UBOAT News

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

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!

[h2]Summary of the changes[/h2]
[h3]Optimization[/h3]
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.

[h3]Campaign setup[/h3]
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.



[h3]Volumetric lighting[/h3]
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.



[h3]Food management[/h3]
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.



[h3]Stable release[/h3]
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.

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

[h3]Optimizations:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Campaign setup:[/h3]
- 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.

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

[h3]Simulation:[/h3]
- Fix: Improvements to FAT and LUT torpedo programs.

[h3]AI:[/h3]
- Fix: NPC ships were remaining in the alarmed state, if they were having any enemy wreck site in the sight range.

[h3]Missions:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- 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.

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

[h3]General:[/h3]
- 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

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Best regards,
Uboat team

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.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- Fix: After loading a game state, map was usually becoming slightly darker than intended on the maximum view distance.

[h3]Missions:[/h3]
- 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.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.

[h3]General:[/h3]
- 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