UBOAT News

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.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]User interface:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Crew management:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Chinese localization update by SparrowSHEN (Q:173678441).

[h3]General:[/h3]
- 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- Fix: Error that was causing performance problems near merchant ships, if game was deployed with mods that had an outdated Crew.xlsx / Generation data sheet structure.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

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!

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Ships:[/h3]
- Added Bogue-class aircraft carriers used by U.S. Navy and Royal Navy.

[h3]Simulation:[/h3]
- LUT torpedo pattern improvements.

[h3]User interface:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Missions:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Interactions:[/h3]
- Fix: Diver sent to a wreck was sometimes taking a break to read a newspaper with the recent events.

[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Crew management:[/h3]
- Fix: Sailors were sometimes not working at important stations like the diving station after sending some of them onto an external mission.

[h3]Optimizations:[/h3]
- Further disk and memory usage optimizations.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- Portuguese localization update by Roliçonho.

[h3]General:[/h3]
- 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

Dear Players,

Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 will be released on August 11th!
Thanks to our Loyalty Discount, you can get a CMS 2021 at an additional 10% off!



To verify whether you’re eligible:

• Check your Steam Library to see if you own one of the games from the list below
• If you do, you get 10% off Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 - the discount will be available on the CMS 2021 Steam store page
• Be quick! The offer lasts 7 days, between August 11-18

Please note that the Loyalty Discount adds up with the 10% Launch Discount, which means you can buy Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 - 20% off!

To receive the 10% Loyalty Discount, you must own one of the games listed below:

- The Tenants
- Mr. Prepper
- Mech Mechanic Simulator
- Rover Mechanic Simulator
- Lust from Beyond
- Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
- Car Mechanic Simulator 2015
- Car Mechanic Simulator 2014
- Cooking Simulator
- House Flipper
- UBOAT
- Barn Finders
- Thief Simulator
- Tank Mechanic Simulator
- Ultimate Fishing Simulator
- 911 Operator
- 112 Operator
- Rustler
- Train Station Renovation
- Drug Dealer Simulator
- The Beast Inside
- Lust for Darkness
- Plane Mechanic Simulator
- Gold Rush: The Game
- Accident
- Agony
- Agony UNRATED

Yours,
DWS

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.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Technical & optimizations:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Simulation:[/h3]
- Improvements to LUT torpedo behaviour.

[h3]User interface:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Crew management:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]AI:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Interactions:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Missions:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]General:[/h3]
- 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

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.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- Chinese localization update by SparrowSHEN (Q:173678441).

[h3]General:[/h3]
- 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