All posts by jooki

Alpha 33 “Hacking and Crafting”

Dear Space Colonists, the Serious Brothers proudly present alpha release 33. It involves crafting and hacking and we where also present at two conferences during this update cycle – in case you are wondering what took us a bit longer this time. As usual we’d love to hear how all the new features work out for you. Please leave us your comments and ideas.

TL;DR

  • Crafting Items in the Workshop
  • Nitro Pumpkins
  • Midras Resources & Resource Storage
  • Texture Size Doubled
  • Breaking Waves at the Sea Shore
  • Independent Frontier Towers
  • New Item: Hacking Kit
  • Share System & City Takeover Improvements
  • AI Territory Logic
  • Temperatures and Global Warming
  • Quo Vadis Conference and Amaze Festival
  • 9 More Things

Crafting Items in the Workshop

One of the main new features that come with this release. In the workshop you get a list of special items that you can craft yourself instead of buying them. They are listed with up to 3 resources that you need for the generation of a certain item and it also shows if these are available or not. This will enhance the trading system as well because you can buy most needed resources from other factions. In the future it might become necessary to buy new  construction plans or recipes from your trading partners. But for now we have a basic set of strategic things that we will try to balance out.

Nitro Pumpkins

This plant is a new rare resource used to craft the fertilizer and explosive device items, because it enriches nitrogen and salts. It can be found in mires and cold but fertile biomes – and was also added to the campaign planets.

Midras Resources & Resource Storage

The Midras are selling more rare resources as they are now needed for many crafting issues. For crafting it was also necessary that goods, energy and food that you particularly chose to lay in and reserve space will no longer be consumed by your personnel in times of shortage. That change was made as well because you couldn’t sell stored things when they are always eaten up by hungry colonists.

Texture Size Doubled

We have lately fixed a long time overseen graphics problem concerning texture mipmapping. The whole planet with all the stuff on it should have much higher resolution by now!

Breaking Waves at the Sea Shore

Beautiful waves and a soft and organic water line on the beaches improve the look and feel off our oceans now.

Independent Frontier Towers

Towers do no longer need a field connection to the city center, the land claimed by your towers and therefor the towers them-self remain yours even when your city center is lost.

New item: The Hacking Kit

Buy this item from the tech trader to hack and take over an adjoining tower of another faction. They can defend themselves by use of such a Hacking Kit as well. so it makes sense to keep one in your inventory just for security reasons. The AI will also make use of this, once they feel like this is a good decision.

Share System & City Takeover Improvements

From now on you can always repurchase your shares for twice the price if somebody else owns them. The shares will be taken from the company owning the most of your shares.

You do no longer have to obtain over 50% off an opponents shares to take over a city that is smaller than 50%. The take over fee has been reduced to 8.000 space coins.

AI Territory Logic

Our AI companies can now use the land claim feature to obtain fields adjoining their build radius. They will eventually use the hacking tool to take over your towers – take care!

Temperatures and Global Warming

There is a new variable range of global planetary temperature that can be defined when creating a new planet for competition mode or free play. The global temperature is raising up to 10 degree until the final climate collapse happens.

This is also important for the health of local flora. Some sorts of trees and plants will not stand a chance in snowland anymore but they will regrow leaves as soon as the temperature raises to positive numbers again. Water temperature is limited down to minus 2 degree Celsius.

You will be able to experience this phenomena particularly well on the new ice planet we are currently working on.

Quo Vadis Conference and Amaze Festival

Serious Brothers where present at the international Games Week Berlin and showing Imagine Earth on several Events. Indie Game Expos at Quo vadis and Making Games Festival on Mo – We and at the A Maze Festival on Friday.

9 More Things

  • Fix: fish, fertile and desert on generated planets
  • Highlighted field colors show the best and worst placement choices directly when you are setting up a new building!
  • Italian language goes official
  • Rewritten game info in steam store and website
  • Better handling for long names in the info panel
  • Fixed problem with the emission goal on Rounos
  • New icon for iron deposits
  • Position fix for infrastructure buildings in dev panel
  • Switched mouse buttons fix for left-hander
  • The competition panel shows the winner more clearly

Games Week Berlin 2017

Dear Space Colonists, the Serious Brothers will be present at the Games Week Berlin and showing ImagineEarth on serveral Events. Indie Game Expos at Quo vadis and Making Games Festival on Mo – We and at the A Maze Festival on Friday. See you in Berlin next week! Also the German Computer Games Award will be presented in Berlin at a festive gala event this week. Imagine Earth was nominated for Best Game Design 2 years ago. With prize money totaling 550,000 euros, it is the most important sponsorship prize for the German games industry.

As a small feature addon we have lately fixed a long time overseen graphics problem concerning texture mipmapping. The whole planet with all the stuff on it should have higher resolution by now!

FReport #28 – New Cities and Constructs

Good news for those who where questioning the retro 90s look of Imagine Earth. Yes, not all buildings are state of the art and some will get a makeup upgrade already with the next release in a few days. Finally the cities look like futuristic stuff you would definitely build while you are colonizing space.

We should also see some redesigned farms and get the space port running where you can build rockets and fill them with the resources you produced to sell them on the intergalatic markets…

Raumhafen

FReport 22 – New Opponents and Opportunities

Welcome to the latest friday report! We’re back from taking a summer break and working hard on the research system revolution. Due to holidays the whole thing is delaying a bit more but we got lots of exciting news on latest units and constructs. I almost don’t know where to start… but remember all these are ideas in development that will most likely change and we’re desperately looking for more feedback on them.

New Trade Dynamics

So far your overproduced resources go straight into the trash as long as you haven’t developed the warehouse already. A still very limited possibility to store resources for hard times. One that we definitely want to expand.

Raumhafen

Space Ports

In the future we want to advance the whole trade system to enable you selling the different sorts of resources each at their individually varying price level to other colonies but futher more into space with your own space ships. When we do that you will be able to use your city center ships to deliver a package of certain goods package into space But that will keep it occupied for a very long time. To improve your sales oportunities you can build the space port. At an extra cost you can construct one way rockets to stuff in the resource packages that are to be sold and to send them off to the intergalactic markets.
This way of trading makes you independent from other business partners but the rocket construction lower the profit rate.

The Harvesters

harvesters2

These creatures have developed a completely different life style than other known lifeforms of this galaxy. They hover into the lower orbit of a planet with their giant ships and extract all resources from on or under the ground with advanced tractor beam technology. The appearance of harvesters is a devasteting event for a living environment and a thread for its inhabitants. As long as you have no advanced defence technology you can only try to buy your colony out of their interest by delivering the desired resources yourself. Infact when a harvester is slowly turning towards your colony and approaches your cities for a good loot you can motivate them to change course if you sell them your resources at zero cost. But that will only make someone elses problem for a while…

Stone Quarry

NewBuildings

There’s another new unit that was long overdue. The stone quarry produces build material from rocks. Yes they are finally no longer useless. After all that time these rocks turn from being an annoying disruption into an actual resource. Reaping by tool will no longer only cost your money and time it’s an early and limited way to gather a sort of goods. Of course the quarry will mine rocks slower and constantly. produce more building material at lower costs. you can increase its effectivity by placing it next to stone deposits.

New research options

Additionally when you advance your societies transportation abilities in the research field mobility you can also relocate stones from one place to another to save the build material for later but set free the building land they block or just take them to a quarry elsewhere. You will also be able to research blasts which way you can get rid of rocks and gold deposits the fastest way but that involves heavy losses.

Imagine Earth nominiert beim Deutschen Computerspielpreis 2015

( german press release on the occasion of the nomination for German Computer Game Award 2015 in the category “Best Game Design“)

8. April, 2015 – Das von zwei jungen Braunschweigern unabhängig entwickelte Computerspielspiel “Imagine Earth” ist für den deutschen Computerspielpreis 2015 in der Kategorie “Bestes Game Design” nominiert. Das Welt-Simulations- und Strategiespiel problematisiert die dramatischen Auswirkungen des Klimawandels.

Es läuft zudem die Online Abstimmung für den Publikumspreis. Man kann online noch bis zum 19.4. abstimmen und 3 x 2 Karten für die Preisverleihung und Gala am 21.4. in Berlin gewinnen.

Deutscher Computerspielpreis: Normierte Spiele 2015
(Kategorie: Bestes Game Design)

Publikumspreis: Online-Voting
( unter Top 20 steht Imagine Earth alphabetisch an 9. Stelle )

Imagine Earth

Es handelt sich hier um ein futuristisches Aufbau-Simulationsspiel, in dem der Spieler Kolonien auf weit entfernten Planeten errichtet. Es geht um Wachstum, die Versorgung der Einwohner und die Koexistenz mit anderen Siedlern. Darüber hinaus gilt es Wirtschaftlichkeit sicher zustellen und interstellaren Handel mit produzierten Gütern zu betreiben.

Die ganz große Herausforderung besteht jedoch darin, das Öko-System des Planeten nicht zu gefährden. Versäumt es der Spieler seine expandierende Gesellschaft mit neuen Technologien oder nachhaltigen Energien auszustatten, bevor die fossilen Brennstoffe zur Neige gehen, dann droht entweder ein Kollaps der Kolonie oder des globalen Klimas.

Beide Entwickler stammen aus Braunschweig und Umgebung, studierten an TU und HBK und haben hier 2014 ihre Firma „Serious Brothers UG“ gründet um Imagine Earth und weitere Spielprojekte zu entwickeln.

“Eine Balance zu finden, zwischen Wachstum und Nachhaltigkeit, das ist die größte Herausforderung für jede Zivilisation.”,
Martin Wahnschaffe (30), Programmierer

„Die Idee war, den problematischen Kontext von Umweltzerstörung und globaler Erwärmung in ein packendes Spielprinzip transportieren. Herausgekommen ist eine Art „Sim City“ im globalen Maßstab. Doch im Grunde ist das Spiel kaum vergleichbar mit anderen und die Möglichkeit einen ganzen Planeten zu bevölkern ist ein echtes Alleinstellungsmerkmal. Der Spieler hat volle Kontrolle und alle Freiheiten, seine eigenen Strategien zu entwickeln.“,
Jens Isensee (33), Game Designer

Imagine_Earth_Cover

Terraforming Preview and Rounos Reworked

We are currently developing new features for our editor that maybe will find their way into gameplay in some form as well… At least its a huge step towards the possibility of a universe with procedural generated planets and a new game mode called Conquest in addition to the available campaign. The video footage shows what I personally call the “godmode”: The ingame planet editor is taking shape… A big wow from the design department, with that thing running I could create 2-3 planets a day ;D.

Steam Update: Rounos Reworked

In addition we have just published a new early access version on Steam. It brings a completely reworked Rounos mission. The old script had too much stuff happening in parallel. We changed this and it’s much more straightforward now. Special events and side-quests are better communicated and highlighted on the planet and in the mission briefing. A side effect is that old Rounos savegames wont work anymore. Sorry for that, but there were too fundamental changes to the mission.

Your thoughts and feedback are welcome!