May 26, 2022

Cannibal Crossing - Rocketcat Games

It's the Cannibal Crossing 1.0 Launch! With this, we're out of Early Access. I want to thank everyone for all the feedback that let me change the game for the better. The game is a lot different from when I picked it up as a publisher!

This 1.0 launch post will be a bit shorter than what I usually do for my games, as I am HORRENDOUSLY SICK right now. However, when the dust settles (couple months from now?), I plan on doing a retrospective post on Cannibal Crossing. It was a pretty big change from the previous game, and I'd like to talk a lot about how feedback shaped the game and late design decisions. I say late design as by the time I got to publish this game, there was already a really big story on its dev process.

This update also had some final difficulty tweaks, mostly related to requests to lower the enemy amount in areas that have already been cleared. This has been dropped a lot. I'm always afraid to do this too much, but let me know what you think. I could tweak things even more in an update.

Also, keep the feedback coming! We can always do more updates.

As always, you can contact me in a variety of ways and talk to me directly. Links to the Discord and official Twitter in-game! For now I am passing out.

- Kepa

Cannibal Crossing 1.0 List of Changes

- All our previous changes from Early Access!

- Difficulty Tweak for enemies appearing in previously cleared areas. Down from 10% chance to 6% chance
- Above tweak for hard mode is down from 15% chance, to 12% chance

- Update to the lighting, optimizations and reducing the file size of major lighting sprites to 25% of previous
- Fix for a bug that let you get infinite fuel with the Lighter (dumped straight to your inventory)
- Fix for Groupeez boss, for followers attacking where the boss was instead of where it is

- Controllers should now work for rebinding again

- The Mortar should no longer damage the player
- Fix for the Quantum Mailbox
- Fix for Lola's bar getting enabled before prologue is finished
- Checks for higher difficulties getting unlocked properly
- Some wave mission spawn position updates

- Preventing some sliding along walls and doors
- Updated follower AI
- Fixed a bug for different ammo types being used than expected

- Changed Electronics Station description from "scrap" to "metal" for battery making
- Spanish update for some changed text

- Various tweaks/fixes

May 26, 2022

Making The Mini Golf Course - Dev Log 57

PowerWash Simulator - Josh FuturLab

Hey everyone - welcome to dev log 57!

Last week we released Update 0.9, our birthday patch including 3 community jobs and a whole host of QOL changes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1290000/view/3224025758063263090

Today Artist Laura and Designer Dave give a VIP backstage tour of the Mini Golf Course level's development.

Before we start on this dev log, we are aware of a few issues with 0.9 and are working on a hotfix and will let everyone know when it goes live. There are temporary workarounds to many of the issues including multiplayer desync here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1290000/discussions/0/3389534247558075422/ We are also listening closely to all of the feedback, thanks everyone!

Making It Look Great!

Laura is the artist who worked on making this job a visual fantasy. We asked some questions to show how they got a hole in one:

Where did you start with the level?

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
I had a pitch from the design team about a 'fairytale, knight, castle' theme for this minigolf, so I started by thinking about a story. Players will make a little trip, from the forest to a little village, and then they will enter the dragon cave until finally arriving at the big castle! I thought it was important and exciting to bring players into different areas and have this storytelling.

What is the favourite part of the job you worked on?

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
I think my favourite part of the job I worked on was all the little animals and particularly the dragon because it was a challenge for me as I'm not used to doing animals/characters in 3D. And I am pretty happy with the final result!

What was challenging working on this level?

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
As I said previously, the dragon was challenging, but there are almost 300 objects in this scene, and with Powerwash's workflow, everything needs to be as clean as possible! And it's not easy to find all the issues, but thankfully we have a QA team!

What changed the most during development with the level?

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
The composition changed a lot. I had a lot of feedback from the design team during all the development to change this - move this -remove this. And also the materials changed, at first, the castle and rocks were really dark and not very interesting and 'funny' so we needed to find something more colorfull to match the idea of this mini golf level!

Was there something you wanted to have in the level, but it just didn't work?

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
I think I have everything I wanted on this level and I'm pretty happy with the result, it was really nice to work on this one because I was free to do what I had in mind!

Any closing thoughts?

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
I just hope people enjoy the story, the colors and animals of the minigolf course, I put all my love on it ! haha

Making it Play Great!

Dave is the designer who was in charge of making the level fun to play and clean! Here are their answers to the same questions! :)

Where did you start with the level?

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
We had some rough guidelines from the James (Creative Director):
1) We want a Castle on top of a hill that can be seen at all times.
2) We want the course to spiral around the hill to the Castle on top.
3) We want the theme to be Story Book Fantasy (less Dungeons and Dragons, more King Arthur, and Sword in the Stone).

We started with research: Looking at real-world minigolf courses to get an idea for hole and course layouts. While thinking about the layout of our course and where each hole would be positioned, we decided to try and tell a story from Hole 1 to Hole 9. The story is an adventure starting out in a forest, travelling through a village, navigating a dangerous cave, before arriving at the outer walls of a castle. The player goes through training in the courtyard, makes their way through the castle keep corridors, and eventually arrives at the castle itself.

What is the favourite part of the job you worked on?

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
My favourite part was trying to figure out the layout of the holes. They needed to fit the space, draw the player along the 'correct path' and I also wanted them to be somewhat viable as real minigolf holes.

What was challenging working on this level?

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
Trying to envision how everything would fit together. What was the scale of the objects? What sight lines did the player have? Could we hide and reveal areas to make it feel like the player is exploring and discovering the level as they progress? There were lots of elements I needed to consider as I was designing the level, but it was Laura that really helped pull them all together and make what I had in my head a reality.

What changed the most during development with the level?

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
The layout around the back side of the course, after the dragon. We needed to take the player up quite a steep incline, but we also wanted to squeeze in a few holes on the way. Eventually the castle courtyard-to-corridor idea formed and we used steps and stairways between the holes to push the player upwards.

Was there something you wanted to have in the level, but it just didn't work?

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
We wanted all the holes to be fully playable. For example, if the player hit the ball in the dragon's mouth, it'd pop out the hole on its back, roll down the tail and into the hole. Hit the ball through the final hole and it'd roll down the gutters in the bucket. The complexity and time needed to get everything working and bug free just made it unfeasible for us unfortunately.

Any closing thoughts?

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
I loved working on this level, it was fun to use some more traditional level design techniques to lead the player on the journey through the level and to give a sense of discovery and exploration. I hope players enjoy exploring the minigolf course and returning it to its former, vibrant glory.

We hope everyone has learned more about the level process and has enjoyed some of the in-progress images!

Weekly Meme

Each week we release a PowerWash version of a popular meme format. This week it is 'Take My Money'. How would you caption it? If you have any recommendations, please also let us know below!

That's All, Folks!

Thank you to everyone for reading. We hope everyone is enjoying the new content and these insights! :)

Keep up with everything PowerWash Simulator by following our channels:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PowerWashSim
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/futurlab
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@powerwashsim?
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/powerwashsim
PWS Wiki: https://powerwash-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/PowerWash_Simulator_Wiki

May 26, 2022

Big Building Update

Instruments of Destruction - Radiangames

Version 0.121 is now out! It features a bunch of new large structures, 3 new/updated Sandbox islands, and some improvements to how destruction works (particularly with large structures). Here's the full changelist:

* Added a bunch of new large structures (towers, office buildings, warehouses, and bridges).
* Added a new Sandbox island to test bridges (Bridge Tester).
* Updated Structure Zoo 1 + 2 and made Structure Zoo 1 the default.
* Improved structural collapses so buildings insta-crumble far less often.
* Reduced debris flying up way too fast from a block breaking into pieces.
* Improved particle debris so it doesn't bounce crazy high.
* Fixed some sides being damaged (or not) when they shouldn't be as structures break apart.
* Changed how treads collide so they glitch out far less often.
* Island Editor: Improved how built-in structures are referenced so custom islands won't lose references in the future (See ISLAND EDITOR NOTE below).
* Structure Editor: Added a warning if decals are not connected to a block.
* Structure Editor: Added a button to select disconnected decals.
* Structure Editor: Fixed sound fading out over time in the test mode.
* Island Editor: Fixed multiple small issues with the ground editor.

ISLAND EDITOR NOTE: If you've built a custom island that references built-in structures, those structures will be incorrect. Adding/changing new structures to the built-in list broke them, sorry! This shouldn't happen again in the future (after the level is saved), even as more structures are added.

To show off the new stuff, I made another video. I think this format works the best for me because I don't have to worry about VO and that makes them fast to record/edit (recording also doubles as extra testing session).

Some of you may notice this is not the 0.121 update I had said it would be. Here's some background on why that is:

After the 0.120 update, I planned to work on new islands for a while. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the new islands, so I procrastinated by working on a new version of Draco to test all the new terrain features and find any other issues with the in-game editors. While that new version of Draco isn't in the game yet, the editors did get some refinement, and I felt ready to figure out some island ideas.

While working out what new island designs/concepts to build, I decided I wanted to push the limits of how large buildings could be in the game and have these massive buildings/structures be the focus of some new islands. I started to work on the larger structures, but kept running into small problems. The limits of the game were just a bit too low, particularly the number of maximum links between pieces in a structure. So I increased some numbers, but as I worked on large towers and such, debris was not looking as natural as it should, with too much stuff flying up randomly, and small particle debris bouncing far too high.

The particle debris was easy enough to fix, but it took me way longer than it should have to figure out where the fast-flying medium debris was coming from (it was mostly from incorrectly initialized variables). Once that was finally resolved, I spent a while tweaking numbers to prevent the instant-crumble phenomenon that happened pretty frequently when larger towers started to collapse.

Eventually I got some new towers in, and a couple new office buildings (one of them is not in the video/sandbox island because it's not very unique and will likely get revised). The warehouses and bridges took a bit more time to get right, as they required yet more destruction/stress tuning (as well as general experimentation).

I realized while working on all these structures that they should be the focus of this update, and I'd work on new campaign islands after. So new islands are still coming, but it'll be a little while longer.

Long-Term Structure Improvements

Now that this update is done, I think it's pretty obvious I need to make a significant change to allow much better long-term variety in structures. That change is adding support for some sort of wedge or skewed box as part of a structure. As everything about structures and blocks uses a standard box shape, it's not going to be an easy change, but I can think of a few different approaches that might help make it a little easier to add.

I'll also make it possible to rotate blocks/building arbitrarily once that happens, but there's no rush quite yet. I doubt I'll be adding many new structures after this update (until the change happens), as the structural style will change quite dramatically when it happens. I need to think more about the problem before I commit to any sort of timeframe. There are also other dramatic changes I might want to do first, such as multi-select in vehicle build mode.

Adventures in Failing to Focus

To be honest, the past few weeks have been a bit of struggle in terms of my work consistency. Some of the things I've been working on have been pretty tedious, but my productivity problem has been more mental than anything else. I've been doing less programming lately, and that means I have a harder time focusing. Working on structures/islands/art/etc is relatively straight-forward and my mind has always wandered while doing that kind of work. I won't get into details, but that's lead to more problems and distractions than usual lately.

Some of the recent struggles are just due to burnout from working 10+ hours for 6 months, and part of is a natural cycle I tend to go through. Usually the best thing for me to do (when focus is hard) is to just work on anything on the game, regardless of whether it's important or not. Just need to find something that seems fun and easy and do that. Eventually the focus will return and my abnormally high productivity with it.