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SOTI DEV.Blog #1

738 View2022-12-02

Hello, future Adventurers!

We are excited to open our brand new page on the TapTap platform! While you fine people are awaiting the mobile version of Spirit of the Island, we’ve got something really cool to show today.

As many of you know, the PC has been out for a while now. And since its release in August, Spirit of the Island has received many new updates and features that our community asked for. To give you an idea of what awaits you in the PC version (if you decide to try it) and what base we are using for the mobile port, we are presenting you a digest of sorts, where we’ll explain our new features and how SOTI matured during the last 4 months.

Grab a cup of something warm and enjoy!

Where did we start?

Our 1.0 release featured a HUGE changelog. New items, buildings, systems, bug fixes — but we were well aware that it wasn’t enough. We wanted to not only polish what we’ve already created but also expand and add even more features to Spirit of the Island. That’s how Roadmap 2.0 was born.

Since that, we’ve been working hard on adding new features, both promised in the roadmap and completely new ones, that our community requested. And there’s quite a lot to talk about!

Where we are now?

Oh oh oh, where do we even start? Let’s go from the earliest to the latest additions to the game and see how they reshaped the gameplay of Spirit of the Island.

August

The release has shown us that there are still quite a lot of things that need work and improvements. And the biggest pain point was FOV and camera. It was a very tough change for us since we had to readjust and remodel many shaders and textures, but we’ve implemented a solution for camera changes. Not only can you rotate in freely now, but it will also automatically reposition itself when an object blocks your POV. We’ve also adjusted the default camera angle and made the game look a whole lot better!

The second concern was resolution support and ultra wides. To play around with the limitation, we’ve made the game's window fully resizable which massively improved the situation.

The third concern was controller support. While we are still adding various improvements to it, with the August update we’ve basically reworked all navigational aspects and ensured that the game is fully playable with a controller (Steam Deck support is coming soon too!).

The last concern was gameplay aspects, primarily the length of the in-game day. We’ve made one in-game day last 40 real minutes (up from 25). It was a very large change from a gameplay and balance perspective and we hit the spot with it!

September

One of the very first things we did was increase the player's level cap to 99 and implement the first updates to storage and inventory systems. The player cap increase allowed us to rebalance the HP bonus that you get with each level and not only make it more consistent across all levels but also to make your HP pool much larger. As for inventory, it did need a lot of work, which will go on in the next updates as well.

A bit later we added the ability to drop coins in multiplayer. While we are still working on the bigger banking system, this placeholder solution allowed players to exchange money almost from the get-go. Together with this update, we added an auto-save option, as the older system “sleep to save” was very unforgiving to the players. Alongside all mentioned changes we’ve made countless fixes and adjustments in preparation for the upcoming 1.1.0.0.

Speaking of 1.1.0.0, this was our first big update for the game. We’ve completely reworked the game's map from scratch, making it colorful, detailed, and modern. To be honest, it’s a joy to look at it. Together with it, we implemented a new decoration system for shops (basically well decorated shops will provide more sales than normal ones), redesigned the staff menu, improved EXP gain for social and fishing skills, implemented a ton of performance fixes, and many many more things!

October and November

October was a very very busy month for us, especially because of Halloween! We had a great opportunity to try our very first in-game event and it was a big success. Just to let you know, we’ve left it in the game so you can enjoy it when you get to play the game as well.

But if you thought that Halloween is the only thing we’ve added — no no no! It was only the cherry on the top of the pie of the amazing new changes, like Wardrobe, which allows you to customize your character at any point in the game.

We added three very long-awaited features that players wanted since Early Access. First is the ability to rebase your house. For that, we had to rewrite a lot of code and squish tons of bugs, but it’s finally here.

The second one is the Greenhouse. Winter was a pretty boring month for farming, don’t you think? Not anymore. With the greenhouse, you can raise crops and plants all year round.

And the final one is a major QoL addition to the crafting system: now all recipes are automatic. For example, if you wanted to craft some planks before, you’d need to look for your chest with wood, grab it, go to the bench… Not cool, right? Now the only thing you need to do is to use the workbench as they are aware of the items in your storage chests. It’s a huge timesaver and by far one of the best QoL improvements to date.

The most recent change was a brand new sleep logic, which allows you to do things when your character is tired. After all, being very slow is already a huge punishment so we’ve decided to remove all other limitations.

What’s next?

A lot! We are currently testing out a very new, deeply improved tutorial system for new players. After all, the Spirit of the Island changed a lot in the last few months and we need to reflect on all those changes.

We are also in the finishing development stages for new Romance and Banking systems. And that’s not everything that we are planning to do. SOTI is set to receive lots of love in 2023 as well.

We hope we got you interested! Thanks for reading and have a great day.

With love, Spirit of the Island team.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1592110/Spirit_of_the_Island/

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