[h3]Fellow officers,[/h3]gamescom is over and it has been a blast! Seeing so many of you come to our booth, try out the game and give us feedback...
that was awesome. However, we haven't stopped working at all and especially not on the next update.
Welcome to Update 7.0.0 - now available in Open Beta before the full update launches on September 20th![h2]Introducing: Update 7.0.0[/h2]
You might be wondering: Hey, why are they not naming it? Where's the fancy picture showing off the new features? Why is this blog post looking different than the others?
Well, it's actually quite simple.
On our road to leaving Early Access, we want to polish the game further, focus on fixing bugs, and bring you a bunch of necessary quality-of-life improvements. Why add new features for the sake of new features when you should rather improve what has been there before?
That's why Update 7.0.0 is just... 7.0.0. It's a very simple naming but also an effective one.
[h2]Car control improvements![/h2]
We know, we know: The current way of controlling your patrol car is not really optimal at all. That's why we're tackling this very issue and issue a bunch of improvements to make it a lot more enjoyable.
We've rebalanced all patrol cars to make their controls more natural so please give us your feedback on that. In addition, we've added new settings related to vehicle steering sensitivity and controller dead zone adjustments. Last but not least: You can now switch seats from inside the car!
[h2]Manage the accidents you caused[/h2]
Some of you are truly ruthless! Causing accidents left and right, bringing other NPCs in difficult situations, making them lose everything they own... but hey, it can be fun as well at times.
Now, you can manage these very accidents! Document the accident, talk to the NPC, ensure everyone gets all the information necessary.
Side note: The speed limit of the street will now be displayed on the screen! Not just good for your own driving behavior but also for radar gun usage...
[h2]A little bit of balancing[/h2]
If I say the following three things, will you finally be happy?!
Accidents will now happen less.
You will get fewer NPCs asking for directions.
Crimes are now happening more far away so that wallet thefts and so on won't happen right in front of your eyes.
... I'm happy now. It feels good.
[h2]Performance Improvements[/h2]
We've optimized the game in several areas to further improve performance by reducing memory usage, deleting unused assets and adjusting the number of parked NPVs (which, as a side effect, should bring other improvements with it).
[h2]Hungarian Language[/h2]
This is only possible thanks to
John Bart who spent his last few months working on the mod, translating the ENTIRE game to Hungarian. We can not even slightly imagine how much work that must have been so please thank him for his tremendous effort!
If you want to switch to Hungarian, you only have to
head over to the Steam Workshop and subscribe to the mod! We'll make sure, together with him, that this localization option will get updated over time as well!
Thank you John Bart for all your efforts, it has been awesome working alongside you
[h2]How do I enter the Open Beta?[/h2]
We've made the process as easy as possible to include you, the community, early on during the development of the game. To join the Open Beta, you only need to perform the following steps:
- Right-click on Police Simulator: Patrol Officers in your Steam library.
- Select 'Properties' in the menu.
- Select 'Betas' in the sidebar on the left.
- Select 'Beta' in the drop-down menu and confirm your decision to switch to that branch.
- An update should now start - you are now officially part of the Open Beta!
To switch back to your stable save game, just repeat these steps again - but instead of selecting 'Beta', you just select 'None'. Easy.
Everyone can test the beta extensively and provide feedback on its features, balancing, and bugs. Feel free to send us your impressions on
Discord, in the
Steam Beta forums and
on our Socials.
[h2]Save game to unlock everything in the beta[/h2]
By
visiting this link, you can download a save game for use on the beta branch (and
only on the beta branch!). This save game will unlock all features immediately. You also need to know that you must copy the save game into the following folder:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Boston\Saved\SaveGames
You can find the folder more easily by typing %localappdata% into the Windows search.Since the save is named
Career_0beta.sav, you have to delete any other save game which might also be called
Career_0beta.sav. We recommend doing a backup of the old save game as well should you want to keep it for the future.
Of course, this is completely optional and intended to help those who want to see everything unlocked in the beta from the very start. The old method of unlocking stuff does still work.
[h2]Here are the official patch notes for Update 7.0.0[/h2]
No more talking, now it's time for the Open Beta!
New Features
- You are now able to manage player-caused accidents
- Hungarian language is now supported as a mod pack (more details above!)
Car Control
- Added vehicle steering sensitivity and controller dead zone adjustments to settings under controls
- You can now switch seats from inside the car
- Rebalanced all the police cars so make the driving more enjoyable
Gameplay
- Speed limit of the street is now being displayed on the screen
- Improved Radar gun behavior when standing in a park
- Updated the start date of the game when creating a new save
- Cones and barriers now have light strips to make them more visible in night shifts
- Improved the “move/wait” traffic gesture to handle stuck cars
Balancing
- Increased the minimum distance from the player where the NPC can commit crimes. Stuff like wallet thefts should now not happen right in front of your eyes.
- Increased the cooldown for asking for direction feature: NPCs should not spam you with directions requests anymore
- Decreased the accident callouts frequency
- Rebalanced the fallback trigger for Ambulance and Arrest transport officers
Performance Improvements
- Reduced the memory used by some game textures
- Deleted a lot of unwanted assets to improve memory handling
- Deleted more non-used animations with no references
- Adjusted the number of parked NPV count for all the different graphic settings
Animations
- Improved NPC walking animation by enabling IK
- General animation improvements for interactions, handcuffing, escorting NPC
- All the police vehicles have separate NPC getting in and out animations
Tutorials
- Updated handbook entries for speed limits, traffic stops and high crime areas to give more information to the players
- Added more intuition feedback to assist player while placing traffic cones & barriers
Miscellaneous
- All the neighborhoods now have their own image when getting unlocked
Bug Fixes
GAMEPLAY
- Fixed an issue where player was penalized for driving fast even though police vehicle was under the speed limit
- Fixed issues with some traffic stops where the traffic never went through
- Fixed an issue where the yellow border of the assigned area was shown incorrectly
MULTIPLAYER
- Fixed an issue where the client can no longer interact with the accident NPC if the host is too far away from client
- Fixed an issue where client can not re-enter the co-driver seat after exiting the vehicle
- Fixed an issue where sometimes client was stuck in "searching for sessions" window while looking for public sessions
- Fixed an issue in multiplayer where the partner officer legs were spinning
- Fixed an issue where the multiplayer tutorial was displayed even when tutorials were turned off
NPCs
- Fixed an issue where sometimes accident NPC was clipping into traffic from opposite lane
- Fixed an issue where sometimes NPC were sliding and not walking
- Fixed an issue where sometimes NPC were not interactable in crime scene location
- Fixed an issue where towing the NPCs car during accident callout was always justified
PATROL CAR & TRAFFIC CARS
- Fixed an issue that caused the patrol car to keep accelerating on its own after closing the pause menu
- Fixed an issue where sometimes NPV do not switch lanes and are stuck near traffic stops
WORLD & GRAPHICS
- Fixed some collision issues with buildings
- Fixed a graphical issue when entering Historic Downtown precinct
- Fixed many minor art issues
- Fixed an invisible collision in North Point precinct
- Fixed an issue where the barrier was clipping into officer while picking it up
- Fixed an issue where the license plate of the NPV was incorrectly displayed when searching the trunk
- Fixed camera rotates upside down when entering patrol car
UI
- Fixed an issue where the subtitles were stuck on the screen
- Fixed many Loca issues in different languages with overlapping text
- Shift selection as a category was shown twice in settings which is now merged
CONTROLS
- Fixed an issue where a player was trying to pick a cone with a cone already aimed loses several action inputs
- Fixed an issue where using hand gestures was also triggering focus mode
- Fixed an issue where players can't interact with damaged accident NPV after letting its driver go
MISCELLANEOUS
- Fixed an issue where a placeholder image was displayed when ending the shift by losing all the CP
CRASHES
- Fixed an issue where sometimes the game entered hang state in loading screen
- Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when changing any setting
- Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred due to Controller Deadzone
- Fixed a crash where sometimes loading into certain precincts crashed the game
- Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred while searching for wanted suspects
- Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when letting NPC go
- Fixed a crash when returning to main menu
- Fixed Crash After Speaking with Handcuffed Suspect
- Added potential fix for crash in traffic system
- Fixed a ton of other user-reported crashes
https://store.steampowered.com/app/997010
