POSTAL 4: No Regerts News

Just some fixes for ya' today :)



Crash related to an Armor pickup
NPC's respawning in position right after they had been killed
Optimized collision on various models, should help performance a bit some areas
Optimized LOD's on foliage

Saves! Yup, that fundamental feature that you’ve all been waiting an entire month for! Saves are not yet in their final form, but they are good enough to now showcase and make use of. As of now they allow you to:

• Save anywhere when not inside a mission area (Prison/Sewers) and it’ll remember your position, completed errands and current inventory
  
  
• Load from your last save at any point in game
  
  
• Resume from your last save/checkpoint from the main menu
  

There are a few features still missing and will be addressed in a future update:

• It’s not possible to save your location and position from within some errand maps such as the Prison/Sewers. Although if you die in Sewers or Prison, you'll still be able to respawn from the last checkpoint you hit
  
  
• There are no save slots yet, only your previous save/checkpoint is remembered
  
  
• It takes longer to load from a save than we’d like, but this will improve as we work on the streaming system
  

A couple cheats to allow you to warp around the world a bit easier, mostly for our internal testing but you guys might find them helpful. Press ‘T’ to bring up the talk bar and type the following to wrap yourself to a location:

• /TurtlePower (Teleport to the Sewers)
• /DoNotPassGo (Teleport to the Prison)
• /INeedAJob (Teleport to the Job Agency)
• /SPCA (Teleport to the Animal Catcher area)
• /OneStarMotel (Teleport to the Ending Motel building)

Few notes:

- Note that these do not automatically complete any errands, it’s just a way to quickly travel between areas
- We will be adding the ability to manually save from inside the Sewers and Prison in a future patch!




We’ve tightened up our Anu’s ready for you to go deep into and explore! The Anu’s Inn building was previously a thrown together placeholder building that was inaccessible and had a ridiculously high in poly count for what it was. It’s now far better looking, all rooms are open to explore, and it’s less likely to contribute to melting your PC components

BEFORE



AFTER



Redesigned the starting area

BEFORE





AFTER





Various updates and improvements to level design in some areas, and minor performance updates

Ambient sounds in some areas across the game, most notably the Laundromat

Replaced placeholder Ammo textures




Some weapons not correctly reflecting light, so they no longer appear black in some areas

===Added===

• New scooter textures and colours
  
• More ambient sounds to levels
  
• Population setting ('Low', 'Medium' and 'High' in 'Performance' settings)
  

===Changed/Improved===

• Updated the credit screen
  
• Made Vitamin X Kick more powerful!
  
  Preview:
  
  [previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
  
  
• NPCs in Sewers
  
• Spurt’n’Squirt now turns on the pilot light when changing to Gasoline
  
• Impact sounds from weapons such as the AK
  
• Replaced more placeholder textures
  
• Lighting optimization
  
• Weapon textures
  
• Fluid collision system to better sync NPC hits
  

===Fixed===

• Crash when changing HUD types from the main menu
  
• Classic HUD reverting to the new HUD icon for empty inventory slots
  
• Beggar Sign not being removed from your inventory when seeing Bellow early
  
• Various mapping bugs
  

Notes:

• Saving is coming next week! We are just testing now and ironing out some bugs, but they’ll be in the next update.

Last week’s big highlight was the release of Vitamin X power up and the instantly iconic ‘hose urine stream’.

What more do you want? We probably could have slapped a 1.0 version number on the build and called it a day and still have gotten a Game of The Year award due to this inclusion, but we don’t have anything better to do so I guess we’ll push on with some more updates.

As you guys might have noticed, the game is being improved in the ambient sound department. The outdoor areas play host to bird and insect noises, the Penitentiary has a set of both pre and post riot background noses, and we snuck a little gag into the beginning of the cinematic with Bellow. Sound improvements will be on going.

We also added the ability to change back to the classic POSTAL 2-style HUD, and in the future we'll be adding more options for users to customize their game. Currently, switching the HUD will crash the game if you try and change it from the main menu, guess we should have tested that first, eh? Booting the game back up though will see the HUD set correctly though. Or just change it mid-game where it’s not a problem. The fix for this will be a part of the next patch.

Behind the scenes we’ve been getting our new lead level designer settled in and he’s been giving us a few tisk tisks, and vows to start improving things, both visually and technically. First thing he’s been focusing on is replacing crappy placeholder art assets and reducing overall polycounts on objects that need it the most.

Finally, we’ve taken on a full time member who only has one job (at least for the foreseeable future) - optimization and streaming research. He’ll have the unenviable task of digging through any and all documentation, spamming various forums, contacting anyone that might have some advice, and getting in there and applying some good ol’ fashioned trial and error to find out what works best and what does not.

Saving is semi-implemented on our end now, and undergoing testing. The first update to include it will allow you to resume your game from the last used checkpoint and have all the previously completed errands remembered. We’ll keep improving the same system until we hopefully end up with full save states.

That’s all folks, see you in a few days for the next update!

Running With Scissors Team

===Added===

• Vitamin X powerup! Once the Dude has consumed one of these, he’ll get the following buffs:
  
  - Super strong urine stream! It will not only break windows, but also knock over NPCS!
  - Machete will dismember NPCs with the primary fire and no charge time!
  - Melee attacks are faster
  - Dude’s movement speed increased
  - Kicking NPC’s will knock them over
  - More buffs will be added in the future
  
  [previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
  
• Crouch Toggle checkbox to the controls
  
• HUD customization! For now just the one option, and that’s the ‘Classic’ P2 hud, you can find it in the options under 'Gameplay':
  
  
  
  
• Cosmetic skins for some of the weapons, go check them out, selectable from within the phone menu! Sadly, we forgot to implement a microtransaction system, so guess you get them for free…
  
• Ambient sounds to the outdoor areas, and prison
  
• Toilet to the Antiques store! You’re welcome!
  

===Changed/Improved===

• The ladder sounds
  
• Prison security code screens
  
• Female heads so they should be easier to kick around
  
• Lighting and shadowing inside various buildings, mostly in houses and the prison area
  

===Fixed===

• 'Reset Defaults' in control binding menu causing all bindings from that menu to be disabled for the current game session
  
• Incorrect dude lines being used in the sign beggar errand
  
• Glasses clipping into NPC’s faces
  
• Various crashes
  
• Minor scooter bugs and general polish
  

Notes

• Saving system is still coming along but not quite ready for show time yet
  
• We are in the process of taking on someone full time to focus on nothing but optimization
  
• The guy that normally posts these patch notes and does the cool stuff like adding screenshots etc was off sick today and I'm about ready to go get a beer - it's been a long day - so forget the lazy presentation of this post. [I'm back boys! The post should look sexy now!]