Update: B129 Preview 15Dear skippers,
The update B129 Preview 15 is now complete and may be downloaded on the public testing branch.
Since there were quite many changes in this update, we prepared a short summary. We hope that you will enjoy the new additions!
Summary of the changesOptimizationThe main goal for this update was to perform certain technical maintenance tasks that we wanted to implement for quite a long time. We touched every file present in the game and restructured the game in a more optimal way.
Thanks to this, UBOAT occupies 6 GB less space on the disk, as well as uses up less RAM than before.
Campaign setupSince there are quite many realism settings to deal with during the campaign setup, we felt that we should make this experience easier to go through for the new players, which are not yet familiar with the meaning of everything present at this screen.
For this reason we added an animated selection of realism and crew management complexity.
Volumetric lightingThere is now a volumetric lighting support in UBOAT. It's a fog-like effect that is most intense near the light sources as they light up particulate matter in the air. It's a quite mood building addition in our opinion.
Food managementAs UBOAT developed, it became capable of fitting more play-styles. For players, that are not enjoying complexities of the crew management, we added a new realism setting to disable food management in the game.
When this setting is disabled, everything food-related is removed from the game. Food may still appear inside the cargo holds of NPC ships, but it won't play any useful role aside from that.
Stable releaseWe intend to release update B129 on the stable branch soon. We are still hunting for one crash issue and also want to ensure that everything is in place after technical changes in Preview 15. We ask for just a bit more patience.
ChangelogGraphics:- Added volumetric lighting support for point lights. This effect is most noticeable inside the u-boat.
- Improvements to the water shader & calibration pass for the overall water look.
- Further improvements to the generic merchant ships models and textures.
- Small improvements to u-boat interior models and textures.
- New hair shader that is faster and works more consistently with post-processing effects like the ambient occlusion and contact shadows (known issue: due to this change, the NPC ship captain's beard is sometimes blurring during merchant ship inspections - we are investigating this issue).
- Added outlines for the crewmen after hovering them with a mouse.
- Improvements to the fog effect, especially near the horizon.
- Fix: Fixed a very old bug related to the texture streaming feature, that was making certain textures to appear very blurry and never be loaded in a better quality, even if the camera was very close.
- Fix: If contact shadows were enabled for all lights in the settings, there were various shadow artifacts present around light bulbs.
- Fix: Main menu lighting was different (subjetively: worse) after leaving an ongoing game to menu when compared to the state of it after visiting the menu for the first time.
- Fix: Water wasn't being lit by some components of the ambient lighting.
- Fix: Map skins weren't correctly loaded in some cases, if the skin was changed during a gameplay. It was loaded correctly after reseting the game.
- Fix: Improved lens flares occlusion by geometry in the scene.
- Fix: Generic merchant ships no longer appear completely white for a short time after spawning in the scene.
- Regression fix: Flashing lights in the weather station reconnaissance scene.
Optimizations:- Optimized game files structure for smaller disk space, less memory usage and faster loading times. Game is now smaller by 6 GB on the disk after installation. Memory usage and loading time decreases due to this change depend on the used quality settings.
- Main shader performance optimizations.
- Major memory usage optimizations. Some of the most substantial changes:
• Shadowmaps now occupy 2x less space in the graphics card memory.
• 24k world map texture is loaded only, if the texture quality setting is set to maximum - otherwise a 12k texture is used.
• Optimized quality of certain less important sound effects.
Campaign setup:- The campaign setup in the main menu was reworked with animated preset buttons for the realism and crew management. The old slider for selecting one dimensional complexity was removed and replaced with a static realism bar.
- Added a possibility to disable food management from the game during the campaign setup.
User interface:- Changed "Paper-like" map skin name to "Paper-like (Default)" and changed the old "Default" skin to "Colourful".
- Added explanation what happened after enabling a free camera mode with the instruction on how to disable it.
- Added an alternative sound effect that is played in the main menu after clicking various UI elements.
- Added a warning when player is trying to load a game state that was saved with a different mod setup than the current one.
- Added a dedicated icon for the third time compression button in the dynamic travel system. Tweaked the tooltips for all time compression buttons in the dynamic travel system.
- Fix: After researching T5 torpedoes the summary text in the HQ was missing.
- Fix: UI issues after opening HQ screen from the device manual use mode.
- Fix: Sea name in the upper left part of the UI was often not updating after entering a different sea.
- Fix: The scenario selection screen was empty for a short period of time after clicking the "New game" button in the main menu. There is now "Loading..." notification instead.
- Fix: Scene sound effects were played at their normal volume levels instead of being quiet after entering the "Management" view and switching to any tab aside from the "Crew".
- Fix: It's no longer possible to have "Any" fields in the schedule of sailor shifts. It's allowed only for the officers.
- Fix: After finishing a phase of multi-phase campaign objective (like "Battle of the Atlantic") the progress bar was disappearing under the campaign objective's photography on the map.
- Fix: Hardcore aiming mode wasn't counted into the final realism value.
Simulation:- Fix: Improvements to FAT and LUT torpedo programs.
AI:- Fix: NPC ships were remaining in the alarmed state, if they were having any enemy wreck site in the sight range.
Missions:
- Collision damage is now disabled during tutorial missions.
- There is now a dedicated notification for events that make the current mission impossible to complete, for example if a friendly u-boat that called for help was sunk by the enemy.
- Fix: There was a missing arrow during tutorial mission #2 that should point the map button.
- Fix: Errors appearing in the log in large numbers after loading a game state saved during certain tutorial missions.
- Fix: Gold recovery campaign assignment wasn't available for taking at La Spezia, but at quite distant ports like Bergen and Wilhelmshaven.
Localization:- Major Chinese localization update by SparrowSHEN.
- Russian localization update by Hard.
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.
- German localization update by Ruby.
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- French localization update by FvJ and Placebo.
- Fix: Improvements to the Chinese font.
Crew management:- Fix: After preparing an extensive crew schedule that had most sailors assigned by name to shifts or to the officers, the shift changes were sometimes not working.
- Fix: Officers could become duplicated in some cases involving story sequences. One reproduction was to send them on an inspection, leave the area without closing the story view and select an option to go back to the u-boat.
General:- Added integration with the rich presence feature in Steam.
- Fix: The port officers were not returning to their old spots after a port was attacked by the planes, if they hidden inside the warehouse.
- Fix: It's no longer possible to send a diver to a ship that is still sinking.
- Fix: Music was becoming quieter by 50% after each load of a game state saved on a map.
- Fix: Errors appearing in the log and slightly affecting performance, after leaving the game to the main menu, when there was an active story sequence (for example a merchant ship inspection).
- Fix: Undetected units weren't receiving damage from most damage sources.
- Fix: It's no longer possible for the auto-save to be made during the mission summary sequence or when a free camera is enabled.
Yours,
DWS