Devlog Update 199

We’re back to working on the campaign once again, so you know what that means by now - not much that we can show currently and most of the stuff going into the next game update are smaller tweaks.

Many of these were small UI improvements. There are per-category buttons for marking objects as available/researched in the scenario settings now:

The handle for extending boat ride stations should look better and more like something that can be interacted with:

Scenario descriptions are visible from within the park now:

Some event notifications got a progress bar so you got a better idea how much longer the event will go:

And fire deco objects emit some flickering light now:

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Devlog Update 198

We released a patch for some smaller problems late last week, but overall the update went fairly well and there don’t seem to be any major problems caused by the big underlying changes. The changelog for the patch is at the end of this post.
There are however some rare cases on Mac and Linux where the game is running much slower than it should be for no apparent reason. We’ve contacted Unity about it since it seems to be an engine issue, so hopefully we’ll know what’s going on there soon.

GOG released a new tool that allows us to upload and release new updates by ourselves, which will speed up how fast new game versions appear on their store a lot. We’ve integrated their tool into our release pipeline so releasing updates on GOG is a single click for us now, just like on other big stores.

We’re also getting closer to getting some professional translations done, so I’ve improved our translation tools last week. We had a limitation previously where certain words would be impossible to translate into some languages - for example we have small umbrellas guests can buy from shops and the big ones available as deco that provide shade. Even though these are two very different things in English they are both called “Umbrella” but other languages use different words for each of these, so we needed to add the ability to have multiple different translations for a single English word depending on context.

Changelog (Beta 7a)

- added highlighting trash as source of bad scenery ratings in scenery rating visualization view
- added clicking on a thought marker opens the info window of the person belonging to this thought
- improved behaviour when placing a queue tile next to a ride entrance that is already connected to a path that isn’t a queue
- should fix some severe performance issues on macOS
- fixed prices in deco UI not updating when scaling deco objects using hotkeys
- fixed ride light color button being shown even if ride has no custom light colors
- fixed a case where people would sometimes not know how to get somewhere even though there’s a path
- fixed a problem with color palettes where colors would be invisible
- fixed rare case where staff couldn’t leave staff room
- fixed weirdness with wooden supports when placing rotated blueprints
- fixed edge scrolling being active while game isn’t focused
- fixed weather not getting saved/loaded properly

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Devlog Update 197 + Beta 7

Beta 7 is now available for download! The full change log is at the end of this post.

Devlog

Garret added lights to the Transformer:

And we added the Gyro Drop Tower from last weeks Art Stream:

Changelog

- significantly improved guest performance
- significantly improved performance when running game at x2/x3 speed
- significantly improved park loading times
- increased overall guest count (some parks might see less guests; depends on what the park contains)
- added Gyro Drop Tower
- added Calm ride music track
- added sound effects for recently added props and rides
- added scenario goal requiring a certain amount of coasters with a certain rating
- changed coasters to attract significantly more guests to the park than other types of rides
- changed how park rating is calculated
- adjusted money balance to account for higher guest numbers (might need further tweaks)
- improved guest flow to attractions
- improved some more building pieces to be recolorable (walls, pillars)
- improved performance when zooming in/out of crowded areas of the park
- fixed guests being able to see bad decoration below paths
- fixed raised paths not blocking rain on paths below
- fixed some pavillions not blocking rain
- fixed guests sometimes exiting boats immediately instead of riding them
- fixed not being able to build some track pieces after curved slope-to-flat transitions
- fixed exit gates not waiting for all guests to leave the ride
- fixed a case where trains could get stuck when leaving the station and cause lag
- fixed a case where the finance overview could get stuck
- fixed an error when using object pipette on modded objects
- fixed path supports not appearing until game is unpaused
- fixed red build preview when dragging fences even though fence can be built
- fixed duplicate resolution entries in graphics settings

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Devlog Update 196

Art Stream

Come join us on Garrets Twitch channel on Wednesday (May 30th) at 1pm PDT to chat while watching some new Parkitect art being created.

Devlog

The multithreading stuff seems to be fairly stable right now! We will still be running a bunch of tests this week, but it looks like it will be possible to release it with Beta 7 already.
Having more guests messes with the financial balance of the game quite a bit, so we started adjusting that. As usual it will take many tiny tweaks over a longer period of time to get that feeling right again, so don’t expect that to be perfect just yet with the next update.

A more reasonable amount of guests for this test park

The audio team delivered a few hundred new sound effects, so all the props and rides that were added in the past half year or so got their sounds now!
Gordon also finished a new calm ride music track which will be very nice for the most low-intensity rides.

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