Good day, fellow Meeps!
Welcome to the last update before the release date announcement! Although World Turtles is “Made with Unity”, it still feels “Unreal” that we’re almost at the Early Access release point. When I started tinkering with Unity 4 years ago, I had no idea what lay ahead!
The biggest updates for the last 5 weeks are discussed below. As before, some more Quality of Life improvements have also been added.
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De Chelonian Mobile!
Gideon
Voiceovers for all Four Tutorials
There is now a Meep voice guiding you through all four of the tutorials. There’s not much more to say about that!
Localization
Localization for German, Chinese and Afrikaans (my mother tongue) has just about been completed, and the process is working quite well! More languages will be selected based on the support for World Turtles in different regions. Personally, I’d love to just add 6 more languages off the bat, but it also has to make financial sense. Fan-based localizations are not off the cards, although any such endeavors must be properly managed and executed.
Introducing: Challenges with Variability and on-line Leader Boards
You can now ply your trade against four challenges that need specific strategies to complete successfully. There are five difficulty levels to choose from. You also have the option of submitting your best score for any challenge-difficulty combination to an online leader board.
The challenges introduce variability in the game parameters: Experience can be gained at different rates; Upgrade multipliers can alter the efficiency gained from levelling up; Goodwill can accumulate at different rates for different challenges. Tutorials and Challenges can also have different Research tech trees – the research items can be organized in any way that fits the data structures and the UI will automatically display and handle it correctly. There’s no reason why this feature cannot eventually make it into the Map Maker as well!
Helicopter Rides
In addition to Water Ways being constructed by Builders using helicopters, Meeps on Leisure tasks now also use Helicopters to fly over their homes, while Wanderers now use available helicopters to scout further, including across water.
The First Draft of a Detailed Map Maker (Tectonic Plates / Topography)
While you will not yet be able to play on these maps, you can now create your own maps by specifying Tectonic Plates (and the direction and speed with which they move) right on the map, or by applying Topographic Maps to determine land elevation. Then, you can select Climate parameters and even edit hexes individually. More options will continuously be added and, eventually, you will be able to play on and share these maps.
Hello, World!
65 New Music Tracks
I’ve added 65 more of Alexander Nakarada’s wonderful tracks to keep the playlist fresh. His discography is an absolute treasure!
UI
The UI is constantly improving, although the additions this month are not as impactful as last month. However, I should be able to share some exiting news on this front soon…