B121 Preview 9 - Unstable branch (Updated 26.06.2019 20:15)

Greetings!We have prepared new patch that is available to download on Unstable beta branch.However please bare in minds, that it might behave... unstable.Leave your feedback ONLY in this discussion, as it will be much simpler to gather useful information for us.If anything goes wrong, then please:- describe in a few words what exactly happened.- send a screenshot or video from the bug,- post your output_log file (but only after the bug occured, as output_log file resets itself after each game launch),- DXdiag (or write your exact specs),Output_log file is located in here:c:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Deep Water Studio\UBOAT\Use https://pastebin.com/ for sharing the log.Unlocking Unstable beta branch on Steam:Go to properties of the game in the library,move to the last tab - BETAS,pick the Unstable branch from the drop-down menu,you now gained access to the patch,wait for the patch to be applied.----- CHANGELOG -----Travel system overhaul:- 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 possibility to use it at all times.- Travel system was streamlined and no longer speeds up units depending on the current sea size etc. 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 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.New off duty system:- 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.- (Preview 4, 13.06.2019 22:25) U-boat upgrades now also require off duty time to be installed.Storages overhaul:- 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 indicate, 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.General improvements:- 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 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.- (Preview 6, 20.06.2019 22:15) Reworked navigation table. It's no longer possible to get lost soon after navigator had worked for a substantial time at it.- (Preview 6, 20.06.2019 22:15) Added research for sonar decoys. Removed sonar decoys from the starting equipment.- (Preview 6, 20.06.2019 22:15) UI sound effects are now stereo panned and most of them is more quiet by default.Performance improvements:- 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 occuring during weather changes, boarding crew etc.- Texture compression tasks are now asynchronous.- Physics should run more smoothly near ports.Fixes:- 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 exagerrated bounce of a few ship types on time compression.- Rudders sway much less to the left and right when travelling 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 transition between the port and the deck.- Diesel engines range estimation was off and didn't consider 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.- (Preview 2, 08.06.2019 10:05) Electric engines battery drain was lowered.- (Preview 2, 08.06.2019 10:05) Certain transport tasks could become stuck at 100%.- (Preview 3, 12.06.2019 11:05) Time compression now correctly stabilizes torque changes from buoyancy to make watching it more comfortable.- (Preview 3, 12.06.2019 11:05) Purchasing torpedoes into stern torpedo storage wasn't working.- (Preview 3, 12.06.2019 11:05) Carry item orders assigned to officer with helpers were sometimes ended prematurely with a few items left in the source storage.- (Preview 3, 12.06.2019 11:05) Quartermaster role wasn't working since 121 Preview 1.- (Preview 3, 12.06.2019 11:05) Quartermaster could transport 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.- (Preview 3, 12.06.2019 11:05) Displayed item count was often wrong when slot was a target of a transport task.- (Preview 3, 12.06.2019 11:05) Code related to now deprecated skipping calendar dates feature was removed from the game. It had minor impact on the performance.- (Preview 3, 12.06.2019 11:05) Time skipping of the resupply at port was often ended prematurely.- (Preview 3, 12.06.2019 11:05) Storage weight limits weren't respected, if all items were queued to be moved at once between storages.- (Preview 3, 12.06.2019 11:05) Fixed multiple problems resulting from moving one shop item to a few u-boat's storage slots.- (Preview 4, 13.06.2019 22:25) Some crew members could start working with a briefcase or a backpack after vacation.- (Preview 4, 13.06.2019 22:25) Improved performance during time skipping in port.- (Preview 4, 13.06.2019 22:25) Headquarters task duration is now expressed in days, if appropriate, instead of hours to improve readability.- (Preview 4, 13.06.2019 22:25) Hydrophone can be now correctly downgraded to GHG at ports.- (Preview 4, 13.06.2019 22:25) Localization fixes.- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) Selling items to the warehouse no longer resets their count.- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) Items that aren't produced by a given country or are at a low stock are no longer restocked in the warehouses.- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) Number keys no longer initiate dialogue options when various UIs opened through a dialogue are open.- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) Keyboard shortcuts could stop to work, if player left to menu during a dialogue.- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) Torpedo arm distances were adjusted for faster torpedo types (they were noticeably higher than for the slow ones).- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) It's no longer possible to detect groups hidden behind land by any means.- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) Various fixes to conning tower observation animations.- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) One part of the conning tower wasn't being visually damaged by the explosions.- (Preview 6, 20.06.2019 22:15) Attempt at fixing Unity's background thread crash after entering HQ.- (Preview 6, 20.06.2019 22:15) Map grid could have a gap at the bottom part of the screen after entering land area.- (Preview 6, 20.06.2019 22:15) Lens flare quality improvements. Fixed lens flare flickering every 10 minutes of in-game time.- (Preview 6, 20.06.2019 22:15) Ammunition Production I task wasn't doing anything due to a bug.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Failed missions weren't handled properly and player could get rewards for them.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Espionage assignment fixes.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Attempt at fixing Unity's background thread crash after entering HQ.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Console wasn't properly displaying some messages after optimizations from B120.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) ON convoys could travel through land on the way to Halifax.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Physics of the items hanging on the hooks in the stern torpedo room could become permanently corrupted, especially when large time compressions were used.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Torpedo mechanic could get stuck outside of the pressure hull after loading or warming torpedoes. Also the end of loading animation was erratic.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Selection on portraits could stop working after performing certain steps.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) One part of VIIC u-boats was remaining visible even after loosing them from the sight.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Possible fix for duplicated/ghost units which couldn't be reported after sinking.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Diver could become not selectable under certain circumstances.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Leaving tutorial by clicking the button at the end was causing minor issues.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Caps were sometimes visible in FPP.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Minor storage UI fixes.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Minor render pipeline fixes.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Localization fixes.- (Preview 8, 24.06.2019 17:55) Underwater effect wasn't working inside flooded compartments since at least a few versions.- (Preview 8, 24.06.2019 17:55) Torpedo and hatch animations now respect current time scale. They were moving too fast on a pause and too slowly on a time compression.- (Preview 8, 24.06.2019 17:55) Activator banners react more consistently to being occluded by the scene elements (labels were previously unaffected).- (Preview 8, 24.06.2019 17:55) Loading screen music now respects current audio settings.- (Preview 8, 24.06.2019 17:55) Various fixes to first aid.- (Preview 8, 24.06.2019 17:55) Fixes to various path-finding related warnings that probably didn't had any impact.- (Preview 8, 24.06.2019 17:55) Multiple fixes to having two torpedo mechanics at the same time.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) 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.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) Inactive characters that were on a vacation or investigating other ship were coming back to the scene after loading a game state.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) Reworked internal compartments of smaller units to make them more easily sinkable.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) Added balancing factor to the torpedo damage formula.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) 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.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) HQ now requires more definite sinkings for a reward.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) Font fixes.B121 internal fixes and improvements:- (Preview 4, 13.06.2019 22:25) Changed icon for skipping time at port.- (Preview 4, 13.06.2019 22:25) It was possible to skip time in the headquarters scene, causing a few issues during the process.- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) Torpedo loading and transport tasks are now being simulated during time skipping in port.- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) Torpedoes could end suspended in the air after starting a vacation.- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) Improved aesthetics for time skipping. Scene was often displayed in a partially outdated state.- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) Weather transitions weren't smooth since a few versions due to the time system changes. Observation system was affected too.- (Preview 5, 18.06.2019 18:10) Tutorial was adjusted to fix various problems caused by mechanical changes introduced in previous B121 versions.- (Preview 6, 20.06.2019 22:15) Further work on physics stability to fix some types of ships flipping upside down on the most intense time compression during torpedo evasion maneuvers.- (Preview 6, 20.06.2019 22:15) Balanced time compression scales to make them more user-friendly and practical.- (Preview 6, 20.06.2019 22:15) Small object physics had also improved stability to work well with the new time compression scales. This change affects crates, barrels, pontoons etc.- (Preview 6, 20.06.2019 22:15) Vacation is now not allowed until 7 days pass since the last one.- (Preview 7, 23.06.2019 08:50) Better stabilization for small object physics.- (Preview 8, 24.06.2019 17:55) Fixed infinite loading screen during transition between travel mode and local area.- (Preview 8, 24.06.2019 17:55) Characters could get stuck somewhere in the water ahead of the bow. Reproduction steps are unknown, but it should no longer happen.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) Vacations weren't working in ports other than La Rochelle.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) It's no longer possible to start a vacation before the first mission in the sandbox mode.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) Vacations weren't costing anything.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) Time skipping button at ports wasn't appearing back again after loading a game state.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) Some of the characters returning from a vacation could form one very large group.- (Preview 9, 26.06.2019 20:15) Vacation descriptions fixes.Best regards,DWS