Tower Unite News

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for November 21st, 2022, detailing all the changes that have happened since November 14th, 2022. Note: Devs that don't appear in the weekly log are not necessarily away or not doing work, but may be working on things currently not announced or backend work that doesn't need to be detailed.

[h2]Accessibility Suggestions[/h2]
We've created a forum post asking the community for suggestions on how we can improve gameplay for players with certain conditions such as colorblindness, dyslexia, or anything else that might affect a players ability to use the standard presentation and controls of the game.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, and possible solutions on how to solve a particular issue, please check out the forum post here.

[h2]November 2022 Condo Contest - ENDING SOON[/h2]

Hey everyone!

This month, the Condo Contest goal will be to build on the rooftop of the default Condo!

So, the main requirement is that your build must be on the roof of the default Condo.

Beyond that, feel free to do whatever you want with the build, including any theme. It can be an enclosed space or an open area, and you can include pictures of stairways / teleport areas / etc. to get up to the build.

The submission period ends on November 29th, 2022 at 11:59 PM.

You can read all the rules and how to enter the contest here!

[h2]Dark Voyage - OUT NOW[/h2]
Last week, we released our interactive shooting dark ride, Dark Voyage! We also released a quick hotfix on Friday which fixed some issues from the initial release.

We're also working on another patch to fix some more issues found over the weekend.

You can read the patch notes here!

[h2]Plaza: Carnival Games[/h2]
Johanna started working on several new Carnival Game style kiosks for a future expansion to the Plaza boardwalk.

[h3]Plaza: Water Gun Game WIP[/h3]



[h3]Plaza: Milk Jug Toss Game WIP[/h3]



[h3]Plaza: Balloon Dart Toss Game WIP[/h3]



[h2]Plaza: Electronics Store NPC[/h2]
JJosh continued working on the new Plaza Store NPCs, working on the Electronics Store NPC.

[h3]Plaza: Electronics Store NPC EARLY WIP[/h3]



[h2]Miscellany[/h2]

Johanna looked into optimizations for the Plaza.

Lifeless continued working on game world maps.

macdguy worked on Dark Voyage, releasing the update, along with continuing work on Condo I/O.

Madmijk worked on Dark Voyage, fixing some bugs, while also working on adding movement smoothing to the Monorail.

Nuclearxpotato continued working on Virus: Altar, working on the rear tunnels. Also started working on some Holiday items.

Sketchman worked on backend improvements and fixes.

Wheezwer finished working on concept art for the Tower Glove. She also helped come up with ideas and concept art for the Holiday items.

Will continued working on music and sounds for SDNL and Dark Voyage.

[h2]Wrap It Up[/h2]
That about covers everything that happened since November 14th, 2022 at PixelTail Games.

---

Join our Discord for development updates and community fun! https://discord.gg/pixeltail
We love awesome people like you!

We're also active on Twitter! https://twitter.com/PixelTailGames

Follow our developments on our Trello in near real-time: https://trello.com/b/6BwRMiPw/tower-unite-roadmap

Take a peek at what's being worked on every week in our weekly dev logs! There's bound to be something interesting every week! https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/devupdates/weekly-dev-logs

Please report bugs & submit suggestions on our forums. We're active everyday & here to help.
For bug reports: https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/bug-report/18
For suggestions: https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/suggestions/7

This update addresses several bugs from the new update.



Changes

• Dark Voyage: Improved legibility of scores on the screens
  
• Dark Voyage: Reduced volume of other player's guns
  
• Dark Voyage: Increased hit box size of the pop up ghosts
  
• Dark Voyage: Increased hit box size of the minecart ghosts
  
• Dark Voyage: Increased hit box size of the flying hell demons
  
• Rolling pets now sit with you if you are in a seat

Bug Fixes

• Dark Voyage: Fixed pop up targets sometimes being up before they even pop up
  
• Dark Voyage: Fixed doors often not opening
  
• Dark Voyage: Fixed a hole in the Plaza

Join our Discord for development updates and community fun! https://discord.gg/pixeltail
We love awesome people like you!

We're also active on Twitter! https://twitter.com/PixelTailGames

Follow our developments on our Trello in near real-time:
https://trello.com/b/6BwRMiPw/tower-unite-roadmap

Take a peek at what's being worked on every week in our weekly dev logs! There's bound to be something interesting every week! http://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/devupdates/weekly-dev-logs

Please report bugs & submit suggestions on our forums. We're active everyday & here to help.
For bug reports: https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/bug-report/18
For suggestions: https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/suggestions/7

The Dark Voyage
Now open! Experience an interactive dark shooting ride that takes you on a journey through time and monsters! Enter your time vehicle with up to 4 others and face off against the terrors that await you in various corrupted locations. This ride is a permanent attraction.



Haunted ghouls and ghosts try to spook your face off in this adventurous and dangerous ride that is set to chill your bones to dust.

Hit targets with your blaster to rack up points to contribute to a group total, and compare scores with friends! With a sharp eye and good aim, you may even uncover hidden secrets.




Extension of Halloween Events
We'll be extending out the Halloween events for another week. We've added a few new items to the Halloween Ghoulcery store to unlock. This is also your last chance this year to earn ghoul coins and get the newly updated Ghoulish Spender achievement!



Changes

• Added the Dark Voyage (Shooting Interactive Dark Ride)
  
• Added Used Cleaver, Used Hatchet, Used Machete, and Decorative Remains to the Ghoulcery
  
• Added Second-Hand Axe, Second-Hand Machete, Melty Candle, Wall-Mounted Bell, Gas Lantern, Prop Barrel, Prop Crate to Rob's Imports
  
• Added Campfire, Firewood to the Seasons nature store
  
• Added Spikeboard to the DIY store
  
• Condo: You can now drag grouped items with standard drag/drop
  
• Condo: Added group copy support to Copycat. When you copycat a group, it'll also keep it as a group on duplication
  
• Condo: Alt-drag group copying now regroups the copied group together so it stays as a group on duplicate
  
• Plaza: Ghoulcery now has categories for each year
  
• Plaza: Map boards now have maps on both sides
  
• Plaza: Halloween remains spawn amount increased from 10 to 20
  
• Ghoulish Spender achievement now only requires 20 items for it to be unlocked
  
• Condo: Physics items no longer simulate physics on respawn by default, with a setting to override that and simulate physics on respawn
  
• Updated Collection Book navigation tabs to be more visually distinct when they are active
  
• Arcade - Sunlight Roller: Increased the texture resolution for Sunlight Roller's cabinet art
  
• Arcade - Candy Slam: Tweaked Candy Slam's target materials to be more readable/clear
  
• Condo: New Barrel item model
  
• Condo: Reduced lights on Billiards table

Bug Fixes

• Plaza: Fixed several fast travel teleports not working
  
• Plaza: Fixed remains sometimes spawning in the stairs leading to the maze
  
• Plaza - Halloween: Fixed remains spawning inside the haunted maze's staircase
  
• Arcade: Fixed wrong collision in coin pushers
  
• Arcade - Little Birde Feeders: Fixed collisions not always toggling on when playing
  
• Arcade - Avalanche: Fixed cats being colored wrong
  
• Arcade - Avalanche: Fixed cat hit animations not playing properly
  
• Arcade - Gears of Coin: Fixed coin not always falling down the funnel
  
• Arcade - Dragon's Treasure: Removed extra giant peg that was intersecting with one of the Dragon's Treasure machines
  
• Arcade: Fixed Cold Slushy cups having no textures
  
• ZM - Gasoline: Fixed missing gasoline pumps and sign
  
• Minigolf - Kingdom: Fixed an area that would not correctly mark the player as out of bounds
  
• Virus - Corrosion: Fixed spawn points intersecting with map geometry
  
• Virus - Corrosion: Fixed several collision issues
  
• Virus - Subway: Improved post processing effects that would cause certain weapons to look without color
  
• Virus - Hospital: Fixed chairs being made of entirely wood
  
• Condo: Fixed Turkey item not replicating to other clients
  
• Plaza: Fixed a collision issue with the dueling arena building
  
• Fixed a bug with collection book when switching between Arcade/Fishing categories if you were inside the list of items when switching categories
  
• Condo: Workshop NPC models no longer t-pose/unset on condo reload

Optimizations

• Plaza: Optimized reflection capture maps. Decreased memory footprint from ~360MB to ~80MB, and removed redundant or extra capture points
  
• Plaza: Removed redundant fog particles from the Halloween Plaza to increase performance
  
• Optimized the materials/draw calls on the devil pet, flying skull pet, UFO pet, flaming skull pet, flying sun pet, and the angel pet
  
• Reduced drawcalls (optimization) for the rope fence, dock lamp, and tall standing candle lamp
  
• Optimized various pet materials
  
• Optimized several condo items
  
• Optimized Halloween maze

Join our Discord for development updates and community fun! https://discord.gg/pixeltail
We love awesome people like you!

We're also active on Twitter! https://twitter.com/PixelTailGames

Follow our developments on our Trello in near real-time:
https://trello.com/b/6BwRMiPw/tower-unite-roadmap

Take a peek at what's being worked on every week in our weekly dev logs! There's bound to be something interesting every week! http://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/devupdates/weekly-dev-logs

Please report bugs & submit suggestions on our forums. We're active everyday & here to help.
For bug reports: https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/bug-report/18
For suggestions: https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/suggestions/7

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for November 14th, 2022, detailing all the changes that have happened since October 31st, 2022. Note: Devs that don't appear in the weekly log are not necessarily away or not doing work, but may be working on things currently not announced or backend work that doesn't need to be detailed.

[h2]Accessibility Suggestions[/h2]
We've created a forum post asking the community for suggestions on how we can improve gameplay for players with certain conditions such as colorblindness, dyslexia, or anything else that might affect a players ability to use the standard presentation and controls of the game.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, and possible solutions on how to solve a particular issue, please check out the forum post here.

[h2]Dark Voyage[/h2]
We're working hard on getting "Dark Voyage", the shooting interactive dark ride, ready for release. We're aiming for sometime this week provided everything goes well.

macdguy continued working on "Dark Voyage". He finished up the events and is working on getting the ride ready for release.

Madmijk continued working on "Dark Voyage", making sure the carts perform their duties correctly.

[h2]Virus: Altar[/h2]

Nuclearxpotato worked on replacing the block out with terraces and cliff faces. He also worked on the serpent tunnels in the back of the map.

[h3]Virus: Altar WIP[/h3]



[h2]Condo: Item Grouping[/h2]

macdguy worked on support for grouping items together in the Condo, so that many objects can be moved around at the same time.

[h3]Condo: Item Group Demo[/h3]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Miscellany[/h2]

JJosh continued working on the new Plaza Store NPCs, working on the Electronics Store NPC.

Lifeless continued working on game world maps.

macdguy continued working on Condo I/O, and added controller support to the Graphics Settings Menu.

Sketchman worked on backend improvements and fixes.

Wheezwer worked on UI icons for the emotes.

Will continued working on music and sounds for SDNL.

[h2]Wrap It Up[/h2]
That about covers everything that happened since October 31st, 2022 at PixelTail Games.

---

Join our Discord for development updates and community fun! https://discord.gg/pixeltail
We love awesome people like you!

We're also active on Twitter! https://twitter.com/PixelTailGames

Follow our developments on our Trello in near real-time: https://trello.com/b/6BwRMiPw/tower-unite-roadmap

Take a peek at what's being worked on every week in our weekly dev logs! There's bound to be something interesting every week! https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/devupdates/weekly-dev-logs

Please report bugs & submit suggestions on our forums. We're active everyday & here to help.
For bug reports: https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/bug-report/18
For suggestions: https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/suggestions/7

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for October 31st, 2022, detailing all the changes that have happened since October 24th, 2022. Note: Devs that don't appear in the weekly log are not necessarily away or not doing work, but may be working on things currently not announced or backend work that doesn't need to be detailed.

[h2]Accessibility Suggestions[/h2]
We've created a forum post asking the community for suggestions on how we can improve gameplay for players with certain conditions such as colorblindness, dyslexia, or anything else that might affect a players ability to use the standard presentation and controls of the game.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, and possible solutions on how to solve a particular issue, please check out the forum post here.

[h2]October 2022 Condo Contest OVER[/h2]
Thanks again to everyone who participated in the vote.

There were 130 responses this time, and votes were very spread out between participants!

The winners of the community vote are:

1st Place - @medai, Lolo-Chan, Nykane Mundoe, CorpseCutieDana
2nd Place - @Baby_In_A_Pipe
3rd Place - @Tut.exe
4th Place - @Assault

Because the vote was so spread out this time, and there were so many amazing entries, we wanted to highlight some of the exceptional Condos that didn't place in the community vote.

These highlighted condo builders will receive 400,000 Units in addition to the 100,000 Unit participation prize.

The staff highlights include:

For Theming:
@CalculatorSpoon - Abducted

For Storytelling:
@Frasler - Fyrstaden

For Unique Gameplay:
@fruzstrated - The Midnight Faire

Honorable Mentions:
@TheGreenKing - Horror Towers
@GoopGoop - Castle Pixelwick

You can read all of the entries submitted for this contest here.

[h2]Halloween[/h2]
We're working hard on getting "Dark Voyage", the shooting interactive dark ride, ready for release.

Johanna continued working on getting the Plaza setup and ready for "Dark Voyage".

macdguy continued working on "Dark Voyage". He finished adding targets and events to the Western and Hell sections, while continuing to work on the Mansion section. He also worked on finishing the gameplay logic, the game coordinator, along with designing sound ambience / musical events in the ride.

Madmijk continued working on "Dark Voyage", finishing the cart logic and other related tasks.

Nuclearxpotato worked on adding more Halloween items.

Wheezwer continued working on signage for "Dark Voyage".

Will worked on music and sounds for "Dark Voyage".

[h3]Halloween: Spikeboard Item[/h3]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Halloween: More Items WIP[/h3]



[h2]Miscellany[/h2]

JJosh continued working on the new Plaza Store NPCs, working on the Electronics Store NPC.

Lifeless continued working on game world maps.

macdguy fixed some bugs and continued working on VR support.

Nuclearxpotato continued working on the Virus map, Altar.

Sketchman worked on backend improvements and fixes.

Wheezwer worked on UI icons for the emotes.

Will continued working on music and sounds for SDNL.

[h3]Emote UI Icons WIP[/h3]



[h3]Electronics Store NPC WIP[/h3]



[h2]Wrap It Up[/h2]
That about covers everything that happened since October 24th, 2022 at PixelTail Games.

---

Join our Discord for development updates and community fun! https://discord.gg/pixeltail
We love awesome people like you!

We're also active on Twitter! https://twitter.com/PixelTailGames

Follow our developments on our Trello in near real-time: https://trello.com/b/6BwRMiPw/tower-unite-roadmap

Take a peek at what's being worked on every week in our weekly dev logs! There's bound to be something interesting every week! https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/devupdates/weekly-dev-logs

Please report bugs & submit suggestions on our forums. We're active everyday & here to help.
For bug reports: https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/bug-report/18
For suggestions: https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/suggestions/7