Weekly Dev Log for February 9th, 2018

[Caboose700]

Weekly Dev Log for February 9th, 2018

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for the week of February 9th, 2018. If you haven’t heard, we’ve recently retired our old Daily Dev Log in favor of the Weekly Dev Log, which will allow us to give a broader picture and explain things in plain English, while also including some photos from development. Without further ado, let’s get started.

Tower Unite 0.4.1.0 Update

While working on Zombie Massacre, we’ve been working on the next update to Tower Unite, version 0.4.1.0. You can see the working list for all the features and fixes on the Trello Card.

Quick Scaler Tool

Coming in 0.4.1.0 is the Quick Scaler Tool. @macdguy worked this week to get it ready. For those who don’t know, the Quick Scaler tool will allow condo creators to uniformly scale an item to make it anywhere from 5x larger or smaller.

Quick Scaler Tool WIP Video

Underwater Condo Changes & Fixes

@Johanna has been working this week to address some issues that came up regarding the Underwater Condo. She’s re-written a good portion of the code for the elevators and airlocks, to hopefully fix the desync problems between players. She also worked to make day/night cycles enabled underwater, and the ocean material has been changed to use the same material used in the plaza.

Underwater Condo: Underwater Day/Night Photo #1 (Night on Top, Day on Bottom)

Underwater Condo: Underwater Day/Night Photo #2 (Night on Top, Day on Bottom)

Zombie Massacre

Systems

Combo Powerup System

A massive chunk of work this week was done for the Combo Powerup System. The Ramming Shield, Tesla Zap, Transplant, and Camera Flash Combos were completed, and a prototype of the Black Hole item for the new class Scientist was created and tested this week.

Zombie Massacre: Combo Powerup Demo Video

Zombie Massacre Special Item Demo: Black Hole Prototype

Ragdoll System

The ragdoll system for Zombie Massacre was improved to move the zombies in the direction they took damage from.

Zombie Massacre: Ragdoll System Improvement

Camera Volume System

A system was created to allow the camera to be moved in Zombie Massacre, for use in the cinematic portions of the game. With the cinematic features, we are looking at adding story elements to every map.

Zombie Massacre: Camera Volume System

Upgrade System

Work started this week on an upgrades system that will allow players to upgrade their items, weapons, health, etc.

Models

Radio Tower

The Radio Tower Model that @Matt made was integrated into the game by @Madmijk, and a prototype of its functionality was created.

Zombie Massacre Radio Tower: Model Implemented

Zombie Massacre Radio Tower: Prototype Video

Turret Item

@Matt has been working on the Turret Item model this week, making the different variants, and creating the textures and high polys.

Zombie Massacre: Turret Item Model w/ Variants WIP

Zombie Massacre: Turret Item Textured WIP

Zombie Model

@Wergulz has been working on the Zombie Model, finalizing the silhouette for re-topology.

Maps

Compound

@Lifeless has been working this week on the Compound map.

Music

@donglekumquat has been making some great progress on the music and is currently working on the Round 2 music and getting close to finishing the Round 3 music.

Minigolf: Kingdom

@Johanna has been splitting her time this week between the Underwater Condo fixes and working on the Kingdom map for Minigolf.

Minigolf: Kingdom Progress Teaser #1

Minigolf: Kingdom Progress Teaser #2

Minigolf: Kingdom Progress Teaser #3

Minigolf: Kingdom Progress Teaser #4

Furniture Items

@joshua has been working this week on a Table and Chair dining room set.

Furniture Items: Dining Table and Chair WIP

Furniture Items: Dining Table and Chair Render WIP

Tower Express

@Caboose700 has been working on Tower Express this week. He finished the checkout system, which allows users to purchase up to 1,000 items at once. Aside from some Quality of Life additions, he’s been working on internally handling any errors that might occur due to unexpected downtime on Steam’s end.

Tower Express: Cart Checkout System w/ 1,000 Items Purchased

Art

@krionikal has continued his work on the First Person Hands model, continuing to rig the hands.

Wrap It Up

That about covers everything that happened this week at PixelTail Games. We’ll see you all next week, and have a great weekend!

[Clark]

Looking good! Loving the progress on ZM so far… Just a bit curious about the item choices JJosh is working on. We have tons of chairs and tables, why not spend the dev time on more interesting items? Things that add something to the game & get people excited.

A lift, escalators, zip line, cable car, a monorail, a jukebox, animated floors/walls, teleports, etc. are a few examples, I’m sure you guys could be a bit more interesting & fun.

[CalculatorSpoon]

@Caboose700

a prototype of the Black Hole combo for the Scientist was created

Is the Scientist ‘???’?

[macdguy]

@CalculatorSpoon

Is the Scientist ‘???’?

Yup, the Scientist is a new character class.

[macdguy]

@Clark

A lift, escalators, zip line, cable car, a monorail, a jukebox, animated floors/walls, teleports, etc. are a few examples,

A lift, escalators, zip line, cable car, or a monorail would be something the programmers would have to make work. Zip line itself requires custom movement code, depending on what we want out of it.

Teleports will eventually be made, but there has to be a new interface to set the destination.

I’m working on a media player for the Condo on my off time.

---

Josh is working on furniture models people have suggested in the Item Suggestions and stuff that don’t require coding at the moment because I’m busy working on Zombie Massacre, Mike is busy on Zombie Massacre, Zak is busy with Workshop, and Caboose is busy with the website.

[Baby_Blue]

Those ZM abilities look super satisfying! Also that dynamic camera movement is fantastic, running around with the camera shifting while shooting zombies reminded me of the PS1 Resident Evil games, always loved that camera system (but could do without tank controls lol).

Also yet again two more items! Please keep these items rolling out! I hope we get an update with a solid batch of furniture relatively soon. Even the halloween item batch was a breath of fresh air.

@Clark

Things that add something to the game & get people excited.

A lift, escalators, zip line, cable car, a monorail, a jukebox, animated floors/walls, teleports, etc. are a few examples, I’m sure you guys could be a bit more interesting & fun.

I completely agree that we need more variety than chairs and surfaces, but those are the kind of items that can be modeled by an artist and implemented easily. The items you describe sound incredible but would need a programmer to create the functionality. However I am all for a broader variety of items!

But with all of that said Scalar tool is the spotlight, did not expect to get this anytime soon let alone next update. Can not wait to get my hands on that, its going to completely change how I build condos.

[Baby_Blue]

Wait what is this golf bag wow item?

[CalculatorSpoon]

It’s a Wowozela.

[Baby_Blue]

Oh ok didn’t realize that’s what the icon was for it, thanks!

[DENMarkus]

the scaler tool is pretty good!
and zombie massacres turrets look amazing

[Heavysteam]

@macdguy

scale an item to make it anywhere from 5x larger or smaller.

And here i was hoping to make a giant building sized apple of death.

https://i.imgur.com/gwN9BYH.png
Y- Ya, it’s how you use it right guys… right?

@Caboose700

for the new class Scientist was created and tested this week.

“So what exactly your PHD?”
‘I hunt zombies’
“What? I don’t see any zombies”
‘You’re welcome’

@Krionikal

continuing to rig the hands.

[Clark]

Yeah I understand it requires programming but nothing wrong with preparing the models right? But fair enough, going through the item suggestion list is understandable for now! Keep up the good work man, can’t wait to mess with that scalar tool (:

[ilipitagaon]

@Caboose700

Coming in 0.4.1.0 is the Quick Scaler Tool. @macdguy worked this week to get it ready. For those who don’t know, the Quick Scaler tool will allow condo creators to uniformly scale an item to make it anywhere from 5x larger or smaller.

That’s quite disappointing. I was hoping to use them on canvases to make them a lot bigger. Any plan to maybe allow up to 10x?

Also, could we scale them with floating numbers instead of just 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, and 5x?

[ToxicBoo]

@Caboose700

Coming in 0.4.1.0 is the Quick Scaler Tool. @macdguy worked this week to get it ready. For those who don’t know, the Quick Scaler tool will allow condo creators to uniformly scale an item to make it anywhere from 5x larger or smaller.

Awesome! Now I can finally make my wall mounted TV a reasonable size!

[macdguy]

@ilipitagaon

That’s quite disappointing. I was hoping to use them on canvases to make them a lot bigger. Any plan to maybe allow up to 10x?

Also, could we scale them with floating numbers instead of just 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, and 5x?

After discussion, I’ve increased it to 10x.

As for the floating numbers, it’s not obvious in the video, sorry, but you can adjust the scale factor so you can resize by between .01 to .1.

[CalculatorSpoon]

@macdguy

After discussion, I’ve increased it to 10x.

I really want to see a 10x theater screen. Also, would larger sizes on media players decrease the fps more?

[macdguy]

@CalculatorSpoon

Also, would larger sizes on media players decrease the fps more?

Nope.

[Baby_Blue]

That is awesome news! It’ll make even more possible. This is the condo tool I’ve been anticipating the most by far, can’t wait.

Any future increases are fully welcome as well!

[Link]

@macdguy

After discussion, I’ve increased it to 10x.

love u <3

[Eriberto]

We all love you