We know how much you all love Dennis and you just can’t get enough of him… Oh come on, that was a good one.
Anyway, Dennis will also be featured in Road Diner Simulator with a lot new ways to annoy you, but also new ways to deal with him. No, we will not be giving you a shotgun. We have seen this frequent suggestion from the community, but that would be wrong on so many levels :P That being said, e think we came up with something even better. Have a look at today’s DevLog over at Road Diner Simulator to get a better idea:
Now, since Gas Station Simulator, Road Diner Simulator and Motel Simulator are separate games that will work together, support and influence each other, decisions in certain aspects there will also carry over to the gas station.
One of the interesting options to deal with Dennis at the diner is to befriend him. Yep, we knew you would love that. Since we can’t have Dennis being a menace at the gas station and nice and helping at the diner just across the street, the decisions regarding Dennis made in one game will carry over to the other.
As you might have noticed, we are really excited about the concept of these 3 games working together and are constantly coming up with new interactions between them.
In case you aren’t aware, two games we are working on are Road Diner Simulator and Motel Simulator. While both are separate games, they are connected with each other and Gas Station Simulator. The road diner is just across the highway and the motel will be close to the side of the gas station.
When you own any combinations of those games, they will work together, influence each other, provide bonuses and allow you various interesting interactions. This also means that a lot of things we are creating for the road diner and/or the motel will also be adding additional content and features to Gas Station Simulator in order to make this happen.
A hot fix for both the base game and the free Party Time DLC fixing some issues. This hot fix also fixes two game crash issues we have been tracking for a while now and were finally able to find what caused them.
Bug Fixes
Fixes an issue where employees would stop working after being talked to.
Fixes an issue where Party Time would show as greyed out on Level 6 in certain circumstances.
Fixes a game crash related to driving "Rudy" if an autosave has been triggered at same time.
Fixes some minor sound related issues with the Party Spot and the Ice Cream Stand.
Fixes a bug that caused customers not wanting to go home after you would close the Ice Cream Stand.
Fixes a physics related crash when broom would overlap a soon to be destroyed trash object trying to apply physics it it despite the object bering no longer valid.
Gameplay
The small Fiat is a little bit easier to clean in Car Wash from now on. (About 10% less of car cleaning required).
Product Delivery Crates have been moved to a slightly better position so they aren't halfway into the truck geometry.
Visuals
Police car textures increased in quality a bit so it doesn't look blurry at high settings.
Ice Cream mini-game now has quick key legend visible in the bottom right corner for easier assistance.
The cleaning skill level should now be displayed correctly.
Party Time DLC is here!
We just released Party Time DLC for you to enjoy some new content and boosts to the popularity that the community requested:
You can now build a party venue and bring another revenue stream to your business. When things get a bit more relaxed in the late hours of the day, you can now crank things up with the new party content. We hope you'll enjoy that party!
Amount of sandy footsteps created by visitors have been reduced significantly and they should no longer spawn when the customers are standing still.
Employees should no longer clean the warehouse related items (Music Sets, Giant Teddybear, etc.).
Customers using toilet should now again pay $1.50 to use the toilet.
Fixed a crash related to Car Wash which caused the game to crash when closing Car Wash, the whole Gas Station or occasionally calling the UFO.
Fixed a crash that occurred when the player was driving Rudy and the game tried to access the player’s inventory.
And just to round everything up nicely, we now have a 10% discount on our first DLC:
Update #7 is here! While the major goal of this update has been stability and especially CPU performance, we also added some new features and general gameplay improvements. The CPU focus allows us to further increase frame rates going forward. We also moved to an updated version of the game’s engine and switched to DirectX 12 which in itself should provide even further improvements.
This update also introduces some changes to the AI. In order to avoid problems with traffic or customers, it might be necessary to reset the traffic using the Big Red Button at the Dust Bowl sign when you first start the game after the update.
Features & Content
There is now a management tab on the PC that allows you to open/close all areas of the gas station. This allows you better control of how busy you want things to be at any given time.
A new caravan section has been added allowing you to hire an additional employee for a total of 6 employees helping you out on the gas station.
Enjoy even more freedom to customize your station thanks to the new Landmark list which allows you to hide any large decorations around the station.
A new landmark has been added. It’s a wreck of an old food truck.
A new unique NPC has been added. Clara is a reference to our other game Food Truck Simulator where she plays a major role.
Gameplay
Sprint is finally here. Serve your gas station customers even more efficiently thanks to faster movement by using the SHIFT button.
A new AI task randomization system has been implemented that should provide a bit more randomness in customer arrival orders to make it feel a bit less superficial.
The thresholds for popularity levels have been significantly lowered across the board. We also added 9 new popularity levels in preparation for the upcoming Party Time DLC that will further improve the popularity situation many players complained about.
Fuel Capacity saving/loading should now always be working properly. In certain cases when loading a saved game you could lose the fuel in the truck that was about to deliver it to your gas station.
Warehouse Capacity should now be calculated correctly when saving/loading games. In some conditions they did previously show the wrong values.
Visuals
The “artworks” created by Dennis will now be destroyed after customizing a new wall with the hammer tool and paying the price.
Tools in hand should no longer wrongly rotate under certain conditions.
Fixes an issue that caused customers to "drive in air" while returning to their vehicle.
Employees
Employees should now be smarter when cleaning and will no longer go for the same trash items or objects all the time.
You can hire one more employee for up to 6 total.
The scanner and baskets will now appear when an employee is serving customers at the cash register.
Stability
We did quite a lot of small fixes in many areas when it comes to stability and you should see a significant improvement in that area. As for the bigger fixes, this update does:
Fixes an issue within the physics subsystem that was responsible for a significant amount of crashes, especially in later stages of the game.
Fixes various memory issues within the UI that would eventually lead to the game crashing.
Fixes another nasty memory leak when invoking the in-game menu (ESC) on system with 8GB of RAM or less.
Performance
Gas Station Simulator has been moved to a new engine version and now by default supports DirectX 12. This helps with some of the performance improvements. Should your GPU not support DirectX 12, you can still run the game in DirectX 11 mode by launching the game with the optional parameter -d3d11.
Switching to the new engine also allowed us to use various package and asset optimizations which resulted in reducing the size game assets take on your SDD/HDD (about 3-5GB depending on DLCs). Storage space saving however were not our primary consideration, but the fact that the less storage space game assets take, the less time it takes to load them.
This update also features a series of optimizations and improvements across the board when it comes to CPU, GPU and memory usage with gains up to 40%.
We greatly optimized all physics systems in the game so that they’re now a lot more efficient when performing calculations on the CPU.
Many of the gameplay related calculations have been reworked and more things are loaded and handles asynchronously now. This should result in less hitches and smoother overall gameplay performance.
Car Wash related calculations were rewritten for better performance and strain the CPU a lot less now. Car Wash related game logic and calculations take about 90% less CPU resources now.
VFX and Lighting systems has seen major improvements to avoid a situation when in certain conditions those system would cause high performance costs over time on the entire level.
Optimized the lighting system and settings to consume less resources in general.
Optimized the character animation system to costume less resources as well. This should help with performance especially in later stages of the game.
Certain heavy textures were downsampled to further speed up loading times. These alone should decrease loading time by about 10-15%.
LODs on most vehicles have been improved to look better at closer distances or lower settings.
LODs for characters have been reworked to reduce the amount of weird clipping at lower settings.
LODs for most objects in the game world has been improved upon to further improve GPU performance.
Many optimizations to quest condition checking have been made. Cases where certain objects (like: the grandfather clock from the beginning of the game) when not removed could keep checking overlaps for the remainder of the game causing a minor drop in performance. While each drop on its own was indeed minor, they could add up which would make a noticeable difference especially on lower specs systems.
Other Bug Fixes
Discord link in the main menu should work again allowing you to join our Discord community.
Minor translation fixes in various languages.
Can Touch This DLC
New roof selections have been added to allow you better match roofs with walls.
We are very interested how the fixes and especially performance improvements are working for you. Please let us know. And while you do that, we continue working on update #8 that will focus mostly on GPU improvements.
Update #7 coming tomorrow!
Just a heads-up: tomorrow we plan to release Update #7! While its main focus are optimizations, there are also some new features and new content.
Expect Update #7 to arrive tomorrow sometime late afternoon (Central European Time).
Party Time DLC is coming soon!
One year ago we released Gas Station Simulator and to celebrate it, we prepared a DLC. As the name suggest, the theme of the DLC is partying and while doing so it will provide the long requested boosts to popularity! And it’s free!
As promised yesterday, today we unveiled the Party Time DLC store page with information, what this DLC will include. Check it out:
Party Time DLC will become available on 22.09.2022 at 19:00 CET.
What’s next?
Today we released Food Truck Simulator. Every game launch involves pretty much everyone at the office, but come tomorrow it’s back to real work! And the first thing the team will do is wrap up Update #7 for Gas Station Simulator that we’d like to deploy next week. The update comes with some new features, but its main focus is stability and CPU performance optimizations.
After Update #7 it’s time for the Party Time DLC. You should not have to wait long for that one. A week or thereabouts after update #7 already. We will have more details about Party Time DLC tomorrow so you will know what you are waiting for. While this is happening, a part of the team continues to push GPU focused optimizations for the next update in order to deliver it in a more timely manner this time.
As mentioned previously things are speeding up now and on top of all that we’ll have some more news about new things in Gas Station Simulator within a week to 10 days tops.
Until then, maybe give Food Truck Simulator a try. There is a launch discount and a demo to have a look before you decide:
And for those missing our games, there is a nice bundle and Gas Station Simulator is on sale right now with 23% off the regular price!
More Dennis?
As you might now, we are working on Update #7 for Gas Station Simulator right now and then we’ll proceed to provide you with more content in free and paid DLCs. Update #7 is in final testing already, so it won’t be long now and we hope it will improve performance and stability of the game for many of you.
We plan to continue to improve the game and work on further optimizations and more updates parallel to the development of the next DLCs such as Shady Deals.
There is on thing we find ourselves discussing a lot internally when planing future content for the game and that’s the love-hate relationship most of the playerbase has with Dennis.
We are thinking about expanding his presence not only in Gas Station Simulator, but also in the two games that will work with it: Road Diner Simulator and Motel Simulator. We are thus looking for cool ideas from you what to do with Dennis. It is always great to pick up some ideas from the community and we could even do something with Dennis that spans over several content updates. That being said, no matter what we’ll do you will be able to toggle future Dennis encounters on and off - yes, we learned that lesson :P
Speaking of Dennis: Tomorrow at 19:00 CET we are releasing Food Truck Simulator where Dennis is all grown up. While on and around the gas station Dennis is an annoying brat, as a man he is downright dangerous both in person and with his own competing food truck. That might be a good reason for some to have a look at the game:
We are very excited about the connectivity between Gas Station Simulator, Road Diner Simulator and Motel Simulator and how these games will work together and influence each other in-game. There is a lot of planing going into this endeavour and we come up with new ideas all the time. It also gives us an opportunity to revisit existing game systems and improve them.
Employees are one such system that we are looking to revamp quite a bit. Especially for Motel Simulator our requirements and expectations are significantly higher than employees offer in Gas Station Simulator. One such an example is the need for more in-depth behaviours. For Road Diner Simulator on the other hand we want more attributes to nicely mimic situations where customers react differently to employees based on how they handle customers, how nice they are, etc.
While at it, we also want to add more depth to employees in general and are even toying with the idea to allow players to move their employees between games. Let’s say you just bought Road Diner Simulator and started playing. You could close some areas of your gas station for the time being and delegate one or two of your gas station employees to the diner until you get your diner to a more advanced stage.
This in turn requires us to make changes to employees in all of the games which is something we can all look forward to. Obviously such changes will also need to come with lots of improvements to how you can assign and manage employees so some of the issues voices by the community will be addressed here as well.
In case you aren’t aware, two games we are working on are Road Diner Simulator and Motel Simulator. While both are separate games, they are connected with each other and Gas Station Simulator. The road diner is just across the highway and the motel will be close to the side of the gas station. When you own any combinations of those games, they will work together.
For example: if you own Gas Station Simulator and are playing Road Diner Simulator, you will see your gas station the way you made it recreated at the other side of the highway and vice-versa. Additionally, the gas station, motel and diner will provide various bonuses to each other and influence not only existing game mechanics in the other games, but also content. That’s why we are so excited about making those work together.
The race is on…
Remember how at the beginning of August there was a big argument between the teams working on Gas Station Simulator and Food Truck Simulator regarding having a food truck in Gas Station Simulator? We asked you then for your thoughts and opinions and we've received some great feedback and ideas on how to do exactly that. We're working on that and we agree that a food trailer would fit better. One more step in our quest to increase the scope of the gas station and new content. And we’ll announce even more any day now.
Of course at this time we’re also busy working on many other earlier suggestions you've sent us and a big update is right around the corner, along with a birthday surprise we've mentioned a few days back.
Considering the warn reception that idea of a food truck in Gas Station Simulator received, you can probably imagine that this argument between the teams wasn't the end of it all. Now both teams sort of try to one up each other in terms of ideas and implementations. Gotta say, it's quite stimulating. And that also means if there ever was a time for you to contribute ideas for new content, it is now. Let us know.
Cleaning, rebuilding and decorating your gas station is what takes the bulk of your time in Gas Station Simulator. We've even added a DLC - Can Touch This - just for that purpose. We're still planning on expanding ideas relating to that part of our game.
In that time, the team behind Food Truck Simulator (that is going to be released next week already on September, 14th) expanded on the functionalities of gas stations within their city. There are gas stations that you can not only fill your food truck at, but also perform some jobs in order to use those gas stations as fast travel points. They have a pretty nifty tool in form of a water hose to rinse and clean the gas station. We’d love to hear from how you like that tool. Sure, we now have our crazy space vacuum cleaner that we've added to Gas Station Simulator in June, but maybe you have some other ideas how we can improve on that aspect of the game. Again, let us know.
