Imagine Earth News

Dear planet colonizers, just in time for the Steam Winter Sale we can offer you a very special update as the new illustrator's character design has been finalized and successfully integrated into Imagine Earh - Planetary Colonization. Please help us by testing the new features and give feedback into the Steam forum. If you like what we are doing think about reviewing the game on steam - this will help the project a lot!


[h3]New Factions and Campaign Characters[/h3]


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.

[h3]Tension Tracks[/h3]


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.

[h3]Performance Optimizations[/h3]


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.


[h3]Load Planet Dialogs[/h3]


These screens finally show all the information you need to know when loading a planet in competitions or in the workshop.


[h3]Game Pad UI Optimized[/h3]

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.


[h3]Interface Changes[/h3]

The list of Buildings has been redesigned to make mass repairs, cleaning and upgrading of infrastructure in your colonies a piece of cake.

• Hide build menu info when cursor hovers planet behind it
  
• Hide buildings list until first city is built
  
• Reformatted descriptions in victory points overview
  
• Building list notifications centered between bookmarks and factions panels
  
• New startup logo
  

Fixes

• Fixed campaign research counter
  
• Fixed build panel still shows selected item, when another category is selected
  
• Sound volume should not affect music volume
  
• AI keeps asking for alliance
  
• Icon shown in wrong height over asteroids with rare resources
  
• Editor build menu can now be used with gamepad
  

Most of this winter’s update 62 for Imagine happens under the surface or in the controls and interfaces. There is a lot of fine-tuning to optimize the general usability of the game with gamepad and mouse alike. We also worked on the Xbox implementation and the translation. Yes, the characters in the game will soon not only look completely different, they will speak to you! But according to the season there are also some improvements on the ice planets, a new soundtrack and much more…

[h2]Light Curser[/h2]



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.

[h2]Heat Radius of Volcanoes Increased[/h2]



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.

[h2]Brand New Ring Styles[/h2]



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.

[h2] Winter Wonderland[/h2]



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.

[h2]New Character Design[/h2]



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.

[h2]Keyboard and Mouse Controls Info Optimized[/h2]



We have also optimized the control display for mouse & keyboard control. On top of that there are a few handy new shortcuts.

[h2]
Autumn Sale - 35% off now![/h2]



[h2]New Soundtrack[/h2]

Another new track has been added to the Imagine Earth soundtrack. Making the whole atmosphere of Imagine Earth more rich, symphonic and diverse.

[h2]New Languages[/h2]

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.

[h2]Gamepad Refinements[/h2]

• 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
  

[h2]More Fixes[/h2]

• 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
  

Friends of planetary colonization, finally a new update is ready and delivers a big chunk of improvements. One of special importance is the integration of the gamepad control, for us the opportunity for a major overhaul of the whole interface. Controller support is important for the XBox version but would you use it on PC? Tell us how you think about it and what else could be tuned. Have fun reading and trying it out, here's the direct link to the feedback forum.


[h2]Research System changed[/h2]


No more research budgets are required to research in campaign. After the system of tokens and budgets was already switched off for other game modes, you can now finally do research in the campaign without having to wait for another budget. All you need are research facilities to drive the process forward. City centers also come with a built in research unit. Of course you can still buy and sell budgets, they are now called licenses and activate researchable options directly.


[h2]Ocean Sound[/h2]


We installed a new sound system to bring atmosphere and plausible sound backgrounds to the planets, so that the environment feels acoustically richer. First there is an ocean sound, which now increases in volume the more oceanic fields are nearby. Next, we will apply this to city and forest sounds, for example.


[h2]Gamepad Control Prototype[/h2]


We have invested an amazing amount of work in the implementation of a game pad control system so that the game can be released on the Xbox console at the end of January. Because of the use of rings and radial menus from the beginning, the whole thing turned out to be very intuitive and if you know the right places, it works surprisingly faster than the mouse control. But as the headline makes clear, this is all prototype. We would like to hear your opinion about how the game pad control feels in this first version.


[h2]New menu button font[/h2]

One advantage of the whole game pad conversion was that we redesigned a lot of buttons and menu structures to be more readable and accessible. For example we found old load game menus that were long forgotten over time.


[h2]Tool Tips in Tool Rings[/h2]


Previous tool tips have often covered the control ring half or almost completely. Therefore, the tools with name, price and description have been moved to the far right.


[h2]Soundtrack[/h2]

Three new synphonically composed music pieces underline the flow of Imagine Earth in the new version. It is remarkable how much the music adds to the overall atmosphere of the game.


[h2]Colony Rating Revised[/h2]


The dustiest menu of this upgrade was the Colony Rating, so it really deserves an all around makeup. New colors and functions. A division is now called "Commodities and Capital" and counts the liquid capital of a company and also the market values of its buildings there and includes them appropriately in the share value.


[h2]Joma Mission refurbished[/h2]

What should not be missing in the game development is that one of the missions of the story-based campaign needs an update as game features and controls have evolved. This is always a great way to give the mission a refreshing touch.


[h2]Buildings List Panel[/h2]


We delivered this area with a small but crucial weakness in the last update. You couldn't click on the upgrade buttons and couldn't jump directly to the buildings. This is now history and the control has been optimized a lot. The tab for dirt and the condition of the buildings has been split into two separate tabs where you can now also directly initiate a repair or a cleaning.


[h2]Buildings List Button[/h2]


This button now makes the total number of pollution, building demolitions, incidents with poor quality of life and loss of productivity visible and allows you to jump there directly.


[h2]Game Setup Revised[/h2]


Creating a new game has now become even more goal-oriented and handsome. Some inconsistencies have been fixed and the menu as a whole has been made more attractive.


[h2]Planet Completion[/h2]


Now the achievable goals are also visualized on planets. This makes it a visible challenge to drive the success of the missions to perfection.


[h2]UI & Other Improvements[/h2]

• Renamed free play to endless game and sandbox to editor
  
• Better descriptions in endless and competition game
  
• Crafting and trading panel highlight selection
  
• Red popup dialog when deleting savegames and profiles
  
• Fixed load screen
  
• Revised layout of money, emissions and population panels
  
• New menu headers when starting a game
  
• Revised layout and background of profile screen
  
• Reduced size of forest graphics
  
• Reduced runtime memory consumption and number of triggered garbage collections
  
• Fixed visual gap in ocean rendering
  

We are very excited to share this happy announcement with you today. Imagine Earth now has Turkish interface and Turkish subtitle support! We value our Turkish fans and believe that playing the game in their own language will give them a better experience. We would like to thank Plus Localization for the excellent job they have done translating the game. We hope that strategy and simulation fans in Turkey are going to love Imagine Earth. Thank you to the Turkish players for the support you have given us so far and your support from now on…

Have fun

Come over so we can tell you how to win one of 20 Imagine Earth Keys during the time of Gamescom (27.-30.8.20).
The winners will be announced August 31st.

Discord: https://discord.gg/fCJAUxc

Indie Arena Booth: https://online.indiearenabooth.com/play/index.html?ID=1614

Also we will play Imagine Earth with Conner on his Twitch channel https://www.twitch.tv/RennoctheGreat