Pre-launch Patch Notes and Your Demo Feedback

[76561199474791648]

Good morning, Drivers! I’m sure you have seen me in the Steam discussions already trying to help out with the Demo or following up on questions, but my name is Blake - I’m a part of the Ironwood Studios team and I’m here to help you on your journey in Pacific Drive.

First let me say on behalf of the team that it’s been awesome watching so many of you play the demo and break stuff. No seriously - it’s been a huge help to see what was working and what wasn’t. We’ve been making steady improvements to the game as a result of the things we’ve seen, and your feedback has been valuable to us.

Here’s a few things we’ve gotten done in the past few weeks:

• Performance improvements across the board for PlayStation 5 and PC - GPU on High/Ultra settings, and general CPU improvements across various areas of the game.
  
• There are now 6 Radio Tracks that are safe-to-stream and will play on the car’s radio and the garage’s juke box when Streamer Mode is enabled in the Settings - including the introductory song “Ghost on the Road” by our friend Gordon McGladdery at A Shell in the Pit.
  
• Many UI/UX, input, and clarity of information improvements
  
• Many quest scripting bulletproofing fixes to prevent progression blockers and confusion about objectives.
  
• Tweaks to game economy balancing to smooth out general harvesting + crafting of essentials, while making per-biome objectives a little more spiky and tantalizing.
  
• Game Balance improvements for damage amounts, healing amounts, and battery drain/recharge amounts.

You can find the full patch notes at the bottom of this post - but I want to take a second to look at some of your most requested changes and features.

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Saving on a Trip in Progress

Currently, saving functions like this: when you’re in the garage, you are able save up to your current level of progress. Parts will stay on the ground, your inventory stays the same, you’ll even have the same amount of gas in the tank for the car, etc. While out on a trip into the Zone it’s a bit different. You’ll keep all your progress up to the current junction, but nothing after - your game will save automatically when you enter a new level and the game won’t save again until you get back to the garage, or move on to the next junction.

Due to the scope of the game, and our focus on providing a robust and varied experience across a high number of trips into the zone, with variable map sizes, anomaly populations, and the amount of hazards, we had to make technical sacrifices early on in the project that makes revisiting this save behavior not feasible. While we understand why this is highly requested, it’s not something we plan on revisiting for those reasons.

We believe that once a majority of players have had time in the game, it’ll be apparent why the save system is working this way. The game gets much faster and more intense the more you learn your way around the Zone and you’ll have plenty of time to grab the essentials and get out or take your time and explore. If you do need to save mid-run, just head for the next exit and then you can safely quit the game once you load into the next level, without losing any progress.

Our game director elaborates on the subject here.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1458140/announcements/detail/4113546234714112723

Perpetual Stability is Now Available as an Option

Your favorite tune is on the radio, you’re in need of a new set of panels, and the Zone is calling to you - and now you have all the time in the world! We’ve heard your calls for Perpetual Stability as an option for accessibility and we’re happy to say that it’s been implemented in time for launch.

We’re putting what we as the developers think is our best foot forward in how the game plays but we also believe that the doors are open when it comes to letting players change how things work. There’s even a few options to modify your experience with the Zone Storms so that you can have your own experience based on your playstyle.

1. Are you looking for a cozy drive through the Pacific Northwest? Just hunting around for parts and vibing to the radio? The “Disable Instability Storms” setting removes storms that manifest due to growing instability, e.g. arrive after a certain time on a map, allowing you to take your time exploring every nook and cranny.
   
   
2. Would you like to open a gateway and outrun the storm, while avoiding any surprise Zone Storms? The “Disable Gateway Storms” setting removes storms summoned by opening gateways back to the garage.
   
   
3. If you’re not interested in trying to outrun the Zone Storms at all you can enable both settings. You’ll never be chased out of a map by instability storms, but you will still have to contend with the zone’s anomalies and random anomalous weather patterns that drift through occasionally.

We’ve also changed the way that we approach how Achievements behave in relation to the other Accessibility options - they are now only disabled when you disable player damage, player death, and car damage in the gameplay options. All other gameplay settings (like Quirks, Storms, etc) allow you to configure your play experience better without blocking earning achievements.

Non-WASD Keyboard Layouts and Re-mapping Steering

We’ve also been able to address the issues some players saw in the demo using non standard WASD keyboard layouts and hand positions. Now, you’ll be able to remap things like the gas, brake, and steering direction to other keys. You can re-bind these in the Setting menu’s Controls tab under the Bindings categories.

We’re also aware of community requests for re-binding the camera perspective axis, and expect to have good news to share on that front soon!

Future Quality of Life Changes and How We’re Approaching Them

Before we wrap up, we wanted to make sure to communicate that beyond the improvements you see here, Ironwood is committed to continuing support of Pacific Drive with patches and hotfixes after launch. There are many areas of the game we’re interested in, but as folks can see looking at the options we are already providing, we’re definitely passionate about quality of life and accessibility improvements and will continue to be looking at options going forward.

Due to the size and complexity of the game, we do need to be thorough with any changes or improvements before making any promises but in an effort to be transparent with the community, when we have something exciting to share, you can find that information here in our patch notes, and on our Community Discord server.

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Before I get to the pre-launch patch notes, on behalf of the entire Ironwood Studios team, we’d like to thank you all for providing your perspectives and that we appreciate the energy you’re bringing to Pacific Drive. It’s a very big game being made by a smaller indie team, and we look forward to hearing all about your adventures from the Zone while riding shotgun when the game releases tomorrow.

[76561199474791648]

Version 1.1.1 - Highlights

- Performance improvements across the board for GPU on High/Ultra settings, and general CPU improvements across various areas of the game.
- There are now 6 Radio Tracks that are safe-to-stream and will play on the car’s radio and the garage’s juke box when Streamer Mode is enabled in the Settings.
- Many UI/UX, input, and clarity of information improvements
- Many quest scripting bulletproofing fixes to prevent progression blockers and confusion about objectives.
- Tweaks to game economy balancing to smooth out general harvesting + crafting of essentials, while making per-biome objectives a little more spiky and tantalizing.
- Game Balance improvements for damage amounts, healing amounts, and battery drain/recharge amounts.

Bug Fixes

- [Community Bug] Issue where Cyrillic would sometimes appear in English language after swapping languages has been addressed.
- [Community Bug] Fix for getting stuck on Car Abilities Screen when Pause Game while in Menus setting is enabled.
- [Community Bug] Fix for food randomly appearing in your inventory sometimes.
- Fixed issue where there would sometimes not be selectable exit gateways on the last junction of a route. (for valid non-dead-end junctions)
- Fixed issue with Logbook entry achievements not incrementing properly.
- The car will no longer get thrown hundreds of meters away from certain physics interactions. (usually related to Shakers or small rock piles at high speeds)
- Fix for Tools sometimes hitting things behind the player while being used.
- Fix for SFX looping on aborting crafting
- Fix for Armored Bumper not unlocking in Fabrication Station even if scanning requirements are met
- Fix for issue where exiting your car while driving under the garage door could get the player stuck in the roof
- Fix for Arc Doc energy cost not displaying on Car Abilities Screen
- Many floating props in the world are now settling on the ground better.
- Fixed various props not having proper collision
- Fix for Controller vibrations getting stuck in certain situations.
- Removed “In-World UI Cursor” setting as it broke various UIs when enabled.
- Fixed issue with Transfer Trunk getting deleted sometimes
- Fixed issue where Insecure Items sometimes wouldn’t eject items from the trunk and cause input spam / transfers upon revisiting the trunk.
- Beating Heart reliably applies its effects and properly stops its animation when inactive
- Abilities no longer drain battery while the game is paused.
- Fixed issue where save game timers would loop back around to 0 after 24 hours of playtime.
- Fixed issue where the car could flip out a bunch when hitting a single barrel in the middle of the road
- Friendly Dumpster will no longer give piles of 12+ car parts of the same part
- Fixed issues where sometimes Repair Putty would have trouble targeting car parts.
- Fixed issue where the player could fall through the ground if they tried to leave the Car when it was upended sideways on the driver’s door.
- Improvements to flashlight lighting and clipping into objects in front of the player.
- Fixed certain inventory views extending offscreen, making items inaccessible.
- Fixes for certain VFX causing flickering in the car mirrors
- Fix for bug where pausing the game for a long period of time would cause the Car Physics to freak out on resume.
- Fix for the station wagon sinking into the ground slowly over time
- Fix for doubled-up cars behind the garage
- Fix for doubled-up gas pump in garage
- Fixed an issue with Peculiar Car Parts losing their status effect when the Free Repair Setting is enabled.
- Fixed an issue where exiting a Gateway back into the garage in certain circumstances would get a visual effect post-process stuck on screen.
- Fixed an issue with audio ambiance not playing properly in certain quest towers.
- Et Tu achievement is no longer incredibly difficult to get due to a bug
- Wiper speed quirks now work as intended
- Improved behavior of wind storm event and bunnies at high FPS.
- Fixed an issue where an abductor absconding with a chrono dilator could cause perpetual slow motion.
- Running on Empty achievement now unlocks properly with both Low Fuel and No Fuel in tank.
- Tinker Station now properly reduces the cost of hints after diagnosing a quirk
- [Community Bug] You can now re-holster fuel pumps properly at gas stations like a good citizen of the zone.
- [Community Bug] Fixed an issue where holding down throttle on both keyboard and controller would create unbounded acceleration.

QoL + UI/UX Improvements

- [Community Bug] Improved legibility of the button prompt icon for Logbook Notifications
- [Community Bug] Fixed an issue where dropping lit flares would cause all flares to disappear from the Hotbar
- Updated some controller default bindings to align with players expectations. Jump on Cross, Kick on Square, Uninstall Part on Triangle.
- Fabrication station nodes now display yellow if they're adjacent to unlocked nodes, making it easier to explore the items that you can work towards unlocking. Nodes you can unlock with your current resources are shown with a dotted yellow outline. The drop-down menu also can still be used to view immediately available upgrades.
- Controls cleaned up for Scanning. Short and Long presses with scan input results in a scan and displaying relevant data. Long hold of Player Menu button will open the log entry for something you’re looking at.
- Improvements to “Recommended Tool” UI that pops up when looking at certain resources for accuracy and better interaction hinting to players.
- Incoming Radio Transmissions popup is now for attention getting with bright yellow color and SFX looping.
- Improvements to various ways of moving items around inventories and between containers.
- Improvements to UI overlapping issues based on high volume of quest objectives.
- You can now open the transfer trunk while holding an object
- Improve consistency of input prompts around fuel pump interactions in various parts of the game.
- Fixed a UX issue where leaving the settings menu with Esc wouldn’t properly save Settings
- Added “Equipped Part Swapping” gameplay setting that you can enable to swap a part on a car with one already in your hand. (cutting down on inputs for common interactions maintaining the car)
- Toned down the visual effects onscreen when player is taking damage / hurt to ensure a little more visibility.
- Easier to highlight + repair the mini-turbine car part now.
- Outfitting Station pulls from Car Trunk resources now as well (like other crafting stations in garage)
- Improved clarity of “breaking” status car parts health bar
- Batteries list their capacity in the crafting screen and logbook entries now.
- Fix for Anti-Grav device displaying Chrono Dilator description instead of its own.
- Improved icon sorting when re-arranging items in inventory views
- Reduced instances of erroneous ui-interaction-based HUD warnings
- Part Locker will now correctly indicate when they are full (green light) or not (red light)
- Added ability to re-bind the Movement axis in Controls Settings
- Correct healing information shows in inventory and crafting UIs for all healing items
- Made optional Transmissions more attention-getting with louder alert SFX and flashing Play text.
- Fixed an issue where pushing in both thumbsticks to sort an inventory on Controller would also trigger each thumbstick button’s individual functions as well.
- Improved iconography for certain car parts
- Improved reliability of “Found In” information in logbook entries.

Mission Fixes / Improvements

- Progression will no longer get stuck if you saved and quit while between objectives
- Tutorial: Fixed fuel objective sticking around if you save and quit and reload before leaving the garage but after completing tutorial steps.
- Tutorial: Fix issue that could occur with Repair Loose Wheel step not progressing
- Tutorial: Fix for issue where the player could fail to have enough Medkits to progress at the pack supplies step
- Sierram Observation Tower bulletproofed against possible progression blockers.
- Fixed an issue where Tourists would sometimes not spawn in Sierram.
- Fix for issue where you can travel further than 2 junctions away from the Garage before activating the Stabilizers in Forest.
- Early exit (gateway) progression blocker fixed in Expansion Wall Crossing mission
- Hazards are properly spawning inside of the Expansion Wall now.
- Fix for instability showing up on the Visions mission junction
- Fixed issue where connections from junctions adjacent to the Red Meadow Facility mission junction would not unlock when expected
- Fixed a progression blocker issue where the exit from the Old Wall level would not be open in some cases.
- Fixed objectives getting stuck if you died on the Deep Zone stabilizer map.
- Music plays on retries of the Old Wall Crossing mission after failures as well
- Fixed progression issues related to Oppy’s Pneumatube being full of items after mission failures and failing to deliver future mission-critical items.
- Fixed an issue preventing access to the Bathroom when returning from Expansion Wall Crossing mission
- Fix various other issues related to taking supply runs before attempting missions.
- Fixed Stabilizer map hints and icons not showing up properly in Expansion Wall Crossing and Old Wall Crossing final maps.
- Fixed issue where players could get around the other side of the garage and soft-lock themselves if they tried leaving the garage map
- Improvements to ensure OST music plays during important story moments in Old Wall Crossing and The Final Mission

Gameplay Balance Tweaks

- Fixed issue where sometimes there wouldn’t be enough Anchors on the last junction of a Route to open a Gateway.
- Flare guns have been buffed to be re-usable and cast light in a larger area and linger in the air.
- Players take more pass-through damage when their car’s protection is compromised.
- Fixed issue where players were not losing any items after abandoning a trip
- Abandoning a trip will properly leave behind a remnant ghost
- Insecure items fall out of containers much sooner and faster now. (so as to be more noticeable)
- Improved positioning of ramp trucks
- Made visuals for Tree Candy resource site more attention getting
- Made it easier to scan Bubblegum Buddies
- Anchors won’t spawn in inaccessible areas of the map
- “Gifted” anchors will give their proper amount of LIM energy now
- The Anchor Radar tool will no longer ping locations that have already been harvested
- Fixed issue where you wouldn’t be able to scrap / liberate an engine on the Remnant’s Ghost
- Fix for Dumpster pearls without status effects not giving items when broken down in the Matter Deconstructor
- Reduced battery drain from Disruptive Discharge junction condition
- Improved durability and function of tier two tools, and slightly reduced certain tier one tools durability.
- Improved Peculiar parts resistances and quality
- Flares burn for longer
- Radiation density reduced in junctions near the garage.
- Instability storm timers extended slightly in general, and moreso on Stabilizer maps.
- Various slight tweaks and improvements to crafting recipes and container loot tables.
- Increased Car Side storage, reduced starter trunk size to better differentiate trunk upgrades.
- Reduced Hand Vacuum to 2x2 grid size item
- Updated the sequencing of a few nodes in the Fabrication Station tech trees
- Plasma now used to craft Insulated Doors, Panels and Bumpers
- Added a variety of other Transmuter inputs that can be found in the world, and reduced Transmuter costs in general.
- Investigator Module now correctly adds hint behavior to Tinker Station
- Battery usage values for car abilities rebalanced to be slightly more draining, while recharging attachments recharge more now. Environmental drains are reduced as well.
- Neon Reefs now spawn at their intended rates in The Mires.

Performance Improvements

- Various PS5 and PC performance improvements to Game Thread (CPU) and Visuals (GPU)
- High Shadows Quality setting is now much less expensive with similar looking quality.
- Performance improvements in Rocky biome for PS5 and PC
- Fixes for frame rate issues on PS5 after certain level transitions
- Performance improved when holding lit flares

Localization Improvements

- [Community Feature] Support for AZERTY Keyboard Layouts
- [Community Improvement] Included translation improvements suggested by Steam Next Fest players in French, German, and Russian.
- Made text scroll in some UI widgets where it was exceeding bounds and getting clipped or overlapping.
- Eliminated any Chinese characters showing as fallback fonts for Japanese language
- Various improvements to translation quality and fixing English strings appearing in non-english languages.
- Improved achievements description accuracy in non-english languages
- Fixed some incorrect speakers in dialogues in Logbook lore entries

Known Issues

*The team is aware of these issues and is continuing to investigate and address them for launch day and post-launch hotfixes.*

- Some 3D meshes can rarely and randomly get stretched by the level load process, and intersect with the game space in a confusing way (visual bug). This can be fixed by re-loading the save. If you’re seeing this a lot, you can try launching in DX11 mode for compatibility, but at the loss of some performance.
- Tutorial: “Open Headset OS” prompt can get stuck onscreen after adding the Crude Door to your Checklist, until you hit subsequent mission objectives.
- Mouse buttons are not re-bindable currently due to a bug
- It is easy to miss the Map Scan (optional) in the Deep Zone circuit tower due to low light
- Abductors are hyper-focused on bunnies and will ignore all other distractions
- Threadripper CPUs can have frame pacing issues causing random performance drops
- Current DLSS implementation can sometimes reduce performance instead of improve it for certain NVIDIA GPUs when playing at lower resolutions.
- The Player Menu can appear over the Credits, obscuring them and the Tab/Back button prompt to close the Credits.
- If you Save and Quit at the wrong time when returning from the Expansion Wall Crossing mission, progress can get blocked. (Allow dialogues to progress fully before saving and quitting at the Garage to avoid this issue until a fix lands.)
- Repair Station garage upgrade will continue playing its visuals if it still has juice but only a Peculiar car part left to repair.

[aleks]

great stuff, love to hear it

[✪ Guanacito]

Awesome

[Chris]

“Due to the scope of the game, and our focus on providing a robust and varied experience across a high number of trips into the zone, with variable map sizes, anomaly populations, and the amount of hazards, we had to make technical sacrifices early on in the project that makes revisiting this save behavior not feasible. While we understand why this is highly requested, it’s not something we plan on revisiting for those reasons.”

Disappointing.

[path]

the entire community: "can we have a save function so that those of us who have lives beyond just playing video games every day can actually go and live them?"

you, the devs: "sucks to be you lol, now stop having a family and start boosting our total player count"

[Jinn]

I'm actually surprised and joyed that you listened to some of the lesser-requested features like an instability accessibility option, it was one of my biggest fears with this game and now that it exists, I can't wait to enjoy the zone in all the time I want to take

[landon9918]

Thanks for the notes. Glad to see Ironwood is committed to hotfixes and patches after launch.

[TWMazza]

That's what I call fixes o'plenty. Thank you, I can't wait for the release!

[aleks]

Originally posted by path:

the entire community: "can we have a save function so that those of us who have lives beyond just playing video games every day can actually go and live them?"

you, the devs: "sucks to be you lol, now stop having a family and start boosting our total player count"

hows that the entire community lol theres plenty of peoples that enjoy it the way it is and intended to be like, i don't really see much of an issue as i have a busy life myself but can allow myself to play literally an hour? just prepare urself before taking on a zone, it's really not that hard i understand theres many casual peoples but it was explained why its not the way u guys want it to be, just move on.

[8bitnic]

Thanks

[Damiano75]

Localization Improvements

- [Community Feature] Support for AZERTY Keyboard Layouts
- [Community Improvement] Included translation improvements suggested by Steam Next Fest players in French, German, and Russian.
- Made text scroll in some UI widgets where it was exceeding bounds and getting clipped or overlapping.
- Eliminated any Chinese characters showing as fallback fonts for Japanese language
- Various improvements to translation quality and fixing English strings appearing in non-english languages.
- Improved achievements description accuracy in non-english languages
- Fixed some incorrect speakers in dialogues in Logbook lore entries

ITALIAN LANGUAGE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[esotericist]

Originally posted by Paradise Express:

Ah, so as I expected the real real reason for no save on exit is purely a tech/dev skill limitation.

Good to know - slightly better than just being stubborn, and gives confirmation it won't ever be added and I won't ever buy the game.

i dunno. the wording of some of that makes it sound to me like they're just trying to provide a more effective placation, given the "you'll see why it's like this" phrasing. my money's on "just don't want to do it, and want to get people off their back", especially given how long it took them to actually say anything past the initial response. and if it was really technical issues, they should have said that in the first place anyway.

the accessibility adjustments are nice, but inadequate for me to pick the game up.

oh well. less money spent i guess.

[Phyksar]

Have you addressed this performance issue in the demo?
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1458140/discussions/0/4211497623308682698/

[Ap2000]

Originally posted by path:

the entire community: "can we have a save function so that those of us who have lives beyond just playing video games every day can actually go and live them?"

you, the devs: "sucks to be you lol, now stop having a family and start boosting our total player count"

Stop being so disingenious.
That's not at all what they said.

[Bill Simmons]

Great to hear from you folks before release! Excited to see what the zone has in store for me tomorrow