Weekly Dev Log for June 8th, 2018
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for the week of June 8th, 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.
0.5.0.0 Progress
We’ve been busy prepping Tower Unite 0.5.0.0 for release. We are currently in a content lock, and are making last minute tweaks and bug fixes. We’re aiming to release the update sometime next week.
Payouts based on Level Difficulty
@macdguy implemented a long awaited feature, payout scaling based on how difficult a particular level is. This only will take effect on Gameworlds with Difficulty rated maps, such as Minigolf, Ball Race, and Zombie Massacre.
New Feature: Payout Scaling on Level Difficulty (Medium)
New Feature: Payout Scaling on Level Difficulty (Very Hard)
Gameplay Tips
Tips are now presented during the waiting for players stage to help players learn tips and tricks.
New Feature: Gameplay Tips
Waiting for Players Prediction
A change has been made to the waiting for players menu, to add prediction to button presses. This will eliminate the issue where a player presses “Ready Up” but it takes a few moments for it to register.
Zombie Massacre
Most of the focus this week on Zombie Massacre has been all about bugfixes found during play-testing. However, there were a couple tweaks and changes to the game since last time it was shown off.
Tweaks & Changes
The radius for the Turret, Radio Tower, Black Hole, and Laser were modified, and the Spider Web Traps are now larger. The healing kit gives points to the owner upon healing a player. Textures for the Spiders, Vampires, and Wolves were reduced, along with the corpse lifetime. The lowest LODs are forced on the Corpses.
Minigolf
Bugfixes
@macdguy fixed some issues with the Minigolf Camera, and added lerping when zooming in and out. The rotation and cursor logic was refactored, making it much more reliable. Input issues with the mouse during alt-tabbing was also fixed.
Minigolf: Cove
Bugfixes
@Lifeless worked on several bugfixes to Cove this week. The cannons on Hole 11 were modified to be way more reliable. The ball should no longer become stuck on the Non-HIO lane on Hole 18. Some issues with Hole 17 being slow were resolved, as well as the addition of camera transitions, to avoid the camera constantly colliding with rocks. The HIO path on Hole 3 should be less likely to fail, and the loop on Hole 13 was fixed to not break as often. The issue where the golf ball can get stuck on the moving walls on Hole 2 was resolved.
Minigolf: Kingdom
Playtest
Preliminary play-testing of Kingdom occurred this week, to help get some feedback on the map’s direction.
Progress
@Johanna completed the intro cameras for Holes 1-14, worked on the finishing touches for art in the Market Area, and added sounds to the map (for the main soundscape). She also started working on Hole 17, and the art for the Lava Dungeon for Holes 17 and 18.
Weapon Progress
Super Shotgun
Chris started working on the super shotgun this week, finishing the blockout and starting work on the high poly.
Super Shotgun: First Person View
Super Shotgun: Bottom Overview
Super Shotgun: Back Overview
Super Shotgun: Back Overview
Super Shotgun: Top Overview
M1 Garand
@krionikal continued working on animating the M1 Garand.
M32 Grenade Launcher
Alex started working on the animations for the M32 Grenade Launcher.
Upcoming Items
@joshua continued working on new items for Tower Unite. This week, he worked on creating models for Hot Chocolate, Bread, Water Bottle, Sugar and General Cooking Items.
Experiments
These experiments are just proof of concepts, but may be coming to Tower Unite in the future.
Bowling Alley Media Player
The bowling alley would have a media player on each lane, which is only viewable by the players in that bowling lane. The players on the lane would be able to vote skip, or opt-out of the media playing all together.
Experiments: Bowling Alley Media Player
Virus Infection Changes
This change would affect how infection works in Virus. Currently, the movement based infection has serious issues when it comes to lag. This experiment tires a different method of infection, by having the infected player click to slash at the survivors. Upon getting hit, the survivor would turn infected. The great thing about this method over the movement method, is that the infected slashes can be predicted with the weapon prediction system, making lag less of a factor.
Experiments: Virus Infection Changes
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!
