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Fellow officers,

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It's finally here! After weeks of beta testing (thanks, btw), we're pleased to announce that The Keys-to-the-City Update is now available to all players of Police Simulator: Patrol Officers!

[previewyoutube=64UqnW3WbIs;full]YOUTUBE LINK[/previewyoutube]

What's inside The Keys-to-the-City Update?

We've prepared a plethora of new features and improvements for you. Some have been planned for a long time now and quite a lot come straight out of the oven - and are based on your feedback. Without further ado, let's dive right into it!

Open Patrol

Right as we began our journey in Early Access, people wished for one feature: "Please give us the option to play shifts with fewer restrictions!" Okay, to be honest, you've articulated your questions in a different way - but it's here now, anyway. Roam through the districts of Brighton with more freedom and play the game the way you want with Open Patrol!

Keep in mind that before selecting Open Patrol, you have to unlock it first by playing and progressing through some shifts. Obviously, you don't have to do that should you have already unlocked basically everything by now or at least the third district - Open Patrol will be available for you right from the start. Lay back, protect your city and get back to the precinct whenever you want. Currently, you need 14 Duty Stars to unlock the feature but we are observing your feedback and discussions about these requirements.

New Duties

Throughout Brighton, citizens have reported new violations: A bunch of wallet thefts was observed and drinking in public became a major problem in the entire city. Stop the thieves, stop the alcohol, stop the offenses!

However, you can also relax and focus on interacting with your fellow citizens in new ways. Some of them will ask you for directions while you are now also able to greet them back. Say hello! 👋

The moment you discover some exciting Point of Interest, the in-game map gets updated with a corresponding shiny icon - which is especially useful when your fellow citizens are asking for directions.

More NPC Variety

With the new update, we're also shipping three new male faces and three new female faces - in addition to four new haircuts for female NPC and two new haircuts for male NPC. Since all NPC are randomly generated from a larger amount of different options (gender, hair, face, hair color, clothes, etc), you will definitely see a lot fewer twins at every corner now. Apparently, they are not all related to each other. I'm relieved.

In addition, we will now have tenfold the number of names than we had previously. We're speaking of 733 female first names (previously: 77) and 754 male first names (previously: 75). Plus, we will now have 769 last names in total (previously: 60).

You see, more actually means MORE. I recently bought a new calculator and the first thing I did was to calculate how many possible combinations of names we now have. You won't believe the number: 1.100.000.

AI Improvements

I'm confident that basically everyone has experienced this: You want to blip a car to the side, they try to find a parking spot and... never do that. Do they just have bad eyes or are they trying to scam us?

We were aware how annoying that must have been which prompted us to improve the AI behavior significantly: Blipping now forces vehicles to stop in the right lane instead of looking for a parking spot - unless there is an available spot immediately nearby. In addition, blipped vehicles will now no longer brake abruptly when starting their parking maneuver.

If vehicles are under the influence of your patrol car siren and blue lights, they can now also be blipped and consider their current "stop location" as "stopped for parking". They are also blocked from moving forward when your ELS is active. Last but not least: In general, vehicles should react better to the player and also to the player's vehicle with activated sirens.

Some other Quality-of-Life Improvements

We now have an explanation system for the loss of Conduct Points so that the process is more transparent. You won't hurt yourself in your confusion anymore. Starting today, Car Patrol Shifts are also available within high crime areas and Field of View Adjustments are working better.

Voice-overs

We spent our last few weeks and months recording new voice-overs in both English and German and can finally ship them with this update! In the beta, they were not included yet as they were simply not finished. But hey, they're ready now and you can enjoy them in all their glory.

Bugfixing

Once again, we are prioritizing bugfixing above all. Our backlog of tasks is quite long and the team has already ironed out a lot of them - but just like with every game, work is never done! Please continue to send us your bug reports as we collect and read them all.

We know there are some that cause bigger issues and are also aware that there are some very nasty ones, especially when it comes to clipping and AI. Fixing those isn't easy and very often, we cannot reproduce them internally until we get that one piece of information that is so crucial.

Please check out the full patch notes down below for more details on everything we've fixed with this update!

Update 4.0.0 - Full Patchnotes

We had an amazing start to the new year and cannot wait for everything that's in front of us. Some of you have already seen our updated roadmap in which we tease some upcoming features like holding cells in precincts, being able to transport arrested people yourself, first modding capabilities, traffic management... and more!

We hope you're excited for the future of Police Simulator: Patrol Officers and eager to develop the game alongside us. Thousands of new players are joining us on our journey each month and we see no signs of stopping.

Okay, enough said - let's get to the patch notes!

New Features

• New Feature: Open Patrol

• New Feature: Conduct Point Explanation System

• New Feature: Helping NPCs asking for directions

• New Feature: Greeting NPCs

• New Violation: Wallet Theft

• New Violation: Drinking in Public

NPCs

• Added 4 new haircuts for female NPCs & 2 new haircuts for male NPCs

• Added 3 new face models for female NPCs & 3 new face models for male NPCs

• Added more than 700 new first names for male NPCs & more than 650 new first names for female NPCs

• Added more than 700 new last names for NPCs

• Added some new animations to the police officers in the precinct reception

Police Car & Traffic Cars

• Improved NPVs reaction when blipped over: Blipped vehicles now do not stop abruptly

• Improved NPVs reaction when blipped over: NPVs now stop on the right lane if they can not find a parking spot nearby

• Improvement: Vehicles under the influence of your patrol car siren and blue lights can be blipped and consider their current "stop location" as stopped for parking

• Improvement: Pulled Over NPVs / Blipped Vehicles are blocked from moving forward when ELS is active

• Improved vehicle reaction to sirens: When blipping an NPV it does react to my code 1,2,3 and stops searching for a parking spot while the siren is activated (or the horn). When running code 1,2,3 NPCs and NPVs do not react enough and do not try to avoid me as a player / make way.

• Improved spotlights on Panther Z

• Car patrols are now available in high crime areas

World

• Added more lights in darker areas (especially useful in Night Shifts)

Sound

• Added more voice overs for English and German languages

Handbook

• Modified handbook entry for Parking Regulations, to include explanation about cars with “Shift” sticker on them

Balancing

• Decreased chance for 'Smoking Exhaust' to be more realistic

• Decreased chance for 'Engine Too Loud' to be more realistic

• Beta Change: Adjusted the chances for NPC to ask for direction

• Beta Change: Decreased distance range for greeting and asking for direction because the NPC voice lines are inaudible

Bug Fixes
GAMEPLAY

• Fixed a lot of cases where the action was unjustified in report, even though it was a justified action by the player

• Fixed an edge case where sometimes players were losing SP instead of CP

• Fixed an issue where player was able to hold two tools at the same time

• Fixed an issue where restarting shift was placing players into the running shift again

• Fixed an issue where incorrect CP was deducted when ticketing broken windshield

• Fixed a issue with Radar Gun where pressing escape deleted the evidence photo the officer took

• Beta Fix: Fixed an issue where player could not greet back when he had a tool equipped

• Fixed a minor issue with night shift timings

MULTIPLAYER

• Fixed an issue where some NPVs were invisible for client

• Fixed an issue where the player's position from the previous shift was also displayed in the new shift when leaving the area of jurisdiction

• Fixed an issue where 'Asking for ID' was blocking the client

• Fixed a multiplayer issue where the client sometimes had camera view of the host while talking to accident witness and this lead to game being stuck for client

• Fixed a major NPC flickering issue in multiplayer sessions

• Beta Fix: Fixed an issue where sometimes players where not able to join Open Patrol in multiplayer

• Beta Fix: Fixed an issue in background check where the host and client saw different information about the NPC

NPCs

• Fixed many issues concerning NPC behaviors (e.g.: Drug dealer did not walk away after being let go)

• Fixed issue where graffiti sprayers were spraying on advertisement boards and windows of buildings that were invisible

• Fixed an issue where graffiti sprayers had no spray can in hand

• Fixed an issue where graffiti sprayers were spawning on top of buildings

• Fixed an issue where drug dealers were spawning in unreachable places

• Fixed an issue where sometimes the buyer does not walk away after a drug deal

• Fixed an issue in crime scenes where the criminal was still on the scene due to broken navmesh

• Fixed an issue where NPCs did not walk on sidewalk due to broken navmesh

• Fixed an issue where NPCs were floating in bus stops

• Fixed an issue where NPCs were sitting on invisible benches

• Fixed an issue where NPCs are sitting behind the bench

• Fixed an issue where NPCs were clipping through tables

• Fixed an issue where NPCs were clipping in Kiosk

• Fixed an issue where the NPC faces LOD were incorrect

• Fixed an issue where NPC feet were inside the ground

• Fixed an issue where some NPCs were showing skin through dress

• Fixed an issue where sometimes NPC fingers were all weird

• Fixed an issue where you could not interact with NPC when aiming with a tool

• Fixed an issue with drug dealers fleeing

• Fixed a navigation issue under the bridges which caused drug buyer to not interact with drug dealers

• Fixed a NPC navigation issue due to a narrow sidewalk

• Beta Fix: Fixed an issue with wallet theft victims no longer fleeing from player when he fires taser or gun

• Beta Fix: Fixed an issue with wallet theft where the victim animation was not played correctly

• Fixed an issue where sometimes wanted suspects did not flee the crime callout area

• Fixed a issue where some NPC standing near the sidewalk were blocking the traffic

• Beta Fix: Fixed an issue where sometimes the NPC asking for direction does not mention the location

• Fixed an issue where sometimes player could not interact with the pulled over NPC

• Fixed an issue where sometimes you could not call an ambulance for an injured NPC

PATROL CAR & TRAFFIC CARS

• Fixed an issue where Patrol Cars were accelerating after returning from a tutorial popup

• Fixed an issue where Patrol Cars were accelerating on their own after closing the Board Computer

• Fixed an issue where Patrol Cars were disappearing from game session if the previous session was failed

• Fixed an issue where player could interact with NPCs while asking for NPC ID

• Fixed an issue where some parked NPC were submerged in the sidewalk

WORLD & GRAPHICS

• Fixed a lot of places where sometimes you could see spaces in between two buildings

• Fixed a level design issue with misplaced scaffolding on a building

• Fixed an issue where a small part of a building in Chester did not have a texture

• Fixed an issue where some walls were missing collision

• Fixed an issue where some walls in game were missing collision so that players could walk through them and fall into the never-ending abyss of Brighton

• Fixed some issues where cables were clipping through buildings

• Fixed some issues with coffee shops

• Fixed an issue where bookshelves in precinct were changing textures (are they chameleons?)

• Fixed issues where some decorative plants did not have collision

• Fixed an issue in parks where the grass textures looked really wrong

• Fixed an issue where graffiti cans were submerged into the sidewalk

• Fixed an issue where bicycles were submerged into the sidewalk

• Fixed an issue where some street sign boards were small in size, so now we have increased their size to have better visibility

• Fixed an issue with the LOD of trees

• Fixed an issue where sometimes the border warning color was incorrect

• Fixed a visual issue with the parking spot in traffic stops

• Fixed a lot of level design issues

• Fixed an issue where some graffiti were overlapping with each other

• Fixed lighting issue during night shifts, where earlier the areas where too dark without lights

• Fixed a lot of textures on buildings

UI

• Fixed the developer debug string displayed in the intuition messages (no more #hackerman)

• Fixed an issue that caused the 'Aim mode: Field of View' settings have no effect

• Fixed an issue where the displayed intuition was sometimes incorrect and misleading

• Fixed an issue with the tool tip for 'Parking in Front of Bus Stop' that did not mention towing as justified

• Fixed an issue where the color of the game suddenly turned to black and white (thanks, Marcobarg!)

• Fixed an issue where placing a custom marker on map sometimes did not show up

• Fixed an issue where the interaction button 'F' was still present during driving the patrol car

• Fixed an issue where the NPC ID was displayed completely black

• Beta Fix: Fixed an issue with Open Patrol: When in open patrol, hovering over the icon does not show useful information

• Beta Fix: Fixed an issue where the last used car in career mode is displayed in Open Patrol

• Fixed an issue where the compass did not move correctly

• Beta Fix: Fixed an issue where the star for Open Patrol where incorrectly updated

• Fixed an issue where the high crime area progress bar does not get filled

• Fixed an issue where sometimes the Duty Stars displayed on save game was incorrect

• Fixed an issue in encounter report, now demanding ID unjustifiably is properly displayed

TUTORIALS

• Fixed issues with tutorials not triggering correctly

• Fixed an issue with cannabis tutorial which had broken gender text

• Fixed an issue where 'Expired Parking Meter' tutorials were triggering on handicapped cars

• Fixed an issue where 'Underglow Lights' tutorial was not triggered correctly

• Fixed an issue with 'Using Turn Signal' tutorial

• Fixed an issue with 'Wanted Person' tutorial

• Fixed an issue with 'Photographing' tutorial

• Fixed an issue with 'Broken Lights' tutorial

SOUND

• Fixed an audio loading crash when entering Patrol Car

• Fixed an issue where the sound of damaged patrol car engine was still audible after restarting the shift

• Fixed an issue where continuing a career from main menu after leaving a career mutes many sound effects

• Beta Fix: Fixed wrong dialogues being player when handcuffing a wallet thief

• Fixed wrong dialogue lines when detaining for suspicious driving behavior

CONTROLLER

• Fixed an issue with game pad- it was observed that the shift selection screen does not show any

• Beta Fix: Fixed an issue where a designated button for controller to switch to the Open Patrol mode was not displayed

MISCELLANEOUS

• Fixed an issue where player character ragdolled after opening the patrol car trunk (do a barrel roll!)

• Fixed hands clipping through blazer

• Fixed an issue where the graffiti was visible when NPC is painting

• Fixed an issue where some hairstyles were missing in game

• Fixed an issue with adjustment to female officer uniform

CRASHES

• Fixed a game crash when performing background check

• Fixed a crash in shift end report

https://store.steampowered.com/app/997010?snr=1_2108_9__2107