Shadows of Doubt
Shadows of Doubt is part of Simfest!
We are taking part in a Steam event called Simfest in collaboration with our pals at Auroch Digital and Stray Fawn.
You can find Shadows of Doubt and a whole load of other awesome simulation games here: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/simfest
The event is designed to celebrate all simulation games and we are happy to be a part of the amazing selection of games they have there!
Stay tuned for some more news on the roadmap coming tomorrow!
Join our Discord to get involved in the conversation
Shadows of Doubt Version 34.05 Patch Notes
- Performance improvements
- A change in the way the game loads its configuration files: It now uses [addressables](https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/com.unity.addressables.html) (this may affect current mods)
- Improved caching of rooms and material handling, which should mean less stutter as you play on
- AI will now be ok with you turning on the table lamps at eating places and public places
- You can now put down items directly by looking at a flat surface without going into the inventory
- You can now attach grenades and trackers to walls and static furniture
- Fixed: Footprint materials memory leak
- Fixed: Error when loading save game where the player was in a vent
- Fixed: The various ammo boxes in the game would not display a first person model
- Fixed: Errors occurring when updating strings for the case board
- Fixed: Issues with fruit market stands becoming invisible at close range
- Fixed: Snow was overly affected by motion blur
- Fixed: Some culling bugs with atriums (eg City Hall lobby)
- New trespass sounds
-New pick up and drop item sounds
- New enforcer scanner notification sound
DevBlog: A Roadmap Update
I’m writing an update today to talk about progress and what you can expect from the project in the near future. It’s continued to be really busy; I’m really pleased with the number of bugs we’ve been able to fix since the initial launch but am also aware that there’s still a bunch more to go. We’ve decided to prioritise the bug fixing over new content, at least during this initial phase. It feels like we should aim for a solid a foundation for new content as possible, and while we’re super excited about all the ideas we (and you) have about expanding the game, it’s sensible to not try and rush too many things into it right away.
We’re settling into a rhythm of releasing experimental patches, then pushing them to the default branch a week or two after. Josh has been working at increasing performance and reducing the obstacles to a smoother gameplay experience; this is a work in progress and you’ll likely see small gains as we continue to roll out the patches. Meanwhile, I’ve mostly been focused on fixing gameplay bugs: The reports you’ve been submitting are super useful and contain most of the info we need to track things down.
A work-in-progress shot of a new location that may be featured in the first content update!
A quick note on new builds; occasionally changes we make can effect how the game generates a city using a seed. For example, if we added a piece of furniture, the game will generate a city featuring it whereas previous versions wouldn’t; this can have a knock-on effect that changes other things in the city if you compare it to one that was generated with a previous build with the same seed. Therefore it’s worth stating that city seeds themselves often won’t be fully forwards or backwards compatible with previous versions. What does this mean? Not much in effect; if you have your previously generated city file any save games that use that city will continue to work with it (unless we state otherwise in an update- but we’ll try and keep this to an absolute minimum).
It only really matters if you were to delete the city file a save game uses, then try to load that save game with a newer version: It will attempt to recreate the city using the seed saved in the save game file, but the city generated could be slightly different, therefore causing inconsistencies. I don’t foresee this as being a big problem, but I’ll be looking at ways to mitigate this in the future or at least communicate it in-game.
TLDR: Don’t delete your city files for save games you still want to play on.
A last bit of news: I’m looking for another unity developer to work with on Shadows! If you’re interested, or know somebody who does, have a look at [this job page] for details.
Shadows of Doubt V 34.05 Experimental Branch Patch Notes
We have another experimental branch update out! As a quick reminder about why we wanted to use the experimental branch and how to use it: we wanted to use an experimental branch so that players can opt-in to test it out first before we push it out for everyone.
To opt-in you have to right click on the game in your Steam library and select properties. Then click on Betas and from there you will have the option to select the beta you would like to opt into. Once there click on that dropdown and select experimental.
- Performance improvements
- A change in the way the game loads its configuration files: It now uses [addressables](https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/com.unity.addressables.html) (this may affect current mods)
- Improved caching of rooms and material handling, which should mean less stutter as you play on
- AI will now be ok with you turning on the table lamps at eating places and public places
- You can now put down items directly by looking at a flat surface without going into the inventory
- You can now attach grenades and trackers to walls and static furniture
- Fixed: Footprint materials memory leak
- Fixed: Error when loading save game where the player was in a vent
- Fixed: The various ammo boxes in the game would not display a first person model
- Fixed: Errors occurring when updating strings for the case board
- Fixed: Issues with fruit market stands becoming invisible at close range
- Fixed: Snow was overly affected by motion blur
- Fixed: Some culling bugs with atriums (eg City Hall lobby)
- New trespass sounds
- New pick up and drop item sounds
- New enforcer scanner notification sound
Shadows of Doubt V 34.04 Patch Notes
- Fixed: Instances of player unable to sit after loading a game.
- Fixed: First person model was visible in photographs taken. (appeared in 34.01)
- Fixed: Items could spawn in the wrong top 2 mailboxes.
- Fixed: A rare occurance of the game failing to generate a city and getting stuck on the load screen.
- Fixed: A rare error occuring when the game tried to remove a button object.
- Fixed: 'Placing' money already in the room from the décor edit menu could result in infinite money.
- Fixed: First person guide arrow no longer appears in in-game photos
- Fixed: Screen blue now no longer effects the destination text.
- Fixed: Hospital dialog options appearing after passing out from getting mugged.
- Fixed: Some Z-fighting in the first person hand models.
- Fixed Guest pass status icons were not being removed from display properly.
- Fixed: Visual Glitch with basement standing water on very large cities.
- Fixed: Instances of certain actions like 'Talk To' not being available if they player had been witnessed doing something illegal.
- Fixed: Certain specific room lighting configurations could result in a rendering error (like tv static)
- Fixed: Errors resulting from placing certain types of furniture in décor edit mode.
- Fixed: Player being unable to scan fingerprints on street lights.
We would like to extend a huge thank you to all players using the experimental branch for their feedback, and are pleased to note we are making good progress regarding the games optimisation.
Shadows of Doubt V 34.01 Experimental Branch Patch Notes
As you may have seen we wanted to test out a performance improvement but in doing so we had to update the Unity version we were using, so there is some potential for new bugs or instabilities. With this in mind we wanted to use an experimental branch so that players can opt-in to test it out first before we push it out for everyone.
To opt-in you have to right click on the game in your Steam library and select properties. Then click on Betas and from there you will have the option to select the beta you would like to opt into. Once there click on that dropdown and select experimental.
These are the patch notes for this update:
- Improvements to performance
- Fixed: Memory leak to do with loading materials in the game
- Fixed: Problems with dead bodies being discovered by citizens after loading a save game
- Fixed: Hovering over the text on an inventory item could cause the game to not register selection on that square
- Fixed: Wooden cabinet door could appear invisible
- Fixed: V-sync should now work with frame cap enabled
- Fixed: Laser scale was wrong, resulting in it appearing through walls
- Fixed: Problems with inconsistent red citizen outlines past a certain range
A quick note on new builds; occasionally changes we make can effect how the game generates a city using a seed. For example, if we add a piece of furniture, the game will generate a city featuring it whereas previous versions wouldn’t; this can have a knock-on effect that changes other things in the city if you compare it to one that was generated with a previous build. Therefore it’s worth stating that city seeds often won’t be fully compatible with previous versions. What does this mean? Not much in effect; if you have your previously generated city file any save games that use that city will continue to work with it (unless we state otherwise in an update- but we’ll try and keep this to an absolute minimum).
It only really matters if you were to delete the city file a save game uses, then try to load that save game with a newer version: It will attempt to recreate the city using the seed saved in the save game, but the city generated could be slightly different, therefore causing inconsistencies. I don’t foresee this as being a big problem, but I’ll be looking at ways to mitigate this in the future.
TLDR: Don’t delete your city files for save games you still want to play on.
I'm back with a little update!
I’m back from a bit of downtime, really excited to get back to work on the project. While I’ve been gone, Josh has made some really promising progress on performance optimization. Specifically, we’ve updated our Unity version which has allowed us to make some decent improvements to the batching, and therefore performance.
We’re keen to test it out, but to do so we’re going to open up a public ‘Experimental’ branch; which will contain the latest version of the game that we’re working on, but will be more untested that the default branch. Once we’re confident in those builds they will get pushed to the default branch. You’ll be able to check out the experimental branch featuring the latest build next week! I’ll post more details when it’s available.
So it is back to work and I hope you are looking forward to more fixes, optimisation and content to come over the next few weeks and months!
Shadows of Doubt DevBlog #35: Post-Launch Progress
However, I'm in need of a break for a couple of weeks— I've been working flat out on the game for a long while now and these last six months or so have been especially intense! So I'm keen to take a step back and regain some headspace. While I'm off though, fellow developer Josh will be continuing to work on the game, along with Monomoon and Stark on audio and writing respectively. So we should have another update good to go not long after I return towards the end of the month.
It's worth noting that there's been some activity on our Discord around modding, which is awesome. This isn't currently something we can officially support (as the game is in early access there's a lot of internal stuff subject to change before we can do that), but we're keen to see what we can do to help implement that along our early access journey. We've put together a quick form where you can send us ideas if that's your thing.
There's still a lot to come during early access, when I return we'll be looking forward to our first content update; themed 'Cheats & Liars'. Exciting! Thanks for all your support!
/ Cole
Shadows of Doubt V 33.19 Patch Notes
- Fixed: If you attempted to select a new furniture item from the shop while placing an existing one, décor edit mode would close
- Fixed: The weapons dealer now has enough employees to sustain a full work week (this was causing problems on some cities forcing it to be closed on certain days or even most of the week!) Requires a new city generation.
- Fixed: Some items could fall through the floor when being thrown
- Fixed: In rare cases the AI investigating a flipped light switch could cause errors
- Tweaks to low health and damage indicators
Shadows of Doubt V 33.18 Patch Notes.
- Added apartment purchase confirmation popup
- Added a toggle option for enabling/disabling flickering room lights (the default is off). Note: This does not affect broken neon sign letters in the street as they do not affect gameplay light levels.
- Improved hidden item photo clues (they should be taken from less awkward locations!)
- Minor mix improvements to some of the music tracks
- New sync disk installation and upgrade sounds (replaced placeholder)
- Fixed: A bug that stopped the correct mission item from being detected in your inventory
- Fixed: Issues with route plotting taking the player to incorrect locations
- Fixed: It was possible for an evidence window’s title text to overspill onto other UI window graphics
- Fixed: Opening the map during play was disabled if you had the map open in the case board screen
- Fixed: A rare case of standing lamps appearing invisible
- Fixed: Some missing ASCII characters in font atlases