v0.34.0 - Improved Tornado Rendering, Velocity Radar & Windshield Rain Effects

v0.34.0 brings a lot of much needed functionality, bug fixes and visual improvements!

Visual Improvements

• The lighting and rendering of the tornado funnels has been massively overhauled again, you can now see detail and variation inside the tornado funnels. I just did a live stream and was amazed at how good they are looking now :)

• There are now windshield rain effects for the yellow truck and red truck DLC, with automatic wipers that adjust their speed to the rain intensity - these can be disabled in settings if they cause your game to lag

• The velocity radar has been completely overhauled, now it's looking much more complete (though I do have a minor hotfix planned for it for tomorrow to increase the coverage further)

• The default radar quality when you first start the game is now higher (level 3 instead of level 1) - this is a noticeable improvement and makes the radar actually usable even in the early stages of the game

• I have attempted some improvements to multi-tornado rendering, it's not perfect as there are still some difficult technical rendering challenges, but I feel like it's an improvement on the previous rendering method

• The headlight brightness has been dialed way down, it was saturating the camera and didn't look too realistic, now it's much better :)

• The red truck DLC had some internal lights because the interior was so dark, however these looked strange at night and would also reflect off the windshield, so instead the material properties for the red truck interior have been adjusted to be slightly brighter

Usability Improvements

• Following Camodo Gaming's epic video I have made the probes lift slightly (about 20cm) when you click on them in the bed of the truck, this prevents them getting stuck in the bed of the truck when trying to slide them out

• If the mini-map is expanded, pressing the escape key now minimises it, pressing escape again open the pause menu

• The pause menu is now separate from the settings menu, giving you the option to resume the game, open settings, or return to the main menu - hopefully preventing those mis-clicks accidentally ending your chase :)

• The settings menu is now also accessible from the main menu

• Vehicle handling has been improved for the yellow truck, making it more controllable at higher speeds without being twitchy

• The mini-map and expanded map now save your previously selected zoom level, so zooming out the expanded map doesn't change the zoom level of your mini-map in the corner of the HUD and vice-versa - they are two separate zoom levels which makes using the map much easier now

• Free cam photos are now included in your log book in career mode, it's no longer limited to only VHS mode photos

Bug Fixes

• Tornadoes could go from a thin funnel to 1+ miles wide in a few seconds, this has been fixed and limits have been put on how rapidly a tornado can expand in width

• The ground scouring effect no longer renders over the top of the tornado funnel

• The doppler effect on train horns has been reduced a lot, so it doesn't sound massively distorted while panning around in the free camera

• There was a bug preventing houses from getting damaged when sheltering in the basement, this has been fixed

As always, enjoy! :)