Parkitect (PKT) Discussion Thread

[ECZenith]

I was just checking out the Parkitect devlog and even more rides are coming! The newest ones are Turbine and Mine Coaster. Even with Planet Coaster coming out I still love the classic feel of Parkitect, glad there will be even more stuff before it's full release! Go TexelRaptor!!

The New Turbine Ride

Mine Coaster

[Midgetman82]

New year, new update! Alpha 10's available for download. A full devlog is here, but these are the major new additions:

 

Jumper ride

 

Signs that restrict access to specific people only.

Ability to buy land in scenarios.

Visual water refraction.

 

Beginning of SciFi props.

Budgeting for ride maintenance, and more.

[G Force]

New rides look great, really add a lot of depth to the game.

 

Hopefully I'll man up and buy in one of these days, lots of potential I think!

[Midgetman82]

Devlog Update 134

 

Tim has spent the last couple weeks on adding a random terrain generator to the scenario editor, and it’s producing pretty nice results now There’s lots of options so you’ll never have to play on empty flat terrains anymore (although that’s still possible if you want to):

 

Also smaller park entrance and some wooden paths and queues, and new decoration objects (and less blurry text in Unity).

 

Lastly the ability for a window to minimize when the mouse is outside of it.

 

I'm most excited about the terrain generator! Now it's gonna give each park more variety and character!

 

Edit:

There's also new metal walls (Devlog Update 133) that will be implemented in the next update.

[TheCoasterKid211]

Devlog Update 134

 

Tim has spent the last couple weeks on adding a random terrain generator to the scenario editor, and it’s producing pretty nice results now There’s lots of options so you’ll never have to play on empty flat terrains anymore (although that’s still possible if you want to):

As someone who plays RCT3 regularly, this is the most awesome thing ever made in any game ever.

[ytterbiumanalyst]

^ Agreed. Each time I start a new park, I have to spend a couple of hours just making it not flat and bare of trees. Great update!

[Midgetman82]

Alpha 11

Alpha 11 is now available for download! The full change log is at the end of this post.

Devlog

 

We added Skyfall, a drop tower ride where guests are turned into a horizontal position during the drop:

And there’s the Junior Coaster from this weeks Art Stream:

And Gabby made progress with the visual overhaul of the UI. Updating it all is a ton of work that’ll be ongoing for a while. Releasing it all at once when it’s finished would be difficult, so we’ll ship what we currently have and continue improving it over the next few Alphas until it’s done (like we’ve always done it with all parts of the game ).

Here’s the current state:

 

(Partial) Changelog

- started UI overhaul (not complete yet)

- added Junior Coaster

- added Skyfall

- added terrain generator to scenario editor

- added fountains

- added modern building sets

- added wooden paths and queues

- added smaller park entrance that is easier to theme

- added shadow fadeout distance setting

- added tilt shift intensity setting

- added running costs for shops and utility buildings

- added female staff outfits

- added auto-minimizing deco builder window

- added world markers for person thoughts

(Full changelog located in post)

Was certainly not expecting the drop tower, let alone the lay-down flat tower!

 

Also, the scenario editor!!!

I think the other game(s?) could reeeally benefit from something like this to give spice to more people's parks instead of always starting out with pre-made or flat lands.

 

Also friendly reminder that this is an $18 game that works on almost any computer.

[Midgetman82]

Copy-paste from latest Devlog posted two days ago...

Devlog Update 138

 

Gordon finished a new song! It’s really catchy, give it a listen:

 

Improving terrain textures has been an open task for a very long time. The reason is that we have a list of requirements/wishes for them, and figuing out a technique that fulfills them all took a while

 

-we wanted to not be severly limited in the amount of different terrain textures we can use (~8 at least)

-hard straight edges between textures don’t look nice, there should be some sort of transition. This can clash with the first requirement; for example -Texture Splatting is usually only done with up to 4 different textures, or requires lots of big splat textures, which leads us to the next requirement…

-it shouldn’t increase savegame sizes too much

-it should play nicely with our terrain. The old textures looked particularly bad around hills

 

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since the Christmas Holidays break last year and did a bunch of research and prototyping, and we’ve finally arrived at a method that we like

 

First of all, here’s what it looks like:

 

You can change the texture for quarter tiles now instead of for the whole tile, so it’s more fine-grained than before. Actually, it’s even more fine-grained than that, because each quater tile is further divided up into 4 triangles so you can paint around hills nicely:

 

As you can see, transitions between tiles aren’t exactly smooth but it’s better than straight edges, and I think our art style allows us to get away with the hard cuts.

 

We can theoretically use up to 256 different terrain textures, and savegame size shouldn’t be increased by more than a couple hundred kilobytes in most cases.

 

So, we’re pretty happy with that!

 

On the downside, we’ll have to drop DirectX 9 support for it. DirectX 10 is available since ~10 years by now, but we still wanted to know how many people would be affected by this change.

 

So we ran some analytics over the last couple months and found that less than 2% of our players use DirectX 9. Doesn’t sound too bad, but that’s still uncomfortably many! Digging into this further though it turns out that ~90% of these people use DirectX 10-capable graphics cards, so we assume they just don’t have the proper drivers or DirectX version installed. In addition, a good amount of the remaining people is still running Windows XP, which we never officially supported.

 

So I think we can justify changing our minimum requirements to a DirectX 10-capable graphics card. If you’re still affected by this and can do absolutely nothing about it, please let us know.

 

Just for fun, here’s a dump of screenshots of the (sometimes weird) things we tried for terrain textures

[ECZenith]

http://themeparkitect.tumblr.com

 

There is yet another update to Parkitect! This time, featuring the submarine ride, check it out !

[Midgetman82]

New devlog. Next update gets Flying coasters!

There will also be zoning updates, and updates to the finances window.

[djackson]

Is the editor block based (rct3) or spline(planet coaster).

[CoasterDirected]

Is the editor block based (rct3) or spline(planet coaster).

I'd say it's much more similar to RCT3, although much more complex. It's locked to a grid, but nearly all parts are able to be shortened or lengthened. It's got limitations, but it's pretty great and fits the classic style.

[Midgetman82]

New update's been released with the B&M style flying coaster, and some new scenery pieces like fountains.

[Midgetman82]

Devlog updates (148-149):

 

-New western scenery pieces, removing scenery from blueprints, and a travel log of their trip to 3 major European theme parks.

-Paddleboats!

-Animated decoration objects.

[Midgetman82]

I might've been slacking in posting some updates about the game to here, but the team hasn't slowed down. Latest Alpha release update made me figure I should make another, and show off the highlights from the past few updates missed here:

 

-New ride, Orbiter:

New Splash Battle:

New Boat Transport ride:

New train style for looping coaster:

New bumper boats:

Monorail can work in shuttle mode.

New building box selection mode:

Raising/lowering scenery won't eat at plants/trees.

Also tons new scenery items including basic geometric shapes for more custom stuff. More stuff found on their devlog site:

http://themeparkitect.tumblr.com/

[Midgetman82]

The new alpha update is out for download:

 

For those of you that can't wait for the water coaster to come out on Planet Coaster, I have some very good news for you:

It's pretty neat. Tried it out myself with something simple. It doesn't go flush with a body of water because it'll auto-make a tunnel if you do, but instead uses its own splashdown section.

Also discovered you can toggle the GUI on/off by hitting 'x'. Helpful for screenshots.

 

New scenery ratings.

"Guests don’t like seeing park utility infrastructure such as staff rooms, resource depots and employee paths. They have a negative effect on the scenery rating." Now it makes more sense to block off the view of the staff room, because it will have an effect on your guests. Speaking of...

 

New immersion ratings to go along with the scenery ratings. Now people will be affected by how much scenery is around them:

New 45 degree turns on all tracks.

New Monorail ride!

There's a bunch more things I didn't cover since they're kinda spread out, but they're all in the game's Devlog here.

 

And a bunch of other things not covered in this post.

[Midgetman82]

New year, new updates to catch-up on (again, there's a LOT I'm omitting for the sake of length, the rest are on their devlog in the link provided):

 

What's new and currently available right now (beta 2):

"Employees gain experience by doing their work now. The more experienced they are the faster they complete their tasks and the less quickly they get tired. They can also be sent to the Staff Training Room, a new park utility building where they train to gain experience more quickly."

New color-able trees, bunter flags,

You can add custom music, and go between colors from a select palette or the old custom color palette.

You can build fences onto raised sidewalk, and it'll replace the default fence on that path. This includes Queues.

New large monorail type.

New small monorail type.

New powered coaster type

New one-car 6 person bobsled coaster type.

New spinning coaster type, which if found under the selection menu of the current spinning coaster.

 

What's coming in the next update:

First-Aid's coming.

LSM launches are coming to select coasters.

Overbanked turns are gonna get much easier to make

Like, a lot easier to make.

 

I know I seem like the only one interested in the game here, but I've seriously been loving the management aspect of this highly underrated game. I think the management aspect of this is far more manageable than is Planet Coaster's, and the simplicity of this game makes it much easier to pick up as well.

[Midgetman82]

Beta 3 update is ready for download! The LSM launch system was put on the Giga coaster, Wing coaster, and the Steel coaster.

 

I made a Premiere spaghetti bowl coaster and posted it to the workshop in case anyone wants to download it.

Steam Workshop Link

 

The devs threw in a new flat ride and made a new tree type as well:

[Midgetman82]

As always, the team is still updating the game with new rides, scenery, and other miscellaneous items!

 

Beta 4 update available to download! This update's got floorless coaster. And even though the trains aren't extended out like dive coasters, they still gave it holding brake section.

 

They also included a custom shop for you to make your own theming around too.

 

For the next beta update, they're already starting to focus on visuals. Hard to see the major differences here on the forums, but the FOV and colors had certainly changed so things in the game won't look so flat.

[Afterburn]

^ Oh wow, I'm digging the visual update. Gorgeous!

[Midgetman82]

You guys are gonna love this!!!

"This very unusual looking coaster is fairly cheap to build and fits into small footprints, but is still capable of all the elements you’d except from a big steel coaster. On the downside it has a relatively low capacity. You can also spot a new shop here, the Funnel Cakes stall!"

RMC Raptor track coming in the next beta update! Remember, these updates typically get released towards the beginning (or end) of the month.

 

That, along with other updates like "exporting big 4k screenshots of the entire park" that will come in the next update as well.

These guys still work pretty regularly churning out some things Planet Coaster doesn't even offer, on a game that runs smoothly on most computer systems too. I still gotta give them credit for all that, because I still find this a highly underrated game more people should really look into! Just my $0.02 tho.

[DoinItForTheFame]

I can't decide if this game is worth the money or not...

[MartinU]

I know I've really enjoyed this game. I like the simplicity of it, and how with the limited materials, if used in a smart way, you can create great rides and scenery to go along with it.

 

I also like how it's still being developed. And insight is being asked for to ensure a great experience for users.

 

Looking forward to the next update.

 

Is it worth the money? If you are going for a realistic looking game with tons of custom scenery, no. But, if you are looking for a fun and challenging theme park game where you have to keep guests happy while building rides easily, than yes!

[josephcissell]

I was originally one of the Kickstarter backers for this project, but at some point I got too busy and lost track of what was going on with it for a while. I absolutely love the art style and how much thought and care has been put into this though! Really happy to see how it has turned out. Now I just need to update to the latest beta and give it a spin.

[Midgetman82]

 

The lights in the game will finally be working!

 

Lights will cut on automatically when it rains, and there will be a new night mode! If you create mods for the game (the devs very-much support adding custom elements into the game) then the new version of the Asset Editor should work with lights.

 

"Did you ever feel like your park looks a bit… boring when it rains? After this update that will no longer be the case, because all the lights actually work now."

"To fully capture the atmosphere of a theme park in the dark we’re updating all flat rides with hundreds of tiny lights."

"And if you like it really dark you can turn on the new night mode whenever you want!"

Moreover, most of these lights also receive unique animation sequences. I have built us a tool for placing and animating the lights, and Garret has been busy working with it. So far we’re at over 6.000 animated lights, but there are still a bunch of rides left to update!

If you want to learn more about how we’re creating light animation sequences you should check out this weeks Art Stream where Garret will show how it works.

^The art stream in question is on Wednesdays.

http://themeparkitect.tumblr.com/post/172276555907/devlog-update-187-visuals-update-33