Unitys text rendering isn’t the greatest currently - text looks blurry, styling and layouting is fairly limited, and when it had some trouble with handling a custom font as part of our current UI overhaul it was clear that it was time to switch to a 3rd party text rendering solution. Here’s a direct comparison:

The deco window is quite big and can get in the way, so we’re experimenting with automatically minimizing it as soon as the cursor leaves the window. Not sure yet if this might be confusing new players, we’ll have to see :)

Tim has spent the last couple weeks on adding a random terrain generator to the scenario editor, and it’s producing pretty nice results now :) There’s lots of options so you’ll never have to play on empty flat terrains anymore (although that’s still possible if you want to):

Garret added a smaller park entrance that can be themed more easily:

And some wooden paths, queues and more deco objects, including additional nice building pieces based on designs by StolleJay:

Alpha 10 is now available for download! The full change log is at the end of this post.

Devlog

When we started with this project I knew almost nothing about programming shaders, and while there’s still much left to learn I’ve gained a bit of experience. So I’ve improved the water shorelines and added refractions:

The underwater glass tunnels were faked a bit previously - we simply didn’t draw any water on top of them because I didn’t know how to make it look like they’re not flooded with water on the inside. It looked “good enough” in most cases but always bothered me and especially now with the refractions it looked weird, but I’ve figured out how to make it work properly now:

Garret started working on sciene fiction props:

And Luuk added a maintenance budget setting to rides:

Lowering the budget reduces the monthly maintenance costs but has a negative impact on safety if done for too long.

Changelog

- added Jumper
- added mechanical props
- added science fiction props
- added setting one-way signs per staff type
- added missing pieces for the brick and spooky walls sets
- added adjustable ride maintenance budget
- added receiving land as reward for scenario goals
- added configurable land costs for scenarios
- added adjustable climate for scenarios
- added returning guests
- added theme filters to deco window
- added categories to blueprints window
- added banking across the 180° mark
- added limited banking to 90° per segment size
- added restoring weather and camera position when loading savegame
- added default Steam Controller configuration/scaled up UI in Big Picture mode
- added water edges at terrain end
- improved spawn positions of guest/ride info windows so they don’t all appear in the same spot
- improved deco window performance
- improved rain performance
- improved sorting of deco objects (grouped by theme)
- improved the look of water and underwater tunnels
- improves guest animation performance
- improved stopping position in station for Vertical Drop Coaster and Wing Coaster
- should fix “location occupied” error when building coaster tracks although location isn’t occupied (let us know if it still happens)
- fixed a case where Janitors were unable to transport trash out of the park
- fixed tunnel entrances sometimes showing through terrain
- fixed visual glitches on log flume water
- fixed coaster stat graph getting messed up when switching to coaster stat tab repeatedly
- fixed deco builder entries sometimes not showing enough color buttons
- fixed lag when rotating camera while editing a coaster
- fixed lag when switching to coaster stat tab
- fixed a rare case where it was impossible to click anything after loading a savegame
- fixed Star Shape and Turbine rides sometimes being in wrong position while letting guests in after loading savegame
- fixed camera not being able to focus onto objects while game is paused
- fixed not being able to edit scenarios

We added the Jumper ride from this weeks Art Stream:

Tim added receiving more park area as a reward for completing scenario goals, which should allow for some interesting scenarios:

And Luuk added a default configuration for the Steam Controller. I don’t own a Steam Controller and was surprised to see how well it works in Luuks demo - almost as fast as using a mouse and keyboard. Pretty cool!