PowerWash Simulator News

Hey everyone - welcome to dev log 41!

Today it's time for your spiciest speculations. Can you figure out what this filthy new job coming in update 0.8 is from the pictures in this dev log alone? Scroll down, put on your detective's hat, and let us know your guesses in the comments!



In last week's episode we covered the return of the gnomes and the new ladder system coming in the update, find out more here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1290000/announcements/detail/3148579075943293649



Do you consider yourself a Sherlock Gnomes? Below are candid images of one of the 4 new levels coming in 0.8. Can you work out what this level is? Next week we'll fully reveal it and show it off on our weekly dev stream (Fridays 3 PM UTC.)

Engage inner sleuth, now!



It's watching you!



Do you need to vent about this level?



Take a seat and relax whilst you make your guesses.



You can go to the ceiling with speculations here!



The writing is on the wall...



Last week's image.

So what do you think? Best and worst guesses in the replies! :D



This week's meme format is 'Distracted Washfriend,' feel free to use/caption this as you feel fit!



Next one drops Monday on Twitter!

[h2]That's all folks![/h2]

Thanks so much for reading this dev log, we hope you had fun reading it! Next week we'll fully reveal this new career job!

Also join our Discord to submit and vote on ideas for PowerWash Simulator, find other players and more!

---> https://discord.com/invite/powerwashsimulator

Keep up with everything PowerWash Simulator by following our channels:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PowerWashSim
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/futurlab
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@powerwashsim?
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/powerwashsim/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/powerwashsim
PWS Wiki: https://powerwash-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/PowerWash_Simulator_Wiki

Hey everyone - welcome to dev log 40!

Today we're not looking at a beloved family board game but instead at the return of the gnomes and how we've changed the way ladders work.

Last week we set out what we'd be roughly covering at the start of this year and if you want to read more on that - you can right here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1290000/announcements/detail/3148579075943293649





The ladders have been a regular critique from the community on how slippy they are and then easy to fall off the sides by mistake. We have been listening!



If you had 8 ladders you could pull off these clean tricks with the new system...

Today, Programmer Matt gives us this insight into what they've done to improve them:

Originally posted by Matt

Ladders have always been a tricky endeavour for the team, the original functionality was nothing short of a real ladder. You climb up or you climb down. This functionality was present with the previously ladder system, although it was skewed by the ability to do other forms of movement simultaneously.

With the latest system, we have simplified your interaction with the ladder, enabling you to climb up and down with less effort.

Proposed by design, we have made the ladders a two-way road in which the player may exit by turning perpendicular to the ladder, jumping off, or merely exerting enough momentum to move off in a given direction.

The tricky part in implementing this system was compensating for the different ladder placements per level, in one fine sweep.

In the early stages of development, the ladder held all the functionality to itself. But what good is a ladder without someone to climb it? With this in mind, the most sensible thought was to store and calculate the climbing data per ladder, and have the user retrieve this data when in contact.

The player tells the ladder where they would like to move, and the ladder provides the information to move in that direction. Overall bringing us to a system where the ladder no longer only supports the player, but they support each other (how sweet~).

There still remains some fine-tuning for the current system, however, we have confidence its current state will add to existing gameplay for users when encountering a wild ladder.

Here's a close look at a single ladder in-engine in-action.

Please do let us know your thoughts below this post!



The humble gnomes have become such a staple of PowerWash Simulator and even our mascot. However, they had been occasionally getting in the way of people's cleaning if knocked over in certain ways. We implemented a new QOL system to pick them up before 0.7 but realized too late that there were issues and all of the gnomes which then had to be temporarily removed.

The good news, they are returning in 0.8 and better than ever! One of our designers Nick has gone through every level and placed at least 1 gnome in it. So those gnome hunters out there, this is your time to shine!

Nick was super useful and had this to say on how he placed all of the new gnomes:

[Quote]I definitely didn't place the gnomes, they just appeared throughout Muckingham one day.

They appeared in my dreams the next day...

Thanks Nick!

On the technical side, here are some insights from Gonzalo one of our programmers who created the new pickup system and fixed the gnomes:

Originally posted by Gonzalo

Gnomes and pickable physics items in the game operate in a different way than the accessibility equipment (stools, ladders, etc.) They should have the ability to be placed anywhere within the constraints of the maps and physics while stopping the player from picking up accessibility equipment.

This led to situations in which the gnomes behaved in unexpected ways and could cause a plethora of bugs including softlocks which had been a major problem in multiplayer mode.

After some thorough investigation and testing, physics items have been reworked to be more in line with the rest of the pickable items. You should never see another situation in which the gnomes or other physics items are blocking your accessibility equipment from being picked up which means that our fantastic gnomes are ready to start monitoring decorating the areas again!

They are gnome more. (we'll stop now, we promise!)

Drop us a comment below if you're happy to see these cheeky characters making a return to the game!



Our marketing artist Cristina has been hard at work in unity posing the player model in various poses then turning them into well-known memes! Just for fun, we'll be releasing them each week for you to edit and play around with.

Here's this week's:


Feel free to share, caption or edit this template! :)

We're more than happy to share good ones across our social media!

[h2]That's all folks![/h2]

Thanks so much for reading this dev log, we hope that it has been insightful! Next week we'll be teasing one of the new levels coming in Update 0.8 so don't miss it!

Also join our Discord to submit and vote on ideas for PowerWash Simulator, find other players and more!

---> https://discord.com/invite/powerwashsimulator

Keep up with everything PowerWash Simulator by following our channels:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PowerWashSim
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/futurlab
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@powerwashsim?
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/powerwashsim/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/powerwashsim
PWS Wiki: https://powerwash-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/PowerWash_Simulator_Wiki

Hey everyone - Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2022, in today's developer log we'll take a look at some of the things coming soon and stuff that we'll be covering in more detail in dev logs over the next few weeks!

We hope everyone has had a great time over the Christmas period, our whole team is now back recharged, and working hard to make PowerWash Simulator even better in '22!



Without further ado, onto the first dev log of the year.

[h2] CO-OP Changes [/h2]



We've been listening closely to all of your feedback on the multiplayer beta. One of the most common suggestions is to have some reward for the 2nd player in career mode. We hear you and are looking into it!

This topic is likely going to have a full dev log devoted to it soon!

There are also some priority fixes we want to make to multiplayer but we'll keep everyone updated closer to patch 0.8.

Thanks for all of your feedback and reports so far!

[h2]No More Slippy Ladders [/h2]

We're looking to add a feature where you don't slip off the sides of a ladder. This anti-slip has been one of the highest community requests and we can't wait to add it into the game!



We'll likely take a deeper dive into the work on this in a future log too!

[h2]Gnomes[/h2]

Gnomes will be making a return and to settle some players' madness they will also be added to maps where there wasn't a gnome already. The hunt to find them all will be on!

Also, the feature that originally broke the gnomes leading to their removal will also be added. That is being able to pick up the gnomes and carry them around. We'll show this off in a future post, but this will help if the gnomes get stuck in front of a dirty surface blocking cleaning.



[h2] Mini Golf Course Dev Diary [/h2]

As the Mini Golf Course job is already announced, we don't have to worry about spoiling it! (It was suggested and voted to be created by the community!)

We want to start a series showing the development process from rough to ready for this and maybe some of the other community maps! Expect more on this in the future!

For now here's a very early (from over a month ago) sketch the designer Dave sent to the artist Laura suggesting the creation of a cool dragon statue! What will it look like? Will it make it into the game? Keep an eye out for when we drop these dev diaries to get answers!



[h2] Map teasers [/h2]

There are several more maps coming in 0.8 and some of our most ambitious yet. It is very hard not to spoil them all right now but we're holding back on big teasers until a bit later. That being said, here's something to speculate and mull over before we start to turn up the teasing heat!



Can you tile what this is?

There's a lot here but also a little. We can't wait to dig deeper in upcoming dev logs and to be able to start teasing the 0.8 jobs in a few logs too! For now, thanks for reading and we'll see you next week for log #40!

Keep up with everything PowerWash Simulator by following our channels:

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/powerwashsimulator
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PowerWashSim
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/futurlab
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@powerwashsim?
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/powerwashsim/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/powerwashsim
PWS Wiki: https://powerwash-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/PowerWash_Simulator_Wiki

Hey everyone,

In this week's dev log we extend an extra clean helping of season's greetings to you all and give some updates on us over the holiday period!

Last week we looked into the past at how far PowerWash Simulator had come!

If you want to time travel, read dev log 37 here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1290000/view/3148576538715280569





Here's an early Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the whole development team here at FuturLab.

We'd like to take a moment to say a big thank you to everyone for making 2021 such an incredible year for us.

Thanks first for your reviews, we're now the 7th top-rated Steam game of 2021 and 66th of all time according to SteamDB! It's truly an honor and we're constantly blown away by everyone's reaction to the game we've put so much passion into.



Also, thanks for all of your feedback that's helped us shape and make PWS better over the past few patches. We definitely aren't done yet and have lots more planned leading up to 1.0.

[h2]See You in 2022[/h2]



The team is now off for the holiday period until the new year!

Don't worry, we've got lots of content planned in 2022, and content patch 0.8 isn't too far away. We can't wait to let the teasers flow and see everyone's new speculations! We'll also be working hard on correcting known issues and ironing things out for that patch.

Thanks for reading this log, the next one will be on the 7th of January where we'll hopefully have some spicy spoilers for content update 0.8. Have an amazing holiday period and we'll see all of you in 2022!


If you want to vote on new game ideas, talk to the community, find some tough dirt - then join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/powerwashsimulator

Keep up with everything PowerWash Simulator by following our channels:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PowerWashSim
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/futurlab
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@powerwashsim?
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/powerwashsim/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/powerwashsim
PWS Wiki: https://powerwash-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/PowerWash_Simulator_Wiki

Hey everyone,

Update 0.7 dropped last week with our multiplayer beta! This week, instead of looking into the future and 0.8, we'll be taking a peek at the past!

If you do want to learn more about 0.7, read here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1290000/announcements/detail/3148575179713052844

Anyway, let's go further backward with this week's developer log!



[h2]The Beginning[/h2]

Enjoy this clip of one of the earliest tests and experimenting with the game idea back in July 2019:



I think we can all agree the game has come a LONG way since then! The developer who had made this clip can't even remember making this prototype which says how old and alien it is now!

Here's a look at early wetness VFX which reflections were amped way up and the power washer spray wasn't even properly implemented:



Also notice that the BBQ isn't down near the grass!

[h2]Multiplayer Edition[/h2]

Here's a look at one of the first breakthrough moments with the multiplayer where we were excited to get washing working between host and client! Also, this GIF became a bit of a meme with our community showing off the classic Unity bean!



Following this, we had some memes made by the community like this one:


But the player model has come a long way since then!

It next came to prototype the suit and its animations, here's a WIP first walk captured by the dev team!



Really walking on eggshells there.

We further developed the suits and colors.

Here are some early very bright suits we decided to tone down significantly.



Radioactive green... who knows maybe it will make a return in the future...

There's still work to do on bugs and quirks but here's one of our meme-worthy favorites during development:



To present-day cleaning suit all squeaky clean:



Anyway, those were a few glimpses into powerwash past, but back to looking forward! We'll see you next week for our last dev log before the holiday break! Have a great weekend all!

If you want to vote on new game ideas, talk to the community, find some tough dirt - then join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/powerwashsimulator

Keep up with everything PowerWash Simulator by following our channels:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PowerWashSim
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/futurlab
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@powerwashsim?
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/powerwashsim/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/powerwashsim
PWS Wiki: https://powerwash-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/PowerWash_Simulator_Wiki