Tower Unite News

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for March 16th, 2020, detailing all the changes that have happened since March 9th, 2020. 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.


We are in the final stages of getting this update ready for the general public. Last week was spent mainly figuring out some small networking issues. We're hoping to get this update out sometime this week or next week. We are working hard to get Phase 1 of Arcade released shortly after.

Johanna worked on creating Pizza and Ice Cream shops inside of the arcade.

JJosh worked on several arcade items, such as the Vacuum Robot and a Pug Plush.

macdguy worked on various aspects of the arcade gameplay. He created new HUD elements for "How to Play", token costs, and tickets in hand. Work was also done on better ticket handling and a bonus system for games that have bonus modes.

wheezwer worked on creating logos for both the Pizza and Ice Cream shops and worked on dialogue and designs for the Arcade NPCs.

Will worked on getting sounds figured out for "Pluck-a-pal" and "Wheel of fire".

[h3]Arcade: Pizza and Ice Cream Shops WIP (characters are not finished)[/h3]


[h3]Arcade Overview with Pizza and Ice Cream Shops WIP[/h3]


[h3]Arcade HUD Improvements WIP[/h3]


[h3]Arcade Items WIP[/h3]


Madmijk worked on some improvements for condo editing. Items can now be aligned onto objects in a more deterministic fashion. Before, the item previews would jitter and change orientation when dragging across differently oriented surfaces. Now, the item orientation is determined from the surface angle directly, so no more sporadic/slight differences in orientation when you drag an item across different surfaces.

[h3]Condo Editing Improvements[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Sketch and macdguy continued working on the Unreal Engine 4.20 upgrade.


That about covers everything that happened since March 9th, 2020 at PixelTail Games.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for March 9th, 2020, detailing all the changes that have happened since March 2nd, 2020. 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.


Last week, we released our first public beta test of Tower Unite running on Unreal Engine 4.20! These beta tests allow us to catch bugs that we might have not have caught by ourselves in testing, to help make actual releases less buggy. If you want to read more about this and how to get involved, please check out our forum post here!


Continuing on from last week, we were unable to find an absolute fix for the Skeletal Mesh Artificating issue in a reasonable amount of time, so we've settled on using the workaround fix for now until we come up with a better solution. If you've participated in our Public Beta Tests, you will see this workaround in action.

We're continuing to wrap up some bugs that were introduced with the migration. During the creation of this Dev Log, an issue with how the dedicated servers talk to Valve was resolved, and right now we're working on fixing some issues with the Game Coordinator that runs Bowling and Poker. Once these issues are resolved, and no major other issues crop up, we're hoping to get the update out very quickly.

We'd like to thank everyone for sticking with us during this period. We want to get this out as soon as we possibly can just as much as you guys want to be able to take advantage of these improvements and optimizations, so we can get finally get the Arcade - Phase 1 released to you guys.

Johanna worked on decorating the Arcade, as well as creating a Pizza and Ice Cream shop.

macdguy worked on some changes and fixes to various Arcade games, as well as working on some Arcade items.

Sketchman created some achievement icons for Arcade in-between waiting for things to compile.

Wheezwer worked on creating ticket icons to go onto score charts for each machine, while also creating some score charts for machines that didn't already have them. She also created logos for the Ice Cream and Pizza stores.

[h3]Ice Cream Store Logo WIP[/h3]


[h3]Arcade Machine Score Charts WIP[/h3]


[h2]Arcade - Future Attraction[/h2]
We also wanted to take this opportunity to show off an Arcade attraction that will be appearing in the final phases of the Arcade. This attraction is yet to be given an official name, but in essence this attraction is a rail-based shooting gallery, taking a cart of players through various levels to defeat random enemies that pop out of the environment. This attraction was planned from the very beginning of development, originally being conceived as a boardwalk attraction, until being given a home in the Arcade.

The Weapon Model we showed off in the February 24th, 2020 Weekly Dev Log will be used in this future attraction as the primary weapon.

[h3]Rail-Based Arcade Attraction WIP[/h3]


JJosh continued working on items for Cooking, this week tackling meats, corn, and ice cream.

[h3]Cooking Items WIP[/h3]


ThisIsntNath created the Monthly Dev Breakdown for February 2020.

[h3]Monthly Dev Breakdown for February 2020[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Sketchman and macdguy continued working on the Unreal Engine 4.20 upgrade.


That about covers everything that happened since March 2nd, 2020 at PixelTail Games.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for March 2nd, 2020, detailing all the changes that have happened since February 24th, 2020. 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.


Work continues on the migration to Unreal Engine 4.20. We've been resolving various issues that cropped up regarding the move from 4.19 and 4.20, and we're glad to say we're wrapped up with the 4.20 upgrade. We're working as hard as we can on the few remaining bugs. There were two sections of the game that broke regarding Steam Workshop when we migrated engines.

The first major issue was to the workshop static meshes, which are for condo items. There was an issue where the static meshes would not appear in the game whatsoever, and after many days of pulling our hair out, we managed to fix the issue.

The second major issue was a crash was introduced when trying to search for Workshop items, and this was pretty easy to resolve.

The third major issue affects the Workshop Skeletal Meshes, which are for the player models, and is the issue we're still working on resolving as of this dev log. While the Workshop Player Models are visible in game, there's some artifacting on the textures of the models creating dark blotches shown below.

[h3]4.20 Workshop Skeletal Mesh Artifacting[/h3]


When attempting to debug this phenomenon, we noticed that the TangentZ might be the culprit.

[h3]4.20 Workshop Skeletal Mesh Debugging[/h3]


We've gone through various fix attempts, but the complete solution still lies outside our grasp. At first, we thought tangents were flipped in some way, which later turned out not to be the case. We've also looked into the UVs, reverting the engine shaders, checking lighting, messing with mesh settings, etc.

We do have a workaround, which removes the blotching but the lighting on the model isn't accurate, depending on the direction the model is facing.

[h3]4.20 Workshop Skeletal Mesh Workaround[/h3]


If we cannot find a fix for this issue in the next couple days, our plan is to get the public beta ready with the workaround, so that we can start getting something actually shipped out for you guys.

Johanna worked on trying to make the area less dark and dingy. She also added an upstairs "hang out" room, and created a Gumball Machine.

macdguy worked on "Pluck-a-pal", tackling some bugs with physics desyncing, crane grabbing improvements, and finishing the general gameplay loop.

wheezwer worked on art for "The Day the Corn Stood Still" shooting gallery. She also worked on art for the 4-player game "Quick Service".

[h3]Arcade Upstairs WIP[/h3]


[h3]Arcade Overview w/ Upstairs WIP[/h3]


[h3]Arcade Gumball Machine[/h3]


[h3]"The Day the Corn Stood Still" Art WIP[/h3]


[h3]"Pluck-a-pal Gameplay WIP"[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]"Quick Service" Art WIP[/h3]


Johanna worked on the graphical update to the Minigolf map, "Forest".

[h3]Minigolf: Forest Graphical Update WIP[/h3]


JJosh continued working on items for Cooking, this week working on some deserts and chicken.

[h3]Cooking Items WIP[/h3]


ThisIsntNath worked on an updated early access trailer.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Sketch and macdguy continued working on the Unreal Engine 4.20 upgrade.


That about covers everything that happened since February 24th, 2020 at PixelTail Games.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for February 24th, 2020, detailing all the changes that have happened since February 17th, 2020. 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.


Last week we briefly touched on the issue with Workshop Items in condos preventing the release of the Unreal Engine 4.19 version of Tower Unite, and mentioned that we had a couple possible routes we could take in fixing it. In our quest to fix this issue once and for all, it seemed that Unreal Engine 4.20 had fixed the issue. So, we took the time to upgrade our engine again from Unreal Engine 4.19 to Unreal Engine 4.20. Unfortunately, just migrating to the next engine version didn't completely resolve the issue. The engine upgrade from 4.19 to 4.20 was a best case scenario, as it would have saved us time, but didn't entirely pan out.

Instead, we had to rewrite portions of the Workshop code to get it all working again, and we're pleased to say that the issue has been resolved. Since all the work was already done in migrating to Unreal Engine 4.20, we're going to be staying on Unreal Engine 4.20, which means we'll be able to take advantage of all the optimizations and improvements from both Unreal Engine 4.19 and 4.20.

What this all means is that the last major hurdle preventing the engine migration has been cleared. We're now in final stages, fixing a couple of smaller bugs, and conducting wide scale tests to ensure all our systems are functioning properly. Be on the lookout for an announcement in the future as we also plan on doing a public beta of Tower Unite running on Unreal Engine 4.20, which we'd like to get as many players as we can to help test before it rolls out.

You can check out our current checklist of tasks left here.


Now that the final stages of the engine migration are underway, we've begun planning out Update 0.8.9.0 of Tower Unite, which will contain not only Unreal Engine 4.20, but also a load of optimizations and improvements to core systems, the Minigolf Map "Island", the graphical upgrade of the Minigolf Map "Waterhole", new player name tags, and more. You can read all about this update here.

Johanna finished working on the "Maze" Arcade Cabinet.

macdguy continued working on Arcade Items.

madmijk continued working on Arcade Items, specifically the Glow Stick and Spinning Top items.

wheezwer started working on art for the 4-player arcade machine.

will continued working on music and sounds for Arcade, specifically "Lonely Gun 30XX".

[h3]Untitled Maze Arcade Cabinet Model WIP[/h3]


[h3]Handheld Fan Item WIP[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Stealth Box Item WIP[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Various Arcade Items WIP[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Electric Scooter Item now supports Multiplayer[/h3]


[h3]Glowstick Item WIP[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Spinning Top Item WIP[/h3]


JJosh continued working on items for Cooking, this week working on several cakes and deserts.

[h3]Cooking Items WIP[/h3]



The "Text Hat" item's text is now stylized and can have it's color changed. The living lobby player entity was updated to use the new name tag system, and to include the chat messages. Vehicles can now be colored from the hotbar. The basketball hoop was upgraded to now detect all physics items, and the net now reacts with physics.

[h3]Text Hat Item Improvements[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Living Lobby Player Update[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Vehicle Colors from Hotbar[/h3]


[h3]Basketball Hoop Upgrades[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Chris worked on a weapon for a yet to be announced activity.

[h3]Weapon Model WIP[/h3]


Sketch and macdguy continued working on the Unreal Engine 4.20 upgrade.

ThisIsntNath continued working on the updated Trailer.


That about covers everything that happened since February 17th, 2020 at PixelTail Games.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for February 17th, 2020, detailing all the changes that have happened since February 10th, 2020. 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.


We're pleased to announce that we have released our first batch of merch for Tower Unite on Redbubble. We hope you all enjoy them, and we have a bunch of new designs being worked on for the next batch. Read more about this at the Merch Announcement or visit the store.





Work continues on the Unreal Engine 4.19 upgrade. We're working to address an issues with Workshop Items in condos, which is preventing the widespread release of the Unreal Engine 4.19 version of Tower Unite.

There are a couple of possible routes we can take to fix this problem, and we are currently pursuing one of them, but it is too early to tell if it will be successful. We're working as fast as we can to get this resolved and into the hands of our players, and it is just as frustrating for us as it is for all you guys.

While work on Unreal Engine 4.19 continues however, other developers are busy working on other aspects of the game.

macdguy worked on prizes, specifically several vehicles such as the RC Tank, RC Drone, RC Rocket, Pogo Stick, Voyager (hoverboard), and Tricycle, as well as some of the weapon prizes. He also worked on adding a boost mode to all the vehicles, and implemented wearables on characters that are on vehicles.

madmijk worked on prizes, specifically the Disco Ball prize, and is now implementing the wearable items JJosh created into actual wearable items.

Wheezwer started working on art for the "The Day the Corn Stood Still".

Will continued working on music and sounds for the Arcade, specifically for the "Wheel of Fire" machine.

[h3]"The Day the Corn Stood Still" Art WIP[/h3]


[h3]Disco Ball Prize WIP[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]RC Drone Prize WIP[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]RC Tank Prize WIP[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Pogo Stick Prize WIP[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Voyager Prize WIP[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Tricycle Prize WIP[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Skateboard Prize WIP[/h3]


[h3]Wearables now work on Vehicles[/h3]


[h3]Electric Scooter Boost Mode[/h3]


Johanna finished working on the HD remaster of Sandbar, now named "Island".

Johanna finished the art pass for "Waterhole".

[h3]Minigolf: Waterhole Art Pass[/h3]


Johanna started the art pass for "Forest".

[h3]Minigolf: Forest Art Pass WIP[/h3]


JJosh continued working on items for Cooking.

[h3]Cooking Items WIP[/h3]


ThisIsntNath created an updated version of the Plaza tutorial video.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

macdguy worked on a redesign of the Hotbar for Condos and Plazas.

[h3]Improved Hotbar WIP[/h3]


Sketch continued working on the Unreal Engine 4.19 upgrade.

Wheezwer continued working on designs for merch.

ThisIsntNath continued working on the updated Trailer.


That about covers everything that happened since February 10th, 2020 at PixelTail Games.