This week we mainly improved the games performance and added new graphic settings. In addition we finalized the concept for temples in the game and started with the implementation. Remember that all changes will be published with the Alpha 11 release planned for May 1st.
Graphic Settings and Performance
The graphic settings now comes with options for the shadow quality and the details of textures and particles. Depending on your system this should allow you to increase the frame rate about 20% .
In addition to this Martin has been searching for performance bottle necks and memory leaks. He was lucky enough to find several of both so even without changing graphic settings Imagine Earth should run more smoothly.
The screenshot was take on a system without dedicated graphics adapter - so 30 fps is quite good.
Concept for Temples
Instead of plundering a temple you can also bring a sacrifice. This will give you access to the temple and it's powers. The powers include making fields fertile, starting a wildfire somewhere on the planet and even letting volcanoes erupt. To use them you have to wait until the "believe energy" is full. The time this takes depends on the amount of population in nearby buildings.
And how do these powers work? We don't know, but Twostone has kind of an explanation for it:
I would describe this power as a technology that we have not fully understood yet. But why shouldn't we use it?
What’s up next week?
We will build all necessary logic and user interface elements for the Illuminati temples and add them to the Bora mission.
If there is time left we will also add a new way of earning development funds that can be used to unlock technologies.
Also we will attend the price gala of the "Deutscher Computerspielpreis" where we are nominated for best game design. If you haven't voted for the audience award yet you should do it now: http://dcp-voting.gamezone.de