UBOAT submarine simulator UBOOT

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 13
Tue, 13 July 2021



Dear skippers,

We just finished the next update - B129 Preview 13. It's ready to download on the public testing branch. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more. We hope that you will find the changes useful.

Changelog

Torpedo pistols:
- Added "torpedo flaws" realism setting to the campaign setup. It has three presets:
•   Realistic: Torpedo pistols have flaws that match the historic records.
•   Semi-realistic: Optimal impact angle is rewarded with an almost guaranteed detonation of a torpedo, although sub-optimal hits usually end up in a detonation too - especially if a torpedo is properly maintained by an engineer.
•   Basic: Torpedo impact angle is ignored and torpedo duds are determined using a flat chance. This chance is very close to zero, if torpedo is properly maintained by a trained officer.
- When playing with the Realistic or Semi-realistic torpedo pistol realism setting, there is now a small chance of torpedo being faulty, even if the impact angle is in a sweet spot.
- If playing with the Basic torpedo pistol realism setting, the duds are no longer predetermined as in the earlier versions, to allow for reloading the game state for another result.

User interface:
- Distance measurements are now displayed with 1 decimal place when kilometers are used up to a distance of 10 km.
- Fix: It's no longer possible to open a character customization screen for guests on board.
- Fix: There was a wrong officer role displayed on the character screen, if it was an unsaved role. In some cases, the role would revert to "Unassigned" after opening the character screen.
- Fix: Auto-save settings were applied correctly only from the in-game menu, but not from the main menu.
- Fix: After launching a torpedo, it was appearing for one instant in a wrong spot on the map and was displayed as neutral.
- Fix: After opening the promotion view, the initial description was missing in some cases or could refer to a not pickable option.
- Fix: Pressing an escape twice on a screen where a progress towards a decoration is presented was resulting in a white square being displayed on the screen.
- Fix: Ship selection panel was appearing over the periscope UI, if a periscope view was started when torpedo launchers UI was also open.
Crew management:
- Regression fix: Navigator was never leaving his station to do other work, even after the position was fixed in 100%.
- Fix: "Navigator" skill was considerably increasing a performance of fixing the position at the navigator's station (it was not intended).

Animation:
- Fix: Officers could freeze in an animation of pointing something with a finger.
- Fix: Map zooming animations weren't smooth and were sometimes ending at a slightly incorrect position.
- Fix: Crew that was manning guns on NPC ships was sometimes not rotating with the gun.

Graphics:
- Improved shadow settings during the decoration cutscene.
- Improved texture quality of certain F-class destroyer variants.
- Regression fix: Some of the oil tanks in Aruba were missing.
- Regression fix: Corrected wrong textures on the trucks that are sometimes carried by the merchant ships.
- Regression fix: Ports weren't affecting the nearby sea state since the graphics engine update and the waves were sometimes appearing above the port.
- Regression fix: There was a large blob of smoke visible, if player paused the game, enabled the free camera mode and moved the camera to a direct vicinity of a ship that was at a distance of at least few kilometers from the initial camera position.
- Regression fix: There was a lighting artifact visible on the main menu u-boat since B129 Preview 12.
- Regression fix: An intense specular was visible at the bottom of the u-boat's hull in the section view. It was introduced by mistake in B129 Preview 12.
- Regression fix: Missing textures on the merchant ship figurines that appear during Battle of the Atlantic map cutscene.

Missions:
- Fix: If player uninstalled the deck gun before departing in the third tutorial mission, it wasn't possible to continue at a certain stage of the mission.
- Fix: Changed the first merchant ship's course in the third tutorial for a more convenient attack.
- Fix: Ship that needs to be attacked with the torpedoes during the third tutorial is now selected back automatically, in case of unselecting it by mistake.
- Fix: Mission wasn't counted towards a medal progress in some cases, if a game state was loaded with this mission already started.
- Regression fix: Crew was having a very hard time to spot the lost u-boat in the side-mission with a lost ship.

AI:
- Fix: Ships in a convoy were sometimes stopping to move forward.

Optimizations:
- Provided compatibility of all major shaders in the game with an engine feature called SRP Batcher. We noticed that it stopped to work after one of the recent updates of the engine. It should give a substantial boost to the performance.
- Removed a few redundant memory allocations in the code.
Localization:
- Removed all references to "pre-heating" and "warming" torpedoes and changed them to "performing a maintenance".
- Russian localization update by Hard.
- German localization update by Ruby.
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- French localization update by FvJ and Placebo.

General:
- Improvements to the capture course computations.
- Improved the way in which names are picked for the NPC ships to better avoid repetitions during long playthroughs, if all historic names from the pool run out.
- Fix: It's no longer possible to meet another u-boat with the same name as the player's u-boat.
- Fix: Periscope's field of view was sometimes inconsistent with the stadimeter measurements after reloading a game state and opening the periscope view, until the right mouse button was clicked at least once.
- Fix: It was possible to encounter a situation when there wasn't enough water in the compartment to remove it by using a bucket, but it was still enough to cause the splashing sound, while moving inside that compartment.
- Fix: Added a notification that explains the situation when saving a game state couldn't be completed, because there was no free disk space.
- Fix: If player attempted to save a game state, when there wasn't enough space on the disk, in some cases the "Saving..." label would remain on the screen.
- Fix: Ships were starting their engines from zero after spawning in the scene, which was enough for the hydrophone operator to loose contact for a moment.
- Fix: Wreck sites could still appear as a far visual contact in one remaining case, that involved spotting the sinking ship upclose and quickly moving away from it to a distance of a few kilometers.

Yours,
DWS

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 14
Wed, July 14, 2021

Dear skippers,

We just released a small update to fix an important regression in Preview 13. Aside from it, there are also other improvements. Please take a look at the changelog below for details.

Changelog

Graphics:
- Fix: After loading a game state, map was usually becoming slightly darker than intended on the maximum view distance.

Missions:
- There is now a mission objective to get back to the port at the end of the third tutorial.
- Fix: Officer which is supposed to create a target solution is now selected automatically during the third tutorial mission, if he was deselected by a mistake.

Localization:
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.

General:
- Time compression blockade is no longer being set after pausing the game.
- Fix: After sending the crew to certain generic merchant ship variants, sent sailors could appear in the air near the u-boat's bow.
- Fix: After starting certain story sequences with more than 3 characters, saving the game, loading the game and leaving the nearby area completely, sailors would stop to work on their automated schedules and there would be performance issues.
- Fix: Infinite vacation issue.
- Fix: Ammunition transports were usually empty.
- Regression fix: Deck gun could become duplicated after loading a game state.
- Regression fix: Food management was being disabled in the existing game states.

Yours,
DWS

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 15

Dear 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 changes

Optimization
The 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 setup
Since 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 lighting
There 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 management
As 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 release
We 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.


Changelog

Graphics:
- 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

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 16
Thu, 29 July 2021



Dear skippers,

We just released a new hotfix that fixes the regressions introduced with the technical changes in Preview 15.

Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more.

Changelog

Graphics:
- Regression fix: Search light shadows were looking worse than before.
- Regression fix: Certain elements in Aruba were looking off.
- Regression fix: Cook didn't had an apron.
- Regression fix: Character body was disappearing after trying to change his complexion on the customization screen.

Localization:
- Chinese localization update by SparrowSHEN (Q:173678441).

General:
- Fix: Steam rich presence text was worded incorrectly in the case of weather station placement mission.
- Regression fix: Keyboard settings weren't having any effect since Preview 15.
- Regression fix: NPC crews were levitating above the decks of NPC ships.
- Regression fix: Music volume settings weren't applied in all cases.
- Regression fix: Attempt at fixing random crash issue in the main menu when any of the animated buttons appears.
- Regression fix: "Explosives" command in the console has stopped to work.

Yours,
DWS

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 17
Wed, August 4, 2021


Dear skippers,

We just finished the next update - B129 Preview 17. The main goal of this release was to update Unity engine to the latest LTS version to fix a few long lasting technical issues.

Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more.

Changelog

Technical & optimizations:
- Unity engine updated from 2019.4.20f1 to 2019.4.29f1.
- Continued work from Preview 15 that further decreases the size of the game on disk and results in a smaller memory usage.
- Faster startup time, counting from launching the game to seeing the first logo.

Graphics:
- Fix: A missing texture on rudders and propellers of some generic merchant ship variants.
- Fix: After moving a mouse over a crew member that was panicking, there was a square outline displayed around the pulsating circle below him.

Simulation:
- Improvements to LUT torpedo behaviour.

User interface:
- Further work on the campaign setup user interface.
- Fix: Telegraph and other tools in the user interface could be wrongly positioned after loading a game state saved on the map and leaving the map mode.
- Fix: Number of contacts detected by an officer could be duplicated on his portrait for some time, after he participated in a story sequence like a merchant ship inspection.
- Fix: After changing sailor's name, the banner above his head wasn't immediately resized to fit it and there could be an overflow.
- Fix: Map interface was remaining on the screen and in some cases was overlapping with other UI elements, after initiating an interaction with shot down aircraft, while having an open map.
- Fix: Blank portraits could sometimes appear in various views after continuing certain game states. The most common reproduction was to send a full team (3 officers + sailors) to a neutral merchant ship, save the game state, load it back and open the crew list.
- Regression fix: After visiting the skipper customization screen during the new campaign setup, then going back and going forward again, the customization was no longer opening at this point until buttons were clicked a few times.

Crew management:
- Fix: After promoting an sailor to be an officer, he was still occupying the station on which he was working before the promotion. He could also make the station inaccessible for the rest of the crew in some cases.
- Fix: It was possible to initiate climbing the ladder down from the bottom (and climbing up, from the top), in the case of a ladder at the side of the conning tower.
- Fix: Only one crew member of shot down aircraft was marked as an airman, the rest was displayed as sailors.
- Regression fix: NPC crews were duplicating in some cases after loading a game state with their ship being present in the scene.
- Regression fix: NPC crews weren't initially visible after loading a game state saved very close to their ship.
- Regression fix: It wasn't possible to transport ammunition from the main storage to any of the ammunition storages at the deck since Preview 15.

AI:
- MTBs and other ships lighter than the u-boat will no longer try to ram it, but instead they will circle around the submarine and fire at it as long as it's surfaced.
- Fix: Convoys were stopping after sinking an aircraft carrier inside them.
- Fix: NPC ships now compute a more accurate course for the torpedoes.

Interactions:
- Fix: After ordering an evacuation of a merchant ship, leaving it and initiating an interaction with it again, there were many problems after that point.

Missions:
- Fix: It's no longer possible to send crew to land again after building the weather station.
- Fix: It was possible to move through destination in tutorial #4, if a high time compression was used and FPS was low enough.

Localization:
- French localization update by FvJ and Placebo.
- German localization update by Ruby.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- Chinese localization update by SparrowSHEN.
- Portuguese localization update by Roliçonho.
- Czech localization update.

General:
- Fixes to the most common errors appearing in the logs. Most of them were harmless, but it will still make the logs cleaner.

Yours,
DWS
 

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 18
Tue, 10 August 2021

Dear skippers,

We just finished the next update - B129 Preview 18. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more.

Also, we need your help.

We are looking for players affected by crashes that happen a few minutes after starting a new game or loading a game state. We are hunting for this specific crash issue for a few weeks and need a helpful hand from somebody to test a few repair attempts for us. Since it happens only on 3-4% of computers, we hadn't much success at reproducing this in our studio.

Please contact Ruby, if you have this problem and would like to volunteer. Thank you!

Changelog

Ships:
- Added Bogue-class aircraft carriers used by U.S. Navy and Royal Navy.

Simulation:
- LUT torpedo pattern improvements.

User interface:
- Campaign setup UI improvements.
- Count of survivors taken on board is now updating in realtime, while making a selection.
- Fix: It wasn't possible to plot a course to target in some cases, by clicking with a right mouse button on the green mission dot.
- Regression fix: Sometimes white squares were appearing instead of icons during a mission selection.

Missions:
- Fix: Portraits of some officers were temporarily disappearing during tutorial missions #3 and #4.
- Fix: Weather station placement mission could break and stop progressing after building the station.

Interactions:
- Fix: Diver sent to a wreck was sometimes taking a break to read a newspaper with the recent events.

Graphics:
- Improvements to the highlight/outline effect that appears after moving a cursor over objects.
- Fix: Characters wearing Jacket 04 variants had missing body geometry after equipping at least once a rain coat.
- Fix: Echosounder wasn't being highlighted after looking at it or hovering a cursor over it.
- Fix: After moving a cursor over a generic merchant ship, only the hull was highlighted, superstructure wasn't included.

Crew management:
- Fix: Sailors were sometimes not working at important stations like the diving station after sending some of them onto an external mission.

Optimizations:
- Further disk and memory usage optimizations.

Localization:
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- Portuguese localization update by Roliçonho.

General:
- Pontoon with the departing crew is now always visible, even if there is nobody at the conning tower to observe it (since there is player's crew on it).
- Fix: Convoy names appearing in Steam Rich Presence statuses were unintentionally localized in the player's local language, while the rest of the text was in English.
- Fix: Map couldn't be moved after loading certain game states.
- Fix: A very distant visual contacts (40+ km) were sometimes being detected with no apparent reason, if high time compression was in use. This issue was also sometimes leading to sub-optimal target selection for side missions.
- Fix: If the limit of officers that may stay on board was exceeded and player increased this limit through a reputation purchase, it was still not possible to leave the port until any officer was removed from the ship and added back.
- Fix: Neutral merchant ships from Sweden weren't having cargo upon inspection.
- Regression fix: Random animation issues of crews on NPC ships.

Yours,
DWS

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 19
Fri, August 13, 2021

Dear skippers,

We just finished the next update - B129 Preview 19. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more.

Changelog

Graphics:
- Fix: Crew working at the navigator's station or the depth steers station could become invisible and appear in T-pose after hovering a mouse over them. This problem was happening after following certain steps that involved loading a game state from a specific situation in the game.
- Fix: Highlight effect that appears after hovering ships was much larger than the model in the periscope and UZO views.
- Fix: A problem in character batching algorithm that could result in wrong textures being displayed on a character when he was observed from a certain distance.
- Regression fix: After loading certain game states, the screen was black for a few seconds.
- Regression fix: The Blitz wasn't disappearing from the map since a few versions back.

User interface:
- Fix: Port defences notification was persisting on the screen after loading another game state.
- Fix: Journal was sometimes empty or with some messages missing after opening it and having selected a language that had a formatting error in any of the messages.
- Fix: Blank portraits were appearing for the sailors recruited in the port after instantly entering the crew list.

Crew management:
- Fix: After promoting a crewman to become an officer or skipper, he was equpping a new cap matching his rank, but in the UI "None" was displayed as the cap.
- Fix: Chests that are used by the crew to perform repairs at higher elevation could continue to block movement after disappearing, if a game state was saved when they were disappearing and loaded back again.

Localization:
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Chinese localization update by SparrowSHEN (Q:173678441).

General:
- Fix: Crash issue that occurred randomly in the main menu.
- Fix: If officer became tired, when he was on his way to flood or blow the ballast tanks, he could sometimes enter a permanent idle state.
- Fix: Error that was causing performance problems near merchant ships, if game was deployed with mods that had an outdated Crew.xlsx / Generation data sheet structure.
- Fix: Auto-save on leaving was saving the game also at forbidden times.
- Fix: Steam rich presence integration was stopping to work after performing a merchant ship inspection.
- Fix: Repaired problem in the save system that could make certain game states to be not loadable.
- Fix: Random animation issues of crews on NPC ships (continuation).
- Fix: Fixes to the the most common game errors that we managed to identify in the player logs.

Yours,
DWS

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 20
Sat, August 14, 2021


Dear skippers,

We just finished the next update - B129 Preview 20. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more.

Changelog

Graphics:
- Added "Coming soon" picture to all ports that will be added in the next version.
- Reworked textures on Dale-class, Ol-class, War-class and Wave-class tankers for a better quality and more optimal memory usage.
- Regression fix: Sailors on lifeboats weren't fully aligned to the seats after recent model updates.

Optimizations:
- Memory usage optimizations.

Crew management:
- Fix: After promoting a sailor that was a member of the initial crew to be an officer, he wasn't present in the TAB menu until the game state was reloaded or he was removed from the ship and added back again.
- Fix: After loading a game state with a character saved in a certain animation transition the character was staying freezed in this transition forever.

General:
- Regression fix: Improved compatibility with game states saved before Preview 19. There was one change that was making some game states to not load.
- Fix: Fixes to some of the most common game errors that we managed to identify in the player logs.

Yours,
DWS

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 21
Thu, August 19, 2021


Dear skippers,

Update B129 Preview 21 is now ready to download on the public testing branch.

This update brings fixes to some of the last commonly reported bugs and issues, as well as adds general improvements. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more.

Changelog

Graphics:
- Added NPC crew on Dale-class and War-class tankers - these were the last ships without a visible crew.
- Fix: Hatch at the conning tower was blurring in random directions when it was observed from the conning tower's interior at the open sea.
- Fix: Shadows were flickering on the lowest shadow settings in certain scenes appearing during a merchant ship inspection.
- Regression fix: Tracer projectiles were casting striped shadows onto nearby ships, since memory usage optimizations a few versions back.

Crew management:
- Fix: Crew members could in some cases get stuck and don't move to their destinations.
- Fix: Injured characters are automatically treated after moving them from the ship to land.
- Fix: It's no longer possible to move dead characters from the ship to land just before they disappear.
- Regression fix: Captain and the first engineer have stopped to evacuate from the NPC ships since the previous update.

Interactions:
- Fix: If player encountered a group of two or more merchant ships, sent a crew to inspect one of them, ordered an evacuation, followed certain steps and then ordered moving some cargo to the u-boat, the crew sent onto that ship was gone after skipping time.
- Fix: Crew members were duplicating after each save and reload, after sending them to another ship, entering interior scene, sinking the ship that was the target of the interaction and quickly returning back to the u-boat.
- Fix: If player loaded any cargo from the interaction target two times, sailors sent onto a delegation were returning with a wrong initial animation and some of them could become duplicated, if a game state was reloaded.
- Fix: Crew that was returning from an interaction could in some cases don't appear on the player's u-boat, but get stuck somewhere on the open sea instead.

U-boat:
- Fix: One of the telegraphs inside the conning tower wasn't working.

World simulation:
- Fix: If player experienced a major lag, while having enabled a high time compression and entering a port area, it was possible to move a very large distance during that lag and appear inside the land afterwards.
- Fix: Merchant ships are now much less likely to travel in groups, when they don't have any escort.

User interface:
- Fix: Missing icons on decision buttons during evacuated merchant ship inspection story.
- Regression fix: One of the clocks in the UI was having the seconds hand displayed at a wrong position.

Localization:
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- German localization update by Ruby.

General:
- Fix: Ongoing research was sometimes not being completed and it wasn't possible to claim a reward for some additional time despite having the progress at 100%.
- Fix: Path plotting was having various issues after loading a game state where skipper was on the lost u-boat, until he came back to the player's u-boat.
- Fix: Steam rich presence integration was stopping to work after starting the mission to sink Royal Oak.
- Fix: After meeting an aircraft carrier, saving the game state, reloading and shooting down one of the aircraft that started from the aircraft carrier, the carrier would loose the ability to detect the enemy.
- Fix: Officer working at the hydrophone was reporting sonar decoy above the u-boat as ship propellers above the ship.
- Fix: Fixes to some of the most common game errors that we managed to identify in the player logs.

Yours,
DWS

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 22
Tue, August 24, 2021


Dear skippers,

Update B129 Preview 22 is now ready to download on the public testing branch. It brings some important fixes in preparation to a stable release. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more!

Changelog

Graphics:
- Fix: Trees were rendered slightly above the terrain, if they were being observed from a large distance.
- Fix: Temporal antialiasing wasn't rendering correctly in the u-boat interiors.
- Fix: Highlight effect that appears after moving the cursor over a ship was sometimes visible through the water in certain views.

Game launcher:
- Fix: Added scroll support for mod descriptions.
- Fix: Fixed slightly overlapping elements when there was more than 6 installed mods.

Optimizations:
- Fix: Performance issue that was getting worse during long playthroughs. The performance should improve in the existing game states, but a new playthrough may be needed for the full effect.

Ports:
- Fix: Alexandria is now better aligned to the coast. This change may cause temporary problems after loading a game state that was saved near Alexandria. Please leave the area and enter it back to avoid them.
- Fix: After docking in a different port than the current flotilla port / home port it wasn't possible to walk through the area that was usually occupied by the leading officer's car.
- Regression fix: Leading officer had his legs partially in the ground in Kiel and La Spezia.

User interface:
- Added a warning that stadimeter cannot be used to measure a distance to the selected ship without identifying it first.
- Added a notification that appears after pressing the bug reporting shortcut on the keyboard that informs that data is being collected before the actual bug reporting UI appears.
- Added a notification on the torpedo launchers UI, if a launcher is broken. It's no longer possible to try to flood such launchers.
- Fix: Incoming radio messages notification was sometimes displaying a wrong number of the incoming transmissions after loading a game state. In certain cases it could display zero, but still remain visible on the screen.
- Fix: After identifying a ship's class, the interface in the periscope view was spoiling a ship's true nationality instead of displaying the nationality visible on the flags.
- Fix: Added a degrees symbol to the numeric value displayed in the course estimation UI.
- Fix: After loading a game state and selecting an officer that was ordered to rest, the rest toggle wasn't displayed as toggled.
- Fix: During ongoing interactions, often a progress bar was displayed on the participating character portraits, even if there was no work being done.
- Fix: After selecting an officer working at the UZO when there was an ongoing interaction, there was sometimes an "Unknown object" visible on the contacts list that shouldn't be there.
- Fix: If a list of incoming transmissions has changed, while the radio interface was already open, the UI could behave erratically after choosing one of them.

AI:
- Fix: Tankers were sometimes searching the area for submarines after being attacked instead of evading a hostile.

Missions:
- If a convoy that is the target of a wolf pack attack is forced to change its course or speed as a result of player's actions or external factors and is no longer going to arrive at the planned attack location, the wolf pack is now being disbanded and a radio message is sent by the high command that explains the reason.
- Fix: Wolf pack attack mission wasn't progressing, if player was the first to arrive at the attack location.
- Fix: The u-boat that appears in the lost u-boat side mission was having a gray / neutral flag displayed in UI.

World simulation:
- Fix: Due to certain optimizations, encounters with NPC groups weren't always working reliably and in rare cases it was possible to, for example, spot behind the u-boat a group of ships that was travelling in an opposite direction.
- Fix: At high time compression, it was sometimes possible to move past an undetected enemy group before it was loaded and appeared in the scene (the end results overlap with the issue above).
- Fix: After encountering a convoy with an aircraft carrier, it was in rare cases possible for the aircraft to spawn first and be spotted by the player's crew before it was placed on the carrier.

U-boat:
- Tweaks to the audio sources intensity when hydrophone is being used from the sea surface.

Crew:
- Fix: Crew members duplicating after saving and reloading a game state.
- Fix: After pressing the button to recruit a random sailor to help the officer, sometimes a captive was being added instead.
- Fix: Random animation issues of the crews on NPC ships (continuation).

Map:
- Improvements to pathfinding on the map.
- Wind speed on the map is now displayed in the units selected by the player.
- Fix: If player pressed shift and clicked on a port icon, the entire route was erased and computed from the scratch rather than appended to the existing route.
- Fix: Contacts on the map for ships that appear during certain campaign assignments were sometimes called "Special" rather than "Ships".

Localization:
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- German localization update by Ruby.

General:
- Fix: Torpedoes launched from the aft launcher by NPC u-boats were usually sinking right after being launched.
- Fix: After placing an order to neutralize the buoyancy by blowing the ballast, then pumping the water out of the compartments and surfacing this way, the crew wasn't automatically flooding the ballast tanks after receiving the next dive order - it was necessary to do it manually.
- Fix: It's no longer possible to save a game on the character customization screen.
- Fix: Weather state could sometimes become stuck after certain missions.
- Fix: It was possible to toggle the flashlight for the selected officer after pressing the keyboard shortcut, even if there was a fullscreen user interface or a development console on the screen.

Yours,
DWS

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 23
Wed, August 25, 2021


Dear skippers,

Update B129 Preview 23 is now complete and ready to download on the public testing branch.

We are planning to release a stable version of B129 soon and continue further work on the stable branch. There may be still some more updates and fixes in the days ahead though!

If you are interested to find out what's new in this version, please take a look at the changelog below.

Changelog

Modding:
- Updated Unity modding template to work with the latest B129 releases. The project in the template now requires Unity 2019.4.29.
- Fix: After opening the Unity modding template, it was possible for the welcome window to be opened in a few copies.

Graphics:
- Fix: A fog-like effect was appearing on the screen after zooming in the map view to the closest possible zoom level, while being away from the coast.
- Fix: Added ship name on Dale-class and War-class tanker hulls.
- Fix: Turm IV quadruple gun wasn't resetting correctly to a forward looking position.
- Regression fix: Rain was rendered under the water.

User interface:
- Fix: Campaign setup preset buttons were slightly vibrating, if temporal anti-aliasing was enabled in the settings.
- Fix: Portraits could remain on the screen after moving to HQ view in rare circumstances.

Crew:
- Crew returning from an external interaction now appears at varied positions on the deck rather than everyone at the same spot.
- Fix: Returning crew now appears in the control room rather than on the submerged deck, if u-boat dived.
- Fix: Unusual issue with crew members moving at the u-boat's bow and refusing to go anywhere else until La Rochelle was left.

Missions:
- Added missing descriptions for a few remaining campaign missions.
- Fix: Patrols appearing during the campaign assignments could spawn directly near the player's ship, if console was used to skip some time.
- Fix: "Unknown object" and "Empty" objects were reported in a few places in UI during the weather station placement missions.
- Fix: The radio transmission from the weather station was transmitted for only 6 minutes. If player didn't receive it in that time, it wasn't possible to complete the mission.
- Fix: Journal entry after completing the Royal Oak sinking assignment wasn't correct.

Localization:
- French localization update by FvJ and Placebo.
- German localization update by Ruby.

Optimizations:
- Performance improvements for longer playthroughs.

Map:
- Regression fix: If player ordered to plot a route to port, while moving and having enabled a time compression, the path could be plotted to some other location near the port instead.

Yours,
DWS

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 24
Thu, August 26, 2021


Dear skippers,

Update B129 Preview 24 is now complete and ready to download on the public testing branch. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more!

Changelog

Graphics:
- Fix: Aircraft stationing on the carrier were having duplicated propellers and windows.
- Fix: Map was blinking with a black colour when player's ship was receiving damage.
- Fix: Newspapers were not aligned correctly to the sailors reading them on the starboard bunks in the bow torpedo room.

Interactions:
- Fix: Taking survivors from a lifeboat was sometimes not working correctly - the character wasn't actually moved to the player's ship and after leaving the area a notification was popping up that he was released.

Crew:
- Fix: It was possible to perform first aid on torpedoes after making a few steps.

User interface:
- Fix: XP bar in the character selection panel wasn't full after reaching the maximum level in the game (5th).
- Fix: Tooltips were incorrect for the time compression buttons, if dynamic travel system was being used.

Missions:
- Fix: Southern Routes campaign objective was often stopping to progress.
- Fix: Supply ships (milk cows) were sometimes selected as a target for the ally calling for help and lost ship missions. It wasn't intended and could cause some issues.

World simulation:
- Fix: Some merchant ships weren't carrying any cargo.

Localization:
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- German localization update by Ruby.
- Portuguese localization update by Roliçonho.

General:
- Fix: After damaging a ship and forcing the crew to evacuate, leaving the area and then coming back, the crew was back on the ship and the buoyancy (HP) bar was full.

Yours,
DWS

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 25
Fri, August 27, 2021


Dear skippers,

Update B129 Preview 25 is now complete and ready to download on the public testing branch. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more!

Changelog

Graphics:
- Fix: Improvements to alignment of sailor animations on bunks.
- Fix: Torpedo could be displayed at a wrong position (outside the launcher), if torpedo was being loaded or maintenance was performed on it at a high time compression and the order was aborted for any reason.

Optimizations:
- Improved performance when a high time compression is in use.

Interactions:
- Fix: Aircraft crews were having duplicated names.
- Fix: Sailors sent on external interactions were sometimes selected for a new shift on the ship, but since they weren't there, vital stations could be unmanned.

Localization:
- English localization fixes by Steve.

User interface:
- It's now possible to leave a dialogue by pressing escape.
- Fix: The outer pointer on the UI telegraph wasn't moving when keyboard shortcuts were used to set a gear.

General:
- Added a suggestion in the main menu to contact us, if game previously crashed due to the issue that we are trying to fix.

Yours,
DWS

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 26
Sun, August 29, 2021


Dear skippers,

Update B129 Preview 26 is now complete and ready to download on the public testing branch. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more!

Changelog

Graphics:
- Fix: Bunks in the bow torpedo room were sometimes rendered in both states, open and closed, at the same time.
- Fix: Indirect lighting in the u-boat's interior was wrong for the duration of certain interactions.

Crew:
- Fix: Order to keep the bulkheads closed was sometimes stopping to work reliably after reloading a game state.
- Fix: Sometimes the countdown above injured characters was missing and it wasn't possible to treat them.
- Fix: Random animation issues of the crews on NPC ships and lifeboats (continuation).

User interface:
- All UI views can be now closed by pressing an escape key.
- Fix: Lines drawn on the map during the assignment summary were sometimes out of sync with the actually presented events in the UI.
- Fix: Progress bar below the campaign objective photography on the map was disappearing after reaching 100%.
- Fix: It was possible to attempt selecting a target square for the milk cow moving operation that was already pending.

Localization:
- German localization update by Ruby.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.

General:
- Fix: Rewards and penalties assigned for events that were described in a newspaper were assigned twice.

Yours,
DWS

[Asid]

Update: B129 Preview 29
Wed, September 1, 2021

Dear skippers,

Update B129 Preview 29 is now complete and ready to download on the public testing branch. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more!

Changelog

Graphics:
- Fix: Officers were clipping through the antenna on Turm I during the award ceremonies.
- Fix: Warehouse worker in Wilhelmshaven was slightly clipping through an ashtray on the table.
- Regression fix: Captives were not rendered completely after moving the camera at a certain distance from them since Preview 28.

Localization:
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.
- Chinese localization update by SparrowSHEN (Q:173678441).
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- Russian localization update by Hard.

Yours,
DWS