This month’s alpha release comes with a lot of useful changes to the user interface. It’s now a lot easies to understand what influences the resource production on a local and on a global level and to identify the biggest emission sources. In addition we added a new competition mode that introduces victory points to the gameplay.

Competition Mode

In the competition mode your goal is no longer to be the first to reach a defined population. Instead you have to earn victory points. As the following screenshot shows there are different ways to receive these points.

This allows you to use different strategies to win the game. You can try to maximize your population or you can try to maximize your money and buy points from the merchant. For the future we plan to add additional ways to earn points.

Reworked Menu

All game modes (Campaign, Free Play and Competition) are now available from the main menu. To load or continue a game you have to choose the game mode first – this especially helps to keep the load menu clear.

Emission Statistics

By clicking the global emissions display on the top right you get some details on the emission sources. Currently this is hard to understand and even a bit buggy. So Jens did a redesign of it that makes it a lot simpler and easier to understand. Have a look at the screenshot below.

On the first level it displays the current compensation of global emissions and the emissions caused by every player. You can drill down each of them to find out what type of building causes the most emissions. In the example my coal power plants cause 120 of 398 emissions which is more than a quarter.

Resource Statistics

Finally we had to rebuild the complete resource statistics, because they just didn’t work (and feel) right. There was simply too much numbers that made it almost impossible to understand what goes on. For example the following screenshot shows the food statistics – how much food is produced by your buildings and how much is consumed.

Production Details

The different things that influence the production amount of a building are now presented more clearly. The base production including upgrades is displayed blue. Bonus production (by ground types and influencing neighbor buildings) is displayed green and a decrease, for example by pollution, is displayed red.

That’s pretty much it. Packed with some bugfixes to the Bora mission all changes are now available through the early access version.

Besides creating a new trailer and logo, we focused our efforts on reworking Joma and Lorian and adding some small enhancements to the other missions. It was exciting to see just how much has changed since we first built them!

In addition we have changed the main menu to make sure it is as easy as possible to start a custom game with the game mode you want and a generated, campaign or sandbox planet.

Warning: The following will contain spoilers!

Joma: Temples and Terraforming

After introducing the Illuminati temples on Bora it was obvious that the temples you find on Joma should become some power, too. We took the “fertilize” power from the Illuminati temple as the it’s first power and added terraforming as it’s second power. This all is  wrapped into the mission and some small side quests.

The image shows the temple on Joma (left). It has the power to terraform a free ocean field (middle) so it becomes usable land (right). Since the temple has to keep the global balance there will always be a side effect: Creating farmland will degenerate some field on the planet to a desert. Terraforming ocean to land will somewhere change a field from land to ocean.

Lorian: Merchant and Laser

First, we did some general enhancements like reducing the mission goal from 4 million to 3 million people, fixing quests that didn’t work correct and things like that.

Second, we now introduce the merchant and the warehouse on Lorian. It’s a perfect fit and allows you to generate some money by selling overproduced goods to the merchant. In exchange he will sell research licenses that will be usable during all missions of the campaign (see Friday Report 12 for more information).

Third, we integrated the laser defense into the mission and removed the scripted nuclear catastrophe.  Instead you now have the chance to really defend against the meteorites and we used this element to add a nice final to the mission.

Bora

On Bora we did some fine-tuning. Especially with the Electronic Employee, who had several unwanted vulnerabilities and wrong behaviors. Additionally, Bora now comes with a beautiful visualization of the planetary shield.

Custom Game

The main menu now has a new option called “custom game”. Starting a custom game is an easy and fast way to play Imagine Earth. It comes with a predefined setting and let’s you configure the following options:

1. Choose planet
   • Random generated planet: You can configure basic params like planet size, theme and forests.
   • Campaign planets: You can use all unlocked planets from the campaign.
   • Sandbox planets: Use the planet you have built in the sandbox editor (can be reached from the main menu).
2. Choose game mode
   • Competition: Reach the expansion goal before your competitors.
   • Continuous: Enjoy to colonize the planet without any goal. Additional colonists are optional.
   • Time Trial: Hurry to reach the expansion goals in time.

Enjoy!

Alpha 11 of Imagine Earth on Early Access finally brings the last Bora mission of the single player campaign and delivers as well Giant Robotic Exploitation Machines, Planet Bora, Trading Cards, Illuminati, The Space Merchant, Space Trade with Aliens, Disruptive Volcanoes, Graphic Options and much more.

It’s not as polished and finished as we would have liked but we wanted it out so you can get new impressions on how the game features develop. Let us know what you think.

Please consider writing a short review to push it on steam!

Space Merchant

The space merchant (see imagine above) is a new building that has it’s introduction in the Bora mission. He arrives from time to time to sell things like developments funds and meteorite strikes and to buy resources and Ideon crystals. This said it’s a good idea to build warehouses so you are prepared when he arrives.

Laser Defense

As you can see it melts away giant meteorites which can be quite helpful from time to time. You can build the laser defense by upgrading  your research district.

Volcanoes

Geological investigations allow you to display volcanic activity. Every fossil-based or ground influencing building near a volcano (e.g. a geothermal power plant) will increase the seismic activity and through this the probability of an eruption. This also goes for exploding buildings and incidents. So you better be careful, because  you definitely don’t want a volcanic outburst near your city!

Illuminati Temples

After offering a sacrifice in the temple it will start to pool gaian energy. The more happy people live nearby, the more energy is collected. You can use it to: 1. Make soil fertile 2. Start a fire on any forest or building 3. Cause a destructive volcanic eruption.

Electronic Employee

The Electronic Employee is a robotic device specialized on the extraction of resources and human capital from your planets and bases. He grows assimilating cables to infiltrate and take over your headquarters. That’s spoiler enough. Play the Bora mission and find it out by yourself.

Graphic Settings and Performance

The graphic settings now comes with options for the shadow quality and the details of textures and particles. Depending on your system this should allow you to increase the frame rate about 20% .

Steam Trading Cards

Jens created 6 cards with small and big images. In addition 6 badges you can craft with 6 emoticons and 3 profile images.

And that’s it 🙂 Again: Please consider writing a short review to push it on steam! Thanks a lot!

PS: For more information on what’s coming next please follow our weekly Friday Report.