DEV BLOG #15: UPDATE 11 IS NOW LIVE! Featuring Piece-by-Piece!

Dear Tycoons,

Happy Tuesday! Our latest update is live, and with it comes our Piece-by-Piece builder! You’ll now be able to create custom buildings and scenery in-game, using four themes and over 260 pieces. PxP significantly enhances the way you build out your parks, giving you total freedom to create any designs you dream up. Paired with our UGC system, the possibilities are limitless. Using UGC, you can build custom PxP tiles, which you can then use within the PxP system and share with the rest of the RCTW community!

As a reminder – this is the Alpha version of the Piece-by-Piece feature. There will be a few bugs and quirks as you build out your new Piece-by-Piece structures, so be sure to visit our forums and leave your feedback!

Additionally, this update features a number of bug fixes and improvements to our pathing system and graphics, along with continued performance gains.

We just had a great showing of PxP to European press at Gamescom, and will be in Seattle at PAX Prime later this week, so be on the lookout for articles on the latest RCTW news soon! Additionally, we’re having a developer stream TODAY with designers from Nvizzio to give you all a tour of PxP and answer any questions. That Stream will start at 1:30pm EST at https://www.twitch.tv/silent0siris.

And to celebrate the release of PxP, we’re offering a 25% sale on Steam starting at 1pm today!

For right now, read about the details of this latest patch. We can't wait to see what you all do with your Piece-by-Piece system. Get building!

- Team RCTW

PIECE-BY-PIECE (ALPHA RELEASE)

Starting today, you will now be able to create Piece-by-Piece buildings by assembling pre-set, tilable parts. Using four available themes (General, Adventure, Western, and Sci Fi) and over 260 total pieces, the creative potential is limitless! Find a full rundown of the Piece-by-Piece system below.

To access the Piece-by-Piece builder, simply click on the new builder icon in the center of the menu.

The Piece-by-Piece builder includes the following features:

4 Packs of themed pieces
Build structures matching the décor and scenery of your parks by using one of four distinct theme sets. Each set comes with a huge variety of walls, floor tiles, roofs, and scenery objects to bring your creations to vivid life. And you can always mix and match, creating a saloon with fluorescent sci-fi doors, or a Mayan ruin littered with dusty wooden barrels. The packs are as follows:

• General Buildings Pack
• Adventure Buildings Pack
• Western Buildings Pack
• Sci-Fi Buildings Pack

Skeleton Stations custom-made to be compatible with the Piece-by-Piece builder
In today’s update, you will also find a number of “Skeleton” service buildings, and 6 Skeleton RollerCoaster stations. These pieces are designed to slot in to your Piece-by-Piece structures, creating seamless coaster stations and structures that interact with the rest of your park. Simply slot in the skeleton, and connect a path to the entrance as you would with any other building! Find the skeletons within the “buildings” menu.

• Coaster Skeletons available: Looping Coaster, Hyper Coaster, Wooden Coaster, Stand-up Coaster, Floorless Coaster, Flying Coaster.
• Coaster Skeletons coming soon: Inverted Coaster, Accelerator Coaster, Wing Coaster, Spinning Coaster, Dive Coaster.
• Skeleton Buildings available: Food & drink stands, Souvenir shops, Park services buildings, Staff buildings.

Color Selector
Just like with our coaster builder, the Piece-by-Piece builder features a full color selector. Get creative with bright pink pyramids or jet black space-age towers. Highlight any Piece-by-Piece element, click over to the “Colors” tab, and customize as you see fit!

Placement & Controls
The Piece-by-Piece builder offers full placement flexibility. The system was created to allow quick and easy placement of pieces and allows freeform positions and rotations. The combination of the grid system along with freeform placement means that you can place structures however you like!
Also, you can now seamlessly delete pieces (by highlighting a piece within the Piece-by-Piece builder mode and hitting the delete key), undo any placement or deletion (press ctrl+z), duplicate any Piece-by-Piece structure (find the “Duplicate” button after highlighting a finished Piece-by-Piece structure), or move your structure (find the “Move” button next to “Duplicate”)!

• Delete and Duplicate the selected piece(s).
• 1/2/3/4 manipulation keys: 1 for elevation, 2/3/4 for rotations.
• Move and delete tool.
• The 4 toggles: Grid Snapping, Alignment Guides, the new Auto-Stacking and the new Angle/Elevation Snapping.

Grouping
This cool new feature allows you to group Piece-by-Piece buildings, Scenery, Flat Rides, Shops, and Coasters. Once grouped, you can then save them as one “set”, duplicate them, or save them as blueprints. You can do this in just 3 simple steps:

• While in the Piece-by-Piece builder (don't click on "Finish"), any new Scenery, Flat Rides, Shops, and Coasters you create will be automatically grouped.
• To add a non-Piece-by-Piece structure to a group, mouse over a not-grouped-yet-non- Piece-by-Piece object, and you will see a tooltip asking "Add to group?".
• To add outside of the Piece-by-Piece builder: select an object, then shift+left click on another one. A new Grouping panel will appear to validate.

Full Blueprint System
Our upgraded Blueprint system gives you the ability to save and share any Piece-by-Piece building, grouped with scenery, shops, rides or even coasters! Also, each theme comes with a number of blueprints made by Nvizzio for you to enjoy. To add your own blueprint, click the “blueprint” button next to the “Finish” button within the Piece-by-Piece builder.

Fully-Integrated UGC!
With our UGC system you have the ability to create Packs of pieces for use with the Piece-by-Piece builder. The UGC pieces are natively displayed in the Walls/Roofs/Tiles/Deco & Lights tabs instead of segregated into one list like for Scenery items. You can also easily access Featured UGC in the Packs tab and additional UGC or the social hub, by clicking the ‘’+’’ icon.

Follow these steps for an in-depth guide on making your own UGC pieces to integrate with PxP!

We’re so excited to see what you all can make with this new feature! As always, visit us on the forums to share your feedback and show us your awesome buildings and scenery pieces.

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FULL UPDATE LIST:

NEW CONTENT:

ALPHA Piece-by-Piece Builder – Use over 260 titles from 4 themes (General, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Western) to build custom structures and scenery. Quickly share your creations with the RCTW community using our blueprint system, and import custom PxP packs pieces using UGC.

IMPROVEMENTS:

• GRAPHICS / PERFORMANCE: Improved Peep Billboards
• GRAPHICS / PERFORMANCE: Optimized Graphics for Restaurants, Facilities, Stands, etc
• GRAPHICS / PERFORMANCE: Optimized Coaster Stations
• GRAPHICS / PERFORMANCE: Optimized Loading Stations
• PATHS: End Cap Implementation and Fixes
• PEEPS: Can pick up peeps while game is paused
• SCENERY: Updated foliage for plazas
• UI / UX: Option Buttons highlight green when selected

BUG FIXES:
The Bugs below have all been fixed in this latest update. Note that this is only a selection of all the bug fixes from the full list.

• BUILDINGS: Souvenir Shops - Sci-fi souvenir shops are missing textures.
• BUILDINGS: 'ArgumentException' occurs when placing any building using the 'Move' tool.
• BUILDINGS: Texture of lantern and lamps on several buildings is improper during the night.
• BUILDINGS: The ground of the 'SciFi Glass Plaza' pops in and pops out when user zooms in and out the camera.
• BUILDINGS: Adventure food stands are missing roof texture
• BUILDINGS: Some of the staff buildings have an open door in the back but only one path through
• BUILDINGS: Some of the 'Souvenir Shops' structures’ lamps do not glow at night.
• BUILDINGS: Custom Coasters - Peeps sit too forward on the coaster seats, leaving a large gap behind them all.
• COASTERS: If the user places the INVInvertigo and tests, it will fail to complete the cycle and will get stuck at the last set of breaks
• COASTERS: Applied color does not apply on the Rail of the Coaster.
• COASTER BUILDER: Not possible to build a coaster station partly on a slope
• COASTER BUILDER: Coaster supports not generating normally over Locked Terrain.
• CRASH: Attempting to delete a portion of a coaster track will give a NullReferenceException.
• CRASH: Game freezes on infinite loading screen after loading the save file created in Scenario: 03 'Gilded Glade'.
• CRASH: The title eventually stops responding in Luminous Isle when going through the day/night cycle while building a park on systems using AMD/ATI graphics cards.
• CRASH: Logs are spammed with NullReferenceExceptions when placing and cancelling to move a Roller Coaster.
• FLATRIDES: Ride cam does not focus completely inside the cabins of the ‘Zipper’ ride.
• FLATRIDES: The lighting effect of the lamp on the ride 'Spinner' is misaligned.
• FLATRIDES: Peeps appear to be floating after exiting the ride 'Spacewars'.
• FLATRIDES: Ride cams not working properly for 'Flying Carpet' from 'Thrill Rides'.
• FLATRIDES: Peep hands clip or do not touch the center wheel of the seats in ‘Banana Tycoon’ ride.
• GRAPHICS: If user places a coaster station into the park and waits until night, the coaster station will appear too dark.
• GRAPHICS: Plants feature missing textures
• MULTI-TRAINS: Hyper Coaster and Looping Coaster far camera angle only works on 1 train when multiple trains are on the track.
• MULTI-TRAINS: 'The Machine' fails test when using 2 trains with 3 wagons/cars on each train.
• PATHS: Building the shortest path possible in the middle section of a line segment will disallow any further pathing from said path.
• PATHS: Inaccurate collision checks
• PATHS: If user places any building close to the end node of the path then it is observed that the user cannot extend the path
• PATHS: The resolution of the path appears to be very low during Sunrise and sun set.
• PATHS: Attempting to snap a building to a path 180 degrees in the opposite direction will cause it to appear upside-down.
• PATHS: Player cannot connect queues the way they want with certain rides
• PATROLS: Highlighting the name of the patrol areas will enable hotkeys while changing the name of the patrol area.
• PATROLS: Patrol area circles appear beneath the paths when zoomed in for Janitors and Entertainers.
• PEEPS: Peeps are moving and sliding while jumping and puking.
• PEEPS: Peeps clip through coaster train after opening Coaster info window
• PEEPS: Peeps clip through the ground while entering park
• SCENARIO: In Scenario 3, 'Average Revenue Per Peep' and 'Revenue per Peep' in February appears as zero.
• SCENERY: Unable to rotate lamp posts, arches and ride signs on path/queues.
• SCENERY: Lamps at Specialty Plazas do not provide enough light.
• SCENERY: Plants besides the entrance building in the 'Dusty Dunes' map are pink textured.
• SCENERY: Broken texture on Desert Bush
• SCENERY: 'Banana Tree' leafs pops in and out with respect to the camera position.
• UI / UX: Finance Screen - The green line under the default selected button "Revenue" and "Profit (Loss)" is barely visible.
• UI / UX: The grid is misaligned with the entrance of the parks.
• UI / UX: Time of Day - Game environment and the 'Time of Day' icon initially shows 'Sunrise' and then changes to 'Night' mode instead of Day.
• UI / UX: Time of Day - All maps should consistently load at sun-rise

KNOWN ISSUES:

We are still working on a number of bugs, tweaks, and other fixes. With each update we address a number of bugs and make improvements, but sometimes this may cause other features to break in the process. Our focus during Early Access is on releasing updates faster to you so we can get feedback earlier in the process. If you see a bug please report it in our Bug Tracker. Feedback on what you see implemented should go in our Improvement Tracker.

Note that we have been seeing a number of users reporting issues with computers that are below the game’s minimum specs, so please check the main steam page before playing to ensure you meet the requirements. Additionally, we have seen a number of problems are solved when users update their graphics drivers.
Lastly, downloads via Steam may sometimes get corrupted or updates don’t fully install leading to odd behaviors in game and starting the game. Try these steps to verify the game cache:

Right click RollerCoaster Tycoon World in Steam
Click Properties
Then Open the Local Files tab
Click Verify integrity of game cache
NOTE: In general – it is a good idea to verify the Integrity of the Game Cache after any update just to be sure.