I worked on some long-requested coaster features this week.
Curves have similar slope options as straight pieces now, meaning curves can transition directly into a slope or to a different slope angle:

This allows building some smooth elements that were not possible before.

And we’re adding LSM launches. This is a magnetic launch system that allows accelerating to high speeds without having to stop the train. It‘s fairly expensive though!

Due to the upcoming holidays this release is a bit earlier than usual. We’ll be on our winter break now and will return to the usual weekly devlog schedule on January 15th.

Beta 2 is now available for download! The full change log is at the end of this post.
Happy Holidays everyone and see you in 2018!

Devlog

Gordon finished another three awesome ride music tracks: Western, Banjo and Polka. Check them out!

I’ve spent this week on performance optimizations.
The worst performance experienced in Parkitect is usually when zooming all the way out so that most of the park is visible on screen at once. To a degree this is simply due to needing to render a lot more stuff, but partially it’s also because we can’t do certain optimizations - for example, we don’t run animations on guests who are not visible. Since one of the biggest performance costs in Parkitect is animations that is a problem with hundreds of visible guests.
To solve this I’ve built a separate animation system with the only purpose of rendering animations as fast as somehow possible when zoomed out. The animations are lower quality but you can barely notice the difference from a distance so it’s fine! I’ve also limited it to the most important animations to further improve performance: standing, walking and sitting.
How much of an improvement this is varies across parks, depending on how many guests there are and what else is going on. Overall though you should see at least an 25% FPS increase when zooming all the way out. Here are some results from my tests:

Changelog

- added Elevator transport ride
- added three new ride music tracks
- added custom ride music (loaded from My Documents/Parkitect/My Music)
- added Western props, window boxes
- added more ride descriptions
- added remaining guest needs to park rating
- added overview list of all current guest activities
- added fences adapt to stairs
- removed color limitations from trees and rocks
- improved performance significantly when zooming out in busy parks
- improved Bumper Boats movement
- improved Splash Battle target building (easier to attach to walls)
- fixed Submarines could unload guests before fully arriving inside the station
- fixed advanced color picker sometimes misbehaving

This week there’s a new actions overview, showing what everyone in the park is doing:

Fences adapt to stairs now, making the look of paths very customizable:

The color limitations have been removed from trees and rocks, so you can give them any color and use the brush/pipette tools on them now:

Gabby made some nice new western props and I made some window boxes:

And Garret gave an interview talking about the games development and some things that are still to come: