Tower Unite update for 16 December 2021

Winter Holidays are here!

Wintertime has come to the Tower Unite Plaza! We’ve decked out the island with holiday cheer and brought back all of the classic holiday events. Be sure to drop by Santa Claws’ Workshop for new Condo and Appearance items, and enjoy the festive atmosphere!

Holiday Coins are also back and can be earned by playing any of the games in Tower!

Monorail!

The new and improved Monorail system is ready to take you to all of your favorite destinations around the Plaza. Hop on at one of the four stops and see the island from a new perspective while you ride in style to the stores and games.

New Appearance Store

Appearance items can now be bought at the new store: Tower Threads! There you can preview appearance items before you purchase them. You can also activate the appearance menu using the store’s high tech equipment! All appearance items that were previously on the appearance menu have now been moved to the new store.

Changes

• Plaza: Holiday 2021 Events Begin
• Plaza: New Store: Tower Threads, for all your apparel needs
• Plaza: Plaza audio pass. Added sounds to the Bowling Exterior, Casino Exterior, DIY, Franky's Grill, Rob's Imports, Fresh, Songbirds, various room tones, ocean, dock sounds
• Plaza: Added new holiday items to Santa's Workshop and Celebrations stores
• Plaza: Added Floating Text item to the D.I.Y. store
• Plaza: Subtly improved quality of Plaza lighting
• Plaza: Tower Lobby small art pass
• Plaza: Pool bypass bridge added
• Plaza: Updated palm trees
• Minigolf - Sweet Tooth: Hole 10 hole-in-one has been adjusted
• Condo - Suite: You can now toggle off the upstairs railing
• Condo - Suite: Add another light manager for the upstairs area
• Condo: Spin to Win Home Edition probabilities changed to completely random instead of favoring "nothing"
• Appearance Editor: You can now adjust the camera zoom with mouse wheel
• Appearance Editor: Improved lighting and background visuals for the main menu
• Appearance Editor: Improved background on the in-game UI
• Appearance items are now only located in the new Appearance store: Tower Threads, instead of being available in the appearance editor
• Plaza: Tower Threads now has a way to visually preview Appearance items before you buy them
• Plaza: Store UI improvements and animations
• Condo: Added Canvas materials: Simple Color
• Accelerate: First drift boost stage now requires 1.0 seconds to engage instead of just 0.5 seconds
• Accelerate: Turn rate increased to allow for sharper turns without the need to drift (sharp turn engages after 0.35 seconds of holding turn down)
• Accelerate: Increased ground turn friction to keep the kart from sliding all around, resulting in much tighter controls
• Condo: Added five different types of light animations to the Christmas Lights Twinkle
• Condo: Added canvas comment support for Canvas Statue and Canvas Theater Frame
• Inventory: Improved item edit popup, added separators to make the edit button stand out more from the other options
• Inventory: Locking or Disabling Collision on items now automatically closes the edit popup
• Inventory: Hot bar inventory now hides while editing items
• UI: Renamed C context button prompt from "Actions" to "Character"
• UI: Renamed "Set Workshop Player Model" to "Find Player Model"
• UI Renamed "Remove Workshop Player Model" to "Take Off Player Model"
• UI: Updated font on latest news UI to make it more legible
• Items: Improved RC car handling
• Items: Reduced Launch Pad sound volume
• UI: Some unit HUDs now change for the holidays

Bug Fixes

• Fixed gizmos not working when intersecting with a locked item
• Appearance Editor: Fixed the character often times not facing the camera when entering appearance editing mode
• Appearance Editor: Fixed the character not facing the camera after manually rotating the character and switching to a new accessories tab
• Appearance Editor: Improved the camera overall, adding easing and ironing out edge cases
• Appearance Editor: Fixed networking lag that would cause the character head to snap down when entering the appearance editor
• Appearance Editor: Fixed large or small characters not fitting within the camera's views (basically appearance editor would completely break with tiny or large player models as the cameras would be mega offset). Now the camera will adjust smoothly to match the size of the character
• Appearance Editor: Fixed back camera offsets
• Appearance Editor: Fixed right click tool tips for appearance items not showing up properly on the main menu
• Appearance Editor: Fixed sell tooltips not closing when you click off them or scroll wheel off
• Plaza: Fixed not being able to checkout items while on the store main page category list
• Condo - Suite: Fixed seats in couch not letting you get back up out of them after entering them
• Workshop: Fixed normal maps clearing when using translucent or masked materials in workshop models
• Fixed footstep sounds not playing most of the time while in first person due to previous optimizations
• Condo - Courtyard Villa: Fixed missing collision on Shower Base in upstairs bathroom
• Condo - Courtyard Villa: Fixed upside down wall in Pantry room
• Condo - Courtyard Villa: Fixed wrongly placed gravel texture on the landscape
• Condo - Courtyard Villa: You can now edit the baseboards in the hallway again
• Condo - Courtyard Villa: Fixed incorrect material on some paving stones
• Condo - Courtyard Villa: Fixed shadows appearing in the bathrooms when items are hidden, but the light is turned off
• Condo - Courtyard Villa: Removed collision on distant mountains
• Condo - Courtyard Villa: Fixed a bunch of item/placeable lights not working in some rooms
• Condo - Courtyard Villa: Fixed flashlight not working in some rooms
• Condo - Courtyard Villa: Fixed missing support piece
• Condo - Courtyard Villa: Optimised lighting a little bit
• Condo - Courtyard Villa: Fixed several light managers being stuck in the origin of the map
• Little Crusaders - Knightsend: Fixed various camping spots
• Little Crusaders - Knightsend: Fixed out-of-line flags
• Little Crusaders - Knightsend: Fixed a dragon spawn point that was being blocked
• Little Crusaders - Knightsend: Fixed various holes in the world
• Condo: Fixed hidden edit item icons (such as placeable lights) not displaying for players who have Edit All Items permission but not Surface Edit permissions.
• Condo: Fixed locked doors showing an E prompt in some cases (should just show the words "locked")
• Condo: Fixed condo built in lights not having the new light functions
• Items: Fixed workshop NPC having loading icons that draw through the world
• Items: Fixed Stealthbox not animating the local player when in hidden mode (crouched). Also fixed the local player hiding and added a vignette effect to show the hidden state to the local player
• Items: Fixed christmas lights not generating lights properly
• Items: Fixed canvas frame color being applied to non canvas frames causing canvases to be tinted upon duplication or load in sometimes
• Plaza: Fixed DIY store floor missing footstep sounds and causing vehicles to slow down
• Ball Race: Fixed GLXY level 11 rotating platform causing unwanted physics reactions
• Inventory: Fixed not being able to open edit menu (right click popup) while currently editing an item
• Inventory: Fixed not being able to middle mouse open edit another item while currently editing an item
• Inventory: Fixed not being able to readjust the camera with right click while currently editing an item
• Inventory: Fixed advanced build mode hiding cursor when it shouldn't be
• Inventory: Fixed advanced build mode hiding key prompts for gizmo editor when it shouldn't be
• Milestones: Fixed camera position resetting to default angles when placing down the Golf Ball Milestone
• Milestones: Fixed Golf Ball Milestone stroke count able to be increased while the ball is in motion
• Milestones: Fixed Golf Ball Milestone leaving causing input to get stuck in a weird mode
• Fixed being near NPCs causing vehicles to slow down
• Plaza: Fixed Pumpkin Pool Tube, Pool Tube, Flamingo Tube, Duck Tube, Donut Tube, and Dino Tube not being in the Oasis store
• Fixed emote list sometimes not listing after using a vehicle
• Plaza: Fixed placement positions of holiday decorations
• Condo: Fixed teleporters not teleporting players if it's placed on a spawn point
• Inventory: Fixed tooltip and highlighting features not turning off when hovering over item settings
• Inventory: Fixed cursor always being a hand when over item settings
• Fixed concrete and other surfaces not having the default foot step sounds (and increased glass footstep sound volume)

Optimizations

• Plaza: Optimized Plaza VRAM usage, saving around 200mb of VRAM
• Plaza: Lightmap memory optimizations
• UI: Optimized the main unit HUD UI
• UI: Optimized button UI across the game
• Optimized footstep logic so the server doesn't have to calculate as much

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