FIX: Mouse wheel button has no more building copied
FIX: Click on utility building you could change rent
FIX: Terraforming with teammates was calculated incorrectly
FIX: Gamepad sabotage and demolition function failed
CHANGED: Increase land out of the water is cost 10 times more
CHANGED: Dark Pixel Clouds at tornado
CHANGED: White Pixel Clouds at Meteorite
CHANGED: Streets can be built over paths
CHANGED: Terrain at building on the hillside can be leveled
Update July 2023 [v0.8.8] with Awards, Currencies and more
More text soon
FEATURES
ADDED: Different currencies inserted until the euro is inserted: Deutsche Mark, Gulden, Finnmark, Franc, Drachmen, Escudos, Peseten
ADDED: Side quests menu with filter button and selection for details and follow-up
ADDED: Side quest window for the selected quest
ADDED: Side quest counter over the starmenu icon
ADDED: Tooltip with Details about the stars on the star Icon at the top
ADDED: Awards are given every 2 years for the most money earned, most tourists attracted and most buildings constructed
ADDED: Footprint icon for buildings that are accessible with distance from the road
ADDED: Map movement with mouse on edge
USABILITY IMPROVEMENTS
FIX: Side quests no longer show the time progress except for time only quests
FIX: Correlation menu could only be moved via building cards
FIX: Cluster supply showed too high needed capacity
FIX: Ships are stopped at the volcano
CHANGED: Correlation menu movement also with Keyboard possible
CHANGED: Main quest with percentage
CHANGED: First launch sets resolution even with zoom level
CHANGED: Higher resolutions have been removed. Still accessible via zoom level
CHANGED: Tutorial text for quest and award
CHANGED: Tutorial for Gamepad compatibility
Calendrical beginning of summer
Today is the calendrical beginning of SUMMER!!! The longest day in the northern hemisphere🌍🌞
We celebrate this with an offer week of 35% discount 🎉
Update May 2023 [v0.8.7] with volcano, pollution and more
Hello everyone,
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: Support@SummerIslands.de
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
Update April 2023 [v0.8.6] with Reputation through Quality & Environment
Hello everyone,
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.
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:
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.
The year 2022 is over and we can look forward to the new year 2023. I would like to write this year again a small review of the year 2022, what big changes there were and what we can expect in 2023.
But first of all I want to thank you for your support!!! For your feedback, for your found bugs, for your wishes, for your fun with Summer Islands. I have the impression that since the release of the demo a little more quietness has flowed into many expectations and thus more time could be spent in completing it. I always notice people who immediately like news, tweets or toots and comment positively. There is constant feedback and with steamsales especially. I get a list of trackable bugs and requests that I always like to add to my todo list and integrate.
I thank you for this nice communication!
From my point of view, the biggest new features in 2022 were the following:
Frontend Engine Migration
Consultant level rework
weatherfrog/weather map
Harbors in light water
New ways
New sound effects
Map editor rework
Double speed
I sorted them by the fun factor ;) The biggest plus point is the new frontend engine Pixi JS. Especially because it is still under development. There are many new possibilities that I could implement to increase the performance. But there is still a lot of potential in the engine. Since there is some feedback about low FPS after some game time. I am constantly analyzing, but a comprehensive analysis with a solution is still outstanding.
Just in the last update the new consultant levels came. These are much clearer and so far I have not received any negative feedback. Along with this came the weather map and the weatherfrog. For the player there is thus the possibility to control the disasters better and react. Especially the number of disasters has decreased.
A change in the game principle was also the possibility of building a harbor in light water. This required some path calculation. But it was worth it. The deep water was only intended for this purpose at the beginning. But I think it's a good principle, so you can't connect all streets.
You can hear the new sound effects all the time when you want to build a new building and you also don't want to miss the double speed.
The map editor is a nice feature for people who only want to play in the sandbox. Full freedom, no money problems and if you want you can still play the map in normal mode.
Prediction for 2023
Although already delayed several times, there is a plan to release Summer Islands from Early Access in 2023.
>>Drop microphone<<
>>Pick up microphone<<
Yes this has been planned many times. But I'm positive and there must be some time to start with Summer Islands 2 in 3D ;D
But back to the remaining features for Summer Islands. There are some small things to be done here. The fine tuning in some places. The change of the code so that less problems occur in the menu navigation. But also e.g. to integrate the reputation better into the game. The larger changes will probably be:
Gamepad support
I would like to create a game feeling, so that one can control the whole game on the couch with a controller. This requires some adjustments. E.g. a constantly selected field on the map. You open the menu bar first by pressing a button and then the building menu. The controller functions can be switched on and off. Especially for the steam deck is often requested.
Auctions/Special buildings
Many would be happy to see auctions again, which auctions special buildings. So that the player with the highest bid can build the building as the only owner. This would of course be a pleasant homage to the past. However, I am not so sure if this fits into the gameplay. The alternative would be the following: There are special buildings randomly distributed on the map at the start of the game. Around the special buildings you can build your buildings, which then get a boost. The radius can differ depending on the building, as well as the boost and the type of building. So every player has the incentive to build a special building. Possibly one could also take over the special building. I think this would be a nice idea.
Expansion Disasters, Sabotages, Plants, Animals
These are not major changes, but rather the expansion of the content. There should be some more catastrophes (fires, ...), more sabotages (takeover, ...), the plants should grow/dynamically spread and in some places there should be some more animals.
These are my wishes and thoughts for our new year 2023. Feel free to write your wishes in the comments here or via Twitter, via Mastodon or mail. I would be very happy.
Last but not least, here is the link to the gameplay tutorial video. As a beginner there is the tutorial explained and as a professional you never stop learning:
Then here again a very HUGE THANK YOU to YOU and your support to Summer Islands. You are the heroes and a Happy New Year 2023 to each of you.
Update December 2022 [v0.8.4] with weather map and consultant management
Hello everyone,
Here again the biggest announced changes. The consultant salary levels:
Each consultant has 3 different salary levels. At each salary level you unlock information/features but it costs more. You can terminate the consultant as soon as his/her protection against dismissal has expired. When hiring or increasing the salary level, the protection against dismissal takes effect for a certain period of time.
Let's take a closer look at the individual features and functions. I have always marked salary level 1 with RED, salary level 2 with ORANGE and SALARY LEVEL 3 with GREEN.
Repair Manager:
As before, you can automatically repair your buildings. At salary level 1 you can only do this when a building has only 40% of its health left. At level 2 you can repair your buildings at 90% health. A new feature is the automatic reconstruction in case of disasters. This means that if a building is destroyed by a disaster, it will be rebuilt by the repair manager. ATTENTION: If you don't have insurance, you will have to pay the building costs again.
Resort Analysting:
The picture is already known to you. Only the information will be shown to you with the individual salary levels. Tourist occupancy rates in each building category are shown with salary level 1. For the supply buildings with level 2. With level 3 the occupancy rates of the enemy buildings are only shown to you at the edge of the buildings, as an example in the picture to see.
PR Manager:
There will be a change in the PR manager. You no longer have the possibility to set the advertising to the maximum from the beginning. Therefore, at salary level 1, it unlocks advertising to " average " and the progress of reputation with details. At salary level 2 you can unlock advertising up to "very much" and only at salary level 3 you can set "ultra much". In addition, there is also a PR boost.
Weatherfrog:
Here comes the weatherfrog. A very quiet consultant who only explains himself with gestures and facial expressions. Now you're thinking "Why does he cost so much money?". The weatherfrog is a special consultant who also needs special food. He can tell you exactly when and where disasters will come. His gestures and facial expressions will be shown directly to you. At food level 1 you will get the period when there will be disasters again. It is estimated that there will be no disasters even about every 3-5 years. At food level 2 it can show you the compass direction where disasters will come. Lastly at food level 3 it shows the exact location of the next disasters. I know, I know, I know.... UNBELIEVABLE what's out there.
Security Guard:
The security guard, on the other hand, is not changing much. It protects your buildings and makes it harder for enemies to sabotage them. At salary level 1 it will be 30% more expensive for enemies. At salary level 2, it becomes 50% more expensive for enemies. At salary level 3, it becomes 100% more expensive on the opponents.
Saboteur:
The saboteur gives you more sabotage options with each pay level. At salary level 1: Release cockroaches. Damages the health of the building At salary level 2: Corrupt construction time. Construction time is shortened for your buildings and vice versa for opponent's buildings. At salary level 3: evacuate people and depart buildings. BOOM!
Finally, here is a summary of all the salary levels and advisors
New buildings: As you have already seen, 8 new buildings are added:
2 vacation cottages
2 villas
1 hotel
photo shop
climbing park
skate park
The end of the update comes with a new version of the front-end engine.
