What's New
You know that moment when you adjust the brightness on your monitor and suddenly everything looks right? That is basically what happened to our island this week. We went from a washed-out, grey-tinged landscape to a vibrant tropical paradise -- and fixed a whole list of things along the way.
First, the camera. On macOS trackpads, zooming simply did not work before. Two-finger scrolling was being ignored entirely. We fixed that, and while we were at it, we added keyboard zoom (Q and E keys) as an alternative. More importantly, the camera now moves with a smooth, gentle glide instead of snapping instantly to its target. Pan, zoom, and rotate all ease in and out, giving the whole experience a cozy, polished feel that fits the relaxed pace of a logistics city builder.
Then we tackled the colours -- and this turned into a detective story. Our terrain looked like an overcast autumn day no matter what palette values we tried. We brightened the greens, cranked up the sun, even added glow effects to the beach -- nothing worked. After five rounds of iteration, we finally found the culprit: an aggressive colour filter in the rendering pipeline was silently crushing all our saturation. Once we switched it off and dialled in our own colour adjustments -- warmer sunlight, richer saturation, softer ambient lighting -- the island transformed overnight. The beach turned into warm golden sand. The meadows became the lush, saturated green we had always wanted. The ocean sparkled in bright blue. It finally looked like a place where you would actually want to build a settlement.
We also gave the island itself a dramatic makeover. The original map felt too small and too flat -- like a pancake with a little hill in the middle. So we doubled the island size and increased the height dramatically. The result: broad, sweeping lowlands that are perfect for building, rising to a steep central mountain crowned with snow. The coastline is sharper, the valleys are deeper, and the whole landscape has a much more satisfying sense of scale. We also cleaned up the biome boundaries so they flow organically across the terrain instead of forming visible contour lines.
Finally, a small but significant change: we removed the swamp biome. It was not pulling its weight visually, and it did not connect to any gameplay mechanics. The space it freed up went to the forest biome, which will matter a lot more once woodcutters and foresters enter the picture.
Behind the Scenes
The colour issue was caused by a tonemapping algorithm -- a standard post-processing step that adjusts how colours map from the internal high-dynamic-range space to your screen. The "cinematic" option we were using is great for realistic scenes, but it aggressively desaturates bright colours, which is the opposite of what a stylised, colourful game needs. Switching to a simpler approach and adding our own saturation and contrast settings gave us full control over the final look. The terrain surface also received a procedural detail treatment that breaks up any visible repetition in the ground texture, making it feel more natural and hand-crafted even though it is entirely generated.
What's Next
The world looks and feels right. Now it is time to populate it -- roads, buildings, and the first settlers are on the horizon.