Development Status #104

[h2]Dear Mechanics,[/h2]

Welcome to our one hundred and fourth development status update.

[h3]PzKpfw II Ausf. C - Engine[/h3]

As for all new vehicles we are adding we trying to simulate and present how engiens and gearboxes are working inside. Here is a sneak peak and work in progress of upcoming PzKpfw II Ausf. C. Check out video below:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]New shader & new objects inside[/h3]

With new tank we are finalizing new shader we started working on from few weeks ago. General idea was to merge materials into one. For current vehicles our system consist 3 materials per module.

• Extraction (Stage 1 Mud - Stage 2 Rust)
  
• Workshop (Stage 2 Rust - Stage 6 Final Paint)
  
• Museum (Stage 6 Final Paint + Stage with camo and other)
  

Now each module have only 1 material. With this change we now can easily tweak and control data inputs in materials. Supporting this required a bit of reworking the system of how we read and translate materials between for example extraction missions and on workshop.



Within this material/shader we can control every step of renovation and also have options to have camouflages, decals, dissolve effect when disassembling elements or for example Default Textures. This enable to have custom colors or textures and keeping all renovation aspects visible. This for example gives opportunity to us and for modders in future to add other objects/models inside tanks like radio stations or anything.



[h3]Optimization[/h3]

Previously we have received a lot of reports that the game crashes when entering/leaving the museum. We dug around and found that the game tries too often or even a few times at once release memory - this process is slow and heavy for Unity and should be only done when necessary - so after this patch take a note on how fast the room/level loads - it will be important to us to tell if this works.

[h3]Storage Panel[/h3]

The newest patch will bring performance improvements for the Storage panel. Previously it worked in a simple way: for a selected tank, the game internally loads his data, because access to tank elements info is required. Then, for example, for 1000 stored elements, the game had to create 1000 independent buttons. This process could take even over a dozen seconds. Now game also first loads tank data, but then it spawns only a maximum of 10 buttons, only these which have to be physically visible in the Storage panel. When a player will press scroll bar buttons, to go to the next or previous page with listed elements, game logic will dynamically load and assign proper element info (properties, icons, etc.) for a particular button.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Localizations[/h3]

We have received many reports suggesting that there are still bugs in our localizations. We would like to improve the quality of our in-game translations, so we thought we would share this idea with you directly. As there are people in our community from all over the world, we would like to announce that we are looking for people willing to participate in the process of localization of Tank Mechanic Simulator.

If you are interested, please contact our Community Manager - [DeGenerals]Goozy on the forums, in a private message or on discord.

Thanks for all the support and have a good weekend.
DeGenerals