Dear skippers,

The update B129 Preview 15 is now complete and may be downloaded on the public testing branch.

Since there were quite many changes in this update, we prepared a short summary. We hope that you will enjoy the new additions!

The main goal for this update was to perform certain technical maintenance tasks that we wanted to implement for quite a long time. We touched every file present in the game and restructured the game in a more optimal way.

Thanks to this, UBOAT occupies 6 GB less space on the disk, as well as uses up less RAM than before.

Since there are quite many realism settings to deal with during the campaign setup, we felt that we should make this experience easier to go through for the new players, which are not yet familiar with the meaning of everything present at this screen.

For this reason we added an animated selection of realism and crew management complexity.



There is now a volumetric lighting support in UBOAT. It's a fog-like effect that is most intense near the light sources as they light up particulate matter in the air. It's a quite mood building addition in our opinion.



As UBOAT developed, it became capable of fitting more play-styles. For players, that are not enjoying complexities of the crew management, we added a new realism setting to disable food management in the game.

When this setting is disabled, everything food-related is removed from the game. Food may still appear inside the cargo holds of NPC ships, but it won't play any useful role aside from that.



We intend to release update B129 on the stable branch soon. We are still hunting for one crash issue and also want to ensure that everything is in place after technical changes in Preview 15. We ask for just a bit more patience.

- Added volumetric lighting support for point lights. This effect is most noticeable inside the u-boat.
- Improvements to the water shader & calibration pass for the overall water look.
- Further improvements to the generic merchant ships models and textures.
- Small improvements to u-boat interior models and textures.
- New hair shader that is faster and works more consistently with post-processing effects like the ambient occlusion and contact shadows (known issue: due to this change, the NPC ship captain's beard is sometimes blurring during merchant ship inspections - we are investigating this issue).
- Added outlines for the crewmen after hovering them with a mouse.
- Improvements to the fog effect, especially near the horizon.
- Fix: Fixed a very old bug related to the texture streaming feature, that was making certain textures to appear very blurry and never be loaded in a better quality, even if the camera was very close.
- Fix: If contact shadows were enabled for all lights in the settings, there were various shadow artifacts present around light bulbs.
- Fix: Main menu lighting was different (subjetively: worse) after leaving an ongoing game to menu when compared to the state of it after visiting the menu for the first time.
- Fix: Water wasn't being lit by some components of the ambient lighting.
- Fix: Map skins weren't correctly loaded in some cases, if the skin was changed during a gameplay. It was loaded correctly after reseting the game.
- Fix: Improved lens flares occlusion by geometry in the scene.
- Fix: Generic merchant ships no longer appear completely white for a short time after spawning in the scene.
- Regression fix: Flashing lights in the weather station reconnaissance scene.

- Optimized game files structure for smaller disk space, less memory usage and faster loading times. Game is now smaller by 6 GB on the disk after installation. Memory usage and loading time decreases due to this change depend on the used quality settings.

- Main shader performance optimizations.

- Major memory usage optimizations. Some of the most substantial changes:

• Shadowmaps now occupy 2x less space in the graphics card memory.
  
• 24k world map texture is loaded only, if the texture quality setting is set to maximum - otherwise a 12k texture is used.
  
• Optimized quality of certain less important sound effects.

- The campaign setup in the main menu was reworked with animated preset buttons for the realism and crew management. The old slider for selecting one dimensional complexity was removed and replaced with a static realism bar.
- Added a possibility to disable food management from the game during the campaign setup.

- Changed "Paper-like" map skin name to "Paper-like (Default)" and changed the old "Default" skin to "Colourful".
- Added explanation what happened after enabling a free camera mode with the instruction on how to disable it.
- Added an alternative sound effect that is played in the main menu after clicking various UI elements.
- Added a warning when player is trying to load a game state that was saved with a different mod setup than the current one.
- Added a dedicated icon for the third time compression button in the dynamic travel system. Tweaked the tooltips for all time compression buttons in the dynamic travel system.
- Fix: After researching T5 torpedoes the summary text in the HQ was missing.
- Fix: UI issues after opening HQ screen from the device manual use mode.
- Fix: Sea name in the upper left part of the UI was often not updating after entering a different sea.
- Fix: The scenario selection screen was empty for a short period of time after clicking the "New game" button in the main menu. There is now "Loading..." notification instead.
- Fix: Scene sound effects were played at their normal volume levels instead of being quiet after entering the "Management" view and switching to any tab aside from the "Crew".
- Fix: It's no longer possible to have "Any" fields in the schedule of sailor shifts. It's allowed only for the officers.
- Fix: After finishing a phase of multi-phase campaign objective (like "Battle of the Atlantic") the progress bar was disappearing under the campaign objective's photography on the map.
- Fix: Hardcore aiming mode wasn't counted into the final realism value.

- Fix: Improvements to FAT and LUT torpedo programs.

- Fix: NPC ships were remaining in the alarmed state, if they were having any enemy wreck site in the sight range.

- Collision damage is now disabled during tutorial missions.
- There is now a dedicated notification for events that make the current mission impossible to complete, for example if a friendly u-boat that called for help was sunk by the enemy.
- Fix: There was a missing arrow during tutorial mission #2 that should point the map button.
- Fix: Errors appearing in the log in large numbers after loading a game state saved during certain tutorial missions.
- Fix: Gold recovery campaign assignment wasn't available for taking at La Spezia, but at quite distant ports like Bergen and Wilhelmshaven.

- Major Chinese localization update by SparrowSHEN.
- Russian localization update by Hard.
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.
- German localization update by Ruby.
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- French localization update by FvJ and Placebo.
- Fix: Improvements to the Chinese font.

- Fix: After preparing an extensive crew schedule that had most sailors assigned by name to shifts or to the officers, the shift changes were sometimes not working.
- Fix: Officers could become duplicated in some cases involving story sequences. One reproduction was to send them on an inspection, leave the area without closing the story view and select an option to go back to the u-boat.

- Added integration with the rich presence feature in Steam.
- Fix: The port officers were not returning to their old spots after a port was attacked by the planes, if they hidden inside the warehouse.
- Fix: It's no longer possible to send a diver to a ship that is still sinking.
- Fix: Music was becoming quieter by 50% after each load of a game state saved on a map.
- Fix: Errors appearing in the log and slightly affecting performance, after leaving the game to the main menu, when there was an active story sequence (for example a merchant ship inspection).
- Fix: Undetected units weren't receiving damage from most damage sources.
- Fix: It's no longer possible for the auto-save to be made during the mission summary sequence or when a free camera is enabled.

Yours,
DWS

From July 20 to July 27, you will be able to purchase Uboat Mechanic Simulator at a great discount.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/494840/UBOAT/





Best regards,
Uboat team

Dear skippers,

We just released a small update to fix an important regression in Preview 13. Aside from it, there are also other improvements. Please take a look at the changelog below for details.

- Fix: After loading a game state, map was usually becoming slightly darker than intended on the maximum view distance.

- There is now a mission objective to get back to the port at the end of the third tutorial.
- Fix: Officer which is supposed to create a target solution is now selected automatically during the third tutorial mission, if he was deselected by a mistake.

- Spanish localization update by Tordo.

- Time compression blockade is no longer being set after pausing the game.
- Fix: After sending the crew to certain generic merchant ship variants, sent sailors could appear in the air near the u-boat's bow.
- Fix: After starting certain story sequences with more than 3 characters, saving the game, loading the game and leaving the nearby area completely, sailors would stop to work on their automated schedules and there would be performance issues.
- Fix: Infinite vacation issue.
- Fix: Ammunition transports were usually empty.
- Regression fix: Deck gun could become duplicated after loading a game state.
- Regression fix: Food management was being disabled in the existing game states.

Yours,
DWS

Dear skippers,

We just finished the next update - B129 Preview 13. It's ready to download on the public testing branch. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more. We hope that you will find the changes useful.

- Added "torpedo flaws" realism setting to the campaign setup. It has three presets:

• Realistic: Torpedo pistols have flaws that match the historic records.
  
• Semi-realistic: Optimal impact angle is rewarded with an almost guaranteed detonation of a torpedo, although sub-optimal hits usually end up in a detonation too - especially if a torpedo is properly maintained by an engineer.
  
• Basic: Torpedo impact angle is ignored and torpedo duds are determined using a flat chance. This chance is very close to zero, if torpedo is properly maintained by a trained officer.

- When playing with the Realistic or Semi-realistic torpedo pistol realism setting, there is now a small chance of torpedo being faulty, even if the impact angle is in a sweet spot.
- If playing with the Basic torpedo pistol realism setting, the duds are no longer predetermined as in the earlier versions, to allow for reloading the game state for another result.

- Distance measurements are now displayed with 1 decimal place when kilometers are used up to a distance of 10 km.
- Fix: It's no longer possible to open a character customization screen for guests on board.
- Fix: There was a wrong officer role displayed on the character screen, if it was an unsaved role. In some cases, the role would revert to "Unassigned" after opening the character screen.
- Fix: Auto-save settings were applied correctly only from the in-game menu, but not from the main menu.
- Fix: After launching a torpedo, it was appearing for one instant in a wrong spot on the map and was displayed as neutral.
- Fix: After opening the promotion view, the initial description was missing in some cases or could refer to a not pickable option.
- Fix: Pressing an escape twice on a screen where a progress towards a decoration is presented was resulting in a white square being displayed on the screen.
- Fix: Ship selection panel was appearing over the periscope UI, if a periscope view was started when torpedo launchers UI was also open.

- Regression fix: Navigator was never leaving his station to do other work, even after the position was fixed in 100%.
- Fix: "Navigator" skill was considerably increasing a performance of fixing the position at the navigator's station (it was not intended).

- Fix: Officers could freeze in an animation of pointing something with a finger.
- Fix: Map zooming animations weren't smooth and were sometimes ending at a slightly incorrect position.
- Fix: Crew that was manning guns on NPC ships was sometimes not rotating with the gun.

- Improved shadow settings during the decoration cutscene.
- Improved texture quality of certain F-class destroyer variants.
- Regression fix: Some of the oil tanks in Aruba were missing.
- Regression fix: Corrected wrong textures on the trucks that are sometimes carried by the merchant ships.
- Regression fix: Ports weren't affecting the nearby sea state since the graphics engine update and the waves were sometimes appearing above the port.
- Regression fix: There was a large blob of smoke visible, if player paused the game, enabled the free camera mode and moved the camera to a direct vicinity of a ship that was at a distance of at least few kilometers from the initial camera position.
- Regression fix: There was a lighting artifact visible on the main menu u-boat since B129 Preview 12.
- Regression fix: An intense specular was visible at the bottom of the u-boat's hull in the section view. It was introduced by mistake in B129 Preview 12.
- Regression fix: Missing textures on the merchant ship figurines that appear during Battle of the Atlantic map cutscene.

- Fix: If player uninstalled the deck gun before departing in the third tutorial mission, it wasn't possible to continue at a certain stage of the mission.
- Fix: Changed the first merchant ship's course in the third tutorial for a more convenient attack.
- Fix: Ship that needs to be attacked with the torpedoes during the third tutorial is now selected back automatically, in case of unselecting it by mistake.
- Fix: Mission wasn't counted towards a medal progress in some cases, if a game state was loaded with this mission already started.
- Regression fix: Crew was having a very hard time to spot the lost u-boat in the side-mission with a lost ship.

- Fix: Ships in a convoy were sometimes stopping to move forward.

- Provided compatibility of all major shaders in the game with an engine feature called SRP Batcher. We noticed that it stopped to work after one of the recent updates of the engine. It should give a substantial boost to the performance.
- Removed a few redundant memory allocations in the code.

- Removed all references to "pre-heating" and "warming" torpedoes and changed them to "performing a maintenance".
- Russian localization update by Hard.
- German localization update by Ruby.
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- French localization update by FvJ and Placebo.

- Improvements to the capture course computations.
- Improved the way in which names are picked for the NPC ships to better avoid repetitions during long playthroughs, if all historic names from the pool run out.
- Fix: It's no longer possible to meet another u-boat with the same name as the player's u-boat.
- Fix: Periscope's field of view was sometimes inconsistent with the stadimeter measurements after reloading a game state and opening the periscope view, until the right mouse button was clicked at least once.
- Fix: It was possible to encounter a situation when there wasn't enough water in the compartment to remove it by using a bucket, but it was still enough to cause the splashing sound, while moving inside that compartment.
- Fix: Added a notification that explains the situation when saving a game state couldn't be completed, because there was no free disk space.
- Fix: If player attempted to save a game state, when there wasn't enough space on the disk, in some cases the "Saving..." label would remain on the screen.
- Fix: Ships were starting their engines from zero after spawning in the scene, which was enough for the hydrophone operator to loose contact for a moment.
- Fix: Wreck sites could still appear as a far visual contact in one remaining case, that involved spotting the sinking ship upclose and quickly moving away from it to a distance of a few kilometers.

Yours,
DWS

Dear skippers,

Update B129 Preview 12 is now complete and ready to download on the public testing branch. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more. We hope that you will find the changes useful.

- It's no longer possible to leave the port with more officers than the allowed limit. It was possible to go above this limit, after receiving a new officer during Enigma recovery mission.
- Fix: Sailors were working at the radio, even if it was damaged or there was no electricity in the compartment.
- Fix: In some cases, only a captain and the first engineer were on a lifeboat from a sunk ship, the rest of the crew was missing.

- Added a notification that informs about a milk cow being sunk by the enemy.
- Clicking on a new radio transmission notification now opens the radio view instead of selecting a radioman.
- Fix: Campaign photographs were missing on the map after the mission summary animation until player opened the assignment selection view.
- Fix: Reward icons were missing near the buttons for freeing the survivors in a port.
- Fix: Torpedo UI and unit selection panel are now closed when an interaction is triggered.
- Fix: Campaign photographs were permanently disappearing from the map after closing them, without leaving an icon behind, if that was done on a loaded game state.

- Decreased a number of AA guns needed to find in the espionage assignments from 5 to 4.
- Fix: Friendly u-boats no longer call for supplies when they are in very dangerous areas, for example near the British coast.
- Fix: There was no milk cow being assigned as a reward for completing the bronze stage of multi-stage campaign objectives.
- Fix: The wreck in the gold recovery campaign mission wasn't appearing at the marked spot until terrain generation was triggered.
- Fix: Wind speed stated in the weather station message wasn't correct.

- New, more detailed UZO model and textures.
- Reworked deck textures, increased variety and fixed minor model issues of the generic merchant ships (ones that are being referred to as "Similar to..."). This work will be continued in the next update.
- Flag rendering improvements. There was an issue with incorrectly rendered lighting on one side of the flag. Added subsurface scattering effect to all flags.
- Improvements to the quality of sun light shadows. Technically, the shadow cascades are now usually being fit better to the specific camera demands.
- Fix: Flat areas were appearing on the sea, if the seabed below was at around 400 - 600 meters.
- Fix: Crew on NPC ships is better aligned to the deck during walking.
- Fix: Fixed issues with a wrong specular being rendered by shaders used to render some of the large objects, like certain ports and merchant ships.
- Fix: After a game state saved near a generic merchant ship was re-loaded, some of the textures on that merchant ship could change after each re-load.
- Fix: Dynamically spawned waves at the ship bows and after torpedo explosions were noticeably lacking vertices, if they were observed from a large distance.
- Fix: Shadow-like lines were appearing on objects when they were viewed from a very close distance in exterior areas and ambient occlusion was enabled in the settings.
- Fix: Lifeboats were disappearing too fast when camera was moved away from them.
- Fix: If camera moved close to a warship, some of the crews of the other ships viewed later would stand in an unusual position.

- Regression fix: Interaction was stopping right after the welcome, if the merchant ship was carrying tea in the cargo hold.

- Fix: One of the possible leaks in the engine room was adding water to the control room instead of the engine room.

- Regression fix: Implemented frequency-dependent wave fading in coastal areas for the physics engine. This feature was implemented only on the side of graphics in the initial B129 releases, which was causing the physics to be sometimes out of sync in the coastal areas.

- Russian localization update by Hard.
- German localization update by Ruby.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- French localization update by FvJ and Placebo.

- Improved physics performance of Dale-class, Ol-class War-class and Wave-class tankers.
- Memory usage optimizations related to the merchant ships and tankers.

- It's no longer possible to permanently move under the terrain, for example by diving deeply using a high time compression before the terrain is generated and appears in the scene.
- Fatigue penalty starts to count after undocking from the port rather than right after the vacation ends. It prevents the crew from becoming fatigued by waiting for the ongoing resupply operations after the vacation.
- Having pressed left CTRL in the free camera mode, makes the camera move more slowly than usual.
- Ship groups are split into smaller ones more aggressively to avoid various practical issues from having too spread out groups.
- Regression fix: It wasn't possible to leave the port after taking the survivors on board in certain cases.
- Regression fix: It was possible for the u-boat to permanently stop detecting any ships, even if they were very close. This issue should be corrected also in the existing game states.
- Regression fix: Some ship classes were docking at a wrong elevation since Preview 11.
- Regression fix: Sound of rotating periscope could be heard for a while after the rotation stopped.
- Fix: Sunk ships were detectable from afar as masts over the horizon.
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the log files from the user reports.

Yours,
DWS

Dear skippers,

Update B129 Preview 11 is now ready to download on the public testing branch.

This update brings fixes to the most frequently reported bugs and issues, as well as adds some general improvements. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more.

- Update of the ship measurements presented in the identification book to better match the actual dimensions of the ships.

- Food stored on the u-boat is no longer consumed when the u-boat is stationing at a port.
- Improvements to crew pathfinding, that should result in less traffic jams on the u-boat, for example when a sailor sits on the bunk and blocks the passage.
- Fix: Crew members were becoming stuck in the toilet, if they tried to block a leak inside.
- Fix: It was possible to move in FPP to the u-boat's deck, order a dive and stay there.
- Fix: After loading certain game states, there was a permanent alarm enabled on the u-boat.

- Improved lighting in the skipper customization scene.
- Fix: After initiating an interaction with a lifeboat, camera was sometimes appearing inside a nearby ship's hull.
- Regression fix: One of the haircuts was having gaps when viewed from a distance.
- Regression fix: NPC crew on C3 ships was moving outside the ship.

- Optimizations to crew pathfinding, that should slightly improve the performance, when a high time compression is being used.
- Removed a per-frame memory allocation, that was affecting performance.
- During loading, there is now an increased time budget for various background tasks, that should result in a slightly faster loading time and a decreased need to continue some of these tasks after the loading is complete, which usually affects the performance.
- Increased the memory buffer used for uploading textures to the graphics card. It should slightly decrease the time it takes to load the game from the main menu, decrease framerate drops caused by background loading and possibly fix a related crash to desktop issue. This change costed an additional 40 MB of VRAM.
- Various other optimizations.

- Improvements to how survivors are released. A list of survivors present on the ship is now opened along with specified rewards, to claim the rewards from there.
- There is now a warning on the screen that suggests to dive deeper, when player tries to use the hydrophone from the surface.
- It's now possible to manually enter a number of items to move between the storages instead of using a slider.
- Fix: Gun UI was sometimes displaying a fractional ammunition count.
- Fix: Survivors could be moved off the ship in a port without actually releasing them for a reward.
- Fix: After a milk cow was sunk by the enemy, it was still being displayed in the HQ. Note: We are going to add a notification that will inform about supply ships sunk by the enemy soon.
- Fix: Pulsating glow around mission markers was behaving erratically, if a high time compression was being used and there was an active mission with a time limit.
- Fix: There is now a scroll present near the officer portraits when a torpedo launchers UI is open and it takes some of the portraits space.
- Fix: It was possible to select survivors from sunk ships for various interactions and for HQ tasks.
- Fix: Improved positioning of various tooltips to make them appear near the hovered UI controls, instead of appearing on top of them.
- Fix: Auto-save settings were changing after loading another game state.
- Fix: Recently added button for changing the depth steers mode was sometimes not present in the TAB menu.

- Fix: During the patrol summary, penalties were assigned for sinking neutral ships in the enemy convoys - it wasn't intended.
- Fix: Swiss rubber transports had empty cargo holds.
- Regression fix: Path to the docking point at Bergen couldn't be plotted.
- Regression fix: Wrecks of ships were not spawning, if they were sunk at deep water.

- Decreased ventilation capacity from 50 kg to 40 kg to match the weight of a full stack of potassium absorbers.
- Potassium absorbers are now consumed more slowly, but they are also less efficient at refreshing the air inside the u-boat.
- Fix: Decreased oxygen consumption on the dynamic travel system.

- Complete Russian localization provided by Hard, based on his Workshop mod "RU advanced".
- French localization update by FvJ.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.

- Fix: After performing an air reconnaissance and reloading the game state, one of the icons that mark each of the port defences would reappear in a slightly different location.

- There is now a different description displayed after searching the cargo hold, if the ship carries a military cargo.
- Fix: Items selected for the team after initiating an interaction were disappearing later, if they were manually equipped before starting the interaction.
- Fix: It was possible to start an interaction with a shot down aircraft for only one time. The button was stopping to respond later on.
- Fix: If a ship turns out to carry tea, but documents stated something else, there is now a different flow of the story that doesn't ignore this fact.
- Fix: After searching an abandoned ship, there was a mention of a sailor from the crew being present during the search.

- Warships behaviour is now improved when they attack non-submarine targets.

- Fix: Probable fix for the issue where damage was inflicted to the conning tower, while the u-boat was travelling at the periscope depth in a shallow area and 140x time compression was being used. More testing is needed to confirm this fix.

- There is now a logging added during story sequences / interactions, that should make potential modding of them easier to debug.

- It's no longer possible to undock from a port with survivors on board.
- Added a new auto-save setting for saving the game state before leaving the game.
- Fix: Depth displayed on the map was sometimes positive for the sea, if it was beyond the sight range.
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the log files from the user reports.

Yours,
DWS

Hello skippers,

The next update for B129 is ready. It brings fixes to the most commonly reported issues encountered in your play-throughs as well as general improvements. It's now ready to download on the public testing branch.

- Added Enigma machine as an actual item carried by the rescued radioman in the Enigma recovery campaign mission.
- Fix: The u-boat's wreck and the German merchant ship's wreck could disappear, if they were left alone for long enough with the warships nearby.
- Fix: Ships that were marked on the map during the lost ship and ally calling for help side missions and the side mission with sinking a specific merchant ship inside the convoy were being tracked on the map after mission has ended without any means for the player to have up to date information on them.
- Fix: If an encounter with the warships during the gold recovery mission was lasting for a long time, certain errors would start to be written to the log at periodic intervals.

- Fix: Crew members that were either blocking the leaks or making repairs near the torpedo loading hatch, were blocking the entrance to the bow torpedo room for the other characters.
- Fix: If crewman was manually equipped with a diving suit (not through the group selection and equipping UI) and sent onto a mission, he would later stop reacting to any orders until the game was reloaded.

- Increased allowed vertical looking range in FPP.
- Fix: Funnel smoke effect was sometimes restarting with no apparent reason on certain ship types.
- Fix: Lifeboats should no longer capsize with the crew inside.
- Fix: If player initiates an interaction with the lifeboat, camera now switches to it like in the other interactions.
- Fix: The blurring effect that is visible at the edge of the sight range, where it fades into the fog of war, was being performed only vertically rather than in both directions. This effect was also affecting the map performance a bit more than intended.
- Fix: When map was being zoomed out, the scene visible inside the sight range was sharply changing the brightness at some thresholds.
- Fix: When map was being zoomed out, the terrain was disappearing at a much higher threshold than it was re-appearing when zooming in.
- Fix: Crew members that were in a ragdoll state had most of their body invisible, if player saved the game state at this moment and reloaded it, until another crew member would help them.
- Fix: Boxes under crew members involved in the leak repairs were not visible after re-loading the game state.

- Fix: The interaction that allowed to send a diver to the wreck remaining at the seabed was fully functional only, if it was a part of the campaign mission with recovering gold from the sunk merchant ship.
- Fix: Ships from which cargo was being loaded onto the player's ship, could sometimes unspawn during the time skip and the transport operation would be interrupted.
- Fix: It wasn't possible to send a crew on an already evacuated merchant ship.
- Fix: In some cases, after selecting a radioman for the outgoing group, the whole interface would close and the selected radioman would salute in a loop.
- Fix: C3, N-A1 and Liberty ships weren't fully supporting the inspections. It wasn't possible to see their cargo in the cargo hold and there would be no scene with the crew standing on the deck.

- Searchlight balance adjustments. The sight range increase in the darkness is weaker than before, while the sight range increase in the fog is much weaker.
- Fix: Searchlight sight range increase was affecting only the "Clear sight" range, but not the "Max sight" range.

- Added icons for the campaign missions. They are displayed in various user interfaces.
- Rescued sailors and officers from NPC ships are now listed in the crew list.
- Removed the helmet button from the unit selection panel.
- Added a button to the TAB menu to switch between the electric and the manual mode of the vertical steers (known issue: this button may be sometimes missing - we are going to fix this in Preview 11).
- Fix: Tooltip was missing for the "Tutorial" campaign setting.
- Fix: If player pressed an escape, while selecting the target square for a milk cow, some UI elements would remain on the screen and it was hard to leave the HQ scene.
- Fix: After closing the HQ map, sea ambience was audible inside the HQ scene.
- Fix: Highlight and tooltip weren't disappearing from the icons displayed in the scene, if player haven't moved the mouse, but moved the camera in such a way that the icon would no longer be under the cursor.
- Fix: After performing certain steps involving loading another game state, the background under launcher index could be displayed blue as if the launcher was flooded, while it wasn't.
- Regression fix: Certain campaign missions had their descriptions missing since a few updates.

- Fix: Periscope was sometimes instantly rotating in a different direction during measurements. It could be interpreted as if the ship would disappear.
- Regression fix: Errors were written to the log, if stadimeter was used without identifying the ship first since Preview 9.
- Fix: Chronometer UI was using the actual ship's length to estimate the speed, rather than the length of the ship's class selected in the identification book by the player.

- Major Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.

- When units present in a convoy move away at a considerable distance, they are now separated from the convoy. They are treated as a separate contact moving forward and will act individually. This fixes various issues and makes many things more practical.
- Fix: Wrecks spawned in the scene, could in some cases fall below the terrain, if the location was shallow.

- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the log files from the user reports.
- Fix: Game states from a play-through could become not loadable after a rare occurrence of technical nature.

Yours,
DWS

Hello skippers,

The next update for B129 is complete. It tweaks the game's balance and fixes bugs based on your recent feedback. It's now ready to download on the public testing branch.

- Fix: Guns installed on Turm I couldn't be repaired.
- Fix: It wasn't possible to move ammunition from the storage to the AA guns ammunition storage.
- Regression fix: It wasn't possible to move ammunition from the storage to the deck gun ammunition storage since Preview 7.

- Regression fix: After opening the map and loading another game state that was saved in FPP at an exterior area, the sea was no longer displayed until the map was opened and closed again. It was also having some effect on the performance.

- When there are few interactions available near the player, the button to initiate the interactions changes into a dropdown that allows for selecting one of them. This change fixes a related issue in the Enigma recovery mission.
- Fix: The selected auto-save setting was wrong after the interface was re-opened, if player selected 1 auto save to be kept at a time.
- Fix: The survivors taken on board were treated like officers in some user interfaces, specifically the Management tabs: Squads, Tasks and Schedule.
- Fix: Newspaper about Operation Barbarossa had missing contents.
- Fix: Compressed air notification wasn't disappearing in some cases after reaching 100% due to rounding.
- Fix: After submerging, the arrow near the player's u-boat icon wasn't becoming semi-transparent along with the ship icon.
- Regression fix: If the time compression was enabled, then after returning to the main menu the time compression was continued and the animation was much faster.

- Fix: NPC u-boats were attacking all neutral ships.

- Regression fix: If player waited for the investigation on the lost u-boat mission to end, while having open the story user interface, the investigation would repeat each time and the mission wouldn't progress.

- Fix: After researching the upgraded pistols, the torpedoes with the old pistol are now no longer produced. They may still appear in the warehouse for some time, until they are all used up by the player and the other u-boats.
- Regression fix: It was possible to research LUT torpedoes before researching the T3 torpedoes. It was not intended.

- Scripting mods are now recompiled after each game update.

- Fix: The impact detonation setting on torpedoes, due to an error, had noticeably increased dud rates in situations where it wasn't intended.
- Fix: The stadimeter was using the actual mast height of the ship being targeted rather than to use the data from the page selected by the player in the identification book.

- French localization update by FvJ.
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Fix: Missing characters in certain languages.

- Fix: Fixed a reported case of infinite loading screen.
- Fix: Officers were receiving XP for premature detonations of torpedoes with the magnetic setting.
- Fix: The camera could swap to a wrong ship after torpedo detonation, if the hit ship was different than the one which was initialy targeted.
- Fix: The camera wasn't swapping to the hit ship, if the torpedo was launched manually.
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the log files from the user reports.
- Regression fix: Button to wait for the approaching convoy in the upper right corner wasn't appearing since initial B129 releases.
- Regression fix: A tooltip wasn't appearing after hovering the deck gun and errors were writted to the log.

Yours,
DWS

Hello skippers,

There is a new update ready to download on the public testing branch. It fixes some of the most often reported issues from the last few days, but there are also other worthwhile additions present like the auto-save system. We hope that you will find it useful.

- Regression fix: Crew could become stuck at the conning tower after participating in certain story sequences. This fix was designed to remove that issue also in the existing game states.
- Regression fix: Sailors weren't joining the officer at the deck gun, after performing certain steps.

- Fix: Character textures could be atlassed in a wrong way in some cases after loading a game state. This was making the character look very unusual after moving the camera at a certain distance from him.
- Fix: Diesel exhaust was visible after loading a game state that was saved when the u-boat was docked at the port, but there was nobody working at the engines.

- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Fix: New torpedo names weren't translated in some parts of the UI.

- Added notification that informs that the currently received radio message was stopped to be transmitted at the source (for example after sinking the ship).

- Added auto-save feature.
- Fix: Restored partial compatibility with B128 version of TDC mod.
- Fix: Upgraded torpedo pistols are now researched at the start in all scenarios. They were intended to lack only in the future 1939 - 1940 scenarios.
- Regression fix: Torpedo wasn't disappearing after explosion, if player launched it manually without choosing a target.
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the user reports.

Yours,
DWS

Hello skippers,

We finished the next update for B129. Preview 7 overhauls torpedoes in the game by adding various pistol designs and control programs, opens up the possibility to uninstall the deck gun, as well as fixes many issues reported by you during the last week. This version is now ready to download on the public testing branch.

To implement some of the new features, we had to break the game states compatibility. We tried to finalize all changes that required this at once, so that there won't be a need to do this again in the closest future.

- There are now quite realistic and hopefully more interesting pistol designs in the game: Pi1, Pi1 revised, Pi2, Pi3 and Pi4. Certain torpedo types exist in a few variants depending on the installed pistol.
- Torpedoes can be now switched between the impact (AZ) and magnetic (MZ) pistol setting, each with its own advantages and drawbacks.
- Added FAT and LUT torpedo control programs that make the torpedo follow a certain pattern after a potential miss. Such control mechanisms are being installed on T1 and T3 torpedoes once these programs are researched.
- Impact pistol trigger chance now depends on the impact angle rather than being a flat chance.
- Magnetic pistol flaws include detonation on its own before reaching the target or not exploding when reaching the target.
- Added checkboxes in the torpedo UI that allow the player to specify which of the flooded torpedoes he wants to launch.
- T2 torpedoes are now free, while T1 require additional payment. Historically T2 were 2x cheaper in production and balance-wise are often also worse in overall.

- Added scenes that visualize the story when player meets with another u-boat in the mission where friendly u-boat calls for the help.
- Fix: Terrain often had missing segments inside the sight range that weren't generated.
- Fix: Sight range had graphic artifacts near the border when a map skin different than the paper-like was used.
- Fix: Officers were loosing their hair after performing an inspection, if they had equipped headphones before going out.
- Fix: Corrected crew positions on the pontoons.
- Fix: Light bulbs were constantly flickering for some time, if player reloaded an older game state from the current playthrough.
- Fix: If player disabled lighting inside the compartment, saved the game state, enabled the lighting inside the compartment and reloaded a game state, it was no longer possible to change the lighting state inside that compartment.
- Fix: Some textures were glowing after visiting Aruba.
- Regression fix: Black screen flickering, if the main menu was in the animated mode.
- Regression fix: U-boat in the main menu had a few missing elements.
- Regression fix: During moonless nights and heavy storms very intense reflections were appearing on the sea.

- Added a possibility to uninstall the deck gun for less drag under the water.

- Ventilation system and breathable air balance pass.
- Fix: County-class cruisers were too resistant to damage.

- Fix: Rewards for completing the campaign objectives weren't assigned.
- Fix: Weather station is now removed from the storage and character backpacks when it's being built on the land.
- Fix: U-boat's wreck in the Enigma recovery mission and merchant ship's wreck in the gold recovery mission were missing, if player entered and then left the area.
- Fix: Weather station mission had a missing objective for testing the weather station's signal.

- Removed all fast travel points from the game.
- Fix: NPC u-boats were often gathering into large fleets near friendly ports.
- Fix: Probable fix for ships spawning below the land in Scapa Flow when there was more ships on the anchor than expected. More testing is required to confirm this.
- Fix: After ordering the milk cow to move to a different square, it was always moving to BB square instead.
- Fix: Milk cows could be moved only once, because the icon was disappearing from the map.
- Fix: Sunk ships are now being cleaned from the world after some time, instead of instantly once the player leaves their direct vincinity.

- New loading backgrounds.
- New torpedo icons.
- "Sight" range circle was renamed to "Clear sight" to make the intentions behind it more understandable.
- Added a special icon for the pilot NPCs.
- Ship names in various parts of the interface are now consistent. Lifeboats are no longer being called pontoons.
- Fix: After clicking the right mouse button on a port icon, when the port was loaded in the scene, the click was ignored and path to it wasn't computed.
- Fix: Port icons sometimes had question marks on them.
- Fix: Progress bars below campaign photographies on the map, were not being updated after loading a different game state during an ongoing playthrough.
- Fix: Mission type icon wasn't appearing on the mission objective notifications during campaign missions.
- Fix: Progress bar on the research notification was often missing.
- Fix: Long names in the unit selection panel could expand outside the panel.
- Fix: After loading a game state saved in the zoomed map view at location where a campaign objective photography is usually displayed, clicking anywhere would open the campaign details view.

- Fix: Officer could occassionally enter an infinite loop of rest and work changing every a few seconds.
- Fix: Removed the old way of diving to the wrecks at the bottom of the sea. All features of the old system will be gradually implemented into the new one.
- Fix: Sailors were trying to block leaks in evacuated compartments.
- Fix: If player entered the periscope or UZO manual mode and sent the officer working here somewhere else, using the TAB menu, the view was acting strangely and it wasn't possible to leave it.
- Fix: A possible fix for the officer duplication. More testing is required to confirm this.
- Fix: Special characters like the captain and first engineer were appearing in more than one instance, if player performed specific steps that involved starting an inspection and reloading the game state at specific stages.
- Fix: Propeller recognition skill was causing some issues with the radioman's AI.
- Fix: After player took all survivors from the lifeboat it was still possible to interact with it.
- Fix: It was possible to send a crew onto a delegation when the u-boat was in the decks awash mode and it was causing various issues.
- Fix: "Navigator" skill was missing in the leader's skill tree.
- Fix: After saving a game state during a story scene with more characters sent that can be displayed in the scene and reloading that game state, there were many issues encountered later that included depending on the story: performance degradation, not being able to assign sailors to officers and not being able to end the story sequence.

- Regression fix: Fixed an error that could lead to performance degradation.

- Ships that use a false flag now don't try to run away when they spot the enemy to make the deception more convincing.

- French localization update by FvJ.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.

- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the user reports.
- Fix: Resource amounts are now represented with more bits of precision inside the memory to avoid numeric issues, for example it was possible to travel large distances without loosing fuel, if time compression wasn't used.
- Fix: An issue in the save system that could make certain game states not load, if they were loaded three times in succession.

Yours,
DWS