Eco Report 4 – Garbage Incoming and 7.3 Released
We’re 7 weeks out from Early Access launch and the game has been growing fast, especially out of our native United States, which is cool to see considering we haven’t finished localizing yet! It’s been really satisfying hearing user stories about what happens in the game. For example, Twitch streamer Vortac held a debate before their election:
Eco was also featured on Venture Beat’s gaming podcast, where they did a deep dive, and really got to the heart of the matter when a global debate arose about whether they should guide their society with capitalism or communism. Shenanigans ensued:
“We made a mint, minted the currency and backed it with gold. We made around 650 Hay Pennies. …. While we were doing this, a guy out in the woods, who was not part of our society. He was making his own mint and he ended up minting like 5000 official currency that would work at any store. It was called Pound Sterling. No one’s using it yet, but it’s just sitting out there as a threat. … As we realized this individual was building his own mint, there was a rush to impose a law, that said no more mints could be built. I post that law as I saw him starting, I knew what he was doing, he had built a kiln and learned a certain ability. I bet he’s trying to make a mint we need to pass that law.”
The fact that people are doing such varied and interesting things with the economy, and getting into conceptual discussions about it brings joy to my soul, working as intended, and we still have tons more systems to add (debt and bonds are coming and that’s going to be a fun one). There’s so much potential for emergent player stories in playing with systems like this and we want to really take it far.
Upcoming Feature
In the immediate future though we have a surprise feature we’re going to sneak in before the vehicle update, and the feature is trash. Really, it’s literally garbage.
Garbage
Now you’ll be able to drop items anywhere, and they’ll sit on the ground for awhile and you can pick them up, but if you don’t they will either turn into permanent, polluting, disgusting garbage or if they’re plant-based they will biodegrade into compost. This will be another negative resource that societies will have to plan for and handle (or don’t, and see what it does to the world), and the amount generated by players will ramp up as tech increases. That’s coming in 7.4.
But today is our 7.3 release, and we have lots of new performance and stability improvements, as well as bugfixes and some small features. Here’s the list:
Change Log
Tons of bug fixes!
Features
- Localization system first-draft added to the game! Will be expanding it and adding translations into other languages.
- Added a framed glass door
- Added new steel lighting solutions: table lamp, ceiling light, and standing lamp.
- World markers now appear on a list in a Minimap panel.
- You can now see all markers on the minimap and click them.
- Added the concept of “global markers” which can be set by the server leader and will be displayed to everyone. These can be hidden per-user.
- ‘Add Marker’ in the minimap will add to where you’re looking at.
- Added Steam Friend Listing in the server browser
- Adds and fixes of functionality to ServerWatcher
For the complete 7.3 change log, click here.
We’re also continuing on with our vehicle update, and elevators are just about in-game. We have a bunch more vehicles we’ll be adding too.