POSTAL 4: No Regerts News

You wanted performance improvements? You have them! As promised, we put pretty much the entire team onto the task of optimization for a few weeks. This process is still ongoing, and future updates will improve things further, but for now, you should have a much more enjoyable experience with this update in the way of higher framerates and far less hitching.

Many new features and improvements, too!

Note: Older saves will not work with this new update. They will be marked as red and should be deleted. Future updates should not break older saves - this is a one off thing.

Bystander Deathcrawling: There are currently two ways they can get to it: by being lit on fire and left to burn out or by begging for their life and still being attacked

Deathcrawl-after-ragdoll: if a pawn is 20% health or less, or they were kicked with Vitamin X, they'll go into deathcrawl when they recover from being ragdolled

Stumble animation, when a pawn runs for a certain distance they will stumble and stop to catch their breath

Machete charging sound

New faces on more Male pawns

Third-person animations for GasCan, Urethra, Pigeon Mine, Grenade and Beggar Sign (also TP fixes - see fixed section for more details)

Proper controller support: Map screen navigation with gamepad analog, navigation for inventory tab of phone, tab switching on map screen and more!

New loading screen transition after Dude gets arrested

Load zones! Due to absolutely no demand, a feature form POSTAL 2 has made a return! They are far quicker with fewer of them compared to P2 though, so they probably need a rebranding… lets call them ‘ZAP ZONES’*

*ZAP ZONES are hopefully only a temporary solution to the level hitching issues in POSTAL 4 and we aim to reintroduce full level steaming in the future when we’re doing our final optimizations. We’re pretty sure you’ll agree the trade off is worth the results in the here and now.




Optimization improvements. We still have some way to go but you should see some notable improvements to the frame rate in some of the worst areas, and the hitching/stuttering that randomly happened has been mostly eliminated

Scooter’s hill climbing capabilities and handling

Improved sidewalk transition near the Job Agency

Audio quality of radio songs

Increased the top speed of the Scooter slightly

Made improvements to the IK system - NPCs will now walk up stairs/hills/steep sidewalks more naturally

Gap between neck spout particle and NPC’s neck

Replaced more placeholder textures

Text/Event messages for things like pickups will now be combined, not duplicated, when multiple items are collected at once

Weapon wheel can now switch weapons and ammo types simultaneously

Replaced certain foliage meshes with better looking/optimized versions

Reduced the self hit pitch for all of our fluid weapons, meaning it’s never been easier to piss yourself out when on fire!

Adjusted window opacity settings




Broken 'Controls Binding' menu

Broken 'Post Process' and 'AA' method scrollboxes

Broken motion blur setting

Cat petting state transition not factoring the slowdown from Catnip

Weapon flicker when changing weapons while under Catnip

NPCs not reacting correctly to Dude carrying dismembered body parts

Certain sound effects not respecting Audio slider settings

Various assets that didn’t have a texture assigned

Not being able to explode Civvie’s noggin or dismember him

Flamethrower sound effect not looping correctly

Third-person camera going through walls

Third-person melee animations playing on the whole body as opposed to just the upper body

Erroneous “Save Exists” prompt when saving

Issue with the Save Menu where you couldn’t save over old slots

Customers not looking at the cashier

Generic paintings appearing behind Shady Art Dealer paintings

Couple terrain dips for better NPC navigation

Word wrapping/formatting issues with Firefighter side-errand

Controller issues in the various game menus

Ton of mapping bugs that were reported on our Janky community forums (p4isjanky.com)

Long pause that was that was happening in the Main Menu when you opened the game

NPCs sometimes being able to fire weapons without limbs

Having to mash 'Spacebar' multiple times to skip cinematics

NPCs getting stuck in continuous loop after being hit with SnS9000 Urine

Dude’s ERC Tower remark replaying after going back to starting area

Dude switching to last weapon used after holstering Urethra weapon

NPCs belonging to the same faction turning on each other when receiving damage (Police)

Art Dealer head/eyes not tracking player correctly

Pickup sounds for Dogs and Cats

Dude icon not showing on Map Screen

Cell Door sound playing when Police Station level loads

Hello, POSTAL fans!

As promised, we’re finally opening our community forums to the public. The new forums will allow us to better monitor feedback, but also help bring the Steam and GOG communities together in order to get a better understanding of where you guys would like us to focus our efforts. These forums will also act as the main point of contact between the community and RWS, allowing us to discuss various aspects of the game with each other, share ideas and basically, make POSTAL 4 the best game it can be! Although we’ll still continue to monitor the Steam and GOG forums as well, we encourage you to use the Janky site as the primary forums.

In the coming weeks, we will select some of the more active forum members to join our QA team, where they will have access to the latest nightly builds.

‘POSTAL 4 is Janky’ forums are open for registration right now, so make sure to sign up and fill it up with memes and D pics....I mean, fill it up with valuable feedback, suggestions and bug reports! (Registrations need to be approved and may take up to 24 hours, but chances are you'll not have to wait that long!)

https://www.postal4isjanky.com/forums/

As always, we would like to thank you for your continued support of our worst game ever candidates!

The Running With Scissors Team

WARNING: This Update includes A Lot of new cool stuff but it does not include any significant performance updates. In fact, in some areas it’s probably worse than the last build in terms of FPS (although there should be fewer instances of hitching). We focused on new content at the expense of performance. Now it is VERY IMPORTANT that we get this sorted out ASAP! Henceforth, we will be focusing our ENTIRE TEAM on optimization for as long as it takes to improve the janky ass framerate and remove all the major hitching present in the build.

Typically we’d have done this later in development but early access changed that. We want everyone to have a smooth experience. We will get this janky game running smoothly before pushing forward with adding more significant new features. Thanks for your understanding and support

Happy Valentines
❤️
New FOV menu with Vertical FOV setting

Proper support for Ultra-wide aspect ratio

Basic police system! You can now get arrested and sent to the police station. There are still ways to go in this area as this system will be greatly expanded upon in future updates

Civvie11 as Edensin’s resident crack dealer!



Asphalt and water skidding and tire rolling sounds for Scooter

New character heads and skins

Pickup notifications

NPC Head and eye tracking, and Blinking



New neck bleeding particle and behavior

Implemented a limb blood stream for severed limbs

New fiery trail for Molotov as well as new Molotov fire spreading code and particles



Ability to pickup dropped grenades

Implemented Free Mouse selection on the Weapon Wheel and ability to toggle the Weapon Wheel (Accessible from 'Gameplay' settings)

Implemented turn multiplier for the Hose and Vitamin X Urethra - this will make the streams feel “heavier”

More songs to the Radio

New extending and folding animations for the Baton

Money display to Phone screen

Pressure indicator for the Hose

Killer Crocs to the Pump Room in Sewers



Urethra cosmetics - You will now be able to select between five different urethra cosmetics (Ranging from the classic black bar to a hot-dog emoji). You can switch between them by selecting the 'Urethra' weapon from the 'Weapons' app in your Phone





New Skybox!

More NPC's in previously empty areas

Two new side-errands!

Volunteer Firefighter:

On Monday, after the Dude receives his tasks from the job agency, he receives a Mayoral Alert on his phone. It turns out the town’s fire station is on fire! With no fireman having stepped foot into Edensin in the last 40 years, a call for volunteer firemen (or firewomen) has been put out to the public. It’s none of the Dude’s business, but hey, there’s a small paying bonus if you do it!

Art Dealer:

On any day of the week, the Dude may enter the local art gallery which he initially discovers is completely devoid of any artwork on display. However, the proprietor beckons the Dude to accept a job for her. The dealer asks if he’ll go around town finding any special purple-framed paintings, part of the so-called “Royale Collection” that she’s after, and deliver them to her to put on the exhibition. Each delivered painting will yield a cash reward, and even dupes will pay out a smaller reward. Upon delivering a full set, the Dude will get a large bonus as well. Better get exploring if you want that fat cash reward!

We were planning on putting out three side-errands, but unfortunately one of them wasn’t quite ready to go. It should be going out soon though, stay tuned!





Many fire particle effects

Level design focusing on the cliff faces around the starting area and the more empty areas







Increased the sounds of bullet impacts

Improved Pigeon Mine sound effects

General lighting improvements

Weapon switching now remembers the last weapon used for each weapon slot

Category sublist on the Weapon Wheel will now fade out when out of focus

The Dude now bleeds blood, not concrete dust

Adjusted the Pistol reload sounds to better sync with the animations

Pilot light on the Spurt’n’Squirt 9000 is now extinguished when firing fluids

Improved fire extinguish smoke particle

Bystanders will now emit smoke when tazered

Improved the Tazer shock particles

Refined the Spurt’n’Squirt 9000 Flamethrower particle and projectile code

Remade the entrance to Sewers with much better models



Replaced more placeholder assets

Normalized in-game dialog

Improved road collision, so now NPC's don't clip and the scooter is smoother

The look of sidewalks (Added more detail)

Removed placeholder paintings in certain buildings, replaced with proper art

Major improvements to Fire Station and Clock Tower buildings









Updated the Credits screen (It looks much sleeker now)

Moved the Dude’s third person camera back an extra meter

Increased the scale of Grenade pickups and projectiles

Updated cutscenes to get rid of random looping sounds

QoL improvements to the Radio system: “Now Playing” messages, added a button to advance to the next track





Various mapping bugs (Floating assets, holes in terrain, certain meshes lacking collision)

Fixed up the AK muzzle flash so it better syncs when firing

Not being able to kick NPCs in the nuts!

Energy Drink and Vitamin X activation sounds

Cat Chute trigger to check only for the actual cat inventory items and not the dead dogs

Desert Eagle not playing its reload sounds

Animal spawners spawning at the start of the game as opposed to at the start of Animal Catcher cutscene

HUD not being visible when driving the Scooter

Fixed car alarms not triggering

Fixed several animations with broken fingers

Fixed 'interact' icon not displaying properly on one of the keypads

Fixed Flamethrower projectiles going through walls

Infinite water sounds when dying in water

Slap sound effects playing when hitting thin air

Fixed Game Menu disappearing if Save/Load menus was selected while a Save/Load menu was open already

Crashes related to the Subtitle system (As well as other crashes that were reported on our Steam Forums)

Hey POSTAL fans!

In our last development update, we explained that there would be a longer than normal wait until the next game update, as we wanted to take some time to really add in some significant content. We were gunning for a release of this update last Friday, the 31st of Jan.

Alas, we are the developer of "The Worst Game Ever" and we hit some last-minute problems that needed addressing before we roll it out. It should not be too much longer now!

It just doesn't feel right having such a long period of time between game updates, so after this next release we’ll go back to shitting out smaller, more frequent updates. Also, we are considering offering an ‘update beta’ branch, where those that want to stay on the absolute cutting edge can, on the understanding that things can, and often will, go horribly wrong at times (Maybe not POSTAL 3 wrong... but wrong).

With the next update, we will finally be opening our community forums to the public. These will allow the Steam and GoG communities to contribute in one place, and allow us to run polls and the like to get a better idea of where you guys want us to prioritize our efforts. We will select some of the more active members from there to join our QA team, where they will have access to nightly builds.

We have heard the complaints from the community about getting more insight into our plans for the game in the future, and are considering how best to share this information. We could just put a camera in MikeJ's Bidet... but that's not gonna happen. We don’t want to give you the entire design document, but it’s fair for our Early Access supporters to get an idea of where we plan on taking the game.

And finally, we’d like to address the sluggish elephant in the room - performance. This next update will not see major improvements in this area we had hoped. However, it’s been decided that after this update is out, we will have our entire team working on improving the framerate and any associated level stuttering/hitching EXCLUSIVELY (Please clap!). Every coder, modeler, artist and level designer will be in on the effort.

The change log of the next update is far, far bigger than any you’ve seen before and includes many improvements and finally some new things to do!

Thanks for sticking with us, we won’t let you down....again.

Running With Scissors Team