UBOAT News

Dear Skippers,

We are back with the next major update to UBOAT. This one is probably the largest update to the game so far. If you haven't tried it by now on the testing branch, then hopefully it will surprise you in a good way!

We already described the first features of this update when it hit the testing branch for insiders:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/494840/announcements/detail/1612779851182114038
During the testing it became even bigger though, so let's discuss the new features one by one.


Assignments are now selected in a new way that gives you a much cleaner overview of the objectives and area of operation.




You can expect new challenges like a battleship presence in the area of operation as well as some twist to existing missions. Sometimes a war correspondent will join your crew, while in other times you may be given a task to test experimental torpedoes.

Some of the objectives and rewards for existing assignments were also reworked.






All your officers will collect points toward decorations of various types. They are awarded for notable bravery in combat or veterancy.




New mission summary presents a much more cleaner overview of completed objectives, collected rewards as well as a log from the patrol.




Talented modders from the community already created mods that draw attention. Since this version is now going public, Steam Workshop now also becomes publicly available.

If you would like to start modding for yourself, check our guide on the game's wiki:

https://uboat.fandom.com/wiki/Modding


Aside from that, there was a few other notable additions:

• Sea near Bergen is now much more deeper and much closer to the real world bathymetry maps.
• It's now possible to move in FPP on the step at the front of the conning tower like the crew does, to clearly see what's in the front of the u-boat.
  
• Collision damage and sounds.
  
• German localization was updated (warm thanks to Ruby for providing it).
  

This update adds a considerable amount of new content and thus memory usage had to go up a bit. We implemented new optimizations to the game to offset that, but it's still going to be 10% - 15% higher than before. It probably won't affect most systems.

If your system is low on memory though or you use a software that consumes a large part of RAM you can increase the page file in Windows like described in this article to avoid problems (12 GB should be more than enough):

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/how-to-manage-virtual-memory-pagefile-windows-10,36929.html

Also, if you would experience any sort of crashes, please verify game files integrity in Steam by entering game properties, going to "Local Files" tab and clicking appropriate button there.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

Good evening everyone!

It's Christimas time! We would like to use this opportunity to wish the UBOAT community Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

We also take a short break from working on UBOAT. We will be back after Christmas to continue work and push B125 on the stable branch.

Thank you for your continued support and for your everyday contact.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

Greetings!

The nominations for the Steam Awards are here, and to us, UBOAT has always been a “Labor of Love”. Conveniently, you can nominate our game in this category in the Steam Awards.

First of all, thank you all for your continuous feedback which help us make UBOAT better and better every single day. Thanks to your suggestions and constructive criticism we were able to improve the experience in terms of gameplay, visuals as well as immersion.

That’s not all! Even if we have a lot of adventures behind us there is still plenty to come. With the latest v125 update we entered the Early Access Roadmap which means more changes and new features in upcoming months!

Here is the list of things that you can expect in series of new updates:

- new missions
- new units
- more interactions
- campaign
- continuous visual and technical upgrades
- changes based on your suggestions


We wish you a happy voting and thank you for your love and support!

Best,
The UBOAT Team

Hello!

We are back with a major update to UBOAT. It just hit the "unstable" branch for testing. You can switch to this branch by going to "beta" tab in the properties of the game on Steam.


Main feature of this version is a full modding support. Pretty much anything should be possible to change and your imagination will hopefully be the only limit.

We will soon start to post guides on how to start modding UBOAT on the fandom wiki and in Steam articles section. Please post your feedback and if there is anything missing we will be happy to improve.



Along with that we release the first two official mods:

• UBOAT Inspector (Steam | subsim | Nexus Mods) - which is a useful tool for modders.
  
• Saint-Nazaire Port in France (Steam | subsim | Nexus Mods).
  

Our mods are meant as modding examples and resources and some of them may eventually be integrated into the main game.

Note: While this version remains on the testing branch, Steam Workshop is going to be hidden. Please join this group on Steam to gain access to it.


Immersive start feature from the roadmap is now complete. When starting a new game you can select a starting scenario for the campaign, which influences many things in the game, especially starting u-boat, crew and date.

If you would like to say goodbye to the old crew, they will be sticking in the tutorial scenario until its removal next quarter.




This version introduces two new ships.

Kirov-class cruisers
Russian fleet enters UBOAT without compromises.



C3 freighters
These are one of the largest American-made freighters.




Since this version UBOAT has a launcher application. It features a built-in mod manager and a news section that will let us communicate certain things better.




It's a common request that is now in the game. It's no longer necessary to adjust them in the main menu.



There were many visual upgrades both small and large to the u-boat interior and exterior and the main menu. We encourage you to take a look around and see, if you can notice the changes.




Iron sights were an often requested feature and we managed to implement it in this version for all guns in the game. There are also major recoil and animation upgrades related to guns. Please check that out in the game and let us know what you think.




We continued to work on improving FPP experience by programming useful meters and devices on board:

- Papenberg gauge and inclinometer are now functional and add a few points to the immersion.



- Echosounder texture was created from the scratch with a much better resolution to make the results readable directly in the scene.



- Missing engine RPM meters on the starboard were added.
- All other meters on board had their display resolution increased for a better look and readability. There were also a few corrections on their scales.




While this version just hit the testing branch and may introduce a few bugs related to the new features, there are many fixes to the existing game base. Most notable fixes include:

- Sailors assigned to an officer would sometimes ignore orders while manning AA guns on the upgraded conning towers.
- Fixes to clipping of certain cloth combinations.
- Indicated depth under cursor on the map is much more precise and consistent. It should be much easier to navigate near Bergen with this upgrade.
- Characters no longer levitate above beds during certain animations.
- Recruitment officer no longer ignores your officers and doesn't instantly look away.
- Important AI fixes for coastal areas.


For the rest of this quarter we will be focusing on the remaining work from the roadmap, bug fixes and supporting the modders. We probably won't be adding extra things like in this update.

Just to remind you, mission overhaul and evacuation from the roadmap are planned for this quarter. We think we will finish them in time, but in case of a delay we will keep you updated.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

As promised, here comes our roadmap and our plans overview for the Early Access period. We will be updating the graphic below each quarter or so and we'll try our best to keep you up to date.

(Please right click on the image and select "Open image in a new tab" to see it in the full size.)

Please note that the feature list visible on the roadmap is not exhaustive and focuses on large tasks that may affect gameplay in impactful ways.

Let's discuss planned work in detail.


We see our current sandbox and mission system as a good base for new content. Unexpected events tend to happen, and each assignment, despite similar goals, can turn out differently each time. Having said that, we're going to make some changes soon.

First, we want to start with some groundwork and rework assignment briefing. We want to add more flair to it and make all objectives visible on the map during selection. In the current version, it's often hard to tell, for example, where is the sector that needs to be visited without closing the interface first and checking that on the map manually.

To battle the repetitiveness we want to add more variation to existing missions, by providing additional, clearly described conditions to them. Your ship may be fitted with experimental gear for the mission, storms might be expected in the target area or maybe a journalist will join your crew. These are some examples of things that may be enriching assignments soon.

We also feel that assignments need to be a bit more rewarding and offer additional challenges. We modeled 17 historical medals from various sources. We are going to use them soon by awarding them to the player and officers for completing multiple challenges during the assignment.



After the groundwork is done, we will start adding more content to existing missions and add completely new ones. We will also resume work on a campaign that will span through the whole World War II.


We plan to add a configuration screen soon. There, each player will have the possibility to choose the starting year, exact U-Boat to be roleplayed and the starting crew.

We are already taking steps to add new units to the game. You can expect to see completely new ships types like oil tankers, enemy submarines and German surface ships along with more variety among the existing unit types.



We're also working on replacing our current tutorial with contextual hints, explanations and adding training missions in the game world.

And last, but not least, we'll add submarine pens to the game world that will be buildable in HQ. They will look like the one in the main menu.


Crew management is going to see some changes. There is going to be a new screen where the player will be able to define various rules for the crew.

It's going to be possible to start rationing the food, order a sailor to be always ready to flood the tanks or define if the idle crew should run to the bow compartment during a crash dive.

These rules will require spending management points that will be provided to you by experienced officers who will be overseeing their implementation in life. It will simulate the effect of your crew gaining experience and working well with each other as time goes on. It will also add some automation but in a balanced way.

At the later stages of Early Access, we will be adding more crew events on board, as well as more interactions with objects in the world. It's going to be possible to take aircraft crew as captives on board or rescue survivors from a sunk ship, although that will be banned in 1942 after Laconia incident.


With each update, we did some small steps to add full modding capabilities to the game. We consider them now to be in pretty good shape and we'll start releasing our modding tools and guides soon. They will come with Steam Workshop support.

Although we declared this in Q4, it may start slowly rolling this month.


Technical issues will remain our top priority.

We already solved a great deal of them by version B124, but we will continue our commitment to solve them in the future.




The most effective way to report bugs to us is to use the in-game bug reporting tool that, by default, is assigned to the F11 key. This tool sends us useful diagnostic data that helps to prepare proper fixes.

For general suggestion and discussion about further development, we invite everybody to visit the latest pinned topic about unstable version testing. We make a new topic with each version.

Today we are going to mark our old forum for bug reporting as deprecated. We removed the link to it from the main menu of the game a few versions back and posting on that forum will be disabled.

Yours, Deep Water Studio