Third EMERGENCY 5 & EMERGENCY 2016 expansion pack available now!
10/27/2016
10/27/2016

Extended and improved freeplay!

Good news for all players of EMERGENCY 5 and EMERGENCY 2016! The third big and free expansion pack is available now. There are 5 new freeplay events and many improvements through the game. The biggest improvement is for multiplayer mode. With the new update, it is not necessary any more to use port forwarding to play a multiplay game. You can also use the new direct connection mode for LAN matches. In the new unit overview window you can see all your placed units on the map. More details of improvements and changes brought together in the list below.

On October 28 we will release the game EMERGENCY 2017.

Note: The update for Mac users will be released in November.


New content

  • New freeplay and multiplay events:
    • Storm front over the city
    • Blackout
    • Manhunt
    • Explosion at rock concert
  • Additional new freeplay event:
    • Train crash
  • Added unit overview window which can be opened by clicking on a new button inside the minimap or by pressing 'O'

Additional improvements and fixes

  • General
    • Full multiplay and modding compatibility between EMERGENCY 5, 2016 and 2017
    • Many stability improvements
    • Additional performance optimizations
    • Fixed a problem with savegames containing non-ASCII characters or only a single character
    • [Steam only] Connected all achievements to Steam
  • Graphics
    • Regarding black screen reports from users - thanks for your feedback, we were able to identify two problems:
      • Graphics cards below minimum requirements: Intel HD 4000 graphics cards generally cause a black display inside the main game - this is the only Intel card known to have this problem
      • Fixed: Black screen inside the launcher already when using an installation path with non-ASCII characters
    • Fixed flickering supervisor which could happen in sore rare situations
    • Highlighting of recommended graphics setting for your computer in graphics settings menu
    • Additional map polishing regarding slightly misplaced objects
    • Visual polishing
      • Fixed light editing of some cars which previously disabled e.g. headlight emissive map while the dynamic light was still active
      • DLK vehicle has now blue lights which rotate correctly together with the ladder
      • Fixed several visual glitches
    • In case the used graphics cards doesn't support DirectX 11, there's now a more detailed error description so you can more easily figure out what's the cause of the problem
  • Effects
    • Improvements for the depth-of-field effect, it's less noisy now
    • Improved bloom effect which previously could look odd in certain lighting & weather combinations
    • Ultra quality graphics: The street markers on wet streets are no longer oddly dark
    • Low quality graphics: Damaged or destroyed windows are now black so one can no longer see through the buildings
    • The selection marker below player's personnel now rotate slightly as it did in EMERGENCY 4
    • Dead persons now have a special pose so one can identify them faster
    • Persons diagnosed as deceased are marked with an icon now
    • Smoother movement of some effects, e.g. throwable weapons
  • Units
    • Faster animation of firefighters getting equipment from rescue vehicle
    • Faster animation of crane vehicle
    • Intensive care transport vehicle can now be used in freeplay and multiplay for EMERGENCY 2016 (and 2017) players
    • Rescue dog: Faster feedback if no victim can be found
    • SWAT helicopter can now be sent to hover (using right-click), land or rope down the SWAT team (using buttons)
    • Helicopters: Fixed glitches when issuing an exit command for starting/landing helicopters
    • SWAT drone: issuing the search command again while already searching enforces searching another target, if there is one
    • Firefighter plane: Message when ready again is now a normal message, no supervisor
  • Campaigns
    • Some changes to the EMERGENCY 5 Avalanche mission so that finding and rescuing all victims works better
    • When starting the tutorial inside the EMERGENCY 2016 campaign, it could happen that the game didn't continue correctly after finishing the tutorial
  • Events
    • Gangster behavior improvements for some police events
    • Fix for quickly escaping supermarket robbers
    • Fixed several bugs leading to events getting stuck or failing too early
    • Automatic cleanup of failed freeplay events
  • Gameplay
    • Fixed issues with cars temporily standing around on streets
    • Added a hint when units can't reach their target position
    • Smoother braking of vehicles at traffic lights or obstacles
    • Smoother following of moving targets, e.g. policemen chasing gangsters
    • Injured player units and damaged vehicles are not selectable any more, especially for multi-selection
  • Freeplay
    • How many events can be active at the same time is now controlled by the current event level, which is shown in the information bar at the top
    • Improvements to event appearance probabilities
  • Multiplay
    • Multiplay communication uses a proxy server now so no port forwarding is needed any more
    • Additional IPv6 support
    • Added direct connection mode so clients can connect to a host by entering the host IP address
    • Fixed disconnects caused by certain gameplay situations
    • Fix for several visual glitches on client side
    • Fix for a background music issue
    • Better multiplay compatibility of events and units
  • GUI
    • Added more buttons to the launcher
      • Open your user data folder (containing your savegames, settings, mods, log files, etc.)
      • Reach our support more easily
    • Unified hotkeys for unit commands
    • Jumping to an event is now also possible by clicking into the objectives list
    • Showing both event time and game time of day where it makes sense
    • Moved drone screen windows to have enough space for the unit overview window
    • Camera zoom does not change any more when jumping to an event
    • Fix for the credits display in EMERGENCY 5 campaign which did not always get updated correctly
    • Usability improvements
      • Inside the minimap, the path of the currently selected unit is now shown in singleplay modes
      • Added more tooltips
      • Double click support for loading savegames and overwrite security question for saving
      • Clearer checked icon for checkboxes
      • Various more minor GUI tweaks
  • Audio
    • Fixed that several audio effects were played too loud after an building evacuated audio effect had been played
    • Smoother audio fade in/out for ambient sound
  • World Builder / Modding
    • Fixed and extended navigation map tool visualizations
    • Asset browser asset context menu tag editing ease-of-use actions added
    • Added batch processes for converting skeletons between the two most widely used coordinate systems
    • Added pre-defined collision types to simplify collision editing
    • When importing OGRE meshes, we now only output errors when there's just a single and empty texture unit
    • Particle assets now also support hot-reloading inside the editor, reimport a particles effect to see the new asset at once
    • Fixed situations where an online editor client deleted some local game files not managed by the online system
    • Fixed various situations with linked objects inside the online editor which could lead to transform changes not been saved correctly
    • Fixed a problem of the local prefab file cache not being updated correctly in certain situations after having changed the editing of a prefab asset
    • Added more API exports for plugin modders (e.g. command modes, reserve logics)