Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for July 1st, 2019, detailing all the changes that have happened since June 24th, 2019. Note: Devs that don't appear in the weekly log are not necessarily away or not doing work, but may be working on things currently not announced or backend work that doesn't need to be detailed.
2019 Survey
We just posted a new survey asking some helpful questions to get input from the community.
Your input is incredibly helpful in deciding where we take the game! Please spend just a few minutes of your time to let us know how we're doing!
Work has continued on the Summer Update, which we plan on releasing sometime this week. macdguy worked this week on the Chainsaw Deathmatch and Booze Bash minigames, while JJosh has been working on over 40 new pool tubes.
Summer Update: Pool Tube Teaser WIP
Summer Update: Chainsaw Deathmatch Gibbing WIP
A new minigame Chainsaw Death match was made for the Summer update. Gore is toggable in settings.
wheezwer and Johanna continued working on the Arcade Machine art. Work was completed on the Candy Slam, Ring God, Little Birde Feeders, and Stack 'em machines. Work started on the Tornado and Lonely Gun 30XX machine art.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for June 24th, 2019, detailing all the changes that have happened since June 14th, 2019. Note: Devs that don't appear in the weekly log are not necessarily away or not doing work, but may be working on things currently not announced or backend work that doesn't need to be detailed.
Arcade Progress
A bunch of progress has been made with the arcade since the last development log. Salmon Says, Mind Tester, Skeeball, Whirl-A-Fish, Little Birde Feeders, Dizzy, Stack 'em, Wheely Rigged, and Ring God are all playable, yet their gameplay is not entirely finalized.
wheezwer completed the artwork for "Avalanche" and "Ring God", and is continuing to work on artwork for "Little Birde Feeders".
Johanna started working on a "moving target" arcade game model, and she also completed the model for a "duck punch" arcade machine. She also went and fixed some ceiling tile lightmaps in the Arcade, as well as tweaking the "Little Birde Feeders" model to better suit the gameplay. Lastly, she worked on materials for the animated lights for the arcade machines' attract states, and created some signage for the "Avalanche" and "Ring God" games.
Sketch worked on artwork for the "Wheel of Fire" game.
Madmijk started working on "Stack 'em", focusing on gameplay and replication.
Caboose700 finished the gameplay for "Salmon Says".
macdguy worked more on the arcade game base, adding several features such as player animation support, physics improvements, LED colors & attract animation support, improvements based on playtesting, and scoring zones for Skeeball and similar games. He worked on gameplay & controls for Skee Ball, Dizzy, Wheely Rigged, Super Hoopers, Salmon Says, Little Birde Feeders, Mind Tester, and Whirl-A-Fish. He also started working on gameplay for Ring God (Ring Toss) and started implementing the animations Gloves finished.
Gloves made some adjustments to the button press animations to make them play faster, as well as creating a different type of button press, which is more of a fist slam than a slap. Also started making throwing animations for "Ring God", as well as working on the Sledgehammer animations.
Will worked on sound effects for Dizzy, and started working on sounds for Skee Ball.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for June 14th, 2019, detailing all the changes that have happened since June 7th, 2019. Note: Devs that don't appear in the weekly log are not necessarily away or not doing work, but may be working on things currently not announced or backend work that doesn't need to be detailed.
Arcade Progress
Now that fishing is in a stable state, our main focus has moved to Arcade.
Earlier today, we created a massive post detailing all the machines we plan on having in the arcade, which you can find here. We suggest you check that out if you want to see what each arcade game will be!
This week, a new button component system for all the buttons in the arcade was completed. macdguy completed all of the base code for the arcade machine gameplay, and has been working with Gloves to complete the animation system. In addition, the unit cost and ticket base code, along with the multiplayer handler for Galaxy Police was finished. macdguy also completed the physics system for the arcade games, and completed pretty much of all of the gameplay code for Dizzy and Super Hoopers.
Johanna and Wheezwer continued working on the arcade machine models and artwork. Wheezwer finished the artwork for the claw game "Pluck-a-pal", and started working on the artwork for the ball attack game, "Avalanche". Johanna completed the model for the ball toss game, "Bird Feeder", along with the "Piano" arcade game. Johanna also started working on a yet to be named ball toss game, and added a second floor to the arcade, which will contain more games.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for June 7th, 2019, detailing all the changes that have happened since May 20th, 2019.
We normally post our Weekly Dev Logs exclusively on our forums, but we're going to start posting them on Steam as well!
Note: Devs that don't appear in the weekly log are not necessarily away or not doing work, but may be working on things currently not announced or backend work that doesn't need to be detailed.
Fishing Update and Hotfix
Last week, we released the Fishing update, which introduced the long awaited Fishing minigame playable in the Plaza, with over 100 fish and items to obtain. You can read about the update's release here.
Yesterday, we released a small hotfix to fix some issues that were introduced with the Fishing update, which you can read about here.
New Artist
We hired a new artist for the summer, Wheezwer. She'll be working on the cabinet artwork and sprites for the Arcade.
Arcade Work and Art
Now that Fishing is released, our focus has turned onto the Arcade.
Johanna has started working on a new ring toss machine and a new ball toss machine, as well as working on the prize redemption desk.
Wheezwer completed work on the cabinet art for Whirl-A-Fish, and started working on the cabinet art for the claw machine.
Gloves continued working on player animations for the Arcade, this week focusing on the animations for the Wack-a-mole machine.
macdguy started working on the arcade game base (that handles all the machines gameplay code), mechanisms to debug the player animations, as well as starting work on the basic game loop and networking of game events.
Arcade: Whirl-A-Fish Artwork WIP
Arcade: Ring Toss Machine WIP
Arcade: Ball Toss Machine WIP
Arcade: Claw Machine Artwork WIP
Arcade: Prize Redemption Desk WIP
Arcade: Wack-a-mole Player Animations WIP
Arcade: Player Animation Debug WIP
Arcade: Game Base Testing WIP
Nightclub Art
Johanna continued working on the interior of the nightclub.
Nightclub: Interior Hallway WIP
Nightclub: Hall to Dance Floor WIP
Nightclub: Dance Floor WIP
Playable Guitar Progress
Madmijk has been working on the Playable Guitar, working on the user interface for storing chords and palettes.
After tons of time and work, Fishing is finally here!
Fish With Your Friends Fishing is a fun and relaxing Plaza activity that you can play with other players. Catch fish together and show off what you caught with your friends.
Catch Over 100 Different Fish and Weird Items The aquatic ecosystem of the Plaza has been greatly expanded, and with over 100 different species of fish and a bunch of exclusive fishing items to be found, there’s sure to be some hidden treasure waiting just for you.
Use Various Bait Different types of fish are attracted to different types of bait. We've added tons of variations of bait to help your fishing needs at the Gone Fishin' Bait Shop, right near the rollercoaster dock and the fishing docks behind the games building.
Adopt Sea Friends Sometimes you'll catch a Sea Dollar. They're the currency of the sea. Once you have enough sea dollars, you can adopt aquatic friends such as dolphins, whales, and sea TUrtles.
Build Aquariums After you've got a fish, you can place the fish in aquariums in your Condo. Just drag the fish into the aquarium and it'll be happy to call it home.
Become a Dolphin That's right, become a dolphin. Fishing comes with several milestones and one of the coolest milestone is actually being able to become a dolphin.
New Inventory
Search No more spending countless hours searching your inventory for that one soda can, the new inventory features a convenient search bar so you can get back to customizing that sick condo.
Easy Filters Just looking for all your couches? There’s now a button for that too. With the easy filters, all of your couches, chairs, and other item categories can be filtered in just a few clicks.
Improved Tooltips Tooltips now tell you more useful information, such as the store the item can be found in and in which Tower Unite update the item was added.
Sorting You can also now sort items by their name, price, and version added.
Color The new inventory is also colorable, so you can customize what color you want your inventory to be. Obtain that perfect nostalgic blue or the cute hot pink look.
Lock A new lock feature was added which lets you lock the inventory in place. This keeps the inventory from automatically closing after you release the Q key.
New Store UI
New Logos and Themes (and some sounds) The store UI has been completely redone with unique theming and logos, adding charm and character to each store.
Landing Page The store UI now also splits the items sold into categories. Looking for just bait? Click that bait button. Looking for lures? Well, you get the idea.
Sorting You can now sort items in the store by their name, price, and the version of the game they were added.
Shared Jackpot
Wheel of Money was updated to now have a shared jackpot across all machines. This change makes it so no machine has a unique jackpot, keeping things a bit more civil amongst players. Also, we've increased the chance of winning the jackpot by just a tiny little hair.
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Changes
Added Fishing!
Collection book now has a sea encyclopedia to track caught fish
Bait shop and fishing rod now functional
Over 100 fish species and dozens of weird items
Summer event characters are back
Metal detector events are back
Casino: Added shared jackpot for Wheel of Money - each WOM machine will now contribute to a cumulative jackpot instead of per-machine
This is our first Easter themed event, so we hope you enjoy these little games. This update also includes a Plane War minigame which will run in normal non-event rotation from now on.
Tower Unite, now with PAK
We have more news with the release of this update. We've conducted some research into the PAK format which Unreal Engine allows us to package our game in. In conducting this research, we've found that PAK files can significantly reduce the loading times of the game, with some drawbacks we’ll detail below.
We tested how long it takes to load into the Plaza from the Main Menu. The test was conducted on a Intel Core i7-5820K, with a Intel 750 Series 400GB PCI-E SSD and a Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 7200 RPM HDD. Of course, keep in mind that your results may vary from our tests.
Hard Drive with PAK File: 24 seconds to load into the plaza.
Hard Drive without PAK File: 2 minutes 45 seconds to load into the plaza.
SSD with PAK File: 7 seconds to load into the plaza.
SSD without PAK File: 43 seconds to load into the plaza.
There are some drawbacks to using the PAK file however, which is why this will be available via an opt-in process.
Due to how the PAK file is generated, any change to the game will require a full re-download of Tower Unite.So for example, if we push out a small patch that only changes 25MB, the non-PAK users will only have to download the 25 MB that changed, while the PAK file users will have to download 9.8 GB.
The PAK file is compressed, which helps reduce the amount of data that is required to be loaded, but comes with a small CPU overhead, which we weren't able to measure, but it could be an issue if the computer is lower powered.
As the build times are slightly longer, when an update is released, there might be a small delay in when the PAK version of the game will be pushed out.
If this sounds fine to you, here's how you can participate. In your library, right click Tower Unite, and click Properties. Then, click the BETAS tab and select defaultpak. This will start downloading the PAK version of Tower Unite.
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Changes
Added new Easter themed items (available in the easter egg hunt event): Bunny Ears, Catsack Bunny, Plush Rabbit, Basket, Throwable Eggs
New Easter Egg Hunt event
New minigame: Easter Egg Fall
New minigame: Plane War
Improved Fruit Frenzy minigame
Removed trampoline from Fruit Frenzy and instead added increased jump height for all players in the minigame
Fruit Frenzy now gives all players an air dash item that allows players to dash through the air
Minigame HUD now shows who killed you last
Minigame HUD now has kill feed
Bug Fixes
Fixed workshop player models sometimes not loading in!!!
Fixed Adrenaline milestone not working after first use
Plaza: Moved the boat launch building over to give the new bait shop & boat rental building more space
Plaza: Cleaned up the railings around the boardwalk
Plaza: Added more night lighting around boardwalk
Updated the targets in Target Practice to be visible during night time better (they no longer appear dark at all). Also updated the effects for the special targets
Added target lifetime indicators to Target Practice so you can tell when a target is about to remove itself
Updated the lighting in Minigolf - Forest to look much better
Updated leaderboard scoreboards screens in Plaza to show top 10 instead of just top 5
NPC item no longer shows prompt for talking to them if they have no dialogue lines at all
NPC item no longer shows leave dialogue if there is no dialogue lines
NPC item no longer shows talk button if there is no dialogue lines
Collection book now remembers the last scroll bar position after you've closed it and reopened it
Improved the look of the diamond golf ball
Updated engine sounds for RC golf cart
Added a setting to enable dynamic weapon scopes (like the crossbow) for better performance
Added a gameplay reset option to reset all plaza trackers (plushies, info markers, and camera spots)
Updated diamond jetpack trail
Reduced the scale of the RC car
Bug Fixes
Plaza: Added collision to the plaza road's trim so players can no longer fall through it when using the tiny potion
Plaza: Reduced texture data from ~760MB to ~740MB which will very slightly improve load times (ongoing process)
Plaza: Added collision to a metal wall behind the tower that did not have collision
Plaza: Fixed a gap in the escalators
Fixed a bug leading to plaza minigame payouts not always working
Minigolf - Sweet Tooth: Fixed the tubes getting players stuck by redoing them entirely
Minigolf - Altitude: Fixed Hole 18 being the absolute worst
Ball Race - Khromidro: Reduced the chance of falling through the finish circles without actually finishing
Ball Race - Summit: Fixed various different areas where you could get stuck
Virus - Hospital: Fixed an issue where you couldn't infect players in certain areas
Virus: Fixed workshop models sometimes loading in after the virus player model is set, causing infected players sometimes not being the infected model
Fixed a couple exploits with vote kicking
Fixed a couple exploits regarding upgrade items
Fixed Throwable Popcorn and Camera weapon shadows drawing when they shouldn't be
Fixed Casino anti-macro check breaking equipables when it failed to verify
Fixed first person legs causing players to be headless while using RC vehicles
Fixed monster potion creating lag and preventing switching monsters after doing the attack animation