Devlog Update 190

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.

Devlog Update 189

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.

Lonely Hills Park, by DeficientGamer

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

Brutalism Park, by Urben1680

Devlog Update 188 + Beta 5

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.

Changelog

- completely overhauled visuals
- added night mode and lights turn on during rain
- added animated lights to flat rides
- added graphics settings for Ambient Occlusion, Screen Space Reflections
- added higher quality Tilt Shift effect
- added decorative light objects
- added Monorail Coaster
- added Funnel Cakes stall
- added tool for taking screenshots of the entire park (default hotkey: F11)
- added small terraforming costs
- added more guest voices
- added rain protection visualization
- added legends to visualization views
- added block sections visualization to track builder
- added water sections on Water Coaster terminate block sections now
- added list of all shops/rides contained within assigned zone to hauler/mechanic info window
- improved zone visualization
- improved load times and memory use of custom ride music significantly (from many minutes to less than a second in some cases)
- improved overall performance by up to 25%
- reduced time it takes to go from a loaded park back into the main menu or into a different park
- fixed market research results not being displayed correctly anymore since Beta 4
- fixed guests having trouble to find the park entrance if the path from spawn to entrance has many crossings
- fixed guests could accidentally leave the park if there are multiple park entrances next to each other
- fixed rain protection not working for flat rides as intended
- fixed Spinning Coaster cars rotating like crazy after loading savegame
- fixed UI problems with the balloon shop
- fixed tracked ride graphs being empty
- fixed suspended cars not swinging anymore

Devlog Update 187 - Visuals Update (3/3)

Art Stream

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.

Until then here’s a quick video showcasing the new lights in action: