RCTW - Early Access - Dev Blog #9 - Update #6 Now Live!

Dear Tycoons,

Today we have an amazing visual update in store for you, along with a number of smaller items that you have been asking for. The visual improvement alone will dramatically change your experience playing the game. As always, many other parts of the game have been updated including Paths, AI, Audio, Graphics, New Scenarios, and Performance, but the real star of the show is our brand-new Skybox! Check it out:

NEW SKYBOX

In today’s update we are launching our new Skybox. As you can see above, it’s been completely overhauled, meaning that the entire game gets a significant visual upgrade along with it. Along with these lighting and color improvements, we have also added a beautiful sunrise and sunset sequence as well. Your game will go through a full day cycle, from daylight to sunset to night to sunrise. The effect is much more realistic and smooth, and it enhances the look and feel of everything else in the game. The new skybox would not have been possible without your feedback, so thank you so much for your comments and suggestions. We’d especially like to thank our testers who have been working with this new skybox for a bit and helping us tweak it. Now it’s your turn to tell us what you think!

NEW SCENARIOS

Today’s patch also includes brand-new Scenarios 4, 5, and 6. These scenarios give players the chance to experience exciting new gameplay challenges. We also spent time refining and tweaking Scenarios 1, 2, and 3 so be sure to check them all out.

MASS DELETE TOOL – ALPHA FEATURE

A top fan request – a mass delete tool – has be added to the game and is ready for you to test in Alpha mode. When you click the bulldozer now you will have the option to select multiple items to delete at one time, and you can change the area that you delete by zooming in and out. It’s fast, easy, and a very clean way to mass delete items in the game. Let us know what you think and know that we plan to further refine it in the future.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

We have continued our work on AI with this patch with a focus on the Park Rating System as well as the Marketing System. Both should now give more accurate information about your park. Each system has been refined and balanced to give a better gameplay experience.

Additionally, we know there were some issues with the way peeps chose their rides, so we improved an algorithm associated with informing a peep how novel a particular ride is and factoring it into their decision making – this should really improve the dynamism with which the peeps move about your park.

PERFORMANCE

We are aware of performance issues affecting some players, and are working hard to optimize and improve framerates. In this update you will notice a number of general performance improvements, as we have further continued our work on in-game object optimization from our prior update (particularly around Flatrides) along with general environmental improvements.

PATHS

Our team is spending more time improving the path system and responding to your feedback. You will notice in today’s update that we have completed a number of upgrades to the path deletion and placement algorithms that should build upon what we launched with our last update.

STAFF HEATMAPS – ALPHA FEATURE

Last but certainly not least we are launching the very first version (Stage One) of Staff Heatmaps. At this stage you are now able to click the Heatmaps button and view where your current staff are and their associated buildings. This system is the first element we are launching from our larger Staff Patrol Areas system that we will be rolling out in future updates. We know staff management was a huge part of the previous games and we are refocusing attention to the system. It’s been re-thought from the ground up and we have heard your feedback so be sure to stay tuned to future updates to see it come into the game! Check out stage one of Staff Heatmaps by going to the Heatmaps tab in the game.

The team now has their sights set on our next big update. It’s a doozy, packed with new content, improved performance, new features, further improvements, and other tweaks! As always, your input is driving our roadmap and decisions, so we need you to keep it coming! For just this reason, we have shifted development to release new features more quickly, and in some cases early stages of development. It allows us to pivot and fix a feature or tweak before it goes too far into development.

We thank you for all the continued support, feedback and bug reports!

-Team RCTW

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Here is the full list of today’s updates:

NEW FEATURES AND CONTENT:

• GRAPHICS: Incredible new Skydome added to the game! Enjoy the new sunrises and sunsets now available across all maps.
• SCENARIOS: Three New Scenarios have been unlocked for you to try out! Check out all new Scenarios 4, 5, and 6!

IMPROVEMENTS:

• BUILDINGS: Assets will only appear as a ghost if they have not fully loaded yet
• GRAPHICS: Improved the textures on the "Golden Entrance"
• PATHS: Further improvements to path deletion and placement
• PATHS: Improved the UI for choosing between Curved and Straight Paths
• PATHS: Removed the green highlight around already-placed paths
• PEEPS: Improved the algorithm associated with Peeps choosing a ride based on novelty
• PEEPS: Improved the logic and balance for peeps when choosing what coaster to ride
• PEEPS: Improved the Park Rating system and resolved a number of bugs/balance issues
• PEEPS: Peeps now trigger specific thoughts when in the "ill" state
• PEEPS: Removed the increase cap for in-game marketing and resolved a number of bugs/balance issues
• PERFORMANCE: First pass of optimizations on environment
• PERFORMANCE: Further optimizations to flatrides
• PERFORMANCE: Sunrays are now disabled when not visible by the user
• PERFORMANCE: Terrain will now have tessellation according to camera height
• PERFROMANCE: Improved the Global Illumination algorithm to improve performance
• SCENARIOS: Number of balance and other tweaks to scenarios 1,2, and 3
• UGC: Added a "Subscribed Items Filter" to the UGC manager in-game

ALPHA FEATURES:
This list contains features that are in-progress, have had a first pass at improvements, or are at an Alpha stage.

• UI/UX: ALPHA FEATURE: Staff Heatmaps - You can now see all your staff in your park and what they are up to using heatmap view!
• UI/UX: ALPHA FEATURE: Multi-Item Delete - You can now simply hover over or select multiple items to delete at once.

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

• BUILDINGS: Entrance and Exit nodes on coaster stations do not align
• GRAPHICS: Graphic options can fail to update and save properly
• GRAPHICS: Issue with the texture at the base of the Drop Zone ride
• GRAPHICS: Leaves and branches of the Palm Tree disappear upon placing it when the camera is zoomed in
• GRAPHICS: LOD problem with the Spacewars ride
• GRAPHICS: Silly Swing and Barnyard Bash flatride LODs are not correct
• GRAPHICS: There are a number of path texture bugs
• PATHS: Player unable to add a path to a sloped path
• PEEPS: Food & Drinks items purchased by any Peep does not update in purchased list under 'Purchases Page' of peep info window.
• PEEPS: Food and Shops always display a popularity of 0.
• PEEPS: Janitor only empty trash can when there is nothing else to do
• PEEPS: Park Rating - 'Ride Quality' graph under the 'Park Rating' tab raise up to some level, just by placing a coaster station into the park.
• PEEPS: Park staff flash outside their building if they cannot reach their destination.
• PEEPS: Peep history is not recording consistently
• PEEPS: Peep Nausea and Energy are being reduced to 0 and increased to 100 after standing up from bench
• PEEPS: Peep remains highlighted after picking and dropping them.
• PEEPS: Peeps do not use certain "unique" restaurants
• PEEPS: Peeps get stuck between benches and path
• PEEPS: Peeps scale to bigger size when sitting in the Observation Tower
• PEEPS: Peeps’ happiness get raised to 100 if stuck on any building or ride exit tongue
• PEEPS: There are a number of rotation and animation issues with peeps
• PEEPS: When deleting a Ride peeps walks in the air to the nearest path instead of respawning
• SCENARIOS: Wooden Coaster 1 fails to complete the cycle in Scenario 2
• UGC: A white blank box will be left on the screen after downloading a blueprint
• UGC: User must exit to the Main Menu and re-enter gameplay to use UGC that is enabled via the Social Hub.
• UI/UX: Coaster station is shown as general even if it is a themed station
• UI/UX: Current month under the 'Park operations' window fails to match with the running month at the bottom left of the tool bar UI.
• UI/UX: Heatmaps become unresponsive when user selects ‘Theme Concentration’ over the rides and tries to bulldoze placed assets
• UI/UX: Heatmaps can occasionally cause textures to fail
• UI/UX: Mouse wheel rotation/elevation increments are slower at high mouse wheel scroll speeds
• UI/UX: The close button on the ‘Test Tab’ fails to function
• UI/UX: Unable to dismiss the welcome message when a user first launches the game

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.

For a general guide on fixes and troubleshooting steps for common issues (including the 57% bug) please visit THIS USER GENERATED GUIDE. 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:

1. Right click RollerCoaster Tycoon World in Steam
2. Click Properties
3. Then Open the Local Files tab
4. 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.