Patch Notes (19 April 2017)

We've been working hard and we've got a great patch for you all tonight. There's still a lot more left to do, but some fantastic progress has been made in this round. We've been listening closely and we know performance has been a major issue, so it's one of the primary things we've addressed in this patch -- and several smaller additions, and of course numerous fixes as well.

We'll be back with more as usual -- and if you're itching to get your hands on the latest updates or fixes, check out the Experimental branch. Instructions to access it are available in our Steam forum (the experimental subforum). Experimental received numerous updates, one almost every day since the last default patch on April 1st -- and we'll be hard at work with a similar rollout plan for this next batch of updates.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support & for your assistance with the bugs, we couldn't do it without you. Thank you very much!!

NOTABLE GAMEPLAY IMPROVEMENTS, CHANGES & ADDITIONS
Performance Improvements -- Major performance improvements have been integrated with the Agent AI and Agent Pathfinding systems. The game is also now available in 64-bit and 32-bit flavors. Performance should be be substantially better than before; we have more work to do here, and quite sizable gains are still possible, but this should yield a substantially improved gameplay experience versus gameplay prior to this patch.

Multiple Security Wings -- Passengers now use the proper security zone when two separate ‘wings’ are secured by different security zones

Flight/Boarding Time “Resize” -- Flights can be ‘resized’ by hovering over their right edge in the Master Flight Schedule. Passengers arrive to your airport based on flight arrival time, not departure time, so this does lengthen the amount of time passengers have to catch their flight.

Vehicle Zone Destinations -- Target selection has been improved substantially. Detailed overview available here: forum thread

Security Exits -- Security exits should NOT be built on the exit to your security zone, only on separate exits -- exits “stop the flow” of security within your airport, and are designed to allow you to have dedicated exits instead of having passengers go through your security zone to leave your airport.

Passenger Security & Traversal -- Passengers can no longer walk outdoors in a secure area, even to get to their gate

FULL CHANGE LOG

 * Major performance improvements to Agent Pathfinding & Agent AI
 * Fixed an issue with some sprites invisible on certain video cards (taxiways, runways)
 * Metal detector: arrows added & vertical orientations positions fixed
 * Body Scanner: 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 ‘nonsecure’ again after leaving a secured area
 * 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
 * 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
 * Minor tweak to improve queue distribution; will be addressed further in future updates
 * 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 that over-allocated memory
 * Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause stuck vehicles
 * 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
 * Implemented several misc. memory optimizations
 * Fixed a bug that could cause janitors to get stuck
 * Fixed several construction related bugs; could cause them to get stuck or not finish projects
 * Improved performance of worker pathfinding substantially
 * Decreased memory allocations required during save game
 * Fixed a runway validation; runways now correctly require a taxiway (non-runway) connection on both ends (was causing stuck aircraft after undocking)
 * 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
 * Fixed a bug that could cause the vehicle spawn queue to back up excessively
 * Added additional checks to help prevent vehicle spawn queue backups
 * Fixed a bug with Gate Agent Desk assignments
 * Fixed several bug that could cause the game to crash
 * Fixed a validation for Gate Agent Desks
 * Fixed a bug that could cause passengers to get stuck on doors/corners
 * Fixed a bug that caused conveyors to unset Sidewalk tiles
 * Fixed a bug where loading save games could rarely lose state for an individual agent
 * Slightly lowered the chance of dirty floors in restrooms
 * Fixed a bug that allowed conveyor construction when bankrupt
 * Fixed a bug that allowed zones to be placed under security exits
 * Fixed a bug that prevented ‘require enclosed area’ from being satisfied by security exits
 * Added new ‘Sectors’ report, will be utilized further in the future
 * Added queue graphics

NOTABLE KNOWN ISSUES

 * Bag Scanner: Does not yet follow arrows in vertical orientations.
 * Multiple Wings: Passengers will not correctly exclude objects in other wings yet, though they will correctly use the proper security entrances.
 * Passenger Pathfinding: As part of the pathfinding optimizations, passengers may take slightly-strange paths especially around zones. We’ll be improving this in the future.