Devlog Update 171

Parkitect has been complete and stable enough for a while now that calling it an “Alpha” doesn’t seem fitting anymore - so the next update will be “Beta 1″ :)
Aside from the name change things will keep going as they have with the weekly devlog updates and monthly game updates until the game is finished. The biggest missing part for that is still the campaign, which is being worked on and progressing well.

Along with the Beta 1 update around the end of November we’ll also bump up the price slightly to $19.99.

Devlog

Luuk added marking terrain with “support rights” to the scenario editor, which is land you can’t directly build on but you can build across it:

And the color picker received a palette of nice predefined colors:

Tim has been working on improving savegame loading times and managed to reduce them by roughly 40%:

Most notably the annoying long freeze that happened on the loading screen is also gone now. Making these improvements possible required replacing a bunch of default Unity functionality with custom code. This affects many parts of the game so we’ll keep an extra close look on problem reports once this has been released to make sure no subtle bugs have crept in that we couldn’t find in our tests.

Devlog Update 170

Parkitect has been fairly moddable for a while now, but it always required some coding skills. To make things easier some great community tools have been created in the past, but since the game keeps changing every month mods tend to break sooner or later which is frustrating for both modders and players.

To improve this situation Luuk has been working on an official modding tool for the past few weeks. Custom objects are the most common type of mod so the quick and easy creation of custom object mods is what the tool is focused on for now. It only takes a couple of clicks to get a 3D model working in the game:

Since this is an official tool we can ensure that mods created with this will continue to work with future updates of the game.
We’re also making it open source in case anyone wants to contribute improvements.

To give modders a headstart the modding tool is fully compatible with the current version of the game and available right now over here: Parkitect Asset Editor

Also, with the next update we’ll add Steam Workshop support for mods allowing to install them with a single click!
Modders will be able to upload and publish updates for mods directly through the game just as easy.
When uploading a blueprint or savegame to the Workshop that contains any modded objects the required mods get automatically linked as dependencies so it’s easy to find and install any mods that are needed for using that blueprint/savegame.

Devlog Update 169

Employees gain experience by doing their work now. The more experienced they are the faster they complete their tasks and the less quickly they get tired.

They can also be sent to the Staff Training Room, a new park utility building where they train to gain experience more quickly.

Devlog Update 168 + Alpha 19

Alpha 19 is now available for download! The full change log is at the end of this post. 

Devlog

We’ve added the Gentle Monorail Ride from last weeks Art Stream. It’s a very calm scenic ride that fits nicely above paths or between other rides:

There are a bunch of new scenario options:

And we’ve added an overall thoughts overview to the Average Guest Stats window, which helps identify problems with the park more quickly.
You can also click individual entries and get markers for where these thoughts have appeared in the park, which has been added to all other thought lists as well. This helps for example with figuring out where guests visiting a certain ride are coming from:

Changelog

- added scenery visibility and rating system
- added “Immersion” stat for guests showing how much they like the scenery
- added park and ride scenery ratings
- added scenery protects rides/paths from rain
- added Water Coaster
- added Gentle Monorail Ride
- added Scarecrow entertainer costume
- added skeletons, mausoleum, sculptures
- added scenario settings: can’t change park entrance fee, free ride entrance, free shop products, disallow terraforming, build height restriction
- added all current guest thoughts to guest overview window
- added a bigger 45° curve option
- added right click to turn off all other theme buttons in deco builder window
- improved guest performance
- improved deco window search to search through all categories, not just the currently selected one
- fixed a case where trains could derail for no reason
- fixed haulers not being able to pick up crates from delivery pad if stack is too high
- fixed terrain sometimes not rendering at all on Linux