Presenting Imagine Earth in two show cases in one game. The festival is an interesting mix of art & game culture.
A Maze Festival Berlin 2017
All posts by jooki
33c3 “Interplanetary Colonies”
A talk by Liz George and Peter Buschkamp at the Chaos Communication Congress 2017 that we liked a lot, because it treated some more tangible possibilities of planetary colonization.
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…
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.
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
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
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.
Goldener Spatz 2015 Best Indie Game
Hurray! Imagine Earth was awarded with the “Goldener Spatz Award 2015” as “Best Indiegame”. Look at this picture of me holding the price. Actually it was a very nice trip to Erfurt even though the trophy turned out to be made of glass not gold. Main thing is the kids like our game!
Nomination Steam Sale now!
Wow! Imagine Earth got nominated for the “German Computer Game Price 2015” in the category “Best Game Design”. We have a 25% off sale on steam from 20.4. – 26.4. to celebrate this.
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
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!
Steam Online Scores Integrated
Hey, we have just integrated Steam Leaderboards into the Imagine Earth score system. After an update on Steam you can see your score for every planet and compare to …
- steam friends
- people in your country
- people around the globe.
Please note that you will have to finish a mission again to upload the score to Steam.
Tip: If you are using multiple Imagine Earth profiles (e.g. sharing the game with a friend or relative) the best score will count. So you can have kind of a local competition between profiles and only the best will put his or her score to the global leaderboards.
In addition to the leaderboards we also made the Joma mission a bit easier and added new graphics for every planet.
Your thoughts and feedback about the new leaderboards are welcome!
New Terrain Texturing and Trade System
We revolutionized the way our planets are getting textured and came to a quite simple solution based on the height of the terrain. This enables 5 times more details while saving a huge amount of texture space. It works for all existing planets and will make it much easier to produce more of them – even procedural planets in an expanding universe seem to be possible now…
Diversifying Resource Production
In the real world it’s a good decision to diversify the production of a resource. For example it’s helpful to use different ways of energy production, because the whole system becomes more stable.
We will add this aspect to the game. The more different producers you have for a specific resource the more you will increase the mix-factor. This will give you a general bonus (e.g. 10% more energy for 4 producers)
it might look much like this and the feature will pave the way for another new gameplay element:
Trade System Coming!
In the last mission of the single player campaign we plan to introduce a trading system. You will be able to trade different resource types like energy from oil, solar energy or wooden goods with other colonies (and maybe also with natives). This way you can raise the mix-factor of your resource production even though you might only be growing mono cultures. This will unleash a great potential for free and strategic development of your colonies.
As always we encourage you to share your thoughts about the games’ state so far and what you would love it to become… Continue reading