Finally! There it is, the new version of Imagine Earth using the Unity graphics engine. It took us a while to port all visualizations and UI elements, but the result it totally worth it – especially because we can move much faster now based on a modern graphics engine with a lot of tools and features that make the live a lot easier for us.

Full savegame compatibility

Before we have a look into what is new, we want to point out that your existing savegames will still work. If you experience any problems related to that, please note that we lately moved the savegames to a new directory:

%userprofile%\AppData\Local\ImagineEarth

If you want to try out the old version again after tomorrow afternoon on for comparison, you can do so with the following instructions:

Right-click Imagine Earth in your Steam Library.
Under „Properties…“ click „Betas„
Enter the password „oldgameengine„

Ocean shader

A good example for these beautiful opportunities is the new ocean shader that comes with refraction effects for objects that are under water.

Physics based materials & new lightning

The unity engine made it a lot easier for us to add beautiful visual effects. We use physics based rendering for all buildings and world objects, which for example gives rare resource deposits metallic reflections in the sun.

Also each planet theme now has a much stronger colorization and individual look.

Post-processing effects

The game now makes use of an improved bloom post-processing effect and a depth of field filter, as shown in the image below.
There is also an exposure filter that lights the scene up on the night side of the planet.

3D Sound

Finally we have a working solution for the 3D sounds in the world. This feels especially great with the new landing sounds of the trader space ships.

Planetary shield

This is the new style for the planetary shield generated by the great pyramids. The triangle elements randomly move and make it look very organic.

Explosions

I picture says more than a thousand words…

Thunderstorms

The thunderstorm has a completely new visualization and each lightning strike puts the scene into a bright light.

Pollution, snow and more particles

Snow areas now look more natural and sometimes have a decent snow particle effect.

We have also used particle effects and the new building shader to intensify the pollution visualization. Thus it’s now easier to see which fields have a high pollution and need cleaning.

Forests

Trees in forest now move independently from each other in the wind. Also we have added basic shadows that make the forests easier to see on the night side of the planet.

Other improvements

• Improved video quality and playback.
• “Building menu” title on the building ring to make it better distinguishable from the tool ring
• Consistent usage of fertility icon
• Volcano and other big objects: The tool ring is now positioned over the clicked field instead of the center of the object

Hello lovely space colonizers, a new update had to be done. Some bugs and exotic writing problems in the documents folder of Windows didn’t want to stop appearing for some players while being not reproducible by us. We suspect hyperactive anti-virus programs behind it and the like, but now we’ve rewritten the Imagine Earth method to save your profiles and your savegames to end it once and for all!

No Savegame Left Behind

Imagine Earth will copy your populated worlds and achievements into a new folder the next time you start the game.

Savegames are now stored here: %userprofile%\AppData\Local\ImagineEarth

As always with our updates, all savegames should still work afterwards, a circumstance that is less self-evident than you might think, or so to say that causes extreme activity at our end 😉 Please try if everything still works as usual.

Steam Cloud Support

On that occasion we added steam cloud support for our game. This means savegames and scores will now be synchronized via Steam.

Depending on the amount of savegames you have and your upload speed this may take a while when starting the game the next time.

Unity Engine Beta

Of course also the new Unity Engine beta version of our game has also undergone some optimizations as we want to change to the new Universal Pipeline of the Unity Engine with the new year if all goes well. If you want to have a look at it, check in the last dev post how easy you can unlock it on Steam. Everything is already in its place and running. https://www.imagineearth.info/alpha-56-preview/

Greetings Colony Managers, surely you are wondering what happened to the monthly updates that we used to deliver all the way. The simple reason is that big changes are coming. After 5 years of early access we decided to make an engine switch to Unity before finally releasing the game.

We worked restlessly and after two month the new version is ready to be tested. So to make it short if you’re already supporting Imagine Earth in early access we wanted to give you the opportunity to join the preview of the new version.

Why all the work you might ask. Well we simply wanted to make it easier for us to provide you with great visuals and to have a better out of the box stability and compatibility than the community driven Monogame engine, we used before. It also gives us easy portability to other platforms and consoles. New opportunities await us in terms of graphics and shaders so the quality, look and the atmosphere of the game can finally meet the aspiration and complexity of its content that we have created over all the years.

Please help us getting the new baby tested!

1. Right-click Imagine Earth in your Steam Library.
2. Under “Properties…” click “Betas”
3. Enter the password “unitypreview”.

Important note: You can always leave the beta and return the the existing version of the game. All savegames will be compatible!

The current version comes with automatic crash reporting. This means that we will receive a technical error report that will help us to find and fix the problem.

List of Improvements

• A good example for these beautiful opportunities is the new ocean shader.
• See the noble metal deposits glitter in the sun.
• Experience physics based rendering for all constructs in the world.
• Improved lighting system renders the world more colorful and shining.
• Finally we have an improved solution for the 3D sounds in the world and it comes with new effects for incoming space ships.
  -Finally we have a contemporary implementation for hd video for the intro and cut-scenes.
• A new style for the planetary shield generated by the great pyramids.

Expect more exciting stuff to happen in Imagine Earth – Planetary Colonization soon as the Unity universal render pipeline is still in development we keep the game up to date of course. After all this engineering work we can’t wait to get back into game design and put some well thought-out ideas into practice. Please stay tuned for what comes next.

Welcome! The September update of Imagine Earth is ready. Our focus this time is on share trading but as usual you get lots of improvements and new features.

We hope you enjoy all of these goodies. If you haven’t reviewed the game on steam yet, please do! Let us know what you think about the changes. We’re so close to reclaim the 80% – Very good” rating, which would be incredibly great for the reception of the game 🙂 Cheers, Martin & Jens

Shares Trade & AI

You can’t miss the new share panel which is located among the all important panels in the middle bottom. It offers a great overview to all values and numbers that play a role in share trading.

The AI opponents are know actively buying shares. At least those who have share trading in their corporate agenda. On the right you see how many owners a corporation has and how many shares they own. This also means another important thing: AI will now actively take over cities if they have a sufficient amount of shares. The times when you could sell your own shares excessively without a risk are over!

Catastrophes and Global Warming

All possible natural catastrophes are now listed in the Global warming drop down. And the disaster risk is rising by several percentages with ongoing global warming.

You will be notified regularly about the changes in the global ecosystem.

Tools in the Build Panel

We integrated a toolbox into the build ring and the build menu. There you can activate tools for mass upgrading, cleaning and repairing. It’s super handy and it come’s with the new forestation tool: It always plants the best fitting forest on a piece of land. You only have to examine the type of vegetation first.

Productivity Warning Icon

We brought a permanent icon into the world that shows unmistakably when a certain production building is unproductive or misplaced. So you can optimize your colony without having to do guess work and checking each individual field.

Highscores for Steam Workshop Planets

You can now compete for global highscores on every planet that you downloaded from Steam Workshop. Just play it in competition mode and get ready to beat global scores.

Music Tracks

We have a new win theme created by Alex of William E. Audio. A good opportunity to play and win one of those workshop planets and listen to it!

Also, we changed two music tracks that where part of the game for years now. Their highest intensity level for the final state of global warming was an e-guitar melody that most people couldn’t stand for long. We optimized one track to be suitably played as background music for longer time and erased the other completely. Please stay tuned until we have the funding for a full force SciFi soundtrack 😉

New Event Notifications

As you can see new event notification popups will inform you from now on when important things are happening. They popup whenever you earn landing permits, research budget or licenses. They will also show up when catastrophes are threatening your base.

Gamescom, August 20. -24th

We have been to gamescom in Cologne and showed Imagine Earth to the public in the Indie Arena Booth. Definitively the best place for innovative Indie Studios! As expected it was a so called blast to present the game to so many excited players. New ideas and balancing issues popped up by the minute. Also the prime minister of our home state was showing up to try the smartest climate crisis simulator made in Niedersachsen, Germany so far ;D

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In case you’re wondering, the one to my right in the first picture isn’t Martin. It’s Timo from Mad About Pandas who helped me out presenting Imagine Earth for almost 10 hrs over 5 days because Martin has become a father most recently and couldn’t attend the show due to obvious priorities 😉

Lots of Other Things

• Simplified script syntax (will soon be available for workshop as-well)
• Changed color of infrastructure building icons
• Allow to cancel “quit mission” dialog
• Make sure trader has always at least one laser or pulse cannon
• Display faction names in game setup
• Xrathul now “harvest” all colony buildings – not only districts
• Display victory point target number in victory points panel
• Improved camera controls (less sensitive in some situations)
• Also adjust temperature in fields adjacent to area of climate generator
• Display build graphics immediately after placements
• Colorize area that will belong to a city while it’s being built
• Removed annoying sound in colony rating panel
• Make sure AI keeps some resource and items to have better trading opportunities between players
• Improved territorial dominance logic – distance to claiming building should be more important than build order
• Allow cancelling of research

Welcome to the latest update of Imagine Earth. As usual, you can expect a bunch of interesting improvements and new features. We hope you enjoy all of these goodies. Please let us know what you think about the ongoing developments. Cheers, Martin & Jens

New Construct: Thermo Generator

This state of the art geo engineering tech improves agriculture and quality of life in very cold and hot regions by optimizing the temperature by up to 10°. It also prevents climate based tornadoes, thunderstorms, forest fires and desertification in the vicinity. This advanced weather manipulation technology requires a lot of energy and causes emissions.

Related to this the mission on Joma got a makeup. You will find it easier to get development licenses to unlock new buildings. The mission now points to stock trading, where you can buy shares of other companies to participate in their profits. Joma has become colder, making it more difficult to grow food. In return you will receive the new building, the thermo generator…

New Planet: Udion Torix

A new planet has been discovered in the Udoxia Galaxy. A tough competition against ruthless corporations is waiting for you to master it.

New Game Setup

The setup of a new game has been adjusted to give a more meaningful overview of what the player can expect. As the most important change we added a checkbox for sabotage. If you deselect this checkbox, you will be able to play a peaceful construction game that is limited to economic competition and environmental aspects.

Threat waves

You may now experience less isolated catastrophes taking place somewhere on the planet and therefor periodically occurring events during which extreme weather conditions ( Thunderstorms and Tornados ) occur very frequently or seismic activity ( earthquakes and volcanoes ) or an increased occurrence of asteroid and meteorite showers. Special vigilance is required.

Debris animations

We’ve put some fancy animations into the game when you harvest resources. Drones now use various lasers or tractor beams to demolish rocks or forests, repair buildings and clean fields. You can now also observe flying particles that match the units you are working on.

Message journal

The new journal lists all previous dialogues chronologically, like in a messenger. Between the dialogues the fulfilled mission goals are listed, thus an excellent orientation in the temporal sequence of the mission is ensured.

The brand-new journal also contains a “Typo Button” with which you can post discovered spelling mistakes directly to the dedicated Steam forum.

Sandbox Terraforming Tools

We made editing terrain much easier in the sandbox editor. You can now level terrain to adjust it to the height of the first field that you click.

Steam Workshop Briefings

In the Steam Workshop you can now add a briefing to the planets you create.

AI Gives Up – You Go On

You can now continue a competition game after winning to enlarge your civilizations and cleaning up the mess of the economic rivalry.

AI corporations do give up their colonies when they are bankrupt and out of shares. They will leave the planet and you can take over their infrastructure.

Allied native camps

They can now be relocated. Also allied Illuminati camps now provide you with meteorite showers every now and then.

Indie Arena Booth 2019

Also worth mentioning, Imagine Earth is on board of this year’s @IndieArenaBooth 20.-24.8.19 at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. If you’re there, please come over to our Booth! Indie Arena is located in hall 10.2 and has Booth number 021G. Line-Up out now!

Other stuff

• Bonus missions limited to 3 goals each
• Optimized zoom level for camera animations
• Small volcano-like mountains for “volcanic” theme
• Improved main menu sun animation
• Improved unlocking of constructs on Tuto
• Added better explanation for tech licenses
• Removed shadows for construction holograms
• Improved interaction of tool ring and docked panels
• Improved supply capsule user interface
• Increased number of research funds sold by merchant
• Start video can be deactivated in settings file
• Improved UI representation of trade-able items and resources
• Tech licenses can be sold to the merchant again

Fixes

• Fixed rounding error in resources panel
• Fixed trader message “not interested” when you have nothing left to sell
• Fixed animation problem of profile dialog
• Fixed problem with research chunk highlighting
• Fixed color of ocean citadel powers

The title of this update blog post successfully names Update #53s uber feature. Workshop enables you to share the planets and challenges you created in the terraforming mode. While creating a planet their, you can now define Opponents, Rules and Events and they will be saved for the players of your challenge. You can then upload them to steam directly from the game. Read here how easy it is actually is. The best world creations might even make it into the game itself…

This is just the beginning. We will implement more abilities to script missions, create other factions, modding speakers and landing ships soon. What we already have is a workshop forum thread, leave your ideas on what you wanna create and mod right there.

New Quest Vizualization

All the goals in campaign missions are now grouped into quests of around 5-8 goals and their completion results in winning a central mission goals. That improves story telling and makes it much easier to recall in which context you are doing a certain goal.

New Game Options

Freeplay / Competition now offer to start a “Custom Game” which are totally self configured by you. “Workshop Games” have rules, elements and opponents predefined by the creaters of the challenge that you loaded from steam workshop. “Terraform Game” Means you start a challenge which you created in Terraforming maybe to test it before uploading to Steam Workshop.

New Languages

Lately brazilian language was added by DuH!! Thanks so much for that contribution.
Chinese translation updated to latest version.

New Epic Title Theme

New Music for Imagine Earth by Zevik Perry, thanks man!

Item Categories

Crafting menu in the workshop now has 3 item categories now Offensive items / Structures and Utilities.

Added

• Creating a challenge in the sandbox now allows you to define rules, elements and opponents and save them with the planet.
• Level 3 city expansion for City Center is available from start in Free / Competition Mode
• Destruction process is having a nice debris effect.
• Asteroid smoke column tuned, looking much better
• Description for Leens Spacebot
• Old building icons reworked. Progress ring optimized
• Improvements for Magni and Bora Mission
• builder drones are now needed to reconstruct a ruin.

Balanced

• Building orders have priority for builder drones over destruction orders. However repair and destinguish orders have top priority.
• items that are generated by certain buildings have a lower generation rate growth when you get 2x 3x 4x… units of a building.
• We got rid of item limit that was set to 8 because the places in the toolring.
• Research queue has 6 slots and shows them now no more than 6 active researchs are possible from now on.
• “Sell button” in trade menu is reconfigured to “Sell overproduction”
• Explosive device does not damage constructs on neighouring fields anymore.
• Mood Fix: Natives where too depressed, you always had to gift something before you could trade
• Exploding uplink drone balancing: Doesn’t take out all buildings around it anymore
• Warning sounds are now independent from time.

Fixed

• “Warehouses are not running” bug
• Problem with ideon maps sold by natives.
• Wrong speakers for denial dialogs.
• Remediation center does now start one cleaning process after the other instead of twenty at the same time.
• Gold storage increased endless because auto trade with Midras was activated who pay in Gold
• Levelup Bug: City Center no longer needs a drone to update itself
• Overkill Bug fixed: all connected buildings exploded ;/
• Hangup on Startup when starting Campaign
• 2 Xrathul bugs eleminated

Greetings, Colony Managers our latest release is ready for you. Tons of bake-fresh features sweeten the colony day. To wrap it up, making the other AI corporations your rivals is more dangerous than ever, now they attack with offensive items. Researching is now less casual and more time based. Some items are produced by districts in addition to being crafted. You can also hack the stock market in a new share panel attached to the tool ring on city centers of other colonies. We polished the new build menu and you can monitor upcoming threads much better in the reworked bookmarks panel.

We hope you’ll enjoy the latest features! Please leave your feedback in our forum. We would be so happy if you’re interested in supporting our project as a beta tester. Which basically means you get the new update earlier than the rest. In case send us a mail. Additionally a 25% sale is coming to Steam on April 22. Mark our words!

Cheers, Jens & Martin.

French language translation

We can’t party hard enough on the commitment of Victor “Lartima” who out of nothing send us a mail with the completed french translation of Imagine Earth! Thanks so many times to you and to Bouy, who got the translation started!

Fresh gameplay trailer

This one is simply showing it all, all features, all threats, all items and all that we worked on over the last two and a half year – as the old trailer was kind of that old. On top it has something special, a final release date. Yes, we are hopeful to finish version 1.0 within 2019… Please share, post and tweet it as much as you can.

Actually this is a good opportunity to thank all the 30.000 supporters that helped to keep the Imagine Earth project alive and well progressing with their early access purchases. If you wanna join the crew, this might be an opportunity…

Shares panel & stock market hack

You can buy the shares of other corporations directly from the tool ring on their city center. There you overview who’s owning the corporations shares and you can directly hack the stock market from here in case you made or bought a stock market hack which is a brand new offensive strategic item in the game.

Count down warnings in UI

The bookmarks and events panel in the top right of the screen now warns you with a countdown before Pirates, Xrathul or Asteroids and other threats kick in. We needed to give players more time to prepare and you can even increase the warning time for an area by building research districts. At the same time we reduced alerts about stuff going on in the middle of nowhere. The panel now gives a better visualization of all the threads and catastrophes next to your cities and around the globe.

Time based research

From now on it takes a certain amount of time to research upgrades to make the decision of what to research first more strategic. You have a research queue that can by prioritized any time and you should pay attention to the efficiency factor which is raised by every research district you build. The city center also contributes to the factor as it has a built in research lab as well.

Item production in districts

We almost accidentally came up with the idea of letting the various types of districts produce items over time. That gives every district a more individual and special functionality. The new build menu nicely visualizes the items that are in production and it also shows the ones that can be crafted.

AI sabotages with offensive items

Based on diplomatic relation and mood of AI factions they start using offensive items against you. Their tension to move against you is raised by an aggressive agenda. They will not hesitate to use pirates, assimilators, asteroids, sabotage and sometimes also explosive device and ideon bomb.

Improved UI of build panel

The build panel is an UI element we reintegrated lately after having it replaced by the practical build ring several years ago. It allows you to permanently see your stock of items and gaia forces, also those who are actually still loading up and in production. This precious piece of user interface needed a cleanup and that’s what we did recently. Also hovering buildings in the build ring or panel will show related resource icons on planet.

Mission improvements

• Tuto: Show research icon more early
• Joma: Birons epidemic quest working again
• Lorian: Changed timing of asteroids and improved trigger for slick bay quest
• Rounos: Joe starts some destructive actions after losing
• Rounos: Gave Joe access to a temple with tornadoes

Improvements and fixes

• Balanced generation and regeneration of pollution
• Districts freely convertible
• Victory point per 5,000 mined rare resources
• Fields can now be bookmarked with CTRL+number key
• Personalized messages by NPCs
• Smoother build radius
• Improved forestry explanation dialogs
• Fixed auto save naming problem (will reduce the number of created savegames)
• Use saw icon for rare plants like corals
• Fixed interaction with icons in navigation mode (space key)
• Sound pitch fine tuning
• Changed color of price text to neutral
• Fixed overlap of alliance confirm buttons in message panel
• Fixed AI selling and back-buying items all the time
• Improved rare resource description texts
• Fertile only from 90% and desert only from 10%
• Editor: Clustering of fossil and rare resources
• Editor: Distribute temples evenly and add ocean citadel
• Editor: Ensure that rare resources are available everywhere

In the first update for Imagine Earth in March you’ll find many optimizations for UI and AI that lay ground for innovative new game play features consider the next update to revolutionize core game play at several odds and ends.

Extended research menu

The research menu has a new optional viewing mode where all details are presented directly on screen instead of as tool-tips. For now the compact view still stays the default view, so you have a perfect overview for all your research processes.

We also optimized the filters in the research menu. You can highlight research options according to what their primary effect is. That makes it easy to adjust your research strategy to suit your specific needs.

Upgrades in build menu

The building descriptions in the build menu now also contain all upgrades of the building and their potential pros and cons.

Upgrades that have already been researched can be activated here to be automatically build together with the building.

Visualization of competitors

We made the visualization of competitors more compact and consistent to the rest of the user interface. Instant intuitive visibility for the ranking, diplomatic status and victory points. More over you see which incidents or catastrophes are impacting their colonies and also the resulting share price drops.

Competition rating UI reworked

We reworked the competition ratings table. The x-axis now has the different types of colony points needed to win the competition. We added more captions and explanation texts to clarify all aspects.

Faction messages in tool ring

When accessing a city center other factions are now talking to you directly – we are working on making this communication as personal as possible…

Factions have individual agendas

Factions do now have individual agendas that add character and individual tactics to the 8 different corporations you can play in competition and freeplay mode.

• Cooperative: Cooperative diplomatic sentiment.
• Aggressive: Aggressive diplomatic sentiment. Sabotages other colonies.
• Sustainable: Preserves the environment and prefers buildings with low emissions.
• Exploitative: Tries to get as many fossil and rare resources as possible. Does not care about environmental impacts.
• Expansive: Trying to own as much territory as possible. Does not like it when someone takes over territory.
• Trader: Focuses on trade. Likes to sell resources and items.
• Gaian: Tries to get as many temples as possible and generate Gaia.
• Oceanist: Prefers to build the colony on the coast and the sea.
• Scientist: Researches as many technologies as possible.

Water foam at the coast line

A decent foam line at the coast makes it easier to identify the exact sea level and whether fields are land, coast or ocean. This is an addition to the waves the are rolling in and breaking.

Building type visualization

There are several options in the build menu that help to visualize certain states and objects in the world. For example it can colorize buildings by their type to provide a better overview.

Additional changes & fixes

• You can now sell incomplete packages of rare resource to free up space in the warehouses.
• New city center sounds!
• Workshop menu got a face lift.
• Build menu buttons reworked.
• All campaign planets have decoration and environment objects like mountains suitable to their planet theme now
• Big Illuminati Pyramids can’t burn anymore
• Unified calculation of field and construct values to improve AI decisions and simulation speed
• If you loose competition you won’t get spammed by the professor commenting on that anymore .
• Build menu: you can now have a certain category activated that stays open also when you hover another for short operations. So you can keep your eye on your inventory or the forces you have ready.
• AI in sandbox is no longer saved and transferred into created planets.
• Bora: AI allies may no longer build their second colony next to the great pyramids to prevent the mission plot from getting stuck.
• Fixed problem with multi-use of temple powers
• Fixed assimilator drone explosions

Happy new year again, this time from China! As Steam has started its Lunar New Year sale “Imagine Earth” is 25% off for the first time in 5 years Early Access. Don’t wait for more until the game is finished ;). We are accompanying this sale with an update release that brings you much more than redesigned game characters and a classic strategy game styled build menu for advanced gameplay…

Please note that we are looking for beta-testers who can check on our new update releases days earlier than other players, please mail us if you happen to be that enthusiastic about getting your fingers early on new updates of Imagine Earth!

Meet the New Crew

The old avatars of the main crew members in the campaign are some years old by now and we always knew we’d have to give these guys a makeup someday. Nothing is a better way of showing how this game has grown up over the years than the evolution of Limas character. It goes all the way back when it was a casual game idea with comic characters. Maybe we should not have opened this old box 😉 but with the final release coming in 2019 this nostalgic flashback came over Jens..

The Brand New Control Menu

A new build menu on the left side of the interface will keep you informed about all your build options. Coolest thing about it is that this menu also shows your inventory and on top the craftable items. It has a category for all your gaia forces and shows if they are fully loaded. You won’t have to visit a workshop anymore to craft your stuff. It comes in addition to the classic build ring, so nothing changes, you just get more options.

World Visualizations

The control menu also offers a set of visualization tools. you can highlight fields that are threatened by rising sea-level caused by global warming. You can highlight rare resources, fertility, ground pollution, construct types and colony areas.

Standalone Diplomacy & Trade Panels

If you open a trade or a crafting panel it will be centered on screen from now on. The background is blurred out and playtime is paused, so you can concentrate on deals and negotiations with factions and traders.

Drone Reconfiguration

We are currently experimenting with how the drones are working. We decided to limit the city centers drones to one per level – so you are starting now with one instead of two. This makes it more important to level your city.

The maintenance station no longer comes with a build drone. Instead it comes with a repair drone that only does repair jobs and will automatically do this in the range of the building. As before it can be upgraded with a fire station.

Same goes for the remediation center. It now has a special remediation drones instead of a build drone

Gaia & UI Balancing

Based on feedback and the experiences we received from Wuik in the steam forums, we had another look at the Gaia balancing. The following changes have been done:

• Doubled Gaia production
• Reduced price of Gaia container
• Display correctly how much Gaia is available in a temple
• In addition display how fast Gaia is created and how this is influenced by the nearby population