Crash related to an Armor pickup NPC's respawning in position right after they had been killed Optimized collision on various models, should help performance a bit some areas Optimized LOD's on foliage
Saves! Yup, that fundamental feature that you’ve all been waiting an entire month for! Saves are not yet in their final form, but they are good enough to now showcase and make use of. As of now they allow you to:
Save anywhere when not inside a mission area (Prison/Sewers) and it’ll remember your position, completed errands and current inventory
Load from your last save at any point in game
Resume from your last save/checkpoint from the main menu
There are a few features still missing and will be addressed in a future update:
It’s not possible to save your location and position from within some errand maps such as the Prison/Sewers. Although if you die in Sewers or Prison, you'll still be able to respawn from the last checkpoint you hit
There are no save slots yet, only your previous save/checkpoint is remembered
It takes longer to load from a save than we’d like, but this will improve as we work on the streaming system
A couple cheats to allow you to warp around the world a bit easier, mostly for our internal testing but you guys might find them helpful. Press ‘T’ to bring up the talk bar and type the following to wrap yourself to a location:
/TurtlePower(Teleport to the Sewers)
/DoNotPassGo(Teleport to the Prison)
/INeedAJob(Teleport to the Job Agency)
/SPCA(Teleport to the Animal Catcher area)
/OneStarMotel(Teleport to the Ending Motel building)
Few notes:
- Note that these do not automatically complete any errands, it’s just a way to quickly travel between areas - We will be adding the ability to manually save from inside the Sewers and Prison in a future patch!
We’ve tightened up our Anu’s ready for you to go deep into and explore! The Anu’s Inn building was previously a thrown together placeholder building that was inaccessible and had a ridiculously high in poly count for what it was. It’s now far better looking, all rooms are open to explore, and it’s less likely to contribute to melting your PC components
BEFORE
AFTER
Redesigned the starting area
BEFORE
AFTER
Various updates and improvements to level design in some areas, and minor performance updates
Ambient sounds in some areas across the game, most notably the Laundromat
Replaced placeholder Ammo textures
Some weapons not correctly reflecting light, so they no longer appear black in some areas
Last week’s big highlight was the release of Vitamin X power up and the instantly iconic ‘hose urine stream’.
What more do you want? We probably could have slapped a 1.0 version number on the build and called it a day and still have gotten a Game of The Year award due to this inclusion, but we don’t have anything better to do so I guess we’ll push on with some more updates.
As you guys might have noticed, the game is being improved in the ambient sound department. The outdoor areas play host to bird and insect noises, the Penitentiary has a set of both pre and post riot background noses, and we snuck a little gag into the beginning of the cinematic with Bellow. Sound improvements will be on going.
We also added the ability to change back to the classic POSTAL 2-style HUD, and in the future we'll be adding more options for users to customize their game. Currently, switching the HUD will crash the game if you try and change it from the main menu, guess we should have tested that first, eh? Booting the game back up though will see the HUD set correctly though. Or just change it mid-game where it’s not a problem. The fix for this will be a part of the next patch.
Behind the scenes we’ve been getting our new lead level designer settled in and he’s been giving us a few tisk tisks, and vows to start improving things, both visually and technically. First thing he’s been focusing on is replacing crappy placeholder art assets and reducing overall polycounts on objects that need it the most.
Finally, we’ve taken on a full time member who only has one job (at least for the foreseeable future) - optimization and streaming research. He’ll have the unenviable task of digging through any and all documentation, spamming various forums, contacting anyone that might have some advice, and getting in there and applying some good ol’ fashioned trial and error to find out what works best and what does not.
Saving is semi-implemented on our end now, and undergoing testing. The first update to include it will allow you to resume your game from the last used checkpoint and have all the previously completed errands remembered. We’ll keep improving the same system until we hopefully end up with full save states.
That’s all folks, see you in a few days for the next update!
Vitamin X powerup! Once the Dude has consumed one of these, he’ll get the following buffs:
- Super strong urine stream! It will not only break windows, but also knock over NPCS! - Machete will dismember NPCs with the primary fire and no charge time! - Melee attacks are faster - Dude’s movement speed increased - Kicking NPC’s will knock them over - More buffs will be added in the future
Crouch Toggle checkbox to the controls
HUD customization! For now just the one option, and that’s the ‘Classic’ P2 hud, you can find it in the options under 'Gameplay':
Cosmetic skins for some of the weapons, go check them out, selectable from within the phone menu! Sadly, we forgot to implement a microtransaction system, so guess you get them for free…
Ambient sounds to the outdoor areas, and prison
Toilet to the Antiques store! You’re welcome!
===Changed/Improved===
The ladder sounds
Prison security code screens
Female heads so they should be easier to kick around
Lighting and shadowing inside various buildings, mostly in houses and the prison area
===Fixed===
'Reset Defaults' in control binding menu causing all bindings from that menu to be disabled for the current game session
Incorrect dude lines being used in the sign beggar errand
Glasses clipping into NPC’s faces
Various crashes
Minor scooter bugs and general polish
Notes
Saving system is still coming along but not quite ready for show time yet
We are in the process of taking on someone full time to focus on nothing but optimization
The guy that normally posts these patch notes and does the cool stuff like adding screenshots etc was off sick today and I'm about ready to go get a beer - it's been a long day - so forget the lazy presentation of this post. [I'm back boys! The post should look sexy now!]
Week two saw an update to 0.1.3.3, bringing with it key rebinding as well as various fixes and improvements. We’ll make sure one update a week is the least you can expect, although as we get more testers on board we’ll be able to do more during some weeks.
While all these bug fixes and improvements are important, it’s high time we started getting some fun new features and toys for you to play with! In the next update coming this week, we will be introducing the Vitamin X power up - an inventory item that will give you the following buffs:
Super strong urine stream! It will not only break windows, but also knock over NPCS!
Machete will dismember NPCs with the primary fire and no charge time
Melee attacks are faster
Dude’s movement speed increased
Kicking NPC’s will knock them over
(More buffs will be added in the future)
Work on being able to save and load from checkpoints is ongoing. If you guys are wondering how the hell this could be taking so long - we don’t blame you - the complexity of implementing it while using open world level streaming caught us off guard too. We’re still not quite ready to put an ETA on when it’s coming, but we’ll update you as soon as we know more.
We have also started to step up our efforts to implement the three side errands that we have planned for (ingame) Monday, and these will come sometime after the save system is implemented.
We decided to create a new community forums and are in the process of getting that set up right now, and sometime in the next week or two we will open it up for registration. We’ll continue to monitor and participate on the steam forums as we have been, though.
We’ve continued to gather your feedback and are in the process of implementing some of them (using dismembered limbs as makeshift melee weapons, for example).
Performance improvements are ongoing, and we’re also working on more menu options in this area, notably a population slider like the one found in P2 - allowing for more of fewer NPCs wandering around.
Thank you for your continued support, reviews and feedback!
Key rebinding first pass, it’s now possible to rebind your controls from the options menu. It’s missing a duplicate key warning, and for the love of god do not press ‘Restore Defaults For This Page’ while in a game or you’re going to have a bad time (it’s okay to do it from the main menu, though)
Sounds for the ladder when climbing, jumping on and off, and sliding. Sounds are placeholders for now and will be improved
===Changed===
Some overly bright materials to be darker, to conform the look of the game better (ongoing)
Controller button binding key textures to use the custom P4 font
===Fixed===
Crash related to asking someone for a job after setting them on fire
NPCs puking perpetually
Beggar sign not replacing the hands depending on the message choice
Bug where a silenced shotgun would not function properly
Ragdolls deforming when they are supposed to be inactive
Multiple scooters spawning at the scooter stations
Various mapping issues reported on the forums
Being able to interact with interactable objects through walls
===Other===
Further work on Optimization, most people should be a few FPS higher in the worse areas now. Work on this will be ongoing
It’s been a pretty crazy week, and now the dust has settled we can start to reflect, and plan for what comes next. Thank you to anyone that’s bought the game, added it to your wish list, reviewed it, given us bug reports/feedback, and posted kind words of encouragement. We hope to retain this goodwill and will strive to make sure the good faith you guys have given us is deserved.
We’ve spent much of the first week talking internally, monitoring feedback and working out what the general sentiment is around where we should be focusing in the short to mid term. We shall be updating our internal schedule accordingly this week.
We’ve mostly been fixing as many crashes as we can, improving performance, and catching anything else that could be a potential blocker for progress. We’ll keep rolling out these mini-updates a few times a week.
The key rebinding feature is coming along well and should be with you this week. After that, full attention will be put towards being able to load checkpoints from a save after you’ve left the game. No ETA on this yet but we’ll keep you posted.
We’ve realized that subtitles are in high demand, and have decided to get those implemented sooner rather than later (this won’t take time away from core development as much of the work will be done by translators, and the subtitle system is already there in UE4).
We’re wasting no time in expanding the team and putting your money to good use. A seasoned level designer/artist will be joining us starting today, and we’ll be advertising soon to further expand the team in the areas we need it the most.
Ability to go into Third person with the ‘N’ Key. This feature is EXPERIMENTAL and won’t be fully supported for a while, but it works well enough for you to have some fun with. Preview:
Note that P4 will always be designed primarily around being a first person shooter first and foremost.
Checkbox for Mouse Smoothing and turned it off by default
===Changed===
'How To Play' screen updated to show 'V' for holster and 'J' for taking screenshots (which are used for the Feedback menu)
Male heads so they should now be ‘lighter’, for games of head soccer!
Map screen textures on the phone UI
===Fixed===
Various mapping issues
Missing jumping and landing animation on the offhand weapon when dual wielding
Ammo counter going into the negative when dual wielding
Doggy treats inventory items not being removed when eaten
Three separate crashes related to StopWeaponAnim
Multiple scooters spawning at the scooter stations
Problem where the foot would display over the ‘find a job’ sign
Ragdolls and gibs not going to ‘sleep’ when not active. Might help performance when on a rampage
Grenades are now removed from your inventory when depleted
Performance improvements
Various mapping fixes
If you die after completing the prison errand and leaving the area, you’ll no longer get sent back to a checkpoint within the prison, leaving you locked up for good
===Changed===
Based on your feedback, we replaced the Beggar Sign marker with a new model. With the old model, it was kind of difficult to tell that it was a marker