Posted on

Update beginning of July [v0.1.4]

Hello together,

the first stress has gone and we get into the mode to release new features. Additionally there is also Steam Summer Sale and of course everyone is busy with sales of other games 🙂
We’ve gathered all the feedback and packed with our ideas. Out came a Trello board where you can see a lot about the future planning of Summer Islands. It’s not yet so perfectly arranged and colored. So WIP:
https://trello.com/b/FbC1a19w/devboard-summer-islands

But let’s get to the innovations for this week:
Today we proudly present the Linux Support. Some bugs and implementations had to be done. But we made it to the end. The MAC support mentioned above is still in progress. We are still testing and hope for positive results.
Since we are not the experts of Linux and MAC we hope for your help to fix bugs. In addition I would like to refer to the “BUG REPORTS” rider in the discussions:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/731650/discussions/

Of course we also implemented some small things that disturbed you.
The button for infinite money will still not be available! 😀 Little joke.

As a small change we have arranged the New History antichronologically. So the latest news are always at the top of the window. This way you don’t always have to scroll and we should have integrated it right away.

Furthermore, we have looked at the compulsion to road connections and loosened this a bit. For some buildings there is now the possibility to place them a little away from the street without getting losses. There may be a maximum of 2 fields distance to the next street, no matter in which direction.
Currently the buildings can be: beach volleyball, tennis, beach chairs, ice shop and surf shop.
But we are still considering to mark this directly in the building menu with a small icon or something.

The campsite has also been upgraded. As soon as a campsite is connected to a street, you can build as many campsites as you like on it and the others on it. Thus a large camp site can be realized. However, at least one camp site must be connected to a street. Somewhere the visitors have to get to the campsite.

That was it for this week and we hope you are looking forward to the coming weeks/months, just like we are:
https://trello.com/b/FbC1a19w/devboard-summer-islands

Update log:
-LINUX support
-CLIENT: News History antichronological
-SERVER: Streetnetwork: a few buildings can have two fields between building and street to connect (Beach volleyball, tennis, beach chairs, ice shop and surf shop)
-SERVER: Tents can connect other tents if one tent is connected with street.

Posted on

Update February [v0.0.19]

Hello together,

this time there were many improvements to the Basic Game Principle to meet the requirements of Early Access. We are getting closer and closer to the goal to get a stable version that includes the basic Summer Islands mechanics and can be extended with bigger updates in the future.
You can read from time to time how the Steam marked is flooded by unfinished Early Access games and how they don’t get done. This will not be the case with Summer Islands!

We have made many improvements in this version and implemented mechanics that should have been integrated for weeks.
The biggest internal finetuning changes have been in the BUILDING COSTS and in the calculation of the POPULARITY of the buildings. In addition, work was also done on the MAP CREATION.

A few smaller architectural restructurings were carried out, e.g.

  • We did this during the creation of the Minimap. Since the creation during the runtime requires a lot of resources, we placed them in the server that sends a PNG file to the clients when the game starts.
  • Each player now has the ability to customize the building colors according to flat or normal mode.
  • The maximum water depth has been extended so that a more beautiful transition from dark to light water is possible.
  • As soon as a bridge part is destroyed, the surrounding bridge parts are destroyed sequentially.
  • The starting year was set to 1990 for aesthetic reasons. 🙂
  • A more complex insurance calculation was integrated.
  • A long required allocation of the buildings on the basics of IDs was realized and integrated into the individual areas.
  • A smoother movement was integrated, which gives the player a better assignment of the direction of movement.

In summary, a lot of work was done on smaller extensions and bug fixes. Many mechanics are already integrated in a stable way. A large part of the still needed work lies in the visual improvement of buttons, explanations or the missing tutorial. But let’s face it, who is still playing a tutorial these days? 🙂
A knowledge database/help center with short explanations might be the better choice. But that will not be decided until the next few weeks.

Update log:
-SERVER: BUILDING COSTS improvements
-SERVER: POPULARITY FORMULA improvements
-SERVER: MAP CREATION improvements
-CLIENT: Minimap adapted with PNG.
-SERVER/CLIENT: Destoyed Buildingsfields are now taken into account in earth elevations and decreases and cannot be changed.
-CLIENT: Destoyed Buildingsfields uses earth fields as background
-CLIENT: Added more setting to distinguish color between normal and flat.
-CLIENT: added select mode without Cache.
-CLIENT: when demolishing a road we use a new Cluster calculation
-SERVER/CLIENT: dark water with -2 height
-CLIENT: Red font graduated, not so red anymore
-Server/Client: bridge deletion with delay.
-CLIENT: small ships inserted.
-CLIENT: Building manager rent increase/lower fixed
-CLIENT: Building manager scroll mouse offset fix
-CLIENT: Movables buildings adapt to colour of building
-CLIENT: Movables are always reintegrated into map.
-CLIENT: smoother movements with Keys AWSD
-CLIENT: Click on building to show building preferences by colors via ID
-CLIENT: Buildingsizecheck converted to ID
-SERVER: buildingsizecheck converted to IDs
-CLIENT: mapbasicfunctions changed to ID
-SERVER/CLIENT: Start year set to 1990
-CLIENT: finance menu: Yearly history saves 30 entries
-CLIENT: finance menu: month history stores 24 entries
-CLIENT: buildingfieldselection corrected