This one started with me sitting down and reading every thread on the discussions board in one go, then going through the game's code looking for the causes rather than the symptoms. Six separate threads were about the same thing, one achievement I thought I had fixed was still not unlocking, and a couple of you had found problems I would never have spotted on my own machine. Thank you for all of it, including the ones written in frustration — those were the most useful.
🌱 One product left and no shelf to put it on: I'M STUCK now fixes that. This was the most reported problem on the board and it is a real dead end, not a missed shelf. Here is what was happening. Every product needs a certain number of shelf sections. If you start a product on a second section it did not need — easy to do, the game let you — that section is taken, and the product that genuinely needed it has nowhere to go. You could see it if you knew to look for a red counter on a shelf label, but nothing told you that, and Auto Shelve and Teleport simply reported that there was nowhere to go. Press ESC and hit I'M STUCK now and, before it does anything else, the game finds every product that is spread over more sections than it needs, moves the strays back onto the sections that product already has, and releases the spare. The message on screen tells you how many items it tidied. It then does everything it did before: re-checks every shelf, repairs capacities, sweeps lost stock and tells you how many items are left. On top of that, the "This section is full" and "claimed by another product" messages now say exactly this, so you do not need to have read these notes to find the way out.
🌱 "You did it raw, dawg", second attempt. I said in V1.1.5 that this now unlocked, and for some of you it did not. Players on brand-new saves, with the end-of-shift screen plainly showing zero ability uses, were still not getting it. I am sorry about that; I fixed one leak and clearly there was another I could not see. So I have stopped relying on the flag entirely. The achievement now checks the exact same four numbers the end-of-shift screen prints — Magnet Grab, Teleport, Sort Items and Auto Shelve uses. If those all read zero when you hit 100%, it unlocks. The rule is the same as it always was: buy whatever you like, upgrade whatever you like, just do not use an ability during the shift.
🌱 Smoother, with fewer hitches. Two things. Every single shelf section and every shelf label in the shop — 1,364 objects — was running a per-frame update that did absolutely nothing, because of an empty node I never deleted. That is gone. And the autosave, every two minutes, was writing the entire 12,792-item save file, reading it straight back in, and writing it again, purely to stamp the time on it. It now writes it once. If you have ever felt the game catch its breath every couple of minutes, that was why.
🌱 Long product names no longer hide what you are holding. Pick up Benzydamine Mouth Throat Spray and the held-items panel grew wide enough to cover the item in your hand. Long names now wrap onto a second line instead.
🌱 Crash reports are finally possible. If the game crashes, you will now get a window with the details and a copy button, and a folder at %LocalAppData%\BigBadPharma\Saved\Crashes with everything I need. That folder did not exist before this patch — the crash reporter was never included in the build, which is why every crash report so far has been a description rather than data. If it happens to you, please post the copied text on the forum, or zip that folder and I will tell you where to send it. This is the single most useful thing anyone can do to get the remaining crashes fixed.
🟠 Crashes on lower-spec laptops, especially 8 GB with integrated graphics. I have several reports of the game failing at the menu or on New Game on these machines, and I believe it is running out of memory rather than hitting a bug, but I want a crash report to be sure before I say so. In the meantime, adding -dx11 to the launch options (Library, right-click the game, Properties) is worth a try on integrated graphics. The minimum spec on the store page will be updated to be honest about memory.
🟠 Controller in the menus, and Steam Deck. Still not done, and I know Deck players cannot get past the title screen with the pad. The workaround for now is to switch the Steam Input profile to keyboard and mouse for the menus and back to gamepad for the shop floor. It is the next thing on the list, together with custom key bindings, which need the same part of the game rebuilt.