Release Notes


v0.4.1.34a - October 2, 2011


October's release is unfortunately under-the-hood heavy, lacking too much glare. However, the updates are major.


We greatly optimized the Raytracer. It depends on the size of the city but basically the larger the city the greater the optimization gain. For our test city of about 400,000 the previous version estimated (because we didn't let it finish) the rendering would have taken over 8 weeks while the new version finished in 3 days.


We also moved the Simulator to its very own thread, having it run in parallel with the main game thread. Having the Simulator run in a separate thread means we can now expand it without worrying too much about slowing down gameplay. To go along with the trend, we also removed the pointless pausing while the game window was minimized or not in focus.


To give you something new, even if minor, we added the ability to make the bulldozer dezone lots (in addition to clearing them). Simply hold down the Ctrl key while the dozer is active.


It's not yet written in stone what the next release will include specifically but it will definitely have more glare.



Minimum Requirements:


  • Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7
  • 1 GHz processor
  • 1 GB of system memory
  • Hard drive with at least 50 MB of available space*
  • Support for DirectX 9.0c, Shader Model 2 and 128 MB of graphics memory

* Does not include space requirements of DirectX and Visual C++ Redistributable which may be anywhere from 20kb to 500 MB depending on what has already been installed.


What we install:


  • Synekism v0.4.1.34a
  • DirectX Redistributable
  • Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable
  • GPU-Z.0.5.4.exe (to check DirectX support - removed after installation is finished/aborted)

NEW FEATURES:


Core:

  • you can now dezone lots with the bulldozer if Ctrl is held down
  • the mouse will now turn to the correct cursors while on the edge of the game window (the resize cursors)
  • the game will no longer pause while minimized or otherwise not in focus

Raytracer:

  • greatly improved the efficiency of the raytracer
  • small cities will see relatively small improvements
  • large cities (over 400,000) are now renderable within a 2-3 days (as supposed to several weeks!)

Simulator:

  • the simulator is now entirely in a different thread
  • simply means we can expand it without affecting the in-game performance so expect some more intelligence soon

KNOWN ISSUES:


  • zoning along more than one, non-aligned, road segment does not work
  • zoning very sharp-angled lots can cause them to overlap the road
  • if the angle lock option is on you cannot create regional roads
  • on some machines, the game will just refuse to work even if they meet the minimum specs (we are working on this one)

PATCHES:


  • Oct 1, 2011 - v0.4.1.34: initial release
  • Oct 2, 2011 - v0.2.2.34a:
    • fixed the installer because it was overwriting new saves in the My Documents folder with older saves from the Program Files folder if they existed (basically deleting any new cities or progress done after the v0.3.2 release unless the Saves folder in the Program Files Synekism folder was deleted manually)