Version 9.0.1 has been released and fixes the following issues:

• Not being able to drag a broken tool into the repair slot
  
• Broken Labor Icon

Today we launch Eco 9, after a year in development! It’s been a great big upgrade to the game and underlying tech with a core underlying goal: to set the stage to build this game to the stars. We’ve spent a ton of work strengthening the technical foundations of the game, tuning and balancing the design, and adding the foundations for new features that will continue to grow the game.


Eco is our forever game, something we plan to continue growing and expanding indefinitely. As such, the vision of where we’re going is something we really want to share with the community, inviting them to participate in its creation. So with 9.0 we’re also launching the Eco Tree, which is our new interactive hub for presenting the game and connecting the community and devs:


Check it out at https://play.eco

Here you can see the massive scope of the game, listing our current and future features, the devs working on them, and details on each update they make. We plan to have the whole dev team use this tree to post their updates, and Eco players will be able to join the discussion of features and where we’re going. We’ll also have updates going automatically to our discord, so you can follow us there too.

As the game progresses over the coming months youll see new features become solidified and shaped by player feedback to individual devs. Eco is a game not just about community, but built by one, and like the game we’re all in it together.

For 9.0 itself we have a huge addition of features and improvements.

The short list of what’s new:

1. Performance – Much improved GPU and CPU performance.
   
2. Government – Create constitutions, elections, laws, districts in-world.
   
3. Work parties – Collaborate on projects and share rewards.
   
4. Mining upgrade –Prospecting drills and new processing path for ore.
   
5. New animals – predators with new behaviors.
   
6. Crafting upgrade – Labor and flexible ingredients added.
   
7. Ecopedia – In-game wiki.
   
8. Cloud Worlds hosting service – SLG run hosting service.
   
9. New biomes – Wetlands.
   
10. New building system – Hammer and material types and shapes upgrade. Bulk actions.
    
11. UI upgrade – Full pass on all UI.

And the long list:

• Law system moved to ingame with a variety of improvements to help ease of us
  
• Vastly expanded options for laws and government types
  
• Constitutions that decide the the foundation of how a government is set up
  
• New government buildings each with their own function
  
• Customizable election processes that can be used for different aspect of government
  
• Districts can now overlap and are viewable with new in-game district map
  
• Customizable government titles with optional wages
  
• Government bank accounts that are exempt from personal wealth calculations
  
• Citizens now have the option to overthrow a government

• New animal species and predator behaviour
  
• Updated Geology with new ways for ores to spawn in more compact deposits
  
• Prospecting drill for locating ore
  
• Unique log types for each type of tree
  
• Wetlands biome has been reintroduced
  
• Adjustments to pollution so avoiding climate change requires more effort from society

• New labor system for calorie powered crafting
  
• Expanded mineral processing system with additional depth and byproducts
  
• Work Parties that enable collaborative work and hiring skilled labor
  
• Upgrade modules for crafting efficiency
  
• Crafting costs reductions are more trade based
  
• Tagged ingredients for recipes that can accept a variety of inputs
  
• New crafting recipes, items, and world objects
  
• A variety of balance changes to expand on the depth of specialties and encourage more interaction

• New tier 4 building materials: Ashlar Stone and Composite Lumber
  
• Lots of new building forms for existing materials
  
• Different variations of Hewn Logs and Lumber based on the type of wood used
  
• Visual update to Asphalt Roads including the ability to have lane lines
  
• Improvements to the building system so multiple blocks can be placed at once.

• A detailed Ecopedia explaining most game concepts and mechanics
  
• Expanded lighting system and additional graphic improvements
  
• Revamped UI
  
• Audio improvements with new interactive music
  
• A new minimap that is visible at all times by default
  
• Map now has an optional 2D mode and additional filters for information
  
• More flexibility with claiming and dividing deeds

• Fix for performance degradation over time (“memory leak”)
  
• Decreased RAM usage
  
• A variety of server optimizations
  
• Massive improvements to FPS and overall stability

Eco 9 represented a big refactoring of a lot of core tech of Eco, and we’re in a good place to have much more frequent updates. We’re planning to alternate with minor and major monthly updates, with minor updates containing bug fixes and polish and major updates containing new features and systems, and we have lots in store we’re starting on already. Can’t wait to get there with the community.

Important Info for the Update:
- Please make a backup of your old world, in case something goes wrong.
- When migrating old 8.3 worlds you will loose all government related features, e.g. laws, districts and demographics.

Enjoy

- John K, Strange Loop Games Founder + Eco Designer

After a year in the pipes we’re pleased to announce Eco 9 will be launched on September 9th.



The short list of what’s new:

1. Performance – Much improved GPU and CPU performance.
   
2. Government – Create constitutions, elections, laws, districts in-world.
   
3. Work parties – Collaborate on projects and share rewards.
   
4. Mining upgrade –Prospecting drills and new processing path for ore.
   
5. New animals – predators with new behaviors.
   
6. Crafting upgrade – Labor and flexible ingredients added.
   
7. Ecopedia – In-game wiki.
   
8. Cloud Worlds hosting service – SLG run hosting service.
   
9. New biomes – Wetlands.
   
10. New building system – Hammer and material types and shapes upgrade. Bulk actions.
    
11. UI upgrade – Full pass on all UI.

And the long list:

• Law system moved to ingame with a variety of improvements to help ease of us
  
• Vastly expanded options for laws and government types
  
• Constitutions that decide the the foundation of how a government is set up
  
• New government buildings each with their own function
  
• Customizable election processes that can be used for different aspect of government
  
• Districts can now overlap and are viewable with new in-game district map
  
• Customizable government titles with optional wages
  
• Government bank accounts that are exempt from personal wealth calculations
  
• Citizens now have the option to overthrow a government

• New animal species and predator behaviour
  
• Updated Geology with new ways for ores to spawn in more compact deposits
  
• Prospecting drill for locating ore
  
• Unique log types for each type of tree
  
• Wetlands biome has been reintroduced
  
• Adjustments to pollution so avoiding climate change requires more effort from society

• New labor system for calorie powered crafting
  
• Expanded mineral processing system with additional depth and byproducts
  
• Work Parties that enable collaborative work and hiring skilled labor
  
• Upgrade modules for crafting efficiency
  
• Crafting costs reductions are more trade based
  
• Tagged ingredients for recipes that can accept a variety of inputs
  
• New crafting recipes, items, and world objects
  
• A variety of balance changes to expand on the depth of specialties and encourage more interaction

• New tier 4 building materials: Ashlar Stone and Composite Lumber
  
• Lots of new building forms for existing materials
  
• Different variations of Hewn Logs and Lumber based on the type of wood used
  
• Visual update to Asphalt Roads including the ability to have lane lines
  
• Improvements to the building system so multiple blocks can be placed at once.

• A detailed Ecopedia explaining most game concepts and mechanics
  
• Expanded lighting system and additional graphic improvements
  
• Revamped UI
  
• Audio improvements with new interactive music
  
• A new minimap that is visible at all times by default
  
• Map now has an optional 2D mode and additional filters for information
  
• More flexibility with claiming and dividing deeds

• Fix for performance degradation over time (“memory leak”)
  
• Decreased RAM usage
  
• A variety of server optimizations
  
• Massive improvements to FPS and overall stability

We’ve been releasing blogs with lots of details on how it all works, check on our past updates for the gritty details and a tour of features. I speak for the team when I say we can’t wait to get this out to the Eco community and see what amazing societies people build. And even still, we’re only at the beginning of where we want to go with Eco.

In this blog post I’ll be sharing information about the new animal species being added to Eco in the 9.0 Update! Several new large animals and many smaller species have been added, putting us much closer to our goal of having the building blocks of an interesting ecosystem present in each biome.

As always, let's start with the overview over our Eco Update 9.0 Blogs:

1. New Government system: Constitution
   
2. New Government system: Elections and Elected Titles
   
3. New Government system: Demographics and Wages
   
4. New Government system: Laws Part 1: Using the system (This blog)
   
5. New Government system: Laws Part 2: Taxes, Ownership, Property, and Wealth
   
6. New Government system: Laws Part 3: Tour of different actions, and Executive Actions
   
7. New Government system: Districts
   
8. New Crafting: Work Parties
   
9. New Crafting: Labor System
   
10. New Crafting: Modules and Efficiency Redesign
    
11. New Crafting: New Tech Tree
    
12. New Building System: Hammer and new Building Styles
    
13. New Mining System: Mineral Dispersion and Drill Usage
    
14. New Mining System: New Processing Path and Pollution Info
    
15. New Animals and Predator Mechanics (This blog)
    
16. New Ecopedia System
    
17. New UI
    
18. New Audio
    
19. New Hosted Worlds System

In Eco, species have so far been selected to maintain a consistent thematic continental inspiration: The Americas. North American species are prominent in grasslands, and colder biomes like tundra and taiga. The Eco world is its own, and we are certainly not trying to simulate the Americas, but it makes sense when making a game about preserving a fragile and complicated ecosystem to try to look at ecosystems on earth as a whole, rather than mixing and matching random species. In Biomes like the desert, rainforest, and wetlands, the continental inspirations have expanded in 9.0 to Central and South American species. In particular, species are often chosen because they have an interesting or important role in their real world ecosystem.

In the Rainforest biome, the big newcomers are the Agouti and the Jaguar!



The Agouti is a large rodent species that feeds mostly on fruits and nuts in the rainforest. The rainforest in Eco 9.0 is partly inspired by the Amazon tropical rainforest, where the Agouti has an interesting role. Agouti are both prolific buriers of seeds and also one of just a few species capable of opening some tropical tree nuts, which is required for those seeds to germinate. These propensities make the Agouti a key part of the health of rainforests.


In each biome there are multiple levels of consumers that rely on the plant producers of energy at the base of the food chain, and the obvious choice for an Amazon-inspired rainforest’s apex consumer is the Jaguar. The Jaguar is an iconic predator that like other apex predators can be considered a keystone species because of the pressure they exert on many of the other consumers in their ecosystem that otherwise would likely balloon and dominate the others. Of course, in Eco as in the real world, humans subvert apex predator’s position in the food chain and it will be up to players to monitor how their activities impact the natural hierarchies around them.




In the Wetlands biome which as of 9.0 is still heavily in-progress, we have added two new animals: The Snapping Turtle and the Alligator. The Snapping Turtle is inspired by the Alligator Snapping Turtle, which inhabits freshwater areas of the U.S. in the real world. These turtles are a very robust species with long possible lifespans and keen abilities when it comes to scavenging and predation of smaller (and even sometimes larger) animals. Snapping Turtles rely on a wide range of food sources, and are a good indicator of the overall health of wetlands and their invertebrates. They are an eccentric species and vulnerable to pollution and habitat destruction.




The Alligator is a mostly aquatic freshwater reptile that serves as the Wetlands apex predator. Alligators modify wetland environments, creating ‘Alligator holes’, which is something we hope to represent in the future in Eco as part of a nests and dens system. Alligators hunt many types of prey, preferring to do so from the water. Alligators sometimes hunt Alligator Snapping Turtles, but sometimes the reverse is also true! Watch your fingers in the Wetlands. Alligators also are known to consume one of our other new species: Crabs!




Based on Dungeness Crabs from Washington, Eco’s new Crab species is a marine crustacean that feeds on clams, mussels, and anything else it can scavenge on the sea floor. Crabs are a tempting source of protein for humans, and one which can be harvested sustainably more easily than more fragile species. Crabs, however, are vulnerable to warming and acidifying waters.



The Coyote is the main addition to deserts in Eco 9.0. Coyotes are fascinating animals that have made deep cultural impressions on people living along-side them. The Coyote’s biggest strengths are its adaptability and resilience. These predators of mostly small rodents and mammals can survive in many kinds of places and under many kinds of pressures. It is thought that human pressure on Coyotes may have actually resulted in a smarter and tougher population of Coyotes. Coyotes represent a different kind of consideration for players-- how do you live with a species that is just about as adaptable as you are? Hopefully not with an endless campaign of extermination based on poor science, as has unfortunately occurred and still occurs today in the United States. Up to you though!


In addition to these new animals, we also upgraded the look of our Wolf species, which has always been based on the Grey Wolf.



That wraps it up for terrestrial animals, but in 9.0 we have also begun expanding the species that live in the sea and in freshwater!


New to marine environments in 9.0 are Moon Jellyfish, Cod based on the Atlantic Cod, Sardines, and Blue Sharks! This suite of additions is designed to start fleshing out marine ecosystems in preparation for further big updates to Eco’s oceans and waterways, especially for boating and fishing in the next patch!



In addition to these sea-based species, we have added a Bass fish based on the Largemouth Bass to freshwaters in Eco.


In 9.0 we have also begun to expand the behaviour possibilities of animals in Eco. Now, certain species have the ability to defend themselves if you get too close. Various species will now briefly attack the player before fleeing. In addition to this new behaviour, many animations have been added and improved for animals turning in place, along with other improvements. It’s always best to give wildlife space!

Finally, we have begun to add many more indications of invertebrate life to the ecosystems in Eco, with bees, spiders, grasshoppers, and more. Eventually the intention is to have indicators of invertebrate health in the local ecosystems tied to the appearance of these more decorative species, with some larger species being quite dependent on them such as birds and smaller mammals. We look forward to continuing to deepen and expand Eco’s wildlife and representation of the impressive and unique ecosystems we have on planet Earth.



Before we wrap this blog up, our Community Manager Dennis has a request:
We're currently looking for pupils (or recently graduated persons) aged 12 - 19 that have played Eco and would be interested in giving a short (10 - 20 minutes) and anonymous audio-only interview (english or german) about their experience with our game for the project "DiSpielGeo" (https://dispielgeo.de/en/) conducted by the University of Cologne. Pupils under the legal age need written parental consent and the parents can of course take part in the interview.

The research is about the potential use of digital games (including Eco) for geography education. If you are either of legal age or a parent and interested in helping science out, please contact me at dennis@strangeloopgames.com. Please note that we cannot accept applications from minors directly, if you want to take part, you will need to ask your parents.

- Keegan O'Rourke, Lead Artist, Strange Loop Games

Hey all, as we work down the home stretch of big-fixing and optimizations for 9.0, I wanted to talk more about the law system in the game and how it’s expanded and will support much of the future progress of Eco.



As always, let's start with the overview over our Eco Update 9.0 Blogs:

1. New Government system: Constitution
   
2. New Government system: Elections and Elected Titles
   
3. New Government system: Demographics and Wages
   
4. New Government system: Laws Part 1: Using the system (This blog)
   
5. New Government system: Laws Part 2: Taxes, Ownership, Property, and Wealth (This blog)
   
6. New Government system: Laws Part 3: Tour of different actions, and Executive Actions
   
7. New Government system: Districts
   
8. New Crafting: Work Parties
   
9. New Crafting: Labor System
   
10. New Crafting: Modules and Efficiency Redesign
    
11. New Crafting: New Tech Tree
    
12. New Building System: Hammer and new Building Styles
    
13. New Mining System: Mineral Dispersion and Drill Usage
    
14. New Mining System: New Processing Path and Pollution Info
    
15. New Animal System: Attacking Animals
    
16. New Ecopedia System
    
17. New UI
    
18. New Audio
    
19. New Hosted Worlds System

For those have been following, the Law system is fundamental to a lot of the systems in Eco, and with 9.0 we’ve built it out to be very extendable and powerful. It can have all kinds of effects triggered by the world, and affecting the world in specific ways. Let’s look at a few of them.

One of the legal actions you can trigger with laws is currency transfers, either taxing the player or paying them (when incentivizing something). Let’s set up a law that does both. We can make a law that detects a negative action, say ‘Pollute Air’ and taxes it:



We can set which sources will specifically trigger this:



In this case, since its for roads, we can make the vehicles that pollute be the ones that pay it, so we can limit it to just vehicle pollution via this dialog:



Next we setup the action to take when this trigger happens. We can assign a tax:



Here we’ve set the amount paid to be relative to the amount of the pollution. This is selected as a game value, which through the dropdown can be changed to many different types of calculations:



However, since the truck pollutes relatively slowly, this is going to be a low amount of tax. You can see this on the tooltip for the truck:



0.1 PPM per hour means youd have to drive around for an hour before only paying .1 in tax. Not enough. We can amp this up with an arithmetic operation inserted in there, performing a calculation to get the amount to tax:



Here the rate is taxed amount it multiplied by 100, making it a much more meaningful amount.
And submit!



Notice the law ‘hieroglyphics’ which give you an idea of what the law is about (pollution + tax).
Once this makes it into law, driving around in a polluting vehicle will slowly move funds into the treasury:



This notice pops up showing you the amount youre paying each ‘tick’ while driving. And we can see by clicking on the treasury, it’s starting to fill up:



To note here, the full transaction record of all bank accounts is public knowledge in Eco, meaning you can explore how the whole economy works. This is of course not how the real world works, but that extra transparency lets you ‘peer behind the curtain’, see how the inner economic machine functions, and understand it better. We might make it possible to have private transactions later, which will allow nefarious ‘white collar’ crime a bit easier which should be something players have to contend with.

Now we can create the second part, the ‘Spend’ clause that puts that money to use.



Here it detects construction of road items, and if youre constructing them pays you out of the treasury. To keep a balance, if you deconstruct a road it charges you. So there’s an incentive to build roads, but you can’t just build and destroy the same piece over and over.

Now the law icons grew a bit to show these extra detections:



Now when you destroy road you pay, and when you build you get paid:



This shows how you can use multi-part laws to do connect parts of your world and add economic incentives/disincentives as needed.

Ownership is another one you can change now, with a legal action to change property owners. We can make a law that uses the new Demographic system (see blog) to restore abandoned land to the commons. We check when a user first enters the abandoned demographic:





And then use the new ‘Change Property Owner’ legal action to move it to ownership of a government title (see blog) for redistribution:



Now we have a fail-safe for a common problem in Eco, players who abandon a world clogging up the space with their claimed property. By making the solution something that’s implemented through the law system, players get to decide what is the fairest way to handle that redistribution as part of the government decision making process.

The last example I’ll give is using the concept of wealth in laws. For example, we can make a wealth tax on a timer. Selecting the ‘Citizen Timer’ trigger will run a law on a specified period:



This will run an action on every member of ‘Abandoned’, every 24 hours. The trigger it runs can detect the wealth and tax based on that:



Here it performs a calculation, taking 10 percent of the player’s wealth in the given currency. You can see in the ‘Wealth’ tooltip what it’s doing exactly:



It looks at non-government accounts, and for multiply owned accounts it takes a pro-rated amount. So, no stashing those funds in overseas accounts, the government will still find you.

This just scratches the surface of what you can do with laws, and it’s really cool to see what kind of societies players are creating in our 9.0 playtests with these tools, from very complex and byzantine law structures to simple flat taxes. All kinds of societal experiments that play out within the game, one of my favorite things about it.

Thanks for reading and being patient as we finish up 9.0, it’s coming ‘soon’™, we plan to announce a release date in the next few-several weeks. If you want to get your hands on it early and give us feedback, chat to us on Discord and you may be able to join one of our playtests.

Also, as usual I'll be covering the contents of this blog in our next livestream this Saturday at 11am (11:00) PDT / 8pm (20:00) CEST, drop by and ask me your questions!

- John K., CEO, Strange Loop Games

In a previous Eco Peaks update I showed some of the big updates to world generation for geology and mining coming in update 9.0 for Eco. In this post I’ll present the very closely related updates to mineral processing and pollution in 9.0. Mining and mineral processing is an essential part of the global economy, since it provides the raw materials for many industries. It also raises many questions about land management, pollution, and waste storage. Tailings ponds and stacks are places where products and byproducts of mineral processing are stored long term, and they are some of the biggest structures humans build in the real world. We are excited to continue updating Eco until we have a satisfying representation of this kind of mass extraction and management of earth resources, and the consequences of their byproducts.


Underground Mining.


A tailings pond.

Before we go on, he is the overview over our Eco Update 9.0 Blogs so far:

1. New Government system: Constitution
   
2. New Government system: Elections and Elected Titles
   
3. New Government system: Demographics and Wages
   
4. New Government system: Laws Part 1: Using the system (This blog)
   
5. New Government system: Laws Part 2: Taxes, Ownership, Property, and Wealth
   
6. New Government system: Laws Part 3: Tour of different actions, and Executive Actions
   
7. New Government system: Districts
   
8. New Crafting: Work Parties
   
9. New Crafting: Labor System
   
10. New Crafting: Modules and Efficiency Redesign
    
11. New Crafting: New Tech Tree
    
12. New Building System: Hammer and new Building Styles
    
13. New Mining System: Mineral Dispersion and Drill Usage
    
14. New Mining System: New Processing Path and Pollution Info (This blog)
    
15. New Animal System: Attacking Animals
    
16. New Ecopedia System
    
17. New UI
    
18. New Audio (This blog)
    
19. New Hosted Worlds System

In 9.0 we will be adding more detail and realism to the way players process rock and ore, as a foundation for continued updates to tailings and their effects. This will also allow us to develop other industries in Eco like the chemical industry and better represent things like construction and road building materials. Mining and mineral processing ties into a lot of facets of civilization in interesting ways. The impact of these industries will be represented in future updates to pollution and its containment, as well as remediation of polluted materials.


[Stamp Mills] are an early upgrade to the [Arrastra] crusher, allowing more efficient and timely crushing of rock and ore. Here, two of them are going through a stockpile of [Granite] to make [Crushed Granite], harnessing the power of the nearby [Windmills].

The biggest change from previous versions of Eco is that now to process mined ore, players must first crush and then concentrate ore to get metal concentrates which can be smelted. There is a new suite of world objects which can be used to accomplish these parts of mineral processing. Beginning with Iron Ore from a mine, here is the new layout of machines, products, and byproducts for initial early game mineral processing in 9.0:


From left to right, [Iron Ore] embedded in sandstone from a mine goes through the [Arrastra] which crushes it, producing [Crushed Iron Ore] with [Crushed Sandstone] as a new byproduct. The [Crushed Iron Ore] can then be poured through a [Rocker Box] to concentrate it into [Iron Concentrate], with [Wet Tailings] coming out as a new byproduct. [Iron Concentrate] can then be smelted into [Iron Bars], with [Slag] as a new byproduct.

All the new byproducts have varying levels of usefulness, and will necessitate greater operations to store long term. Future updates to Eco will expand on uses for and effects of byproducts, for instance the potential to re-mine old tailings for more metals. For 9.0, crushed stone and other aggregate like crushed slag can always be used in roads and concrete production.


An array of advanced [Jaw Crusher] machines, chewing away at [Granite] and [Copper Ore] from a nearby Copper Mine. Froth Floatation Cells sit waiting to concentrate the crushed ore, on the left. Pipes feed the Froth Floatation Cells the water they need to function from a nearby river.

Different ores require different technologies to concentrate effectively. A simple way to think of different kinds of concentration is if they are ‘wet’ or ‘dry’. Some ores like copper and gold need more chemicals and coaxing to separate and concentrate, necessitating a ‘wet’ process.


In this screenshot you can see an array of mid and end-game mineral processing technology: [Jaw Crushers] for crushing along the top, [Screening Machines], and [Sensor-based Belt Sorters] for dry concentration of iron ore, and [Froth Floatation Cells] for wet processing of all ore types in the middle. On the bottom you can see the tops of [Blast Furnaces], currently our mid and end game smelters.

A big difference between wet and dry concentration is in the byproduct produced. In 9.0 we are adding [Wet Tailings] to broadly represent the tailings produced by wet concentration processes. These tailings present a harder management problem, since they must be contained and prevented from leaking freely into their environment to avoid contamination of soils and water with freed heavy metals and residual chemicals from the processing. For now, this means they will act as a more potent pollutant in the environment and their storage must be taken more seriously. In future updates we will greatly flesh out the mechanics of tailings transport, storage, containment, and remediation or re-use. For instance, Wet Tailings will eventually be pipable, so that large mining operations can simply pipe their Wet Tailings into a nearby containment structure.



As we upgrade and deepen the systems in Eco that revolve around extracting and using all types of earth resources, we know there will be lots of balancing and updates needed to make it a satisfying part of the experience-- especially because not many games try to simulate these aspects of the economy and extractive industries! We welcome your feedback as we go, and hope you’ll look forward with us towards an expanding exploration of earth resources, their role in our economy, and their impact on the world.

I'll be covering the contents of this blog in our next livestream this Friday at 11:30am (11:30) PDT / 8:30pm (20:30) CEST, drop by and feel free to ask questions!

- Keegan O'Rourke, Lead Artist, Eco

Hey all, John K here to talk about one of the most core systems in eco, the Law system, and how we’re evolving it for Eco 9.

Before we dive into that deeper, here is the overview over our Eco Update 9.0 Blogs:

1. New Government system: Constitution
   
2. New Government system: Elections and Elected Titles
   
3. New Government system: Demographics and Wages
   
4. New Government system: Laws Part 1: Using the system (This blog)
   
5. New Government system: Laws Part 2: Taxes, Ownership, Property, and Wealth
   
6. New Government system: Laws Part 3: Tour of different actions, and Executive Actions
   
7. New Government system: Districts
   
8. New Crafting: Work Parties
   
9. New Crafting: Labor System
   
10. New Crafting: Modules and Efficiency Redesign
    
11. New Crafting: New Tech Tree
    
12. New Building System: Hammer and new Building Styles
    
13. New Mining System: Mineral Dispersion and Drill Usage
    
14. New Mining System: New Processing Path and Pollution Info
    
15. New Animal System: Attacking Animals
    
16. New Ecopedia System
    
17. New UI
    
18. New Audio (This blog)
    
19. New Hosted Worlds System

From the beginning laws has been one of the driving features of eco, forming the glue between the three pillars of gameplay: economics, ecosystems, and government. It introduces a seldom-seen mechanic in games where the players within a world are designing the rules that govern it, rules that they themselves will be subjected to.

This strange, self-referential loop of laws – that they govern the very people that enact them – creates a new kind of challenge for players: to consider their own needs along side those of the group, of which they are apart. You have to think outside of yourself, take a holistic view of the situation around you, and design a system that will not only help you achieve your goals but be accepted by other citizens. The very act of engaging in this kind of systemic thought is powerful: considering yourself in the context of society, considering the needs and motivations of others and weighing them against your own is a huge part of empathy and building a better world. I believe both the most fun and the most powerful kind of learning happens in these situations, when you are given a challenge that requires a shift in perspective to solve.

And so it shouldn’t be surprising that laws are a major part of our new Eco 9 update, in fact they’ve been essentially entirely rewritten for 9.0, making them fundamental to all actions and stats in the game. What’s more, the foundation for the system has been updated quite a bit, so all future additions will be much easier and faster and more powerful. We’re set for the long-haul with this update for all kinds of crazy stuff we want to do with government, like towns/cities/countries.

If you’re familiar with Eco v8 and prior, you’ll remember laws are created in a webpage hosted by the Eco server. This has been changed to create them in-game, setting them via the new Court object:



Courts are setup as part of the government system (earlier blog here), which in 9.0 will be designed by players. You can decide who is allowed to set laws, or require that laws be passed by election (blog on elections and elected officers here). Each court holds up to three laws:



Since laws are civic objects, they are governed by the constitution, and may require elections to change. Thus on the second slot, you see a proposed law change that is currently under election. Fun fact: with all civics objects, you can update them via elections and all the usages of them will auto-update too (ie, if you update a district used by a law, that law will update to the new district when the election succeeds).

You’ll also see the icons for each law. These are a little visual language we created to represent what the law does. The left one, for example, shows an icon for currency creation, and prevention, meaning it’s a law about preventing currency creation. This lets you know at a glance what a law does, and those icons are reproduced wherever the law is referenced. Plus they look cool, like a kind of legal hieroglyphic.

So let’s dig into how the law works. Here’s a look at a basic law that prevents all chat.



With each law, you define a set of causes and effects. Here, the trigger is the action, ‘Chat Sent’. The effect is very simple in this case, Prevent. If this law is active and a citizen tries to chat, this is what they get:



So not an actual law you would use in the game, but an example for simplicity. What you have is basically a programming interface, where you create code that defines civics behavior in the game. Say we want to change the effect to tax instead of prevent. You can click the drop down by prevent and get the list of different effects that are available:



Choosing ‘Tax’, we then get a set of properties to configure, with some nice defaults:



Note the gear on the top left, clicking this shows the advanced properties:



By default, it targets the Citizen, which is whoever performed the interaction, in this case sending the chat. You can see that the icon for Citizen has the ‘Chat Sent’ icon to make this connection. You can change this if you want, but since usually it’s common to tax the person doing an action when performing a law, its hidden by default. This way we aim to streamline the process of creating laws, making it as simple as possible, but still have room for powerful stuff for advanced users.

If I click Citizen, I can pick other targets for the tax:



You can see both users and demographics/titles are included (check out demographic blog here). So if you want to get fancy, you can make an action that taxes a whole group instead of just a single person.

Next we can set the tax amount. This as well has flexibility for simple and powerful use. By default, you can just enter a number, like ‘1’ is entered here:



But if you click that dropdown, you get a whole slew of ways to define how they’re taxed:



Now you can use a calculation in determining how the tax amount is determined. Say we want to tax based on a percent of wealth. We can choose ‘Percent’ and for the value choose ‘Wealth’:



Now when you send a chat, it will tax you 10% of your wealth. Not exactly ‘free’ speech am I right (sorry).

You can see all this getting described in words as you construct it:



This is a nice check on what youre constructing: you can see it in both the constructible view with tables, and in plain English. Once this law is active (assuming the dubious result that it would actually get passed in election), you get this when trying to send a chat:



Town coffers being filled! With our chatty populace we’ll be building that new road in no time.

But wait, all this tax on communication could have a negative effect. Perhaps we want to make exception. That’s what the conditions are for. Let’s revise this law and add an ‘if’ clause:



Picking the drop down, we get a big list of ways to determine conditions:



Let’s make an exemption based on skill – highly skilled citizens can chat freely. So we select Skill Requirements:



And choose which skills we want to look at:



And there we go, it checks if they’re a carpenter and only taxes if they don’t have it.



Now when I try to chat, I’ll get some more detailed reasons:



We made it a goal to make laws very visible to players, so when one passes or fails it tells you why, and it tells you what effect was rendered. So here you’re getting taxed, and you know why (because you’re not a carpenter), and all the colored text can be moused over for more details.



So you see the approach we’re taking with laws and all civics actions: making them flexible and powerful, but simple to use, and with lots of documentation and data available at your fingertips to understand what’s going on. Don’t need a lawyer to get around in Eco, the goal is for most citizens to be actively engaged in the civics and economy systems, so everyone is part of the governance rather than an elite group of players.

For part 2 of the laws blog, I’ll get into the actions that you can detect and trigger very specific results on, which leads to all kinds of powerful results. And it’s a big list now indeed, here’s a small part of it:



Going forward, many new features will use what we’re showing here. For example, defining a conditional (Citizen must have carpentry) is an object on itself, meaning it can be used anywhere you want a conditional, and in fact it is used on Work Parties already, if you want to define who can join your work party:




This is one of the reasons we prioritized the civics system with Eco 9, because it requires a foundation that will be super useful for all the future features, and it’s come along great and will be a solid base for all that’s to come. We have a very flexible way to define causes, effects, conditionals, and all kinds of other logic that will apply to many parts of the future game. We’ll be sharing those ideas with you as well, and you can see a lot of them in the other new objects like demographics, wages, elections, etc.

And so we get a step closer to a lot of the bigger goals of Eco – where civic engagement by all players is necessary to save the world and prevent catastrophe. Where there are defined government positions that give powers to specific citizens, giving civic responsibility and power in a planned and efficient way, and having to think about how all that should be designed from the ground up. We’re already seeing some amazing societies being crafted with these new systems in our 9.0 test servers, and can’t wait to see what else people come up with.

I'll be covering the contents of this blog in our next livestream this Friday at 11am (11:00) PDT / 8pm (20:00) CEST, drop by and ask me your questions!

- John K., CEO, Strange Loop Games

Hello, I'm Leonard and I'm the audio director for Eco. I started working with Strange Loop Games in 2011 on Vessel and am happy to be back with the team again.

For version 0.9 we've been hard at work the past half year to improve and expand the audio content while also upgrading the existing audio system. The initial audio system for Eco was built using Unity and this has been entirely replaced by the Audiokinetic Wwise audio system. This new audio system allows us to move a lot faster when adding new content and includes many features not available in the regular Unity audio system.

Here's a list of our Eco Update 9.0 Blogs:

1. New Government system: Constitution
   
2. New Government system: Elections and Elected Titles
   
3. New Government system: Demographics and Wages
   
4. New Government system: Laws Part 1: Using the system
   
5. New Government system: Laws Part 2: Taxes, Ownership, Property, and Wealth
   
6. New Government system: Laws Part 3: Tour of different actions, and Executive Actions
   
7. New Government system: Districts
   
8. New Crafting: Work Parties
   
9. New Crafting: Labor System
   
10. New Crafting: Modules and Efficiency Redesign
    
11. New Crafting: New Tech Tree
    
12. New Building System: Hammer and new Building Styles
    
13. New Mining System: Mineral Dispersion and Drill Usage
    
14. New Mining System: New Processing Path and Pollution Info
    
15. New Animal System: Attacking Animals
    
16. New Ecopedia System
    
17. New UI
    
18. New Audio (This blog)
    
19. New Hosted Worlds System

As far as new sounds, we've added lots of sounds for animals, vehicles, crafting tables and tool to help make the experience much more immersive. I've recruited Phill Aelony (https://www.phillaelony.com/) as a composer to double the amount of music in the game and we’re working to have all the new songs react interactively with the game in the future.

Most of the sounds you hear in Eco 0.9 have been recorded and created by me for the game. I've spent days going to construction sites to record excavators, travelling to the top of a mountain to record icy wind sounds and built synthesis patches with mathematics to simulate the sound of wind turbines. The main goal of the audio is to support your experience in the game and help it come alive.

The following videos give a look into how some of the audio is made in Eco:










For more information on the audio in Eco, have a look at the upcoming Eco Tree and my Twitter profile @VideoGameAudio with the tag "#EcoGame". I'm also available on the Eco Discord so you can contact me there too.

I'll be doing a live stream this Friday, at noon (12:00) PDT / 9pm (21:00 CEST) and will go into lots more details about the audio, looking forward to seeing you online.

- Leonard Paul, Audio Director, Strange Loop Games

Hi everyone, my name is Milenko and I am the Art Director of ECO. Since I speak here rarely, before I start talking about UI, I would like to let you know where the art production is at and share a bit of an artist experience from our work so far.



Here's a list of our Eco Update 9.0 Blogs:

1. New Government system: Constitution
   
2. New Government system: Elections and Elected Titles
   
3. New Government system: Demographics and Wages
   
4. New Government system: Laws Part 1: Using the system
   
5. New Government system: Laws Part 2: Taxes, Ownership, Property, and Wealth
   
6. New Government system: Laws Part 3: Tour of different actions, and Executive Actions
   
7. New Government system: Districts
   
8. New Crafting: Work Parties
   
9. New Crafting: Labor System
   
10. New Crafting: Modules and Efficiency Redesign
    
11. New Crafting: New Tech Tree
    
12. New Building System: Hammer and new Building Styles
    
13. New Mining System: Mineral Dispersion and Drill Usage
    
14. New Mining System: New Processing Path and Pollution Info
    
15. New Animal System: Attacking Animals
    
16. New Ecopedia System
    
17. New UI (This blog)
    
18. New Audio
    
19. New Hosted Worlds System

Firstly, the Art team is working really hard at bringing more visual content to the game and we never stop. Many new assets are waiting in the cue to be plugged into the game. However, priority now is working through the latest increment, making it stable and making sure it runs smoothly. So while the engineering team is fixing and polishing the .9 update, the art team is assisting in anything we can help with, putting polish on as much art as possible without causing any issues ourselves and preparing assets for the versions to come.

Game systems are getting more intricate, vision more focused and complex and the game itself is getting more depth than before. As the technology improves, we, the art team, are getting the opportunity to make our game prettier and more appealing to the player. For me personally, making art for ECO is the biggest challenge I have had in my career so far, I am learning a lot and had to change my perspective and opinions about the game art compared to any previous experience I had.

With the world being procedurally generated and the amount of control given to the players, it is very hard for the art team to oversee and control the final look of the game we are creating. It is still possible to a sufficient extent, but the ways to do it are very different from the ones we as artists are used to. So it requires a bit of change in the way we think about how we do things.
Regardless of difficulties, it is a nice challenge and keeps us sharp and on our toes at all times. And that is a good thing.

I will try to write up a specific, longer blog post about art evolution on the game at some point soon. In regards to the User Interface, revisiting everything was a process that took months to bring it to the current stage. It took a lot of sketching, prototyping and many, many new art bits and the ways that they needed to be put together.

With ECO growing as an experience and reaching the stage where it is ready to move into the next phase of development, there was a need to revise most aspects of the existing User Interface so that the game becomes more streamlined, features more clear and obvious, player interactions easier to understand and the game overall easier to use.



In the course of past months, with a lot of hard work, game design has progressed and evolved and the game-play has become much more intricate with new features and more complexity.
Prior to 9.0, the User interface was mostly in the prototype phase and was often built on the spot in order to make a new feature functional.

So we wanted to make it more organized, prettier and overall more appealing. It meant breaking many old things and rebuilding them from scratch, coming up with the new common themes and overall unifying it as much as possible visually while making it easier for players to use.
In the course of the game development, and with many new features,new, specific, UI groups and functions unique to each other started to become necessary.

Thankfully, the current iteration has become faster and more responsive allowing the player to interact with the world and the game with fewer clicks. We came up with different themes for different interfaces, figured out how they work with each other, figured out the way we want to put them together and tried to make sure they work thematically with each other so the overall look still follows the same theme, and fits with the overall game style. Some animations and movement have also been introduced to help with the experience overall.
Following are some examples of the look for the new interfaces being built:

There is a main on-screen interface which is a redesign of the existing one allowing the player to keep tabs on main aspects of the gameplay.



Mini map got its own category, with minimized, popup and full screen versions, giving the players different options they can use based on their play. It is always visible now and adds to the game a lot.




There is a massive and complex Ecopedia UI, designed to assist players in understanding many aspects of the game. throughout the rest of the interface it can be accessed and should help in clarifying different game segments.



Laws interface allows players to craft civic and legal aspects of the game, helpful in organizing society and managing players' interactions with the world as well as each other.





Work parties interface is there for assisting in organizing and following various tasks throughout the game.





Skills interface is allowing the player to follow their progress and learn about different professions development.



Improvements go on and returning players will hopefully find them enhancing their previous experience and new players will find the overall interactions with the game easy and unobtrusive.

Of course, everything is still work in progress and the art style, features and visual functionality are developing and evolving together with the game itself. So the current state is an improved and more organised version of the previous one, and as the game development progresses visuals and style will change to adapt to the needs of the project.

The livestream covering this blog will be hosted on Sunday, May 31 at midnight PST / 9am CEST. We're aware this isn't optimal but due to me working from Australia it's the best slot we could get.

- Milenko Tunjic, Art Director, Strange Loop Games

Greetings Eco citizens! Todd here to present this week’s development blog focusing on our new Labor system for crafting. Labor introduces an exciting new layer to the economy which allows for a variety of new interactions between players.



Here's an overview of the Eco 9.0 blogs so far:

1. New Government system: Constitution
   
2. New Government system: Elections and Elected Titles
   
3. New Government system: Demographics and Wages
   
4. New Government system: Laws Part 1: Using the system
   
5. New Government system: Laws Part 2: Taxes, Ownership, Property, and Wealth
   
6. New Government system: Laws Part 3: Tour of different actions, and Executive Actions
   
7. New Government system: Districts
   
8. New Crafting: Work Parties
   
9. New Crafting: Labor System (This blog)
   
10. New Crafting: Modules and Efficiency Redesign
    
11. New Crafting: New Tech Tree
    
12. New Building System: Hammer and new Building Styles
    
13. New Mining System: Mineral Dispersion and Drill Usage
    
14. New Mining System: New Processing Path and Pollution Info
    
15. New Animal System: Attacking Animals
    
16. New Ecopedia System
    
17. New UI
    
18. New Audio
    
19. New Hosted Worlds System

In update 9.0, all crafting projects will require calories to be expended in the form of labor. When designing labor, we had a few key goals in mind:

• Encourage more collaboration through the new labor market
  
• Increase food demand during the modern eras of technology
  
• Create a need for dedicated crafters to consume calories

One of the design pillars of Eco is to balance the needs of society with the impact on the environment. Part of this is the need to dedicate large areas of cleared land to agriculture. To make this possible, a steady demand for food is needed.



Prior to the labor mechanic, as technology progressed and specialists became more proficient, the need for calories began to slowly decrease over time. Though resource gathering always consumed resources, many of the major industries had minimal calorie requirements. As a result, the market price for food tended to dip once larger farms were developed.

With the new labor system, progressively larger farms will be needed to supply the calories required for production. Advanced technologies will still increase the efficiency of resources use, but extra labor will be needed to keep up with the increased production.


Farmer using the new AoE Modern Hoe.

The labor market especially benefits farmers, hunters, and chefs. A constant flow of calories will be required to keep the economy running smoothly. To help keep up with this extra demand, we are introducing a variety of new bows and advanced farming tools (see tech tree blog). In addition, we are adding new food recipes for chefs that can accept a larger variety of ingredients.

Crafting in the real world requires work to be performed as part of the production chain. In 8.3, crafting simply required the necessary ingredients and an active crafting table. Some crafting tables had an additional power cost while operating, but otherwise players could operate near limitless crafting tables placed around the globe without needing much interaction. Update 9.0 addresses this by adding labor as an additional cost to recipes to represent the human component.


Crafting UI showing four different types of skilled labor costs.

All citizens can perform the basic labor needed for the early starter recipes to establish themselves. Beyond this, most recipes require skilled labor. To craft these recipes, labor must be provided by a citizen who has specialized in the related skill. More experienced specialists will be able to expend less calories while performing labor and help craft more advanced recipes.


Work order in progress with option to add labor.

Both resources and labor must be added before work on a project will begin. Labor can be added directly from the Crafting UI or by interacting with a placed crafting table. This encourages crafters to stay in closer proximity to crafting tables. While a work order is in progress, players will still be free to explore the world and interact with their surroundings, but work orders will occasionally need more labor added as new resources are acquired.

With this change, small producers will be able to find a role supplying towns with a local supply of resources. Large producers will have incentive to hire other specialists to perform the labor needed to keep their expansion stores stocked with inventory. Both scenarios make it easier for multiple players who share a specialty to contribute to society in their own way.

A major benefit of the labor mechanic is the addition of a labor market to encourage collaboration. Previously, we showcased how players can hire skilled laborers to contribute to their crafting projects (see work parties blog). We also previewed how new players will have an alternate route to progression by gaining experience while providing labor (see upgrade module blog). These are just some of the ways that labor will promote more interaction.


Economy Viewer showing different work parties available in the world.

Large scale projects, like researching new technologies and crafting new government buildings, require large amounts of labor and resources to be contributed. For big jobs like these that benefit the public good, there is incentive to have multiple citizens contributing labor to a single project. When collaborating on research projects, a work party can be created so all citizens that contributed will have access to the technology once completed.

Something we want to expand on in Eco in the future is the ability for players to form companies and act as a single corporation. Skilled labor, along with the new wage and work party systems, are important steps in this process. We are excited to see how players will use these new tools while establishing an economy.

With this blog we will be wrapping up our preview of the new crafting system for 9.0, but we still have plenty of content to showcase in our upcoming blogs. I hope you have enjoyed this look at the new labor system and I look forward to sharing more during this week’s stream.

- Todd Glenn, Developer, Strange Loop Games