Change Log


No known issues should exist when updating from 7.1.X to 7.2.

• Tweaked worldgen to have more "terraced" feel to it
  
• Tweaked worldlayer gen to have larger regions of biomes
  
• New players now start with the basic tools (previously given through the tutorial) placed in their backpack. The tutorial is updated to direct players there, then to popup tool-specific tutorials when they select them.
  
• World objects automatically switch to the "status" tab when they're disabled
  
• Added a discord button to the title screen
  
• Building is much smoother now and shows an in-world cursor where you are targeting blocks / objects. (can be disabled in advanced settings)
  
• Re-enabled stats, with significant performance improvements. Stats can now be disabled manually from the server panel if they continue to be a performance problem.
  
• Updated Road and road ramp meshes and textures to function more smoothly with vehicles and buildings.

• Plastic is no longer a block. If you have any plastic inside stockpiles, it will remain in them, but it should be removed and placed into chests as soon as possible.
  
• Objects that affect housing now display it in their tooltips.
  
• Exiting vehicles now uses the standard interact keybinding
  
• Currencies can now be backed with different items (not just gold)
  
• Fixed a bug where picking up mints would cause other mints to have the wrong associated currency
  
• Changes the recipe cost of a couple late game research and recipes.
  
• Solar Generator cost changed from (1 steel) to (15 steel, 5 servos, 5 circuits)
  
• Wind Turbine cost changed from (10 iron) to (20 steel, 10 gearboxes, 10 circuits)
  
• Moved the stove recipe from the Factory to the Machine Shop
  
• Dead plants now disappear after 24 hours.
  
• Plants that die young no longer continue aging to maturity.
  
• Player planted plants are now significantly more resistant to natural forces.
  
• Tailings in carts will now pollute
  
• Fixed the stack sizes for Mortared Stone, Hewn Logs, Bricks, and other block materials
  
• Added 8 slots of storage to the shelf, cabinets, icebox, and refrigerator
  
• Added acorns (oak seeds) and fir seeds
  
• Beans gathering improvements moved from Grassland Gatherer to Forest Forager
  
• Added a seed recipe for tomato seeds
  
• Birch growth time reduced from 5 to 4
  
• Cedar growth time reduced from 5 to 4
  
• Tomato growth time reduced from 1 to 0.8
  
• Amanita Mushroom growth time reduced from 1 to 0.7
  
• Crimini Mushroom growth time reduced from 1 to 0.7
  
• Rice growth time reduced from 1 to 0.8
  
• Oak growth time increased from 1 to 6
  
• Fir growth time increased from 1 to 4
  
• Saguaro Cactus growth time increased from 1 to 3
  
• Camas growth time increased from 0.2 to 0.8
  
• Wheat growth time increased from 0.15 to 0.7
  
• Fern growth time increased from 0.2 to 0.6
  
• Huckleberry growth time increased from 0.25 to 0.8
  
• Beet growth time increased from 0.2 to 0.8
  
• Corn growth time increased from 0.15 to 0.8
  
• Fireweed growth time increased from 0.2 to 0.6
  
• Creosote Bush growth time increased from 0.25 to 0.6
  
• Sagebrush growth time increased from 0.25 to 0.6
  
• PricklyPear growth time increased from 0.2 to 0.7
  
• Beans growth time increased from 0.2 to 0.8
  
• Fishing skill max level reduced from 5 to 4
  
• Fishing skill cost reduced from (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) to (1, 2, 2, 3)
  
• Fish cleaning moved from butchery to fishing, including two new skills under fishing
  
• Clams can now be harvested for clams
  
• Urchins can now be harvested for urchins
  
• Kelp can now be harvested for kelp
  
• Fishery has three new recipes: shuck clams, clean urchins, and shred kelp
  
• Charred Fish recipe was moved from Campfire Creations to Campfire Cooking
  
• Freshly generated worlds have a little special something hidden somewhere probably maybe

• Simplified client mod building so you just need to select a save location for the built bundle.
  
• Added a server option to continuously scan for unity bundle changes for faster client-side mod iteration times. (just save & reconnect to test in game)
  
• WorldObjects now automatically set animation controller parameters, see ModKit wiki for details.
  
• Added scripts to modkit
  
• MaterialEvents - use in conjunction with unityevents to animate material properties
  
• iTween Visual Editor - flexible tweening for animating movment / properties
  
• EcoLight - make lights that play well with Global illumination.
  
• SyncPhysics - keeps physics in sync (makes custom rubble & vehicles possible)
  
• Cleaned up the wiki a bit and added an in-depth getting started tutorial covering the complete process of creating a client-object mod

• A large amount of performance changes were done that will allow the server to handle considerably more players concurrently than before. Our stress test had close to 70 players on a 16km² server at once!
  
• Optimized object relevancy check by finally adding that spatial partition we've put off forever.
  
• Optimized the connect-to-server process of the client
  
• Claiming property no longer causes stalls for all clients
  
• Minimap updates are now much more efficient (helps increase players per server limit). On larger worlds, the minimap may take some time to load in fully.
  
• Optimized some of the animal simulation code, removed some concurrency issues that caused animals to sometimes just stand in place

• Fixed a bug that prevented users from seeing changes made in a store until they logged out and back in.
  
• Fixed ‘Items In Container’ contracts not saving list of items.
  
• Fixed inserting items via right-click not counting for contracts.
  
• Fixed display of items left to place in world markers for contracts.
  
• Fixed Contracts to properly handle temporary, limited authorization on objects (you can put bricks into a container you don’t own if you have a contract allowing it, but you can’t remove them).
  
• Fixed currency exchanges working despite bad room requirements.
  
• Fixed currency exchanges failing if you try to use default currencies.
  
• Fixed currency exchanges letting non-authed users mess with the lists.
  
• Fixed issue where server search got out of sync with the displayed search string
  
• Blast furnaces can now be placed outside
  
• Fixed a web API exploit, allowing anyone to set server config remotely.
  
• Sadly, "/unstuck" while driving will no longer do awesome things
  
• Fixed silly avatars when destroying a cart someone else is driving
  
• Replace stockpile exception with a warning if the world<->inventory sync fails, instead of crashing the server
  
• Fix float parsing which has issues in other cultures and caused misc weird issues, including some "connection failed"
  
• Fixed occupancy for solar generator, stove, repair station, stove, washboard, couch, padded chair, and washing machine
  
• Fixed missing art for washboard and washing machine objects
  
• Blocks that don't stick to walls will now fall immediately (fixes phantom blocks when falling across chunk borders)
  
• Object spawning is now synchronized to prevent weird physics collisions that often sent objects flying
  
• Fixed cut trees occasionally floating w/o gravity
  
• Players no longer get stuck when stockpiles change or blocks are placed where they are standing
  
• Vehicles, rubble and trees should fall through the world much less frequently
  
• Vehicle acceleration has been clamped so launching vehicles should be much more difficult
  
• Dev Tool can now target more things
  
• Display full stack traces in the disconnection dialog when disconnected due to an exception. This will make reported bugs much easier to fix.
  
• Fixed a typo in a chat command name ('exeptional' -> 'exceptional')
  
• Fixed some more moderately rare chunk build exceptions
  
• Fixed a bug where the fish caught would sometimes not seem to be added to your inventory
  
• Fixed being unable to move after exiting a text box using 'Escape'
  
• Fixed a server crash related to leveling up skills (A concurrency problem)
  
• Show better error messages when there is a problem with our auth servers
  
• Fixes preventing the 'Play' action with a law - Instead of crashing the server, it will now kick the player with an explanatory message.
  
• Fixed issue that prevented Linux server from running as a background process
  
• Can no longer propose new districts with unnamed districts or districts with the same name. Servers stuck with districts with the same name should be able to redefine them to have unique names now.
  
• Fixed redefining districts being incorrectly prevented due to editing a district that is referenced by another law
  
• Fixed existing law text not getting updated when districts are renamed
  
• Fixed a server crash from air pollution emitting objects, which was due to threading problems
  
• Fixed a server crash that happened when double clicking 'x' on a store listing
  
• Fixed a login problem that may have caused users to log in as someone else
  
• On object windows, the 'Status' tab is now hidden if there is nothing on it
  
• On object windows, the 'Storage' tab shows an 'empty' message if there is no linked storage on it, rather than just being empty
  
• Each time you open an object window, the first tab is shown, regardless of what tab you had open when you last closed it - Unless the object is disabled, in which case the 'Status' tab is shown.

Change Log


No known issues should exist when updating from 7.1.X to 7.2.

• Tweaked worldgen to have more "terraced" feel to it
  
• Tweaked worldlayer gen to have larger regions of biomes
  
• New players now start with the basic tools (previously given through the tutorial) placed in their backpack. The tutorial is updated to direct players there, then to popup tool-specific tutorials when they select them.
  
• World objects automatically switch to the "status" tab when they're disabled
  
• Added a discord button to the title screen
  
• Building is much smoother now and shows an in-world cursor where you are targeting blocks / objects. (can be disabled in advanced settings)
  
• Re-enabled stats, with significant performance improvements. Stats can now be disabled manually from the server panel if they continue to be a performance problem.
  
• Updated Road and road ramp meshes and textures to function more smoothly with vehicles and buildings.

• Plastic is no longer a block. If you have any plastic inside stockpiles, it will remain in them, but it should be removed and placed into chests as soon as possible.
  
• Objects that affect housing now display it in their tooltips.
  
• Exiting vehicles now uses the standard interact keybinding
  
• Currencies can now be backed with different items (not just gold)
  
• Fixed a bug where picking up mints would cause other mints to have the wrong associated currency
  
• Changes the recipe cost of a couple late game research and recipes.
  
• Solar Generator cost changed from (1 steel) to (15 steel, 5 servos, 5 circuits)
  
• Wind Turbine cost changed from (10 iron) to (20 steel, 10 gearboxes, 10 circuits)
  
• Moved the stove recipe from the Factory to the Machine Shop
  
• Dead plants now disappear after 24 hours.
  
• Plants that die young no longer continue aging to maturity.
  
• Player planted plants are now significantly more resistant to natural forces.
  
• Tailings in carts will now pollute
  
• Fixed the stack sizes for Mortared Stone, Hewn Logs, Bricks, and other block materials
  
• Added 8 slots of storage to the shelf, cabinets, icebox, and refrigerator
  
• Added acorns (oak seeds) and fir seeds
  
• Beans gathering improvements moved from Grassland Gatherer to Forest Forager
  
• Added a seed recipe for tomato seeds
  
• Birch growth time reduced from 5 to 4
  
• Cedar growth time reduced from 5 to 4
  
• Tomato growth time reduced from 1 to 0.8
  
• Amanita Mushroom growth time reduced from 1 to 0.7
  
• Crimini Mushroom growth time reduced from 1 to 0.7
  
• Rice growth time reduced from 1 to 0.8
  
• Oak growth time increased from 1 to 6
  
• Fir growth time increased from 1 to 4
  
• Saguaro Cactus growth time increased from 1 to 3
  
• Camas growth time increased from 0.2 to 0.8
  
• Wheat growth time increased from 0.15 to 0.7
  
• Fern growth time increased from 0.2 to 0.6
  
• Huckleberry growth time increased from 0.25 to 0.8
  
• Beet growth time increased from 0.2 to 0.8
  
• Corn growth time increased from 0.15 to 0.8
  
• Fireweed growth time increased from 0.2 to 0.6
  
• Creosote Bush growth time increased from 0.25 to 0.6
  
• Sagebrush growth time increased from 0.25 to 0.6
  
• PricklyPear growth time increased from 0.2 to 0.7
  
• Beans growth time increased from 0.2 to 0.8
  
• Fishing skill max level reduced from 5 to 4
  
• Fishing skill cost reduced from (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) to (1, 2, 2, 3)
  
• Fish cleaning moved from butchery to fishing, including two new skills under fishing
  
• Clams can now be harvested for clams
  
• Urchins can now be harvested for urchins
  
• Kelp can now be harvested for kelp
  
• Fishery has three new recipes: shuck clams, clean urchins, and shred kelp
  
• Charred Fish recipe was moved from Campfire Creations to Campfire Cooking
  
• Freshly generated worlds have a little special something hidden somewhere probably maybe

• Simplified client mod building so you just need to select a save location for the built bundle.
  
• Added a server option to continuously scan for unity bundle changes for faster client-side mod iteration times. (just save & reconnect to test in game)
  
• WorldObjects now automatically set animation controller parameters, see ModKit wiki for details.
  
• Added scripts to modkit
  
• MaterialEvents - use in conjunction with unityevents to animate material properties
  
• iTween Visual Editor - flexible tweening for animating movment / properties
  
• EcoLight - make lights that play well with Global illumination.
  
• SyncPhysics - keeps physics in sync (makes custom rubble & vehicles possible)
  
• Cleaned up the wiki a bit and added an in-depth getting started tutorial covering the complete process of creating a client-object mod

• A large amount of performance changes were done that will allow the server to handle considerably more players concurrently than before. Our stress test had close to 70 players on a 16km² server at once!
  
• Optimized object relevancy check by finally adding that spatial partition we've put off forever.
  
• Optimized the connect-to-server process of the client
  
• Claiming property no longer causes stalls for all clients
  
• Minimap updates are now much more efficient (helps increase players per server limit). On larger worlds, the minimap may take some time to load in fully.
  
• Optimized some of the animal simulation code, removed some concurrency issues that caused animals to sometimes just stand in place

• Fixed a bug that prevented users from seeing changes made in a store until they logged out and back in.
  
• Fixed ‘Items In Container’ contracts not saving list of items.
  
• Fixed inserting items via right-click not counting for contracts.
  
• Fixed display of items left to place in world markers for contracts.
  
• Fixed Contracts to properly handle temporary, limited authorization on objects (you can put bricks into a container you don’t own if you have a contract allowing it, but you can’t remove them).
  
• Fixed currency exchanges working despite bad room requirements.
  
• Fixed currency exchanges failing if you try to use default currencies.
  
• Fixed currency exchanges letting non-authed users mess with the lists.
  
• Fixed issue where server search got out of sync with the displayed search string
  
• Blast furnaces can now be placed outside
  
• Fixed a web API exploit, allowing anyone to set server config remotely.
  
• Sadly, "/unstuck" while driving will no longer do awesome things
  
• Fixed silly avatars when destroying a cart someone else is driving
  
• Replace stockpile exception with a warning if the world<->inventory sync fails, instead of crashing the server
  
• Fix float parsing which has issues in other cultures and caused misc weird issues, including some "connection failed"
  
• Fixed occupancy for solar generator, stove, repair station, stove, washboard, couch, padded chair, and washing machine
  
• Fixed missing art for washboard and washing machine objects
  
• Blocks that don't stick to walls will now fall immediately (fixes phantom blocks when falling across chunk borders)
  
• Object spawning is now synchronized to prevent weird physics collisions that often sent objects flying
  
• Fixed cut trees occasionally floating w/o gravity
  
• Players no longer get stuck when stockpiles change or blocks are placed where they are standing
  
• Vehicles, rubble and trees should fall through the world much less frequently
  
• Vehicle acceleration has been clamped so launching vehicles should be much more difficult
  
• Dev Tool can now target more things
  
• Display full stack traces in the disconnection dialog when disconnected due to an exception. This will make reported bugs much easier to fix.
  
• Fixed a typo in a chat command name ('exeptional' -> 'exceptional')
  
• Fixed some more moderately rare chunk build exceptions
  
• Fixed a bug where the fish caught would sometimes not seem to be added to your inventory
  
• Fixed being unable to move after exiting a text box using 'Escape'
  
• Fixed a server crash related to leveling up skills (A concurrency problem)
  
• Show better error messages when there is a problem with our auth servers
  
• Fixes preventing the 'Play' action with a law - Instead of crashing the server, it will now kick the player with an explanatory message.
  
• Fixed issue that prevented Linux server from running as a background process
  
• Can no longer propose new districts with unnamed districts or districts with the same name. Servers stuck with districts with the same name should be able to redefine them to have unique names now.
  
• Fixed redefining districts being incorrectly prevented due to editing a district that is referenced by another law
  
• Fixed existing law text not getting updated when districts are renamed
  
• Fixed a server crash from air pollution emitting objects, which was due to threading problems
  
• Fixed a server crash that happened when double clicking 'x' on a store listing
  
• Fixed a login problem that may have caused users to log in as someone else
  
• On object windows, the 'Status' tab is now hidden if there is nothing on it
  
• On object windows, the 'Storage' tab shows an 'empty' message if there is no linked storage on it, rather than just being empty
  
• Each time you open an object window, the first tab is shown, regardless of what tab you had open when you last closed it - Unless the object is disabled, in which case the 'Status' tab is shown.

Having our game out there in the wild with people playing and streaming regularly has been a pretty amazing experience. We’re seeing a pretty interesting graph of players, which seems to indicate organic growth:

All in all a great launch, not without it’s bumps, but wouldn’t want to make it boring would we? And so, what’s next…

Our focus for the next big update to Eco (which we plan to start doing monthly) will be to add much more machinery and vehicles. The goal for the end of the game is that players will no longer be doing labor by hand; instead they will be using massive machinery to transform the planet at a large scale. Bulldozers to flatten land, cranes to build skyscrapers, mining drills to harvest entire mountains, plows to create farms and combines to harvest them, logging machinery for harvesting entire forests, boats for sea transport and trains for land.

To succeed in stopping the meteor, half your planet will be covered in farms, more in skyscrapers, and several mountains strip mined out. Doing this without destroying the ecosystem in the process will be a challenge, and the arc of the game will see players growing in strength with their technology and economy and having to grow their civics and regulations alongside them, or risk internal destruction.

We’ll be putting together models and start building these out over the coming weeks, but we have a couple already made, boats and trucks:




Should be pretty easy to rig these up and turn waterways into a very important transport system.

Here's a mining machine we're working on that can do some serious grinding through mountains.



And here's a look at elevators, which you'll be able to use for mineshafts, and a variant (later in the video) you can use on the edge of cliffs.

Stay tuned for our new community road map, where we’ll be adding lots more features that are coming into the game and get the community’s feedback on them.

We’re asking for help from the community for translating the game into many languages, if you’d like to chip in join our discord at discord.gg/eco and hope in the #translation-team channel. Hope to get support for Latin languages pretty quickly, then move into Asian languages. We’re seeing a lot of interest from non-English speaking locales so really want to support them.

See you in Eco,

-JohnK

Having our game out there in the wild with people playing and streaming regularly has been a pretty amazing experience. We’re seeing a pretty interesting graph of players, which seems to indicate organic growth:

All in all a great launch, not without it’s bumps, but wouldn’t want to make it boring would we? And so, what’s next…

Our focus for the next big update to Eco (which we plan to start doing monthly) will be to add much more machinery and vehicles. The goal for the end of the game is that players will no longer be doing labor by hand; instead they will be using massive machinery to transform the planet at a large scale. Bulldozers to flatten land, cranes to build skyscrapers, mining drills to harvest entire mountains, plows to create farms and combines to harvest them, logging machinery for harvesting entire forests, boats for sea transport and trains for land.

To succeed in stopping the meteor, half your planet will be covered in farms, more in skyscrapers, and several mountains strip mined out. Doing this without destroying the ecosystem in the process will be a challenge, and the arc of the game will see players growing in strength with their technology and economy and having to grow their civics and regulations alongside them, or risk internal destruction.

We’ll be putting together models and start building these out over the coming weeks, but we have a couple already made, boats and trucks:




Should be pretty easy to rig these up and turn waterways into a very important transport system.

Here's a mining machine we're working on that can do some serious grinding through mountains.



And here's a look at elevators, which you'll be able to use for mineshafts, and a variant (later in the video) you can use on the edge of cliffs.

Stay tuned for our new community road map, where we’ll be adding lots more features that are coming into the game and get the community’s feedback on them.

We’re asking for help from the community for translating the game into many languages, if you’d like to chip in join our discord at discord.gg/eco and hope in the #translation-team channel. Hope to get support for Latin languages pretty quickly, then move into Asian languages. We’re seeing a lot of interest from non-English speaking locales so really want to support them.

See you in Eco,

-JohnK

• Server Optimizations. After some initial tests, we think we can reliably reach close to 16km² worlds supporting up to 100 concurrent players on decently powerful servers. 7.2.0 will have lots of performance updates towards making this a reality.
  
• Farming tweaks, bug fixes. Farming is getting looked at with some short-term fixes to clarify how some of the mechanics work better.
  
• Art updates. There are a lot of animation polish that missed initial steam release, but are being added now.
  
• Localization. We are adding localization support, and with the help of the community will be translating Eco for numerous languages.
  
• Stats. We had to disable stat collection earlier, because it was tanking server performance over time. This should be resolved in 7.2.0, but we added an easier option to disable the stats if it becomes an issue again.
  
• Modding. Closer to the end of February/Early March the modkit will have integrated support for uploading/hosting mods through mod.io, and support server side for downloading and installing these mods automatically.

A new staging build with some of the above will be out later today on the 'staging' beta branch. The general turn around time on builds is 2 weeks, and it is expected that 7.2.0 will land around March 6th, at which point 7.3.0 will be branched for next release, so on and so forth.

We also have broader long-term plans for Eco and community involvement in that process in the works - expect more news on that front in the coming weeks

• Server Optimizations. After some initial tests, we think we can reliably reach close to 16km² worlds supporting up to 100 concurrent players on decently powerful servers. 7.2.0 will have lots of performance updates towards making this a reality.
  
• Farming tweaks, bug fixes. Farming is getting looked at with some short-term fixes to clarify how some of the mechanics work better.
  
• Art updates. There are a lot of animation polish that missed initial steam release, but are being added now.
  
• Localization. We are adding localization support, and with the help of the community will be translating Eco for numerous languages.
  
• Stats. We had to disable stat collection earlier, because it was tanking server performance over time. This should be resolved in 7.2.0, but we added an easier option to disable the stats if it becomes an issue again.
  
• Modding. Closer to the end of February/Early March the modkit will have integrated support for uploading/hosting mods through mod.io, and support server side for downloading and installing these mods automatically.

A new staging build with some of the above will be out later today on the 'staging' beta branch. The general turn around time on builds is 2 weeks, and it is expected that 7.2.0 will land around March 6th, at which point 7.3.0 will be branched for next release, so on and so forth.

We also have broader long-term plans for Eco and community involvement in that process in the works - expect more news on that front in the coming weeks

Hey all, so it’s been a crazy week for us, where not only did we have the Steam Release, but a giant grant proposal to submit (which is 112 pages of FUN!) for a future project. It all combined into a really epic time, with exciting developments like our login servers crashing shortly after we open the Steam floodgates (fixed now, but that was a wild ride).

Now that it’s out there and the dust has cleared a bit and people are discovering it at a much higher rate, it’s a good time to take stock and think about the future of Eco and where we want to take it in Early Access. And before looking to the future, it’s always fun to look to the past:




It looks like a completely different game over these three years, and basically it is (aside from the fact that you still have an axe and can chop down trees, so much else is totally different). That we were able to communicate our idea with our rough visuals in our Kickstarter and build a dedicated community over the years has been one of the best experiences I’ve had, and we’re super grateful to all our backers. It's rewarding to hear they’re satisfied with what they invested in.

So it may be a surprise to some, but Eco is planned to have a big educational slant to it, and we want to make it a game that can be played by a classroom. We don’t openly advertise this to the gaming market, because ‘educational game’ has become synonymous with ‘something nobody would voluntarily play’. I personally think that’s a tragedy that people have made that connection, as the connection between fun and education is what’s most important in learning. So, we’re a little stealth with that aspect of the game to avoid fitting into preconceived notions of what ‘educational’ means, but it is one of my goals to gradually remove that stigma (which also exists from the education side, where many educators are skeptical of games having educational value).

There’s a ton we want to do with the game in education, most specifically we want it to be this virtual world that runs alongside your classroom, where you apply what you’re learning, and that generates context for school work. So as you’re learning ecology, scientific argumentation, civics, statistics, or many other topics, a teacher can have an Eco server running in the background that kids play out of the classroom, and the server will email the teacher dynamically generated context from what’s happening in the class, making it fodder for discussions and further study.

At a basic level, it provides what I think is the biggest missing piece from education: an immediate reason ‘why you should learn this’. Here’s our grant submission video where I and my brother Jeff (who works on Eco too) explain the project:


So a big piece of Eco’s future is fitting into classroom models, which is a very *very* different market than entertainment games, with much more complexity around reaching customers, but I think that’s also a huge opportunity to do something that could have a big impact on how we educate kids, and how we think about the roles of that. Focusing on inspiration over rote knowledge, making inspiration a key metric. We also want to make other games that cover other subjects eventually creating a whole universe of virtual worlds that cover every topic taught in school. That’s a long ways off for now, though, but it’s what we’re working towards.

It’s a combination of really awesome and really stressful to see streamers picking up the game and inevitably finding (sometimes hilarious) bugs, but also super useful for seeing how other people are experiencing the game. It’s unique kind of joy when they ‘get it’ and it all makes sense, and then equally torturous when they struggle on something you were convinced was straight forward. Illuminating, in any case. Some of the streamers on Twitch who’ve been playing Eco below.



GiantWaffles in particular did a ‘stress test’, letting the community come in and play, which pretty much gave us a heart attack, but it held up surprisingly well, until the lag got unbearable. It inspired Eric our tech director to go through and do some turbo-optimizations, though, and we might be able to support 100 people in a server soon (fingers crossed).



Last thing I want to mention is the Eco Road Map, which right now is on Trello but we are in the process of creating a community site for it, where we lay out what we’re planning to work on and solicit community votes and comments on what they’d like to see. We’re really hoping to bring all these new players that Steam has exposed to Eco, into the fold, as there is a pretty awesome community growing around Eco, and the patience and thoughtful feedback we’re seeing from players as we get this big ship up and running has been quite heartwarming overall.

So all in all, it's been a great launch, and I’m really looking forward to sharing the future of Eco with everyone and where we’d like to take it. Let me know what you think of this format of updates too, thinking I will send out updates like this weekly.

Cheers

-John K john@strangeloopgames.com

Hey all, so it’s been a crazy week for us, where not only did we have the Steam Release, but a giant grant proposal to submit (which is 112 pages of FUN!) for a future project. It all combined into a really epic time, with exciting developments like our login servers crashing shortly after we open the Steam floodgates (fixed now, but that was a wild ride).

Now that it’s out there and the dust has cleared a bit and people are discovering it at a much higher rate, it’s a good time to take stock and think about the future of Eco and where we want to take it in Early Access. And before looking to the future, it’s always fun to look to the past:




It looks like a completely different game over these three years, and basically it is (aside from the fact that you still have an axe and can chop down trees, so much else is totally different). That we were able to communicate our idea with our rough visuals in our Kickstarter and build a dedicated community over the years has been one of the best experiences I’ve had, and we’re super grateful to all our backers. It's rewarding to hear they’re satisfied with what they invested in.

So it may be a surprise to some, but Eco is planned to have a big educational slant to it, and we want to make it a game that can be played by a classroom. We don’t openly advertise this to the gaming market, because ‘educational game’ has become synonymous with ‘something nobody would voluntarily play’. I personally think that’s a tragedy that people have made that connection, as the connection between fun and education is what’s most important in learning. So, we’re a little stealth with that aspect of the game to avoid fitting into preconceived notions of what ‘educational’ means, but it is one of my goals to gradually remove that stigma (which also exists from the education side, where many educators are skeptical of games having educational value).

There’s a ton we want to do with the game in education, most specifically we want it to be this virtual world that runs alongside your classroom, where you apply what you’re learning, and that generates context for school work. So as you’re learning ecology, scientific argumentation, civics, statistics, or many other topics, a teacher can have an Eco server running in the background that kids play out of the classroom, and the server will email the teacher dynamically generated context from what’s happening in the class, making it fodder for discussions and further study.

At a basic level, it provides what I think is the biggest missing piece from education: an immediate reason ‘why you should learn this’. Here’s our grant submission video where I and my brother Jeff (who works on Eco too) explain the project:


So a big piece of Eco’s future is fitting into classroom models, which is a very *very* different market than entertainment games, with much more complexity around reaching customers, but I think that’s also a huge opportunity to do something that could have a big impact on how we educate kids, and how we think about the roles of that. Focusing on inspiration over rote knowledge, making inspiration a key metric. We also want to make other games that cover other subjects eventually creating a whole universe of virtual worlds that cover every topic taught in school. That’s a long ways off for now, though, but it’s what we’re working towards.

It’s a combination of really awesome and really stressful to see streamers picking up the game and inevitably finding (sometimes hilarious) bugs, but also super useful for seeing how other people are experiencing the game. It’s unique kind of joy when they ‘get it’ and it all makes sense, and then equally torturous when they struggle on something you were convinced was straight forward. Illuminating, in any case. Some of the streamers on Twitch who’ve been playing Eco below.



GiantWaffles in particular did a ‘stress test’, letting the community come in and play, which pretty much gave us a heart attack, but it held up surprisingly well, until the lag got unbearable. It inspired Eric our tech director to go through and do some turbo-optimizations, though, and we might be able to support 100 people in a server soon (fingers crossed).



Last thing I want to mention is the Eco Road Map, which right now is on Trello but we are in the process of creating a community site for it, where we lay out what we’re planning to work on and solicit community votes and comments on what they’d like to see. We’re really hoping to bring all these new players that Steam has exposed to Eco, into the fold, as there is a pretty awesome community growing around Eco, and the patience and thoughtful feedback we’re seeing from players as we get this big ship up and running has been quite heartwarming overall.

So all in all, it's been a great launch, and I’m really looking forward to sharing the future of Eco with everyone and where we’d like to take it. Let me know what you think of this format of updates too, thinking I will send out updates like this weekly.

Cheers

-John K john@strangeloopgames.com

The 7.1.1 hotfix release has been published. Changelog:

• Fixed occupancy for Waterwheels
  
• Fixed wall forms not connecting to doors properly
  
• Fixed some errors that could cause disconnects for users with multiple characters on a server (due to prior accounts bug). (fixed ShouldSelectUser bug)
  
• Allowed setting backup periods smaller than one hour

The 7.1.1 hotfix release has been published. Changelog:

• Fixed occupancy for Waterwheels
  
• Fixed wall forms not connecting to doors properly
  
• Fixed some errors that could cause disconnects for users with multiple characters on a server (due to prior accounts bug). (fixed ShouldSelectUser bug)
  
• Allowed setting backup periods smaller than one hour