Experimental Patch Notes (15 April 2017)

Latest Experimental Version: April 15, ~11:32 PM


 * Fixed an issue that could cause Janitors to get stuck
 * Baggage car "stuck" improvements/fixes
 * Made aircraft & baggage cars a bit more resilient to environment changes
 * Fixed a bug that prevented placing utility objects over existing conveyors
 * Fixed a bug with luggage when arriving to a destination that no longer exists
 * Several minor performance and memory allocation improvements
 * Improved Passenger need calculation performance
 * Performance improvements on construction tasks and construction indicator UI

Change Notes for April 14, ~8:51 PM


 * Fixed a bug that caused janitors to get stuck
 * Fixed several construction related bugs; could cause them to get stuck or not finish projects
 * Fixed a runway validation; runways now correctly require a taxiway (non-runway) connection on both ends (was causing stuck aircraft after undocking)
 * Improved performance of worker pathfinding substantially
 * Decreased memory allocations required during save game

Change Notes for April 14, ~11:55 AM


 * Workers/staff pathfinding implementation reverted to prevent stuck worker issues

This will re-introduce some construction-related lag, and other staff that take long paths will also contribute to the reduced performance. This is obviously better than stuck workers in the meantime, though, and we'll be circling back around to improve the performance of the worker pathfinding in a future patch that is better vetted.

This fix was put together rapidly in order to quickly address the situation with stuck workers. We will be further reviewing this code, improving its performance, and fixing any loose ends we may have missed; it's possible there may still be situations that result in stuck workers, and if so we'll get those fixed, but we believe that what's currently live should substantially improve the issue while we investigate further.

Note that some in-progress construction projects may be left in a strange or un-finished state; we didn't have a ton of time to spend on "save fixing" code, but we did ensure backwards compatibility as best we could. You may need to manually cancel and construction projects that are left in an unfinished state and that the workers do not automatically resume upon loading the save.

We apologize for the inconvenience & frustration this issue may have caused you. Unfortunately this kind of stuff is the nature of the experimental branch, and especially of our "move fast" methodology -- sometimes our intentions of bringing positive gains to you quickly go great, and as a result we're able to provide you with big performance gains or new things, and rapidly; sometimes however they don't go so well, and you have major issues, such as stuck workers.

It's never something we intend, our goal is always to be getting you improvements & positive gains -- rapidly, without waiting a month or more. Unfortunately the byproduct of that is occasionally negative, but in our opinion the ends justify the means. We'd rather not sit on improvements for weeks at a time, we'd rather continuously push things out and keep you directly involved, even if that does sometimes bring the bad along with the good.

Thank you for your patience, and as always -- we'll have more for you soon!

Change Notes for April 13, ~10:16 PM


 * Construction/Worker performance optimizations; may temporarily result in more ‘task swapping’
 * Fixed a few worker 'stuck' issues
 * Fixed a bug that could cause garbage truck to drive into a position it couldn't drive out of
 * Misc. memory optimizations

See our 'Status Update' post here too, please: http://steamcommunity.com/app/598330/discussions/2/133262487496288893/

Change Notes for April 13, ~3:26 PM


 * Fixed problem with yesterday's fix for "behavior bug to over allocate memory usage"

Change Notes for April 12, ~9:04 PM


 * Fixed issue with multiple security wings that could affect some complex airport layouts
 * Fixed issue with Flight Info Display causing stuck passengers in certain rotations
 * Small change to help ensure aircraft will depart if fully boarded
 * Several baggage car loading & unloading reliability improvements
 * Fixed bug that sometimes caused new Gate Agent Desks to not function right away
 * Autosave now always saves to 'autosave.airport'
 * Fixed bug that prevented adding objects you have in inventory even if unable to afford them
 * Fixed bug that allowed outdoor trees to be placed on roads
 * Fixed a passenger behavior bug to over allocate memory usage
 * Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause the Delivery Truck to get stuck
 * Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause stuck vehicles

Change Notes for April 11, ~11:11 PM


 * Fixed a bug that could cause game save to fail due to memory allocation
 * Fixed a bug that could cause passengers to get stuck/no path
 * Fixed a bug with queue settings not showing any options at higher zooms
 * Fixed a bug that caused passenger bags to flicker/wiggle
 * Improved performance for runway connection validations
 * Improved dropoff passenger pathing; will now go through the Dropoffs zone
 * Minor tweak to improve queue distribution; will be further addressed in future update

Change Notes for April 10, 8:50PM


 * Metal detector: arrows added & vertical orientations positions fixed
 * Vehicle targets improved; prefer to stay in 1 lane and will try to park better
 * Some needs were re-generating too fast; turned them down
 * Runway now requires connection to all functional gates in order to be functional
 * Added validation to walls that prevents objects being walled in & having unusable positions
 * Fixed an issue with construction indicator sometimes being in incorrect position
 * Fixed a bug that would cause hangars to incorrectly show "requires ramp area" error
 * Fixed a bug that caused canceling a Clear or Demolish project to not finish correctly
 * Fixed a bug with food inventory deliveries
 * Fixed a bug that would cause passengers to not become 'unsecure' again after leaving security
 * Fixed a bug that would cause passengers to become stuck in restrooms
 * Fixed a bug that caused Clear tasks to become Demolish tasks when loading a save
 * Added scheduled arrival & departure times to Aircraft hover
 * Passenger spawn changed to be based off of aircraft arrival time instead of departure time
 * Construction worker pathing improvements; prevent 'stuck' issues and more clearly show the cause when they happen
 * Passengers should now use the proper security zone when two separate 'wings' are secured by different security zones

Change Notes for April 8, 7:38PM


 * Fixed an issue that caused intermittent crashes
 * Fixed an issue that affected outdoor gates & sometimes affected security exits

More fixes will be forthcoming -- we just wanted to get these out right away since they were especially prohibitive to gameplay.

Notes for April 7, 11:36PM

Hi all,

Long week for us, we stayed pretty much buried in the code this week and the resulting change list is a bit underwhelming but hopefully the in-game feel does the time we spent on it justice.

There were considerable changes, especially to pathfinding, and so we do expect that there will be bugs; there may even be some bugs that you had seen in the past & that we had since resolved, this is just a result of getting the pathfinding onto a far more scalable system (the one we've talked a bit about in past forum posts).

We'll be getting back onto the bugs right away again, and as usual we're very much seeking your feedback on the changes in this patch as well as any new bugs or issues. We hope to get any new issues on experimental resolved ASAP, get this moved over to default, and then get back to fixing the remaining issues -- and then we'll pretty much be ready for the fun stuff! =)


 * Performance improvements to Agent Pathfinding and Agent AI
 * Fixed an issue with some sprites invisible on certain video cards (taxiways, runways)

Thank you to everyone for your patience this week -- we really appreciate it. As usual, we'll be back with more soon! =)