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 were 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. Join our Discord server for more frequent updates and previews! De Chelonian Mobile! Gideon

Voiceovers for all Four Tutorials

There is now a Meep voice guiding you through all four of the tutorials. Theres 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, Id 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 leaderboard. 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. Theres 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

Ive added 65 more of Alexander Nakaradas 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

[ 2023-04-08 16:53:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Please … help us save our Turtle … it means the World to us!

Gather Some Meeps and Develop a Realm

Is there anything more exhilarating than your first move on a fresh map? A small band of Meeps have gathered together with enough supplies to construct a basic resource gathering outpost. Expand their skills, improve their efficiency and guide them towards guilds, societies and more advanced structures. They, and their children, are going to need these to have a fighting chance of saving their Turtle.

Explore, Examine and Cooperate

Find and cooperate with other bands of Meeps scattered on the map. Work with the environment to improve negative situations and affect progress without destruction. Learn about your world and push back the boundaries of physics in order to advance.

Save Your Turtle, Save Your World

Space can be a harsh and unforgiving place, especially to an enormous Turtle. Like the Meeps, their World Turtle also needs your guidance to stay safe and nurtured. And while you’re at it, maybe you can save some others as well…

Background and Vision

I am a solo Indie developer. I joined the Game Dev party quite late in life, and got my first glimpse of Unity almost exactly 2 years before making the first demo of World Turtles, my very first game, available. I'm amazed at the progress I’d been able to make during these two years and owe a great deal of gratitude to various tutorial channels, plug-ins and artists whom I leaned on during the development. None more than Catlike Coding, whose brilliant Hex Map tutorial series kickstarted this entire endeavour.

I have spent a lot of time polishing the task queueing and progressive construction systems, utilising different threads, UI and more and I feel the basic foundation and technical mechanics of the game is ripe for branching off into various promising directions. The free demo is a small vertical slice designed to exhibit the commitment I have to developing a good-quality game and hopefully pique some interest.

I have a good idea of the general direction I want World Turtles to head in, but there’s a myriad of possibilities available for the execution. For now, I’m focusing on a single-player sandbox-type environment. This will hopefully be followed by a small campaign and a map editor. Having some sort of multiplayer capability would also be wonderful, but there’s a lot to be done before then.

I would love developing World Turtles further alongside a group of enthusiastic real-world Meeps. Please, join me and be a part of the journey!