Tower Unite News

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for August 12th, 2019, detailing all the changes that have happened since August 5th, 2019. 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. (sorry for the delay for the Steam post)


Last week, we released the survey results for our July 2019. Over 1,600 Tower Unite players participated in this survey. You can check out the results here.

wheezwer continued working on art for the "Coloracle 2: Whose Hue?", "Ball Bounce", "Dragon’s Treasure", and "Meteoroid Mania!" arcade machines.

madmijk continued working on the gameplay code for "Captain Calypso’s Planetary Piano".

Coloracle 2: Whose Hue? Art WIP

Ball Bounce Art WIP

Meteoroid Mania! Art WIP

Dragon’s Treasure Art WIP


macdguy started working on a brand new scoreboard for Tower Unite, designed to be familiar and as functional as the one from GMod Tower.

Revamped Scoreboard

Sketch continued working on bug fixes and optimizations for several areas of Tower Unite.

• Fixed an issue that caused workshop models to enter an infinitely loading state.
• Fixed a long standing issue that caused Steam inventory consolidation to crash our backend servers.
• Fixed item exchanging not working in certain situations if your items weren’t in separate stacks.
• Fixed a network bug that caused players to not properly load their workshop avatar when initially joining a server.

That about covers everything that happened since August 5th, 2019 at PixelTail Games. See you all next week!

You can follow our current developments on our Trello:
https://trello.com/b/6BwRMiPw/tower-unite-roadmap

You can follow our weekly developer logs here: http://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/devupdates/weekly-dev-logs

You can report bugs on our forums: http://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/bug-report

Or you may also report bugs on our Steam community, but please expect slow response time.

This update addresses several issues that were recently reported. Workshop player model issues should now be resolved, along with workshop editor importer fix. Developer logs will continue next week.

Changes

• New condo map select UI

Bug Fixes

• Fixed workshop player model loading issues
• Fixed workshop editor importing issues
• Fixed Altitude achievements
• Fixed Altitude lighting being too bright when on lower graphic settings
• Fixed Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Hole 4 camera issue
• Fixed Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Hole 11 not triggering OOB near the end of the hole
• Fixed Minigolf - Alpine: Hole 7 HIO camera angle
• Fixed Minigolf - Alpine: Hole 17 HIO camera angle
• Fixed Minigolf - Alpine: Hole 18 HIO not working
• Fixed Woodlands rocks being small for non-hosts
• Fixed floating door in Theater condo
• Fixed hole in collision on Arcade building
• Fixed invisible water in transit station

You can follow our current developments on our Trello:
https://trello.com/b/6BwRMiPw/tower-unite-roadmap

You can follow our weekly developer logs here: http://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/devupdates/weekly-dev-logs

You can report bugs on our forums: http://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/bug-report

Or you may also report bugs on our Steam community, but please expect slow response time.

Breathe in that naTUre and enjoy the remake of Grassworlds from GMTower, featuring new levels and a brand new song.




Altitude was completely remastered with tons of bug fixes and design changes.
"I did it again hope you like it" - Lifeless



In this update we've also enabled PAK by default. PAK is a compression method that will greatly decrease load times for everyone (HDDs and SSDs).

However, PAK requires downloading the entire game for each update. We recommend users who have metered internet or low bandwidth internet opt out of this PAK version. You can opt out by right clicking on Tower Unite in your Steam library, click on properties and then the betas tab. Select the "lowbandwidth" beta branch via the drop down. The low bandwidth branch will download only the changed files in updates, drastically reducing download amounts - but will also increase load times.

Changes

• New Ball Race race map Woodlands
• Minigolf: Altitude - massive visual overhaul
• PAK is now default, greatly decreasing load times (opt out by switching beta branch to "lowbandwidth")
• Added "next event/minigame" HUD element for Plaza
• Fishing: Increased sea dollar spawn rates
• Fishing: Adjusted very hard difficulty to be more forgiving and less likely to happen
• Balloon Shoot now has combo support
• Virus - Subway: Widened a corridor entrance to allow infected to access an area easier
• Virus - Subway: Added some paneling near the main ticketing area to block a long viewpoint to prevent infected from being sniped off as easily
• Optimized the main menu a ton, should help boot up times (no longer loads in things it shouldn't need to). Also no longer loads the player model unless you are in appearance mode (menu fps speed up)
• Reduced chainsaw volumes
• Sea Dollar now shows up in the collection book

Bug Fixes

• Optimized PAK File: Assets in PAK are now arranged by load order
• Fixed workshop RAM/VRAM leaks
• Fixed various memory leaks
• Optimized more Plaza code
• Fixed collision issues with pool noodles
• Fixed inventory collision issues with fishing rod
• Minigolf - Garden: Fixed hole 4 pipe being too slow
• Minigolf - Garden: Fixed hole 5 HIO not being reliable
• Minigolf - Garden: Fixed hole 12 pipe issues (also added a camera for better viewing)
• Minigolf - Garden: Fixed hole 13 HIO not being possible (or unreliable)
• Minigolf - Garden: Fixed hole 13 out of bounds issue (near the HIO area)
• Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 1 tube being too slow
• Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 4 HIO not being possible (or unreliable)
• Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 5 tube being too slow
• Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 12 HIO not being possible (or unreliable)
• Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 13 left cannon causing out of bounds
• Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 13 HIO not being possible (or unreliable)
• Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 15 HIO not being possible (or unreliable)
• Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed hole 16 not having effects for the barrels being spawned
• Minigolf - Treasure Cove: Fixed barrels on hole 16 being removed too soon
• Minigolf - Emission: Fixed hole 16 laser bridge bouncing balls out of bounds
• Fixed Alpine minigolf leaderboards not loading properly in the collection book
• Virus - Fixed a crash related to adrenaline

You can follow our current developments on our Trello:
https://trello.com/b/6BwRMiPw/tower-unite-roadmap



You can follow our weekly developer logs here: http://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/devupdates/weekly-dev-logs

You can report bugs on our forums: http://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/bug-report

Or you may also report bugs on our Steam community, but please expect slow response time.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for July 22nd, 2019, detailing all the changes that have happened since July 15th, 2019.

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.




Wheezwer and Johanna continued working on the Arcade Machine art.

Johanna worked on a 4 player arcade cabinet for 2D/3D multiplayer games, along with finishing the new Whack-a-mole cabinets.

Wheezwer worked on artwork for two Whack-a-mole machines, Whack-a-mole and Bug Bytes, and two new arcade posters. She also continued working on the murals for walls of the arcade.

macdguy worked on the logic for Whack-a-mole, Bug Bytes (multiplayer whack-a-mole), and Tornado machines. He also continued improving feedback for Ring God and The Offering (Ball Toss). Work was done on the arcade base, adding multiplayer scoring. He also worked on some fixes for Garden, Treasure Cove, adjusted sea dollar earn rates to be easier, and added Balloon Shoot combo support.

Madmijk continued work on the Captain Calypso's Planetary Piano, creating a solo play mode.

Gloves continued working on animations for Arcade.

Will finished the Woodlands song and continued working on sounds for various arcade machines.

Several machines were worked on this week.

Whack-a-mole & Bug Bytes WIP Artwork

Planetary Piano WIP Gameplay Solo
https://youtu.be/oekMge8HP2w

Whack-a-mole WIP Gameplay
https://youtu.be/uaLThz0U1Qs

Bug Bytes (multiplayer whack-a-mole) WIP Gameplay
https://youtu.be/Vl0fbNUK5ng

The Offering (ball toss) WIP Gameplay
https://youtu.be/z02xDGoFTic

Little Birde Feeders WIP Gameplay
https://youtu.be/-iC3WigBte8

Ring God WIP Gameplay
https://youtu.be/27V4u7TL9a4


Lifeless has been been working on another Accelerate level. This one is one based off our early Kickstarter level we showed off.

Super Early Screenshot


Sketch fixed a typo in the new Tiny Potion ad.




Sketch finished work on the memory leaks and optimizations for now. This week he fixed an audio related leak, various async leaks, and resolved Workshop VRAM issues. All of these fixes are now part of the Woodlands update. He also finished the workshop culling optimizations, which we'll be putting out a patch for soon. And lastly, he fixed issues with related to dev-builds that prevented us from performing certain types of debugging/profiling.


That about covers everything that happened since July 15th, 2019 at PixelTail Games. See you all next week!

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for July 15th, 2019, detailing all the changes that have happened since July 8th, 2019. 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.



Wheezwer and Johanna continued working on the Arcade Machine art. Signs for Skee Ball, Super Hoopers, Tornado, Salmon Says, and Stack'em were created.

Wheezwer worked on art for the Skee-ball backboard, finished art for Tornado, and started work on art for the "Jar Toss" game, another "Ball Drop" game, and the "Pachinko" machine.

macdguy worked on the logic for Wheel of Fire (90% done), Pluck-a-pal (80% done), Tornado (80% done), and Whack-a-mole (90% done) machines. He also continued working on Ring Toss to make the gameplay better and added effects. He worked on improved LED effects for Skee-ball and Little Birde Feeders. Work was done for the 2D/3D base, creating weapon support (w/ networking). He worked on the overall Arcade base, adding debug visualizations to help with optimizations, remaking the seat/multiplayer system, and overall improvements. He also started working on the gameplay for Lonely Gun 30XX.

Madmijk continued working on the shader and gameplay for Captain Calypso's Planetary Piano.

Gloves continued working on animations for Arcade, working on Stack'em and Skee-ball.

Will continued working on sounds for Skee-ball.

Skee-ball with Updated Backboard and Sign WIP

Super Hoopers Logo and Sign Art WIP

Stack'em Sign Art WIP

Dizzy Sign Art WIP

Tornado Cabinet and Artwork WIP

The Offering Cabinet and Artwork WIP

Unnamed Ball Drop Cabinet Model WIP

Little Birde Feeders Light Animations WIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwzQS1oMCvs

Skee-ball Light Animations WIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D6itG1SZ88

Captain Calypso's Planetary Piano Gameplay Demo WIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3UvBvR2fFA

Arcade Shooter Demos WIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb2jW9AszMw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ty_oEcK5d8

Pluck-a-pal Crane Machine Physics Demo WIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3JIrf7JF5o

Wheel of Fire Gameplay WIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YZ4iO3jqyE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El-u-utzlQY

Tornado Gameplay WIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0alvcShJ5us

Whack-a-mole Gameplay WIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7GImIuAto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBXUi3YZDjI

Salmon Says Logo Artwork WIP

RC Tank Item WIP



Lifeless made some slight changes to a couple hallways in Subway, to make them less campable.

Virus: Subway Hallway Changes WIP

JJosh continued working on new Plaza Transportation Items, such as the Skateboard and Three Wheeled Trike.

Plaza Transportation Items WIP

Sketch worked on updated Plaza Banner Art, such as The Stray advertisements.

Updated Plaza Art WIP



Sketch continued looking into the memory leaks and optimizations. This week he implemented Axis Aligned Bounding Box calculations for Workshop Item meshes, which will be very useful for culling and performance optimizations.

Workshop Item Bounding Boxes WIP


That about covers everything that happened since July 8th, 2019 at PixelTail Games. See you all next week!