Summer Islands News

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.




-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

Hello together and welcome to 2019!

2019 will be the year. A year that will make the hearts of Summer Island fans beat faster! We have great ahead of this year.
We know the disappointment about the postponed Early Access date is still there...more or less. But 2019 will be the year of Early Access.
Thanks also for all the emails and comments to our last blog entry!
Since the entry we have also received the news that GOG has no interest in Summer Islands. Maybe this will change in the future.
We also thought, through the comments of you, that maybe a beta phase is too much effort and you could go directly to the Early Access. Because Early Access is also going in the direction to improve bugs and do finetuning. As you can see a final decision has not been made yet.

But for now back to the ingame details.
We have been working hard on Summer Islands for the last weeks. On the whole we have
-improved many building arbitrariness calculations for costs/profits,
-the SoundFX extends for a harmonious sound culise,
-small discrepancies and bugs corrected for a better feel,
and the multiplayer mode from Australia to Germany and we were positively surprised how stable Summer Islands is and how much fun it is. That motivates you even more :)

The biggest visible change is in the financial report. There the plan was not to have to calculate forever but to have all important information ready (as it should be with a financial report).



You see now immediately the positive or negative positions with the individual building types. Thus you know directly with which building types you make a loss or you can make still more profit. Below that, there are also the individual expenditure areas such as marketing, insurance, etc.. With the other costs added thereby the annual total sum results.

What we also inserted at new textures are the building plots. Because every building has a construction time until it is finished and the buildings tourists can come. As long as the buildings are being built, this has a bad effect on the neighbouring buildings.



Regarding the construction fields, as well as other areas, we have to say that we have considered/planned many further improvement updates. But for the beginning this should work.


-CLIENT: SoundFX extended
-CLIENT: Texture Bug fixes
-Server: Buildingspopularity calculation improvements
-Server: Money calculation improvements
-Server/CLIENT: financial report improvements
-Server/CLIENT: efficiency improvements

Hello together,

today there are some news that you may not be so happy to receive or that you may have thought you already had. WeHello together, today there are some news that you may not be so happy to receive or that you may have thought you already had. Unfortunately we will not get into our planned time window with the early access in 2018 anymore. We are very sorry about that and we know how much some of you were looking forward to it.

As you have seen, we have been trying hard over the last few weeks to get into an early access stage.
Now we've decided to stop all of it...just kidding! Our planning is as follows:

Early Access release in Q2 2019 at the latest.

This has to do with the fact that we still have to integrate a few important things into Summer Islands and improve them.
Things like that:

• When/how will new buildings be activated?
  
• Create further textures / make them more lively.
  
• Refine/expand SOUNDFX creation.
  
• Memory usage / improve performance
  
• memory/load function even with version differences.
  
• And a lot of finetuning for insurance, advertising, repair, building costs!
  

Please don't forget that we realize Summer Islands in our spare time and we love it too. But you don't always have free time at your disposal.


As the person responsible for programming, I'm constantly testing Summer Islands and working on a Surface Pro 2 with an HD4400. Even with this system (i5-4300U) I get almost constant 50-60 fps. I just wanted to mention that the system requirements for Summer Islands are not very high and you already have a rough plan.


Regarding the fine-tuning on our todo list, we're considering the possibility of opening up for our beloved fans, so that they can get involved before early access.
For us, early access is a way to expand/refine/guide an already playable game through the community. But a game like Summer Islands has to be playable. In the course of early access we will release further features which we hope to be able to improve with your help. Fix bugs, make changes to improve your feel.
So that Summer Islands doesn't only work graphically but also challenges the player with the numbers. For that we see the potential of a closed beta to adjust the difficulty level optimally. We are still thinking about it and would like to hear your opinion about it.


We are also gamers and buy other games. Therefore we see it critically if there is a monopoly in the games market place. To counteract this, we also want to publish Summer Islands on other game platforms. The old one that starts with G and the new one that starts with E. On every shop Summer Islands will cost the same and we would try to publish Summer Islands everywhere at the same time. What do you think of that.

At the end of the announcement I ask the following questions to each of you:

• How are you doing?
  
• What do you think of a closed beta in Q1 2019?
  
• How do you see the release on other game platforms?
  

Hello together,

this week there was a lot of restructuring but no big appearance changes. This week was completely in the spirit of memory and calculation management. But let's start all over again. As I mentioned before, the client of Summer Islands is based on a Javascript engine called createJS. An engine that is really outstanding in terms of HTML5. It's not a grinding advertisement but the efficiency and freedom is really great. On the server side we use NodeJS which is perfect with speed. The problem with a HTML5 game is mostly the browser's limitations in terms of security. So you don't want the Javascript in the browser of a website to simply access your own files in the computer. Thus any creation/access of files must come from the server. This week we have put the focus on the creation of the exe. This means that we have files that should not be stored in the Exe and when loading the reference must be loaded from the server to the Client. So we have reduced the loading time of the Exe strongly. Because everyone who wants to play has no desire to wait long for it.

To sum it up you have to say that the most important thing in a HTML5 game like Summer Islands is the architecture. You also have to constantly make new efficiency changes and optimize storage space.
For example, we have exchanged arrays and maps that you use by default in INT8Arr. You have to make some architecture changes but you can improve the memory usage by 95%. With such ideas you are always busy to get a constant 60 fps.

I am a bit embarrassed but I found the Javascript declaration let in the last week. If you have learned to program with Java then you are already automatically set that the location of a declaration of a variable is at the same time the definition whether the variable allows a local or global access. To avoid mistakes we now change all variables to let!

An additional increase in efficiency we have managed with the Minimap. Before that, the client painstakingly created each pixel and stored it in the cache. When opening the minimap for the first time in the game, you often had to wait longer due to the size of the map. Because all pixels had to be displayed from the cache to the screen for the first time. An alternative that we are now using comes from the server. The server already creates an image of the map during the map generation which we can reload in the client. Thus we have no more waiting time with the client.

But now also to a few further textures which we have integrated. As you saw a few days ago in the last tweet we integrated a cinema.
The cinema belongs to the attractions and earns a little more money than other attractions. It doesn't have any special features regarding the location. So a building that always brings money in.



A souvenir shop was created as a smaller shop. This is small, not expensive and always runs well with tourists. A must for every holiday island.



The car business was not new but reworked. The quality as a more upscale building for the luxury segment has remained the same.



We hope you also enjoy seeing Summer Islands come together in good steps. We could see that on Steam already about 1000 people have Summer Islands on their wish list. That makes us really happy to see so many people interested in Summer Islands. We are working hard towards early access.



-Executable: Data outsourcing with reference
-Executable: faster loadingtimes
-SERVER: create Minimap image
-Server/CLIENT: efficiency improvements

Hello together,

the last days we have been working on the financial menu to increase the ergonomics and to insert the first architectures for consultants. For the early access we leave it with the repair manager. This makes it easier for you to work on the constant repairs that occur when the buildings are being used to capacity. Provided you hire the repair manager and can pay him monthly. Other settings include taking out or repaying a loan, advertising for the buildings and taking out insurance for the buildings in the event of the destruction of a building. There are different settings for advertising and insurance. Depending on how much money you want to pay.



Additionally we have fixed many bugs this week. Last week's news banner needed some minor improvements. Also some buttons and some restructuring of variables were necessary.

A little help in the game we also realized. The event history records the past events. So you can see at a glance which messages came last. E.g. if you load a savegame and first have to look at which events came last. In the course of the game you probably won't use the news history often.



Also this week we have created new textures. As another building in the sports category there is now a jet ski rental. This building is designed for the masses of holidaymakers. You don't get rich with a jet ski rental. But it will be nice to see that near one of these buildings you will see jet skis on the water. This does not bring any advantage for the player. But it will improve the atmosphere.





-CLIENT: redesigned financial settings menu
-CLIENT: Eventhistory window integrated
-CLIENT/SERVER: Consultants architecture implemented
-CLIENT: Bug fixes: slide buttons, news banners