Hello together,

the first stress has gone and we get into the mode to release new features. Additionally there is also Steam Summer Sale and of course everyone is busy with sales of other games :)
We've gathered all the feedback and packed with our ideas. Out came a Trello board where you can see a lot about the future planning of Summer Islands. It's not yet so perfectly arranged and colored. So WIP:
https://trello.com/b/FbC1a19w/devboard-summer-islands

But let's get to the innovations for this week:
Today we proudly present the Linux Support. Some bugs and implementations had to be done. But we made it to the end. The MAC support mentioned above is still in progress. We are still testing and hope for positive results.
Since we are not the experts of Linux and MAC we hope for your help to fix bugs. In addition I would like to refer to the "BUG REPORTS" rider in the discussions:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/731650/discussions/

Of course we also implemented some small things that disturbed you.
The button for infinite money will still not be available! :D Little joke.

As a small change we have arranged the New History antichronologically. So the latest news are always at the top of the window. This way you don't always have to scroll and we should have integrated it right away.

Furthermore, we have looked at the compulsion to road connections and loosened this a bit. For some buildings there is now the possibility to place them a little away from the street without getting losses. There may be a maximum of 2 fields distance to the next street, no matter in which direction.
Currently the buildings can be: beach volleyball, tennis, beach chairs, ice shop and surf shop.
But we are still considering to mark this directly in the building menu with a small icon or something.

(Picture will be handed in later. Steam overload.)

The campsite has also been upgraded. As soon as a campsite is connected to a street, you can build as many campsites as you like on it and the others on it. Thus a large camp site can be realized. However, at least one camp site must be connected to a street. Somewhere the visitors have to get to the campsite.

That was it for this week and we hope you are looking forward to the coming weeks/months, just like we are:
https://trello.com/b/FbC1a19w/devboard-summer-islands


-LINUX support
-CLIENT: News History antichronological
-SERVER: Streetnetwork: a few buildings can have two fields between building and street to connect (Beach volleyball, tennis, beach chairs, ice shop and surf shop)
-SERVER: Tents can connect other tents if one tent is connected with street.

Hello together,

it's really been a few hectic weeks since the last blog entry. We are really happy that we are mostly rated positive on Steam. But let's start chronologically from the beginning. What's happened since the last blog entry.



The two weeks before our release on 21.06 we had made ourselves a good plan. What things still have to be integrated. What definitely has to run stable. We have divided up our time well and have tackled things with priorities. It was really hard to let go sometimes.
Unfortunately we were a bit too optimistic with the submission to Steam. Over the last weekend Steam had checked the game for the first time. Unfortunately many critical results came back there. So we had to deactivate a lot of things for the first time in order to submit the game again as soon as possible. We did that on the Monday before the release. MUCH TOO SHORT!! As already said we had to switch off many things. Mainly the operating system support like Linux and MAC. But that should be only temporary. We all work in our team with Windows. Therefore we never had the possibility to test MAC or Linux. Only after the release we switched on the virtual machine and started Linux. But more about that later. So we switched off many features and hoped that Steam would check the game before the 21.06. That went almost wrong. Because in the morning on 21.06 we received the feedback that Summer Islands was ready for Early Access.
To be honest that was quite a relief. Because Q2 2019 was only June and there were a lot of Steam comments asking for a release day.
So we were lucky again.
But now came the much bigger task. We released Summer Islands with the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere on 21.06 at shortly after 12 o'clock. It was an incredible feeling. Even if it was just a click on a button somewhere in the Steamworks account.

With the release came the first problems. Due to our limited hardware test possibilities one could of course not test the almost infinite number of hardare combinations. This was already pre-programmed that some errors would come. We were always awake the weekend immediately after the release to fix the bugs. In summary, we did our best. There were a few bugs with the different hardware. But also errors with variable declarations in rare cases. In the end we managed to fix the biggest bugs and with the current version 0.1.3 Summer Islands is enjoyable. For all of you who WANT to enjoy Summer Islands!!

Nowadays you have to emphasize such sentences a bit more. Because some negative ratings simply cannot be understood. Give money back and still give a negative rating. We have often mentioned that Summer Islands will not be a substitute for childhood memories. Even if we have integrated a similar concept and much more Features into Summer Islands. Tip on the side: you don't have to flatten an entire island to build buildings. But we're working on another conzept.

Therefore we are twice and three times grateful to you for the many positive reviews and emails with feedback. The people who understood the meaning of Early Access. The people who even take the time to send us suggestions for improvement. With all these people who follow us on twitter, support us on steam or wherever and motivated us, recommended us to others, to these people we want to say THANK YOU!
Without you the game would not have been possible.

So and what comes now?
We continue to work as before and even better. Because we work with even more feedback from you. We already have a rough roadmap which we want to show you in the next weeks. But all in all there will be things like that:
-complex nature (more alive)
-Call integration with impact
-Many more consultants
-Weather Forecast
-Other catastrophes
-Campaigns
-BOT Increase difficulty
-....
-....

I hope you notice that there will be a lot more to come. It is still screwed at all places and we try to consider each feedback and if possible to integrate it.

So we hope you'll give us the opportunity to implement the planned features and we promise you Summer Islands will develop its potential in the game feel yet.

The finanz icon works again after loading a game. :)
We worked on the BOTs init method after loading a game.
And in the end we integrated a reload init method after a black screen when starting the game.

-CLIENT: Finanz menu date obejct BUG FIX
-CLIENT: Canvas init reload after error
-SERVERCLIENT: Javascript stability/efficiency extended.

We hope the freezes are now complete gone. :)

-SERVERCLIENT: Javascript stability/efficiency extended.

Hello together,

we have now managed to release our first patch. Unfortunately a bit late. Some problems have dragged on a bit.

We have worked a lot on the solution of the freezes and on the savegames mechanism with the BOTs.

We also uncovered the insurance fraud and changed some resolution settings.
So it might now be possible to play normally on larger screens like Full HD. Unfortunately we couldn't test it. But if you could give us feedback we would be very grateful.

We would also like to thank all the positive reviews that have been written.
Thanks a lot for that :)

Update log:
-CLIENT: resolution setting improved
-SERVER/CLIENT: Freezes with earthquake disaster BUG FIX
-CLIENT: Savegame array BUG FIX
-SERVER: SavegameKI init BUG FIX
-SERVER: Insurance fraud uncovered
-CLIENT: TUTORIAL is opened right at the beginning
-CLIENT: default maxcredit set to 10Mio
-CLIENT: Shortcuts added to tutorial
-SERVER/CLIENT: Add BOTS/Remove game start BUG FIX

Hello together,


We have released Summer Islands for early access. We are extremely excited about your constructive feedback.

We fixed a few extreme bugs yesterday and hope that they will all work the same today.

MAC & LINUX Support:

Through the steam check we were informed about some serious problems which we have to fix first. BUT we try to do this next week. Because MAC & LINUX is definitely supported.

Furthermore there is a tutorial on

BUG REPORT

in the Steam Forum.

I hope you like the Early Access of Summer Islands :)

-SERVER/CLIENT: English language added
-CLIENT: Pictures Preload BUG FIX

-CLIENT: TUTORIAL menu added & improved
-SERVER/CLIENT: Pause function integrated
-SERVER/CLIENT: Lobby/savegame communication BUG FIXES
-SERVERCLIENT: Javascript stability/efficiency extended.

-SERVER/CLIENT: textures corrected/new inserted
-CLIENT: Scroll functions in menu BUG FIX
-CLIENT: Mouse icons position BUG FIX
-SERVER: Cluster calculation improved
-SERVER: Building Finetuning
-SERVER/CLIENT: Building activation improved
-CLIENT: Credits extended with links
-CLIENT: Financial menu interface bug fixes
-CLIENT: Minimap colorbarray BUG FIX
-SERVER: Send Map BUG FIX
-SERVER: monthly money exchange BUG FIX
-CLIENT: Ship movements BUG FIX
-CLIENT: Info display extended with memory text
-CLIENT: Building manager losses in red

Hello together,

This week there is already a new update after one week. This has the reason that many todos have already been worked through and on the other hand because of the approaching release. We are already extremely excited and hope that you will enjoy Summer Islands. As written in the last update, there will always be new free updates and enhancements in Early Access. We don't make ingame purchases, no subscription model, no paid extensions, no lootboxes. We only have one price and you get all the fun and everything that comes for Summer Islands.

But just a little hint: please keep your expectations low. In Early Access Summer Islands is far from complete. Summer Islands will also not be able to fulfil your childhood wishes. Summer Islands is a new game with similar well-known concepts but still endless fun :D.

Back to this week's updates:
Finding the way for airplanes and ships in large maps sometimes resulted in short freezes. Because it takes longer until a ship finds the harbour in the dark water near the many islands. The solution was an extra Javascript Worker. So an extra thread that does this A* wayfinding. This brings us back to the almost constant 60 fps.

The first complex implementation in Summer Islands was the aircraft. The living thing that made the sky move. Unfortunately, the airplanes are always a problem and make new problems. At that time they didn't know how to do it better. So we had to correct the airplanes again this week. New airports had to change a lot here. Also for waiting airplanes in the waiting loops the wayfinding had to be improved. A time-consuming process!

A small improvement can be found at the NewsIcon. Whenever there are new messages, i.e. catastrophes or new buildings, the button starts flashing. Only if you click on it the flashing stops again. A small step for Summer Islands but a big step for usability.

Now you can also switch off the clouds in the graphics menu. In general, we try to offer all possibilities in the graphics menu that you can show and hide. Unfortunately we can't offer an adjustment possibility for the graphic quality. But due to the constant efficiency adjustments with Javascript Summer Islands runs very stable and has only low hardware requirements.

With the textures there is also a little something new to present. First of all, we have further developed the consultant posters. Now they have got real personalities:



Some new textures were also added to the buildings:
we have extended our port selection with another 2x4 fields port.



There were also some changes in the hotels:







We hope you like the new Textures and you have a great week!


-CLIENT: MausOver building plots BUG FIX.
-CLIENT: New buildings are activated with ID.
-CLIENT: A* method implemented in own worker.
-CLIENT: New airports: landfield position for aircraft corrected.
-SERVER: credit display asynchronous BUG FIX.
-SERVER/CLIENT: Tourist history may only show visitors from houses and hotels BUG FIX.
-CLIENT: Monthly histories only show every second number in the y-axis if there are too many numbers.
-CLIENT: flat button position BUG FIX.
-CLIENT: News icon flashes on new news.
-CLIENT: Aircraft queue corrected.
-CLIENT: Consultens with icons & portraits.
-CLIENT: Clouds in graphics menu show/hideable.
-SERVER/CLIENT: New building textures added.
-SERVERCLIENT: Javascript stability/efficiency extended.

Hello everyone,

This month we have also prepared an update for you to bring you up to date. We have to write that we haven't progressed as far as we had planned during the last weeks. As we've already written a few times, we're programming Summer Islands in addition to our regular job and therefore don't always find the time. Nevertheless there is no need to worry that Summer Islands will not appear. We may work slowly but steadily ;) . Our todo list for Early Access is coming to an end but there are still bugs that want to be fixed. Also a few textures will be reworked to get a better overall picture and of course the finetuning will not be forgotten.
Our schedule for Early Access in Q2 will NOT be affected by this.
We are happy to announce the Early Access date for END June. We are aiming for the 21.06. We are extremely excited to see you play Summer Islands and to see your perfect, successful beach paradise.
But until then there are still a few things to do/add, bugs to fix and long-term tests to do.

From the past weeks we also learned that every second week a small update makes you happier than every 4 weeks a bigger update. We will try to release smaller updates in the future to bring you up to date. On Twitter you can often find small preview videos of Summer Islands, just drop by @SummerIslandsQA.
In the last weeks there was the question how much Summer Islands will cost. Now that we're getting into early access we want to introduce you to our price model.
So in Early Access Summer Islands will cost 19,99€. The reason for this is that we have already invested a lot of time and will continue to do so. Against it would speak that Summer Islands is "only" an Indiegame. I don't want to justify myself any further but appeal to your objective opinion.
As mentioned before, we will publish free updates/extensions in Early Access in the following months, e.g. other catastrophies, better Bots, more advisors, public needs etc.. In its current state Summer Islands is definitely not complete, just Basic and Early Access gives you the opportunity to add suggestions/improvements/wishes to the game. This can only make Summer Islands better for everyone. The free updates/extensions in Early Access are scheduled to take place every 4-8 weeks. Accordingly how extensive the update will be or how many bugs have to be fixed.

So far the realese date and the price model. Let's get to the features that have been integrated like in the last weeks.

Through our created engine that we use with NodeJS we have noticed that the Downloadspeed with Steam unfortunately takes longer than expected (20min~300mb). In detail NodeJS always needs a node_modules folder with all libraries. This folder with a lot of small files is very impractical when saving to a hard disk. Therefore we had to think about a solution with another exe to start looking if the NodeJS lib already exists or has to be unpacked. This saves a lot of time of about 300mb we need on the hard disk for Summer Islands.

As already shown 14 days ago on Twitter we have integrated another consultant. This facilitates the overview over the whole building types which are in a road network. If you have set the building analyst, you will see an extra window at each port and airport. Depending on the type of building, this window shows the occupancy rate and the total occupancy rate. Thus one can recognize immediately with which building type it becomes scarce or whether one should build still more buildings of this type. We like the presentation very much and it has already proven to be very helpful. What do you think?





In addition to the already existing diagrams, we have added the equity and tourist course. The equity history shows you how valuable your buildings are overall. So how much money you have invested in buildings that still exist. A good indicator to compare yourself with other players. The tourist history shows you the total number of tourists in all your houses and hotels. Also a good indicator to see how well you are doing and how well you have placed your buildings.





In the next updates we will present some new textures, improve the computer opponents and fix many bugs to make Summer Islands Early Access ready :)
After 3 years of development we are very happy to be able to bring you Summer Islands!


-EXTERN: Added Pre-Exe to improve steam download
-SERVER/CLIENT: Added tourist chart
-SERVER/CLIENT: Added equity capital chart
-SERVER: BOT improvemend (loan,repayment).
-CLIENT: airport Bug Fix with new textures
-CLIENT: turn menü texture changed
-CLIENT: buildingmenu for too big texture improved
-CLIENT: information label reimplemented/changeable for future
-SERVER/CLIENT: you cannot fire a consultant within his first 150 days
-SERVERCLIENT: Javascript stability/efficiency extended.

Hello together,

we made good progress in the last weeks and are already strong in early access planning. What still needs to be integrated? Which features will be implemented in the upcoming updates? Everything has to be tested again and so on. Due to the existing architecture it is sometimes very pleasant to make small changes and see the effects within a few minutes. You can see how the Early Access is going into the final spurt and it looks good how the individual components interact with each other.

We've been working on the rough timetable in many meetings over the last few weeks. A lot of work has been done on the textures and on small changes that make the game feel better.

I don't want to go into detail because every corner is still being worked on. We still have one or two features that need to be implemented before Early Access. The rest, e.g. in the lobby we set better start values or changed some map settings that just made more sense.
The game statistics (mouse clicks, game time etc.) have also been removed for the time being, because the focus is simply elsewhere at the moment and it doesn't reduce the game fun without the statistics.
The map editor has also been set to "coming soon". For this we have to integrate other methods to implement terraforming in the larger radius. Because I think nobody wants to change a huge world with one click for every change. For the Early Access there will be almost infinite possible worlds with the random values and seed anyway.

We found the natural disasters far too gentle. Therefore we have extended the radius of destruction a bit. Earthquakes can also occur anywhere on the map where land exists. This can lead you to ruin. But with a good insurance you have less worries. ;)

Of course I don't want to withhold the textures from you. Therefore here now the new textures, as well as revised:

Strandhouse: Open for everyone and a dream at every location.



Luxury villa: For the upscale milieu but also easy to place.



Luxury hotel: Also for the upscale milieu. However, the building is much more susceptible to false neighbours.



Beginner hotel: The two middle hotels. The lower one was reworked and the upper one was rebuilt. Both have their pitfalls but cheap to build.



Swimming Pool: This must be for every sportsman and always popular with tourists.



Tennis court & training court: The training court is always well received and easy to build. The location of the tennis court is more difficult.



Market: A market is a good attraction that always brings you good money. But also not too much. ;)



I hope I could give you some anticipation again and I'm already looking forward to your fun at Early Access.


-CLIENT: Lobby more settings added.
-CLIENT: Lobby default values and settings adjusted.
-SERVER: Added flat mode color field generation.
-SERVER: Minimap display at minimap fixed.
-CLIENT: Icons improved.
-SERVER: Natural disasters destruction radius extended.
-CLIENT: Credits inserted. ;)
-SERVER/CLIENT: Map editor/game statistics first set to coming soon.
-CLIENT: option menu extended, tutorial menu added.
-CLIENT: Financial menu improved, if there is too little data no chart will be displayed.
-CLIENT: Pre-money display for building and terraforming newly implemented, bug fixed.
-SERVER: Construction costs of buildings revised.
-SERVER: Cluster calculation bug fixed.
-SERVER: Javascript stability/efficiency extended.

Hello together,

in the last weeks we have made good progress again and we are slowly entering the test phases where you can once again admire the whole project. Some problems with the multiplayer communication have to be corrected in the next weeks. There are small things that must not lead to crashes in the lobby or ingame. We are confident to be able to please you with some ingame videos in the next weeks.

The biggest changes this week are new SoundFX components which we have integrated. Like e.g. at construction works, at the disco or at shops for mobility. The difficulty is to calibrate them in such a way that they are actively noticed but immediately fall back into the subconscious. An atmosphere should be created with it and not a whistle concert. The positioning of the sounds in relation to the position of the viewer also presents us with a few problems in harmonizing this with the architecture of the game. But we work very hard not to have a mono sound at the end.

For the course of the game we also made some changes. The biggest change is in the parks. Before, roads were essential to connect two buildings. So to say that the tourists can get from the airport to all other buildings. We have extended this principle with parks. The parks act as an extension of the connection. One can build a beautiful park at the street and behind it the other building like e.g. a hotel. Because of the park the hotel is still connected to the street and therefore accessible for the holidaymakers. However, one cannot extend a street connection by a park. Parks only extend the connection to other buildings.



In the player colours there is also something new to announce. Previously we always randomly assigned the colors from a previously created texture file to the players. Since this of course does not correspond to the gaming standards, the necessary textures are now created at the beginning of the game on the basis of the colour preferences. This uses a bit more memory but it simplifies the whole color selection and texture creation process.

And last but not least we don't want to deprive you of the new textures that have been created:







A whole series of new airports have been created. From small with low capacity to the largest airports for the big cities.



A new attraction was also added. The open-air cinema. More often to be found in sunnier regions, this building offers an exciting atmosphere for every film.

At the end I would like to make a recommendation for an interview (german) that we finally gave. Who would like to have some background information I recommend to read this here:
https://www.zippy-net.work/article/im-interview-summer-islands

-CLIENT: Bridge Bug Fix
-SERVER/CLIENT: Building site review for building has been revised
-CLIENT: car/bicycle texture on curve corrected
-CLIENT: mouse wheel zoom with layers bug fix
-CLIENT: scroll function inserted for news window
-CLIENT: SoundFX integrated, architecture improved
-SERVER: Cluster calculation has been revised/improved
-SERVER: Parks integrated for Cluster calculation
-CLIENT: Selection building click in flat mode Bug Fix
-CLIENT: Lobby player colors integrated to players
-SERVER/CLIENT: Lobby Server/Client communication optimized
-SERVER: Savegames player ID is assigned when loading new player