Hey everyone!

Patch v0.7.5.0.77 is now live on the public test branch.

The top of hour freeze is finally fixed!

This bug has been haunting us for weeks. It usually showed up right on the hour and felt completely random. I found possible causes and patched them, but the freeze kept coming back. In the end it required a base level refactor, and after days of debugging and writing unit tests, I finally tracked down the real issue.

It was not really about lawsuits or decision popups, even though it often looked that way. The actual problem was tied to player state changes such as placing items, stairs, elevator shafts, making decisions, assigning casino games, end of day reports, or any transition that paused the game. The tricky part was that it only triggered if that state change happened during a single low FPS frame. That is why it seemed random and why some players hit it more often than others, since it even depended on PC performance and what else their computer was doing at the time.

CRT does not use the engine’s built in physics since it is too heavy for a sim, and instead uses math libraries for collision checks in placement, selection, vehicle traffic, and more. The bug was buried in how the game handled this simulation while paused and in certain states. That is why all our tests on lawsuits, decisions, and spawns never revealed it, because the real problem was deeper in the underlying system.

It was a nightmare to track down, but it feels amazing to be sure it is finally gone before merging into the main branch. There is no way I could have greenlit launch with it still in place.

With this fixed I can finally shift back to balance, smaller to mid level fixes, QOL, and polishing. The refactor caused a few new bugs with state changes and overlays, but most of those are already resolved. I have also been working on overlay improvements and tweaks such as color correction for day and night cycles while overlays are active, since I was already deep in that area.

Changelog:

• Resolved an issue where some customers in item lines could constantly try to change to different positions.

• Fixed an issue where taxes were being calculated immediately on expenses rather than on net income.

• Expenses now properly reduce taxable income before tax is applied.

• Improved the collider check system for precision and performance.

• Line system improvements.

• Item search performance improvements.

• Carrot cake now correctly requires carrots instead of cruciferous vegetables.

• Fixed an issue where some tobacco items had 0 prestige points.

• Resolved the problem of manager buffs not resetting after firing them.

• Fixed collider mappings of certain items that caused hovering issues.

• Fixed an issue where entire menus closed instead of performing the backward action when right-clicking.

• Resolved an issue where buttons leading to item placements did not highlight red during placement.

• Fixed the problem of the laundry storage window opening far away from its parent item window.

• Added an indicator for casino game assignments.

• Day/night cycle darkness and lighting no longer affects overlay darkness.

• Fixed an issue where day/night ambiance sound did not sync until a shift change after loading.

• Fixed the problem of interior wall placement not showing an info/error box.

• Reception desk maximum queue length increased from 10 → 15.

• End Day menu can now be minimized.

• Fixed an issue where townsfolk requests did not display a completion window upon finishing.

• Resolved an issue where customers playing bingo in a specific state during save could cause loading problems.

• Fixed a rendering issue with the "Personal Care" research node in the research menu.

• Fixed an issue where people did not play smoke animations when using their favorite tobacco product if its cigars.

• Lawsuit case finalize count now resets correctly between sessions.

• Fixed an issue where the "last taxed paid day" was not being saved.

• Fixed a problem where the transport button did not highlight after opening transport sub-buttons.

• Resolved an issue where game speed did not return to the previous setting after closing a decision popup.

• Resolved an issue where game speed did not return to the previous setting after closing a lawsuit popup.

• Fixed the End Day report menu so it can be moved.

• Made adjustments to sorting order in the End Day report menu.