Summer Islands News

we are happy to announce that a new version has been released. This version has the goal to make the game more complete. No big features were implemented, but rather many bugs were fixed and fine-tuned.

For example, you and we noticed that the building history was reloaded every time you reloaded a game or the charts were sometimes deleted or the star menu did not show the correct number of stars.
We would like to thank you very much for the feedback via the Steam Forum or via email, from all our loyal fans out there.

Through the fine-tuning by us we have reduced the probability of catastrophes a bit. There are now fewer disasters.
Also the default victory conditions are easier to reach and you can adjust them with the buttons. In the victory menu, when a player has reached the number of stars, the victory points are calculated better. Every 100 tourists count as 1 point and one star is already worth 1000 points. The money is the same, 1.000.000 € is 1 point.

The consultants have no longer 15 levels but only 6 levels. So it is not so expensive and time consuming to upgrade them to the highest level. With every 2nd level of Saboteur you unlock new Sabotage. In the future more sabotage possibilities will follow.

The biggest change is the software architecture of the buildings. We have now also integrated the age of the buildings into the popularity function. Older buildings also get a bonus of popularity.
This means that the building popularity is based on the demand of the road network, i.e. the number of holidaymakers and how many buildings of the same category exist. In addition, bonuses are added to this. So the surrounding buildings, the rent, health, how much advertising and now also the age of the building. so from about 5-10 years the bonus for the age increases. This gives the possibility to increase the rent again by a few monetary units. You must always look individually how high one can set the rent.

Of course we have adapted the savegames so that old savegames are automatically converted into the new format.
In case of problems you can of course send us an email:
[email protected]
Or play with an older version in advance. We have released every version as beta since the release in Steam. Under Properties>Betas>Select Beta.

That was it for this update with the big innovations.
We wish you a good Summer Islands start into the New Year 2020. Of course we want to thank you very much. Without you the game wouldn't have come this far. Thank you a lot!!!
There will be a more detailed review of Summer Islands for 2019.

https://trello.com/b/FbC1a19w/devboard-summer-islands

Until then, have fun
Your Summer Islands team.

yes, for the christmas holidays we wanted to release an update for your pleasure.
SUMMER ISLANDS WITH SNOW TEXTURES.......JOKE!

Here's our new trailer at the beginning:
[previewyoutube]https://youtu.be/7J5oE1tTXOs [/previewyoutube]

We thought we would bring a really good improvement of the game atmosphere and release the music! WWUUUUHHHUUU (Finally, it was time).

For the music we worked together with Fabian @ FarBeyond Studio.
You can find his social media accounts here:

• Website: www.farbeyondstudio.com
  
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJYhp8FkgxdttAb2lPjBHKA
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/FarbeyondS
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/309880915804605

We can look forward to more songs in the future. We will be able to integrate them again and again. Half of the songs have been made by myself, by the guy who always writes to you here.
We think the songs are really great. Not every song you like 100% but it's a great compilation. Currently the songs always have a break of 2-3 minutes in between. With the 10 songs we get about one hour running time. That's a good start. We hope you like the songs too.

Furthermore we have added some new textures for the buttons. So that clickable fields are also well visible. We are currently only at the beginning to revise them all and consider how we can find a suitable programmed way without creating new textures. Also, it makes the game fell more alive.

With the BOTS we have also improved a lot. The BOTS now fill their space much better and try to use every building. Of course it is still a long way to go to create the perfect opponents. But with a little patience and more work on our side we are confident.
At Terraforming, we've gone up a bit with the cost. Before that we were much too cheap. It could be that now the balance is a bit confused.

We also fixed the support for Linux. For this bug we want to apologize to the Linux community.
We try to fix smaller bugs over the holidays and restore the finetuning.

I hope you have a lot of fun with the new update and the MUUUUUSSSSSSIIIIIIIIKKKKKK.

https://trello.com/b/FbC1a19w/devboard-summer-islands

in the last few weeks we've been able to work a little bit more on little things. This way we tried to improve the feel of the game.

First of all I want to talk about the SoundFX. We managed to add another component to our engine. So the SoundFX is only played when the object is visible on the screen. With cars you often heard the horn even though you were on the water and hadn't seen any. In addition, we added much more pleasant natural sounds and e.g. a little victory music in the victory window. We will also try to extend the SoundFX in the future.



We have integrated some feedback points from you. For example, if you wanted to go back to the main menu or desktop, an additional window will appear with an additional confirmation. We also improved the savegames. You now have the possibility to give each savegame a personal name. We have separated the storage of the data and the temporary information for the display in the loading screen. This way we can show you the savegames much faster and additionally show you more information. Which version, the playing time or how many players were there. Of course we made sure that the older savegames still work. They don't have a detailed display. But if you load and save them they are up to date.
If you want to copy them you only have to copy 2 files now. Under

../Steam/steamapps/common/Summer Islands/savegames

you can now always find a .data and a .info file. Both should be copied. But loading without the .info file is also possible.



We have much better news to the size of the scores. Unfortunately we noticed that in the last version the encryption of a 2000 map crashed the game. Therefore we took a closer look and made the space consumption more efficient. We could reduce the savegames by 20x. This means that the loading is much faster and that we now have much better possibilities to move the savegames to the Steamcloud.
We have already tested the Steamcloud with success. But not really integrated yet.



There is also a new little thing in the NewsHistory. This shows now always at which building type there is new building, with the new building name. Here and there we have also improved the scrolling or extended the time of the tourists in the sand.
And of course some more bugs fixed!

We are already looking forward to the XMAS holidays and you should also :D
Have fun with the new update!
https://trello.com/b/FbC1a19w/devboard-summer-islands


Update log:

• CLIENT/SERVER: Savegame Management
  
• SERVER: Savegame size reduzing
  
• CLIENT: SoundFX extended/improved
  
• CLIENT: OK/CANCEL check window
  
• CLIENT: NewsHistory improved
  
• CLIENT/SERVER: BUG FIXED
  
• CLIENT/SERVER: Javascript efficiency improved
  

It's finally time. The update 0.1.9 is here, after a long wait. We needed a long time for the bigger feature of this update. There were some setbacks because we couldn't do some things because of our architecture. So we had to change some things and start again. But in the end we managed it.



In detail it is about the feature of levelling larger terrain areas. This makes it much easier to create a surface without many clicks. The preview option to display and calculate the possible costs was the difficult part. Unfortunately we ran into a few dead ends due to our architecture.
We go through a recursive method in which we look which heights do not yet have the desired height. Thus the map is adapted to the new height. If you want to do this several times for a larger area, you have to be careful that the recursion does not cause large FPS breaks. Also you have to pay special attention to the demolition conditions. In the end we have integrated a second map which is preferably displayed when a surface is levelled. Also the recursion is limited to certain areas only. Each part is only responsible for one direction. This does not result in overlaps.
With this we have implemented a feature which is still important for the editor.



A few more features are also available in this update.

We have integrated an de/encryption for the savegames with an additional verification number. So you can exclude in the multiplayer that someone has spent more money after loading and is shown wrong in the statistics. That doesn't bring any big changes now. But in the future we can still expand this.

The SoundFX build effects have also been improved. Next we want to adjust them so that they are only heard when they are really visible on the screen. This has unfortunately turned out to be more difficult than expected. Because our engine doesn't have something like this by default and therefore we have to develop an algorithm first that confirms with little effort whether the object is displayed or not.

Finally we have changed the main menu of the design a bit. That wasn't much effort. The goal was to create a more lively main menu.
And of course we have some bugs fixed!

For the next weeks until the XMAS holidays we want to concentrate on stability and atmosphere.
Have fun with the new update!
https://trello.com/b/FbC1a19w/devboard-summer-islands


Update log:
-CLIENT/SERVER: Terraforming Field integrated
-CLIENT: Planes Layer BUG FIX
-CLIENT: Javascript efficiency improved
-SERVER/CLIENT: SoundFX Buildings improved
-SERVER: Savegames De/Encoding
-CLIENT: Mainmenu improved

I'd say we were on summer break. But unfortunately we were so busy with everyday tasks like looking for a flat, moving etc. You know that this is always time consuming.
Now that everything is back to normal we want to release new updates for you.

I think right at the beginning I would like to mention that we made a stupid mistake. The victory conditions weren't counted individually for each player, they were counted all together. That's why you could quickly end the game with a few BOTS. We fixed that right away.
We would be happy to see a few victory pictures from you. How you cut off so after a certain time. So feel free to post some pictures.

As a bigger feature we have added the money send function. You now have the possibility to send money to every player. Via the star menu and the tab player. Therefore we had to trick something with the HTML DOM elements to get a good input window. I don't think the result is perfect yet. But you can already work with it.



We made some small changes to the options menu. This gives you the possibility to remove moving objects depending on the hardware. Now all corresponding layers are removed from the game and no longer displayed. This might help some people to increase the FPS. Also we could improve the sometimes jerky clicking behavior. We switched to the HTML MouseEvents. These always have the highest priority during execution. So in the future we can integrate much better mouse interactions e.g. the wish to activate street with mouseDown and to build with mousePressUp.

Finally, we also implemented the architecture for the supply buildings. This adds two more buildings: The garbage dump and the sewage plant. These can currently be built easily and are calculated like normal buildings. Of course, other buildings don't want them next door. In further updates the supply buildings will play a bigger role so that the other buildings will work at all. But I have to tell you right now that Summer Islands won't be an economic simulation like ANNO etc.. We want to increase the difficulty and the realism with the utility buildings. There will be more such buildings coming. But at the moment we don't plan with every building what you would need to live. Rather an abstraction for the vacation.



Have fun with the new update! https://trello.com/b/FbC1a19w/devboard-summer-islands


Update Log:

• CLIENT: Send money to fellow players
  
• CLIENT: MouseEvents improved
  
• CLIENT: Javascript efficiency improved
  
• SERVER/CLIENT: Supply building integrated
  
• SERVER: Victory calculation BUG FIX
  
• CLIENT: Options menu improved
  
• CLIENT: OptionsMenu Switch Layer On/Off