Version 0.4.2 - Optimizations, Balancing and talking customers.

Dear Retailers, Since the last update, players have reported a number of bugs as well as severe lag in certain areas. So before starting a longer sprint for the next major update, we wanted to address those issues first. While doing that, we also managed to add a few smaller features along the way. This update has been focused on two main areas: balancing and optimization.

--- New features

New features are always more exciting to read about than technical improvements, so let us start with that. Even though our main focus was elsewhere, we still managed to add some new things to the game.

1. Voices Many of you said you missed the customer voices from the first game, so we have added them back. Both customers and employees now have voices again.

2. End-of-day milestones The end-of-day screen now shows different milestones. You can track your best days as well as your all-time stats. It also now has proper sounds, along with a few bug fixes.

3. Tutorials We are continuing to improve the tutorials. We have changed the text to be more entertaining and less instructional, and we have removed some of the repetitive tasks.

--- Balancing

Our last update nudged the game in the right direction in terms of gameplay feel. Based on your feedback, we have now made further improvements.

- Customers will now ask for help more often with low-help articles, and less often with high-help articles. This keeps supermarkets active while making electronics less overwhelming.

- Fresh Start now begins with more money, so you can open stores with more expensive products.

- Buildings at the lower end of the city now add more population, meaning stores in those areas will generally be busier.

- Electronics are now easier to sell overall, and they no longer receive such a large "luxury" penalty.

- Rent now takes both game speed and difficulty into account. This means it is less punishing on faster speeds.

- A starting "boost" gives you more customers during the first few days of opening, to counteract the low awareness in empty stores.

These changes are primarily meant to create an easier start, as well as a more active and fair experience no matter which products you choose to sell.

--- Optimizations

I have gone through many areas of the code to find where the game could be optimized, and I found several opportunities.

The long loading time was primarily caused by terrain generation. Terrain was generated in chunks, and each chunk was generated one at a time. This process is now spread across your CPU, allowing for much faster level loading.

Then there is the navigation mesh, which the AI uses to move around. It was previously generated across a huge area to make sure even giant stores would always be navigable. It checked all objects in the level and generated across all 26 buildable metres vertically. In most cases, this meant a lot was being calculated without any real need. That was the cause of the first 10-second lag spike when loading your store. This has now been rebuilt with a new system, where it generates on your property and per floor instead, reducing that delay to around a second even on medium-sized stores.

Some menus also had long loading times because of the sheer number of products in the game. Using displays, looking at storage units, and similar actions could take several seconds to open, but they should now open immediately.

We have also