A short update concerning the future road map of Imagine Earth.
After a long time of development we decided to start a crowdfuning. This has two reasons:

1. We need some money to pay for the establishment of a small business partnership, sounds and especially localization.
2. It’s time to go out in the public and tell the people about Imagine Earth on a great scale!

Right now we are planning all details and need a lot of contacts to spread the word about the Crowdfunding.

Do you know someone who would like to mention the crowdfunding for Imagine Earth in a blog, newsletter, …? Please tell us here, on facebook or write an email to martin(at)imagineeearth.info.

You can also leave your email on the right to get notified once the crowdfunding starts. We will post more details soon.

Today we wanna talk about life quality. Those who played the old demo version on steam already know that smilies over the citiy districts show the mood of your people. Back then, this life quality which is divided into 7 major states was responsible for the growth of population and depended on the availability of resources. Today as tax money is collected automatically we decided to add more relations to that.

Still every mood better then neutral makes the population grow. But additionally the circle around the smiley is closing faster as life quality improves and bonusbags of coins will popup over the district in addition to the normal income!

There are three basic criterias:

• Food is vital for your people to survive.
• If you have sufficient energy, life quality will be neutral.
• If you also have sufficient goods, life quality will become positive.

Additionally your people’s mood will be pushed up by wonderful things like Forests, Organic Farms and also by nearby Park Districts and Shopping Centers.

It is lowered by the specific influences of polluting powerplants and industries in the neighbourhood and is reduced by one level in case of critical ground pollution of the city field. It is also reduced if the citypart is devasted what means a critical state of structural integrity or health if you like to say so.

According to our latest poll at the facebook page most people will be playing Imagine Earth with mouse and keyboard even though we have implemented an interesting solution for the xbox360-gamepad. But so we also developed a set of hotkeys, that will boost planetbuilding!

The universal ringkeys will enable you to access any tool or construct with the combination of not more than 1 or 2 keys. Press W and then E and you have immediately placed a citydistrict. If you are hovering a field with a building then the keys direct to the tools in there Q or A start upgrades while for example will start a repair D.

Important note: Gamepad support is disabled in the current early access version of Imagine Earth. We are focusing on the gameplay for now and will come back to the gamepad implementation later.

Love to sit on your coach playing games on your TV?
Just like Steam’s Big Picture mode, Imagine Earth will support your XBox 360 Gamepad as input controller. Simply connect you PC or laptop with your TV. The game will automatically switch between mouse and gamepad – whatever you use to make inputs.

Please let us know if you like this feature or prefer to play the oldschool way – sitting at your desk with mouse and keyboard.

Tip 1: If your TV cuts of some parts of the picture you can adjust the size of the GUI via the options menu.

Tip 2: With the MotioninJoy driver you can also use several other gamepads.

In Imagine Earth there are 8 types of ground that can give your buildings a much higher productivity (or in some cases a much lower). This short overview will help you to decide how to place your buildings.

Soil
is the default ground type for your land buildings.

Fossils deposit
will increase the productivity of power plants that rely on energy sources. Coal and gas power plants are a good example.

Fertile
ground makes the crop yield of your farms much larger.

Desert
on the contrary, isn’t a good place for a farm. Nevertheless, a solar park will have it’s highest energy output when built into a desert.

Coast
fields are know to by windy spots and will increase the production of wind farm.

Ocean
fields will allow you to place some different kinds of buildings.

Oil fields
are the right place to build an oil rig.

fishing grounds
will let your fishery produce a lot of food.

Mountain Fields
They remain inaccessable the whole time.

Here you can see the Infopanel from the lower left part of the screen and how it shows the individual values of some energy power stations in the game. At the very top it shows the  produced resources in blue. The second value is the costs which fall due every week.

The Infopanel makes these values easily comparable when you are opening the buildring we introduced in Devblog #4. There you can see a constructs total production and consumption before placing it.

When hovering the planet this panel is trimed to the production value until you click at a certain construct to learn more about its internals. Now you will have relative values often influenced by other buildings and the the field qualities of the land you’re about to place it on or near by.

Air und Ground Pollution

At the bottom you will always have ground pollution and at last air pollution which stands for the emission of greenhouse gases and leads to global warming. Soil pollution is located on every field and therefor also shown on the top of the infopanel close to the field triangle.

21.Mai 2014 – Das Braunschweiger Startup Serious Brothers hat soeben seine Kolonie-Simulation “Imagine Earth – Planetary Colonization” im Early Acces bei Steam veröffentlicht. Darin spielt man das Schicksal eigens entwickelter Zivilisationen im Zeitraffer bis zum Ende des Klimawandels durch. Das neue Release enthält einen weiteren Planeten und sowie ein neues Forschungssystem.

Imagine Earth ist eine futuristische Aufbau-Simulation. Dem Spieler fällt der Job des Koloniemanagers zu, in welchem er unberührte Planeten erforschen und bevölkern muss. Es gilt große Städte zu errichten und deren Versorgung mit Kraftwerken, Farmen und Fabriken sicher zustellen. Die eigentliche Herausforderung ist es, den Zustand des besiedelten Planeten dabei nicht aus den Augen zu verlieren. Schnell hat man die Resourcen ausgeschöpft und die Wälder verschmutzt und die Polkappen abgeschmolzen. Am Ende kann nur die Erforschung erneuerbarer Energiequellen und die Entwicklung nachhaltiger Produktionslinien den Klimakollaps der neuen Heimatwelten verhindern…

In der offiziellen Demo lassen sich die zwei Planeten spielen www.imagineearth.info/demo

“Mit seinen Entscheidungen wird sich der Spieler mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit an einen Punkt bringen, an dem es seine Strategie komplett überdenken muss !” said Jens Isensee.

“Beim Aufbau die Balance zu finden zwischen Wachstum und Nachhaltigkeit ist in diesem Spiel der Schlüssel zum Erfolg,” meint Martin Wahnschaffe, “so wie es die letzte Herausförderung jeder Zivilisation ist.”

Der Klimawandel ist womöglich die unterschätzteste Bedrohung der Computerspielgeschichte. Imagine Earth transportiert diese ernste Problematik in ein packendes und motivierendes Spielsystem. Es entsteht in gewisser Weise ein experimenteller Weltsimulator, der dem Spieler alle Freiheiten lässt, seine eigene Entwicklungs- und Rettungsstrategie zu entwickeln.

Serious Brothers GbR
Ist ein unabhängiges entwickelndes Duo, dass sich zur Realisierung dieses Projekts zusammen getan hat. Alles hat als enthusiastisches Studentenprojekt begonnen, bis zu Beginn dieses Jahres ein Startup gegründet würde. Das mittlerweile auch schon zwei Preise gewonnen hat und sich erfolgreich um nordmedia Förderung beworben um das Spiel bis zum Ende des Jahres fertig zu stellen.

Pressekontakt:

Name:       Jens Isensee
Mobile:    +49 176 44421882
Email:       jens[ at ]imagineearth.info
Presskit: http://imagineearth.info/presskit

The last Dev-Update already mentioned that we replaced the old resource icons with new ones. So we thought it would make sense to give a little explanation of each resource:

Money
“… makes the world go round.” – as we all are said. In Imagine Earth it is needed to build your cities and to upgrade your buildings. Furthermore, you have to pay the running costs of your producing buildings. Without it you wont be able to grow and to reach your job goals as a World Manager. It is represented by a C – for currency – with a line through it.

Food
Represented by a vegetable. Food is the fundamental resource needed by your people. Without it nobody will move onto you planet and your existing population will run away or die. So make sure you build enough farms and fisherys.

Energy
All your producing buildings and also your cities need energy. Without it they will stop working. There are several different types of power plants to produce it. Some of them generate a lot of energy, others are very sustainable. We will explain each of them in future Dev-Updates.

Goods
The fourth and last resource is represented by a red delivery box. Goods are only needed by your people. They affect the mood in your cities. Too few and your people will leave the city. Build industrial parks, warehouses and other buildings to produce goods.

Have a nice week,
Jooki & Martin

As you can see you will simply have a ring around the field where you clicked to build something and it will show the available building choices. Everything in place!

And yes, we had to redesign the icons of the resources. Because a knuckle of pork can’t seriously be representing food in general, not in a serious game ;D! So we took this abstract version of a vegetable as the major icon for greenhouses, farms, cattle breeding, fishing or fountains. The diamond as the icon of goods was as well misunderstood as luxury goods while it ment commodity and consumer goods of the every day life. At last we decided to put them into these red delivery boxes where anything like that can be packed in.

To expose the function of at least some of the buildings in that ring: These facilities will fit into the building-logic of your cities. the financial district will of course squeeze more money out of surrounding parts and the campus district will advance them while shopping malls and park districts will simply raise the life quality in residential districts.

An early scribble for the next build ring with the first comming up of icons representing the buildings.
Please give us feedback in the comments section below or at our facebook site.

A little update from the development, (expect these to come more regularly from now on). We reworked the water shader and now you can see crystal clear turquoise wobbling ocean water and you will have many ways of polluting it with oil slicks, chemicals, pesticides and even nuclear radiation because your dilapidated industrial buildings can now have accidents you will have to cleanup!..