World Turtles News

Today is the day, fellow Meeps!

I hope you’re just as excited as I am!

Let me be the first to celebrate that World Turtles’ Early Access is now live on PC! 🎉

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thank you all for your support throughout development! I’m super excited to show you everything we’ve accomplished so far, and I hope you enjoy saving the turtles as much as I do.

You can follow us on Twitter and join our Discord to interact with our amazing community! 😉

Don’t forget, you can leave us a review (which really helps a lot), share part of your journey, tell us about a bug you’ve found, or just give some feedback in our Discord.

Save the Turtles!

De Chelonian Mobile!
Gideon

Hi all,

There are, understandably, two very frequent connotations being made between World Turtles and existing popular culture. I wanted to address those briefly here.

TL;DR We all have a very positive relationship and mutual respect for each other’s efforts and intentions! 😊

The Wandering Village
I have actually become online friends with Philomena (team lead of The Wandering Village), and she's been very friendly and helpful towards a noob solo dev. The two games' designs were done completely independently - we only found out about each other later, and became friends due to it. I've been working on World Turtles since 2019, long before I heard of The Wandering Village. I've also purposefully not played or watched TWV since I didn't want it to influence me. I actually have a YouTube channel with dev logs from 2019 (and there exists some early independent YouTube coverage as well) showing my progress, I'm just a lot slower than the TWV team!
Many of World Turtles' Discord members came straight from the Discord of The Wandering Village!😊

Discworld
I am a huge Sir Terry Pratchett and Discworld fan. It is indeed why I chose this setting. However, the World Turtle myth has appeared in various forms via various civilizations across earth and is, in itself, not a problem. I actually contacted Rhianna Pratchett about this very early on to make sure I would not be stepping on any toes. She is completely fine with me using the setting, as long as I don’t make it “Discworld-y” by basing my characters, places and ideas directly on those of Discworld.

To add to all of this, there's also Beyond These Stars coming out fairly soon, but I also know their team lead, Sam, and the situation is similar to the other two discussed above.

See you in the game!
Gideon

Hi all,
________________________

It seems as if "Crashing on the title screen" has been sorted out for Mac users. If anyone still find this happening, please let me know.
________________________

While World Turtles seems to be working well on most Linux and Mac machines, there have been a few exceptions (details below). To avoid disappointment and unhappiness, please test whether the demo runs on your rig before the demo is disabled, which will happen a couple of hours before release.

There will be support channels in the community hub after launch to help sort out specific issues on a case-by-case basis, so please join us there if you run into some problems and don't mind trying a few fixes. If you have the technical experience and capacity to help out, that would also be very much appreciated. As a solo developer I, unfortunately, don't realistically have hours to spend on individual, more obscure issues, although I'd like to somehow cater for as many as possible, with the community's help.

However, if you do have an issue and this sounds like too much of a drag, I completely understand. Also, if you have bought the game without having the opportunity to test the demo, and run into any issues that cannot be resolved in the amount of time you are willing to afford it, please feel free to refund the game - no hard feelings from my side, and I hope from yours.

Known exceptions:

• I've had reports of the game crashing on the Title Screen on Apple Silicon machines, even though these binaries are included in the builds. I have not been able to determine exactly why. If you have an Apple Silicon machine I would appreciate it if you could send me Player Logs (on Discord) so I can try and figure out what the issues are.
  
• Sometimes the game runs fine, but some of the shaders look weird. This can usually be fixed by adding the correct command line parameter(s) when launching the game.
  

Thanks for your time,
Gideon

Good day, fellow Meeps!

I bet you’re excited to hear the news!

World Turtles launches into Early Access on May 1st, 2023 on PC! 🎉

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thank you all for your support throughout development! I’m super excited to show you everything we’ve accomplished since the last demo update, and I hope you enjoy saving the World Turtles as much as I do.

Make sure to join our Discord server and follow us on our Twitter for more frequent updates and to connect with other Meeps!

De Chelonian Mobile!
Gideon

[h2]Good day, fellow Meeps![/h2]

Welcome to the last update before the release date announcement! Although World Turtles is “Made with Unity”, it still feels “Unreal” that we’re almost at the Early Access release point. When I started tinkering with Unity 4 years ago, I had no idea what lay ahead!

The biggest updates for the last 5 weeks are discussed below. As before, some more Quality of Life improvements have also been added.

Join our Discord server for more frequent updates and previews!
De Chelonian Mobile!
Gideon

[h2]Voiceovers for all Four Tutorials[/h2]

There is now a Meep voice guiding you through all four of the tutorials. There’s not much more to say about that!



[h2]Localization[/h2]
Localization for German, Chinese and Afrikaans (my mother tongue) has just about been completed, and the process is working quite well! More languages will be selected based on the support for World Turtles in different regions. Personally, I’d love to just add 6 more languages off the bat, but it also has to make financial sense. Fan-based localizations are not off the cards, although any such endeavors must be properly managed and executed.



[h2]Introducing: Challenges with Variability and on-line Leader Boards[/h2]
You can now ply your trade against four challenges that need specific strategies to complete successfully. There are five difficulty levels to choose from. You also have the option of submitting your best score for any challenge-difficulty combination to an online leader board.
The challenges introduce variability in the game parameters: Experience can be gained at different rates; Upgrade multipliers can alter the efficiency gained from levelling up; Goodwill can accumulate at different rates for different challenges. Tutorials and Challenges can also have different Research tech trees – the research items can be organized in any way that fits the data structures and the UI will automatically display and handle it correctly. There’s no reason why this feature cannot eventually make it into the Map Maker as well!



[h2]Helicopter Rides[/h2]
In addition to Water Ways being constructed by Builders using helicopters, Meeps on Leisure tasks now also use Helicopters to fly over their homes, while Wanderers now use available helicopters to scout further, including across water.



[h2]The First Draft of a Detailed Map Maker (Tectonic Plates / Topography)[/h2]
While you will not yet be able to play on these maps, you can now create your own maps by specifying Tectonic Plates (and the direction and speed with which they move) right on the map, or by applying Topographic Maps to determine land elevation. Then, you can select Climate parameters and even edit hexes individually. More options will continuously be added and, eventually, you will be able to play on and share these maps.



[h3]Hello, World![/h3]


[h3]65 New Music Tracks[/h3]
I’ve added 65 more of Alexander Nakarada’s wonderful tracks to keep the playlist fresh. His discography is an absolute treasure!

[h3]UI[/h3]
The UI is constantly improving, although the additions this month are not as impactful as last month. However, I should be able to share some exiting news on this front soon…