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.

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

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!..

This could be one the sustainable energy plants in our game. Seems to me more interesting than Wavecraft at the moment ;D ! Call it “fuel without fossils”: Jonathan Trent is working on a plan to grow new biofuel by farming micro-algae in floating offshore pods that eat wastewater from cities. Hear his team’s bold vision for Project OMEGA (Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae) and how it might power the future.

Not only does Jonathan Trent grow algae for biofuel, he wants to do so by cleansing wastewater and trapping carbon dioxide in the process. And it’s all solar-powered. TED

On Wednesday evening, the Intel® Level Up Game Demo Contest awarded winners of its yearly competition for professional and student game developers at the E3 edition of Video Games Live. The winning game demos are available for free download at the Steam store and developer teams will have the opportunity to turn their demo into a fully playable title distributed by Valve.

We want to invite you play our demo and give us your feedback and your ideas about gameplay, story and look! Thanks a lot! http://store.steampowered.com/app/213450/

German version

Das Computerspielprojekt “Imagine Earth” der Braunschweiger Jochen Isensee und Martin Wahnschaffe ist mit dem Intel® Level Up Award in der Kategorie “beste Simulation” ausgezeichnet worden. Jochen Isensee hat an der HBK freie Kunst und Kommunikationsdesign studiert. In diesem Echtzeit Simulationsspiel muss der Spieler die Expansion einer planetaren Zivilisation koordinieren, misslingt ihm dies droht ein globaler Klimakollaps mit allen Konsequenzen.

Am Mittwoch den 6.6.2012 hat der Intel® Level Up Demo Contest die Gewinner des jährlichen Wettbewerbs für professionelle und studentische Indie Game Entwickler prämiert. Die Prämierung fand im Vorfeld der weltgrößten Computer- und Videospielmesse E3 in Los Angeles statt. Die Gewinnerdemos der acht verschiedenen Genre Kategorien wurden im Rahmen des philharmonischen “Video Games Live” Konzerts in einer interaktiven Ausstellung in der Lobby des Nokia Theatres gezeigt. Die Demos der verschiedenen Spielprojekte sind nun im the Steam Store frei herunterladbar und die vollendeten Spieltitel werden ebenfalls dort von Valve vertrieben, was man als einen Plattenvertrag für Indie Developer bezeichnen kann.

offizieller Trailer auf Youtube

Demopage on Levelup Site
http://software.intel.com/sites/campaigns/levelup2011/hall-of-glory/index.html

offizielle Website des Projekts
http://imagineearth.info

facebook-Seite des Pojekts
http://facebook.com/ImagineEarth