Breathe in that naTUre and enjoy the remake of Grassworlds from GMTower, featuring new levels and a brand new song.
Altitude Remastered
Altitude was completely remastered with tons of bug fixes and design changes. "I did it again hope you like it" - Lifeless
ATTENTION: PAK is Now Default, Greatly Decreasing Load Times, But Increases Download!
In this update we've also enabled PAK by default. PAK is a compression method that will greatly decrease load times for everyone (HDDs and SSDs).
However, PAK requires downloading the entire game for each update. We recommend users who have metered internet or low bandwidth internet opt out of this PAK version. You can opt out by right clicking on Tower Unite in your Steam library, click on properties and then the betas tab. Select the "lowbandwidth" beta branch via the drop down. The low bandwidth branch will download only the changed files in updates, drastically reducing download amounts - but will also increase load times.
Changes
New Ball Race race map Woodlands
Minigolf: Altitude - massive visual overhaul
PAK is now default, greatly decreasing load times (opt out by switching beta branch to "lowbandwidth")
Added "next event/minigame" HUD element for Plaza
Fishing: Increased sea dollar spawn rates
Fishing: Adjusted very hard difficulty to be more forgiving and less likely to happen
Balloon Shoot now has combo support
Virus - Subway: Widened a corridor entrance to allow infected to access an area easier
Virus - Subway: Added some paneling near the main ticketing area to block a long viewpoint to prevent infected from being sniped off as easily
Optimized the main menu a ton, should help boot up times (no longer loads in things it shouldn't need to). Also no longer loads the player model unless you are in appearance mode (menu fps speed up)
Reduced chainsaw volumes
Sea Dollar now shows up in the collection book
Bug Fixes
Optimized PAK File: Assets in PAK are now arranged by load order
Fixed workshop RAM/VRAM leaks
Fixed various memory leaks
Optimized more Plaza code
Fixed collision issues with pool noodles
Fixed inventory collision issues with fishing rod
Minigolf - Garden: Fixed hole 4 pipe being too slow
Minigolf - Garden: Fixed hole 5 HIO not being reliable
Minigolf - Garden: Fixed hole 12 pipe issues (also added a camera for better viewing)
Minigolf - Garden: Fixed hole 13 HIO not being possible (or unreliable)
Minigolf - Garden: Fixed hole 13 out of bounds issue (near the HIO area)
Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 1 tube being too slow
Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 4 HIO not being possible (or unreliable)
Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 5 tube being too slow
Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 12 HIO not being possible (or unreliable)
Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 13 left cannon causing out of bounds
Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 13 HIO not being possible (or unreliable)
Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 15 HIO not being possible (or unreliable)
Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 16 not having effects for the barrels being spawned
Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed barrels on hole 16 being removed too soon
Minigolf - Emission: Fixed hole 16 laser bridge bouncing balls out of bounds
Fixed Alpine minigolf leaderboards not loading properly in the collection book
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for July 22nd, 2019, detailing all the changes that have happened since July 15th, 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
Wheezwer and Johanna continued working on the Arcade Machine art.
Johanna worked on a 4 player arcade cabinet for 2D/3D multiplayer games, along with finishing the new Whack-a-mole cabinets.
Wheezwer worked on artwork for two Whack-a-mole machines, Whack-a-mole and Bug Bytes, and two new arcade posters. She also continued working on the murals for walls of the arcade.
macdguy worked on the logic for Whack-a-mole, Bug Bytes (multiplayer whack-a-mole), and Tornado machines. He also continued improving feedback for Ring God and The Offering (Ball Toss). Work was done on the arcade base, adding multiplayer scoring. He also worked on some fixes for Garden, Treasure Cove, adjusted sea dollar earn rates to be easier, and added Balloon Shoot combo support.
Madmijk continued work on the Captain Calypso's Planetary Piano, creating a solo play mode.
Gloves continued working on animations for Arcade.
Will finished the Woodlands song and continued working on sounds for various arcade machines.
Lifeless has been been working on another Accelerate level. This one is one based off our early Kickstarter level we showed off.
Super Early Screenshot
Misc
Sketch fixed a typo in the new Tiny Potion ad.
Code Optimizations
Sketch finished work on the memory leaks and optimizations for now. This week he fixed an audio related leak, various async leaks, and resolved Workshop VRAM issues. All of these fixes are now part of the Woodlands update. He also finished the workshop culling optimizations, which we'll be putting out a patch for soon. And lastly, he fixed issues with related to dev-builds that prevented us from performing certain types of debugging/profiling.
Wrap It Up
That about covers everything that happened since July 15th, 2019 at PixelTail Games. See you all next week!
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for July 15th, 2019, detailing all the changes that have happened since July 8th, 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
Wheezwer and Johanna continued working on the Arcade Machine art. Signs for Skee Ball, Super Hoopers, Tornado, Salmon Says, and Stack'em were created.
Wheezwer worked on art for the Skee-ball backboard, finished art for Tornado, and started work on art for the "Jar Toss" game, another "Ball Drop" game, and the "Pachinko" machine.
macdguy worked on the logic for Wheel of Fire (90% done), Pluck-a-pal (80% done), Tornado (80% done), and Whack-a-mole (90% done) machines. He also continued working on Ring Toss to make the gameplay better and added effects. He worked on improved LED effects for Skee-ball and Little Birde Feeders. Work was done for the 2D/3D base, creating weapon support (w/ networking). He worked on the overall Arcade base, adding debug visualizations to help with optimizations, remaking the seat/multiplayer system, and overall improvements. He also started working on the gameplay for Lonely Gun 30XX.
Madmijk continued working on the shader and gameplay for Captain Calypso's Planetary Piano.
Gloves continued working on animations for Arcade, working on Stack'em and Skee-ball.
Lifeless made some slight changes to a couple hallways in Subway, to make them less campable.
Virus: Subway Hallway Changes WIP
Plaza Transportation Items
JJosh continued working on new Plaza Transportation Items, such as the Skateboard and Three Wheeled Trike.
Plaza Transportation Items WIP
Plaza Art Updates
Sketch worked on updated Plaza Banner Art, such as The Stray advertisements.
Updated Plaza Art WIP
Code Optimizations
Sketch continued looking into the memory leaks and optimizations. This week he implemented Axis Aligned Bounding Box calculations for Workshop Item meshes, which will be very useful for culling and performance optimizations.
Workshop Item Bounding Boxes WIP
Wrap It Up
That about covers everything that happened since July 8th, 2019 at PixelTail Games. See you all next week!
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for July 8th, 2019, detailing all the changes that have happened since July 1st, 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.
Summer Update
Last week we released the Summer Update, which introduced two new minigames Chainsaw Deathmatch and Booze Bash, along with a bunch of new pool tubes and other summer accessories. You can read all about the update here.
PAK by Default (faster load times)
A couple months ago, we introduced another version of Tower Unite which used PAK files to contain all of the game data. When using the PAK method, loading times are dramatically reduced.
During our testing, before the PAK version, it would take our Hard Drive test computer 2 minutes and 45 seconds to load into the Plaza. With the PAK version, it takes only 24 seconds. This speed increase is also found on SSDs, going from 43 seconds to only 7 seconds. You can read more about our testing in the original thread.
One of the downsides with the PAK version, is that while the files are compressed which helps loading times, this compression results in having to download the entire game (around 8GB) every time there is a new update to Tower Unite.
This week, we’ve decided we’re going to be making the PAK version the default version of the game. However, we do recognize that there are many players out there with slow or heavily capped internet connections. For this reason, there will be a new “lowbandwidth” branch of Tower Unite, which when selected, will revert to how the game is currently packaged. This will save on your internet bandwidth, but you won’t get any of the speed improvements.
We’ll make another announcement when the “lowbandwidth” branch is released, so that people have time to switch over before we make the PAK default live in our next update.
TL;DR: We will be swapping the PAK version from opt-in to opt-out. There will be a new branch that you can opt-into if you have slower or metered internet. The branch is currently available called “lowbandwidth”, so you can opt-into it now before the next update.
So far we’ve had over 1,200 responses, making this our most popular survey by far.
Arcade Progress
Wheezwer and Johanna continued working on the Arcade Machine art. Work was completed on the Lonely Gun 30XX and Captain Calypso’s Planetary Piano machines. Work began on another “Ball Drop” arcade machine.
Wheezwer worked on Mural Art for the Prize Redemption areas, along with a logo for the WarpZone arcade and posters.
macdguy worked on the logic for the Pluck-a-pal Claw Machine, Ball Toss Fish Bowl, Wheel of Fire, and also improved networking events for scoring so there is no effect/sound delays for the player who is playing the arcade machines.
Madmijk continued working on the shader for the Captain Calypso’s Planetary Piano machine.
Summer is here! While we've been actively busy working on Arcade, some of us have spent time working on a TUbular Summer update to celebrate the season.
We've added two new minigames: Chainsaw Deathmatch and Booze Bash. Chainsaw Deathmatch is a classic GMT minigame but with its own death arena.
Franky's grill is now open! He's got hot dogs and beer for you to drink responsibly.
Our resident pool tube expert (a.k.a. Josh) crafted 53 beautiful pool tubes for you to express yourself with.
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.