This week for us was dominated by the German Games Awards. Aside from this Temples now have some superpowers and seismic activity increases the probability of a volcanic eruption.

Illuminati Temples

Temples now have up to three superpowers:

1. Make ground fertile
2. Start a wildfire
3. Cause a volcanic eruption

To be able to use them the temple needs to be charged. How long it takes depends on the number of people living around the temple. So it’s a good idea to build your cities nearby.

Volcanoes and Seismic Activity

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!

German Games Awards 

We had two nice days in Berlin attending the opening of the International Games Week and the awards ceremony of the German Games Awards. But the nomination must be enough for now they handed the award over to somebody else ;).

This week we mainly improved the games performance and added new graphic settings. In addition we finalized the concept for temples in the game and started with the implementation. Remember that all changes will be published with the Alpha 11 release planned for May 1st.

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% .

In addition to this Martin has been searching for performance bottle necks and memory leaks. He was lucky enough to find several of both so even without changing graphic settings Imagine Earth should run more smoothly.

The screenshot was take on a system without dedicated graphics adapter – so 30 fps is quite good.

Concept for Temples

Instead of plundering a temple you can also bring a sacrifice. This will give you access to the temple and it’s powers. The powers include making fields fertile, starting a wildfire somewhere on the planet and even letting volcanoes erupt. To use them you have to wait until the “believe energy” is full. The time this takes depends on the amount of population in nearby buildings.

And how do these powers work? We don’t know, but Twostone has kind of an explanation for it:

I would describe this power as a technology that we have not fully understood yet. But why shouldn’t we use it?

What’s up next week?

We will build all necessary logic and user interface elements for the Illuminati temples and add them to the Bora mission.

If there is time left we will also add a new way of earning development funds that can be used to unlock technologies.

Also we will attend the price gala of the “Deutscher Computerspielpreis” where we are nominated for best game design. If you haven’t voted for the audience award yet you should do it now: http://dcp-voting.gamezone.de

We received a lot of feedback since the release of Alpha 10. After taking a few days off during the Easter days, we decided to focus on bugfixes and enhancements based on this feedback. This left only few time to work on other stuff, but we managed to update the early access version and demo with the changes (alpha 10.1).

Research and Development Funds

We are working on a concept to make sure research and development are better distinguishable and easier to understand. A first step was to add new icons so they have a clear connection to research and development (at least we hope so).

The next step will be to disconnect the research funds from the mission goals. Until now you could only earn up to 5 research funds per mission and there was no way of receiving additional funds in a free game. We plan to change this by doing the following:

The mission goals of the campaign (five per mission) will continue to give you stars. A new mission or free play will start with one research fund for every star you have. In addition you can earn additional research funds from non-mission goals and they will also be offered by the merchant. However these will not last for the next mission or another free play.

What’s up next week?

We have been adding several new graphic effects and performance hungry features like AI opponents during the last alpha releases. It’s time to enhance the performance of Imagine Earth. In practical terms this means that Martin will add more graphic options that allow you to increase the game performance.

Meanwhile Jens will continue working on the Bora mission and together we will add the final details for the Space Merchant.

It’s already three weeks since we released Alpha 9 and we still have a lot of todos on our list. Here are the main features we have been working on last week.

Space Merchant

The concept we wrote about in Friday Report #3 has now found it’s way into the game. The space merchant (see imagine above) is a new building that will have it’s introduction in the Bora mission. He arrives from time to time and stays until his ship is full with resources you have sold him. This said it’s a good idea to build warehouses so you are prepared when he arrives.

Victory Conditions and Competitors in Free Play mode

If you prefer to have a goal when playing, we have great news for you. We have built a first prototype of victory conditions for the free play mode. Instead of playing a free (and endless) game you can set the victory condition to “population” and add some AI competitors. The amount of population you will need to win depends on the planet size and the number of competitors.

Bora

Jens doesn’t want to spoil details on this yet, so we will have to go with a screenshot.

What’s up next week?

Alpha 10 will be released on Friday, April 3rd. Until then we hope to

• give the AI for the free play mode some polishing,
• fix a logic problem in the Tuto mission,
• add a few Steam achievements,
• integrate the warehouse into the existing Lorian and Rounos missions,
• work on the Bora mission.

With the Alpha 10 release the demo will be updated, too. We want to add some free play to it, so it gives a better feeling for the full version.

Anything else?

If you haven’t heard it yet: Imagine Earth is nominated for the “Deutscher Computerspielpreis”. Please vote for us:  http://dcp-voting.gamezone.de.

First of all we proudly announce that Imagine Earth is nominated for the German Games Award (“Deutscher Computerspielpreis”) in the category Gamedesign. Quite an honor to stand right next to titles like “The Last Tinker – City of Colors” and “Lords of the Fallen”.

Please vote Imagine Earth for the “Publikumspreis” http://dcp-voting.gamezone.de.

The awards ceremony will take place April 21st in Berlin. Let us know if you are there. But here’s what happened last week:

Fossil Resources

While working on this Jens did a redesign of the Info Panel as you can see in the bottom left. The gray bar shows the amount of fossil 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 power full, but you will have to be careful to use them the right way. Fossil resources are limited…

Competitor Stats

The stats now shows population, life quality, advance, etc. of competitors. This will visible in missions like Rounos and Bora and in the planned competition mode.

Warehouse

Each warehouse you build stores up to 3000 goods. The ecologic and efficiency upgrades will add storage for 3000 food and 3000 energy. Storing resources will help you to decrease the amount of resources wasted due to overproduction. And you can use the stored resources to sell them, donate them or keep them for times of resource shortage.

Volcanoes

Volcanoes now spit burning rocks onto the surrounding fields and set your buildings on fire. This is still work in progress.

What’s up next week?

As always we are working on gameplay elements for the Bora mission. The most important part will be to build the space merchant and to integrate volcanoes into the mission script.

In addition we will have a try adding a custom population goal as a win condition to the Free Play mode so you can compete against AI players.

Anything else?

Yes, we had a talk about our roadmap and here are the features we plan to add with the next two alpha releases… Continue reading →