UBOAT News

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.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Torpedo pistols:[/h3]
- 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.

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

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

[h3]Animation:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Missions:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]AI:[/h3]
- Fix: Ships in a convoy were sometimes stopping to move forward.

[h3]Optimizations:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]General:[/h3]
- 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

Dear skippers,

Update B129 Preview 12 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. We hope that you will find the changes useful.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Crew management:[/h3]
- It's no longer possible to leave the port with more officers than the allowed limit. It was possible to go above this limit, after receiving a new officer during Enigma recovery mission.
- Fix: Sailors were working at the radio, even if it was damaged or there was no electricity in the compartment.
- Fix: In some cases, only a captain and the first engineer were on a lifeboat from a sunk ship, the rest of the crew was missing.

[h3]User interface:[/h3]
- Added a notification that informs about a milk cow being sunk by the enemy.
- Clicking on a new radio transmission notification now opens the radio view instead of selecting a radioman.
- Fix: Campaign photographs were missing on the map after the mission summary animation until player opened the assignment selection view.
- Fix: Reward icons were missing near the buttons for freeing the survivors in a port.
- Fix: Torpedo UI and unit selection panel are now closed when an interaction is triggered.
- Fix: Campaign photographs were permanently disappearing from the map after closing them, without leaving an icon behind, if that was done on a loaded game state.

[h3]Missions:[/h3]
- Decreased a number of AA guns needed to find in the espionage assignments from 5 to 4.
- Fix: Friendly u-boats no longer call for supplies when they are in very dangerous areas, for example near the British coast.
- Fix: There was no milk cow being assigned as a reward for completing the bronze stage of multi-stage campaign objectives.
- Fix: The wreck in the gold recovery campaign mission wasn't appearing at the marked spot until terrain generation was triggered.
- Fix: Wind speed stated in the weather station message wasn't correct.

[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- New, more detailed UZO model and textures.
- Reworked deck textures, increased variety and fixed minor model issues of the generic merchant ships (ones that are being referred to as "Similar to..."). This work will be continued in the next update.
- Flag rendering improvements. There was an issue with incorrectly rendered lighting on one side of the flag. Added subsurface scattering effect to all flags.
- Improvements to the quality of sun light shadows. Technically, the shadow cascades are now usually being fit better to the specific camera demands.
- Fix: Flat areas were appearing on the sea, if the seabed below was at around 400 - 600 meters.
- Fix: Crew on NPC ships is better aligned to the deck during walking.
- Fix: Fixed issues with a wrong specular being rendered by shaders used to render some of the large objects, like certain ports and merchant ships.
- Fix: After a game state saved near a generic merchant ship was re-loaded, some of the textures on that merchant ship could change after each re-load.
- Fix: Dynamically spawned waves at the ship bows and after torpedo explosions were noticeably lacking vertices, if they were observed from a large distance.
- Fix: Shadow-like lines were appearing on objects when they were viewed from a very close distance in exterior areas and ambient occlusion was enabled in the settings.
- Fix: Lifeboats were disappearing too fast when camera was moved away from them.
- Fix: If camera moved close to a warship, some of the crews of the other ships viewed later would stand in an unusual position.

[h3]Interactions:[/h3]
- Regression fix: Interaction was stopping right after the welcome, if the merchant ship was carrying tea in the cargo hold.

[h3]Damage system:[/h3]
- Fix: One of the possible leaks in the engine room was adding water to the control room instead of the engine room.

[h3]Physics:[/h3]
- Regression fix: Implemented frequency-dependent wave fading in coastal areas for the physics engine. This feature was implemented only on the side of graphics in the initial B129 releases, which was causing the physics to be sometimes out of sync in the coastal areas.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- Russian localization update by Hard.
- German localization update by Ruby.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- French localization update by FvJ and Placebo.

[h3]Optimizations:[/h3]
- Improved physics performance of Dale-class, Ol-class War-class and Wave-class tankers.
- Memory usage optimizations related to the merchant ships and tankers.

[h3]General:[/h3]
- It's no longer possible to permanently move under the terrain, for example by diving deeply using a high time compression before the terrain is generated and appears in the scene.
- Fatigue penalty starts to count after undocking from the port rather than right after the vacation ends. It prevents the crew from becoming fatigued by waiting for the ongoing resupply operations after the vacation.
- Having pressed left CTRL in the free camera mode, makes the camera move more slowly than usual.
- Ship groups are split into smaller ones more aggressively to avoid various practical issues from having too spread out groups.
- Regression fix: It wasn't possible to leave the port after taking the survivors on board in certain cases.
- Regression fix: It was possible for the u-boat to permanently stop detecting any ships, even if they were very close. This issue should be corrected also in the existing game states.
- Regression fix: Some ship classes were docking at a wrong elevation since Preview 11.
- Regression fix: Sound of rotating periscope could be heard for a while after the rotation stopped.
- Fix: Sunk ships were detectable from afar as masts over the horizon.
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the log files from the user reports.

Yours,
DWS

Dear skippers,

Update B129 Preview 11 is now ready to download on the public testing branch.

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

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Periscope:[/h3]
- Update of the ship measurements presented in the identification book to better match the actual dimensions of the ships.

[h3]Crew management:[/h3]
- Food stored on the u-boat is no longer consumed when the u-boat is stationing at a port.
- Improvements to crew pathfinding, that should result in less traffic jams on the u-boat, for example when a sailor sits on the bunk and blocks the passage.
- Fix: Crew members were becoming stuck in the toilet, if they tried to block a leak inside.
- Fix: It was possible to move in FPP to the u-boat's deck, order a dive and stay there.
- Fix: After loading certain game states, there was a permanent alarm enabled on the u-boat.

[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- Improved lighting in the skipper customization scene.
- Fix: After initiating an interaction with a lifeboat, camera was sometimes appearing inside a nearby ship's hull.
- Regression fix: One of the haircuts was having gaps when viewed from a distance.
- Regression fix: NPC crew on C3 ships was moving outside the ship.

[h3]Optimizations:[/h3]
- Optimizations to crew pathfinding, that should slightly improve the performance, when a high time compression is being used.
- Removed a per-frame memory allocation, that was affecting performance.
- During loading, there is now an increased time budget for various background tasks, that should result in a slightly faster loading time and a decreased need to continue some of these tasks after the loading is complete, which usually affects the performance.
- Increased the memory buffer used for uploading textures to the graphics card. It should slightly decrease the time it takes to load the game from the main menu, decrease framerate drops caused by background loading and possibly fix a related crash to desktop issue. This change costed an additional 40 MB of VRAM.
- Various other optimizations.

[h3]User interface:[/h3]
- Improvements to how survivors are released. A list of survivors present on the ship is now opened along with specified rewards, to claim the rewards from there.
- There is now a warning on the screen that suggests to dive deeper, when player tries to use the hydrophone from the surface.
- It's now possible to manually enter a number of items to move between the storages instead of using a slider.
- Fix: Gun UI was sometimes displaying a fractional ammunition count.
- Fix: Survivors could be moved off the ship in a port without actually releasing them for a reward.
- Fix: After a milk cow was sunk by the enemy, it was still being displayed in the HQ. Note: We are going to add a notification that will inform about supply ships sunk by the enemy soon.
- Fix: Pulsating glow around mission markers was behaving erratically, if a high time compression was being used and there was an active mission with a time limit.
- Fix: There is now a scroll present near the officer portraits when a torpedo launchers UI is open and it takes some of the portraits space.
- Fix: It was possible to select survivors from sunk ships for various interactions and for HQ tasks.
- Fix: Improved positioning of various tooltips to make them appear near the hovered UI controls, instead of appearing on top of them.
- Fix: Auto-save settings were changing after loading another game state.
- Fix: Recently added button for changing the depth steers mode was sometimes not present in the TAB menu.

[h3]World simulation:[/h3]
- Fix: During the patrol summary, penalties were assigned for sinking neutral ships in the enemy convoys - it wasn't intended.
- Fix: Swiss rubber transports had empty cargo holds.
- Regression fix: Path to the docking point at Bergen couldn't be plotted.
- Regression fix: Wrecks of ships were not spawning, if they were sunk at deep water.

[h3]Balance:[/h3]
- Decreased ventilation capacity from 50 kg to 40 kg to match the weight of a full stack of potassium absorbers.
- Potassium absorbers are now consumed more slowly, but they are also less efficient at refreshing the air inside the u-boat.
- Fix: Decreased oxygen consumption on the dynamic travel system.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- Complete Russian localization provided by Hard, based on his Workshop mod "RU advanced".
- French localization update by FvJ.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.

[h3]Map:[/h3]
- Fix: After performing an air reconnaissance and reloading the game state, one of the icons that mark each of the port defences would reappear in a slightly different location.

[h3]Interactions:[/h3]
- There is now a different description displayed after searching the cargo hold, if the ship carries a military cargo.
- Fix: Items selected for the team after initiating an interaction were disappearing later, if they were manually equipped before starting the interaction.
- Fix: It was possible to start an interaction with a shot down aircraft for only one time. The button was stopping to respond later on.
- Fix: If a ship turns out to carry tea, but documents stated something else, there is now a different flow of the story that doesn't ignore this fact.
- Fix: After searching an abandoned ship, there was a mention of a sailor from the crew being present during the search.

[h3]AI:[/h3]
- Warships behaviour is now improved when they attack non-submarine targets.

[h3]Physics:[/h3]
- Fix: Probable fix for the issue where damage was inflicted to the conning tower, while the u-boat was travelling at the periscope depth in a shallow area and 140x time compression was being used. More testing is needed to confirm this fix.

[h3]Modding notices:[/h3]
- There is now a logging added during story sequences / interactions, that should make potential modding of them easier to debug.

[h3]General:[/h3]
- It's no longer possible to undock from a port with survivors on board.
- Added a new auto-save setting for saving the game state before leaving the game.
- Fix: Depth displayed on the map was sometimes positive for the sea, if it was beyond the sight range.
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the log files from the user reports.

Yours,
DWS

Hello skippers,

The next update for B129 is ready. It brings fixes to the most commonly reported issues encountered in your play-throughs as well as general improvements. It's now ready to download on the public testing branch.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Missions:[/h3]
- Added Enigma machine as an actual item carried by the rescued radioman in the Enigma recovery campaign mission.
- Fix: The u-boat's wreck and the German merchant ship's wreck could disappear, if they were left alone for long enough with the warships nearby.
- Fix: Ships that were marked on the map during the lost ship and ally calling for help side missions and the side mission with sinking a specific merchant ship inside the convoy were being tracked on the map after mission has ended without any means for the player to have up to date information on them.
- Fix: If an encounter with the warships during the gold recovery mission was lasting for a long time, certain errors would start to be written to the log at periodic intervals.

[h3]Crew management:[/h3]
- Fix: Crew members that were either blocking the leaks or making repairs near the torpedo loading hatch, were blocking the entrance to the bow torpedo room for the other characters.
- Fix: If crewman was manually equipped with a diving suit (not through the group selection and equipping UI) and sent onto a mission, he would later stop reacting to any orders until the game was reloaded.

[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- Increased allowed vertical looking range in FPP.
- Fix: Funnel smoke effect was sometimes restarting with no apparent reason on certain ship types.
- Fix: Lifeboats should no longer capsize with the crew inside.
- Fix: If player initiates an interaction with the lifeboat, camera now switches to it like in the other interactions.
- Fix: The blurring effect that is visible at the edge of the sight range, where it fades into the fog of war, was being performed only vertically rather than in both directions. This effect was also affecting the map performance a bit more than intended.
- Fix: When map was being zoomed out, the scene visible inside the sight range was sharply changing the brightness at some thresholds.
- Fix: When map was being zoomed out, the terrain was disappearing at a much higher threshold than it was re-appearing when zooming in.
- Fix: Crew members that were in a ragdoll state had most of their body invisible, if player saved the game state at this moment and reloaded it, until another crew member would help them.
- Fix: Boxes under crew members involved in the leak repairs were not visible after re-loading the game state.

[h3]Interactions:[/h3]
- Fix: The interaction that allowed to send a diver to the wreck remaining at the seabed was fully functional only, if it was a part of the campaign mission with recovering gold from the sunk merchant ship.
- Fix: Ships from which cargo was being loaded onto the player's ship, could sometimes unspawn during the time skip and the transport operation would be interrupted.
- Fix: It wasn't possible to send a crew on an already evacuated merchant ship.
- Fix: In some cases, after selecting a radioman for the outgoing group, the whole interface would close and the selected radioman would salute in a loop.
- Fix: C3, N-A1 and Liberty ships weren't fully supporting the inspections. It wasn't possible to see their cargo in the cargo hold and there would be no scene with the crew standing on the deck.

[h3]Balance:[/h3]
- Searchlight balance adjustments. The sight range increase in the darkness is weaker than before, while the sight range increase in the fog is much weaker.
- Fix: Searchlight sight range increase was affecting only the "Clear sight" range, but not the "Max sight" range.

[h3]User interface:[/h3]
- Added icons for the campaign missions. They are displayed in various user interfaces.
- Rescued sailors and officers from NPC ships are now listed in the crew list.
- Removed the helmet button from the unit selection panel.
- Added a button to the TAB menu to switch between the electric and the manual mode of the vertical steers (known issue: this button may be sometimes missing - we are going to fix this in Preview 11).
- Fix: Tooltip was missing for the "Tutorial" campaign setting.
- Fix: If player pressed an escape, while selecting the target square for a milk cow, some UI elements would remain on the screen and it was hard to leave the HQ scene.
- Fix: After closing the HQ map, sea ambience was audible inside the HQ scene.
- Fix: Highlight and tooltip weren't disappearing from the icons displayed in the scene, if player haven't moved the mouse, but moved the camera in such a way that the icon would no longer be under the cursor.
- Fix: After performing certain steps involving loading another game state, the background under launcher index could be displayed blue as if the launcher was flooded, while it wasn't.
- Regression fix: Certain campaign missions had their descriptions missing since a few updates.

[h3]Periscope:[/h3]
- Fix: Periscope was sometimes instantly rotating in a different direction during measurements. It could be interpreted as if the ship would disappear.
- Regression fix: Errors were written to the log, if stadimeter was used without identifying the ship first since Preview 9.
- Fix: Chronometer UI was using the actual ship's length to estimate the speed, rather than the length of the ship's class selected in the identification book by the player.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- Major Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.

[h3]World simulation:[/h3]
- When units present in a convoy move away at a considerable distance, they are now separated from the convoy. They are treated as a separate contact moving forward and will act individually. This fixes various issues and makes many things more practical.
- Fix: Wrecks spawned in the scene, could in some cases fall below the terrain, if the location was shallow.

[h3]General:[/h3]
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the log files from the user reports.
- Fix: Game states from a play-through could become not loadable after a rare occurrence of technical nature.

Yours,
DWS

Hello skippers,

The next update for B129 is complete. It tweaks the game's balance and fixes bugs based on your recent feedback. It's now ready to download on the public testing branch.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Crew management:[/h3]
- Fix: Guns installed on Turm I couldn't be repaired.
- Fix: It wasn't possible to move ammunition from the storage to the AA guns ammunition storage.
- Regression fix: It wasn't possible to move ammunition from the storage to the deck gun ammunition storage since Preview 7.

[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- Regression fix: After opening the map and loading another game state that was saved in FPP at an exterior area, the sea was no longer displayed until the map was opened and closed again. It was also having some effect on the performance.

[h3]User interface:[/h3]
- When there are few interactions available near the player, the button to initiate the interactions changes into a dropdown that allows for selecting one of them. This change fixes a related issue in the Enigma recovery mission.
- Fix: The selected auto-save setting was wrong after the interface was re-opened, if player selected 1 auto save to be kept at a time.
- Fix: The survivors taken on board were treated like officers in some user interfaces, specifically the Management tabs: Squads, Tasks and Schedule.
- Fix: Newspaper about Operation Barbarossa had missing contents.
- Fix: Compressed air notification wasn't disappearing in some cases after reaching 100% due to rounding.
- Fix: After submerging, the arrow near the player's u-boat icon wasn't becoming semi-transparent along with the ship icon.
- Regression fix: If the time compression was enabled, then after returning to the main menu the time compression was continued and the animation was much faster.

[h3]AI:[/h3]
- Fix: NPC u-boats were attacking all neutral ships.

[h3]Missions:[/h3]
- Regression fix: If player waited for the investigation on the lost u-boat mission to end, while having open the story user interface, the investigation would repeat each time and the mission wouldn't progress.

[h3]Headquarters:[/h3]
- Fix: After researching the upgraded pistols, the torpedoes with the old pistol are now no longer produced. They may still appear in the warehouse for some time, until they are all used up by the player and the other u-boats.
- Regression fix: It was possible to research LUT torpedoes before researching the T3 torpedoes. It was not intended.

[h3]Modding:[/h3]
- Scripting mods are now recompiled after each game update.

[h3]Naval simulation:[/h3]
- Fix: The impact detonation setting on torpedoes, due to an error, had noticeably increased dud rates in situations where it wasn't intended.
- Fix: The stadimeter was using the actual mast height of the ship being targeted rather than to use the data from the page selected by the player in the identification book.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- French localization update by FvJ.
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Fix: Missing characters in certain languages.

[h3]General:[/h3]
- Fix: Fixed a reported case of infinite loading screen.
- Fix: Officers were receiving XP for premature detonations of torpedoes with the magnetic setting.
- Fix: The camera could swap to a wrong ship after torpedo detonation, if the hit ship was different than the one which was initialy targeted.
- Fix: The camera wasn't swapping to the hit ship, if the torpedo was launched manually.
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the log files from the user reports.
- Regression fix: Button to wait for the approaching convoy in the upper right corner wasn't appearing since initial B129 releases.
- Regression fix: A tooltip wasn't appearing after hovering the deck gun and errors were writted to the log.

Yours,
DWS