We’re back to working on the campaign again, so you know what that means - not too much to show right now :) We made some good progress on figuring out and implementing how scenarios are going to be unlocked this week.
Since this would be a very short devlog update otherwise, let’s talk some more about the campaign, and first of all who’s working on it. We’re extremely lucky to have two very talented builders from the community working on scenarios for the campaign: Silvarret and Joshua Tjarks. You have probably seen some of their work already, and so you’ll know that they are great park designers and very passionate about theme park games :) Our main goal for the campaign is to make every scenario feel different in some way - especially of course by giving scenarios unique settings, but also by varying the starting conditions and goals and having a nice difficulty progression. These two have been busy for 6-8 months now and they came up with so many ideas that in the end the campaign grew a bit bigger than we originally expected...
As a sneak peak to give you an idea what to expect, here’s a quick look at one of the scenarios - Coaster Canyon by Silvarret:
As a slightly easier scenario this park has lots of flat space for building huge coasters, and there’s also some space at the top of the canyon as an interesting option!
Building on a blank canvas can be difficult, so most maps come with some small pre-built structures to set the mood and hopefully provide you with inspiration for your own additions! We can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with :)
Beta 6 is now available for download! The full change log is at the end of this post.
Devlog
We added the Mini Monorail from this months Art Stream:
It’s a low-capacity, but also low-cost transport ride especially suitable for small parks (or short distance transportation in a bigger park). While working on the campaign we noticed that the bigger Monorails we already had make most sense in big parks and the Miniature Railway can be hard to fit into existing parks, so this new Mini Monorail nicely complements the transportation options in the game filling these gaps.
Garret continued adding and animating ride lights:
And Gordon finished a great new background music song! You can listen to a preview here.
Beta 5 Build Challenge Results
All submissions can be found on the Workshop - thanks for everyone participating! These are the 5 winning entries:
For Beta 6 the new Build Challenge is to build a Giga Coaster! There's a special new rule for this challenge: You can't use more than $10,000 of your budget on scenery. There's a display telling you how much you can still spend on scenery items above the "Submit" button, so keep an eye on that!
The top submissions get included in the next game update as default blueprints.
Changelog
added Mini Monorail
added pine trees
added new background music
added lights to more flat rides
added option for changing flat ride light colors
added options for Mechanic and Janitor for customizing the tasks they should work on
added hovered object name as tooltip to object pipette tool
added deco window remembers last opened category
added revealing object in deco window when using object pipette tool
added hotkeys for changing size of resizable objects (+/- by default)
changed mod objects to be researchable in non-sandbox scenarios
improved building of paths
improved building of transport system pieces
improved object pipette tool to start building at the same height and rotation as copied object
improved camera rotation behaviour on very uneven terrain (especially with large vertical cliffs)
improved terraformer behaviour when using smoothen option around vertical cliffs
improved terraformer levelling tool performance (should fix a crash on systems with low RAM)
improved performance when hiding scenery during rain/night mode
improved hunger/thirst/tiredness park ratings
fixed terraforming tools flickering
fixed curves on vertical track segments not working properly anymore
fixed lighting messing with the colors in visualization views, making it sometimes hard to see what values the visualization was showing
fixed guests not actively heading for Customizable Shops when searching for food
fixed entertainers could sometimes be displayed with the wrong costume
fixed being able to train shopkeepers
fixed closed shops being opened after loading savegame
fixed error when placing fences on the terrain bounds
fixed a case where people would walk over terrain when trying to get somewhere
fixed objects placed in scenario editor giving refunds
fixed objects from blueprints sometimes not giving refunds when destroyed
fixed coasters not giving full refund when destroyed using the bulldozer tool
fixed hue slider in color picker window sometimes not reacting to clicks
fixed a crash on macOS when using the bulldozer tool
Come join us on Garrets Twitch channelon Wednesday (April 25th) at 1pm PDT to chat while watching some new Parkitect art being created.
Devlog
The control hint box was redesigned. Hopefully more people will actually notice and read it now :D
Gabby made new pine trees:
The object pipette is being improved to start building at the same height and rotation as the object that’s being copied. It also shows the name of the hovered object and the deco window jumps to the category and position of whatever you’re copying.
Janitors and Mechanics received customization options for controlling which tasks they should work on:
This can be quite useful for example if you want to have a few janitors who should only clean paths without getting distracted by anything else.
As planned, we’re working more on the campaign now and so everything else that’s getting done is mostly polishing.The path builder got some small improvements, the most important one being that it doesn’t move the “cursor” anymore if a path can’t be built for some reason (for example because of the location being blocked).
Previously it would continue moving no matter what, so in this example you’d continue building paths on the other site of the shop. That seemed like a useful behaviour in some situations but really wasn’t. It confused people and when they tried to “undo” their paths it confused them even more, because using the bulldozer button would not move the cursor back through the blocked location.
Transport system pipes automatically snap to the correct height now when hovering existing pipes (just like paths already did). These things can be a bit annoying to build and there are still a few things we should do to improve that, but this is a good first step.
The terraforming tool was notoriously destructive when terraforming near vertical cliffs with the smoothen feature enabled. It was improved to preserve vertical cliffs, which creates far less unpredictable huge terrain changes that are hard to clean up.
Water is one of the things where I can make a dozen tiny changes without ever being entirely satisfied, and so it has been changed once agan.
And finally, the flat ride lights have customizable colors now. An option to disable the lights has been added as well.
Just a quick update this time - this week was all about doing press/community work and collecting feedback (wow, there has been a ton). We also managed to release a couple of minor patches.
The plan for this month is to spend most of our time on working towards finishing the campaign, so Beta 6 will probably mostly contain polishing, fixes and smaller features.
The reactions to the graphics update have been absolutely amazing, much better than we expected really! It has brought a lot of new players to the game too, and so both our subreddit and Discord are very active right now - if you haven’t already, maybe you want to join too? :) Thanks for everyone who is a part of our small community, we really appreciate your support :D
Just a quick update this time - this week was all about doing press/community work and collecting feedback (wow, there has been a ton). We also managed to release a couple of minor patches.
The plan for this month is to spend most of our time on working towards finishing the campaign, so Beta 6 will probably mostly contain polishing, fixes and smaller features.
The reactions to the graphics update have been absolutely amazing, much better than we expected really! It has brought a lot of new players to the game too, and so both our subreddit and Discord are very active right now - if you haven’t already, maybe you want to join too? :) Thanks for everyone who is a part of our small community, we really appreciate your support :D
Beta 5 is now available for download! The full change log is at the end of this post.
Devlog
Garret made a whole bunch of new decorative lamps during this weeks Art Stream:
And he lit the Swinging Ship to show how our ride lights work:
And we’ve added a new visualization to the track builder that highlights all the invidiual block sections. When using a block system there can never be more than one train inside each “block” of the ride for safety reasons, with a “block” being the section of the track between two positions at which trains can safely be stopped (so they can wait there until the block ahead of them is clear).This is a bit convoluted to explain in text, so hopefully this new visualization makes it easier to understand.
Beta 4 Build Challenge Results
All submissions can be found on the Workshop - thanks for everyone participating! These are the 5 winning entries:
Beta 5 is now available for download! The full change log is at the end of this post.
Devlog
Garret made a whole bunch of new decorative lamps during this weeks Art Stream:
And he lit the Swinging Ship to show how our ride lights work:
And we’ve added a new visualization to the track builder that highlights all the invidiual block sections. When using a block system there can never be more than one train inside each “block” of the ride for safety reasons, with a “block” being the section of the track between two positions at which trains can safely be stopped (so they can wait there until the block ahead of them is clear).This is a bit convoluted to explain in text, so hopefully this new visualization makes it easier to understand.
Beta 4 Build Challenge Results
All submissions can be found on the Workshop - thanks for everyone participating! These are the 5 winning entries:
Come join us on Garrets Twitch channel on Wednesday (March 28th) at 1pm PDT. This time Garret will show how we’re updating old rides and will create some new scenery pieces. He will also demo the visuals update.
Devlog
Lights on!
Did you ever feel like your park looks a bit... boring when it rains? After this update that will no longer be the case, because all the lights actually work now.
And if you like it really dark you can turn on the new night mode whenever you want!
The Asset Editor has been updated so mods can use lights as well.
To fully capture the atmosphere of a theme park in the dark we’re updating all flat rides with hundreds of tiny lights.
Moreover, most of these lights also receive unique animation sequences. I have built us a tool for placing and animating the lights, and Garret has been busy working with it. So far we’re at over 6.000 animated lights, but there are still a bunch of rides left to update!
If you want to learn more about how we’re creating light animation sequences you should check out this weeks Art Stream where Garret will show how it works.
Come join us on Garrets Twitch channel on Wednesday (March 28th) at 1pm PDT. This time Garret will show how we’re updating old rides and will create some new scenery pieces. He will also demo the visuals update.
Devlog
Lights on!
Did you ever feel like your park looks a bit... boring when it rains? After this update that will no longer be the case, because all the lights actually work now.
And if you like it really dark you can turn on the new night mode whenever you want!
The Asset Editor has been updated so mods can use lights as well.
To fully capture the atmosphere of a theme park in the dark we’re updating all flat rides with hundreds of tiny lights.
Moreover, most of these lights also receive unique animation sequences. I have built us a tool for placing and animating the lights, and Garret has been busy working with it. So far we’re at over 6.000 animated lights, but there are still a bunch of rides left to update!
If you want to learn more about how we’re creating light animation sequences you should check out this weeks Art Stream where Garret will show how it works.