our official website! Click here to learn more as this is by far our deepest discount yet 👀

Here are the official patch notes for The Traffic Management Update

Enough said - let's get to the patch notes!

Traffic Management

Added Traffic Cones: Players can now place traffic cones around the accidents and on the road in general, to make traffic around them more manageable
Added Road Barriers: Players can now place road barriers on roads and around accident sites, to make the NPVs take a different route
Added Hand Gestures: Players are able to order NPVs to stop driving, continue driving, drive in reverse and do a u-turn, which makes the player to be in control of the vehicle drivers around him
Giving orders to NPCs: The player now has the ability to make an NPC wait, or evacuate the area they are currently in to make the player be in control of any situation around him

Modding

Added a new modding system for ELS: Players now can change their police vehicle emergency lights and sounds for the emergency siren (can't wait to see what you'll create!)

AI & NPC Improvements

Improved the way NPCs and NPVs react to the police car with lights, emergency siren and lights & siren together
Improved traffic behavior at intersections
Added AI improvements which make the AI more human-like: NPCs react to the police cars sirens and actions around them, if there are gunshots or taser being deployed (instead of chilling like nothing has happened at all and that is just a regular occurence in their neighborhood, just like an old lady throwing flower pots at you just because you've been a biiiit louder when gaming, smh)
Changed the stopping distance between NPVs in traffic and on accident sites
Added more functionality to NPCs feet making their walking more realistic
Changed during beta: Improved NPV lane switching logic: NPVs will not block traffic when they want to switch lanes

Added the names of NPCs in Encounter reports to make it clearer what actions and NPCs caused loss or gain of the CP/SP (now you know who to blame)
Improved the handbook, added categories to make it easier to search through the handbook entries
Added warning pop-up messages after player changes the spawn density/range settings
Adjusted in-game credits (it's me!!)
Changed during beta: Added more intuition feedback to assist players in placing road blockers (thanks for the suggestion, Slayer!)

Gameplay

Players can now arrest someone for fleeing

Performance

Improvement of overall in-game performance

Balancing

Adjustment of NPC spawning range and density in multiplayer
Changed during beta: Increased the speed requirement between NPV and player car to 35 mph to register as an accident
Changed during beta: Increased the distance between player and accident site for despawning of vehicles
Changed during beta: Increased the distance between player and NPV for hand gestures: Now players can use hand gestures from a longer distance
Changed during beta: Another attempt at decreasing the frequency of wallet thefts (maybe it works out this time...)
Changed during beta: Increased amount of cones to carry from 2 to 4

Tutorials

Added new Tutorial "Radar-Gun" which explains how to use the Radar Gun
Added new Tutorial "Stun Gun" which explains when and how to deploy a taser
Added new Tutorial "Flashlight" which explains how to turn on your flashlight
Added new Tutorial "Driving with a broken Windshield" which explains when a driver should be detained for their broken windshield
Added new Tutorial "Open Patrol" which explains the basics of playing an open patrol shift
Added new Tutorial "High Crime Area" which explains to the player what is a high crime area in the game
Added new Tutorial "Fleeing" that explains what should be done, if an NPC is fleeing
Adjusted Gun tutorial text to make it clearer when it is allowed to use your gun during the shift

Happy Birthday!

Decorated the precincts to celebrate our one-year anniversary!

Bug Fixes
GAMEPLAY

Fixed a bug where a player would get stuck in a fleeing dialogue
Fixed issues where SP could get farmed
Fixed an issue for there being no CP loss after tasing an injured NPC
Fixed issue where a player could tase a driver NPC
Fixed an issue where Traffic Stop parking slots would not get properly filled by the NPVs
Fixed issue where a player would not be able to give orders to a detained NPC
Changed during beta: Fixed a bug where players could run around without closing the interaction wheel and could interact with other NPCs
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue where sometimes players got negative CP for justifiably asking NPC to evacuate the premises
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue where cones can not be placed in the same location twice
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue where placing cones too close to driving NPV breaks traffic
Changed during beta: Fixed picking up traffic cones grants incorrect amount
Changed during beta: Fixed a bug that caused the player to lose CP when giving traffic orders next to a wanted NPC
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue that made it impossible to take Traffic Cones from Patrol Car (it always said '0')

MULTIPLAYER

Fixed a bug where in Multiplayer the second player would see NPC outside of their vehicle
Fixed Multiplayer issue in which the second player was not able to interact with NPCs
Fixed an issue where there would be almost no NPCs during a Multiplayer session
Fixed patrol vehicles animations when both players interacted with it at the same time
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue in multiplayer where sometimes there could be no NPC spawning
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue where in multiplayer client did not see the animation when placing road blockers
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue when two players tried to enter the car at the same time, the client observed some graphical issues
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue where client was not able to reuse road barrier after picking it up
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue in multiplayer where the client legs do not move while sprinting + aiming cone
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue in multiplayer where the client gets stuck when ending shift while having any tool equipped
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue that caused the client to get stuck when multiple dialogues occured at the same time
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue that when the client enters a car from the co-driver's site and exits it again they are not able to interact with the car from the co-driver side

NPCs

Fixed an issue with floating NPCs
Fixed an issue where there were no NPCs in the holding cells
Fixed NPCs clipping into vehicles in accidents after they would step out of their vehicle
Changed during beta: Fixed stationary NPC standing on benches when drunk
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue where sitting NPC are floating above the bench
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue where driving NPC are standing

PATROL CAR & TRAFFIC CARS

Fixed bug where Utility vehicle could get damaged too much visually
Fixed NPV clipping and floating issues in accidents
Fixed a bug when a police officer crashed inside a vehicle in accident it would add more evidence (technically, that's realistic, but...)
Fixed issues where the cars number plates would float
Fixed NPVs reacting to the Emergency Siren while they were driving the opposite direction
Fixed NPV teleporting after using the police ladle
Changed during beta: Fixed NPVs brake abruptly after being pulled over without enough space to change lanes
Changed during beta: Fixed blipped NPVs stopping too quickly for a lane switch after intersections
Changed during beta: Fixed NPVs lane switching at a too steep angle
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue where sometimes NPV drive and clip into the player car
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue where sometimes NPV were spawning in player view
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue where traffic outside Historic downtown was not moving
Changed during beta: Fixed using police hand gestures while the NPV is driving in reverse make it disappear

WORLD & GRAPHICS

Fixed the ability to clip into various objects after opening the trunk of a police car
Fixed issues where objects at accident sites would be fallen over unnaturally
Fixed Emergency Lights not showing properly on low & medium video settings
Fixed issues where certain precinct walls had gaps
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue where changing to first-person view bugs our player character's face

Fixed a bug where video settings would not get saved
Fixed a UI overlap when a player would receive "Your First Shift" tutorial
Fixed tutorials not opening their correct handbook page after pressing "H"
Fixed an issue where video settings would not get applied after pressing "F" button
Fixed multiple text overlaps in UI
Fixed various translation issues
Changed during beta: Fixed an issue where map was showing the wrong district border

CONTROLS

Fixed loss of input after attempting to give directions to the NPCs

MISCELLANEOUS

Fixed bugs where uniforms would have graphical issues
Fixed various other minor bugs