Category: Union Update

Union Update: A toast to Anno 1602

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

It was 20 years ago, in March 1998, when the Anno series first raised anchors and set sails to conquer the PCs of gamers everywhere. Anno 1602 would go on to have a long lasting impact on strategy fans and the genre, spawning six follow-up titles in the main PC series over the next two decades- not to mention several other adaptions and spin-offs on platforms like the Nintendo DS, Wii, mobile or tablets.

To really take a trip down memory lane, and to make those of you who were with us from day one feel sufficiently old, let’s take a look at the game’s system requirements:

Operating System: Windows 95 / 98
CPU: Pentium 100 Processor
RAM: 16 MB RAM
GPU: PCI graphics adapter with 2 MB
Sound Processor: DirectX 6.0 compatible or better
Hard Drive: 160 MB
Drive: 4x CD-ROM

For the younger Anno fans among the audience- yes, that really says 16 megabyte (!) of RAM. The times, they are a-chaning in the Anno world! Another fun anecdote is that at the time of release, both gamers and gaming press alike stylized Anno as the big new challenger to Blue Byte’s beloved Settlers series, which was at the time the benchmark title in the historic city-building genre. Fast forward two decades, and the once fierce rivals are now a happy family united under the Ubisoft Blue Byte banner, with our Düsseldorf studio working on the ever-popular Settlers Online, while we in Mainz develop Anno 1800. It is a small world, after all.

With Anno 1800, we want to go back to our roots while utilizing the knowledge we gained over so many years. From humble beginnings 14 years ago, the team has grown together with the Anno series and our fans but many old veterans are still part of the team, while new additions to the team bring their creative and inspiring visions to the table.

While this week marks the 20th anniversary of the series, we want to celebrate Anno and our communities of fans out there throughout the whole year. Starting this week, we will host a small celebration live-stream this Wednesday at 4pm CET. There is enough space left in our time machine, so join us when we play old classic while probably eating some cake and losing ourselves in memories. There will be probably some talks about CRT monitors. However, keep your expectations in check- this stream will be about the series’ history, and won’t include any Anno 1800 news or footage.

Complete your Anno Collection with the Uplay Spring Sale
Did the nostalgic trip down memory lane make your fingers itch for some old-school Anno? If so, you are in luck- the Uplay Spring Sale is running all week until the end of March, including some great discounts on all the older Anno games and DLC packs. It is the perfect excuse to complete your collection in one go!

Buy your missing Anno games on Uplay

Anno Cast 03 aired last Thursday
Last week, our Anno Cast streaming show finally came out of hibernation. In case you’ve missed it, you can just watch the saved broadcast on our Twitch channel.

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Watch AnnoCast 03 – Anno 1800 GameDev show from ubisoftbluebyte on www.twitch.tv

During the show, we answered some questions from our community, chatted a bit about the development process and demonstrated how the trade routes work in our gameplay section. Here are some of the answers from our stream:

OneClickLP: Why is the sun moving together with the camera, resulting in shadows turning with the camera angle?
Answer: When playing the game, you move the camera around a lot while also going through different camera angles. We want that, no matter from which angle you play, you always get the best scenery and lighting, which has been an Anno hallmark since the early days. However, you can choose whether the sun is moving with the camera or should remain fixed in the options menu.

loex1337: Talking about the working conditions, will there be sings for an imminent strike?
Answer: Yes, there will be visual feedback in the game and also context menus which enable you to get insights into the current happiness and developments in your city.

BlueBreath: I wonder if you also implemented an operating costs adjustment for buildings proportional to percentage of filled work spots.
Answer: A factory has not necessarily less operation cost if you are not able to keep your production fully going. However, things like that are in fact more complicated in reality. For Anno 1800, we do not want to overburden the micro-management part, so the operation cost won’t be affected by the working conditions.

Community: Is it possible to get high definition pictures from some of the concept arts and other screenshots you used on the Union? I would love to use them as a wallpaper.
Answer: We are currently working on a big web update and a new community section will be an important part of that. With the new community section, we want to create a space to highlight community creations and fan sites but also provide wallpapers and some other requested assets.

Palemale53: Will I need to satisfy the needs of my inhabitants separately on each island?
Answer: All buildings unlock globally but if you establish a second island, you will need to fulfill your residents’ needs in order to level them up to higher tiers or to keep them happy.

banan1996.1996: How does transferring workforce between island work? Will ships be needed for that?
Answer: You won’t need to build or use your existing ships to transfer your workforce. However, there will be a proper visual representation for workforce being moved to other islands. The system will have some similarities to the energy transfer from Anno 2070, but we will share more details at a later stage.

XGrindYourMindX: Will there be unemployment or is workforce overhead just waiting quietly?
Answer: We tried many things during the early conception phase but we do not think that managing the employment of your residents would do the game any favor. With other resource, operation cost and especially construction management (not talking about trading and other economic aspects), the game can get already pretty complex and deep if you want to make use of all features.

zelsphere: My guess is all these beautiful buildings must be using 2k resolutions textures, with diffuse, spec/gloss, and normal how are you you able to run the game so smoothly with all these buildings utilize such high texture maps?

Dawnreaver: Would it be possible to go into more detail on the technical aspects? I know that previous versions of the engines worked with LODs, but do they also batch the textures?
Answer: Indeed we can’t keep all the textures in memory. We dynamically load them depending on the current camera location in the game. Textures that haven’t been used for a long time are kicked out of memory. One challenge for a strategy game is the highly dynamic camera, e.g. sudden camera jumps via the minimap: If a building’s texture is suddenly needed but isn’t loaded yet, we usually have at least a low-resolution version in memory. In the meantime the high-res version starts loading in the background. With that said, a buildings’ texture size actually depends on its grid size, so a 3×3 building has smaller textures than a large factory. Finally, our buildings usually have albedo, normal, gloss, metallicity and ambient occlusion textures, all BC7-compressed. Some of them are packed into other ones (e.g. normal and gloss are a single texture map)

We are looking forward to the stream this Wednesday and hope that many of you join to share their own Anno anecdotes with us. As the Easter weekend is coming up, there won’t be a DevBlog this week, and no Union Update next Monday.

Union Update: First focus-test has concluded

Posted on by Bastian Thun

This week in the Anno Union, we return to the life of your factory workers and explain how your power over their working conditions can not only impact the productivity of your economy, but also the happiness of your residents. More residential tier DevBlog’s are on the way in the future, accompanied by more details about Anno 1800’s feature set as it opens up during your gameplay progress.

The first Anno Union focus-test has concluded
Over the course of the last two weeks, we gave a dozen Union Members the chance to test the development version of Anno 1800. The dedication and effort all of our Union testers put into their reports and detailed observations was astounding, providing dozens of pages with valuable data for our team.
But it’s not only about additional learnings for the game’s improvements; knowing when a feature works as intended and if the gameplay flow feels rewarding and satisfying is easily as important to us as new ideas. In theory, you can develop a game for decades, continuously improving and adding features and as a result, never getting the product ready for the release. For that reason, positive feedback helps us to know if we are on the right track with the game and its existing list of features.

So what is next? The first thing we need to do is to create an aggregated report, combining all the feedback from the playtest, which then needs to get discussed to identify action points to further improve or develop.
The success of the first test demonstrated that the combination of feedback collected via the Union, events and playtests creates an effective synergy of data to work with.
As it was only the beginning, we will continue to leverage the knowledge from our community with future Anno Union focus tests. As always, we will keep you in the loop and updated as soon as we are about to open the second focus test group.

Anno Cast 03 this week Thursday, March 22nd, 4.30pm CET
Anno Cast 03 goes live this week, break a leg! This Thursday, we will discuss some current and past development of the game, how the Union feedback helps us in all stages of development and of course, show you Anno 1800 in action again. As with previous episodes, we will also answer some questions, some of them previously gathered in the comments (so keep asking) and others during the actual show.

As always, we will publish a blog this Thursday to watch the stream live on the Anno Union.

Union Update: A postcard from the world fair

Posted on by Bastian Thun

Welcome to our latest Community Update! Before we move over to this week’s content, do not forget to vote for the community island in the voting box to the right. Many of you are curious about the size difference between each island but do not worry, we saved a spot among the larger island no matter which one makes first place.

This weeks DevBlog: Residential Tier II – workers
With our next DevBlog, we will leave our charming farming village and take a cab to the brick stone city suburbs, where the working folks find some rest after a long day in our smouldering factories. More and more pieces coming together and the second residential tier is the big first step into the industrial revolution.

Anno Cast 03 will air next Thursday, 22nd of March at 4.30pm CET on: twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte
Due to sickness, we sadly have to postpone the third episode of our AnnoCast livestream by a week. It will be a great chance for us to show you a few of the previously tackled topics in detail and to answer questions from our community. If you won’t be able to make it to the live-stream, feel free to drop questions in the comment section below or in the live-stream blog, which will go up shortly before the stream starts next Thursday.

But before we end todays update, we want to share something with you. Inspired by your great entries to the story contest and previous Union votes, here comes a letter from a visitor of the monumental world fair and admirer of the “Architectural Wonders” exhibition:

Dear, beloved committee,

It is no exaggeration to say your exhibition “Architectural Wonders” was for my friends and I, not merely a great exhibition, but a life-altering one!
Upon hearing a World’s Fair was come to Bright Sands, we booked our cruises, and jammed our portmanteaus to the gills with the finest hats and dresses. A long and expensive trip it was sure to be, but as we would discover, one thoroughly worthwhile.
As our ship puffed into the bay, there was considerable excitement – we tourists are not altogether so hard to please – for the city that unfolded before us was mesmerising! A beautiful bustling skyline that would grace any postal card. Already in high spirits, we wondered what scintillations must await us at the World’s Fair itself.

“A miscellany of modern farming equipment?” someone suggested. “Oh what a dreary thought!” we all laughed. “I heard it might be ship fixings…” said another, “…and I think we have seen quite enough of those!” This of course, tickled us so greatly, it all became rather embarrassing!
But when we saw the city turned out in their best clothes, chests bursting with pride, we soon struck the crinkles from our crinoline. After all, we were the honoured guests, participants in a global celebration of the age. This was something we may never chance to see again in our lifetimes.

 As we stepped into the hall, great gasps rose to the glass-iron canopy. Never in our lives had we seen such innovation, such bewildering and copious inspiration. Ornaments of modern form and style, hitherto inconceivable, bedecked the galleries and walkways. Master masons and sculptors chiselled expertly in pure white stone. From a soapbox, the esteemed Mr Burnett declaimed his genius, demonstrating precisely how the modern bridge might be engineered and erected. Vast books of plans and patterns fascinated with their particulars.

Before long we were quite spent, and so were our purses! We all spent more than ever we had planned, but such an unforgettable visit merited every shiny penny. We all agreed to return at the drop of a hat, should another such exhibition ever take place in Bright Sands, which I’m certain you, as the organisers, will be most delighted to hear.

Ever yours,

Your glowing admirers.

Union Update: A message to our community

Posted on by Bastian Thun

In this week’s Community Update, we want to appreciate the driving force behind the Anno Union: You, our Fans and Union members who give us valuable feedback, support us and – not to forget – share your creative energy with us.

We were blown away by not only the amount of entries, but also by the many different creative takes on the contest such as letters, newspapers, stage plays and many more.
You might imagine that it was not easy for us to pick our three favorites out of so many great entries. And for that reason, we decided to honor five entries for the third and two entries for the second place. Our big “thanks” to everyone who participated and we hope that you enjoyed writing these entries as much as we enjoyed reading them.

Without further ado, congratulation to all the winners:

1st Place – Velerios1 – 1701 Collector’s Edition signed by the team
2nd Place – Aleera_Gorvan, Sermo2010 – Not exactly a surprise 1701 Goodiebag J
3nd Place– DiruKamachi, alleria.sb, Chris.666, Bellasinya, RayoOyar – A signed copy of a previous Anno game (we let you know between which games you can choose)
As mentioned, we will get in contact with you to sort out all the details.

And there is more to come this week: the next stage of our island contest, plus some mail from a visitor of our world fair exhibition.

Focus Test:
The first group of testers have been invited, so you can expect small updates about the playtests in the weeks to come. If you did not make it into the first test, no worries: we will have several tests throughout the year and will let the Union know when we are about to open new focus groups.

Anno Cast is returning March 15th
Our stream will finally return in 2018 with its first episode airing March 15th 4:30pm. As ongoing construction work in our studio forced us to move the streaming room temporarily, the scenery might look a little bit different. We will share more details about the show next week Monday!

Union Update: Workforce and production isles?

Posted on by Bastian Thun

A turbulent month is coming to its end, as quite a few new features were introduced, and we are currently busy tying up a few loose strands from before.
We will send out the focus test invitations for the first group of testers pretty soon, so keep an eye on your mailbox. For the playtest, we had to do some additional polishing on our development version of the game, which lead to a slight delay to early March.

We plan to bring you the long awaited update regarding the writing contest next week; in addition, we will present you the finalists for the upcoming island voting. It was not an easy task for us to select the finalists from over 100 amazing entries!
After our big introduction to Anno’s residential tier system, this week’s DevBlog will bring the stars of the first tier to the stage: enter the farmers of Anno 1800.
To see that the blog resonated with so many of you made us happy and we are looking forward to showing you some of the features in action in the next AnnoCast.

But before we tease too much about the upcoming month, let’s move over to this week’s community C&A:

Community QnA

Community Many of you are curious how exactly the trade routes work between sessions.
Sebastian: As many of you assumed correctly, it will take some time until a ship reaches another session. Here an example:
We have an island in session A, which produces a good currently needed in Session B. We start with creating a route to send the ship to pick up the goods in session A. When loaded, it will travel to the border of the map in order to leave session A. It will now take some travel time until it finally at the map border of session B. I cannot give you more specific details about the exact length of the travel time as of yet, as we are still working on the right mixture between realism and good gameplay flow. Ships should need some time to travel across the ocean but it should not take too long to affect the gameplay negatively.

fabian_eiter Will I need to create residential buildings on every isle separately in order to generate the needed workforce for my production?
Dirk: The short answer: No. The more detailed explanation: Generally speaking, you will always need residential buildings to generate workforce, like farmers taking care of the crops. However, it will be the case that some of your islands do not need your entire workforce. You will be able to transfer such workforce overhead to your production isles.
It is up to you whether you want to generate your workforce on your production islands or to transfer them within your empire. We will provide more in depth details about the workforce system in a future blog.

Annorevolution The high tier residential buildings from early screenshots seem to be 3×6 in size. Does that mean that these kinds of buildings will not be in the release version of the game? How do you plan to create an organic looking cityscape?
Basti: Higher tier residential buildings will connect to create dense house facades, similar to the system from Anno 1404. That allows us to create the look of connected big housing complexes based on several smaller units. The screenshots, which show a modern metropolis in the 19th century, are representative of the look we aim for with the release version of the game.

Gxy12 Will the new workforce system require that you use lower tier residents in higher tier production buildings, or even buildings which rely only from workers from lower tiers?
Basti:Workforce will not be limited to their specific tier, so you will be able to utilize your lower tier workforce for some production buildings from a higher tier. For more details about the workforce system, keep an eye on future DevBlogs on the Union, as this topic will get some more coverage in near future.

otacon2002: What is going on with the trains? Do you have any information how trains will work?
Basti: We are working on it to tackle some of the most burning topics in near future. We wouldn’t do the bigger features a favour if we would just drop some details in a community Q&A. We hope that we will soon be ready to give you some insights on Anno 1800s trains, a topic where the team is really curious about feedback from the Anno Union.

Union Update: Islands galore and community Q&A

Posted on by Bastian Thun

It might be the coldest month of the year, but neither the development nor the Anno Union suffers from the winter blues. As announced, we will relentlessly bring you weekly DevBlog’s about fundamental core mechanics of the series. This week, you can look forward to the start of a whole series about Anno 1800’s residential tiers. We will highlight the artistic vision behind their design, their importance for the setting and their importance for Anno’s gameplay!

Talking about passionate topics: we want to say thanks for everyone participating in the island contest. We got flooded with a crazy amount of amazing entries and our team is currently going through every single one of them in order to present you the finalists as soon as possible. A big thumbs up from the team!

Some time has passed and we will announce the winners of or previous writing contest soon. We made our choice already and had a cool idea how we could properly present the winning stories. This caused a slight delay but rest assured, we lift the curtain in an upcoming Union Update.

Another update about the next AnnoCast and the Community Roundtable is on the horizon. We got plenty of feedback about the first roundtable and we guess that many of you look forward to another evening chat between the Anno Union and the development team?

Before we head over to the community Q&A part of the update, we like to give you some general information about the focus playtest: We all know that you can’t wait to hear more about the tests, specifically their exact starting date. Please keep in mind that the tests are under a strict NDA, and therefore, we won’t provide full coverage on the tests. However, we will briefly talk about the focus-playtests in blog articles and let you all know when they invitations for the first group are out.

Community Q&A

Drake-1503
Resources are important for almost all strategic elements of the game, so please give us adaptable and varied settings when generating an endless-match. Why shouldn’t it be possible to just define the amount of resources? “Unlimited – high – low” would be sufficient to create a rich variety of scenarios and end the endless discussions about the pros and cons of unlimited lodes.
Sebastian: Limited lodes would make the flow of the game much more convoluted and interrupt the gameplay, especially in the already more complicated late game portion of a match. Furthermore, you will be able to claim a high amount of islands across different sessions in Anno 1800. Micro managing every single one of them could end up being quite a daunting task.
Let’s say we have limited lode capacity, that means we would need to create interesting systems to refill the resource lodes.  Just using “a bit of cash” to refill them would not be enough, because think about it: how wants to be frequently reminded that one of your dozen mines depleted just to press a simple button. That is neither challenging nor fun.
We would be able to create a nice system around it, but it would cost us time developing said feature. Even if it looks like a minor feature, we would need allocate time from other content to realize it. Up to this point, the feature just was not that important for us in order to push something else back. The plenty of feedback we got in the last DevBlog made us realize how important a complex lode system is for the community. For that reason, our team will start an internal discussion based on your feedback.

TheYSeaMeRoamin
It might be worth to think about making content, which is matter of controversy in the community, just an optional part of the game. That would allow everyone to create his or her individual game experience. In that case, you would also need to be careful to not make the customization options too complicated but still offer enough to allow for an exciting variety.
Basti: We always need to keep the overall scope of the development in mind. We want to give you a broad variety of game options, as replay-ability is for the community and for us an important aspect of an Anno game. As you mentioned it already, we need to be careful to not overwhelm players with too many options, as just “adding more” is not always beneficial for the quality of a game. Here comes the Anno Union into play, as the program allows us to present you features to get detailed feedback from our communities.

Mark-WilliamK
I hope that you will be able to see steam powered machines used in production buildings, as it was the time where steam became a part of agriculture and heavy industry alike.
Basti: As mentioned in the last stream, the technological advancements of that era will be represented in the game in various ways. Keep an eye on the blogs of the upcoming weeks, as we will walk you through the core elements of the game and through the advancements of the 19th century. With Anno 1800, progression should feel like a journey through the century.

Azrael5111
So far, blogs got always released on a Monday or Thursday and between these days, I check the website only on occasionally. How about the option to opt in for a newsletter, which informs you when a new blog is online?
Basti: We usually aim for the same frequency of days to publish our blogs but sometimes, the amount of blogs or even the publishing date can varys. We got some good feedback about that during our community roundtable and we plan to bring you a chance to subscribe to the blog with the next web update. It probably will not be a classic newsletter though, as we want to reserve that for important events and topics.

ruuti0
I heard that people who work in Ubisoft usually have a Degree (University Degree), but what kind of education people who work in Quality Assurance team exactly have?
Dorina: There is no special “tester degree”. We have very different background in QA. Political scientists, Geographers, Sociologists, Media Designers and Computer Specialists. This is important, as these allows us to have a diversified expert view on the product. The different mindsets are incredibly valuable when identifying issues. Beside this, the company permits the testers to get their ISTQB-Certificate (specific software testing certificate).

Arandur87
I am curious how you can get into game development yourself, especially how you can land a job in QA or QC?
Dorina: Many colleagues in our QA department started in a temporary position and during their time here, they demonstrated their skills and passion for the project.  That leads to many QA tester starting as career jumper or newcomer to game development.

schwubbe1980, Squ4wk, Oldsmobile1963, DiruKamachi
About difficult issues and the amount of bugs during development….
Dorina: It really depends on the scope, size and the lifecycle of a project. During the various development stages of a game, you encounter a high amount of bugs, which also absolute normal state for every project. Think about it, before a game comes together during Alpha, it is a bare framework of features, which are not fully integrated into the game yet. Bugs are prioritized by the impact on the game and how long it will take to solve them. Based on that evaluation, every issue has an estimate of workhours it will cost to solve it. The real bug hunting becomes interesting in the later stages of the game, when many if of the features get implemented into the client as we come closer to the final release version of the game.

Union Update: Quality Assurance and Q&A

Posted on by Bastian Thun

Welcome back to our newest Union Update, today with a short teaser about what’s to come before we move over to answer some of your burning questions.

Many of you answered our call for player created islands and your creative submissions have been in the center of internal discussions already. Some of you wondered if the map needs to be a digital drawing and if the use of a specific program is required. To clarify, you can submit a hand drawn map in form of a scan or uploaded photo. When it comes to format, we prefer .JPG or .PNG and the shape/color comparison is not mandatory, it just makes it easier for us to get a quicker idea of the design of your island.

You can find more information about the island creation contest here: https://www.anno-union.com/en/union-update-island-creation-contest/

We bet that most of you encountered various bugs in your gaming life, is a topic often discussed with passion in communities. For that reason, our QA team invites you to learn one or two things about quality assurance for Anno 1800. If you ever wondered how a QA team operates or how complex the game development really is, we will provide answers in our next DevBlog.
With the QA blog, the Behind the Scenes content will take a short break, as we want to highlight a few important game elements in the upcoming weeks. The look behind the scenes will return at a later stage and we can already tell that the Union gave us some cool ideas for future topics.

While we take about a short break, there is something called “Rosenmontag” in Germany, basically German carnival. As it seems that the folks around Mainz are really into it (and it is a bank holiday in our county), the usual Union Update will return February 19th.

Community Q&A

Craftingfan
Hi, I would like to know if the game will have a diplomacy feature like the one in 1404. Itt was sad that you were not be able to form an alliance in 2070, as I am a fan of both titles.
Basti: Diplomacy will play a role in Anno 1800, an important feature that deserves its own dedicated Devblog, as interactions with NPC’s are a great tool to benefit the games complexity. Diplomacy ads not only another gameplay layer, it also encourages different playstyles and gives the cast of Anno 1800s AI depths to each’s unique character and quirks.

MattMcCorman
In 1602 and 1503, coastlines on islands were extremely long, you could place contors nearly anywhere – even several on one island in 1503.
With 1701, beaches became way shorter (okay, the oriental islands in 1404 had fairly long beach segments) and the new islands shown for 1800 had all short beach segments. Is there a reason for the limitation, such as technical restrains caused by the trade route system or gameplay reasons (challenges, landing military, island protection etc.)?

Basti: There are different factors that play a major role in our island design. Beaches play an important role in the actual gameplay. Limiting the amount of beaches for an island forces the player to think strategically, as the position of a harbor encourages establishing production districts to ensure an effective transport of goods. The amount of beach segments varies from isle to isle and as variety is important for us, many islands will haven even more than two of them. We have not shown many islands as of yet but we are confident that players will like the handcrafted set of distinctive islands Anno 1800 will have to offer. By the way, 1404’s biggest beach segments were roughly 50 grids in size, while Anno 1800 will have beaches with way over 100 grids and with that, allow you to build big and extensive harbors.
When it comes to level design, it allows us more visual variety for the coastlines similar to the uneven terrain on the island. If you look back on the islands in 1404, you will notice that the flat islands had only two design elements: mountains and beaches. With the use of cliffs, valleys, plateaus and other elements, we can create more natural looking limitations for Anno 1800.

DiruKamachi
How many faces, surfaces and polygons are used for an average map?
Are you allowed to tell us what kind of hardware you use? I am especially interested if you use several CPUs at once, what kind of video card and how much RAM you use.
Simon: That is actually hard to put in numbers. We make use of different techniques such as GPU-tessellation, which sends only rough squares (patches) to the GPU, which can further be broken down to triangles when viewed from a distance. That allows us to show every tiny detail from the 3D geometry close up while it uses the simpler triangles when zoomed out.
Regarding the hardware, we have workstations with different setups depending on the workspace. We make use of high performance CPUs with several cores, a lot of RAM (usually 64gig) and usually use high end gaming video cards rather than rendering cards.

Sabdrian
Is Ubisoft open for the idea to release a smaller, trimmed down version of anno 1800 for home consoles, such as the Nintendo Switch?
Basti: We want to concentrate on the PC version of Anno 1800, as it is the platform where Anno’s gameplay and complex features shine. We cannot say if there will other versions of the game in future as of yet. We want to invest all of our development energy in a great PC release version of the game.

Der3ine
Will it be possible to customize your player profile, as it was the case with Anno 2070 and other Anno games before? I am talking about player color, title, maybe starting ship or skins for different things in game?
Basti: Customization of your player profile hereby confirmed 😀
What kind of options and to what extend is something we could probably demonstrate best in a future stream.

Vernandes
How complex will the production chains be? I liked the complexity in Anno 1404, as it was hard to progress far into the game without getting bankrupt. Everything was expensive and the income was not exactly high. Taking the time to produce everything was the main driver for me. The difficulty level and complexity is something I would love to see in Anno 1800.
Achtarm124
How about a blog where you describe your approach to consumption of production chains which require at least two resources?
Basti: We do not want to spoil too much but after we talked about the many aspects of Anno 1800’s logistic system, we will tackle the civilization tiers and their production chains soon. With the next Anno, we want to provide challenges for experienced players while also offer the gameplay freedom to overcome them in various ways. Complexity plays an important role here and the production chains are a core gameplay element of the game. We don’t want to have a too difficult start for new players, especially as veterans usually rush through the early portion of the game with ease. In the spirit of the industrial revolution, we want to raise the complexity when advancing through the tiers.

Enterprise737
Will there be a visible difference between the citizen tiers? Like a distinctive working class district which is separated from the other classes.
Basti: Civilization tiers are more than a game mechanic as they play a leading role to bring the 19th century to life. Keep an eye on the Union, as we will highlight that topic soon.

AmpeImann
Quick question, do we actually need to register to participate in a focus session, or will active Anno Union members be invited to participate without having first to apply to participate?
I haven’t seen anywhere to apply yet, am I missing something or have applications not started?
Basti: Applying for the focus-tests is mandatory for everyone. Rest assured that we keep track of the Union activity of players who apply for a test. Here the link to the application page: https://www.anno-union.com/en/playtests/

Union Update: Island creation contest

Posted on by Bastian Thun

What an exciting week it has been thanks to the big announcement of the upcoming Union focus-playtests and a passionate look inside in the work of our level art team.
This week, it is time for the next DevBlog in our logistic series, where we will demonstrate how we bring back both complexity and freedom of choice with Anno 1800’s trading routes.

While you will hear back about the story contest winners soon, today we want to fuel your creativity once more:

The Union Island creation contest
Islands design has been a matter of passionate community discussions for a long time now and you shared plenty of interesting ideas and suggestions in last week’s DevBlog.
While we love to take inspiration from your ideas, there is also a creative power in the Anno Union, and we want to use that energy to its fullest potential- so we decided to give our Union the chance to bring a true community created map into the game.

We kick off our official Union island creation contest today and we are looking for your interesting takes on the Anno island formula. The best entries get the chance to become something truly special, as we will put the best maps up for a vote on the Anno Union and the winning island shape will get implemented into the game.

Here are the details:
– The deadline for the contest is Thursday, February 15th and you can post your entry here: Island Creation Contest
– You design your own island shape, you can either do it digitally or send us a scan of your drawn image. – Your island should be a clearly visible island shape shown in top down view.
– Your shape should include terrain elements such as mountains and hills as well as marked spaces for beaches. Keep in mind: if something is not marked as a beach, it is counted as a cliff-side.
– Finally , but very importantly, add interesting details and obstacles. We are curious about your interesting ideas but make sure that things do not get too crazy.
– A picture of your island is mandatory but you can post a short description and the gameplay ideas behind your concept in the forum as well.


Here is an example of shape and drawn areas. 

Focus Playtest requirements and questions
We got plenty of detailed and well thought out applications but we also know that there are some burning questions regarding the focus playtests. Instead of answering every single question in the QnA part separately, we decided to provide some extended details on the playtest and will overhaul the FAQ on the playtest page this week.

Deadlines and do I need to apply again for future playtests?
The application process has no deadline attached and you won’t need to apply for each test separately. Several test sessions will run over the course of the year and we will pick testers always from an aggregated list of applicants, which we will frequently update over time.

If I am invited once, will I be able to play on every future focus test?
You won’t – while we might invite people more than once, we want a variety feedback from different players and for that reason, we will change testers for every focus group. Later tests might require data from bigger groups, so just keep an eye on the Union for future information on that matter.

What are the exact system requirements?
Many of you were curious about the time requirements of the first test. While we aim to provide many options to customize your experience for the final game, our early development version is not optimized yet. That means that performance is subject to change and that the hardware requirements are not representative. It is hard for us to tell right now, but you will most likely need a PC which runs 2205 with at least recommended specs.

Why do I need to be 18+?
We are aware that there are many younger Anno fans out there. The minimum age is a legal requirement as the playtest will be subject of a strict NDA. Remember that we give players access to the in-development version of the game. The NDA requirements might change in a later stage of development and we will keep you updated in future Union Updates.

I can’t play one hour every day, why is it not possible to play just 14 hours over the weekend?
We are aware that at least one hour a day over the course of two weeks is a lot of commitment and not feasible for everyone. Future playtests can vary in length, but for the moment we need detailed feedback on a daily basis from testers.
The one hour is a minimum requirement and as mentioned, you can play as long as you have time during the focus test. We will monitor bugs, might perform changes and fixes to the client as well as ask for specific feedback about certain game elements on a daily basis. Because of that, playing the minimum daily time altogether on a weekend is unfortunately not possible.

Will Uplay be required to test the game?
Yes, Uplay will be a requirement for the focus tests.

I am disappointed that activity in the Union was not taking into account for the application process!
As mentioned on the playtest page, constructive behavior is a requirement to be eligible for playtesting. It makes no sense for us to ask you how active you are in the Anno Union or the Ubisoft forum, as we can gather these data on our own. Activity as well as other community engagement is an absolute plus.

How do feedback and bug reports work, will I have someone to talk to if I encounter problems during the focus test?
We will offer support from a dedicated testing team to all testers. We will provide the exact details if you get invited to a test but rest assured that we have a process and the needed tools for feedback collections and reports.

Community QnA

SnakeHunter84
Do all islands have only a small amount of beaches? Is it the rule that mountains surround islands rather than rising from the middle?
Simon: The beaches are the only spots allowing access to your island. However, you will usually have several beach slots available, depending on the size of an island.
Mountains are not limited to the borders of the playing area, and there will be islands in the game where hills and mountains ascend from the center. We want a variety gameplay challenges and scenarios, and the placement of a mountains and other terrain has a strong influence on the difficulty.

DiruKamachi
We are curious how many tiles the island shown in the blog has? When you work on the surface details, it seems that you work on one big object, and that before you structure the sectors of the island. How are you doing that? Additionally, I would like to know what kind of textures you use? And how do you ensure that your textures don’t look like repeating tiles? 80 hours of work for one island, I guess that more than one person works on one island?
Simon: Our islands are one big 3D element, which we are able to completely modify and edit as a whole. It is not segmented by separate elements. Our tools allow us to define the construction space while we work on the object. There are several methods and ways of handling textures, such as “Seamless Textures” or “Tint Maps”, which can prevent unwanted tiling effects. But that is a complex topic in itself and like always, often a combination of different techniques. The 80 hours for an island are the average time spent but we share the workload with several team members.

ruuti0
I have one question, did this thing that it can take 80 hours map time become in 1800, 2205 or was it already in early games like 2070?
Simon: In fact, we optimized our workflow a bit since then, which means we need slightly less time than we needed for an average island in 2205.

Johnnymac34
How many islands would be created for the entire game? Are any of them created via a scripting tool or is it all done manually?
Simon: We don’t want to reveal the final amount of islands for the game as of yet. We use the tool World Machine to create a basic layout for the map which we than alter and polish by hand.

AmpeImann
One question, as a Level Artist, are there performance constraints that go into what you can do with the design of an island? Is there a limit to the number of “features” on each island for the sake of engine performance?
Simon: Level artists usually care about making a level visually stunning but we also have to keep performance in mind especially when it comes to placeable objects or complex vegetation, as these can take up a lot of performance if you aren’t careful.

Union Update: Playtest coming soon!

Posted on by Bastian Thun

This week on the Anno Union, we continue our behind the scenes insights and demonstrate how we create islands from scratch, share our verdict on the first community roundtable and provide details about the upcoming Anno 1800 focus playtests.

Islands are as much part of Anno’s feeling and personality as the design and animations of our buildings. Since almost 20 years, players begin their journey with a small settlement on newly conquered islands, before they expand their empire and claim new land across the sea. This week, we will show you how we create your future island paradise and as usual, expect many interesting insights about the daily work of a level artist.
While not the conclusion of the behind the scenes series, we will take a short break in order to focus on gameplay features and content in the next couple of weeks. Anno 1800 is quite a feature rich game and there are many important core mechanics to talk about, before we can cover the more advanced features of the game. That means that the Union can look forward to a big push of feature DevBlogs in the next couple of weeks.

Our first community roundtable
Our first community roundtable was a blast! Over 150 fans joined our community team to talk about all things Anno Union last week Wednesday. We had as much fun as you guys and the chance to have a real dialogue with the community gave us a lot of insightful feedback and pushed the Union to the next level.

Here a rough overview over the topics we discussed during the roundtable:
We started the roundtable with a feedback discussion around the Anno Union, where we talked about how we perceived the journey from reveal to the end of 2017 while sharing thoughts and ideas for the future. There was especially one thing you liked and would love to continue in future: transparent development and communication.
We will continue to bring you DevBlogs, insights and news about Anno 1800 while leveraging your feedback for the development, streams and events such as the roundtable should further improve interaction between the Anno Union and us.
We also talked about how much commitment from the team it takes to bring you weekly insights about the development and to discuss features with you in such an early state of the game.

Not surprising that we also got many curious questions about certain features and content of the game. As you might imagine, Union blogs and streams are the right place for us to show content but where able to provide some insights why we might not want or be able to talk about a specific topics right now. First off, we have to get many core features out of the way before diving into the more extended content. The logistics blog was a good example for that, as some core functionalities will allow you to give us spot-on feedback when we talk about the content built around these features. Of course, 2017 was also a test run for ourselves and you can expect a heavy emphasize on feature blogs, streams and playtests this year.

Another topic was general community support and if you think that programs like the Anno Union have an impact on Anno communities out there. We want to push that further by providing a dedicated community space for fansites, content creations and any other efforts from our communities out there. Asking you questions was as important as provide answers, we would like to know from you how we all can grow and support Anno communities out there in the comments below.

The first Anno 1800 focus-playtests
It is happening: our Anno 1800 Union playtests will start as early as this February. Throughout the year, we will give more and more Annoholics in the Union the chance to help us improve the game, as we need as much valuable feedback as possible. For the first tests, we call on Anno experts who are willing to provide us detailed daily feedback in a two-week long test session.

Application process
The idea for an application process was actually brought up by the Union itself and we think it is a good way to get useful information about our potential testers. “So how do I apply?”, you may shout at your screen.
We created a dedicated Union Playtest page, where you can find all details needed about the playtesting and application process.

Just head over to the Anno Union playtest page for further information how you can apply for a seat in one of our focus playtest: Playtest Page

Keep in mind that the application process has no deadline, as we will run several focus playtest this year and will choose players from the pool we continue to build up with the application process.

We bet that there are many questions and we will make sure that we answer as many as possible in the comments or next community QnA, which will come with the next community update.

Union Update: Story contest has ended!

Posted on by Bastian Thun

Welcome to our latest Union Update, where we give you a glimpse of this week’s Union content and things headed your way in the near future.

As you might have noticed, the Anno Union suffered an issue last week, which prevented players from accessing the website. We are sorry for the inconvenience and can you tell that we found the culprit; everything should be back to normal now. While we have further plans to improve our website further, the downtime was not caused by a secretively rolled out update, as some Union members presumed. Not that we don’t like sneaking in updates from time to time…

Announcement: The writing contest is closed!
Thanks for all your contribution- we received some great stories and some really cool creative takes on the given task. We will announce the lucky winners in a future update but we can already say that picking the best story will not be an easy task for us. So please join us in a general round of applause for the creative Union task force!
If you liked our writing contest and would love to see more support for community creations such as contests, highlights and other nice ideas to push content creation, share it with us in the comments below!

3D Animation
In this week’s DevBlog, we continue the journey of a 3D asset during creation. Yes, a lot of handiwork went into the asset already but we are far from done here. You were always curious how we create that lively feeling in Anno, where you metropolis is brimming with life and small stories to discover?
Well in that case, you should not miss out this week’s DevBlog, when we give you an exclusive look how we create visual feedback and animation work for Anno 1800.

Let’s come together!
Also coming up this week is our first Union Community Roundtable.
Join the Community team this Wednesday evening for a cozy meetup and chat with us about the Anno Union where we are sure to have answers to one or two questions and discussions ready for you.
The English session will start at 9pm CET – Everyone is welcome! >Annoverse Discord<

While we are using a voice chat for communication, microphones are not mandatory. So feel free to ask us questions in the chat or just listen to the discussion.

What’s next?
We asked you a few questions during our update last week and got a ton of recommendations for future topics you would like to see tackled in the future. We picked some of your ideas and started to shuffle them into our ongoing content plan.

The best things often come at the end, right? We have some news for you that might get you pretty excited. During our last AnnoCast, we talked about our Alpha milestone and that now is the time where we need as much and as varied player feedback as possible. To make that possible, we are currently planning to kick off our online playtest studies in February.

For the first test groups, we need Anno experts who know the series inside out and are willing to provide us valuable reports and tons of data! As suggested by the community previously, we will give everyone a chance to apply for the focus studies with an application form, which should open in the coming weeks.

Well that is something to look forward to; many more things to come and we are – as always – looking forward to your feedback.