Hey Eco citizens, in this post I wanted to talk about some of the changes in the pipe with a new additional direction to the game we’re calling Eco Infinite.
‘Eco Infinite’ will be adding gameplay and things to do Post Meteor, building up support for long term servers with goals and challenges to solve, and in the process aiming to create very tight-knit meaningful communities of players. Seeing the worlds that streamers and players are creating and the depth of the societies there has inspired us to extend the game to support long-lasting communities that don’t break up after the meteor is destroyed. We want these worlds and the relationships that get built in them to continue post-meteor, with lots of rich challenges still in store.
So what’s there going to be post-meteor? Plenty, with the underlying theme of building a utopia. This means continuing to improve the lives of citizens through housing and food systems, but also brand new systems that will come over the next several releases like settlements (a blog on this here), education, culture, and tourism, all while living in harmony with the ecosystem. We’ll also be adding special support for events for players to take part in, like trials, debates, town meetings, and lectures. The more opportunities for collaboration the better, and progress will be unbounded. Achievements will track your progress, both personal and world achievements, and these may unlock aesthetics.
More detailed designs will be announced for these as they start to get prototyped out, and our existing priorities will run in tandem with these which the team continues to work on (quality of life issues like making stores easier to use, performance, boats, tailoring, avatars, garbage, much more). These Eco Infinite items are big ticket items and will take some time to implement, most we will be adding as ‘experimental’ features in an earlier release which players can enable to try out and give us feedback.
Community Tools
Some of the first changes coming in 9.4 will be simple tools to allow running communities better:
- Max Active Players. By setting this optional value, players looking for servers can filter by how big of a community they’d like to play with. Once you reach that level of active players, it will stop being advertised; but then if players later become inactive the server will get a special boost to server rankings in the browser, and eventually achievements for users who come in to support a server that has a player leave. This is to address a common case where players leave a server and new players are needed mid-game, giving the chance for new immigrants to jump in and have a valuable role in the community there. We expect this feature to help a lot with keeping long term servers supported, and setting goals for community size.
- Exhaustion Limits. Setting an optional ‘Exhaustion Timer’ on servers will make players who are playing past a given time limit unable to expend calories (they become exhausted) until the next day. This will allow servers to keep a relatively even playing field, avoiding a common problem case we see where some players can put in an hour a two a day, but others are putting in 10 hours a day and leaving the rest in the dust. Players who do set a desired play-length per day will be matched with servers that have a similar exhaustion limit. This is an opt-in feature for both the server and the player, and we expect most servers will still be unlimited, but it represents another tool in the belt for users to build the type of communities they want.
Achievements
Also coming soon is Achievements. We will be doing something interesting with these: achievements earned on any server will give you steam rewards, but achievements earned on special ‘merited’ servers will be transferrable between servers. We’ll be designing ways for dedicated community members to get the merited status with the approval of moderators, and this will be the beginnings of a ‘metaverse’ within Eco, where aspects of your character will be transferrable between worlds (optional per server to enable this). To start it will be aesthetic features like achievements you’ve earned which show up as icons on your avatar and allow you to craft fancy skins and rewards and such, but later will be all kinds of things.
We’ll also be introducing World Progress Achievements, to go in tandem with Eco Infinite. These will be milestones for your world to achieve, like economic progress, cultural development, well run government, biodiverse ecosystem, etc that will trigger server-wide achievements, and any player who has been active through the previous week or so will gain the achievement on their character. The progress levels will be unbounded, thus there will always be another milestone to achieve (hence the ‘infinite’ in Eco Infinite).
These features are our long term goals, while short term we have ‘Quality of Life’ improvements prioritized (bug fixes, performance, balance improvements). 9.3 is coming out any day, and will include rent and tailoring improvements. 9.4 is shaping up to be a balance patch with extra server tools.
As anyone who has taken a peak at the Eco Tree has noticed, we have super ambitious plans for the games, we’re still at very early days compared to where we want to take it, and the support of our community as we build towards that is how we get there. Over the past several months we’ve seen a huge boost in new players, 2 years after our Early Access release and driven by streamers and word of mouth, and that’s given us the resources to double down on development, grow the team and start to ‘reach for the stars’ (if you get my drift). Feedback from the community is incredibly useful as we do this so don’t hesitate to reach out via e-mail or on Discord to me or the team. Building Eco is like playing Eco: it’s a community effort.
Cheers
-John K, CEO Strange Loop.
Version 9.2.4 Released!
Update 9.2.4 has been released and fixes the following issues:
Fixed crash when using “Resident of District” law condition when residency was set to a property without a plot
Fixed crash with experimental rent feature when a resident was unable to afford rent
Fixed crash with laws that prevented actions when unable to make a payment
Fixed “Object not set” error when trying to add a civic to an election
Fixed calculation for housing value for deeds with large number of residents and rooms
Improved optimization for claiming/unclaiming large deeds.
Version 9.2.3 Released!
Update 9.2.3 has been released and fixes the following issues:
Fixed crash when setting up a registrar title with wages
Fixed crash with strings that were too large for the localizer
Fixed crash related to controller manager
Fixed display error on player tooltip when no residency was set
Fixed display error on store tooltip when the store was setup for barter transactions
Version 9.2.2 released!
Update 9.2.2 has been released and fixes the following issues:
Fixed crash related to rent and deeds
Fixed crash related to animal AI
Fixed bug with recent and favorited servers showing as offline on Your Servers page.
Fixed bug with permissions being not being granted to titles
Fixed bug with main menu where it was possible to open the settings menu twice
Version 9.2.1 released!
Update 9.2.1 has been released and fixes the following issues:
Fixed an issue that prevented users from selecting the default crafting results for hewn logs and mortared stones.
Fixed an issue that caused the crafting sound to go on even after crafting has ended.
Fixed an issue that prevented SLG-Accounts from logging into the game.
Update 9.2 released! Rent & Residency, the Industrial Elevator and Silos!
We are pleased to announce the release of Eco 9.2. A large focus of this update was bug fixing and quality of life improvements, but we have added some new fun features to Eco as we prepare for Update 10. This update introduces the residency feature which we announced in detail in our housing blog. Housing bonuses can now be shared with others by inviting them to become a resident of your property. This is a great way for friends to collaborate together on on a home, and it also sets the foundation for the rent and residency based demographics features that we are currently working on for 9.3.
The new Industrial Elevator is capable of transporting multiple large vehicles at once. As societies in Eco grow, there is a growing need to consume more natural resources and mining for ore is a large part of this. With tools like the Excavator and the Skid Steer, miners are able to output significantly more resources, but have an increased need to transport materials out of the mine. The Industrial Elevator will allow significantly fewer trips to the surface.
With this update we are also adding the Storage Silo for farmers to store their crops, seeds and fertilizer. This is the first of our new specialty storage containers that can store larger stacks of items than a traditional container, but can only accept certain types of items. This should greatly increase the quality of life for farmers as they can neatly organize their inventory in one container. In a future update, silos will be used to help prevent spoilage.
Features
New residency system for establishing a primary residence and sharing housing bonuses
Added an Industrial Elevator that is capable of transporting multiple large vehicles in and out of a mine
Added Storage Silo with greatly increased storage capacity for crops, seeds, and fertilizer
Added a collection of new modern signs
Added new building forms for Corrugated Steel
Added ability able to zoom in and out while in third-person when holding the Alt key
Implemented new in-game Bug Fixer icon for those who have helped report and fix bugs on GitHub
When proposing civics, the proposer can now start an election even if they have permission to pass civics without an election
New experimental rent feature which can be enabled via the server configs
Boards have an updated icon
Optimization
Improved optimization for resizing the objectives UI
Improved optimization for chat storage
Improve optimization for minimap with large numbers of world markers
Improved optimization for serializations
Eco can now take advantage of additional VRAM. Added setting to change max amount of VRAM used, defaulted to max GPU memory.
Balance
Deeds must now be contiguous to count as one deed
Decreased CO2 absorption by trees by 25%
Increased max CO2 produced by animals to 25 PPM from 10 PPM
Decreased spread rate for all trees
Increased craft time for smelting Iron Bar, Copper Bar, and Gold Bar on a blast furnace to 18 seconds from 15 seconds
Steel Bar recipe Coal cost increased and Quicklime is now a static ingredient
Increased max carry weight for Wood Cart, Skid Steer, and Excavator
Increase weight of tailings
Increased weight of Copper Bar and Gold Bar
Decreased weight of Steel Bar
Decreased weight of all Rocks, Crushed Rock, Ore, and Crushed Ore
Decreased weight of Dirt, Sand, and Clay
Decreased weight of Ashlar Stone
Reduced movement speed reduction caused by some plants
Reduced Fur Pelts provided by Small Animals to 1 from 2
Reduced experience provided by butchering animals
Increased Rubber Wheel cost of Truck to 6 to match model
Glass recipe now costs extra Sand and has Crushed Limestone as a static ingredient
New alternate Glass recipe using Quicklime that has extra output
Reduced Glass cost of Fiberglass, Framed Glass, Framed Glass Door, Large Windowed Lumber Door, and Advanced Upgrade Lvl 2
Increased the amount of Limestone available in world generation and adjusted formation patterns
Quality of Life:
Added “Settings” button to the main menu
Transferring property now requires a confirmation from the new owner before the transfer is completed
Store tooltips now display the currency balance for the account used in that store
Deeds are now clearly outlined on the map and easier to identify
Improved camera view when aiming a bow in third person
The room tier tooltip will now display how many empty corner blocks are affecting the room tier.
Resizing the Economy Viewer will now save settings when closing and reopening
Barter trades in Economy Viewer appear separately in the balance column instead of listing a zero account balance
The top notification panel can now be expanded by pressing the “N” key
World markers can now be opened by clicking on the text of the marker
Pressing escape while renaming an object will now cancel the text instead of opening the escape menu
Shortcut keys are now disabled while viewing all option menus
Ballot Box and Executive Office UI now has additional information about available civic actions
Improved handling of duplicate pop-up notifications so they are consolidated into one notification
Renamed old keybinding for Crouch to Dive / Sneak
Improved transition animation when opening up a notification tab
Icons for laws are less spread out in law notifications
Improved notification when attempting to submit an incomplete law draft
Improved button offsets for minimap in windowed and full-screen mode
Updated description for Farms, Mines, Pollution, and Data tooltips for Ecopedia
Updates to the map tutorial to reflect new dockable and pop-out mini-map
Amendments will now appear as added articles when viewing the constitution
Pressing escape to close a popup dialog no longer activates cursor
Added localization support for Ecopedia Reference group names
Added localization support for contract payment information
Added localization support for pickaxe tooltip
Added new server config to set the minimum citizen age required to qualify for the Abandoned demographic
Bug Fixes
Fixed issue with being unable to join a friend’s game via Steam
Fixed bug preventing placing a Large Corrugated Steel Door
Fixed physics issue with tree trunks and other objects not settling correctly
Fixed “Log cannot be sliced any smaller” error when attempting to cut the end of larger tree trunks
Fixed water from pipes not expanding outwards
Fixed bug in Economy Viewer where all currencies were displayed as being created by “Jimmy
Fixed server crash when attempting to pick up a vehicle that was prevented by a law
Fixed “Items Crafted” law trigger not checking for crafting byproducts, like Tailings
Fixed “Chop Tree” law trigger not recognizing the Not Felled condition
Fixed “Dig or Mine” law trigger not recognizing Skid Steers and Excavators
Fixed a number of law triggers to have more accurate item filters and descriptions
Fixed elected titles losing permissions for bank accounts after changes were made to the title
Fixed election website not showing voting history on previous elections
Fixed Default World Currency not being the initial selection for Stores and Crafting Stations
Contracts with Nested Clauses now correctly check all conditions when “Any” is selected
Fixed bug with incorrect yes vote count when viewing active elections
Fixed animal pathing to respond better to landscape changes
Fixed animals falling into caves and get stuck
Fixed bug with teleporting fish
Deer have improved hitbox detection
Fixed Tortoise laying down in awkward angles
Fixed Snapping Turtle strange behavior while turning
Fixed animals moving incorrectly on ramps
Turkey Carcass now correctly has Animal tag for item filter
Old Growth Redwood no longer spread
Fixed issue with moisture calculation that could result in patches of a biome missing some of the native plants
Fixed Skid Steer ability to break rocks on unauthorized land
Fixed issue with avatar being blocked by plants during initial creation
Fixed bug with posting contracts where changes made to the contract requirements would not always save
Fixed Pending Elections notifications box resetting to the top position when using the mouse wheel
Deeds can now be authorized to Titles that deed owner is not a member of
Meteor cutscene can no longer trigger while sleeping
Fixed bug where having passengers in a vehicle could remove road speed buffs
Fixed error when trying to pick up a vehicle with non-empty storage when having enough inventory space to take all the items
Fixed bug with being launched into the air that could occur when standing above a block that was broken
Fixed currency duplication bug that could occur when marking a contract as failed
Fixed issue with Flat Steel Windows and Floors not connecting
Fixed visual bug with minimap that occurred when editing a deed and using the hotkey to close/reopen the map before saving
Toolbench now gives correct error message when trying to insert a non-tool for repair
Fixed issue with rearranging work orders that could result in a permanent map marker until reconnecting
Tooltip for additional labor required in Crafting UI now correctly rounds to whole numbers
Fixed tooltip for Work button in Crafting UI occasionally overlapping the Work button
Tutorial pop-ups can no longer extend past the edges of the screen
Fixed bug with government buildings occasionally not retaining proposed amendments after being picked up and replaced
Currency is now created only after it has been minted for the first time instead of after it has been named.
Fixed error when trying to create a new currency on unowned property
Fixed bug with occasionally displaying incorrect number of specialties learned in the profession tooltips
Fixed incorrect room calculation near wold wrap
Bullrush now properly displays harvest animation
Rearranging the linked storage containers in the Storage UI will keep the alternating color pattern to distinguish containers
Fixed strange behavior with dragging items between linked inventories that have different capacities
Government account description tooltip is no longer hidden by the interface
Arithmetic for law operations now display with correct format in law tooltip
Small Mortared Signs now have a stone table texture for the UI
Fixed margins on popup error notifications
Fixed inability to switch tools after using the Land Claim Stake to claim while carrying blocks
Fixed audio bug with passengers hearing an engine sound if leaving a vehicle after the driver
Fixed issues when migrating servers from version 9.0.5 to version 9.1 and higher
Fixed bug with currency exchange not respecting buy limits for exchanges
Fixed number alignment for difficulty settings when creating a world in the client
Fixed icons on signs sometimes appearing outside the border of the sign
Fixed bug with item links being broken in chat when a player joined with a similar name
Fixed music only playing intermittently
Fixed tax notification when selling something in a store and the taxed account does not have enough funds to pay the tax prior to the transaction
When using a Fishing Pole, the line will no longer get stuck outside of water.
Fixed issue with some recipe names appearing as only “Recipe” in tooltips
Fixed connection issues when using Thai regional format in Windows
Various Ecopedia typo fixes
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please make sure to check your property. This update has removed the ability to have a claim spread out over several areas without being continuously connected. Also, you only get housing points from the deed that you have chosen to be your location of residency - all other deeds will no longer provide housing points.
Happy Holidays! Update 9.1.9
Happy Holidays! We are so thankful to our wonderful community. We are excited for all the new content that will be introduced in the upcoming 9.2 update, but in the meantime we wanted to bring some holiday cheer to Eco.
We’re bringing the festivities to Eco! The world of Eco is getting some festive decorations, just in time for the Holidays! Elk have a new reindeer skin, complete with candy cane antlers. Spruce trees have been decorated with glowing Christmas lights. The distribution station has been adorned with lights and stockings, and storage crates will now appear as wrapped presents.
New Year, New Hopes 2020 has been a tough year for everyone, and we hope gaming can serve as a way for us to continue to connect and lift our spirits. We humbly thank the Eco community and are eager to keep building a place for everyone to meet, build, and grow together. Thank you for playing, and we wish you all a safe, warm Happy Holidays!
With love, The Eco Team
Developer Blog: A Little Place to Call Home
With the Eco 9.2 and 9.3 Updates, we’re adding new features of residency and rental properties, connecting individual skill gain deeper to the economy.
Residency
In Eco, the quality of your housing (along with your food) determines your skill rate. Previously, housing bonuses were calculated from all the property plots you personally owned. This meant that you couldn’t share residency, and you could have houses that gave you points scattered all over the world. We wanted to address both of these, and so introduced the concept of Residency.
With this addition, you will only gain skill points from a single property which you have chosen as your Residence on the deed. Typically, you’ll want this to be whatever residence gives you the most housing points.
Roommates
You can also have multiple residents on a deed, which means roommates can share the same housing value! Like real life though, the more people you cram into a house the less livable it becomes, and we’ve added an occupancy penalty based on how many people are residents of a given home. Importantly, however, this penalty is not linear; it’s barely punishing at all for the first roommate, slightly more for the second, and then ramps up from there to become very punishing.
This was added to make sharing a home with a single person a very small penalty, making it advantageous to pool your efforts with one person. On the other hand, we don’t want a single house crammed full of hundreds of players, so we made that a high penalty.
Note that the penalty here applies before the caps, meaning furniture will give you less points, but you can still make more rooms and reach the same total points as you would in a house where you’re the sole resident. This makes sense, as more rooms and more furniture makes a house full of a lot of people more accommodating.
Difference in penalty between 2 and 5 residents.
Since the penalty is so light for 2 and 3 person homes, I expect to see a lot of players combining houses, either with their friends or strangers they meet on the server. This can lead to lots of interesting collaborations among players, as they’ll need to more closely interact and communicate compared to solo houses, and they’ll get more bang for their buck (ie, if you have two people in a house you have twice the effort to build it, but only 10% penalty! That’s a big gain in efficiency overall).
You can specifically invite who you want to be roommates by setting an invitation on the deed. This can be specific, like a single user, or it can be a group invite, like a demographic such as ‘New Players’ or ‘Everyone’. You can also set the max occupants, which will limit how many people are allowed to crowd in. Thus, you could setup free public housing in your world by inviting ‘Everyone’ but having a max occupant of 2 or 3. Since players can only be a resident of one property at a time, they’ll space out efficiently, and new citizens could get a great residence right away if the citizens of a world have the resources to provide that sort of thing. This also takes advantage of the asynchronous nature of the game: you can create a residence that invites everyone to join, and then even if someone joins the server while you’re offline they can hop in, so you never have to be online together to set it up.
Also note that the ‘max occupants’ is a Game Value, meaning you can determine it with a plain old number or a calculation, same as the laws system (in fact it’s the exact same code! With our engine getting more mature its becoming easier an easier to add rich features). So you could have the max occupancy depend on the total server population, for example. Similarly, you could have special demographics for the invitation section, perhaps a demographic like ‘Is Eligible for Public Housing’ which looks at the player’s age, skill, wealth, etc.
Example of a ‘Calculated’ Max Occupants value that increasing occupancy allowance as world ages.
Rent
Taking this a step further to connect it to the economy, we’ve also added the ability to charge rent to tenants. Owners of a property can set a specific daily rental fee and/or move-in fee and anyone who becomes a resident will have to pay it. If they stop being able to pay it, they will be evicted (and as I mentioned in my twitter this is one of my fav features, because it’s so un-fun in reality and yet really interesting when implemented in a game, because you see it in a wider system perspective).
Just like the ‘max occupants’ value, rent and move-in can be determined by a Game Value, meaning they can rely on any calculation you like. You can make rent dependent on the renter’s total wealth or skill, or on the amount of total citizens needing residency, or the number of tortoises killed yesterday, whatever you like. Lots of potential for programming this fee to suit a given society.
Like residency, rent respects the asynchronous nature of the game: if the player is invited and can afford rent, they can take residency even if the owner is offline. This should make it very easy for citizens to setup additional houses that they can rent out for reasonable prices, and newer citizens can begin renting them to get immediate skill bonuses. Win-win for both parties. We’ve added visibility to make this easier: you can see any ‘recurring payments’ in the economy viewer now (rent, but also wages will show here), and there’s a new tab showing properties for rent.
The owner can also remove residents at will, unless of course the government gets involved…
Property Law
This being Eco, we’ve of course connected all this with the legal system. All the various actions involved in taking residency and paying rent go through the law system, which can prevent, tax, or modify them as will. For example, when a player leaves residency, an action is generated, and if this is a forced eviction it could fine the landlord or even prevent it.
This should have the effect of creating a big new opportunity in the form of the housing market, and the government can regulate and use it to finance other works as well. More connections in our web of systems!
Resident Rights
We wanted to make sure this feature would still be useful in a low-trust environment, IE you want to make sure your renters don’t trash the place. To aid this, we introduced Resident’s Rights. This is a special set of rights that a citizen will automatically get if they become a resident on a property, even if they’re not listed as an owner or as someone who ‘can modify’ the property. These rights will allow the following:
Residents can use any world object on the property even if they don’t own it, accessing its contents and functions, but not pick it up (so you can use the storage on property, but can’t steal it).
Residents can place their own world objects, and pick up any world objects that they placed down (so you can move your stuff in).
Residents cannot place down or pick up blocks (can’t modify the property, this requires more elevated permissions).
Of course, you’re welcome to also give your renters full access to the property through the usual interface on the deed, but then they’ve got free reign. Resident’s Rights gives the opportunity for a middle ground, that you can allow even for total strangers: you can sell benefits to a citizen without risk of them ruining your property. This makes it a lot easier for that collaboration to happen.
These rights apply to any vehicle on the deed as well, meaning you can easily make rental vehicles with this same system. This can have a huge impact on the transport system, creating a new type of economy-connected collaboration.
The Big Picture
One of the core design philosophies with Eco is building lots of interesting systems, and then connecting them together. The more connections, the more meaningful interactions are built, forming a network of ideas that are all meshed together, looping back on one another (which hints at why our company name is what it is). With the feature of residency connected to the economy (through rent) and government (through property law), this adds a ton more interesting connections that can emerge in rich and collaborative ways, creating many ways for a society to organize and regulate.
Also really exciting to note: most of these features here are all a byproduct of the huge refactor we did to the law system for Eco 9: the ability to have game values everywhere, law integration with game actions, economy integration, etc. Because those features were made in an agnostic way (they were added to the engine itself, not just tied to laws exclusively) we can get really unique new possibilities with very little work, which is why we’re able to add this pretty large feature in a minor update, residency in Eco 9.2 and rent in Eco 9.3. You can expect to see accelerated progress on Eco as these investments we made in our tech start to pay off.
And finally, this is a step to a much wider feature set and expansion of the game we’re calling Eco Infinite, in which there is much gameplay after the meteor as people build public-good projects like universities, museums, research labs, and cultural items, to create a growing utopia. Much more on this later, but residency and property law is one of the first steps.
Thanks for reading all and let us know on the Eco Tree what you think!
-John K
Version 9.1.8 released!
Update 9.1.8 has been released and fixes the following issues:
Fixed an issue that allowed access to inventories of removed objects and vehicles remotely by using a pot.
Fixed an issue that created unremovable ghost blocks in stockpiles that persisted during server restart.
Fixed an issue that could lead to the loss of items when a storage was removed while being accessed.
Fixed a rare crash when removing an elevator call post.
Prevented creation of multiple users with same Steam ID / SLG ID.
Version 9.1.7 released!
Update 9.1.7 has been released: Reverted recent physics changes that probably cause issues with teleporting to zero coordinates
