Frontier has released the Winter update for Planet Coaster. According to the release notes, this update introduces new management features, new rides/coasters, new scenarios, a new location and new scenery.

In addition, this patch features improvements in the path rendering system on big parks, optimises memory usage, and comes with cleanups of structure of existing art assets for memory savings.

Furthermore, this update promises to improve overall performance as Frontier has reviewed model LOD’s to ensure optimal rendering of low LOD assets.

This update will be auto-downloaded from Steam, and you can read its complete changelog below.

Planet Coaster – Winter Update Changelog:

New Management Features

• Ride prestige rating visible for rides and coasters on their information panel
  • Prestige reflects the overall appeal and value of a ride to guests
• Reputation status visible for rides and coasters.
  • As rides get older, their reputation can diminish and affect their prestige rating
• Ride reputation decay added to medium, hard and harder challenge mode maps, as well as new career mode levels in Festive King Coaster’s Crackers
• Added guest thoughts for ride reputation decay
• Added notifications for ride reputation decay
• Date opened field in the ride information panel displays Ride Reputation on scenario or challenge parks that support ride reputation decay
• Reputation is in 1 of 5 states: ‘new’, ‘deteriorating’, ‘old’, ‘reviving’ and ‘classic’. The state is determined by the time since the ride was first opened.
• Park Management
  • Staff Lists – Added an “All staff” view
  • Staff Lists – Added ability to change salary, increase training level, assign roster, view workload and fire
  • Attraction Lists – Add the ability to change ticket price, and change the ride status (open, close, testing)
  • Shop/Facility Lists – Add a column which shows whether or not the shop is synced, and add the ability to change the shop status (open, close)
• Sensibly colour the Open/Test/Close and profit/loss columns, making it easier to see what is happening at a glance.
• Add workload indicator to staff information panel

New rides/coasters

• Rides
  • Collider – Retro, SciFi ride that has 20 swinging gondolas on what is essentially a horizontal Ferris wheel that rises to an angle of 87 degrees.
  • Bumpin Derby – Traditional bumper car ride
• Track Ride
  • Sleigh Ride – Winter themed track ride
• Transport Ride
  • Iron Horse – New Steam Locomotive

New scenarios

• Add 3 new scenarios to the game under “Festive King Coaster’s Crackers”
  • Festive Funland – Set in our festive-themed park, spruce up your winter wonderland with seasonal scenery and draw in the merry crowds!
  • Cavenerous Coasters – Set in a dark grotto and with no terrain sculpting and a loan to start you off, bring success to your park
  • Back from the Brink – This abandoned parked is in a real mess; negative cash, huge loans and a ludicrous layout. Turn it around!

New location

• Arctic now available in Sandbox and Challenge mode

New scenery

• New Festive theme
  • Gingerbread wallset
  • Icing decorations
  • 140 new scenery pieces
    • Christmas Trees
    • Baubles
    • Candies and Sweets
    • Snowmen
    • Gifts and Presents

7 x new shops and signs

• Gulpee Soda
• Pipshot Juice
• Pipshot Smoothie
• Pipshot Water
• Pizza Pen
• Cosmic Cow Icecream
• Missy Good Dougnuts

Camera

• Fix for ‘Dynamic’ Camera losing the coaster track and widgets when banking underground
• Ride Camera UI now remembers the settings you last used
• Make the camera slightly better on the terrain skirt
• Hide guest beards when in Ride Camera
• Improved “Kick Flip – Default Camera 2nd Ride Cam” to be more cinematic
• Stop you being able to tunnel underneath the terrain

Coasters

• Added 11 new coaster blueprints
  • Screamer – The American Arrow
  • Lycanthrope – Werewolf
  • The Hunt – Pioneer
  • Frenzy – Rage
  • Trail Blazer – Aethon
  • Impulse – Invincible
  • Red Steel – Iron Fury
  • Harbinger – Malice Unchained
  • Rebel – Mine Train
  • Whirlwind – Spiral
  • Twister – Enigma
• Duck moments no longer add to nausea
• Rolling rapids additional cars disappear if the first one falls off the track
• Don’t explode trains that are stopping at station.
• Angle indicator added to the slope and curve track construction widget
• Length indicator added to the track construction widget
• Improvements to supports by adding dog-legs and sloping supports
• Supports not previewing when moving an elevated ride over its prior position
• Pioneer car’s rear wheels now align to the track
• Improvements to the Invincible support set
• Fix high-speed coasters creating gaps in their heatmaps
• Fix Invincible coaster cable lift holding trains at set speeds even downhill
• Coaster train resets if it stalls near or at the station after a reverse launch.
• Use a scrolling UV on the chain lift to match the speed of change
• Dive Drop Holding Section does not seem to generate very high levels of fear during the pause
• Fixed a LOD pop on the Magic Katz wheels
• Changed wording for G force labels in testing tab to suggest acceleration instead of force
• Wooden Coaster now has a Auto tunnel size slider
• ‘Launched – Hydraulic’ coaster – Added ability to tunnel both spline 2 and the reverse launch.
• Added stairs to catwalks
• Improvements to the Hyper coaster when longer than 30m
• Fixed heat map problem with multiple trains. Trains now only start testing when they leave the station. Second and subsequent trains were starting prematurely which added incorrect values in the heat map
• Fixed issue where multiple train flying coaster trains default to the down position when loading a park
• Fixed Lift hill EFN boosts being applied across a whole coaster/ log flume, not per lift hill.
• Flourishes play less often for guests who were only just excited, playing more often when guest gets more excited
• Fixed for issue where coaster track supports will appear and go through the station when placing the Entrance and Exit
• Lift hills now less nauseating
• Added a drop shadow to the heat map labels to make it more visible against a white background
• Fix issue where changing number of cars/trains on a coaster causes station and adjoining track to be unhighlighted.
• Increased maximum downward slope value for the ‘Invincible’ coaster cable lift to -80°
• Reduced the size of the Magic Katz head so the forward facing ride cam is no longer obscured
• Decrease max fear boost for ducks to 2.
• Flat ride Insanity art improvements, added a ladder. Better harnesses, and slight textural tweaks.
• Increased default station length of ‘powered track rides’ from 12m to 16m to make placement of exit and entrance gates easier
• Rolling River and Choppers Creak have increased max slope decline angle and set a downhill speed value
• Choppers Creek (Log flume) mid sections of the drop now have 2-20m range in 1m increments, making it much easier to align the splash section to the floor.
• Fixed hybrid coaster supports behaving incorrectly when near vertical and banking.

Rides

• Fix issue when placing a Hyperspin ride where the queue has no queue time but guests don’t get on ride
• Fix issue where a new queue tries to go back onto the ride when building the entrance near the control booth
• Fix bug where changing a ride’s entrance may invalidate entrance’s original location

Guests

• Reduced clipping when guests walk into toilets
• Fix seams found where necks connect to body
• Adding “lamb chop” facial hair to male guests
• Fixed Guest cash spent stats not taking into account refunds
• Increasing the number of guests who visit gift shops
• Made the different gift items have different popularity – Balloons > Hats > Momentos
• Added 2 new hats to the avatar and hat shops – Elf and Reindeer
• Fixed issue when changing from open state to testing with guests seated on a flat ride they will remain on the ride while in test mode

Staff

• Added Festive King Coaster as an available entertainer
• Staff placement – Multiple staff members of the same type can be placed at the same time.
• Staff info popup shows the tasks counts of the previous month rather than the current month.

UI

• HUD now shows date-of-month by default and time-of-day on mouseover, rather than vice versa.
• Prebuilt coaster blueprints now show the correct cost in the browser
• Using F5/F9 to load the quicksave/quickload menu now returns the player straight to gameplay rather than to the parent settings menu.
• Don’t disable the path cursor on invalid path, just leave the path cursor as is
• Coaster trigger panel is now dynamic and can be longer
• Fix a bug where the help popup wouldn’t update when switching between selecting a transport or tracked ride.
• “Ride X has not been tested” notification no longer appears if it’s an unfinished coaster.
• “Coaster x is incomplete”, for when the player isn’t editing an incomplete coaster and a certain amount of time has elapsed.
• Added a “Delete Path” button to the path system (similar to you holding the DEL key)
• Ability for you to Sync Prices in your shops
• The left hand UIs (help, notification list, challenges, objectives) and the park management ui will now close the other when one opens
• Added a “Recently Used” sub-category to show recently used
• Add notification for when player has completed a single objective in a difficulty tier
• Adding a tooltip for the UI scaling.
• Fix for multi select ceases to function after deleting selected items
• Fixed issue where Controls Menu resets to the top when mousing over Edit icon
• Fixed coaster objectives not completing if the required value has been rounded up
• Bottom browsers now have (rebindable) keyboard shortcuts – 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 0 and i (Park Management ? Multi Selection)
• Added a “Go to Steam Workshop” button in “My Blueprints”
• Can now rename stations of Transport Rides
• Added some new Statistics to the Park Management ? Misc Statistics
• Fixed statistics for Queue Time reported incorrect data

Localisation and Text

• Removed an apostrophe from the Loading Screen tip “You can change the ticket price of a ride on its Finance tab”
• German – Fix word-wrapping on Help UI with long words

Scenery improvements

• Planet Coaster sign 14 now has colour option
• The Fairytale Fountain thumbnail now matches the model
• Fix texture issue on Classic Brick Pillar 1m tall
• Fix texture issue on Modern Wall 1m Slope
• Added colour option to Panel Curved Wall 2m and 4m
• Clockwork tower scenery object missing geometry/backface cull
• Added 2 new flower shrubs with colour options
• Fixed icons for Wooden Doors/Windows
• Fixed incorrect thumbnail for Rough Brick 4m Station Surround 2
• Fixed waterplanes under the environments so its not visible when you dig in the expanded areas
• Fixed Vendors feet can be seen coming through the base of the shop

Audio

• Mix pass on the entire game to achieve that rides / coasters up close are louder but are more quiet further away. This is intended to help with creating audio theme-ing a little away from louder areas.
• All in all over 800 bugs, mix tweaks and optimizations have been made to the audio of Planet Coaster since release.
• Added audio to new particle effects, new rides, menu’s and blueprints.
• New music tracks: Planet Epoch, Planets Collide, The Joy in Us All, SleighRide
• Audio code has been optimized, is more responsive and runs faster.
• Added audio option to play soundtrack only when the game is paused.
• Fixed previously broken triggered sound effects.
• Increased music streaming buffers to combat music cutting out, this might increase latency.
• *.flac files are now supported by the custom-user music. Current list of file-types supported is : .mp3 .ogg .wav .wma .aac .m4a .flac
• Custom user music is louder on coasters.
• Guests on coasters now respect EIN values and will scream when frightened and laugh when excited. Thanks to forum community for bringing this to our attention!
• Guests on coaster individual animations have audio now.
• Bespoke Harness sounds for Coasters.
• Coasters can be heard much further throughout the park.
• Coaster crashes more audible.
• Guests on coasters will fatigue over time and scream a little less. More dynamic rides will keep them louder, rides that are constantly at a high speed will tire their vocal chords. This is not a game-play changing feature, just restricted to audio.
• More variation between different coaster manufacturers and secondary systems such as brakes and chain lifts.
• Intro movie now respects audio settings.
• Individual guests on rides can now be heard on the closest ride.
• Triggered soundeffects and park speakers need to be pointed for maximum effect as they are loudest from the front. This helps with sound-effects on indoor rides being less audible through walls.
• Triggered soundeffects will be louder depending on how loud the game is, in practice this should helps when using them on coasters.
• When quitting the game, audio now gracefully fades out instead of being cut.
• A little festive surprise in the main menu theme (no worries, we’ll change that back before summer ; )
• When activating the Steam overlay, the game audio is muffled to help audibility when watching tutorials.
• When a steam train goes up or down a hill, the steam-whistle blows. This feature can be used to “script” where a train is audible in the park.
• Vendors cash machines now make a sound when accepting an order. Like their voice it subtly changes depending on their mood.
• When selecting guests, staff or mascot, they are “contacted” and will communicate back their current mood in an emote.
• When rides break down, the unique ride start/stop sound can be heard breaking down also.
• Game volume has been raised slightly.

Stability

• Fix crash when unsubscribing from multiple Workshop items quickly
• Fix memory leak in heatmap data cache.

Optimisations

• Optimisation coaster music system to use less memory
• Improvements in the path rendering system on big parks
• Cleanup of structure of existing art assets for memory savings
• Setup coaster supports to use the streaming system
• Improved loding logic on coaster supports
• Performance improvement when you’re moving a new path piece around lots of existing queue paths
• More optimisation to the park management screen to reduce delay when opening it
• Optimised memory usage.
  • Ensured better sharing of common assets.
  • Improved granularity of large asset packs to separate infrequently used resources.
  • Revised connectivity of asset packs to reduce memory usage in high asset usage situations.
• Improved performance.
  • Reviewed model LOD’s to ensure optimal rendering of low LOD assets.
• Improved load times for parks and blueprints.
  • Reviewed connectivity of asset packs to ensure packs better represent the objects that use them.
  • Speed up loading times by caching database queries

Tutorials

• New “advanced simulation” tutorial