next »

[Taky]

We've spent the last few weeks on getting mod support. Now, we're also pairing this with the performance so in theory our time put into this should be worth it. Depends on the performance improvements, but I'll have a more detailed post about that in a bit. As for mods, this is me slotting in new textures:

[Taky]

In an attempt for additional performance improvements, we're replacing the NavMesh Agent with a custom navmesh agent. This might be the worse decision we've made in a while but we'll see. The decision will make sense if we actually get some real gains for players, say, a 20 fps improvement. Otherwise it was a wasted month. Just typing this scares me.

[Taky]

Did some analysis of the optimizations we recently put in. Probably will make a little post for Unity3D. Basically re-did the agent system for the Unity NavMesh, gains have been reported to be 0 fps up to 20fps. People CPU bottlenecked are seeing biggest gains - which makes sense since the savings really is in the time it was taking for guests to find where they were going. This is a chart pre/post changes.

[Devilkay]

a game with this colors and style is perfect for mobile. Are you working also for something on it?

[Taky]

a game with this colors and style is perfect for mobile. Are you working also for something on it?

Hey! Truthfully, we haven't thought about it. We haven't really seen any compelling evidence that one can make money on mobile for a premium game :/

[william.equal]

I'm still really looking forward to the release of Parkasaurus, liked it very much from the beginning.
Is there a Switch release planned?

[Taky]

At the moment a bit early too tell. Not even sure the game could run on Switch, to be honest, we'd have to tone down the AI a lot and work on the animation systems to not be so demanding. Would be amazing if we could run it on Switch.

[Taky]

Hey friends, Happy New Year! We thought to recap the total #s from all the player parks so far in Parkasaurus!

[Taky]

Things have been quiet on these fronts, we're really bug fixing. This post is a warning to those looking to improve / change the unity Nav System, we did a lot of custom work here; that while improved performance, cause a shit ton of bugs. For example, rooftop walkers everywhere below. Ended up having flag high collisions as ZooObjectRoof (as opposed ZooObject).

[Taky]

Once again I'm reminded that not thoroughly testing patches just results in a ton more bugs in your Alpha. Seems an update to our layers put our Veterinarians on a new one, and that once on fire, never stop burning.

[Taky]

Been a long January. We are sitting on mods being done - this took a while - but figured hey, we should fix the major bugs and update the economy to be better before bringing in new players. With that said, fixing the bugs and updating the economy has taken a while...it gives the appearance that we haven't been doing anything for a while which is a bit stressful; but we're hoping to have the worst offending bugs finish up this weekend. (the unity bug submiter is a life saver, can't recommend this enough). Positive side people send in some amazing parks with their bugs.

[Taky]

Alright - been a busy + quiet February. We've been doing more bugs, and working on a substantial economy update. Part of this is seeing how a decoration heatmap would work (the current decoration mechanic for guests is somewhat lame). Trying to jazz it up more than "place decorations". If anyone has a cool idea, please should it out.

[Taky]

Finally, have our first sizeable update coming to the public server this weekend. We've been working so hard on fixes to the game that isn't really "player facing" that it gives the impression of us not doing much. Anyhoo, in addition to new features also working on some last minute content - new doors!

[Taky]

Lot's updates for this weekend. Had a major save game meltdown on Steam, but hotfixed that. (nobody likes hotfixed). We also decided to add the Carnotaurus from a later dino pack to today.

[Taky]

A few nasty bugs that had to be hot-fixed, notably our first bug that is ONLY found on our Steam build. This bug was no repro'd in our local builds or in the editor which is a bit terrifying. It is related to accessing our main menu via the icon instead of the keyboard hotkey. Is it wrong we'll just see if it resolves itself?

[Taky]

Bit the bullet, had to separate the navmesh between our humans and dinos. Resulting in me testing dino pathing, specifically, do they get stuck on fences and doors (the original motivation separating navmeshes)

[Taky]

The ongoing saga with our end of day. Players really hate the jarring auto end of day that occurs; and have requested a range of changes. I'm not sure, but we're quite resistant to watering down the end of day so it just turns to be a 24hr cycle with no true days. I'm hoping part of the issue is lack of warning we give the player the end of the day is occurring. We're going to try a larger warning bar.

[Taky]

Recently more time has been spent looking at the newer systems we’ve implemented in the game – for example maintaining the energy of your guests. If your guest’s energy goes to 0, they leave the park. Seen below, we started to examine, ”Ok, should I see a difference between a park with no benches (energy refillers) versus a park with benches.

The top graph shows a histogram of the number of dinos seen by guests depending on if the park as benches or not. The park without benches clearly has a lower distribution of maximum dinos seen, a huge portion maxing at 11. The park with benches has a distribution of higher seen dinos, most notably a lot of guests who saw 13 dinos, then 14, 15 and 16. Great! This indicates the benches are extending the time guests spend at the park by maintaining their energy above 0.

The bottom graph demonstrates the difference between guests who have a total park allotment time of 0.4 vs 0.8, 1.0 being a full day of time. Guests that have 0.4 total park time see no difference between a park with benches or without benches. This indicates to us the limiting factor is not guests running out of energy but rather running out of allocated park time. We will likely be tuning this a bit.

[Taky]

Workshop implementation is killing us. Starting to have major regretsies over this. Pretty frustrated... using this as an outlet.

[Taky]

Workshop integrated! Wow... painful. Probably not worth it. We'll see. Anyway, let me talk through a few.

Buildings!

This is the simplest of the workshop assets to create. Players add a script to a mesh object, create the prefab in Unity, and use our packager to upload away. Players also can add windows that light up at night, change the "values" sold by the store (affects guests) and choose where guests actually walk to.