Parkitect Megathread

[mkingy]

Update 75
It???s been a bit of a slow week, with a mix of smaller stuff and some non-development related tasks getting done.

The color picker has been completed for now:


Recoloring objects received a quick transition effect:



Gordon put sounds for the Bobsled Coaster and Vertical Drop Coaster into the game.

We???re testing some new rain:



(The animation is very fluent in the game, choppiness is due to GIF)

Guests don???t have to wait until their coaster car is at the front of the station anymore before they can leave. This allowed us to give rides a ???wait until full??? setting, which also means that the Alpine Coaster cars won???t run empty anymore.

And you can let your guests take a bath now:



We don???t show stuff that doesn???t make it into the game here very often, but here???s a little something - we thought it would be fun if a claw from a claw crane machine grabbed the guest when you pick him up, including rope physics:



It didn???t work as well as expected. The swinging made putting the guest down exactly where you wanted pretty annoying, so it got scrapped.

Credit To Parkitect Developers

Oscar wrote:

Question, did Escape stop working for you guys with alpha 5? I only get the screen blurred when I press it and no longer the typical Escape menu

Should still be working - did you maybe accidentally hit the "C"-key? That hides the entire UI.

[Metazoanhaddock]

Paradox wrote:

Metazoanhaddock wrote:

you don't actually place any supports, the game does it for you

There is a mod that allows for diagonal supports as a building tool so you can place supports that way. They also have truss structures for vertical lifts and stuff too.

As ur one of my testers, you know as well as I do that that park is going to be vanilla ONLY. no mods. future parks will include mods, but i wanna give a feel for what the game alone can do

Can these guests swim like RCT3 happy-go-lucky peeps can? The message in RCT1 & 2 that appears for about 10 seconds "Help I'm drowning!" is a sad thing for me. However in RCT3, they give a shout like yay in the process of "Peep Bowling" lol - I LOVE IT!

[Oscar]

Sebioff wrote:

Oscar wrote:

Question, did Escape stop working for you guys with alpha 5? I only get the screen blurred when I press it and no longer the typical Escape menu

Should still be working - did you maybe accidentally hit the "C"-key? That hides the entire UI.

I think I might have done that. I tried to replicate it and couldn't do it unless pressing the C key. Thank you!

[mkingy]

Update 76

You might have seen a couple of bigger Parkitect videos this week, e.g. by Nerd??, Olli43 and MonotoneTim - it???s been a pretty great week (with a lot of time spent on answering emails), but we still got a few things done.

We added an Inverted Coaster!



And here it is in action:



And we added some ride music:



If you???re familiar with Gordons previous work you might recognize some of these titles???
There are only these four short calliope tracks so far that we???ll probably combine into one longer piece. More to come over time!

Credit To Parkitect Developers[/quote]

This is a really beautiful "B&M Invert"! Heavily based on Banshee! I adore track colors and smooth transitions!

[mkingy]

Update 77

Art Stream

Usually we???re doing a live stream at the end of the month, but due to the holidays we???re shifting it to January this time. Same for the next Pre-Alpha update.

Devlog

I made a simple change this week that improves the staff/guest AI quite a bit and helps with performance as well.

Imagine a worker who???s tasked with grabbing a delivery crate from the stack and bringing it to a shop. First of all the worker needs to figure out how to get to the delivery crate stack, if he even can get there at all. This is done using a pathfinding algorithm. Once the worker reached the crate and picked it up he needs to figure out how to get to the shop, again using a pathfinding algorithm.

But what if there is no path from the position of the crate to the shop? The worker unnecessarily went all the way to pick up the crate and wasted time that he could have used to work on something else. It would be better if the game checked whether the crate can be delivered before the worker goes to get it. Pathfinding is relatively fast, but doing a lot of it would quickly get too expensive. So this needs to be done slightly differently!

The solution is that the game simply knows at all times which paths are interconnected. This can be calculated very fast (and only needs to be recalculated if a path gets added/removed) using Flood fill, so now we can essentially check for free whether the crate and shop are reachable before doing the more expensive pathfinding calculation for how to get to these locations.

Here???s a debug view of this connectivity information:



It visualizes which paths are interconnected, so for example any path tiles with a dark green cube can only be reached from other path tiles with a dark green cube. If you???re on a path tile with a dark green cube you can???t reach tiles with a blue cube.

The game keeps separate versions of this for the guests and employees, since guests can additionally use rides to move around the park.

This can be used in a couple of other scenarios too: for example employees who are assigned to a zone will now immediately return to that zone if they???re outside of it (e.g. Janitors who transported a trash bag out of the park). It was previously too expensive to find a reachable path tile within the zone.


Credit To Parkitect Developers

This article is well-described about the situation where you have to get workers to move effectively!

As for cubes, dark green ones only? Then what are light green ones for?

[mkingy]

lol240 wrote:

This article is well-described about the situation where you have to get workers to move effectively!

As for cubes, dark green ones only? Then what are light green ones for?

They signify different connected paths so teh game engine can calculate the ai pathing much quicker.

[Coasterkidmwm]

NICE. Loving the look of the invert style.

^ I literally want to call that Invert "Batshee"!

[mkingy]

Update 78

Hello 2016! Last year was already pretty interesting, but this year should get quite exciting as well
The modding community over at ParkitectNexus keeps growing, which is fantastic! What???s not so great is that many mods need some kind of settings dialog and so far had to implement it themselves and opened it when hitting some hotkey, which started to become chaotic. So on the initiative of the modding community we added a mod settings screen that unifies all of that and also allows to turn off mods without having to uninstall them:



I also made two small mods myself for things that don???t need to be part of the main game - one is a template for a color palette changing effect:



The other is Twitch Integration, which allows viewers of a Twitch livestream to spawn their own guest and follow his activities. That should be fun
That one should be out shortly after Pre-Alpha 6 - which is a bit delayed this time due to the holidays as already said in last weeks post, but it should be done soon. We already started working on getting it stable and ready.
Credit To Parkitect Developers

[Coasterkidmwm]

I could see myself going "GET A HOTDOG YOU IDIOT GUEST!"

Becoming realistic day by day!

[Dirk_Ermen]

mkingy wrote:

It visualizes which paths are interconnected, so for example any path tiles with a dark green cube can only be reached from other path tiles with a dark green cube. If you???re on a path tile with a dark green cube you can???t reach tiles with a blue cube.

What if both paths are connected somewhere very far in the distance? Eventually all paths are connected somewhere to make them useful. Unless there is some kind of action radius. So it only checks the possible options in a certain range from the worker/guest/etc.

It doesn't matter how far in the distance they are connected. This is simply for checking if there's a connection at all, no matter where.
In 95% of parks all paths might be connected, but the game can't simply assume that's always the case (because in the rare cases where it's not connected it might fail/lag terribly). Also there's the more common situation where paths might temporarily not be connected while you're building the park, you don't want the game to drop FPS in these cases either.

[Coasterkidmwm]

Anyone download the update? It doesn't like my integrated graphics so I'm using the real graphics card instead to see if it likes that. Otherwise aside from saving every 30 seconds the terrain editor fix and everything else is lovely.

Does anyone else feel they need to have 9 billion stalls in their park to even attempt to deal with hunger issues?

[Paradox]

Coasterkidmwm wrote:

Anyone download the update? It doesn't like my integrated graphics so I'm using the real graphics card instead to see if it likes that. Otherwise aside from saving every 30 seconds the terrain editor fix and everything else is lovely.

Does anyone else feel they need to have 9 billion stalls in their park to even attempt to deal with hunger issues?

I downloaded the update and it ran just fine. It seems they recently released some bugfixes as well. I wouldn't worry about hunger issues too much I think the whole guest happiness system is still very early WIP

[mkingy]

Devlog Update 79 + Pre-Alpha 6

Pre-Alpha 6 is available now! Simply grab it from the download link that you received back when you purchased the game. Use the key resender if you lost your download link.

The full change log is at the end of this post.

We also have a Windows 64bit version available now (we already had a 64bit version for Linux, and Mac is universal).

Note: if you???re using any mods you should update them, as mods from Pre-Alpha 5 aren???t compatible anymore. Most mods should have been updated to make them compatible by now.
image



Devlog

Gordon has been very busy with Parkitect audio this week!
Here???s what he???s got to say:

Audio stuff! I know you???re as excited about sound as I am and I am VERY. EXCITED. Firstly, we have added over 200 new audio files specifically to deco items, so now we have 30 new decos that whomp and clank into place when built.
But the really exciting news is that after hearing me whine about how hard it is to get authentic carnival instrumentation, reddit user mikeymillsjr reached out and blew our minds. Mikey is a band organ enthusiast, and has got us access to an INCREDIBLE instrument/machine, a legitimate 1924 Wurlitzer 165 owned by fellow enthusiast Glenn Thomas. This thing is the real deal???an absolute work of art???and we couldn???t be happier to have access to such an amazing machine.

Not only do we now have access to a bunch of real-as-it-gets classic tunes from the early 20th century played from physical paper rolls???roughly half an hour of which will be available in this update???but the machine is equipped to accept MIDI data so we can actually get it to play original compositions as well, and it is all thanks to these two awesome guys. We seriously cannot thank you enough.

Community Update

The modding community made some exciting progress this week as well, specifically H-POPS started working on the first custom flat ride:

More progress has been made since that video, so it looks like there???ll be some cool stuff coming up soon

Pre-Alpha 6 Changelog:

- added Inverted Coaster
- added ride music
- added people <-> water interaction
- added saving color palettes, picking colors from existing objects, repainting existing objects
- added mod settings
- added sounds for: Bobsled Coaster, Vertical Drop Coaster
- added new background music
- added a couple hundred new build sound effects
- added attraction options: wait for half full, wait for full (+ Alpine Coaster can???t run without full cars anymore)
- added new rain
- guests can leave trains now before they reached the front of the station
- improved mechanics behaviour for maintaining/repairing rides with multiple stations
- improved blueprint builder preview performance (a lot)
- some AI improvements; most notably made employees return to their assigned zone if they???re outside of it
- improved track heightmarks: always keep them visible at unconnected track ends
- made sure windows don???t accidentally get lost behind menu bars
- Windows: moved savegames, blueprints and mods to ???My Documents/Parkitect??? folder; fixes issues on Windows 10
- Linux: should fix windows not rendering properly
- fixed terraforming tool being fiddly when raising/lowering large sections of terrain
- fixed delivery crates getting stacked so high that handymen couldn???t pick them up
- fixed objects not following cursor nicely when snapping to grid corners
- fixed guests being stuck on ride exit if exit isn???t connected to a path
- fixed changing attraction waiting time not working
- fixed bobsled trains derailing when loading the game
- fixed bobsled trains derailing when pausing the game
- fixed excessive bobsled car swing on non-tube tracks
- fixed parts of notification bar text entries/windows sometimes showing through tunnel entrances
- fixed scrolling the deco builder window using mouse wheel sometimes not working properly
- fixed path builder remove button sometimes acting unpredictable, especially when removing stairs
- fixed zone borders/park fences not rendering properly in loaded parks
- fixed file name input fields (for savegames, blueprints) allowing invalid characters
- fixed being able to select/delete underground objects while not in underground mode

Credit To Parkitect Developers

^ Mod Test Result: Hey someone's barfed on the pavement!

[mkingy]

Update 80

Art Stream

Garret will catch up on the December art stream next week. Join us on his Twitch channel on Wednesday, 12pm PST to chat while watching new Parkitect art being created.

Devlog

It???s been a bit of a boring week for the devlog. Garret has been ill all week, but he???s better now.

I updated the game to use the latest Unity version, which as usual fixed some old issues we had in exchange for adding some new ones. Here are some of the more interesting glitches I encountered:




After a bit of work it???s running fine again now.

I also spent some time on internal tools, like this one that identifies some common problems with our audio setup:


And finally I tried an idea for getting the problem with people walking in circles on wide paths a bit under control:


It works alright on 2 and 3 tile wide paths, which seem to be the most common ones. On wider paths or big plazas it doesn???t work perfectly but reduces the problem. I think it???s a good tradeoff between an ideal solution and being performance friendly, but we???ll have to see what happens once everyone gets to play with it.

Credit To Parkitect Developers

[Coasterkidmwm]

Ah I definitely noticed a problem with the people and employees walking in circles. Glad they're addressing that.

^^ Looks like it's still a tad tricky to get the "emotional" peeps or janitors to move on wider paths. So I have to say good luck to your programming skills.

[mkingy]

Update 81

Art Stream
We had another fun art stream this week - and to get back on our normal schedule there???ll be another one next week!
As usual, it???ll be on Wednesday, 2pm PST on Garrets Twitch channel.

Devlog
The deco builder window received an overhaul this week. We added object categories to organize everything a bit better, and the window also opens faster again because it doesn???t have to load everything at once.



The categories themselves aren???t finalized yet.
Garret set up this style guide for wall pieces to make sure all of our wall sets (and modded ones) will somewhat fit together.



We also released some objects for modders as scale reference. You can get them here.
He also reworked the existing castle walls to fit this style and added a bunch of nice new objects
Raised dirt paths turn into these shaky wooden constructions now.



We also added some SSAO. It???s really subtle and hard to see in a side-by-side comparison, but it does make a difference in the game and works well with our art style. Some closeups, first without SSAO:



And with SSAO:



If you properly want to see the difference, open the images in new tabs and switch between them.

Credit To Parkitect Developers