Hey everyone! Welcome to the Tower Unite dev log for August 19th, 2026!
VR Development
We’ve got huge news for VR progress this developer log!
Major VR Input Bugs Resolved
@macdguy fixed the two major VR bugs that have prevented VR from being usable: controller binding issues (unbound VR inputs) and VR menu soft locks.
Major VR Art Bugs Resolved
We also fixed various art bugs such as first person player model LODs being very low, xbox controller glyphs for controllers showing up in VR, broken wrists, and @johanna helped also helped fix sprites rotating weirdly in VR and she fixed the VR pointer not drawing over all the VR menus/world properly (which was a huge annoyance).
Upper body/head and arms/hands tracking!
With those major bugs out of the way @macdguy moved on to focusing on IK support. IK stands for inverse kinematics, which helps simulate moving arms and hands around while maintaining joints.
Now the motion controllers properly track your hands and the IK systems will update your arms and wrists to match properly. It also tracks your head and upper shoulders for full upper body support.
Here’s a silly video demonstrating the head/arm tracking:
And since that was finished up, @macdguy moved on to complete networking the arms and head to other players, so that everyone can see you moving around with your VR motion controllers!
This work was a major step towards getting VR support in Tower!
Challenges of Adding VR
We still have a few more issues to figure out, but we’re very excited with this progress and will keep moving on VR.
For a little background on the issues we face, Tower Unite runs on Unreal 4.22, which is a version of Unreal that was released in 2019, over 7 years ago. Upgrading the engine is a massive undertaking and would completely break every custom system Tower has and we currently don’t have the manpower to handle such a huge task. Not to mention later versions of the engine could completely break all the workshop maps due to major physics changes. So since the version of Unreal we use is so old, adding VR is much more challenging than the later version of Unreal.
We know VR is a much desired feature and we also want to make it work well with the current game, so we’re focused on Plaza and Condo support right now and we’ll get to the game worlds at a later date. Each game, even in Plaza, has unique controls that need to be adjusted for VR or reworked (looking at you bowling…). But for the meantime, the motion controller tracking is very exciting and will let players express themselves more than before!
Arcade Progress
We know you’ve all been very patient and excited for us to get the next round of Arcade games out!
We’re back working on Arcade games once again, finishing up the various arcade machines for the phase 3 + arcade expansion we’ve shown off in previous developer blogs.
Gameplay programming and artwork is underway for the new baseball arcade cabinet!
Again, we thank you so much for your patience. We had a couple unfortunate roadblocks and design problems to figure out before we could continue to expand the Arcade further.
We also intend to finish up unreleased Arcade ticket items, so those are also high priority on our list for the next Arcade update.
Cooking Progress
While without any artwork to showcase, we’ve also been picking away at cooking as well, creating more ingredient models/items and finishing off more recipes. We’re tackling things selectively due to our small staff, but we’re still plugging away at cooking and are trying to get cooking in your hands as soon as it’s ready.
Item Updates
@nuclearxpotato did a bunch of updates to existing items, including:
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Fixes for desyncing issues caused by Skeletal Mesh Doors
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The addition of variants for the Cardboard Box (as well as other changes), Soggy Cardboard Box, and Bowling Seats. We also compiled all of the canvas piles into one Canvas Pile item and included those as variants, unlisting the original versions from stores.
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Fixes to color masking on the Mega Exodus
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SFX for physics items like the Shipping Crate (Physics), Plastic Barrel (Physics), and Industrial Barrel (Physics), as well as adjustments to the hold distance of these items.
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Updates to the Hotbar Torch items including removal of casting volumetric light, improved sfx, fixes to repeated lighting of the torch, and fixes to the rotation of the flame FX
… and more! You can see the list of all implemented changes on the recent Summer Update changelog.
New Items
There were also new items added to DIY, the Snackbar, Rob’s Imports, Central Circuit, and Sweet Suite! These include frozen treats, old school tech, the canvas physics item, draping curtains, briefcases, and more!
Selector IO
There is also a new IO tool, the Selector, which is a module with a list of Outputs you can cycle through or make specific selections from. It is similar to the Random node without the Randomness!
August Calendar
That’s a Wrap!
That’s going to do it for this week’s dev log! Be sure to keep an eye out for the next one!
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https://trello.com/b/6BwRMiPw/tower-unite-roadmap
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