Good day, Detectives. We’ve got a news bulletin from the city straight out of the Candor Newsroom for you to investigate!

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First, a notice for detectives currently investigating crime scenes. While similar in look, there IS a definitive difference between Ruby Choice, Ketchup and blood splatter. Make sure you thoroughly inspect your crime scene to ensure proper evidence collecting.

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Recent reports state that Synth Beef is approved for consumption across all food boards informing its customers that it is indeed safe to eat raw and it is “Just like the real thing”. This comes amidst citizens reportedly having bouts of nausea and vomiting after consumption.

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We are also sending out a BOLO for a potential lead on what the surrounding cities are calling “The Bad Poet” killer. We ask that you report any evidence of this poetry to your local enforcers division.

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There has been a surge of black market arms dealers setting up shop in the fathoms, city wide. Anyone discovered to be in possession of one of these rifles should be place on a watch list following an ongoing operation to clean up the streets of illegal weapons and potential sharpshooter assassins.

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This has been your June Candor News update!

CANDOR NEWS: WHEN WE TALK, PEOPLE LISTEN.

Hey everyone! Here is the full list of patch notes for the Sharpshooter Assassin update:

• New: 2 new sniper killer types; these killers will shoot victims from windows or rooftop vantage points around the city.
• New: New mixed-use industrial building\*
• New: Shanty town building (’the Fathoms’)\*
• New: Gated communities (’the Echelons’) are now located at the top of certain buildings. You’ll need to obtain a high social status to access these legally\*
• New: 2 new murder weapons (Bat, Katana)\*
• New: 11 new player perks unlocked by climbing social credit levels! Including:
  • Enforcers will allow you at crime scenes
  • Immediate status cure on visiting player apartment
• New: Auto travel feature; turn this on to allow your player to automatically follow a plotted route. While auto travelling opening the case board does not pause the game, allowing you to interact with your case board enroute to your destination.
• New: Added button on the map display to cancel the current route, along with a toggle for auto travel.
• New: Loitering around shops/bars/restaurants without buying anything is now a thing; you will be asked to buy something or move along.
• New: New conversations, documents and v-mails
• New: Steam trading cards, badges and community assets
• City generation times reduced by about 15%
• Improved weather effects
• Some changed/new interface iconography
• Improved ragdoll physics
• Fixed: Improvements to player route calculation
• Fixed: Some errors with AI not prioritising important actions (discovering body etc)
• Fixed: Player-plotted routes will no longer get cancelled if the player is in mid-air
• Fixed: Bug when waking up in hospital while playing on a pre-release city
• Fixed: Ragdolls were in wrong positions upon load of a save game
• Fixed: In rare cases an NPC could end a citizen’s telephone call by speaking to them
• Fixed: Stealing money or some certain objects was resulting in cr0 fines instead of their worth
• Fixed: Player could get stuck upon loading in a game that was saved inside a Sync Chamber
• Fixed: On games started before 36.07, buying a new apartment before the story mode ended would cause furniture and items to not be saved properly
• Fixed: City Hall 4th floor would appear incorrectly filled-in on the map\*
• Fixed: No override fog settings when inside some buildings (indoor environment could appear overly foggy)
• Fixed: Wall decals were not presented properly in camera pictures
• Fixed: Increased size of briefcase hitbox to avoid intersecting geometry issues when picking it up.
• Audio: metal impact improvements
• Audio: water cooler audio fix for cancelling drinking
• Audio: new décor rotation and placement sounds
• Audio: bone break sound added
• Audio: minor tweak to body collapse sound
• Audio: passing time now has its own soundscape
• Audio: player punch variance when player punches a wall
• Audio: minor improvements to heavy door knocking on wood
• Audio: smoothed Edge Distance parameter for better blending of city ambiences
• Audio: new gain social credit sound
• Audio: new social level up sound
• Audio: new case solved sound
• Audio: new case unsolved sound
• Audio: improved wooden and metal glass door locked attempt sounds
• Audio: minor improvements to sync disk machine sounds
• Audio: sounds added for the various door types
• Audio: steaming manhole improved roll off and behaviour
• Audio: locker lock/unlock improved timings
• Audio: computer HDD loading sound improved roll off
• Audio: fire barrels less crackly/harsh
• Audio: wooden door close creak now probability based
• Audio: fixed English Starch Kola TV ad cutting off too soon
• Audio: added new TV and PA advert (Old Bourbon)

\* Requires a new city generation to appear/spawn/see

Hey everyone, thanks for continuing to play the experimental branches so we can check the fixes aren't breaking anything else! Here is the latest patch on the default branch:

• Faster mesh generation for reduced hitching
• More detailed error messages for attempting to load games with missing city data
• Introduced a failsafe and potential fix for the falling through floor glitch (we’re continuing diagnostic work with this one as it’s unreplicable on a consistent basis)
• Fixed: x2 instances of inaccessible briefcases (requires new mission instance)
• Fixed: Error when choosing colour for citizen work uniform (requires new city generation)
• Fixed: Some minor visual glitches with rain
• Fixed: Error when picking up a key causing it to not remove itself from the world
• Audio: Minor improvements to air duct movement sounds
• Audio: Added randomisation to lockpicking sound
• Audio: Fixed fade-out on some music tracks if stopped early

Hey everyone!

The modding update is now live which includes:

• A text editor tool - You can download it for free here.
• An in-game city editor
• A mono build version of the game - which you can access following these instructions
• Achievements!!
• And More!

All the documentation for how to access and use the modding content is here. You can find people's text pack creations here and you should be able to access this from within the game as well.

You can see the full patch notes below:

• New: Dialog editor tool; allows you to write your own dialog, v-mails, newspaper articles etc.
• New: Mod support with Mod.io integration; download and manage mods from in-game. The official mod support currently includes potential for language mods, text systems and custom cities (see our documentation for more info).
• New: Mono steam branch access (see our documentation for more info).
• New: Foggy weather
• New: 32 Steam achievements
• New: Some more newspaper articles
• New: ‘Toggle Run’ option; when enabled pressing the sprint key will toggle between running/walking for your character. This is now enabled by default.
• New: ‘Always Run’ option; when enabled your character will sprint by default and the sprint key will instead switch to walking pace.
• New: ‘Permadeath’ option; when enabled if your character gets knocked out, they die and you will be exited from the current game.
• Fixed: Open Finished Audio Event now firing at the end of the transition duration.
• Fixed: Door opening state now coincides with animation event.
• Fixed: Some glass materials were not receiving fog properly
• Fixed: Text input filtered out valid non-English characters
• Fixed: Emissive material stuck on lit on some ceiling lights
• Fixed: Increased CCTV capture field of view (could cause the game to stop loading in the ‘Simulating Previous Events’ phase in some rare cases)
• Fixed: Bug with citizens disposing consumable items too early
• Fixed: Issues with items not being removed from citizen hands
• Fixed: Fixed an error occurring on loading in an old save game
• Fixed: Citizen could get stuck in a loop of turning off their bedside light upon loading a game
• Hi-Fi Cabinet Turntable Lid open/closing sound added
• Bloodhound Tracker place/ping sound added
• Closet Slat Door open/close sounds added
• Bandage sound updated
• Game now launches on first start in a maximized window
• It’s now possible to scroll independently of the selected button while a scroll view is displayed while using a controller.

We can't wait to see what people get up to with the mono build and with the text editor tool as well!

Do join the Discord to get involved in the discussion and if you want to hear more about Fireshine Games please do sign up to our Newsletter

Good day, detectives and welcome back to another Shadows of Doubt round-up! This week we wanted to give you a little update on the modding update and touch on more of your personal stories and experiences you’ve had in the procedural cities solving your cases.

An Update on the Modding Update!

We are currently aiming to have the update ready for early December. Before then we may look to share the modding tools with some of the dedicated Shadows of Doubt modding community to make sure it all works and to check if there is anything else we should implement. If you would be interested in this please do join our Discord and take on the "Crunchers" role.

Now for a bit more detail on what is coming with the update. The update consists of 3 main elements:

• A text editor tool - which you can use to add new text to the game for new citizen chatter, conversations, v-mails and more. Different dialog can be triggered based on citizen traits and situation. This is actually what we use to get text in the game.
• An in-game city editor - for now this will only give you the ability to rename buildings and streets and decide where you want to place the buildings but we hope to expand it in the future.
• A mono build - we are going to make a mono version of the game available on a separate open Steam branch so that players can mod the game to their heart's desire. The mono version will have slightly lower performance so we didn't want to put it on the default branch but hopefully you will be able to have some fun with it.
• There will also be a few other things coming unrelated to mods that we have been working on that we will keep secret for now.
• Finally - we will also be implementing Steam achievements as well! We can't wait for you to have fun with these.

Now onto your stories!

Being that Shadows of Doubt tends to be very unique (and sometimes absolutely wild) with every new playthrough and new city, you’d be surprised at the things we’ve seen and probably the things you’ve seen yourselves…

So let’s sit around the diner booth, have a Starch Kola and reminisce on some notable moments shared by you!

!https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35172403/1d6168c7cc341deaf25a2f30ea637d7d8b6c1e30.png

Have you ever been so hot on the case that you witnessed an attempted murder?

Twitter user @n0valith has. And on top of that, was able to apprehend the killer before they had a chance to claim their next victim. Well done! See the full video here: Catching them in the act.

!https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35172403/47aca673b343eb1cc6a5216fccf73e1052d39e6a.png

How about THINKING you’re hot on the case until you realize you’ve broken into the wrong facility after hours to investigate a potential murderer. @pixlBandits has some first hand experience to share with you: Oops wrong place.

!https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35172403/0ec5a034704265f2c6ecc6999665c06483ede061.png

We suppose you could ignore all of these kind of situations if you just go ahead and take EVERYBODY out of the City Hall database. Reddit user u/Kijora_The_Duck did just that when they said “Government Who?”

!https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35172403/44841556eb575591e1a31b3f081c3c1cb3b1b228.png

That’s it for this week, detectives! Keep on the case, and keep sharing your sleuth experiences with us…we might investigate YOU next!

!https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35172403/3107fe63da96c728919964d8cab833557a7f119c.png

Hey detectives, thanks to the people who have been testing the experimental branch we have a bunch of fixes now available on the default branch!

• New: New DLSS configuration settings
• Fixed: Camera sometimes didn’t capture citizens properly (either excluding them when they should be in frame or including them when they should be out of frame)
• Fixed: City Hall receptionists would not turn up to work correctly (requires new city generation)
• Fixed: City Hall reception/foyer was incorrectly named
• Fixed: Game could sometimes display blank text when set to non-English
• Fixed: Potential fix for rare case of game not loading after ‘press any key’ screen
• Fixed: Some typos in sync disk descriptions
• Fixed: Removed an instance of street rubble blocking access to a spawned briefcase
• Fixed: Issues with sync disks not displaying their 3rd upgrade option stats properly
• Fixed: When sync disk was installed with option 3, the tooltip text on the upgrade buttons would only display the effect of the first upgrade
• Fixed: Sync Disk chamber in Sync Clinics could appear invisible in some cases
• Fixed: Trespasser Sync Disk option 'invisible' was not functioning correctly
• Fixed: Beauty Sync Disk option 'allure' increased prices instead of decreasing them
• Fixed: Status effects could still trigger even if they were turned off/disabled through an upgrade

We have a whole host of fixes this week that we had been testing out on experimental branch! Thank you to all the experimental players for testing out the build to check the stability for us!

• Fixed: A bug that stopped cases from being processed properly
• Fixed: AI could get stuck in a loop of picking stuff up and putting stuff down. This was causing some employees to skip work!
• Fixed: Baseball cap item could not be inspected or picked up
• Fixed: Problems with taking a key to the hotel from the kitchen
• Fixed: The player can now drink at the water cooler
• Fixed: No footstep sounds would play if the player was carrying a physics object
• Fixed: Cancelling a custom created string could cause some errors
• Fixed: Missing collider in the new townhouse exterior model
• Fixed: Money ticking animation would always start from 0 upon loading a game
• Fixed: Hole in floor and ceiling at the top floor office of the chemical plant (requires new city generation)
• Improved spatialisation for gramophone
• Improved bed get in/out sounds and bed spring probabilities
• Carpet footstep sounds slightly less sticky
• Venetian blind open/close sounds added

We have a whole host of fixes this week that we had been testing out on experimental and thank goodness for the experimental system because we managed to catch a few issues that were caused by the changes. Now that it is live on default there should be no new issues from these updates.

• Fixed: Player was unable to interact with keypads on certain doors (appeared in 34.09 on experimental)
• Fixed: You can now preview square wall pictures in apartment editing mode properly
• Fixed: Bug report form did not detect compressed save game format (only affected 34.08 experimental)
• Fixed: Placed items disappearing from player apartments after a long period of time (could still happen in a starting apartment in sandbox mode)
• Fixed: Cancelling ‘pass time’ while sitting on certain benches would cause the player to clip through the wall behind the bench
• Fixed: Stopped the player from getting stuck between two back-to-back park benches
• Fixed: Rare freeze error on city generation
• New city data compression: City data is many times smaller and is now included in steam cloud data
• New toggle options in the gameplay settings for save game and city data compression
• Fixed: Problems loading air vents in ceilings (resulting in a weird hole in the ceiling)
• Fixed: Framed jersey wall frame spawned too high and could block air ducts
• Fixed: Placed items disappearing from player apartments after a long period of time
• Fixed: Objectives could become stuck on game load, resulting in some broken side mission logic
• Fixed: Faulty collision mesh for filing cabinet
• Fixed: Some cases of side mission items not loading properly (may require a new side mission)
• Fixed: The game’s initial loading screen had unlocked fps, causing some long loading issues on some hardware
• Fixed: Error that could happen when the game tried to spawn a decal on a null object

A quick hotfix to sort an issue with the latest update:

Fixed: Game was getting stuck on 'Simulating Past Events' on some cities

Hey Detectives!

I’ve got some exciting news to share in this one, it’s probably about time we talked about the changes to our roadmap. Due to a couple of factors (including the success of the game) we’ve decided to extend and revise our initial Early Access plan: The timeline will now be roughly a year, but we’ve also added some stuff to it based on the feedback from the community. This is what our new roadmap looks like:

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Out of the gate it became apparent that our main focus should be on sorting out bugs; this is a complex game with so many moving parts and as a small team it does take time to tackle everything. This pushed back the initial content update a little. We’re getting through them though and fixing bugs will remain a high priority: You’ll continue to see frequent patches every couple of weeks interspersed with less frequent content updates.

Secondly there has been quite a high demand for modding. We’re eager to respond that, so we’ve added a focus to it in our roadmap as a second content update due towards the end of the year. More on that in future blogs.

With that said, we can start to look forward to our first content update ‘Cheats & Liars’, which will arrive in September!

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Another thing I’m working on is compressed save games and city data files. At the moment they tend to be quite large; sometimes well over 100mb (especially in the case of larger cities). Because of this, currently only the save games are stored in the steam cloud and not the city data files.

This can potentially cause problems because if you were to try and load a save game on another machine without also having the generated city file, the game will try and recreate the required city from the city seed. This is fine if the game is on the same or similar version, but if the city was created on an older version of the game there can be differences in what cities feature: Which can of course mean issues when you load in the game.

The good news is that compression reduces the file sizes quite a lot, in some cases around 10x. This means the file sizes become more manageable and we can open up steam cloud to include city data as well as save games. This will go some distance towards mitigating the problem as Steam will be syncing both city and save data across devices.

In an ideal world we’d have it so new versions of the game are capable of recreating identical cities to what an older version of the game would generate if needed. This isn’t an impossible thing to implement but it is quite tricky as it would involve storing multiple past versions of the game’s configuration files for things like furniture and items (as the city generation process relies on this). We may revisit this idea in future if needed, but for now data compression will start to roll out over the next few experimental branch patches.

That’s it for this update, hopefully you are looking forward to what’s to come!

Hey everyone, after some time spent in the experimental branch we're now happy to move the main branch of the game to 34.05. Check out the list of fixes below!

• 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

Hello detectives! Welcome to the latest instalment of the dev blog.

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.

!https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//35172403/640bea91674b78858d3e578f939334fd9e2392b2.png

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.