Update 0.53.2 — Housing + Major Optimization Patch

🔧 Systems & Logic We’ve overhauled the core movement and priority algorithms. Shoppers now glide around obstacles more smoothly, get stuck in aisles far less often, and reach the checkouts more reliably.

We also refined the shopper behavior model. Agents now weigh nearby items and queue lengths before picking a shelf, so their choices look more natural and predictable—no “overthinking,” just fewer random face-plants into walls.

Fixed a bug that prevented stores from earning a rating higher than 4.2 stars.

🏠 Housing & Sleep Home ownership is finally here! Choose from 3 houses and 10 apartments—each fully furnishable with our décor catalog (see below). Important: you can no longer crash on the office couch or “skip” the night on your tablet, so grab a bed for your new place!

🎨 Décor The catalog now features 50+ new items—posters, sideboards, lamps, home furniture, and more. Mix and match to create the perfect look for your apartment or store.

🧠 Interface & UX The main menu is alive and kicking: hover animations, silky tab transitions, and UI elements that scale perfectly even on ultra-wide monitors.

The changelog is now optional—hide it with one click if you’d rather dive straight into the game.

🎮 Widgets & Menus

Full main-menu redesign: bigger fonts, higher-contrast buttons, and faster response times thanks to cached fonts and icons. Even lightning-fast pause-menu hops stay hitch-free.

The in-game tablet got a fresh coat of paint.

Overlay tweaks: balance, date, and time stay visible only as long as you need. Transparency and font size auto-adjust to scene lighting, so numbers remain legible in bright spots.

Widgets and buttons tightened up—more info in less space.

📋 Quests Quest system revamped—cleaner displays and more reliable completion logic.

🚀 Optimization & Performance We dug deep into those pesky stutters to lighten your system’s load.

Rendering. The engine now predicts which objects will soon leave the frame and disables them a bit earlier, cutting draw calls by roughly 25 % in dense areas. LOD cascades were rebuilt so distant models slim down gradually—with no noticeable pops.

Textures. Re-packed atlases using BC7 cut disk size by about a third. Scenes now free up 250–400 MB of VRAM on average while keeping critical details (UI, fine text) razor-sharp.

Asynchronous loading. Heavy actors initialize in background threads, and meshes/materials stream in when needed. Even on an HDD, moving between zones no longer drags FPS into the mud; SSD users will hear only a gentle sigh from their fans.

NPC logic. The shopper scheduler now uses separate worker threads: one plots paths, one watches queues, another sets priorities. That shaved 2–4 ms off each frame in crowded scenes and virtually eliminated micro-spikes.

Memory management. We plugged small leaks in UI overlays and optimized the material pool, trimming ~200 MB off peak RAM use.

In short: the game breathes easier, micro-stutters are nearly gone, and your rig—no matter its horsepower—should feel noticeably smoother. Spot an FPS dip? Hit the new Join Discord button in Settings and let Support know; we’ll jump on it!

🖥️ Safe‑Mode Launch Options If your screen ever turns into a modern abstract painting after changing resolution, don’t panic! You can now launch the game in DX11 or DX12 Safe Mode at 1920 × 1080. It’s a quick bailout while we keep ironing out window‑mode and resolution switching quirks.

🚀 Performance Impact This optimization patch delivers a 1.5 × – 2 × FPS uplift. If you previously saw 150 FPS, expect something in the 225–300 FPS range—hardware-dependent, of course. We verified these gains on 15-plus test rigs covering a wide spread of configurations.

A few setups still act up: some start with solid FPS that gradually tapers off, while others begin low and then ramp up dramatically. We’re actively chasing down both quirks—thanks for your patience while we iron them out!