Dear bus drivers,

we just released a smaller update which fixes a number of issues reported by the community as well as issues of the new buses included in our latest MAN Bus Pack 1. Here is an overview of the fixes and improvements:

Hotfix – Changelog:

Fixes:

• Fixed issues with passengers blocking the door at the cashier and blocking each other inside the bus
  
• Fixed Multiplayer games not loading properly / players not being able to join
  
• Decreased size of the (H) icon on the minimap.
  
• Player seating position in several MAN busses has been adjusted.
  
• The front and rear doors of the MAN A23 were clipping through door frame. This issue has been fixed.
  
• The left sunscreen of the MAN A23 was clipping through the handle of the driver window. This issue has been fixed.
  
• In the MAN A23 the area to interact with the passenger mirror was outside of the mirror. This issue has been fixed.
  
• In the MAN A23 the mirror’s camera position was located behind the mirror, so the view was blocked completely. This issue has been fixed.
  
• When changing interiors of the MAN A23 the bus was always showing the "Neon" interior skin. This issue has been fixed.
  
• In the MAN A23 passengers weren’t able to leave the bus through the second door. This issue has been fixed.
  
• The buttons for the doors of the MAN A23 were falsely labeled. This issue has been fixed.
  
• The left mirror of the MAN A23 appeared horizontally inverted. This issue has been fixed.
  
• The center mirror of the MAN A23 appeared upside down. This issue has been fixed.
  
• Decals couldn’t be placed on the top of the MAN A23 bus (front section). This issue has been fixed.
  
• Decals at the back of the MAN A23 were partially overlayed by the bus color. This issue has been fixed.
  
• Custom license plates weren’t displayed correctly on the MAN A23. This issue has been fixed.
  
• Fixes for Several problems with skins on the MAN A47.
  
• The rear mirror camera of the MAN A47 was outside of the bus. This issue has been fixed.
  
• The doors of the MAN A47 were clipping through the frame. This issue has been fixed.
  
• License plates of the MAN A47 are now shown correctly.
  
• Fixed some issues regarding the windshield wiper of the MAN A47. It is now removing the water from the front window again.
  
• The cockpits of the MAN A47, MAN A21 and MAN A23 were overlapping a part of the cashier. This issue has been fixed.
  
• Changing the "Show skin on windows" option to "off" in the customization menu of the MAN A47, MAN A21 and MAN A23 the bookworm skin was shown around the windows. This issue has been fixed.
  
• Partially false descriptions of the MAN A21, MAN A47 and MAN A21 in the bus shop have been fixed.
  
• The backrests in the standing area of the MAN A37 didn’t change the design when choosing an alternative interior. This has been fixed.
  
• The sun-shield of the Lion's City buses could be pulled down too far, so there was a visible gap between the sun-shield and the top bar. This has been fixed.
  
• Fixed double "Loading Company popup"
  
• Fixed indicator lights in IVECO buses
  
• When hovering the mouse over the door buttons of the MAN A21 a third button was shown. This has been fixed.
  
• Fixed a problem with the illumination of the indicator lights of the MAN A21.
  
• Light in rear section of bendy buses was extremely bright after turning the passenger lights off. This issue has been fixed.

Good news: Our brand-new MAN Bus Pack 1 DLC for Bus Simulator 18 is now available here on Steam. The expansion pack offers access to three additional city buses of the popular Lion's City series by the German bus and truck manufacturer MAN: the 10.50 meter long MAN Lion’s City A47, the 11.98 meter long MAN Lion’s City A21 and the 17.98 meter long MAN Lion's City A23 articulated bus. We wish you a lot of fun with the new vehicles!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/886920

Just before Christmas we are happy to fulfill three of the most common wishes today: Our latest free update for Bus Simulator 18 not only introduces a new Sandbox game mode as well as a Free Roaming drive mode but also the option to place skins on the windows of your buses!

Here is an overview of the new features, game improvements and bug fixes:

Changelog - Update #6

Features:

• Free Roaming (new drive mode)
  
  • At the start of a route you can set "Free Roaming" option.
    
  • The start will be the same as in normal mode.
    
  • There are NO routes or bus stops shown on the GPS.
    
  • In free roaming mode you won’t get any bonuses or penalties.
    
  • Helpful messages will be shown as normal.
    
  • The drive can be canceled via the pause menu at any time.
• Sandbox Mode (new game mode)
  
  • Will be unlocked after reaching Level 8.
    
  • To activate this game mode, it has to be selected while creating a new company (an existing company can NOT be changed).
    
  • The Sandbox Mode is multiplayer compatible.
    
  • The player has unlimited money available.
    
  • The player starts at the highest experience level.
    
  • Everything is available from the beginning: bus stops, busses, decals, colors, wraps etc.
    
  • All bus stops are at the highest level.
    
  • There aren’t any story missions, but if you want to play the tutorial at the start of the game, you are free to do so. The company tutorials are also available (without Mira).
    
  • Helpful messages will be shown as normal.
• Skins on Windows:
  
  • Skins can now also be placed on the windows of the buses.
    
  • New UV maps for the game’s buses have been integrated into the game and the Modding Kit.
    
  • Function to optimize the appearance of older skins has been added in the customizing menu of the buses: skins on windows can be activated, deactivated and scaled.

Fixes:

• Multiplayer: Crash at the end of the loading screen fixed.
  
• Multiplayer: The game loads faster after clicking the „load company“ button.
  
• Multiplayer: The game shouldn’t crash anymore when a client is entering a multiplayer game.

Next to this our Bus Simulator 18: Modding-Kit documentation is now available in three languages: English, German and French. Here are the links to the documents:

English:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/145HmPFdIWdLTnIr6GHrecBjGIC84jRUgQLQUMtY9J4Q/

German:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uM_57uwuX3ilN6JIdp4DhccTnOCIVqcmeKj_ml_oEvk/

French:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bC6WT6VNX6KVd_XtDDGZd4LZI8itneI8_xq6eTt3IBg/

Important note: With our Update #6 we have integrated new UV maps for the different bus models into the game and the Modding Kit. In the Modding Kit the new UV maps can be used as templates for your bus skins. Please take note, that the new „Skins on Windows“ function as well as the new UV maps of the buses may cause the problem that some of the older bus skins aren’t shown as expected anymore. This problem usually occurs when the textures of the skins initially haven’t been tailored properly to the windows and other elements of the respective buses. If you are experiencing optical issues with your favorite skins of the Steam Workshop, you can try to fix it by deactivating the skins on windows function in the customizing menu for the buses. If this doesn’t do the trick, please contact the creators of the mods and ask them to optimize it for the new UV maps and the skins on windows function.

We are happy to announce the release of our new Mercedes-Benz Citaro interior DLC for Bus Simulator 18 today. The DLC includes brand new and authentic color patterns for the seats and classy floor designs which will offer the opportunity to individualize your Citaro buses even more and make them your own!

Enjoy the freedom of choice and try something new. The next shift is just around the corner! So, what are you waiting for? Hop on and take a seat!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/968911

Dear bus drivers,
we just released the latest update of our Bus Simulator 18: Modding Kit here on Steam as well as in the Epic launcher. The update introduces a number of map building expansions and new assets for modders who want to create their own maps for the game.

Map Building Expansions:

Buildings

• Distribution Center
  
• Factories
  
• Harbor Warehouses
  
• Art Nouveau Buildings
  
• Generic Buildings
  
• Modern Residential Buildings
  
• Residential Buildings
  
• Warehouses
  
• Chapel
  
• Garage
  
• Harbor Buildings
  
• Kiosks
  
• Office Buildings
  
• Farm Structures
  
• Storefronts

Foliage

• Bushes
  
• Corn
  
• Flowers
  
• Grass
  
• Trees
  
• Weeds

Landmarks

• Cathedral Structures
  
• Plaza
  
• Train Station

Effects

• Dust
  
• Wind
  
• Rain
  
• Tire Splash

PS: More detailed information can also be found in our Bus Simulator 18: Modding Kit documentation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/145HmPFdIWdLTnIr6GHrecBjGIC84jRUgQLQUMtY9J4Q/

Good news: We just released the 4th major update for Bus Simulator 18 today. The update focuses on a number of additional performance optimizations as well as some general game improvements and bug fixes. More detailed information can be found in our changelog:

Changelog – Update #4

Optimizations:

• Tweak level of detail and shadow settings on various assets throughout the level to improve performance.
  
• NPC car level of detail and rendering settings have been tweaked for higher performance.
  
• The calculation of the NPC car orientation and position on the road is now done in parallel for all cars.
  
• Some PhysX queries are now done in an asynchronous manner, so the game logic needn't wait for them to finish.
  
• The route finding of our NPC cars and NPC buses is now done in an asynchronous manner in order to reduce micro stutter.
  
• Ring menu description texts are now placed inside a floating label in order to improve readability.
  
• Some ring menu buttons were re-arranged to improve usability.
  
• The animations of the bus cockpit have been optimized to use less CPU time.
  
• A performance bug in the code that updates audio effects when the player boards or dismounts the bus has been fixed.
  
• The data needed by passengers to find their way through the bus is now stored in a more efficient way, that does no longer require CPU time whenever the bus moves.
  
• NPC cars do not longer own a radio if they do not intend to use it. (Internal optimization to save performance).
  
• If the lights of a NPC car are turned off, it doesn’t carry the bloom effects for it around anymore.
  
• Functions that get called every frame on passengers and pedestrians are now fully implemented in C++. Previously they still had small parts implemented in the slower Blueprint scripting language.
  
• NPC cars no longer have any Blueprint code. They were fully ported to C++ for performance reasons.
  
• The handling of inputs axes, head tracking and mouse steering has been ported from Blueprint to C++ to improve performance.
  
• Car and bus animations have been made thread-safe by enabling multithreaded animation updates for them.
  
• The calculation of force feedback strength has been optimized.
  
• Change how some data is transferred in multiplayer. This should make the connection more tolerant to lags.
  
• Oncoming traffic now reacts a bit smarter when the player uses the indicators.
  
• Improved driver character steering wheel grabbing and improved performance of this code.
  
• The minimap in the bus and in the user interface are now displaying the same image, instead of rendering nearly the same thing twice. (Optimization to save performance).
  
• An icon for stop requests has been added to the UI minimap. It replaces the redundant icon for bus kneeling.
  
• Some parts of the minimap UI have been ported from Blueprint to C++ to improve performance.
  
• Loading times for several of the sub-levels of the default map have been improved in order to reduce stutters during level streaming.

Fixes:

• Fixed that windscreen wipers sometimes drifted slowly away from the bus.
  
• Fixed that the camera could clip into cars.
  
• Fixed that passengers trying to find their way to enter the bus would sometimes walk right through the bus.
  
• Fixed weird looking passenger movement while boarding the rear part of the bendy bus if the bus was bent.
  
• Fixed that the tutorial would continue after the player sold the wrong ticket to the passenger.
  
• Improved driver model positioning in Citaro K.
  
• Fixed that passengers spawned, but not picked up during the tutorial were waiting forever for their bus.
  
• Fixed that passengers would walk quite a distance if there was something blocking all shorter ways to the bus.
  
• Fixed several smaller localization issues.
  
• Fixed several “crash on exit” issues.
  
• Fixed that one of the truck models in game had mirrored indicator lights when viewed from far away.
  
• Fixed a crash bug when accepting a Steam multiplayer invite from the BS18 main menu.
  
• Fixed a crash related to faulty savegame files.
  
• Fixed that a bus driving on rail tracks could get traffic priority over cars at the railway crossing.
  
• Fixed that the player sometimes was unable to exit the ticket machine UI using a controller.
  
• Fixed a crash bug in host transfer, that triggered sometimes if a player bus happened to be on a crossroads during the disconnect.
  
• It should now be possible to stop the bus at all stations, without it sliding slowly downhill.

Modding:

• A new wheel handler for buses and bendy bus rear parts has been added that yields better performance. In order to get it to work, the animation blueprint needs to have the correct base class. See the updated example buses for details.
  
• Passenger move trees and passenger move nodes are no longer needed at runtime. It's now possible to set all passenger move trees and passenger move nodes on the bus blueprint to "Editor Only Component".

Important note for mod creators: Please note that we uploaded a new version of our Bus Simulator 18: Modding Kit. The updated version enables you to use some of the new performance optimizations for your mods too. More detailed information can be found in our Modding Kit Documentation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/145HmPFdIWdLTnIr6GHrecBjGIC84jRUgQLQUMtY9J4Q/

To offer some deeper insights into our long-term plans for Bus Simulator 18 we have prepared an overview of the current developments as well as future updates, features and new contents for the game on Trello. Here ist the link to our Bus Simulator 18 roadmap:

https://trello.com/b/EwaZY24n/bus-simulator-18-roadmap-pc

We hope you enjoy reading!

Dear bus drivers,

Free mission pack #1 for Bus Simulator 18 is now available to download here on Steam.

After focusing on general game improvements and content such as the license plate generator and the free country skin & decal pack DLC, stillalive studios and astragon entertainment have now come up with the next big surprise for the Bus Simulator 18 community: the first brand-new mission pack. It offers a whole set of new missions for advanced bus drivers! Just like in the previous missions, the new tasks have charming voice-overs by professional actors.

Mission Pack #1 expands Bus Simulator 18 by adding three brand-new missions, along with a number of challenging sub-tasks that focus on boosting tourism in the city of Seaside Valley. In addition to special points of interest and hiking tourism, the nightlife of Seaside Valley plays a crucial role, too. As a reward for completing the new tasks, players can look forward to three brand-new decals, a complete bus skin, and a range of new colors they can use to customize their bus fleet.

Enjoy!




Patchnotes:

• 3 new missions presented by Max Klein added.
  
• Camera lag is now also disabled in third person. This should fix some bus stuttering issues while the framerate is not stable.
  
• Parked car license plates set to not cast shadows, to be culled at 50 meters, and to not keep their instance buffer in the main memory.
  
• A construction site in the inner city was moved slightly so cars no longer clip through it.
  
• Streamlined loading screen visuals.
  
• License plates no longer glow in the dark.
  
• Mission info UI no longer automatically opens when the driver and bus assignment menu is open.
  
• Toggling between third and first person view now places the camera at a maximum distance instead of in the center of the range.
  
• Fixed issue of the player name hovering in maps showing the wrong name.
  
• Improved how NPC cars drive onto the highway.
  
• Customization items now show if they are unlocked by a mission or by a level up.
  
• Some very dark areas lit up.
  
• Loads of smaller bugfixes and general performance improvements.

Dear bus drivers,

Our third update for Bus Simulator 18 is now available to download here on Steam. With update #3, you can now create your own license plate number and letter combination. In the bus customization section of the game, you can find license plate templates for the following countries -> Germany, Austria, France, Great Britain, USA, and Russia.



The license plate generator is also compatible with mods, which means that you can upload your own license plate backgrounds to the game. More information on how this works can be found in our Bus Simulator 18 Modding Kit that you can download for free from Steam Workshop, or you can have a look at the documentation at the following link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/145HmPFdIWdLTnIr6GHrecBjGIC84jRUgQLQUMtY9J4Q/

Have fun!

Dear bus drivers,

Our second update for Bus Simulator 18 is now available for download here on Steam. The main focus is a number of performance and traffic AI improvements as well as numerous additional bug fixes. More detailed information can be found in the patch notes below:

Patch Notes Update #2

• Numerous textures were optimized to reduce memory usage and loading times.
  
• Cashier buttons can now be controlled with steering wheel buttons, but you need to take care to avoid double assignment.
  
• Passenger pathfinding while boarding the bus has been improved.
  
• If even with the improved pathfinding passengers clip into the stopped bus, starting to drive no longer generates a penalty.
  
• If the player has Logitech drivers installed and they allow it in the settings, the pedal axis separation setting is automatically set to CombinePedals=false.
  
• Added input rebinding widgets for IncreaseRetarderStrength and DecreaseRetarderStrength in the normal controls and steering wheel section.
  
• Optimized pedestrian spawning/despawning logic to improve performance.
  
• Tweaked update rate of audio volumes to improve performance.
  
• Fixed issue that clients can no longer join a multiplayer company if too many buses have customization on them.
  
• A bug in the traffic AI has been fixed, which caused NPC cars that did not have priority over the player to sometimes cut in right in front of the player.
  
• NPC cars are now more reluctant to waive their priority to prevent situations where traffic no longer follows right-of-way rules because everyone is letting everyone else pass.
  
• The player positions are now shown on the minimap.
  
• Gamma settings are now remembered correctly.
  
• Drive statistics now list all players that participated in a co-op mission.
  
• When using Quick Start, the bus is placed much closer to the first bus stop if the stop is on a long road.
  
• Reduced lag spike that occurred when loading a sublevel that contains parked cars.
  
• Fixed lag spike caused by trains reaching the end of the tracks.
  
• NPC character movement has been optimized to reduce the performance impact of having lots of passengers in the bus.
  
• Movement of NPC cars has been optimized in a similar way to reduce their performance impact.
  
• The map has been optimized to reduce GPU load.

Important note: The game's Force Feedback setting offers a scale from 0 to 100 now. So select 100 to get full Force Feedback. (Settings > Game > Force Feedback)