Friends of our friends are also our friends!

There is a new game Accident from our friends in Duality Games on Steam, so if you have one of these games, you can grab Accident with a 15% Launch Discount and 15% Loyalty Discount.



We care about our shared Community, so we want to give you an opportunity to get our games in the best possible deals. If you have any of these games, there is an extra 15% off waiting for you, so don’t hesitate and grab some fun!

ACCIDENT ON STEAM:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/852220/Accident

Games combined with Loyalty Discount:
Thief Simulator
Car Mechanic Simulator 2015
House Flipper
Train Station Renovation
Drug Dealer Simulator
911 Operator
Cooking Simulator
Tank Mechanic Simulator
UBOAT
The Beast Inside
Lust for Darkness
Plane Mechanic Simulator

Kind regards,
PlayWay Team

Hello skippers!

We are back with the next major update to UBOAT. We feel that this update is an important milestone towards the full release and we put a lot of effort to make it happen.

We secured additional funding from the publisher to put additional work into the game. For this reason, we decided to deviate for a moment from the original roadmap and put work into the areas of the game that are important, but were somewhat left behind before, like the in-game map. These changes were often requested by you on the game forum.

Considering the above, we now expect to release the full version of the game in January, rather than a fourth quarter of this year. We hope for your patience and understanding as it's for the greater good in the end!

Without further introductions, let's move on and explain what can you expect from this new update!

This is probably the most exciting change in this version. The new map contains dynamic country borders that reflect most historical events of World War II. There are also major battles marked in on the map. We hope that you will enjoy this change as much as we do!



In this version we added 7 tutorial missions into the game. They explain most topics needed to successfully proceed with your career through the game. These missions can be started at any time from any port in the game.

Aside from that, each in-game interface now has a dedicated help system that can be toggled by pressing the question mark icon in the upper right part of the screen.



There are two new realism settings: AI difficulty and economic difficulty.

AI difficulty affects how good enemy crews are at detecting your u-boat, which directly affects the combat difficulty of the game.

Economic difficulty on the other hand, affects the cost and availability of various goods in the ports. In this version, we introduced resource shortages in Germany at the last stages of the war and high economic difficulties make them quite dramatic and more realistic. Besieged ports like La Rochelle may often lack most of the goods needed to sustain your ship.



It's no longer necessary to plot paths in ports manually as they are computed automatically around the port structures. Aside from that, there were numerous other improvements in this area, for example NPC ships can now effectively avoid collisions with each other even in tight formations and it's much easier to avoid entering coastal areas by accident as the new paths avoid them automatically whenever possible.



These destroyers along with River-class frigates, which also started to appear in this version, are used by Royal Navy and many new navies introduced in this update:

• Polish Navy
  
• Free French Navy
  
• Royal Norwegian Navy
  
• Royal Netherlands Navy
  
• Free Belgian Navy
  
• Royal Hellenic Navy

Each sailor now has a different body shape. It may be adjusted at the customization screen.



Patrols are now performed on smaller Kriegsmarine grid squares, which were implemented in this version. We always felt that previously patrol areas were too undefined and large.



Most of the Royal Navy escort ships are now equipped with ASDIC devices since the beginning of the war, which are later upgraded to newer, historically correct types. By the end of war, many of the enemy escort ships are also equipped with radars.

Enemy hydrophone operators are much better at detecting u-boats. We felt that they were lacking a lot since B127, as the enemy convoys started to be much more spread out since then, while escort ships balance wasn't adjusted for that change. It's now going to be again, much harder to stay undetected while sneaking into convoys.

UBOAT is an open world game with vast open scenes. Such conditions are not ideal for the common shadowing techniques that were producing blurry results at times. We decided to implement raycasted contact shadowing technique for that reason. It's commonly used in the games from this year and now UBOAT also joins that party.



Previous implementation of the screen space reflections (SSR) effect in the game was quite outdated and was affecting performance on the high screen resolutions. We updated it using the latest Unity implementation as a reference and optimized for the specific use case of our game (mostly water).

This new version is both faster and more precise, producing reflections where previous implementation was failing to do so.



Most u-boat interior textures are now present in the highest resolution and use better BC7 compression that fixes various colouring artifacts that were previously visible especially on gray surfaces. This shouldn't affect overall VRAM usage as textures are loaded to fit a set limit, but please let us know in case of problems.



We are optimizing the game at each occasion and this time we optimized it quite a lot! While the game may run a bit slower than before after you run it, if you disable the newly added graphic effects, it should almost certainly run faster than before and use less memory.

We also updated the engine UBOAT is built on to the latest version: from Unity 2018.3.4 to 2019.4.11. Despite the numeration pointing to a one year, it's actually two years of progress from the engine developer as the newer version was released just two weeks ago.

Saved game state files should be at least 30% smaller since this version, while both saving and loading should be faster.

We fixed the infinite loading screen issue that was still there in B127 despite our earlier effort. If this would happen again, please remember to drop us a save and a log file and it will be our top priority.

This version is currently present on the unstable branches on Steam and GOG. It may still need some polish and there may be leftover issues from the work done.

Mods may need an update to work well with this update as most aspects of the game were modified. We will do our best to help mod authors. Please come by to the B128 discussion thread on the forum, if your mod was affected.

With your help, we are hoping to release this version on the stable branch as soon as possible.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

Hello!

A fourth hotfix for version B127 is now complete. It fixes the last issues in the game that could cause an infinite loading of saved game states, where the loading wheel was animating indefinitely.

It's fully compatible in regards of saved game states with the previous version.

We are going to focus mostly on the next major release now, namely B128. We will post more details about this update as soon as we become sure about its final shape and complete more of the work ahead.

- Infinite loading issue fixes based on the bug reports.

Yours,
DWS

Hello!

A third hotfix for B127 is now ready. We implemented the common request to stop the time compression whenever a group of units is detected and made a few other fixes as well.

It's fully compatible in regards of saved game states with the previous version.

- Detections of NPC groups now instantly stop the time compression.

- Fixed odd ship behaviour in Wilhelmshaven with ships travelling sideways in some cases.

- Vacation UI items were overlapping with each other, if UI scale in the settings was set lower than 100%.

- Fixes to a few code exceptions from the received log files.

Yours,
DWS

Hello skippers,

We just uploaded a second hotfix for B127. Like the last time, it fixes some of the most often reported issues.

It's fully compatible in regards of saved game states with the previous version.

As usual, we remind you that when you encounter bugs in the game, please let us know. We will do our best to fix them as soon as possible in the next patches.

- Black screen problem during startup that affected some Windows 7 users.

- Fixed infinite loading issue. This fix will work for previously saved game states as long as the cause is the one patched by this fix.

- Improved error handling procedure for mistakes in the target port names in Sandbox / Spawners data sheet. It could lead to an infinite loading screen, if one of the used mods contained error in this file.

Yours,
DWS

Hello!

A first hotfix for B127 is ready. It addresses some of the most common problems that were reported so far.

It's fully compatible in regards of saved game states with the previous version.

If you would experience a black screen directly after launching the game, please let us know in this thread. We hope that this issue is already resolved in this hotfix, but if not, we will ask you some questions and do our best to repair that as soon as possible.

- Realistic travel system only: Sea physics precision was very low for up to 22 in-game minutes or game state reload after using high time compression.

- Logging system no longer tries to continue when there is no free space on the storage device. This fixes various issues that it was causing.

Yours,
DWS

Hello,

After a month of work on the latest major update, it's now ready for a stable release. Many thanks to everybody who participated in the testing and helped this update to shape.




We prepared a quick rundown of the changes in the movie:



As always we did some more improvements during the time this version was residing on the unstable branch. Some of the most requested ones include:

• Drag & drop support in portraits.
  
• New campaign realism settings.
  
• Forbid button on the observation periscope.
  
• Crash & save system fixes.
  
• Sailors assigned to sleeping officers no longer count to the discipline penalty.
  
• Localization updates.
  
• Automatic detection of unsupported graphic card drivers.
  
• Animation alignment fixes.
  
• Improved u-boat turning circle to match the real VIIC data closely on all engine gears.

Full changelog of the B127 version can be read here in the first post: link.


We will now move on and work on the next major version - B128. You will hear from us as soon as this version will shape up!

Notice: This version is too large to maintain a well-tested saved game states compatibility with the previous versions of the game. If you would like to finish your ongoing B126 campaign first before updating to B127, right click on the game, click Properties, enter BETA tab and switch back to B126.

We are proud and humbled by the work of modding community on Steam Workshop. We recommend to take a look at it to all players.

Especially, we would like to point out TDC mod by Freekoly, ZNC and Ruby, which was long awaited by many. If you are into realism and simulation, you are going to absolutely love it.




Yours,
Deep Water Studio

Dear skippers,

We are back with a new major update to UBOAT. We hope that it will bring you some quality recreation in this hard time.

Let's move straight to overview of the changes, but beware - it's going to be a long post.

This version introduces a brand new travel system to the game. It doesn't simplify long distance travel, but instead adds new time compression tools that make long distance travel possible.



Headquarters now organize wolfpack attacks on convoys. You can join them during free roam and patrol assignments. Friendly u-boats now have a dedicated AI that works well in such scenarios. It's also possible to pass to them direct orders.



Configurable shifts is a new feature meant for the players that always wanted to set schedules for the crew and setup work priorities. It becomes especially useful when combined with the realistic travel system.



It also indirectly adds new features such as having a crew member at the valves at all times or delegating power switch jobs to regular sailors instead of the officers. Please keep in mind, that it's advanced feature that doesn't have to be used to enjoy the game. Default schedules are set reasonably well.



Idle crew now runs to the bow compartment during crash dives for enhanced immersion.



TAB screen now supports lower resolution and any number of officers, in case that their number would be increased through modding. There are now quick shortcuts there for all devices on board to quickly order switching them on or off.



Convoys now usually travel in formations with cargo ships inside the convoy and the escort around them.



We put a lot of effort into lowering the memory use and reducing occasional stutters. We also worked around quite a few crashes in the engine and ensured better error handling.

You can probably expect memory usage to be about 20% lower right after launching the sandbox, although exact number varies between quality settings and screen resolutions.

This update brings two new aircraft types onto the table, models for which were made by community member - talented Francis, also known as V11CU96.

On related note, there is now one more way for getting destroyed spectacularly, as some of the aircraft now use rockets (since 1943). Aircraft AI was also improved to behave more realistically, for example aircraft are now more likely to abandon attack in a bad weather and they now rush correctly.





Our main focus for this update were new ship classes. Especially, it adds quite a lot of tankers to the game, which are a completely new category of ships in the game.























Full changelog is available at this page: changelog.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

112 Operator by Jutsu Games is just around the corner so we have a special offer for you!



Anyone who owns UBOAT will get the 10% Loyalty DISCOUNT when buying 112 Operator which releases on April 23rd - the discount option will be displayed on its store page. Our friends from Jutsu Games also prepared the 15% Launch Discount and both deals merge in one - it means a 25% discount total!!!

As a reminder, Drug Dealer Simulator 15% Loyalty DISCOUNT is still available till Thursday (April 23rd) - check it here

112 Operator Loyalty Discount will last 7 days after release, and it’ll be available after logging in on your Steam account with owned game/games.

STEAM:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/793460/112_Operator/

TRAILER:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tNgRcSlO2o


Kind regards,
PlayWay Team

Our friends are releasing the Drug Dealer Simulator, so we would like to present you with a special offer!



If you are the owner of UBOAT, you will get the 15% loyalty DISCOUNT when buying Drug Dealer Simulator, which releases on April 16th - the discount option will be displayed on its store page. And yes, Loyalty and Launch discounts merge in one!:) (at least 25%!)

Loyalty Discount will last 7 days after DDS release, and it’ll be available after logging in on your Steam account with owned game/games.

More info about the game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/682990/Drug_Dealer_Simulator

Release Date Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHELXnfzcTw

New Official Commentary Guidebook:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0ygfVSJPAk


Kind regards,
PlayWay Team