Update 0.998k – Notes – The GamesCom Update

• Building manager replaced with an all-new version. Old multithreaded mechanism packing buildings into meshes for display is replaced with multithreaded mechanism managing distant building parts into instanced render data.
  
• Lowered memory consumption, dynamic allocations/deallocations, RAM-VRAM dynamic traffic and memory fragmentation that could lead to crashes on some PCs.
  
• Data compression and memory pipeline optimizations.
  
• Improved the reduction of memory consumption.
  
• Various internal optimizations and robust memory cleaning.
  
• Increased number of object shot angles for billboard representation for more detailed object blending.
  
• Improved dithering for object and LOD transition.
  
• Improvements to terrain render.
  
• Improvements to billboard render.
  
• Improvements to controller detection routines.
  
• Improvements to internal string caching and search routines.
  
• Improvements to socket memory storage and search per frame.
  
• Improvements to socket caching and socket search per frame.
  
• Several optimization fixes to NPC animation parameters.
  
• Optimized calculations for character nodes and node matrix buffers during animations.
  
• Optimizations for NPC tools and working FX.
  
• Fixes to sowing hand animation.
  
• Restored working seedling menus in one of the purchased greenhouse cabinets.
  
• Proper transport cables between a vehicle crane and green shingle container (where appropriate).
  
• Proper level of details for new vehicles.
  
• Fixed gardening warnings when holding non-gardening tools like fishing rod.
  
• Fixed false-positive blockade of bus stops (a rare occurrence).
  
• Number of changes to main render pipeline regarding texture and mesh render optimizations, buffer operations and texture swaps.
  
• Huge decrease of small dynamic allocations per object create/delete, texture associations and visibility selection.
  
• Unified several shader families in skinmesh renderer resulting in fewer skinmesh draw calls.
  
• Fixed several smaller bugs in skinmesh renderer.
  
• Fixed several bugs in NPC animation wait states and refresh routines.
  
• Removed overhead search calls in idle animation settings for invisible NPCS.
  
• Fixed planting vegetables in the middle of farm greenhouse.
  
• Fixed blinking of greenhouse vegetables. No more D&D spells for them.
  
• Cat doing his job properly (could have let some mice in before).
  
• Fixed upper lights for CA type tractor.
  
• Proper capacity for RAUCH TWS 7000 (8560l).
  
• Removed exhaust smoke from old pickup. Instant green tech for the win!
  
• Forbade a player jump when there are obstacles just over head (to avoid possible clipping).
  
• Reformatted farm stats window to fit new vegetables etc.
  
• Cat and dog ownership shown properly in farm statistics.
  
• Increased vertex-cache hits.
  
• Decreased video memory consumption.
  
• Better (esp. For lower-end/min req. pcs) and more stable FPS.
  
• Distant buildings cast shadows except for lowest shadow settings.
  
• Fixes to trees shadow render (disappearing leaves for trees behind) for higher shadow settings.
  
• Fixes to blinking transparencies.
  
• A number of smaller bugfixes and code cleaning.