''Unknown Horizons'' is a

city-building game A city-building game, or town-building game, is a genre of simulation video game where players act as the overall planner and leader of a city or town, looking down on it from above, and being responsible for its growth and management strategy. ...

and

real-time strategy game Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress incrementally in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to pla ...

, inspired by the ''Anno'' series. It is released under the GNU General Public License (GPLv2) and is therefore

free and open source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

. Much of the artwork is open content under e.g.

CC BY-SA A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...

Creative Commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...

s. The game is still under active development; milestone snapshots are released occasionally.

Gameplay

The player guides a group of people settling in a newly discovered

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Archi ...

of islands. The player must provide miscellaneous goods (including food, lumber and tools) and public services for the settlers' welfare. The inhabitants in return pay taxes which is the main source of income. When supplied adequately, the population will grow and the inhabitants will rise to higher social classes. Currently, there are six different settlement levels planned and more than 40 different buildings available. The starting increment is called "

Sailor A sailor, seaman, mariner, or seafarer is a person who works aboard a watercraft as part of its crew, and may work in any one of a number of different fields that are related to the operation and maintenance of a ship. The profession of the s ...

s". Players can set up a basic infrastructure and provide inhabitants with resources such as food. In the second increment "Pioneers", new buildings become available. Buildings begin to look like wooden constructions instead of tents. Increment 3 is named "

Settler A settler is a person who has human migration, migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. A settler who migrates to an area previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited may be described as a ...

s" and progress is shown by half-timbered buildings. The remaining three increments " Citizens", "

Merchant A merchant is a person who trades in commodities produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Historically, a merchant is anyone who is involved in business or trade. Merchants have operated for as long as indust ...

s" and "

Aristocrat The aristocracy is historically associated with "hereditary" or "ruling" social class. In many states, the aristocracy included the upper class of people (aristocrats) with hereditary rank and titles. In some, such as ancient Greece, ancient Ro ...

s" are designed, but not yet implemented.

Development

''Unknown Horizons'' originated in the ''OpenAnno'' project from 2005 which aimed for being a clone of ''

Anno 1602 ''Anno 1602: Creation of a New World'', entitled ''1602 A.D.'' in North America, is a 1998 construction and management video game developed by Max Design and published by Sunflowers Interactive. Set in the early modern period, it requires the p ...

''.report.pdf
/ref> The project uses Flexible Isometric Free Engine (FIFE) as

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software i ...

and features isometric 2D graphics. Since FIFE also is in development stage and ''Unknown Horizons'' is the first major project based on this engine, the developers of ''Unknown Horizons'' have agreed to help with development on FIFE.

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

was chosen as the language for this project because it is the language best supported by FIFE, guarantees

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software r ...

compatibility, and allows rapid development. The models for ''Unknown Horizons'' are created using

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen appliance, kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsion, emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender ...

and then rendered in four rotations (eight for units). The first public

alpha version A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

was released on October 1, 2008. Development currently focuses on implementing more gameplay content (buildings, resource production lines). Next major steps in development include usability improvements and an island editor. In 2009 the project was renamed from ''OpenAnno'' to ''Unknown Horizons''. ''Unknown Horizons'' took part at the

Google Summer of Code The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to contributors who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer. , the program is ...

2011 as a mentoring organization and participated again in 2012. In 2019, the project moved the codebase from Python 2 to Python 3. In addition the developers asked for assistance with porting to the Godot game engine due to concerns that FIFE was no longer in active development. A separate

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

repository was opened to manage the new codebase.

Reception

''Unknown Horizons'' was selected in October 2011 as "HotPick" by

Linux Format ''Linux Format'' is the UK's first Linux-specific magazine, and as of 2013 was the best-selling Linux title in the UK. It is also exported to many countries worldwide. It is published by Future plc (which produces a number of other computer magazi ...

. Despite its alpha state, ''Unknown Horizons'' already appeared in issue 24/09 of the German

c't ''c't'' – ' (''Magazine for Computer Technology'') is a German computer magazine, published by the Heinz Heise, Heinz Heise publishing house. file:Ct jubilaeum 30 turm.jpg, The 5.71 meter high tower from the 587 published c't editions up to t ...

computer magazine Computer magazines are about computers and related subjects, such as computer network, networking and the Internet. Most computer magazines offer (or offered) advice, some offer Programming language, programming Tutorial, tutorials, reviews of the ...

, as a part of the

Heise Heise may refer to: People with the surname * Bob Heise (born 1947), American Major League Baseball player * David R. Heise (born 1937), American sociologist * Geoff Heise, American actor * Georg Arnold Heise (1778–1851), an influential Germa ...

software collection 6/09. Between 2009 and 2016 ''Unknown Horizons'' was downloaded from

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...

alone 250,000 times.unknownhorizons - stats
on

sourceforge.net SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

References

External links

* * *
Unknown Horizons
' on Indie DB * * {{SourceForge, unknownhorizons, ''Unknown Horizons'' 2008 video games City-building games Free software programmed in Python Free software that uses SDL Linux games Strategy video games Open-source video games MacOS games Video games with isometric graphics Windows games Creative Commons-licensed video games Multiplayer and single-player video games

Gameplay

Development

Reception

See also

References

External links