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