Summer Islands News

In this update we added more natural disasters, fixed bug and additionally improved some small things.



I would say the most beautiful news is the volcano. A natural disaster that can just pop up in between. Somewhere in the nowhere or directly in the vacation paradise. First the volcano gets bigger and bigger until the lava runs out at the end. The lava always runs down the mountain. I.e. who reacts fast and builds a wall around it can prevent the spreading. After some time the lava cools down and the black lava fields remain. These can be built over. The volcano has no negative influence except destruction.



Pollution is not a nice event and has a negative influence on the surrounding buildings. It occurs near buildings and should be removed as soon as possible. This can be done with the demolition tool or you can build a palm tree or a building over it. There are fields that keep spreading. Therefore it is advisable to remove them as soon as possible. The pollution does not destroy buildings, but it destroys the roads. So beware: no tourist will come without a road.



A keyboard has also been added. Don't worry: For mouse and keyboard players nothing changes. For gamepad players there should be no more hurdles with this update. According to my estimation, a "Steamdeck Compatible" should also be possible with this update. But this must first be verified by Steam. So wait and see.

Apart from these features, there were a few minor improvements and bug fixes that also came from you. Mainly with resolutions of 1440p and larger. Many thanks for that to you guys.
Since I develop with a 1080p screen and therefore don't always use the larger resolutions completely I am always very grateful for feedback: [email protected]

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

[h2]FEATURES[/h2]

• Added: Catastrophe: Volcano eruption
  
• Added: Catastrophe: Environmental pollution
  
• Added: Virtual Keyboard for Gamepad
  

[h2]USABILITY IMPROVEMENTS[/h2]

• FIX Resort Analysting
  
• FIX construction review offset with Zoom and >1080p
  
• FIX Street could be built in deep water
  
• FIX MapEditor Saving
  
• CHANGED Demolition Icon
  
• CHANGED all Inputfields editable
  
• CHANGED Positions of the trees are saved
  
• CHANGED Tree/Palm erases pollution and Tourist
  

In this update, we have taken a closer look at the calculation of reputation and better integrated it into the gameplay.
We have integrated 2 new settings for you.



On the one hand you can do more for the environment and social issues to increase your reputation. This costs money of course.
On the other hand you can set your quality in all buildings high or low. The tourists like to see a higher quality and so your reputation increases. Unfortunately, this also increases your fixed costs in the buildings. The opposite is when you decrease the quality.
As soon as you have hired the PR manager, you will generally get a reputation boost and you will also be shown the progress of the last months. Additionally you will see the composition.
Here you can see which factors go into your reputation:



In the course of this we have also taken a closer look at the popularity calculation of the buildings. We have corrected some calculations and strengthened or weakened other factors. The goal is to give the player the possibility of a rent adjustment.
Here you can see which factors flow into your popularity:



Therefore, possibly your vacation paradise will yield different profits after this update.
E.g. the decrease of the building condition was also too low. We have doubled this.

Also included in this update were some bug fixes and an upgrade to the frontend engine. We will continue to upgrade the engine to the latest version. I hope for a future support for WebGPU, which would again include a large performance increase.

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

[h2]FEATURES[/h2]

• Added Reputation: Quality vs Fixed Costs Option
  
• Added Reputation: Environment vs Money Option
  
• Added Icons at the financial tabs
  
• Renamed: Resort to Cluster (Road network)
  
• Upgrade PIXI JS v7.0.4 to v7.2.0
  

[h2]USABILITY IMPROVEMENTS[/h2]

• CHANGED to smaller Textures
  
• CHANGED Popularity Calculation
  
• CHANGED Reputation Calculation
  
• CHANGED Building condition drops faster
  
• CHANGED Buildings are not selectable in build mode
  
• CHANGED Free demolition of buildings that have just been built with pause
  
• FIX Savegame inputfield does not disappear
  
• FIX Server Terraforming Calculation was still with Trashfields
  

here is a rough plan for the upcoming features:




What do you think.
I am very curious to hear your constructive ideas

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

The time has come. From today you can discover your island paradise in a whole new comfortable way. With the gamepad support you can expect a much more intense gameplay and a relaxed experience of the atmosphere from your couch or armchair.

It was a challenge to break down a complex control system to the limited number of buttons on a gamepad. The focus was constantly on the efficiency of the player, "How many buttons do I have to press until menu X", "Is the control consistent", "Which button sequences are already known to the player and should be repeated".



We went through several rounds of feedback, which meant that the modifications ate up at least 1 week of our time. There you had already integrated a control concept and then comes a much better idea for implementation. The time of the development consists also with me to a largest part of thinking how it can be converted.



The result of the gamepad control is perhaps not so simple at first sight. But believe me, once you have built one or the other little paradise, you will get along with it very well. Of course you have the possibility to assign each button individually. We have designed the whole thing for the XBOX controller series. With the multitude of different gamepads that exist, there are certainly other better button assignments for each gamepad type.



The integration of the gamepad support had of course the disadvantage that almost every menu had to be adapted. For each game situation you had to think about a sensible control. But this was also an advantage, because you could change some structures that are now less error-prone, such as all scroll windows. These have received a fundamentally new architecture and should therefore run more stable.Unfortunately, there is no Steamdeck on my desk at the moment, but that could still change. Until then, I'll try to implement any feedback from you to make it 100% playable

I am very unsure of how far the Steamdeck supports the browser gamepad API. Therefore, I do not want to give a green light for the Steamdeck for now. You may have to make settings on the Steamdeck to recognize the buttons in the browser gamepad API. Steamdeck owners should possibly know this, I do not.
What I do know is that from Valve it has been confirmed that Summer Islands is playable on the Steamdeck with Proton support.

Other new features include the advisor information overview for each level AND the half speed button, as well as other bug fixes:



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

[h2]FEATURES[/h2]

• Added Mainmenu Gamepad Support
  
• Added Ingame Gamepad Support
  
• Added Half-Speed-Button
  
• Added Consulting Info Tooltip
  

[h2]USABILITY IMPROVEMENTS[/h2]

• FIX Bot Counter in New Game Menu
  
• FIX Starmenu Scrolling
  
• FIX Storyvideo adjusted to total volume
  
• FIX Victory Scrollmenu
  
• FIX Resort Scrollmenu
  
• FIX Mouseover Building Menu Position
  
• FIX Terraforming also shows terrain at red fields
  

So, it's unbelievable. You think there's already enough overtime in the day job. But somehow there is not less work since 2023.
Enough with the excuses.
Too much time has passed since the last update. I already thought about uploading my progress to Steam. But it always grabs me the ambition that I could still do something more. Because so far the gamepad support keeps me quite busy.

Therefore I try to publish a new aspect of the update here every few days. So I try to show you what's coming and you know that it's going on.

Gamepad support:
It took me a few weeks to integrate the basic architecture/principles. Then I started with the main menu and slowly but steadily went through each menu.
I also integrated a small controller, so you can see when and which button I press on the gamepad.

[h2]02.03-04.03 - New concept & Finance menu[/h2]
After some brainstorming later on, there are some changes to the controls to make it easier and more intuitive to get to all the menus.
With the gamepad key X you can open the following menus one after the other: Finances|News|Minimap|Tasks
The gamepad keys LT and RT are used to switch between the following menus:
Buildings|Street|Demolition|Terrain|Sabotage
With the gamepad cross you move fast over the maps.
Of course all key assignments are changeable.
With the axes you can move the selected field. This starts from the movement slowly and becomes faster and faster.
Have a look at the video with the pressed gamepad keys.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]28.02 - Minimap, tasks and building details[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]26.02 - Building dependencies[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]25.02 - Construction menu[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]24.02 - Terraforming[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]23.02 - Navigation in the game[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]22.02 - Option menu Gamepad Setup[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]21.02 - Main menu Navigation[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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