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[John Krajewski]

Eco is a survival game where it’s not just the players that must survive, but the world itself.  

• Collaborate to build a civilization, developing technology to stop a meteor collision.
• All resources come from a simulated ecosystem, with thousands of plants and animals simulating 24/7.
• Everything you do affects the ecosystem, and players can destroy their food supply and world (server-wide permadeath)
• Create a player-run government to make decisions as a group, proposing and voting on laws
• Use data gathered from the world to make decisions. Debate with scientific argumentation.
• Create a player-run economy that allows you to sell not only good but services in the form of server-enforced contracts (simulating a player driven quest system).
• PvP takes the form of capturing criminals who break player created laws, suffering punishments defined by the law.
• Your food level determines your skill-increase rate, making food very important and tying players directly to the ecosystem from which it comes.
• A game with goals higher than entertainment, we plan to also get it in schools and are creating teacher-tools that allow them to participate and guide students in this world.

We’ve had a successful Kickstarter campaign here, and we’re currently in alpha (available on our website here).
We’re in active development so lots of new things are going in, expect updates here as we develop new systems.  

Some of the stuff we’re working on right now:



- Tax system. Players elect a leader that can then tax the populace and spend as they see fit.
- Election system. We use Instant Runoff Voting, which is a voting style that allows for many candidates better than single candidate selection.
- Power system.  Players will need to create vast power networks late game, public works projects that require smart use of the economy and government tools the game gives you.





We’re hoping to create a very moddable platform out of this game, allowing for more styles of games that use rich social systems and simulations like government, economy, and ecology.  There’s been a number of games with really dynamic, malleable physical worlds, but fewer that are creating social systems that are equally malleable, interesting, and useful.  That’s our focus with Eco.



We're planning to build this experience for classrooms, and have a grant from the Department of Education to do so. Check out details here:




Facebook is here: https://www.facebook.com/EcoVideoGame

Current features we're working on now are elections, power, transport, and property systems.  We're also in the middle of an iteration on our art style, making things higher fidelity and more lush while keeping the stylized look. Thanks for following us and feel free to ask any questions!

-JohnK

[lululuprimal]

This is such a cool concept, really intriguing!!  Love the idea!  Would definitely want to play it!

[NoLocality]

Oh wow, I almost wrote this off as a 'minecraft with better graphics' clone till I watched your video.

I really like the limited resources, active/reactive ecosystem, multiple players deciding the planets fate aspects...intriguing ideas all around.

Also those graphics, especially that flowing water .

Keep us updated, I want to see how this pans out.

[John Krajewski]

Thank you for the warm welcome, I appreciate the great feedback!!

[HopFrog]

This honestly looks very promising, consider me hyped as well! 

[John Krajewski]

Thanks all!  Added a couple new videos to the original post. 

[TGHoly]

woah! look amazing 

[C7]

This is really coming along, and was quite fun to try out at PAX. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do with the game as development progresses.

[John Krajewski]

This week we got property and power systems progress, new foliage, trees, and tools, and Eco won a pitch contest.

Lots going on as we build towards Eco Alpha 4, we’re in the thick of core development right now, which is one of the most fun parts. Great to see the game taking shape and changing everyday. For those that want to support us early in development, Alpha 3 is available on our website now and you get free upgrades permanently and a Steam key when we release there: https://www.strangeloopgames.com/eco-account/home

Here’s a look at what we’ve been doing:

John - [email protected]

This week I participated in the 1776 Challenge Cup in Seattle (http://www.1776.vc/challenge-cup/), pitching our idea of Eco as a platform for both classrooms and entertainment, and we won! I’ll be going to San Francisco next week for the regional comp. Will post a video of the 2 minute pitch when it comes online.


A big goal for Eco is to make it more than a game for entertainment, and getting the word out in these spheres outside the games industry will be a big part of that. Exciting to see others really believe in what we’re doing and the potential it has to transform education.

Besides that I’ve been working on the new Property System. We’re going to be replacing the building system with a general property system, where players can mark land to claim it, and acquire more land depending on how the in-game government wants to zone and allocate it. You can check out the design and our internal discussions (and add your feedback) here:

Property will make a huge difference once our next system, Transport. Once you need to build expensive, resource consuming, polluting transport networks to move resources around the world, where you build something is going to make a huge difference and real estate will become valuable based on surrounding resources. Expect these systems in Alpha 4 and 5, which will have a huge impact on the game.

Eric - [email protected]

Working on getting the new foliage actually in the game, and have it behave more realistically. For one, you no longer completely destroy most plants when harvesting - grass simply becomes cut, huckleberries just lose their berries.


K - [email protected]

Changing power system’s UI.



New UI for crafting table.

1. Non powered crafting table.



2. Powered crafting table




Bug fixes

• infinite bunchgrass seed.
• Icon stick in to mid air and can’t use it
• Gliding when out from high altitude water
• Items duplicated( mainly has issue from Crafting)
• Infinite dirt from dirt under finished construction.

Keegan - [email protected]

I’ve been continuing work on terrain, but also taking a break from that with updates to the tools and their animations. Starting work also on effects for tools and the world. Eventually all the craft tables will have in-use animations, and hopefully the tools will provide excellent feedback and satisfaction on use, with blocks in the world generating effects when you interact with them and when they are destroyed.



Milenko - [email protected]

Spent the week working out how we put together our in game foliage. Rebuilding the tree trunks, setting up their UV’s and working out the tree growth using morph targets.

Currently working on growing foliage.



Thanks all and email us directly with any comments/questions.

-John K

[whilefun]

My (incorrect) first impression was "another minecraft clone", but after watching the trailer this is not the case.

Very cool concept. I like the idea of a deep ecological simulation within a game world like this. The data/graph views and laws aspect is especially interesting.

Have you decided if you will protect against intentional vandalism in the ecosystem? For example, kid has a bad day, goes online at home and cuts down the forest.

Anyway, cool thing! Interested to see where this goes

[chosenpredator]

very cool the ecosystem feature sounds very much like this game thats coming out on steams early access: http://store.steampowered.com/app/428180/

but i really like the visual style of this game more.

[John Krajewski]

Have you decided if you will protect against intentional vandalism in the ecosystem? For example, kid has a bad day, goes online at home and cuts down the forest.

We'll have a criminal justice system that lets players set the rules and deal with law breakers   It's our second stretch goal which we achieved: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1037798999/eco-global-survival-game/posts/1341286

[John Krajewski]

Eco Dev Update! Check out our progress on property, transport, landscape, and foliage.
We’re in the middle of production for Alpha 4 on Eco , and making great progress. There’s going to be several major new systems appearing in Alpha 4 and 5, and players will be able to get a much clearer picture of what the game will be like at Beta and launch. Here’s a look at that work in progress:

John - [email protected]

We learned a ton about the game from watching people play the alpha, and we’re applying what we learned now to a second pass on systems. This week I worked on a big iteration of the property and building systems, it now works as follows:

Players will start the game with several property-claim flags, which they can place anywhere unclaimed (later, they will be restricted by player-government zoning rules).


Claiming property will add it to the first deed in your inventory:



You can use the deed interface to choose who can build there, and see what property is assigned to it, and if you want to transfer it to another deed you can just pull it up and click ‘attach current plot’. This will let players divide up property however they want, and if you give/sell a deed to someone they become the owner of that property. Real estate market created!

Buildings work a lot different now as well. Instead of choosing what type of building you want and then constructing it, you must place crafting tables in buildings of a certain type. You can see what the requirements are on the tooltip, and you’ll get notices what’s wrong if you try to place it in an invalid space.



This will make building a lot more flexible - you can construct rooms however you want on your property, and place tables as you like, as long as they meet the restrictions. I think we’ll see a lot more interesting player constructions with this. Later we’ll be adding room-bonuses so that your craft tables will get boosts if you place it in a building with special properties.

We also made re-building more flexible. Previously buildings were locked down once they were finished, now you can change them at will. The restriction system will auto-detect changes that break tables and notify you:



Now you can keep building onto one house if you want, adding stacks of rooms or underground caverns and filling them with useful tables, and then selling access. Building is such a core part of the game, and we want it to be both aesthetically interesting and strategic, and this system promotes that. Along with the transport system below, where and how you build will make a huge difference on the success of your world.

K - [email protected]

Vehicle and road system beginnings. Vehicles and roads will be the basis of transport, and moving resources between places in Eco will consume resources and create pollution, and infrastructure will be costly to create. It will be one of the main group challenges of the game, organizing public works to create the most efficient transport.

Currently you can just place it, but it will be some different way to craft vehicles.



It can have inventory (open UI with right click)



And you can ride vehicle(E)(behind the scene)



And you can dismount with pressing “E” again

Road system is in development, but it can effect your vehicle.

Road can increase your “mile per gallon” and limit your speed.

Eric - [email protected]

Helping Keegan and Milenko bring their art dreams to fruition. (Trees + Terrain, see their screenshots for more)

Keegan - [email protected]

I’ve been working with Eric to fix up and update the base terrain in Eco, improving performance and the look. Eric improved custom builder tools and I reassembled all the pieces we use for grass/dirt/sand, and I’ve continued to iterate on the rock and ore’s custom builder geometry. We’re starting to approach the point where we can focus on authoring art rather than technology issues with the core terrain of Eco-- and as the next step I have been transitioning to working on buildings to get them to the same standard.





Milenko - [email protected]

Well, working on many things at once.

So everything is sort of halfway there. New plants are coming along, as well as the terrain textures. But the current thing is setting the tree meshes to look right and grow right in the game.

I am up to the third iterations of my meshes, and I think I have finally figured out how it is all going to work.



Lots more to come, looking forward to your feedback, and as always feel free to email us.

-John K.

[marcgfx]

hugely ambitious and very complex game. where everything influences everything. had you told me about your idea, I would have called you crazy. but it seems like you have come a long way already. good luck!

[AngryAgendaGames]

Man, went in thinking this was a minecraft clone, but wow I need to assume less, this game and it's concept is great! I love it when companies undertake the gamification of education. By the way, do you ever plan to release/make this available and usable in a non-class environment?

[John Krajewski]

Man, went in thinking this was a minecraft clone, but wow I need to assume less, this game and it's concept is great! I love it when companies undertake the gamification of education. By the way, do you ever plan to release/make this available and usable in a non-class environment?

Thanks! Yeah definitely, it will be on Steam as a regular game.  We think it's time that education and entertainment games began to overlap, and theres no reason they cant. Games like Civilization are hugely educational, and people are starting to realize that, which helps our cause.

[John Krajewski]

Here's our progress on Alpha 4 this week, lots of updates to trees, roads, property, transport, and the minimap!

Work on Eco is moving right along, and we’ve set the date for Alpha 4 release to be at the end of March! The game will look and play significantly different from Alpha 3, we’ve been working on both visuals (trees, landscapes, roads) and new systems (property, building, energy, transport, mini-map). Here’s a look at that work in progress.

Eric - [email protected]



Trees 2.0 work is continuing. Trees animate growth over their lifetime, adding branches and leaves as they grow. This is considerably different than how they used to grow which was block-by-block, which didn’t look or work that well. Will try and get a video for the next dev blog.



It is now also possible to prune off sections of a tree, by highlighting and damaging the individual portions. Break off leaf bunches (which will grow back), or hack off entire branches (which won’t grow back), or knock down the whole tree. You will have to prune off branches before harvesting the wood after felling each tree, though some branches will break off during the fall.



Also, the block system was refactored finally doing away with the pesky enum-based types of the past. Now all block types are assigned IDs automatically, and adding a new block can be done with just a few lines of code, and any matching artwork. This will allow for very, very easy modding to add as many block types as you want, from any mods, with no conflicting ID nonsense. (actually up to 65536 types)


John - [email protected]

Worked on the mini-map this week (with rendering support from Eric). It now displays the locations of property and buildings, so you can use it to find the buildings you need to use (this will be huge for the economy, allowing you to seek out buildings that stores that provide what you need). Added a filter panel that lets you control what you want visible. Will be adding other players to this next.






K - [email protected]

Command “Let there be Vehicle” is not working.

So using command “Let there be Wheel, Body, Engine, Fuel” to make Vehicle.

Now vehicle is consuming fuel or possibly calories per second while moving, and that’s why your want to get on the right road because wrong road can give huge penalty on speed.

For example, Wrong road 40% of max speed vs. Right road 100% of max speed which giving 150% more traveled distance on good road compared to bad road.


Keegan - [email protected]

I’ve been continuing the ever-evolving process of working on our terrain for Eco, tweaking and improving custom builders and meshes. Next up for that will be meshes to improve the transition between block-types in the world, which will have to be a new system layered on top of what we have now. I’ve also been updating and preparing the first block types usable for constructing buildings with our revamped systems and ideas of how they’ll work: logs, wood, stone, as well as a more advanced steel/aluminum building. I’ve also been working on roads, getting new assets and builders ready to work with our implementation of transportation.




Milenko - [email protected]

Basically still working on prettying up everything.

Finished off first pass of all the new plants, Did second pass on the terrain textures, revised the grass patch mesh, and mostly been working on the tree setup so we can have a system for growing trees.

Ah yes, everything will be choppable now : leaves, branches trunks Should be fun.

Setting up collision is being a bit of a pain, mostly due to the long feud between max and Unity.

need to wrap this up soon, so we can move to support the alpha release, and work on critical assets needed to make that one happen. Then, it will be back to the world stuff, new sky and clouds, critters and avatars, and hopefully with time to spare for the underwater stuff.

Still so much to do!




Thanks and email us with any feedback as always,

-John K

[John Krajewski]

Eco Dev Blog 15 is up!  Check out our progress on trees and technology as we gear up for Alpha 4 launch next month.

Our Alpha 4 build of Eco is making great progress, check out the work below. We’ve come a long way on the visual components, but also the gameplay side. We’ll be putting together new trailers and videos as we come up to our alpha 4 launch to show you how new stuff like power, transport, taxes, and elections work. 


Here’s the progress this week and as always you can pick up the game on our website here  (our Steam launch is later this year, and all previous buyers will get a key).

 

Eric  - [email protected]

If you have been following us on facebook  you have probably seen a lot of the more recent work.

Trees are basically done. I will be hooking up the art for the other 2 variations as well.

Minimap improvements are ongoing.  Tweaking the art, shaders, and whatnot.

Mostly it is non stop bug fixing from here on out to alpha 4.  Fixed the bow, fixing up the tools, etc.

Check out the trees and minimap in the videos below:










John  - [email protected]

The past couple weeks I’ve been deep in the tech tree, creating the full set of items/skills/vehicles/craft tables/foods, etc in the game. It’s a giant amount of data, and the first step was moving it from a large number of code files into a single spreadsheet that can auto-generate all the objects needed in the code:


We now have an easy process to create new suites of related items/skills/vehicles/foods, with all the requisite connections automatically hooked up.  It also gives us a bird’s eye view of the game, which will be incredibly valuable as we tune and balance everything.


Modders will be able to use this same template system to large scale additions or modifications to the game.  To handle this much data we needed some good tools, and we’re setup in a good spot now to start creating a huge amounts of content.

 

K - [email protected]

Whole Vehicle & Road system is ready to play around.

Nature powered generators were added(windmill, waterwheel), and also motor to elec converter was added.

Now MiniMap shows other players on it.

Now character can step up(or climb) little bumps

Store now have functionality of make and delete offer by authorized users.(deletion is not available unless you made that offer)

Resizable container inventory UI YEAH.






Keegan  - [email protected]

I’ve been dancing around working on lots of improvements to get us ready for the next big alpha release-- it has been very rewarding to see all of Milenko and Eric’s hard work with trees and plants rejuvenate the look of the game, and I’ve been touching up what I can to get everything else up to the same speed. Mainly I’ve been helping make and implement new Power and Transportation assets including dirt and stone roads, a generator, a coal burner, a transmission line. I’ve also been updating effects for the first person tools to improve the feel of using them in the world with particle effects, and many other various improvements.




Milenko - [email protected]


Working on all kinds of stuff as well. Going through the remaining icons, doing sickly versions of plants, and texturing our new assets.





Thanks for following us and as always email us if you have any questions!

  -John K

[Pixelologist]

You're still going to get a lot of people saying this is Minecraft 2.0, but don't let that stop you from working on this.

[John Krajewski]

Eco Dev Blog 16 is up with Alpha 4 build progress! Check out what's coming for our next release: Roads, Vehicles, Items, Tech Tree

Been working hard getting the Alpha 4 release of Eco ready for release, this will be a big release with some major new systems in the game, including transport, power, a new building system, logging system, and much more. Here’s a look at what’s on the way:

As always the alpha version of the game is available to buy on our site at strangeloopgames.com/eco, and we’ll be giving Steam keys to all our backers when we launch on Early Access later this year.

We also got a couple new team members, welcome Craig and Steve to the team!

 John - [email protected]

Tons of features and polish for Alpha 4.

Added a new ‘module’ system for buildings.  Here’s a test of it (those chests are actually Sanding Blocks and Tool Shelves), showing how you can plug modules into a table to get extra benefits and unlock other recipes.

 


This will be useful in fleshing out the building system, giving lots of ways to customize and create buildings that will have game effects.  

Also been working vehicles, giving feedback to the player. Notice the new status window when you’re driving around.  Here’s a video of an unfortunate wooden cart crash:





Craig   - [email protected]

I’ve been blocking in the early parts of the skill and tech tree, making sure everything connects correctly and flows well. The skills now include branches allowing specialities such as baking to be researched and learned separately from the generic cooking skill. In addition to that, a few quality of life changes like sorted skill benefits and availability-culled skill trees should help make navigating the rapidly growing content.

 


Eric   - [email protected]

Working on all manner of bugs and loose ends leading up to getting alpha 4 out.  With the myriad of new features since alpha 3, there is a fair amount of fixing going on to get everything solid.

 

Keegan   - [email protected]

I’ve been working on many things since the last update, but recently I’ve focused on blocking out placeholder models for the game’s “world objects”, our internal technical term for objects that players place in the world on top of the voxel custom builders. This way we can start to implement the first iteration of our tech tree, since revamping and refining that will be a huge part of Eco’s design. Even in the process of figuring out what to rough out for the objects, I did a fair amount of design work, researching what physical objects might be best to represent different technologies.

(Again, this is not art that will be in the finished game, these are rough-outs of what objects we’ll likely be implementing)




Steven   - [email protected]

For the last couple weeks I've been working on the minimap UI element - the model used to render the map is now updated in real time as players make buildings or dig into the surface.

Trees are also shown on the map, and specific types of objects (players, workbenches, etc.) are highlighted and listed on the side of the map screen.

I’m also working on various meshing, rendering, and networking optimizations for the minimap.

The player icon shown is temporary



Getting ever closer to Alpha 4, can’t wait to hear what you think of it. As always send us any questions or comments you have or message us on Facebook. Look forward to hearing from you.

-JohnK