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Eco Report #5: Eco first stage of Vehicle Update is released!

Eco 7.4 is released on Steam, featuring the first set of new vehicles we’re adding! Check out this video for a look at them in action:

Our current focus for this release and the next upcoming releases is adding vehicles to the game.

Why vehicles?

The reason is that they fill an important role in the arc of the game. As the tech level of a server increases, the ability for the population to dramatically modify their world increases, thus increasing their impact and stress on the environment, which must be balanced out by strong civic development led by an engaged player base.

By the end of the game, players will have the capability to mine out huge mountains, build a skyscraper, and create farms spanning acres; and they will need to do this, in order to support the massive requirements of late-stage progress.  Along with this capacity to change the world on a large scale comes a huge risk to the ecosystem. The fact that this tech takes time to build to is important: as players are developing technology, they need to also be developing their civic rules, and if tech gets too far beyond civic rules (laws, taxes, etc that guide the server) it could lead to ecological disaster.

So vehicles, beyond being fun to interact with, fill an important slot in the game that will have a huge impact on all the systems of Eco: scaling player-impact on the environment to very large levels by end-game.  We have more vehicles we’re working on for the coming releases, so stay tuned for more, and a big official ‘Vehicle Update’ which we’ll make a lot of noise about in the future.
So without further ado here are the highlights from this release:

NETWORKING UPGRADE

  • We’ve upgraded our networking, fixing all known problems with connections across routers players were experiencing.  We also created a new server browser, shown below. Finding and joining online games will be much smoother now.

GARBAGE

  • You can now drop any non-carried items into garbage piles
  • If left alone, food items will decompose into nothing
  • If left alone, other items will become trash blocks which will cause minor pollution

VEHICLES

  • Added a modern pickup Truck!

  • Added the hand plough

  • Added a nimble Skid-Steer vehicle

MODS

  • Official integration with mod.io is now ready! https://eco.mod.io/
  • A server can subscribe to, download, and install mods from mod.io

For the complete change list go here.

Comments

Eco represents the next-generation of education, learning through self-driven, collaborative inspiration, where their learning directly impacts their goals. Video games have a tremendous power to capture the minds of students, and with Eco we want to channel that incredible potential into avenues that will set them up for success in the world to come.