Weekly Dev Log for September 17th, 2018

Announcements Weekly Dev Logs
1

Weekly Dev Log for September 17th, 2018

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for the week of September 17th, 2018. Here’s what everyone was up to last week! 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.

0.6.0.0 Progress

Workshop

@macdguy has been super busy getting Workshop ready for release. This week he spent some time tackling a cache system, which will download and store workshop models so that clients won’t have to download the same model over and over again. Of course, this system does have a limit, and will automatically make sure the cache isn’t stale and keeping things that don’t need to be kept. He also fixed hat offsets not applying properly when a player model is loaded, and added a toggle to allow players to disable visualizing player models in game worlds.

The next big Workshop announcement is that support has been added for Bowling, Virus, Ball Race, and Zombie Massacre. These gameworlds will display player’s selected workshop playermodels by default, though it is possible to disable this should you wish.

Workshop Editor

An axis visualizer for wearable editing was added, along with wrist and neck offset editing. Additionally, a prompt was added to allow the user to save metadata before switching to edit a different asset.

Game World Improvements

Player scales not being assigned properly has been fixed inside of Bowling.

Virus, along with having Workshop Support, now also supports wearables, and the “player infected player 2” text element was moved to the kill feed.

In Ball Race, the spawning camera rotation not being set fast enough for clients issue was fixed (and the network travel time for the camera rotation was reduced). Also in Ball Race, new hit particles were added for when a player hits walls or the floor really hard.

In Zombie Massacre, a bug where player zombies could be sucked into black holes was fixed, and exploding gas pumps / cars now network their effects properly.

Metal Detector Event

@macdguy finished work on the Metal Detector Event, which lets you roam the island looking for buried treasure.


Metal Detector WIP

Misc Changes

0.6.0.0 will contain entirely new hat offsets for Minigolf Balls and for the Masculine and Skeleton playermodels. An issue with the unit effect settings not assigning was fixed, as well as some particle wearables not attaching properly. Some hats which didn’t have any undersides were corrected as well.


New Minigolf Hat Offsets

Weapons

Chris has continued working on weapons for Tower Unite, this week working on the Vaporizer.

Vaporizer: First Person View WIP

Vaporizer: Top View WIP

Vaporizer: Side View WIP

Vaporizer: Side View WIP

Gizmos

Rob has been working on Gizmos for the condo editor.

Gizmo Progress WIP

Arcade

@Johanna has been working on the new interior of the Arcade building.

New Items

@joshua has been working on some new items, including Ceiling Lights with adjustable strings, a Volleyball, and a Sun Visor hat.

Misc

Lifeless has continued working on Project ##

Wrap It Up

That about covers everything that happened this week at PixelTail Games. See you all next Monday!

26 Likes
2

i see the metal detector
i can’t wait to play with that

also i like all the stuff but especially the virus accessories (hats on zombies :slight_smile: )
and the gismo that Rob has been working on, that’s gonna be really useful for condos

3 Likes
3

gizmo hype

3 Likes
4

Gizmos!!! Rob, you’re a legend!

3 Likes
5

2 Likes
6

that metal detecting is sick

3 Likes
7

Glad to see the metal detector will finally have a use!

5 Likes
8

I can’t tell which is a Gizmos? idk whats is purpose is?

1 Like
9

Gizmos let you move things around easier.

2 Likes
10

The general idea is that you can click and drag on an arrow to move the selected item on that axis only (rotating and scaling are other common gizmo features, but the pictured one doesn’t show those options). This will let you make minute adjustments easier than the normal “drag onto surface” system does.

4 Likes
11

Is it just me, or has the team, following the early release of ZM (hmmm), some changes in the team itself and the July survey, started moving in a bit of a… different direction?
They seem to be focusing more on the features that the playerbase wants and that have been on the to-do list for forever, both big ones (the Workshop, the Arcade) and small ones (the condo transportation items, the gizmos, even the emotes), as well as QOL changes (hat offsets) and features designed to fix some of the game’s biggest problems (the unified Gameworlds port server) or add more of what people seem to enjoy and always want more of (all the new furniture).
I don’t know, maybe I’m just overanalysing. I do really like the “new” direction, however.

7 Likes
12

I think a lot of the reason for this is that they seemed to have pretty much fleshed out most of the core features of the game at this point. I have no doubt that in the process of making stuff like ZM, someone along the way would find some sort of cool new thing, or some better way or writing this or that. They’re probably just at a point where it’s more comfortable making the bigger and more requested features.

Could be wrong, but I love all the stuff that’s been focused on lately. It’s been wonderful watching TU evolve over the past few years.

2 Likes
13

made on my bday :smiley:

2 Likes
14

Yeah I’ve definitely noticed that, my only concern is that if whoever did a lot of the writing for NPCs, items and media (I think Foohy, krionikal or Matt but I’m not sure) have left, and that sort of wacky but not ridiculously over the top humor that makes a lot of the game’s charm could take a bit of a backseat (Mac, Lifeless and Johanna still do pretty great tho)

1 Like