Hi everyone,
We are entering a new stage of development: polishing the game's art and dealing with annoying bugs.
Awnings
I am iterating through the building art a little, the big improvement being animated awnings. In these remote islands, the wind brushes the countryside constantly. It's unrelenting and I wanted this to appear in almost all parts of the game's art: Everything that isn't very solid sways with the wind. The trees, the grass, the fields, everything.
And to increase that effect, I decided to add little awnings on most buildings. They produce well needed shade and move with every gust of wind.
It also adds a touch of color to the gameIt's the little things that make the difference at this point.
Card art
A big update on the game's 2D art assets is coming. It probably won't be ready for the first open playtest but it will be a well needed improvement to the game: I'm not a professional 2D artist so it was very lucky for me to find an artist willing to rework all the cards and all of the UI. I wanted to share a little sneak peek of some of that progress
End game bugs & QA
As a developer you always dread these types of bugs. The ones that happen toward the end of the game when you have thousands of buildings, thousands of NPCs and it is very hard to figure out what part of your sprawling civilization is causing the issue. You have to spend hours trying to find the exact condition triggering the issue, sift through month old code. Sea, Sun & Salt was not spared.
Luckily, Rock Game's very efficient QA team caught the issue and we managed to solve it. The game has now been thoroughly tested and it is almost ready to land in your hands!
Joining october Next Fest!
And finally, The people of Sea, Sun & Salt will appear in this October's Next Fest. We're all looking forward to seeing the game tried out by eager city building fans and hearing all of the feedback and the (hopefully) constructive criticism.
Stay posted by joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/MyurZwEX
Stay tuned!