Report for the Community #25

Greetings dear Comrades of the Soviet Republic. It has been a while we started publishing these reports for You, as we have the 25th report out now, and after almost half a year doing our best to keep up the pace, we started considering that it is a bit too much from time to time. By too much we mean the frequency of reports, because sometimes we struggle to give you more meaningful information and we do not want just to publish reports for the sake of publishing them. The development process is not always that exciting and there are not great achievements every week. Because of this we want to make a small adjustment and we hope it will raise the quality of these reports because there will be more time to prepare graphics and think about talking points. We are changing the frequency to once in two weeks; thus, the release will be every second Saturday from now.

Today is May the 1st and we are celebrating Workers' Day (Labour day) here in Slovakia, a well-known holiday all over the World. It is one of the days in the year, we have all shops closed here to give workers time to rest and remember how important the work-force is for the Republic and the economy. You know very well how your Republic would be without satisfied and healthy workforce. You cannot do anything for Your workers in game except provide them all the necessities they need, but maybe if you are doing the bare minimum for them, this may be the time you give them something extra, just to make them happier, because Your Soviet workers deserve the best, as well as You Yourself, their great manager and leader.

Now back to our development process. The list of fixes, adjustments and additions is quite long this week. First, we want to mention one important change all of you will love. It will be an ability to build pipes underneath existing structures. Do not bother with figuring out how our Soviet engineers and workers can carry this out. It is our superior Soviet Technology and Methodology which allows such construction process. You know we can move mountains using few dozers and excavators in matter of days or weeks in game. But you need to wait a bit until our engineers refine the process and get it into public test version.

We added a double track signal which will allow you to place signals on double tracks by one click. It happened by accident because it is an untested feature, and it was meant to be published in internal test version first. We added new old city buildings to landscape editor and a Helicopter tutorial. Then the Mi-10 passenger helicopter was reworked and Stalinec and KT-50 bulldozers were tweaked to match their price. We also corrected flatbed wagons and the space for vehicles on them was increased. And finally, the Technical services have fuel storage too.

We also successfully fixed some crashes in current Public Test Version (0.8.4.8). One was happening while a burned down building was being rebuilt, another one while helicopter was sent to infrastructure construction, and another one in building editor. Then we fixed an issue with slow construction and slow fire progression due to latest optimization introduced in 0.8.4.X version. Then we fixed an issue with fire stations preventing sending of fire engines if they had a helicopter without access to water. We also attempted to fix an issue with distribution and technical building vehicles being stuck at entrance. It should not happen again, but if you encounter this issue often, then please try to rebuild the structure. Then we attempted to fix an issue with vehicles taking longer routes due to recently added rail crossing penalty to pathfinding algorithm. But these are only some of changes we published in public test version. You can check release notes for more information.

Besides all these there were fixes and changes applied on Internal Test Version (0.8.4.10). We added factory connections and more pedestrian connections to alumina plant. First version of working building SFX was added to conveyor and pipe engines. We adjusted the water source requirements for fire stations, to allow smaller bodies of water as supply. We optimized terrain tools because there was too low FPS while using them in case there were many fields on the map. Then the building of pedestrian rail crossings will be allowed again. We are also testing RMB click on message for its removal.

This is not an exhaustive list of all changes, but it may not be so interesting or exciting to read through. As You can see, the development continues at high pace. The release of Public Test Version unveiled issues which need to be fixed as soon as possible, and when the most of these will be resolved, then the focus will switch to next content update. Until that we will focus on fixing, tweaking, and refining what we already have. And the next report will come out on 15th May if nothing unexpected happens. Until then enjoy the life and have fun.

Thank You for Your support

3Division Team

Report for the Community #24

Greeting Comrades of the Soviet Republic. As You know already, we released the upcoming update for public testing this week. There were no significant issues which would cause a delay, and now You can check all the new features if You activate the test version of the game on Steam. Just bear in mind there can be unknown bugs and we will be thankful if you will report them to us using Steam Discussion or our support page.

We were already able to make some adjustments and fix several issues this week. We added new hotkeys for wireframe, topographic, underground mode and near ping. We also added the possibility to build tunnels below buildings and new settings for notifications. It will be possible to upgrade bridges now using the proper upgrade tool. We adjusted the “Favourite star” to work only with right mouse button and decreased the load capacity of one of the RMN flat bed trucks because it had too much for truck not having a trailer.

We needed to make some tweaks for construction offices too. There was a possibility of helicopter becoming stuck in Construction Office and that should now be fixed. Then vehicles such as road cranes with higher top speed than 40 km/h will no longer be delivered to construction sites by flatbed trucks when the “Deliver mechanisms only by trucks” is checked. We also added a warning message to helicopter construction office inability of mechanism purchases until there is no helicopter with capability to take the mechanism to construction site. We also optimised building placement.

We do not have any other special news for you. We are slowly going through bug reports and working on fixing as many issues as possible. Besides that, there is not too much time left for other stuff now, but wewe able to improve helicopters graphically in the game. And please give a warm welcome to one of the greatest helicopters, the Mi-10. There are passenger and cargo versions of this with several skins available. And the cargo capacity of this helicopter exceeds the cargo capacity of other by a lot. You cannot utilize your helicopter construction offices without this beauty which was developed with our Soviet Allies.

We hope you enjoy the update if you choose to play the public test version. Stay tuned for the next report.

Thank You for Your support

3Division Team

Report for the Community #23

Greetings dear comrades of the Soviet Republic. You can hear news about markets making all-time highs these days quite often as greed and hunger for power drives them in our capitalistic world higher and higher. But we are proud of something else, and that is our own all-time high with Steam reviews. We received 97% of positive reviews there and that is overwhelmingly positive. We want to thank to all of You comrades, because You are part of our success and without You, Your support, and Your feedback, we would not be able to get here. But there is lot of work ahead of us until we finish this game and exit the early access stage. And we have some good news for you in regards of the release of upcoming update for public testing. If everything goes well, we will be able to release that next week and all of You, who are willing to take the risk and participate in testing will have access to that on Steam if You have the game.

We are making good progress in fixing issues our internal testers found. We successfully fixed the issue we had with fuelling of vehicles at farms, quarries, and woodcutting posts. We removed some unnecessary notifications about electricity from distribution offices, farms etc. We also adjusted the time for notifications about electricity to avoid too much spam for short blackouts. In upcoming update, vehicles will be able to pass by a vehicle without fuel. We also fixed the issue with trees placeable into fields. Then we adjusted the requirement for TV and Radio broadcasting. Now, it will be at least 30% overall rating and more than 70% culture preference required to force people to stay at home instead of visiting a cinema or a theatre. And we fixed one crash issue, when the cable way station burned down

We are now working on FPS camera for tunnels. There are some tweaks required for that to work properly. Then we added wet effect for roads, buildings, and terrain while it is raining. Peter also finished works on the video for the upcoming update. It usually take day or two for him because he needs to build up a map where he uses all the new features and then catches some breath-taking footage. Just as curiosity - the regular trailer (such as announcement or EA release) can take week or two to make because he really wants it to look great and he is very strict when come to quality of shoots. So you can see it is not only about coding, there is other work to do in managing stuff regarding the game or the studio which requires our attention and worktime.

We hope everything goes well and there will be no problems which could delay the release of the update.

Thank You for Your Support

3Division Team