There are lots of great entries for the Build Challenge already after just one week - thanks everyone for participating!
Please note that the Workshop might be setting your submission to be "Hidden" by default and that you manually need to change it to be "Public" (there's an option for that on the Workshop page of your submission).
If your entry isn't appearing in the voting box inside the game or hasn't received any votes yet this is the reason why.


I’ve been excited to talk about this for months, so here we go :D

If you’ve been following the development of Parkitect for a longer time you might remember one of the most unique and technically challenging features of our Kickstarter pitch was “Maintaining the Illusion” - that scenery should not just look nice to the player, or have an “area of influence” effect on its surroundings. We wanted it to have a real management purpose, namely hiding the backstage areas of the park from the guests view.
Three months ago we sat down and discussed how to make this happen.
Tim and Luuk have been working on it since, and now we’ve got a really cool scenery rating system :)

First of all, let’s take a look at what exactly it is doing.

Here’s an overview shot of a park with a new scenery rating overlay, showing which areas of the park are nicely decorated in shades of green, and which aren’t in red:



Guests don’t like seeing park utility infrastructure such as staff rooms, resource depots and employee paths. They have a negative effect on the scenery rating:



There are many things that are nicer to look at though and block the view.
For example you could hide that staff room behind a facade or completely enclose it inside a custom structure:



Or use the terrain to your advantage:



Or simply plant some trees :)



These visibility calculations aren’t just being done for the park infrastructure though - we’re doing it for every piece of decoration in the park. And in 3D!
Here’s a debug view where the blue lines show from which path tiles the tree is visible. As the tree moves up it becomes visible over the top of the wall!



Here’s a bonus behind-the-scenes GIF (in realtime!) showing these calculations being done for an entire park. A lot to calculate in a short amount of time!



Seriously - a lot.



Next week we’ll talk about what exactly we’re doing with these scenery ratings and some other uses of the visibility system.

There are lots of great entries for the Build Challenge already after just one week - thanks everyone for participating!
Please note that the Workshop might be setting your submission to be "Hidden" by default and that you manually need to change it to be "Public" (there's an option for that on the Workshop page of your submission).
If your entry isn't appearing in the voting box inside the game or hasn't received any votes yet this is the reason why.


I’ve been excited to talk about this for months, so here we go :D

If you’ve been following the development of Parkitect for a longer time you might remember one of the most unique and technically challenging features of our Kickstarter pitch was “Maintaining the Illusion” - that scenery should not just look nice to the player, or have an “area of influence” effect on its surroundings. We wanted it to have a real management purpose, namely hiding the backstage areas of the park from the guests view.
Three months ago we sat down and discussed how to make this happen.
Tim and Luuk have been working on it since, and now we’ve got a really cool scenery rating system :)

First of all, let’s take a look at what exactly it is doing.

Here’s an overview shot of a park with a new scenery rating overlay, showing which areas of the park are nicely decorated in shades of green, and which aren’t in red:



Guests don’t like seeing park utility infrastructure such as staff rooms, resource depots and employee paths. They have a negative effect on the scenery rating:



There are many things that are nicer to look at though and block the view.
For example you could hide that staff room behind a facade or completely enclose it inside a custom structure:



Or use the terrain to your advantage:



Or simply plant some trees :)



These visibility calculations aren’t just being done for the park infrastructure though - we’re doing it for every piece of decoration in the park. And in 3D!
Here’s a debug view where the blue lines show from which path tiles the tree is visible. As the tree moves up it becomes visible over the top of the wall!



Here’s a bonus behind-the-scenes GIF (in realtime!) showing these calculations being done for an entire park. A lot to calculate in a short amount of time!



Seriously - a lot.



Next week we’ll talk about what exactly we’re doing with these scenery ratings and some other uses of the visibility system.

Alpha 18 is now available for download! The full change log is at the end of this post.

Over the past week I’ve tweaked a lot how guests decide on which ride to go, and as a result you should be seeing way more guests queueing for a bigger variety of rides. As a result it‘s probably way too easy now to make a ton of money, so I’ll keep an eye on that during October.



Our first Build Challenge is to build a Flying Coaster. It can have any theme or decoration, the only restrictions are the given build area and budget.

The top submissions get included in the next game update as default blueprints.

We’ve got a new experimental version available on Steam. If some of you could help testing it that’d be very appreciated :)
You can opt into it by right-clicking Parkitect in your library list and selecting Properties -> Betas -> Experimental.

This experimental version is identical to the normal Alpha 18 but uses an updated version of Unity (the game engine we’re using) and we’d like to make sure it’s working properly before releasing it for everyone.

• added new slope options for coaster tracks
• added science fiction building pieces and props
• added build challenges
• improvements for connecting track pieces with different banking angles
• tweaked how guests decide which rides to use
• tweaked how guests decide when to leave the park
• adjusted flat ride balance
• fixed track banking transitions not being as smooth as they're supposed to in some situations
• fixed an error that could break the advertising UI
• fixed water tool not working as expected on vertical cliffs

Alpha 18 is now available for download! The full change log is at the end of this post.

Over the past week I’ve tweaked a lot how guests decide on which ride to go, and as a result you should be seeing way more guests queueing for a bigger variety of rides. As a result it‘s probably way too easy now to make a ton of money, so I’ll keep an eye on that during October.



Our first Build Challenge is to build a Flying Coaster. It can have any theme or decoration, the only restrictions are the given build area and budget.

The top submissions get included in the next game update as default blueprints.

We’ve got a new experimental version available on Steam. If some of you could help testing it that’d be very appreciated :)
You can opt into it by right-clicking Parkitect in your library list and selecting Properties -> Betas -> Experimental.

This experimental version is identical to the normal Alpha 18 but uses an updated version of Unity (the game engine we’re using) and we’d like to make sure it’s working properly before releasing it for everyone.

• added new slope options for coaster tracks
• added science fiction building pieces and props
• added build challenges
• improvements for connecting track pieces with different banking angles
• tweaked how guests decide which rides to use
• tweaked how guests decide when to leave the park
• adjusted flat ride balance
• fixed track banking transitions not being as smooth as they're supposed to in some situations
• fixed an error that could break the advertising UI
• fixed water tool not working as expected on vertical cliffs

Once again it’s Art Stream time!
Come join us on Garrets Twitch channel on Wednesday (September 27th) at 1pm PST to chat while watching some new Parkitect art being created.

A couple people asked if the new slope options could be used for building smooth zero-g-rolls. After some more tweaking that’s possible now:



We added a new UI element that displays the banking angle of disconnected track pieces to make connecting tracks easier. Additionally, the track builder automatically preselects this angle now if possible:



Garret started working on the science fiction props from the concept art stream Fabrice did earlier:



You might remember Gabby from the work she did for the UI overhaul a few months back. She’s currently helping us with additional deco objects and made these:



They’re mainly intended for the spooky theme but could work well in other areas too.

Once again it’s Art Stream time!
Come join us on Garrets Twitch channel on Wednesday (September 27th) at 1pm PST to chat while watching some new Parkitect art being created.

A couple people asked if the new slope options could be used for building smooth zero-g-rolls. After some more tweaking that’s possible now:



We added a new UI element that displays the banking angle of disconnected track pieces to make connecting tracks easier. Additionally, the track builder automatically preselects this angle now if possible:



Garret started working on the science fiction props from the concept art stream Fabrice did earlier:



You might remember Gabby from the work she did for the UI overhaul a few months back. She’s currently helping us with additional deco objects and made these:



They’re mainly intended for the spooky theme but could work well in other areas too.

That’s right, concept art! Fabrice will be doing a Stream where he’ll draw designs for new props. If you want to help him come up with ideas or just watch and chat, join us Monday 18th at 9am PDT on Twitch.

I’ve been working on transition pieces from one slope angle to another for the majority of last week:



This has been one of the most requested features for a long time, so I’m glad to have made some progress with it. I still need to do a lot more testing since there are so many combinations of pieces, so there’s still some risk of finding some broken cases. So far it seems to be working fine.


Garret and Fabrice have been working on building pieces for the science fiction theme. This was the concept:



And here are the finished pieces:



If you’ve been playing Parkitect for a while you might remember the ParkitectNexus build challenges, where we challenged you to build a ride within certain restrictions and the best entries got included as blueprints into the game. We’re bringing that back, but this time as a proper feature using the Steam Workshop!

Starting with Alpha 18 we’ll have a section on the starting screen where you can browse and vote on submissions for the currently running challenge.



If you want to submit your own entry that’s really easy too: simply hit the “Participate” button and a special Challenge park opens with a designated building area.



Once you’re done, hit “Submit” and your entry gets included in the voting.

That’s right, concept art! Fabrice will be doing a Stream where he’ll draw designs for new props. If you want to help him come up with ideas or just watch and chat, join us Monday 18th at 9am PDT on Twitch.

I’ve been working on transition pieces from one slope angle to another for the majority of last week:



This has been one of the most requested features for a long time, so I’m glad to have made some progress with it. I still need to do a lot more testing since there are so many combinations of pieces, so there’s still some risk of finding some broken cases. So far it seems to be working fine.


Garret and Fabrice have been working on building pieces for the science fiction theme. This was the concept:



And here are the finished pieces:



If you’ve been playing Parkitect for a while you might remember the ParkitectNexus build challenges, where we challenged you to build a ride within certain restrictions and the best entries got included as blueprints into the game. We’re bringing that back, but this time as a proper feature using the Steam Workshop!

Starting with Alpha 18 we’ll have a section on the starting screen where you can browse and vote on submissions for the currently running challenge.



If you want to submit your own entry that’s really easy too: simply hit the “Participate” button and a special Challenge park opens with a designated building area.



Once you’re done, hit “Submit” and your entry gets included in the voting.

Alpha 17 is now available for download! The full change log is at the end of this post.


We’ve added the Orbiter from this weeks Art Stream:



It’s a fairly small and simple ride that’s quite interesting to watch :)

• added Orbiter
• added roof pieces, generic shapes
• added certain objects (like trees) stick to the terrain while terraforming
• added option to control settings for using the middle mouse button for rotating instead of panning the camera
• disabled workers being allowed to help out in zones they aren't assigned to if there are no tasks left to do in their assigned zone
• improved mouse controls
• improved guest performance
• improved staff management window performance
• improved balance of guest preferences for rides
• improved handling for box selection tool (used by bulldozer and for creating blueprints)
• improved bulldozer tool
• fixed not being able to place some objects underground anymore
• fixed guests not littering as intended
• fixed a case where the advertising tab wouldn't work properly
• fixed a case where janitors would not be able to clean trash
• fixed a case where the color picker window could be stuck open
• fixed a case where parts of a crashed train would continue to operate
• fixed a case where boats would drive around without passengers
• fixed mechanics not working properly while off-screen in big parks/on slow PCs
• fixed being able to scroll out of bounds if the game is paused
• fixed guests could walk through cash machines
• fixed speed input field spinner buttons not working properly on Linux with a non-english OS language

Alpha 17 is now available for download! The full change log is at the end of this post.


We’ve added the Orbiter from this weeks Art Stream:



It’s a fairly small and simple ride that’s quite interesting to watch :)

• added Orbiter
• added roof pieces, generic shapes
• added certain objects (like trees) stick to the terrain while terraforming
• added option to control settings for using the middle mouse button for rotating instead of panning the camera
• disabled workers being allowed to help out in zones they aren't assigned to if there are no tasks left to do in their assigned zone
• improved mouse controls
• improved guest performance
• improved staff management window performance
• improved balance of guest preferences for rides
• improved handling for box selection tool (used by bulldozer and for creating blueprints)
• improved bulldozer tool
• fixed not being able to place some objects underground anymore
• fixed guests not littering as intended
• fixed a case where the advertising tab wouldn't work properly
• fixed a case where janitors would not be able to clean trash
• fixed a case where the color picker window could be stuck open
• fixed a case where parts of a crashed train would continue to operate
• fixed a case where boats would drive around without passengers
• fixed mechanics not working properly while off-screen in big parks/on slow PCs
• fixed being able to scroll out of bounds if the game is paused
• fixed guests could walk through cash machines
• fixed speed input field spinner buttons not working properly on Linux with a non-english OS language