Imagine Earth
Last before release update | Hotfix #1
* Fixed ocean texture problems
* Fixed missleading German translation in Rounos mission
* Fixed "licensing" button not being on top in Technology Panel
* Fixed all crashes that came in via error reporting
* Fixed warhouse leveling dropping stored resources
A big thanks to Roderick, Panterich, Rad Chad and the people on our Discord channel and the Steam forums for helping us identify the performance problems.
There is still a big list of improvements on issues you have identified that we are currently working on and will update soon.
Imagine Earth – Last Big Early Access Update
Greetings Space Colonists,
we hope you are all well and ready? We have the next update ready for you! While summarizing the new features and changes to the interface, world, and game mechanics, I realized that #65 is probably the most comprehensive update in Imagine Earth’s Early Access history, and will remain so as Imagine Earth comes out in a month and a half as version 1.0 and leave Early Access!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf_ApUXgMtU
It's time for Late Access
Who would have thought that, to myself these words seem quite unreal and strange after almost seven years of EA. First of all, thank you for your interest and support over all these years! You have made the continuous independent development of this unusual global building and economic strategy game with environmental and climate simulation possible.
Price Increase
Of course, as we approach the final release of the game, it’s worth mentioning that we’ll be ending the Early Access discount for backers and early birds in a week after update #65. The price of the game will increase to $24.99/€ But this has been thought of for years and is quite common and will not happen before Thursday 4/23/21. Those who grab it by then will save themselves the 25 % increase in the full price. But we’re convinced that after 7 years of 1-2 month updates Imagine Earth has reached a quality, depth and maturity we can be proud of and which justifies a new price. Nevertheless, of course we understand the following question:
What Else is There to Come?
But as you might have guessed, it doesn’t end there. This update boasts an almost endless list of fixes and tweaks, but since the last update we’ve been working on quite a few other innovations besides the ironing. The final release will include a brand-new feature, the World Congress, which forces the various corporations to the negotiating table, where they must work together to negotiate measures against climate and environmental destruction. As a game mechanic, this strengthens the interaction between the corporations and also the already established diplomacy system, since the negotiations have a direct impact on international relations.
Final Release Features
The World Congress
The World Congress is in the making and will be ready for release End of May, it is where the amount of redistribution between sustainable and exploitative corporations will take place in the future. The congress will also be a democratic body in which all factions have voting rights corresponding to their share of a planets population. In the future, taxes on resources and trade will also be decided there, the revenues of which will flow into a World Fund from which important investments can be made. In addition, this body with global authority can also decide on penalties for corporations that have sabotaged or harmed others.
Emissions Trade
We remain committed to delivering an authentic environmental simulation with Imagine Earth. To do this, we have recently revolutionized the emission trade that exists in the game. For this update, we have simply reduced the redistribution, because the previous solution made farming unprofitable. As a result, the game has regulated away the climate problem by making all corporations go bankrupt due to overly high flat fees. For the final release version there will be a new system for trading emission rights, only the share of the world population decides how much greenhouse gases a faction may blow into the air.
Content of This Update
UI Optimizations
- The influence of buildings and other effects they had in a certain radius are now visualized with dashed outer borders instead of colored field markers.
- If one of the groups has not landed yet, it has been shown as failed / eliminated in the Victory Panel so far.
- Show loading animation enlarged and in the center of the screen.
- When you change the game speed, the game fades in time display.
- In the final screen of a failed mission, the title and menu ring were missing.
- Correction: The button for landing permission button activates the placement of City Center again.
- If you now open the research panel or the technology menu, you will receive clear introductory texts that explain the playful function of the interface.
- Navigation panel: Show own cities – No. Cities of other factions: Show names only when hovering.
- Icons of other factions and units are displayed permanently again.
- Quick actions overlay smileys to show quality of life from now on.
- There were just too many smileys over cities trying to visualize the quality of life of balanced districts.
- Unit Uplink: Ads were not centered over them.
- Previously her already 20% field pollution prevented the construction ring from opening on this field.
- Faction and trade panel was re-centered.
- Tool ring closed again for traders when clicked from further outside.
- Fixed 11 different graphic problems on the UI.
World and Balancing
- Towers and research districts now clearly indicate with a bright light if they have active laser or pulse cannons installed for defense.
- Contamination icons are more important than inefficiency icons.
- Repair icons are more important than inefficiency icons. Also so you can see the rebuild tool in case of destruction.
- Strange deductions were displayed in the ring menu for districts with optimal quality of life.
- There is now only a maximum of 3 Xrathul, Assimilators or Pirates at the same time.
- Assimilators now also attackable with fire, but this has only weak effect.
- Prevent the opposing factions from spamming the player with diplomatic messages and alliance offers.
- Warehouses and towers needed a revamp of the method that dynamically lets you drive out of the ground when upgrades are made.
- The same, broken method had prevented missiles from neatly riding up from the silo in the Space Port when they were finished building. Which made them virtually invisible to players, making mission completion visually difficult.
- If you had taken over a faction, a city, so far this collected the victory point for it.
- The mood of the city is now saved.
- Fire particle effect was reduced from 9×2 to 4 emitters. In addition, it now looks visually reduced so that you can still see something on the planet below.
- When jumping to a custom city, do not open the tool ring.
- Damn, all planets had ring?! How long has that been the case?
- Field marker recolored the colors of the other markers every time.
- Oceanic water surface was too crinkly.
- Underwater objects were sometimes faded out too early.
- Titanium mesh was not set directly.
- Titanium asteroids on Tuto removed.
- Some units were rendered gray.
- Camera movements of cutscenes de-jerked.
- Terrain-stoneyness locked icon added.
- Trader spaceships – animation went crazy when hovering.
Complete Playtest
- Mission Tuto: bars in the supply capsule were missing.
- Planet Rounos: Joe Dectow’s AI built strange things and sometimes just didn’t do anything it was supposed to.
- Planet Bora – Planetary shield was displayed above all pyramids.
- Planet Edora – The mission got stuck at the end sequence.
- New dialogs that are important to the story can no longer be pushed away as easily as before. As a result, fewer details and info are now lost unintentionally.
- Completion screens for successfully completed missions no longer overlap.
- Various fixes for bugs in the missions Joma, Lorian and Magni, which sometimes made them rarely or not at all playable.
AI Balancing
In the future, the AI will be prevented from repeating friend requests. Until now, if you were too nice to them, they would literally bug you with alliance offers.
Game Setup UI
- A faction says “Hello” succinctly when you select them.
- Do not show Speaker in Game Setup Editor menus.
- New yellow Okay Button when you are in the options for setting up a custom game on a single planet for competition and endless play mode.
- The number of research licenses is adjustable.
- We moved the UI a bit to the right, so that you can see the place behind menu and character.
- Minimum and maximum planet temperatures were swapped.
Sound Optimizations
- World Sounds, Spoken Language and UI Sounds are now separate options. So in addition to the music, everything can be beautifully fine-tuned for individualized sonic enjoyment of Imagine Earth.
- Pirates, Xrathul, Uplinks and other merchants now have default greetings that come whenever you click on them.
- “Plink” loading sound built out at the beginning of the game because proven to be annoying.
- Two different, new voice announcements when you launch into the main menu.
- The sound effects in the UI now sound more impressive than ever.
- Volume of speakers turned down so they no longer overdrive.
- Sound overload removed when you first start the custom game setup.
List of building panels
- Cleaning tab – move nuclear contamination to the bottom because you can’t do anything anyway.
- Various Highlight and Comfort tweaks.
Resource panels
- Population dropdown now includes extensive indication of when a new landing permit will be issued.
Fixes
- You could blithely wander around the planet with a tower because you could move it within your own radius.
- It was possible to use the left gamepad stick or the mouse during cutscenes and crash the game.
- Switching to the new Unity version brought illustrious render and shadow effects. Hard to imagine such a thing.
- This was also possible in the planet view of the editor.
- Even with shortcuts you could open unwanted panels.
- If you pressed the restart button on a planet, you suddenly started with a different number of victory points.
- Button hover sound was often played twice.
- Disable UseGuiScale for all fullscreen panels and set optimal size.
- Whenever a faction said something and the speech bubble closed, the speaker and dialog popped up again briefly in the message panel.
- Object shadows (except planet): shadow casting for buildings, etc. can be deactivated.
- Strange striped graphic errors in the terrain display.
- Black holes – alpha color values of transparent terrain layers corrected.
- Planet in the main game menu does not rotate.
- Overglow Sunburn issue after update to Unity 2020.2.7f1.
- Sea surface hidden colony borders.
- Operation of different panels, hovering through on planets.
- UI was lost when loading during a cutscene.
- Quest icons flicker on planet silhouette.
- Space was cut off from certain camera angles.
Hotfix #64.6
- Fixed rockets and warehouse level 2 sometimes not being displayed
- Fixed problem with calculation of territory, especially when trying to access resources across multiple frontier buildings
- Fixed problem in city district mood logic
- Fixed victory point UI controls
- Fixed victory point for city take over being given to opponent
- Fixed noise in planet editor menu
- Fixed planet temperature problems for old savegames
Hotfix #64.4
* Fixed crash related to update of icons on planet
* Request of a faction overlapped in UI
* Trading screen sometimes not displayed correctly
Hotfix #64.3
* Planet generation often generates too few land fields
* Fixed a few reported crashes
* Don't crash game when savegame can't be loaded
* Line-breaks sometimes missing for Asian languages
Hotfix #64.2
* Fixed problem with hidden construct in tech panel taking away licenese
* Improved volume balance for voices
* Assimilator drones no longer fly through the planet
* Fixed crash related to relocation constructs
Patch #64.1
- Voice Settings were not properly saved
- Repairing sometimes does not stop incidents
- Xrathul wreck should not have incident
- Streets are darkened by highlight
- Active multi tool hides work in progress
- Fixed crash related to calculation of pollution
- Fixed crash related to field icons
Imagine Earth Dev Diary #64 - Listen to the Voices
You can listen to Alias new voice in the latest official trailer.
[previewyoutube="Kf_ApUXgMtU;full"]https://youtu.be/Kf_ApUXgMtU[/previewyoutube]
Forest Ambient Sound
To increase the atmosphere of the game, we have added forest sounds, leafs rustling in the wind and birds chirping around you when you move the cursor over larger connected forest areas and zoom in on them with the camera. This soundscape will soon be expanded to include civilization noise, sounds from air cars and factories, ship horns and rotors that bring the world to life.
Harvesting Tool
We have revised the multi tools, with which you can perform actions like repairing or harvesting multiple times. Each tool now shows with icons on which fields it can be applied. Upgrading, repairing or cleaning buildings were already there and now we have also combined mining and harvesting operations in one handy tool. It replaces the previous deactivation tool, with which you could temporarily shut down production, because that was very rarely needed.
Technology Panel
Many of you missed the technology panel as it provides such a splendid overview for all available buildings and enables you to install upgrades to all of them. So we put it back in business and enabled gamepad controls as well.
Need for Speed
A lot more performance optimization has been done. More multi-threading to make use of available CPU cores and better distribution of logic calls to get rid of CPU usage peaks.
Cheers to the Winners
We have optimized the Victory Panel to more clearly communicate which faction is ahead in the race for planetary dominance.
List of Buildings
We have further optimized the building list of the global planetary management interface to get a targeted and faster overview of the infrastructure and to be able to react in a comprehensive and far-reaching way.
Everything at a Glance
All strategic menus of the game are now united in the message panel, which is uniformly structured in mouse and gamepad control.
Ideon Goals Visualization
The indicator for the completed mission objectives and the Ideon captured on the planet are now also visible during the game.
Share Market Panel
The stock market menu has also undergone a visual overhaul, which is not only pleasing to the eye but also simplifies navigation with the game pad.
New Research Panel
The Research Panel has undergone an update that not only ensures that the upgrade descriptions have now all found a permanent place in the box at the bottom right, so they no longer obscure the navigation in the research grid. The system itself has also changed. To be able to research more than one thing at a time you have to build additional City Centers. Only the amount of research districts now regulates the efficiency or speed of research.
Translations
Big Asian language update! Imagine Earth is now available and playable in a proper simplified Chinese version as well as in Japanese and Korean. Have fun, spread the word.
By the way, have you recordnized the brand new cover image we made for Imagine Earth?
Interface Changes
- Replaced „Imagine Float“ font with „Sansation“ for better multi-lingual support
- Gamepad: Display red cursor when something is not possible
- Introduced blur for tool ring when trading with other factions or space traders
- Hide city borders when switching planets
- Planet rotation in main menu
- More visible icons for scrolling in savegame menus
- Display forest debris when damaged by tornado
- Display highlight when game is paused
Fixes
- Renamed Illuminati to Illumati
- Reduced pollution by Fishery and Shellfish farm
- Fixed saving problems for sound settings
- Fertility Gaia power no longer causes creation of a desert somewhere and vice-versa
- Asteroid crater not visible after impact
- Fixed Xrathul vs. AI endless repairing of city centers
- Ideon sold not properly updated
- Each additional spaceport increases frequency of traders
- Don’t let pirates steal Ideon in campaign missions
63 - Character Revolution
New Factions and Campaign Characters
You'll see them everywhere once you start the game. Design wise it's another evolutionary step forward to the finishing line for version 1.0. Because these people are more likely to be taken serious and showing authentic emotions throughout the campaign.
Tension Tracks
Whenever there is danger in the air you will now also be able to hear it. When asteroids are raining down on your colonies or Xrathul aliens are closing in to feast on your colonies special tension tracks will be played that reflect these threats in the music of the game.
Performance Optimizations
On the CPU side of the game calculations the code has been enhanced and cleaned up for multi threading. That enhances the game speed quite a lot - especially for systems that have a slow CPU.
Load Planet Dialogs
These screens finally show all the information you need to know when loading a planet in competitions or in the workshop.
Game Pad UI Optimized
All interfaces for game pad controls have once again been overhauled to make it a joy using game pad controllers as well. The game features on Steam are now officially set to full game pad support. Since we haven't received a lot of feedback on this yet, we'd be happy if you have a try and tell us what you think.
Interface Changes
The list of Buildings has been redesigned to make mass repairs, cleaning and upgrading of infrastructure in your colonies a piece of cake.
Fixes
62 - Light in the Dark
Light Curser
A simple and effective optical innovation is that the cursor now emits a light on the night side of planets. As half of the planet is logically in the dark and the landscape there is not very impressive without shadows from the sunlight, this light brings life to the dark. Water surface reflections and also gold, metal and crystals sparkle exactly where you look and act on the planet.
Heat Radius of Volcanoes Increased
Dormant volcanoes can be awakened with ideon bombs and thus heat up the landscape in order to be able to better grow food on icy planets, for example. For a while now, this can also be achieved with thermal generators. It was urgently necessary to increase the heat range of a volcano compared to that of a generator.
Brand New Ring Styles
The style of the construction and tool rings was adapted to each other and visualized in a cooler way. The information about the tools no longer overlays the navigation in the ring but is clearly arranged on the right side.
Winter Wonderland
The snow-covered landscape was optimized and embellished. Small but fine adjustments ensure that the landscape is still visible under the snow cover and that the structure of the surface is seen. Thus the snow cover also makes houses and plants even more recognizable.
New Character Design
Just to get you used to this quantum leap in character design, here is a preview of what the next update will bring. We found a talented illustrator and he redesigned all the characters and taught them how to talk in elaborate animations. We believe this will give a fundamentally new feeling to playing Imagine Earth.
Keyboard and Mouse Controls Info Optimized
We have also optimized the control display for mouse & keyboard control. On top of that there are a few handy new shortcuts.
Autumn Sale - 35% off now!
New Soundtrack
Another new track has been added to the Imagine Earth soundtrack. Making the whole atmosphere of Imagine Earth more rich, symphonic and diverse.
New Languages
We added community translations for Polish and Japanese language. If you happen to speak one these languages please let us know how the quality is because we can’t check it ourselves.
Gamepad Refinements
- Gamepad cursor with action icon for tool
- Delete mode für Editor planets
- Briefing/Goals/Planet info buttons
- Refined control of factions panel (bottom right)
- Refined gamepad control of button selection
- Directly close build ring
More Fixes
- UI problem in Inventory ring description
- Refined generation of fossils and resources on planets
- Fixed mood influence range of health district upgrade
- Fixed buildings sometimes showing with a delay after camera jumps
- Increased heating range of volcanoes in cold areas
- Build panel now shows building descriptions when no upgrade is hovered
- Reduced Xrathul bait crafting resources to three
- Improved AI abilities to defned against Assimilators and Xrathul