This is simply a small update to fix a persistent hitching issue that around 50% of users were getting, where there a was frame hitch every 3-5 seconds happening consistently. Sorry it took so long to sort this out - this bug was elusive and took us a lot of trial and error to track down, but it has been our priority as it pretty much made the game unplayable for a huge number of you.

We wanted to make sure this fix was added as soon as possible so did not add in anything else that that will need further testing - but bigger overall performance update, along with plenty of new content, will be with you around the time of Realms Deep!

Three new zones

Border Land

Overview:

The “Border Land World” is located in the southwestern-most part of town. This tile is part of the Commercial District zone where many of the larger businesses are situated. It also includes the portion of the town located in Mexico, hence the name of the tile.

Since this tile is on the border and includes the Mexican portion of the town, of note is the border crossing and its trademark landmark, The Wall. It serves as the sole entrance into Mexico in the game.

Visually, there’s a contrast between the US portion north of the border and Mexican portion south of the border. However, the south-of-the-border area of town nonetheless functions in a largely identical manner, albeit with the Mexican visual twist.







Retail

Overview:

The “Retail World” is the southern-middle part of town. This tile is part of the Commercial District zone where many of the retail shops and larger businesses are situated. Some commercial offices are found here as well. Covering the entirety of the border along the southern edge is The Wall.

Of note is that this tile, true to its name, contains the most highly concentrated number of business establishments.





Ghost Town

Overview:

The “Ghost Town” is located in the central westernmost part of town. This tile is part of the Historic District zone where the town’s aforementioned ghost town is located. This is also where the poorest of the town’s poor congregate in the dedicated shanty town/ghetto.

In keeping with the old west theme established by the ghost town, this area is distinguished by its dry, dusty, desert atmosphere, even more so than the rest of the town’s desert areas. Expect to see tumbleweeds and dying, yellowed shrubbery.







New missions!

Meet Associate

Errand description:

Tuesday's Meet Associate errand is immediately assigned at the beginning of the day and sends the player to meet his new boss-of-the-day following Bellow. You will have to take an underground detour using the town's now newly (re)opened subway system (Using a placeholder location at the moment) which conveniently has available stops between these two districts. Come Wednesday, the rest of the stops will be available, making four total between the four districts around town.

Aside from that, the other major part of this errand is the cutscene where we meet the new boss and his faction: El Plago and his Los Oscuros cartel who operate out of Edensin's South-of-the-Border Land.

Border Smuggler

Errand description:

The short of the errand is that the featured Border Slingshot acts a mounted turret you can aim and fire with your "ammo" being the American immigrants you're launching over The Wall border into Mexico. The task here is set up as a target range challenge where you must successfully aim at floating holographic targets. If you miss a shot or fire an immigrant which is spotted by the Border Patrol, you still need to launch more immigrants over The Wall, but at this point hostile Border Patrol officers will also be spawning in waves to fight you.

Tag Turf

Errand description:

The one special gimmick in this errand is the use of the new Spray Paint Can weapon on the designated Billboards (You can activate the color wheel by holding RightMouseButton). The majority of this errand features combat against a new group, the Sensitive Hipsters.

Here's a short preview of the new Spray Can:



Pet Shop Delivery

Errand description:

On Tuesday, after his meeting with the Mexican Luchadores boss El Plago, the Dude is sent on a delivery mission to bring a nondescript package to a local Pet Shop. Upon his arrival and descent into the building’s undisclosed underground storage facility, he discovers the place is actually a front for a drug lab. Not one to be remiss in his duties, though, the Dude braves the toxic fumes swirling through the air to complete his delivery, only to pass out on his way back to the exit. In his fume-addled hazy mind, he hallucinates himself having turned into a cat, suddenly believing himself to be completing a day’s list of feline-based Mini-Errands. Cat-based catastrophes ensue.

After turning into a cat, Dude (or Dude Cat) needs to complete three mini-errands.

Pay Fine

Errand description:

Here, the player is offered two branches to follow: Pay the fine by performing community service as a Meter Maid or manually dropping his ticket into the conveniently located drop box. Taking the Meter Maid route means roaming the town's free roam areas looking for illegally parked cars to ticket to meet your fine quota. Upscale cars can be ticketed more, but the vehicle's owners will respond with hostility. Going with the drop box route happens to trigger the station's lockdown mode, and the player will need to head to the Lockdown Terminals in the Security Offices to manually disable it. The station's Armory can be unlocked as a bonus!

The gameplay mechanics employed here aren't just for this errand. The Meter Maid will become available later in the week as an optional job/Side Quest to earn more cash. The lockdown mechanic in the Police Station remains a constant in this location, acting as the regular challenge to doing things like stealing from the evidence room, stealing from the Armory, gaining access to the Super Evidence Room, and so forth.

New P2-style shovel! (Blood masks will be added later)



Ingram



M16



New sounds for the Intro sequence

Footprints

Cutscene movie volume slider

Interior sounds to various buildings

Dual wielding crosshair (Borderlands 2 style)



Facial animations for dead pawns

New sound effects for Tazer Baton




Improved Combat AI:

• NPCs not firing at long range distances
  
• Melee enemies should now spread out a little when chasing you
  
• Enemies will also no longer crouch when attacking with a melee weapon
  
• Ranged enemies should no longer run up to your face before attacking
  
• Enemies that lose sight of you no longer stand in place waiting for you to walk up to them
  
• Cops shouldn't get stuck on the border of the Chase/Arrest radius anymore
  
• Changed how enemies react to pointing a gun at them so they don't immediately attack you even if they're panicking
  
• NPCs shouldn't freeze in place when entering Reload state anymore
  
• Refined NPC weapon spread so they don't deal as much initial burst damage

and more!


Optimized vehicle and bystander models

Cars will now exploded when set on fire with Gasoline

Improved distance quality of foliage models

Reduced health on Cop NPCs

Greatly improved the look of various cutscenes

Sonic and Sanic cheats now apply to flying

Added more pickups across all levels

Weapons that use time based ammo consumption now consume 1 ammo at the start

Smoothed the AK firing animation to be less erratic. Reduced the recoil on the AK to make it a bit more manageable

Decreased AI Revolver fire rate from 0.3 to 1.0

Reduced frequency of ambient hawk screeching

Game now autosaves once instead of twice when going through zap zones

All Characters should now drop their Weapons when they die

Tweaked the walking animations

Camera will now pan to errand as the giver talks about it, and zooms to default zoom




A TON of mapping bugs

Crash that could occur after throwing many Pigeon Mines as well as when standing in a queue / interacting with the cashier. And many others!

Collision on a vast amount of assets

Grenades and Molotovs not colliding with doors

Broken interactables

Various issues with Prison

Car explosion sounds playing when master volume was set to 0

Video Menu “Show Outlines” text not matching checkbox

Player taking lethal headshot damage from the Revolver and Shotgun

Implemented fixes for the Dogs and Cats when transitioning back to normal movement

Beggar Sign “nag” dialog lines playing when a sign has already been constructed

Player facing the wrong direction when exiting the Scooter

Map screen panning off to Narnia when finishing errands

"Show Pickup Messages" menu option not working/Hide HUD not hiding pickup messages

Slugs not using any HUD icon

Hey there POSTAL fans!

You’re probably wondering why the game updates have slowed down in recent weeks! It's because we are working our asses off towards POSTAL 4’s biggest single update to date: The addition of Tuesday!

This update will almost double the size of the playable area and give you 4 new errands, all of which are VERY different than the ones found on Monday. Those of you that feel the Errands on Monday were not outrageous enough for a POSTAL game just might cream your jeans at what's coming!

Due to the amazing Early Access response, we have been able to invest significantly more into development and grow the team - we’re now almost 30 members strong having taken on 8 new members in the last month alone, some coming directly from working with AAA studios! Most of their work is tied up in the Tuesday update so it has yet to filter through to you guys - but it’s CUMMING!

Finally, we just want to reassure everyone that once Tuesday hits, major updates (Wednesday) will not take nearly as long and we will NOT be in Early Access forever. When we launched POSTAL 4 in Early Access we had a much smaller team and had a lot of work to do to implement many fundamental features that were missing at launch. We have a STRICT ‘no crunch’ policy at RWS and this means things will take longer than they would if we were uninterested in the welfare of our staff, so we thank you for your understanding and patience.

As always, thanks for the support and for being an excellent community for us to work for. Stay safe out there, and USE A BIDET! Remember - A Clean Ass is a Happy Ass!

The Running With Scissors Team

P.S Allow us to pimp our warez while we have your attention!
Check out https://p0st.al/shop and pick up some swag to help further support our efforts in making P4 the best ‘Worst Game Ever™’!

We are bustin' our asses getting the ‘Tuesday’ update ready so you guys can get sucked into a bunch of new errands, but in the meantime we thought you’d appreciate a small update that blows - presenting: explodable cars!





Explodable cars!





‘View / Weapon Bob’ toggles (‘Gameplay’ settings)


Toggle for enabling/disabling black outlines (‘Video’ settings)





Reduced the loading time between the main menu and the intro movie





Jukebox sound not playing in Blue’s Waffle House

Certain sounds not respecting audio sliders

Some broken InitialState animations

Various mapping bugs that were reported on our Janky and Steam Forums

Broken Kevlar pickup that was causing the game to crash


“Busted” loading screen not appearing after getting arrested


Sent-to-jail audio not playing correctly


Random crash that would sometimes occur around the Animal Catcher area

Foliage Density Slider which controls newly added grass (“Performance” settings)



SiC armor texture




Crash that could occur after switching weapons

Crash that could occur after completing the Prison errand

“Ring Bell” prompt not going away

Various sound effects not being affected by the Master Audio slider

NPC's not using their initial states very often

Prison errand ending cutscene overlapping with mission completion dialogue

Phone popping up after Prison intro cutscene

Champ growling at the Dude

Dogs growling at bystanders when running to catch up with the Dude

Dog treat emitters not spawning

Hey POSTAL Fans!

This time around, we figured it was probably time we started to get a hold on the various common and uncommon crashes that you guys have been getting, as a few have popped up over the last few updates. The game should now be much more stable for most of you!

We also finally included the gamepad menu so you lunatics can invert your analog stick axis. The terrain has been given a fresh lick of paint, and work has been done on ambient sounds within buildings.

In the update we hope to bring you some more performance improvements - especially when there are a lot of NPCs on screen.




Corpses and gibs lifetime menu option (‘Performance’ settings)

Powerlines in Riverside tile

WIP PetShop / MethLab in Riverside tile

Zap-zone signs

Foliage density option (‘Performance’ settings)

New interior ambience sounds to businesses / major buildings

Gamepad Options Menu, including features such as being able to invert axis

An intro fly in sequence before you take control of The Dude

Timed Auto-save setting (It’s enabled by default, game will auto save every 10 minutes)




Added a particle to to the Gas Can’s spout to hide the trail particle gap

Some of the cinematics have had another pass to better follow rules of cinematography and to hide the HUD

Enabled root motion on trip animation; NPCs will no longer snap back to starting location after playing the animation

Optimized the Penitentiary building

Made some changes to landscape in Riverside tile

Implemented new, better looking terrain materials across the whole game

Improved collision on main road section

Left hand Revolver will now contribute execution points to the main right hand Revolver

Increased the Pigeon health so they don’t instantly die from Bystanders on fire

Enabled wind effects on foliage




At least 8 common crashes

Various mapping bugs that were reported on our Janky forums

Double telephone poles from Riverside transition

Phone interface when riding the Scooter

Removed “Sample text” message from Mini-map transparency option

Hey there POSTAL fans!

So a question that’s being asked A LOT is ‘When the hell are the other days coming?’

As those of you who bought the game (last October in order to support us) will remember, that it was released in a very barebones state. Basic normal fundamentals such as key rebinding and a save system were missing, and the performance was SHIT. The AI was undercooked and behind that of even POSTAL 2’s, and we didn’t even have a basic police system in place. The art style was incoherent and many buildings and models were placeholders or needed texture work. We had a lot of friggin work to do.

Until we fixed and implemented a bunch of that shit, it didn’t make any sense to expand the game (REMEMBER, we’re a small team). NOT ANYMORE BABY!!! Work on expanding the map and implementing Tuesday’s errands is in full swing. This does not mean we’re done with improving performance, AI, art and adding things to improve the errands on Monday itself, it just means we are mostly prioritizing getting you guys more content to experience and a bigger world to explore. That said, there is another performance update coming in the not too distant future!

Tuesday will start to see the game getting more outrageous and we hope you’ll enjoy some of the more interesting gameplay mechanics we have planned.

We’d give you an ETA, but then we’ll probably miss that date and look stupider than we already do - but the plan is to release everything related to Tuesday at the same time. The introduction, the new areas, the errands/side errands and the end of day cinematics.

Thank you all for your support in helping us get this far, the Early Access experience has been a pleasure for our team and we’re truly excited to get you new content.

Running With Scissors Team

In this update we introduce the natural evolution of the cat silencer - The Cat grenade! Combine a cat with a grenade, target and NPC, and watch as kitty bolts it towards them, to then explode on impact.

Another nice improvement in this update is the NPC AI. In some areas (such as the main street at the start) NPC’s now go about their lives with more purpose rather than milling about aimlessly. For example, one might wander into the Laundromat, check on their washing, then sit down and check their phone while they wait, or maybe go and pass the time at the arcade. This system is in the early stages of implementation so not all areas have had this treatment yet, but we will improve upon it with each passing update as well as adding expanded actions and animations.

And finally, we have totally redone the roads around town to look better and have better collision with NPCS.

No major performance updates have been made in this update (other than inside the prison). A renewed push for that is coming soon, focusing on NPCs and dismemberment that will reduce the drawcalls by 70%.




The cat Grenade! Combine a cat with a grenade, target and NPC, and watch as kitty bolts it towards them to then explode on impact



A tickbox that should fix the muddy texture issue some users are having. It’s recommended you only tick this option if you are having the muddy textures issue. This removes the need to enter console commands

A slider to adjust the amount of motion blur. We’re leaving motion blur off by default because motion blur sucks :)

Added Road signs around town in an ongoing effort to make Edensin feel more like a real town

Uniforms for Arcade and Hotel workers





First pass of AI improvements and NPC routines

Improved roads

Population slider is now set to ‘Normal’ by default (The recommended setting)

Optimized the Penitentiary building

Updated Spurt’n’Squirt9000 textures to reflect ammo type with new art

Tweaked TP rifle animations

Improved lighting in Art Gallery

Implemented new Armor mesh; fits better on Dude’s body






Dismemberment on Civvie not working

Blood decals not showing on NPCs

Levels not being loaded in correctly when finishing the prison level and then loading an auto save

Shadow distance setting not saving

A bug where the Grenade pin pull animation wasn’t animating properly

Removed redundant capsule shadow setting

Toilet flush emitters not using correct rotation

Various mapping bugs that were reported on our forums

Shop Counter ‘Wiping’ animation loop

Third person stuttering when rotating the camera in third person

Dildo Bidet causing the game to crash

Crash that was happening on ALT-F4

The highly requested mini-map has now been implemented!



Note: You can adjust the mini-map transparency in 'Gameplay' settings!

Improved Art style

In an ongoing effort to improve the look of the game, we’ve given many of the assets an overhaul (notably, the terrain and rocks), and implemented subtle lines around world objects. We’ve also given the map screen a new coat of paint:



As you can see, we've also added various switches under 'Map Tools'. You'll be able to enable/disable the mini-map, errand and side-quest icons as well as the POI icons. Once we implement waypoint markers, you'll be able to switch them on and off too.

Rabbits! It’s Easter, after all. More wildlife will come in future updates

Toggle for silencing the game during focus loss (ALT+TAB)

New MikeJ’s Bidet store

Due to the current Pigeona virus crisis, Local Edensin Officials have supplied civilians with an unlimited supply of face mask

NPC Coughing animations

Third-person Kick animations

‘Shadow distance’ setting in Performance menu

A Vitamin X vender to the Circle J and a Pizza Vender to Pistolas e Tacos





Level design improvements to Skylift and Prison areas

Tweaked Walk up/down animations on NPCs so they look better walking up hills

Reduced the recoil when dual wielding weapons, mostly for the AK

Tightened the way the player’s speed is applied to a fluid trail to minimize the particle gap

Landscape overhaul (Added better looking cliff/rock models)

Improved Art Gallery building

Zap-zone loading screen is now less intrusive

Added new cat silencer attach sound effect

Improved AI navigation

Replaced Art Dealer frames with better models

Quality of Catnip effect texture

Improved performance in Penitentiary (Ongoing)

Updated phone notification texture

Optimized various sounds to be more efficient

Updated Overhead map texture

Spurt’n’Squirt will now be in Flamethrower mode by default

Blood splats will now fade away in 30 seconds

Tweaked Pistol/Revolver TP offset


Ongoing performance improvements:

Optimized NPC hair and boltons to use fewer draw calls

Improved performance in Police Station

Note: a bigger performance push is coming in an upcoming update that should see across the board improvements





Bug that was causing NPCs to freeze and not move until disturbed

Bug that was causing directional hurt indicator to not indicate correctly where the damage was coming from

An oversight where the left weapon when dual wielding is reversed

Left hand when dual wielding appearing in third person

Third person weapon offsets

Non-functional ladder in Scooter Store

Revolver getting stuck when fan firing with a cat silencer

NPCs stumbling / running out of breath too often

Broken Art Dealer painting in Anu’s Inn

Art Dealer paintings despawning

Ambient in Prison sounds not playing

Players sometimes spawning inside of terrain after loading to last checkpoint

Radio sometimes not playing the next song right away

Large variety of mapping bugs

Molotov fire not being able to be extinguished

Grenades not being removed when simply dropping them

Spurt’n’Squirt9000 not firing properly based on ammo types

Road texture leading to Prison

NPC walk animations going out of sync (Arms and legs)

Various crashes

Not being able to put out fires using the Urethra

Collision on a lot of assets

Radio not playing the next song in certain cases

NPC freezing in place

Taser leaving bullet holes on Bystanders

Dude hands not being attached correctly to Scooter handle in third person

NPC corpses causing audio spam with doors

Animations jittering

We here at Running With Scissors have been listening closely to the community input and suggestions during our ongoing development of POSTAL 4: No Regerts. In response to your requests, we have recently made the great decision to replace the sexy and dulcet tones of famed veteran voice actor Jon St. John with a new performer and true fan favorite in the role of the POSTAL Dude!

Coming soon, the POSTAL Dude in POSTAL 4 will now be voiced by Joe Exotic, star of the hit new Netflix sensation Tiger King, who has graciously offered his talent to be recorded live from federal prison! This voice change will also be retroactively applied to all previous POSTAL titles henceforth, including The-One-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named!

We hope you all will enjoy this groundbreaking new change to the POSTAL series on this fine day of April!