UBOAT News

Hello Kriegsmarine,

We just release the biggest patch so far with lots of changes and already have a new one for you to test. We hope you'll enjoy it and leave some feedback!

• It's now possible to add custom music to the game. Please read README file in "(GAME_FOLDER)\UBOAT_Data\StreamingAssets\Packages\custom-music" to learn where to place your music files.
  
• Various modding improvements for summer's modding SDK introduction. Added support for raw audio and texture files and support for data sheet overrides in mods.
  

• Pausing or disabling time compression on the map was causing random camera movement.
  
• Sink ship objectives were sometimes duplicated.
  
• Increased fuel usage to achieve historical range only with some bonuses from an engineer working at the engines and/or leader at the navigator's station. It was very hard to run out of fuel on B121.
  
• Vacation could be bought without sufficient funds and cause the budget to dive below zero.
  
• Faster completion bonus of HQ tasks from a vacation (like Eagle's Nest) wasn't applied to tasks that were started before a vacation.
  
• Vacation notification had missing localizations.
  
• Reputation points count label in reputation purchases screen was often displaying a wrong value.
  
• Added sound effect for reputation purchases.
  

Talk to you soon!

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

Hello Sailors,

Thank you for your patience. We know it's been a while since we posted B121 at the unstable branch. Now, properly tested, we are giving it to all the players waiting. This is the biggest update so far. Lots of changes, plenty of fixes. We went to extremely deep waters with it for you. Without further ado, please take a look at the changes.

• Fast travel mode was removed from the game and replaced with a stronger time compression mode which functionally is pretty similar, but without forcing perspective, unnecessary cheating and added the possibility to use it at all times.
  
• Travel system was streamlined and no longer speeds up units depending on the current sea size etc. The time needed to pass X km on the world map should be just as expected. Please note though that time will still pass faster than normal even without time compression when the game is in the travel mode. We will probably add an alternative, realistic travel system at some point, but the current one will always be the default one in the game. With this update, it should be much closer to what simulation games community wants, while still being user-friendly.
  
• Officers gain and loss fatigue much more slowly.
  
• Fixed very numerous physics problems that were appearing at newly added high time compression level.
  
• Script optimizations for smoother performance when time compression is being used.
  
• Electricity consumption in travel mode was reworked.
  
• U-boat's range on diesel engines now matches the real values.
  

• Moving large quantities of goods from port and refitting u-boat is no longer instant and requires some off duty period.
  
• Crew gets weary over time when being very long on the sea and gains discipline penalties.
  
• Crew can be sent on a vacation to reset their mood, while u-boat is undergoing maintenance work.
  
• Added game mechanic for quickly skipping long periods of time while u-boat is off duty.
  
• U-boat upgrades now also require off duty time to be installed.
  

• It's now possible to open storages and torpedo storages to view their contents and issue transport/loading orders without having any officer selected. Such orders are later completed by officers with certain roles and their helpers.
  
• Added progress bars and labels to the storage UI that indicates, which items are currently being moved somewhere else.
  
• Transported items are now always dropped in a storage slot chosen by the player instead of the first free slot.
  
• Characters will carry items in both ways to save time if there are orders to transport goods in two directions between storages.
  
• It's now possible to buy shells directly into ammunition storages.
  

• Assignments are now completed after talking with the leading officer. They cannot be completed on the sea like before. This change, among other things, allows the player to report all events normally after completing the main objective of the assignment.
  
• Orbit view camera was improved to better present ship's bobbing/elevation changes while moving through the waves.
  
• Added new action icons on portraits: blowing ballast tanks, flooding ballast tanks, wounded, treatment.
  
• Fixes and improvements to many port textures.
  
• Reworked navigation table. It's no longer possible to get lost soon after navigator had worked for a substantial time at it.
  
• Added research for sonar decoys. Removed sonar decoys from the starting equipment.
  
• UI sound effects are now stereo panned and most of them are quieter by default.
  

• Crew's RAM and VRAM usage was considerably decreased.
  
• Generation of character meshes was rewritten to be as asynchronous as possible on the current version of the engine. It should fix the most common hiccups in the game occurring during weather changes, boarding crew, etc.
  
• Texture compression tasks are now asynchronous.
  
• Physics should run more smoothly near ports.
  

• Sun lens flare could be visible under water during sunsets. It could also be visible in some fogs.
  
• Fixed clearly visible boundary on the sea at some distance from the ports.
  
• Injured characters could get some automated orders.
  
• Font fixes.
  
• Camera could orbit target that was no longer visible.
  
• Buoyancy force is additionally stabilized when physics precision is decreased. It fixes exaggerated bounce of a few ship types on time compression.
  
• Rudders sway much less to the left and right when traveling forward with enabled time compression.
  
• Ambient occlusion was incorrect on lower levels of detail for characters, making the transition clearly visible.
  
• Sandbox could start with loading popup still on the screen.
  
• Characters were flickering after transitioning between the port and the deck.
  
• Diesel engines range estimation was off and didn't consider the engineer's skills.
  
• Time compression is becoming disabled after entering or leaving the travel mode.
  
• Player could enter land areas without seeing any notification aside from the paused time.
  
• Reflections on the sea were too foggy.
  
• Transfer count slider in the storage UI now takes into consideration remaining capacity of the target slot. It's no longer possible to declare transfer larger than possible.
  
• Leo Loris wasn't working on the actions queued in the global queue.
  
• Various fixes to torpedo storages bugs.
  
• Fixed exploit that was making instant torpedo loading possible.
  
• Torpedo loading tasks in the global order queue are now performed only by engineers following the torpedo mechanic role.
  
• Global order queue could hold only one non-ending action. It's no longer a case.
  
• Electric engines battery drain was lowered.
  
• Certain transport tasks could become stuck at 100%.
  
• Time compression now correctly stabilizes torque changes from buoyancy to make watching it more comfortable.
  
• Purchasing torpedoes into stern torpedo storage wasn't working.
  
• Carry item orders assigned to officer with helpers were sometimes ended prematurely with a few items left in the source storage.
  
• Quartermaster role wasn't working since 121 Preview 1.
  
• Quartermaster could transport a fractional number of shells to the ammunition storage. He was also never resupplying the storage completely and wasn't re-using slots in the storage.
  
• Displayed item count was often wrong when the slot was a target of a transport task.
  
• Code related to now deprecated skipping calendar dates feature was removed from the game. It had a minor impact on performance.
  
• Time skipping of the resupply at the port was often ended prematurely.
  
• Storage weight limits weren't respected if all items were queued to be moved at once between storages.
  
• Fixed multiple problems resulting from moving one shop item to a few u-boat's storage slots.
  
• Some crew members could start working with a briefcase or a backpack after vacation.
  
• Improved performance during time skipping in port.
  
• Headquarters task duration is now expressed in days, if appropriate, instead of hours to improve readability.
  
• Hydrophone can be now correctly downgraded to GHG at ports.
  
• Localization fixes.
  
• Selling items to the warehouse no longer resets their count.
  
• Items that aren't produced by a given country or are at a low stock are no longer restocked in the warehouses.
  
• Number keys no longer initiate dialogue options when various UIs opened through dialogue are open.
  
• Keyboard shortcuts could stop to work if a player left to the menu during a dialogue.
  
• Torpedo arm distances were adjusted for faster torpedo types (they were noticeably higher than for the slow ones).
  
• It's no longer possible to detect groups hidden behind land by any means.
  
• Various fixes to conning tower observation animations.
  
• One part of the conning tower wasn't being visually damaged by the explosions.
  
• Attempt at fixing Unity's background thread crash after entering HQ.
  
• Map grid could have a gap at the bottom part of the screen after entering the land area.
  
• Lens flare quality improvements. Fixed lens flare flickering every 10 minutes of in-game time.
  
• Ammunition Production I task wasn't doing anything due to a bug.
  
• Failed missions weren't handled properly and the player could get rewards for them.
  
• Espionage assignment fixes.
  
• Fixed Unity's background thread crash after entering HQ.
  
• Console wasn't properly displaying some messages after optimizations from B120.
  
• ON convoys could travel through the land on the way to Halifax.
  
• Physics of the items hanging on the hooks in the stern torpedo room could become permanently corrupted, especially when large time compressions were used.
  
• Torpedo mechanic could get stuck outside of the pressure hull after loading or warming torpedoes. Also, the end of the loading animation was erratic.
  
• Selection of portraits could stop working after performing certain steps.
  
• One part of VIIC u-boats was remaining visible even after losing them from the sight.
  
• Possible fix for duplicated/ghost units which couldn't be reported after sinking.
  
• Diver could become not selectable under certain circumstances.
  
• Leaving tutorial by clicking the button at the end was causing minor issues.
  
• Caps were sometimes visible in FPP.
  
• Minor storage UI fixes.
  
• Minor render pipeline fixes.
  
• Localization fixes.
  
• Underwater effect wasn't working inside flooded compartments since at least a few versions.
  
• Torpedo and hatch animations now respect current time scale. They were moving too fast on a pause and too slowly on a time compression.
  
• Activator banners react more consistently to being occluded by the scene elements (labels were previously unaffected).
  
• Loading screen music now respects current audio settings.
  
• Various fixes to first aid.
  
• Fixes to various path-finding related warnings that probably didn't have any impact.
  
• Multiple fixes to having two torpedo mechanics at the same time.
  
• Propeller audio effects were audible above the surface of the water for up to a few minutes after loading a game state. This problem could affect a few other audio effects too.
  
• Inactive characters that were on a vacation or investigating other ship were coming back to the scene after loading a game state.
  
• Reworked internal compartments of smaller units to make them more easily sinkable.
  
• Added balancing factor to the torpedo damage formula.
  
• Ships evacuated by the crew receive more damage and floodings are more likely to spread to simulate the fact that they lack any kind of direct damage control at such point.
  
• HQ now requires more definite sinkings for a reward.
  
• Font fixes.
  

You must admit, that looks impressive, but let's face it. We would never do it without you and your feedback. Once again, massive thank you for each conversation, each report, each review. You're the best!

Sailors! Dismissed!

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

Hello Sailors!

After silent running with blue lights on for two weeks and working on the next update, we are finally ready to share this version publicly. We try to be as open as possible about the production, but during major work, there is often not that much point in sharing what we have even on the unstable branch as that would be just a pure frustration for you and us :)

Let's move on and talk about the update B121 which is now being released on the "Unstable" branch. If you like to test it, change to it in the game properties from the Steam Library, but keep in mind that this is still a work in progress.


With this version, we overhauled the travel system in the game. The most visible change is that the fast travel mode is gone. We didn't like it, you didn't like it, nobody liked it seems, so we finally got rid of it.

Instead, there is a new time compression available that is 5x as strong as the base one. It allows you to leave areas in a decent time, similarly to the old "fast travel" mode, but it works in a much more cleaner fashion. It can be used at any point in the game without restrictions, while no cheating is involved and all laws of physics are respected. It was a major technical challenge, as physics tend to break easily on such fast time scales and we had to perform many optimizations, fixes and ensure proper handling of edge cases.

Another major change is that long distance travels on the map work differently than they used to. There were many technical changes which translate more or less to such end effects:

• Movement on the map is much slower without time compression. There is much more time to plan an attack on the nearby groups, if you prefer to play real-time without using the active pause.
  
• On the other hand, travel on the map is much faster than before, if the new time compression is used, so this change may satisfy both the patient and impatient players.
  
• All small cheats here and there were removed that translate to more realistic navigation.
  
• U-boat's range is set to real-life values.
  

Those changes address some of the suggestions we were getting from the community since the release. We hope you will like them.


Before this update, there wasn't any decent mechanism that would make it possible to play through the whole war in a reasonable time. We had one solution during the Kickstarter backer beta, namely skipping calendar dates, but it was a confusing solution. We removed it and planned a new system. Finally, we had time to implement that new system. Let's talk about the details.

• Resupplying your u-boat at the port is no longer instant and takes some time to be done. Your u-boat will be moved off-duty until all ordered equipment is loaded inside. You can skip the wait with a click of the button and continue normally. We didn't add any animations for the port workers so far, but we have such plans.
  
• Crew gets fatigued over time and needs a vacation from time to time. We found historical sources about places where u-boat crews were resting and added them into the game. You can send your guys to simply rest in the port city you are currently in or spend some budget and let them relax in a French Chateau or Eagle's Nest.
  
• New travel system ensures that patrols last much longer when it comes to passing in-game hours and days (it's also closer to real-life historical data).
  

These changes ensure that time will progress much faster and potentially allow the player to play through the whole World War II which was always our intention for UBOAT.

We balanced the game accordingly to match these changes. All HQ tasks take much more time to be researched and officers get fatigued much more slowly, which was also a commonly requested change.




To implement the delayed resupply of the ship at ports we had to improve the user interface for storages to make such information readable. It was an unexpected work that lead us to a major change how the storages are used and delayed this update by a week.

Starting with this version it's possible to open storages and plan all logistics without having any officer selected. All transport tasks are later completed by officers with certain roles and sailors under their command.

It's also possible to plan ahead the torpedo loadout and don't let your officer choose it automatically.

All ongoing transport tasks are clearly presented in the storage's user interface.

Another change, is that it's now possible to purchase ammunition directly into a gun's storage.




With this version, we worked on some tougher technical matters that needed some time to be done. The game should generally run more smoothly, with better performance and lower RAM / VRAM usage.

Have you ever noticed lags appearing before and after each rain in the game or after adding new sailors to the crew? They were caused by rebuilding geometry for the characters. Considering that the u-boat is pretty densely packed with unique characters we are displaying them in a very optimized way which has this downside that some CPU work is needed to get it going after each change of the clothing like equipping a raincoat. Starting with this version, it's a fully asynchronous process and those lags won't bother you anymore.


Starting with this version rewards for assignments are received only after talking with the leading officer in the port rather than clicking a button on the open sea. This change keeps the mission open until that point. It allows you to report all sunk ships and other events normally after completing the main objective of your assignment. It was a small oversight in the design that we didn't manage to fix for the initial Early Access version.


You're truly amazing. Thank you for all the conversations we have. We listen to each and every one of you. Your voice is heard and we take it all into consideration. Please play the new patch and let us know what you think.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

Fellow Kriegsmarine Crewmembers,

we're happy to announce that update B120 is already available for everyone after an intense testing period. Thanks to everyone who helped us tweak it and made some important fixes - your support is greatly appreciated!

Here's what you can expect after downloading our new patch:

Improvements:

• Added bug reporting tool accessed by pressing F11.
  

Fixes:

• Lowered memory usage when the game state is being saved.
  
• Decreased lag when ships are spawned in the scene.
  
• Starting a new game was partially keeping research from the previous session.
  
• Blood pools from the previous session could stay in the scene after loading a game state.
  
• Ships could stop after loading a game state if they were in the middle of certain AI behaviors.
  
• A few sound effects were stopping to be handled correctly after loading a game state.
  
• Carry item orders were often ended prematurely if more than one person was working on it.
  
• U-boats operate on Atlantic in smaller numbers.
  
• Save system fixes.
  
• Hydrophone was working on the sea surface and had doubled range since B119 (this problem may persist in saved game state files).
  
• Flames on a few types of NPC ship decks weren't properly restored after loading a game state.
  
• Flag masts are now functioning correctly on Turm II and Turm IV.
  
• Discipline level could become corrupted if the whole crew was moved off the board.
  
• Improved performance in Axis ports.
  
• Game could become permanently paused after loading some game states.
  
• Hydrophone upgrades were working incorrectly.
  
• Port characters could be moved to player's ship due to an error.
  
• Right clicking on UI while the camera is in TPP view no longer releases the character from the station.
  
• Periscope's lock target is automatically cleared when the target is no longer seen.
  
• It's no longer possible to lock periscope on a port, aircraft, torpedo, mine or anti-submarine net.
  
• Map shortcut ("M") no longer can be used in the headquarters screen.
  
• Notifications no longer can be clicked when their effects would cause issues in the current state of the game (dialogues, HQ screen, etc.).
  
• Button for accepting rewards at HQ could become not interactable after certain steps were taken.
  
• Ammunition Production I rewards are no longer displayed with unreadable green color.
  
• Warehouses now have 20 torpedo slots instead of 12.
  
• Correct flags in Portsmouth.
  
• Discipline penalty applied by hunger was incorrectly displayed with green font.
  
• Food wasn't automatically replenished in the kitchen if food ran out in the storage and later was resupplied from the warehouse.
  
• Hunger notification wasn't restored after loading a game state.
  
• Turm IV gun projectiles weren't shot forward in the direction pointed by the crosshair in manual mode.
  
• Audio system fixes.
  
• Game states saved while time compression was enabled were loading in a partially incorrect state.
  
• Work stations in Battery Room no. 2 had too strict flooding intolerance levels.
  
• Character could become stuck and would no longer move in random cases.
  
• Fixed problem with "Saving..." notification remaining indefinitely on the screen.
  
• Game notifies player if saving game state was unsuccessful for some reason (running out of free space on HDD or game error).
  
• U-boats docked in ports were too easily moved by the waves and often ended up beached.
  
• Food consumption is no longer affected by time skipped by gameplay means or cheats.
  
• Sink ship missions could target ships stationing in ports.
  
• U-boat section view lighting fixes/improvements.
  
• Torpedoes were sometimes fired at a different target than expected by the player.
  
• Fixed few errors logged into reported logs.
  
• In-game console could, in some cases, use all available memory and freeze the game.
  
• Logger optimizations.
  
• Discovery of port/ship components (like AA guns) is now triggered in a more user-friendly way.
  
• It was possible to discover port/ship components with the opposite side of the periscope.
  
• After following a few steps map would be no longer possible to open.
  
• Fixes to a few errors that could loop and decrease performance.
  
• Ships could be launched into the sky after loading a game state.
  
• Cursor was missing on the defeat screen if the player was in FPP view.
  
• Carry item orders were usually failing, if there were a few copies of the item in the source storage.
  
• Fixed inappropriate behavior in the kitchen.
  
• Fix for entering land areas in the middle of the Atlantic.
  
• Improvements of contact precision could throw player back to travel mode.
  
• Decreased alarm discipline penalty.
  
• Sailors assigned to the officer could open storage instead of him if he drunk coffee before arriving at the storage.
  

As always, please leave any feedback you may have in the separate forum thread for patch B120: https://steamcommunity.com/app/494840/discussions/1/1652171126120146895/

We are reading through all your comments and reviews and we're happy that we are getting so much support. We're going back to work on further improvements so stay tuned for more!

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

Hallo Mariners,

Wie geht's? We hope you're doing good. Either way, we have great things to announce!

Here's the changelog of patch B119. As you can see it's massive! The saves from B119 are compatible with B118, but some of the new things will be available only after starting a new game in B119. We are aware that it may be a pain, but we think it's worth it.

Improvements:

• Crew list now displays the personality of a sailor, if it was already revealed.
  
• Flags of some countries are now divided between the navy and the merchant fleets.
  
• Index of the torpedo launcher being loaded is now displayed on the portrait of the officer.
  
• Equipment produced through HQ (T3 torpedoes, advanced ammunition types and potassium absorbers) is instantly resupplied in all ports.
  
• It's now possible to abandon current assignment at a cost of reputation (translations for this feature may be inaccurate in some languages).
  

Fixes:

• Fixed growth of save files each time after a game state was loaded through the main menu and saved again, to a point when they were stopping to load.
  
• Confirmed fix for a problem that was causing around 60% of crashes reported to our system.
  
• Fixes for few confirmed memory leaks and decreased memory usage.
  
• Decreased memory usage spikes related to a generation of character meshes and textures.
  
• Major memory optimizations related to terrain generation.
  
• Terrain segments are now generated in smaller batches to save memory.
  
• Application is cleaning memory more often during loading tasks.
  
• Errors logged after upgrading conning tower were fixed.
  
• Characters, especially the cleaner, could become trapped between the wall and the torpedo being loaded in the stern torpedo room.
  
• Animation of loading stern torpedo launcher is now correctly aligned with the handle.
  
• Correct flag files for a few countries.
  
• Officers could sometimes panic after discipline fell to zero.
  
• UI scale slider was moved from "Control" to "Video" settings.
  
• Character name changes are now correctly reflected on the UI above character heads.
  
• Germany produces much more AP ammo at the start of the game.
  
• All ammunition types are much cheaper. Ports store ammunition in much larger quantities.
  
• Combat helmets and rebreathers are cheaper.
  
• Wilhelm Wolff is correctly recognized as a crew member.
  
• Port in which player's u-boat is docked is being periodically restocked like all other ports.
  
• Hydrophone bearing was incorrectly aligned by outdated code. It worked properly only if the ship was oriented directly at the north.
  
• Rudder's drag force was pointed in a wrong direction when the ship was moving backward, causing very odd behavior in case of large rudders.
  
• Few fixes to ship's combat AI.
  
• Upgrades of certain equipment were making radio room or listening room unusable.
  
• Carry item orders could get stuck.
  
• Characters were unequipping raincoats after stepping into the port, even if it was raining.
  
• Mouse pointer could disappear after upgrading the ship.
  
• It's no longer possible to save during a dialogue.
  
• Ships could enter land areas if they were returning back to port on low fuel.
  
• OG and BB convoys had mistaken waypoints on their path.
  
• Identification book was stopping to be functional after loading a game state (this problem is carried over in save files).
  
• Few types of ships had an incorrect setup of propellers and rudders. The most common side effect was the ability to hear their propellers above water from large distances.
  
• Unread messages notification could be visible, even if zero unread messages were present after loading a game state.
  
• Fixed bug that could occasionally cause infinite loading screen.
  
• Exploration mode speeds up sandbox time more than before.
  
• Food is much cheaper.
  
• Fixed not clickable listening room problem.
  
• Characters could play incorrect animations after loading a game state and they could appear in wrong places.
  
• In-progress torpedo loading animation was off after loading a game state.
  
• Officer that was playing cards could get interrupted by sailors eating a meal.
  
• Characters are faded in and out when they start or stop animation that doesn't have specified transition.
  
• Optimization to interiors rendering.
  
• Characters could be lit by the sky ambient and stay that way if a game state was loaded with them sleeping on starboard upper beds (they had a blue tint).
  
• Stored torpedoes no longer can be damaged.
  
• Lowered memory usage and improved performance while loading game states.
  
• Ships in the scene weren't receiving any visual damage and weren't wetted by the sea after loading a game state.
  
• Fixed problem with freezing viewport after using periscope in manual mode.
  
• Aircraft sent from the carrier over long distances wasn't initialized correctly and were causing occasional problems.
  
• Hotkeys for selecting officers were working only for the first 6 officers.
  
• Certain sound effects could become permanently muted after hydrophone was used in manual mode.
  
• Characters could start running in one place when u-boat started to sink.
  
• Cranes in La Rochelle could become invisible after loading a game state.
  
• Crew was much less willing to eat food after the first alarm was over.
  
• Ports and other groups could not load, if a player entered, left and entered their area again in a short time.
  
• Game could freeze during terrain generation.
  
• Increased error durability of the save system. Saved game state files without major structural problems should load normally when smaller problems are encountered.
  
• Fixes to some of the most common auto-reported errors.
  

Did you think that's big? How about we tell you we already launching a new patch B120 for the branch Unstable? So for those of you, who want more from life, we prepared another changelog.

Fixes:

• Lowered memory usage when the game state is being saved.
  
• Decreased lag when ships are spawned in the scene.
  
• Starting a new game was partially keeping research from the previous session.
  
• Blood pools from the previous session could stay in the scene after loading a game state.
  
• Ships could stop after loading a game state if they were in the middle of certain AI behaviors.
  
• A few sound effects were stopping to be handled correctly after loading a game state.
  
• Carry item orders were often ended prematurely if more than one person was working on it.
  
• U-boats operate on Atlantic in smaller numbers.
  
• Save system fixes.
  

Thanks again! We will never be able to thank you enough for all your valuable feedback and reports. You're the best Seemänner in the whole wide world! Talk to you soon.

You can report the bugs here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/494840/discussions/0/2530372519560243154/

Yours,
Deep Water Studio