Imagine Earth News

Greetings, dear world-builders!

While we are already working on the next big thing for Imagine Earth we have worked on a lot of usability, balancing and performance improvements and decided that this is worth being released in a dedicated update.

[h2]Deferred Rendering & Motion Blur[/h2]

Switching to Deferred Rendering has made our Imagine Earth 10% faster right off the bat while at the same time allowing us to show more individual light sources on the planet.

Motion Blur makes the planet's rotation look smoother, especially when running a system with fewer frames.

[h2]Items & Crafting[/h2]



We have built a new crafting panel, that automatically buys the needed resources as soon as not all components to create items are available.
While working on this we have also balanced which resources are needed for crafting and reduced what is needed for most of the items.
Honey Pots, which can be used to attract Xrathul, have been optimized in their operation, especially in the probability with which they lead to Xrathul spaceships arriving on your planet.

[h2]Planet Generator Balancing[/h2]



To get better and play worthy planets we had to diligently tweak the generator. In making adjustments, we tried to achieve as even a distribution of field types and rare resources as possible, while also providing local hotspots that make good starting places for your colony. Also we increased the number of mountains and rocks on the planets and placed more Gaian ruins so that there are more artifacts in the game. Under these circumstances it also made sense to regenerate the Weekly Challenge planets. They are still based on the same planet, but the distribution of resources is a bit different now.

[h2]Bugs & Fixes[/h2]

• Dropped Dynamic Resolution
  
• Removed graphics setting for anti aliasing, because only marginal differences can be seen here based on the rendering techniques of the Unity engine we are using
  
• Fixed configuration display of polar ice
  
• Fixed blurred intro
  
• Workshop Planets File System Windows 7 bug
  
• Fixed the description of the frontier station
  
• Navigation: Show only one city of each other faction
  
• World congress is no longer happening during game over
  
• When productivity is low because of plague, show the corresponding plague icon
  

[h2]Update 1.6.1[/h2]

• Fixed visible planet texture tiling line
  
• Asteroids destroying huge mountains now also leave small mountains and rocks
  
• Fixed auto save not being properly deactivated for sandbox editor, leading to exceptions
  
• Fixed error related to continuing very old savegame
  
• Fixed extremely rare error when selecting an entry in the build panel
  
• Fixed error when switching to a bigger planet in Sandbox
  

[h2]Update 1.6.2[/h2]

• Fixed missing mip maps for planet textures
  

[h2]Update 1.6.9[/h2]

• Competition: Low ground pollution and colony shares are no longer default victory point conditions
  
• Victory points for Pollution, emissions and productivity already count after 5 minutes.
  
• Competitors of editor planets do nothing
  
• Improved controls of build menu with gamepad d-pad
  
• Fixed rounding error for production and consumption
  
• Fixed exception related to propaganda item
  
• Fixed exception related to crafting
  
• Fixed exception related to laser cannon
  

This update fixes a few errors that have been reported:

• Error related to navigation in tool ring
  
• Error related to multi-threading
  
• IOException related to loading the player profiles on the local system
  

The last problem seems to be related to Windows 7 systems. We have implemented a workaround that works for us and hope that it resolves the problem for all of you as-well.

This update fixes a few errors that have been reported:

• Error related to navigation in constructs ring
  
• Fixed translations of new challenge seasons feature
  
• Error related to research
  
• Error related to diplomacy
  
• Malfunctioning of new lens flares in screenshots
  

Besides that we have received an error "IOException: The parameter is incorrect" related to the settings path on the local system of a few users. We are having trouble to identify the reason for this. It would be great if someone how is affected by this could get in contact with us via [email protected].

[h3]Greetings, dear Worldbuilders![/h3]

We hope you started the new year safe and sound and are fit for the challenges it brings, because it will definitely not be boring. The Corona virus keeps the world in suspense and mankind has its trouble to organize itself sensibly against it. After that, the even more colossal challenge of climate change is just waiting to be targeted again. But also in the virtual world, in Imagine Earth, new challenges await you in the new year.



[h2]Official high score league 2022 opened[/h2]
[h3]Quarter and full year leaderboards[/h3]

Effective immediately, we have unlocked the official 2022 league. In addition, we would like to celebrate the official top 10 annual winners of the 2021 league. We sincerely congratulate all the participants for enrolling in the Imagine Earth's internal leaderboards forever.

[h2]The Greatest Terraformers of 2021[/h2]

[h3]1st place - Franci0 - 1,457,784
2nd place - KiBou - 1,400,492
3rd place - Wingyl - 1,393,397
4th place - craig.akitt - 933,881
5th place - Critical Floof - 913,485
6th place - Artiss - 863,621
7th place - Roderick - 663,128
8th place - RainbowDesign - 532,542
9th place - missladykayura - 473,274
10th place - martin - 457,000[/h3]



So in 2022, you'll be competing with other planet managers not only for overall victory in weekly high scores, but also for the lead in quarterly seasons and the overall year-round victory. By the way, we'll be playing the weekly missions ourselves for testing purposes, so you'll have the pleasure of competing against the developers themselves, look for Martin and Jooki in the highscore. If that's not a special challenge.

[h3]Rating optimization[/h3]

We have also adjusted the rating of the game rounds. It remains exciting, you still can't save and load, but you don't have to reach the first place in the competition anymore and the achieved colony rating will be entered into the highscore, so it's worth the work in any case. Of course you can repeat the challenge the whole week to optimize your score by ceiling, have fun!

[h3]Colony Rating[/h3]



We have given the calculation of the value of your global space colony a new balancing. If you sell all your shares, you will no longer end up with a high score of zero, the impact has been reduced to 50%. The quality of life in your colony plays a bigger role, its impact has been increased from 12.5 to 20%.

[h3]Asteroids, moons and blatant lens flare effects[/h3]



Graphically, Imagine Earth has also stepped up its game again in this release. There are a lot of visual effects to admire. Moons and meteors orbit your worlds and cast gigantic shadows, in broad daylight they darken the landscape.
When you zoom in very close to the planet, the perspective rotates so you're not always looking at the action from above. Also, the atmosphere on the horizon becomes dense and blurry.

[h3]Grafik-Optionen[/h3]


You can now set exactly a target frame rate to better define how much gameplay will hit you on the graphics card.

[h3]Automated mining processes[/h3]

The harvesting drones of the warehouses now start mining valuable resources fully automatically. You now have to disable this instead of activating it individually as before. Simply convenient, we think. This way the warehouses fill up by themselves with valuable resources, which are urgently needed for the production of important equipment.

[h3]Landing zone locked[/h3]



In the future, you won't be able to accidentally park your landing capsule right next to another civilization, creating a non-competitive launch position for both parties.

[h3]Fishing grounds and oil wells[/h3]

So far, procedurally generated planets, have almost no fishing grounds and oil wells. Sea grass has a higher positive impact on fishing and it has also become more productive in principle. Thus, in the future, the sea will be of higher strategic importance as a place of expansion and a source of food.



[h3]UI and control improvements[/h3]

• Fields where the temperatures are just too hot to grow food well are no longer shown as particularly fertile.
  
• The display of your cities, top right, is no longer packed with loud icons for bad moods. That was just confusing.
  
• Tooltips and info in the sales and manufacturing panel no longer overlay the menus, but are displayed outside.
  
• We reduced the planetary view in menus and overview also reduced the superfluously large distance to which the planet is zoomed out.
  
• When opening panels like the one for planetary overview or research, the planet in the background is no longer zoomed out.
  
• Font size on various buttons in the game optimized.
  
• Tower is upgraded again when you level it up.
  
• Nitro pumpkin seeds are now also offered by the trader.
  

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

• Game pauses in menus decently again - For example, you could just wait in the win dialog until you lost again.
  
• Intro skipping can be defined in the config file again.
  
• UI-Flickr glitch in hyperspace between galaxies is fixed.
  
• The nice melting of the snow when you turn on the thermo-generator is back.
  
• In the Biron faction, some of the dialogs in the voice output are no longer mixed up. It makes more sense to talk to them now ;D