Summer Islands News

Today there is another update about the upcoming event and the next version 0.9.5 that I am working on.
It feels like time is passing faster and faster and a little vacation of my own contributes to the later release of the new version.

First of all the most urgent NEWS:

https://www.gamescom.global/de #Gamescom2024
From August 21 to 25, 2024, we will be at Gamescom in Cologne with our own stand to show everyone who wants to play Summer Islands.

Come by and play a round or just chat and get to know each other.
There will also be stickers for everyone who wants one ;)
I'm really looking forward to seeing you!!!!

As you can imagine, I've been working on the next update for the last few months.
We have reached the end of our timeline. We were able to integrate the biggest features in the last updates.
The last updates have also shown us that the direction of Summer Islands is getting better and better.
I was extremely pleased with the positive feedback and hope to continue this in the next update.

The next update should theoretically be version 1.0.0.
Possibly there will be an intermediate update with some bug fixes and smaller features.
Because for version 1.0 I would like to integrate another surprise. At least something that has already been requested and can be celebrated with this.
In order not to raise expectations too high, there will be no auctions. But definitely something with more game length

My list of smaller features and bug fixes is unfortunately not that small, which makes another update worthwhile.
To give you an idea, for example, the map editor needs to be validated again and the event editor needs to be redesigned and integrated. The Steam Workshop will also be reactivated. But there are also many small things in the game that work, but are still not satisfying from time to time. For example, you are not informed when a new award starts. This could be improved with a small sound and a notification.

All these small improvements will probably come with version 0.9.5. So that you don't have to wait too long.
I'm guessing that this will only come in September because everything is being prepared for Gamescom before then.
This also includes a small tutorial video for all those who want to test Summer Islands. We simply realized from the past conventions that I explain and tell far too much. I wouldn't be able to do that for the whole Gamescom. Of course, I'm always happy to explain everything if someone asks. But with a short tutorial video, you can help a lot of people to get into the game.

I hope that version 0.9.5 will be closely followed by the full release 1.0.0. I would like to keep the details of version 1.0.0 a little bit secret.

You may have noticed something else. The whole operation here runs under a business and we have a name for it:
Marttalin Games (www.Marttalin.de)
So don't be surprised if you no longer see my name on the store page, but instead Marttalin Games.
But only the name will change. The rest stays the same ;D

Thank you for your support, feedback and patience.

P.S. If you ❤️ Summer Islands, we would be very 🤩 about a 👍 Review.

Have fun

The time has finally come. Thank you very much for your patience.
In this update everything has been turned upside down again and due to the long time a lot could be changed.

The update was basically ready two weeks ago. Then came the Indie Game Fest and some things were adjusted again.
To be honest: fortunately!!! There were still a few bugs and a few errors in thinking.
But the Indie Game Fest was great fun. Looking over the shoulders of so many people as they celebrate the game and give feedback is really great.
Thank you all for your feedback!
Alright, enough of the past. Let's take a look at the hot s***.

The main feature in this update is the engine upgrade. I.e. 30-60fps until the late game.
We were able to verify this in some long-term tests. Nevertheless, everyone has different hardware, which is why there will always be deviations.
A lot of under-the-hood adjustments had to be made. There is still a BUG with PIXIJS which means that we have not yet fully switched to WebGPU. But the new upgrade of PIXIJS alone brings a lot of performance.
In addition, we have made a few adjustments, e.g. moving vehicles (bicycles, cars, mopeds, airplanes, ships,...) now only move at 10fps. In my opinion, this is an adjustment that doesn't really catch the eye and makes the pixel character even more beautiful.

As already mentioned, in this update there are a few buses that drive along the streets as soon as tourists arrive at the port or airport.



I have noticed that some people have problems with road construction and terraforming.
That's why I've made the fields look better in this update. When building roads, you can now build by holding down the mouse button and can build around corners.



When you build a new building, the bonus/penalty area is displayed immediately. Buildings with a foot icon must contain a road in this border so that tourists can get there on foot.



If you have built the building too far away, warnings will now appear. I.e. warnings if the building has no road connection or the building has no harbor or airport or a harbor has no connection to the Dark Water.



The money icon at the top now contains a small report on the last year with the profits and losses of the individual building types.



If you pause, build something and have to demolish it again, you get the building costs back. In other words, as long as no time has elapsed, you can demolish the buildings for free as if nothing had happened.



The costs for terraforming and the consultants have been reduced. The side missions have also been adjusted. In addition, there are always a few beginner missions (Build Harbor, Build Hotel) to steer you in the right direction.

Last but not least: I think many have only found their way to the store in a roundabout way. I wanted to change this. The store button has now been integrated right at the start on the left-hand side. Just in case.



The same applies to the menu to see the preferences of the buildings. If you click on a building, another button will take you directly to the preference menu.



In the preference menu you can select the right buildings or click on the building to build it directly.



There are a few more minor adjustments in the update. There will also be a few changes under the hood in the next update. Because, as already mentioned, the performance of WebGPU could not yet be switched on.
There are also a few missing features like the Steam Workshop support and other wishes from you that I have noted down.

So look forward to the next update or to Gamescom 2024, where we will have our own booth.

Until then, thank you for your patience.

P.S. If you ❤️ Summer Islands, we would be very 🤩 about a 👍 Review.

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

[h2]FEATURES:[/h2]

• ADDED: Engine Upgrade with WebGPU Support and a lot of adjustments under the hood to keep it running
  
• ADDED: Buses on Street
  
• ADDED: Warnings for problematic buildings
  
• ADDED: Buildingsname in different language
  
• ADDED: Money icon shows small report
  
• ADDED:
  

Pause extended: Demolition and money back if no time has passed

[h2]IMPROVEMENTS[/h2]

• FIX: Better display of the letters ÄÖÜ
  
• FIX: Links are opened with Steam overlay
  
• CHANGED: Resolution Zoom with Render Engine
  
• CHANGED: Reduced costs for terraforming
  
• CHANGED: Reduced costs for consultants
  
• CHANGED: Sidequest finetuning
  
• CHANGED: Disaster number finetuning
  
• CHANGED: Road construction with preview
  
• CHANGED: Building preference menu with building button
  
• CHANGED: Building click menu with Button to preferences
  
• CHANGED: Victory menu custo
  

mized

Once again, I can only inform you about an interim status and draw your attention to an upcoming event


From Friday 31.05.2024 14-21 o'clock and Saturday 01.06.2024 13-21 o'clock we are at the Indie Game Fest in Cologne with our own booth.
https://indiegamefest.de/
Come by and play a round or just chat and get to know each other.
I'm looking forward to seeing you again!!!!

All information about the Indie Game Fest and tickets can be found on the following page.
We have also been sent the following code for a 20% discount on tickets for the festival: Game20.
https://www.eventbrite.de/e/854790771207/?discount=Game20

Here is also the list of all games participating in the Indie Game Fest:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43793299/sale/indiegamefest2024


[h2]Upcoming update:[/h2]
I'm working hard on the new update. A few new architecture changes have been thrown out and others have been created.
With every test cycle you get new insights that lead to changes.
But what I can already announce in any case:

Buses are coming.
Buses are intended as fillers for tourists at airports and ports. This means that as soon as tourists arrive in paradise, buses drive from the airport through the streets and roads. You cannot and should not build bus stops or create bus routes. If you haven't built a bicycle, moped or car rental service, the tourists will already arrive with buses at their vacation destination.


You can build roads around the corner:
I think it's a feature that will make life a little easier for some people. You no longer need 2 clicks to build roads, no, you can now build around corners with just one click. This simplifies building and saves a lot of time.


Bonus/Malus area
You experts probably already know the areas by heart. But there is now a guideline to show you how big the bonus/malus area around the buildings is. Please note that all tourists from your street network visit all buildings if they are in the street network. But the area around the building gives your building a certain bonus or malus. e.g. No tourist wants to go to a hotel right next to an airport or landfill.


Warnings
There are also a few hints if a building has a problem


As you can see, there are some changes and improvements coming.
I am improving and fixing bugs in all corners.
My goal is to finish the new update in the next 2-3 weeks.

Until then, thank you for your patience.

P.S. If you ❤️ Summer Islands, we would be very 🤩 about a 👍 Review.

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

Time is passing far too quickly again. It's only just been Christmas and now I hope that everyone had a good Easter.
I would like to bring you up to date with the latest news. What is currently being worked on, what else is happening, etc.

[h3]First of all, the most urgent NEWS:[/h3]
[h2]Summer Islands is part of CAGGTUS 2024.[/h2]
https://www.caggtus.de #GamesGround #Caggtus
From April 5 to 7, 2024, we will be at Caggtus in Leipzig with our own booth in the Indie area to show everyone who wants to play Summer Islands.
Come by and play a round or just chat and get to know each other.
I'm looking forward to seeing you!!!!


[h3]The next update:[/h3]
As you might have guessed, I've been working on the next update for a few weeks now.
In terms of the timeline, the engine upgrade is coming in the next update (and of course a few other little things)
The aim is to round off Summer Islands even further in all areas so that there are no major surprises on release.
This means that with the latest update I'm trying to keep the FPS at 60 (maximum drops to 30 fps), the side missions need to be calibrated and the map editor needs to be adapted for Steam Workshop.

As you can see, there are a lot of things going on under the hood. There are also no more major features planned before the release (I hope this is not a surprise. The timeline has been mentioned here before).

To summarize: We are working on the next update. Your wishes and feedback are welcome at any time.

However, I would like to go into a little more detail about the current technical situation in this news post. In other words, for anyone who also deals with software architecture or wants to understand the IT behind the game in more detail.

The longer you develop games, the more you look at the structures in games. "How was this effect added?", "ah, this little movement already gives you the feeling for XY", "look, the waterfall also only contains 3 textures that move back and forth". Here you still have to be careful that you can still enjoy games. But you also understand that computer games only ever want to and can convey the atmosphere to the player with the smallest of means. Because every calculation in a game must be considered efficiently so as not to diminish the gameplay experience. "Is this fluid calculation for the water worth it or is a simplified calculation enough?", "How much atmosphere does this effect add to the FPS?".
This constant back and forth has accompanied me a lot in recent years.

When programming, there are always two ways to solve complex problems: Solve the problem with computing power or memory capacity. So you can recalculate the position, angle etc. of an object in the game again and again or you can save the information about the object and call it up when required.
If you solve a problem using the computing power, you have full flexibility. With the memory capacity you have more power for other calculations.

Since we have implemented Summer Islands in Javascript, many things are rewritten with the engine upgrade to the memory capacity. The different layers from the browser, JS, Executable to the actual calculation are not designed for high computing power. Nevertheless, a high degree of flexibility is always required at the start of development in order to implement changes quickly.
This has always been an advantage for Summer Islands.
Even if the latest version of the FrontEnd Engine brings a change from WebGL to WebGPU, this unfortunately does not result in a "Plug&Play" stable 140fps.
The change is accompanied by many changes and this is noticeable in the creation of many textures. The focus is now more on reusing the textures that are already stored in the GPU cache. Therefore, all calculations and textures had to be temporarily stored in memory to a much greater extent.

It is well known that you should generally store everything in a cache. But that's always easier said than done. The textures in Summer Islands are all stored in the cache. But switching between textures and creating additional sprites (textures with additional properties) creates a lot of work, e.g. when 3000 bicycles are simply riding around in the landscape.
Also the creation of the fields (water, beach, grass,..) are no longer recalculated with every change. We have added another controller that is responsible for texture management. The rendering can always take all the information it needs for display from this pot without being disturbed.

At the moment I have gotten good results in some long-term tests on my programming laptop (i7-8750H, 16GB Ram, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q). So after 45 years of game time with 15 bots and a 300 map size with 10,000,000,000 starting money (for the bots), it ran at 45-55 fps. The hardest calculations are for the moving objects (bike, car, ship, airplane).

As you can see, improvements are being made in all areas for this update. So it will probably take a while yet. Vacation is not planned until June. So I'll try to keep you up to date over the next few weeks.
But if you still find bugs, have ideas or wishes, feel free to contact me at any time.
Even with the release, this does not mean that features will not be added.

P.S. If you ❤️ Summer Islands, we would be very 🤩 about a 👍 Review.

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

ATTENTION: v0.9.3 is not yet Steamdeck compatible. Steam has forwarded the problem to the Proton team. Until then, another version can be selected via Properties>Betas.

Here are the new features:

The biggest change to the game in this update is the unlocking of building plans.
So we thought we'd make some real money with Summer Islands and integrate an in-game store with microtransactions, cryptocurrency and awesome NFTs!!!
JOKE!!!

But the main component in Summer Islands is money, so it's not a bad idea to be able to unlock the buildings with money.
This means that the new buildings are no longer unlocked randomly during the course of the game, but can be bought one after the other.
A few buildings are already unlocked at the beginning. The others are sorted per category according to purchase price.
A store has therefore been integrated in which you can buy building plans and then build the buildings.



This changes the gameplay somewhat. However, this gives each player the opportunity to implement their own most efficient construction plan.

In addition, minor details have been added and bugs corrected.
Preparations have also been made for the currently planned next update (engine upgrade).


P.S. If you ❤️ Summer Islands, we would be very 🤩 about a 👍 Review.

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

[h2]FEATURES:[/h2]

• ADDED: Research building implemented
  
• ADDED: Map marker is integrated in the savegame
  

[h2]IMPROVEMENTS[/h2]

• FIX: Road direction of the bots was displayed incorrectly
  
• FIX: Chart tourist all data has displayed only last months
  
• FIX: Pause mode also pauses the tooltip in the finance menu
  
• FIX: Environmental & social costs were not deducted correctly
  
• FIX: Fixed costs were calculated too high
  
• FIX: Plants have grown over pollution
  
• CHANGED: Research tree menu and correlation menu merged
  
• CHANGED: Random building activation switched off
  
• CHANGED: Plant growth greatly slowed down
  
• CHANGED: Upgrade PIXIJS v7.2.0 to v7.4.0