Update #56: Nintendo Switch & PC

Parkasaurus

Parkasaurus is a dinosaur tycoon management simulation where you take care of your dinosaurs by constructing well-designed exhibits, researching specialized technologies, and maximizing profits to expand into the ultimate dinosaur theme park. Do you favor development for guests or your dinosaurs?

[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31320585/94a86b82132c05b036ce229fa6fd58e2daf7f3e0.png[/img] Big news friends! [i]Parkasaurus[/i] is coming to the Nintendo Switch [b]early 2022[/b]! Bringing [i]Parkasaurus[/i] over was a challenge the two of us had always wanted to do ourselves. Playing the game on the Switch feels pretty fantastic – and I don’t think anyone else would have given the same love to the port as we did. Wait wait wait, so how does this relate to the PC/Steam version? Well, the controller support required for the Switch (a TON of work) is coming to Steam, along with some other cool tidbits I thought to talk about: [list] [*] Fence helper [*] Guest skeleton optimization [*] Multi-threading NavMesh [*] Controller Support [/list] [h1]Fence helper[/h1] In the video, one can see two [b]fence helpers[/b]. The blue bar that appears showing how the wall aligns is currently in the game. We now added a [b]floating[/b] tile that helps the player not lose track of the cursor location. This makes creating fences with a controller or mouse snappier and quicker. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31320585/485f445f7dad5d7084610c3a987bb0b6a780a4dd.gif[/img] [h1]Guest skeleton optimization[/h1] Who knew the skeleton in the models of the guests took up so much computing power! Maybe some of you knew. Each guest had an entire animation skeleton that the game had to keep track of. Multiply this by 200, 300 guests, and that is a lot of wasted CPU! Now all our skeletal animation was converted to vertex animation so the GPU could help out. This means more guests on screen, which also means we can raise (or remove) the guest cap. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31320585/a1002c72012a4bf4ea4031b5ccbf321b5e73f870.png[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31320585/8cc40cb42b07358a08b97e8c4301bd3f5477f481.png[/img] [h1]Multi-threading NavMesh[/h1] We’ve improved the rebuilding that occurs every time an object is placed in [b]Parkasaurus[/b]. The game is broken up into regions that get activated more or less depending on the point of view of the player. This results in a much snappier and lag-free experience building the perfect park. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31320585/de70d6c227136694176553cc05b128241190bc2a.gif[/img] [h1]Controller Support[/h1] Everyone said controller support was a lot of work. Did we listen? NO! Was it a lot of work? YES! Adding controller support to us meant more than just being able to play [b]Parkasaurus[/b] with a controller – we wanted the experience to feel as good if not better than keyboard + mouse. We underestimated how complex the interactions are between all our UI windows that have to be solved with a controller. The video below looks simple, but we had to decide and work on the ordering opening/closing windows. Phew. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31320585/330fecdb867513c7a31bd962d4424343887123c5.gif[/img] Now be sure to tell your Switch friends about Parkasaurus. 😊 We’ll post again when the game is available. Here are a few ways to follow us: [url=store.steampowered.com/app/591460/Parkasaurus/)]Steam[/url] [url=discord.gg/washbear]Discord[/url] [url=twitter.com/washbearstudio]Twitter[/url] [url=www.parkasaurusgame.com]Mailing List[/url]