Author: Matthias März

Hello Together,

in the last weeks it was pretty quiet around Summer Islands.  That’s because on the other work we had to do next to the Game. But don’t worry:  The time will change that. In the next month we get started again with more content for you.

But let’s talk about what we did in the last weeks. First of all let me inform you that the AI is doing good progress. It is hard to show you some results, because the AI can cultivate some Islands but there’re still some bugs.

For you guys we integrated some moving palms and we really like the result. I think an important goal is that the World is alive!

Next to some smaller features for a better feeling in the gameplay, we also integrated some new textures like our bikes:

And don’t worry about the performance. The engine we use is createJS and with our achritecture we have a pretty stable game.

For the next weeks we wanna create a new Trailer for our steam page and we hope the page goes online after that.

But there’re still some really great features which are not implemented yet. So stay tuned for Summer Islands 🙂

p.s. you can subscribe to our Newsletter: http://summerislands.de/newsletter

Hello Together,

in the last weeks there was a lot going on next to Summer Islands. We’re students and we have still our work going on. BUT don’t worry! We’re planning and managing to create the game Summer Islands and we working all the time on new ideas and features for the game. SO be sure, there will be still some really greate features in the future.

But for now, may i present to you the new stuff in Summer Islands. We worked on new textures. A shop, an hotel and a Spa and so on. It’s great to see new content and see the game grow. Our AI specialist created a plan ‘what to do on the AI for an Alpha realease’. We have on the AI almost the basics done. It’s awesome to watch the AI to play the game. But fot the Early Acces we want to add more features. While you play, the AI musst be challenging you!

In the last weeks we tried to promote Summer Islands on IndieDB. But it didn’t worked out for us. We’re really thankfull for all your support and for your vote. Maybe next year with Early Access on steam 🙂

And in the end we wish you all the best for the XMAS holidays and the best for 2018.
We will try our best to improve Summer Islands and hopefully soon on Early Access on steam 🙂

See you next Year!

Hello together,

we mentioned it already in the last post. we created a new design and after that a new Logo:

We hope you like it.

Now to another subject. On every beach for tourists you find them and in Summer Islands we didn’t forget them.
Tourist on the beach.

On the picture you see some of them. They will appear around a house or hotel if they like it.
So in Summer Islands you have to find the best place for the buildings and also the building around the building. Every building has his requirements.

After the tourists we worked on some weather disasters. This is pretty important, because the weather disasters and the AI are your enemies. You have to work with them.

On the last weekend we red about the indiedb gaming award 2017. Here is a link to our Summer Islands page. Please feel free to vote there.

Like we mentioned it in the last post, we work in our free time on Summer Islands. So next to the masterthesis or work. That means we try our best for new features, but maybe a little bit slower you want it. Be patient and thanks for your support for Summer Islands.

Hello Together,

in the last 16 days we worked on a couple of things. But this time not primarily on new features ingame, more on generell things.

In the beginning we created some new designs. We started to assemble a new nice looking color palette. The colors have to fit into your game in every aspect. They’re a well-conceived choice to reinforce your atmosphare of the game. We worked on the menu colors and a flat looking Design. On the menus you have to focus on the ergonomic aspects. How can you impart a lot of information in an user friendly way. This is something we always have to improve.

The next smaller thing we worked on was the language. We don’t want to spend a lot of money for a translator. So we thought we can handle this with our well known world wide web. So this gives us not the best translations but it is a first step to have a lot of languages with less effort. In the end we have 26 languages and with this amount we can cover the most players:
English
FRENCH / FRANÇAIS
SPANISH / ESPAÑOL
GERMAN / DEUTSCH
ITALIAN / ITALIANO
PORTUGUESE / PORTUGUÊS
RUSSIAN / РУССКИЙ
GREEK / ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ
TURKISH / TÜRKÇE
DANISH / DANSK
NORWEGIAN / NORSK BOKMÅL
SWEDISH / SVENSKA
DUTCH / NEDERLANDS
POLISH / POLSKI
FINNISH / SUOMI
JAPANESE / 日本語
SIMPLIFIED CHINESE / 简体中文
TRADITIONAL CHINESE / 繁体中文
KOREAN / 한국어
CZECH / ČEŠTINA
HUNGARIAN / MAGYAR
ROMANIAN / ROMÂNĂ
THAI / ภาษาไทย
BULGARIAN / БЪЛГАРСКИ
HINDI / हिंदी
HEBREW / עברית

In the end we also created some new textures and worked on our finetuning. So the numbers in the game is the really high prirority stuff we do now.

We’re still planning to publish a really alpha version of Summer Islands in the end of 2017. But we can only work on Summer Islands in our free time.
So be patient if things not going well and fast enough. We’re really love Summer Islands and to create new features for it and we will definitely publish this awesome game.

In the last 14 days we started to improve the leveldesign. So with the prozedurale generator we wanna have a nice impression for the player in the whole map. The map has to be realistic and playerfriendly. So there musst be some nice places to start your holiday paradise. We decided that only in the brighter spots you can raise the map. With this decision the player cant connect every holiday paradise and it gets a little harder. On the other side it gets a lot faster for the ships to calculate there way thru the map. With this restriction we decided that the player can only build a port on the edge of the brighter to the darker water fields.

In the other days we implemented a A* algorithm for the pathfinding from the ships. From this algorithm we needed an array with the field where the ship changes his direction and the algorithm needed to be fast. Because of a map size of 2000×2000 fields it has to be fast. Otherwise we would switch calculation on the Serverside.

A next big step we did had to do with the finetuning in the moneycalculation ingame, for example the buildingcosts, how many tourist can in the building and so on. These numbers musst be perfect balanced otherwise it is too easy or too hard. There is probably a lot to change in the future but this is the first step to test this numbers and see that the AI will survive.

In the next weeks one of us can only work on little bugs or so, because of his masterthesis. But the others will work on the textures, numbers and features. So we apologize for a maybe slower progress of the game. But we plan to have a early access on steam in the end of 2017 or the begin of 2018.

For now please visit our twitter account or our page on IndieDB with the presskit and enjoy our video about the island types:

Ships, planes and cars everywhere. https://t.co/5sXvWyWT5O #gamedev #indiedev #games #pixelart #screenshotsunday pic.twitter.com/lYc5slhHN6

— SummerIslands 🏝️ (@SummerIslandsQA) October 29, 2017

indiedb.com/games/summer-islands

So, there was a lot going on in the last two weeks.

In the beginning we worked a weekend together, to get more performance from the AI and guess what: We did a good job :). a nice performance boost. With that we can push the AI a little bit more. The Basics are almost complete. Next step on the AI would be some individual choices from every AI.

On the client side we integrated a Map Editor. So, you have the possibility to create your own maps and play them. It would be nice to have also the steam workshop integrated so you can share them easily. I mean you can already share them if you copy and send them. But that wouldn’t be user-friendly.

We also got our steam account ready. So, we tried the greenworks lib to get the connection to steam. We had some trouble in the beginning, but after that in the end it worked great. There is a lot to do with this lib and we probably do this just before the Alpha.

Another great news was the integration to support a gamepad like the Xbox controller. We found a good library called ZIM. So, we will definitely support gamepads. But this is really a feature we will do at the end. We will see.

But please enjoy this beautiful nice port from our lovely artist. Wouldn’t it be nice to live there?

This month we worked a lot on the lobby mechanics. So the work was made in the background and you won’t see these things. You only see the effect.

But that’s not everything. On the AI we rework the basic functions to make it more efficency and for the textures we created some new Buildings.

For the next month we try to work on the weather and catastrophes. We tried some effects in the game. But its really hard to get the right amount of rain and also realistic rain. So maybe we need some more month for this.

But for now you can enjoy the small ingame buildings teaser:

This month was all about textures. It never ends. We work a lot on the buttons and the menu. Since were have a lot more textures we want to make ingame videos. But they will take at least the next month.

On the other side we’re creating a map Editor. So that you can create your personal maps ingame and also on a website. On the website you can download the map and implement it to your game on your PC.

The AI did a lot of progress in the last weeks. We implemented the main architecture, so that we can create the individual AI’s now.

The next Month we work a lot on buildingstextures and the eventsystem from the news. The news will show you the weather forecast and new buildings.

We hope you like the ingame pictures from the SummerIslands (Pre-Alpha 🙂 ).

This time we focused on the AI and some new function with the buildings. We’re making good but slowly progress with the textures. The buildings will have a lot of details :). But for now we will provide a small video about the nature and the island texture. Enjoy 😉