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.

Hi Folks, Alpha 10 is out now! It comes with many new features such as the new competition game mode that adds competing ai colonists. They are still behaving a bit experimental. There are different fossil resource deposits now which will run out over time. We started adding steam achievements – claim your victories by starting the game. A redesign of the info panel now keeps the ground conditions visible even with a building on top. The warehouse is available as from Lorian and can store your overproduced energy, food and goods. In addition we have updated the demo version.

If you appreciate our work and like the game please consider writing a short review to push it on steam!

Competition Mode

The competition mode is available for all campaign planets and also for every planet you generate in the sandbox.

In this mode you have to reach a certain population goal and can choose up to 4 AI players. The screenshot above shows a game against 3 opponents. How fast they grow depends on the amount of resources available and the difficulty you choose. You can also steal their land and buildings with watchtowers. In this first version of the AI they wont defend themselves.

The navigation (space key) helps to maintain an overview and the stats menu allows you to compare in detail.

Fossil Resources & Info Panel

The info panel received a new look and some additional functionality:

• The information of building and field are now separated, so it’s always possible to see all details.
• When focusing a building in the development menu or in the build ring you can now see the production range of the building.
  E.g. a fishery will produce between 8 and 20 food depending on where you place it. Putting it onto fishing ground is essential. In addition you should make sure to leave some free fields between fisheries.
• For fossil fields the gray bar shows the amount of resource left in the field. The energy produced by fossil power plants will go down over time. This will make buildings like coal power plants much more powerful, but you will have to be careful to use them the right way. Fossil resources are limited…

Warehouse

The warehouse is a new building in the goods category. It can store up to 3000 goods and its upgrades add the ability to store energy and food. Storing resources is a solution to deal with overproduction and to build a buffer for bad times or fast expansion. The stored resources can also be sold to the space merchant (a new unit that will be introduced in Alpha 11).

Steam Achievements

For now we only added 5 achievements. We are currently collecting things that are worth receiving an achievement for.

What didn’t make it?

1. Mission Bora
   Again. Because we can’t stop discussing and adding gameplay elements instead of focusing on the mission 😉
2. Volcanoes
   In fact we already built them, but they will have their first appearance on Bora. So they are not included in the release.
3. Steam Workshops for sharing Sandbox planets
   We currently aren’t sure whether this is a great feature or not.

What is planned guessed for Alpha 11?

• The final mission on Bora. Really!
• Volcanoes
• Space Merchant
• Laser canon against meteorites
• Steam Trading Cards
• Planet Tehra
• Geothermal Power Plant
• Waterworks
• Complete Research

We wish you a lot of fun with the new version and happy Easter days.

Alpha 9 is out now! Another important step taken 🙂 Here is what it adds to the early access version of Imagine Earth:

Sandbox Galaxy

As introduced in the last Friday Report, you are now able to generate as many planets as you like to and save them to the Sandbox Galaxy. You can use each of them for the Free Play and Time Trial mode (described below).

Editor

Since generating planets clearly isn’t enough we added the editor. The editor works for all of your sandbox planets. You can start it in the planet menu – the same place you would start a Free Play. Within the editor you can terraform (Keyboard M and N), define the type of every field and place and remove every building you like. Finally save the result and go back to the Sandbox Galaxy to play your planet. Watch the video to see everything in detail.

Time Trial mode

After raising the limit with new Landing Permissions and Research Tokens for up to 20 million people on each planet, we decided to include a first draft of the Time Trial mode.

This mode is made up of up to 5 race goals like “500,000 people until week 500”. If you reach one goal the race for the next starts. If you fail one goal, you loose. The time you have for each goal depends on the amount of population needed and the difficulty you choose.

The Time Trial mode is clearly not perfect yet. We look forward to hear your feedback.

Trade with Natives

The natives on Rounos will now sell their precious and tasty food to you. Make sure to negotiate first, because otherwise they wont trade with you. The food price depends on their mood and the maximum amount on the number of forests surrounding them.

Natives added to a sandbox map will also trade with you.

Details

Two details among other things we changed:

• Your operation systems setting for left handed mouse control is detected and used. Did you know that there are 10-15 % of left handeds folks amoung us?! 😉
• Your population now grows based on the space available. This means you will have to deal with the problem of supplying enough resources. The population growth is based on the level of difficulty so you can still keep it easy if you want.

What didn’t make it?

1. Mission Bora, because we put our focus on the Sandbox Galaxy and Editor for this release.
2. The Warehouse, because we are still not sure whether it should be able to store all three resources or just one of them at a time.

What is planned guessed for Alpha 10?

• The final mission on Bora!
• Volcanoes
• Steam Workshops for sharing Sandbox planets
• Steam Achievements and Trading Cards
• A new game mode with AI opponents

Early Access Contest – 3 Steam keys to be won

Win a Steam key for a friend by populating Joma Free Play with the most people. One important condition: You have to maintain a positive climate balance. Upload your Steam Screenshots to our community board on steam. The winners are announced in next weeks Friday Report #3 in the blog section!

We just released a small update to early access alpha 8 on Steam.

It adds a “test-mode” button to the campaign screen. The test-mode allows you to play all available planets and missions without unlocking them. This also includes all constructs in the free play modus.

Additional changes:

• Jens created a new galaxy for the campaign screen.
• Improved the way underwater and coast textures are drawn near the poles so they don’t look stretched anymore.
• Ruins of Cite Centers can now be destructed.
• City parts that don’t grow because of mission resources or bad mood will show a small warning icon.
• Changed the naming of our version so it’s easier to use. Instead of 0.8.1.1302 it’s now “Alpha 8.1 build 1302”.

Jens & Martin

The January update of our early access version is live now (yes, it’s already February … ).

While the Bora mission is still being developed this update comes with one big new feature: Procedural planets. Meaning you can now generate your own planet with different themes, sizes, landmass, field resources, rocks and forests. The big dice button will generate some random values for the lazy ones among you.

In addition Buoy Stations and Watchtowers can now be built on fields adjacent to your build radius. This makes it easier to reach a specific region on the planet without using a City Center.

The next update at the end of this month will hopefully bring you the final campaign mission on Bora. In addition we are experimenting with AI and it’s quite likely that there will be a game mode with computer enemies and allies.

Jens & Martin

It’s only two weeks after our last update, but we added some new features to Imagine Earth and decided to release them before Christmas.

So here is what’s new:

1. Statistic on the air pollution of all your buildings
2. Enhanced visualization of building influences. Outgoing influences are displayed, too now (e.g. the influence of a Forestry on a Factory). Furthermore we decided to leave decimal values away to make the information more clear.
3. Sound volume: You can now control the volume of music and sounds in the game.
4. Production bonus: In real life a diversified resource production is more stable than relying on a single resource (like mono-culture). To take this into account you receive a resource bonus when at least two building types each produce 10% or more of a resource.
5. Development menu: This has already been mentioned and now made it’s way into the game. You can use it to develop new buildings and upgrades. It makes it more easy to compare the different building types and understand the relationships between them. In addition it is still possible to develop buildings and upgrades in the build and tool ring.

The video gives a short introduction on the development menu,  production bonus and the influences some buildings have on each other:

The next update is planned for end of January.

Your thoughts and feedback are welcome!

20/12/14: The demo has now also been updated,

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!