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| Unknown Horizons | |
|---|---|
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| Developer | The Unknown Horizons Team |
| Engine | Godot, Flexible Isometric Free Engine (up to v2019.1) |
| Platforms | Windows,Linux |
| Release | January 2019 (v2019.1), October 2008 (alpha) |
| Genres | City-building,real-time strategy |
| Modes | Single-player,multiplayer |
| Unknown Horizons | |
|---|---|
 A screenshot depicting an early settlement | |
| Engine |
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| License | GNU GPL v2 |
| Website | www |
| Repository | |
Unknown Horizons is acity-building game andreal-time strategy game, inspired by theAnno series.[1] It is released under theGNU General Public License (GPLv2) and is thereforefree and open source software. Much of the artwork isopen content under e.g.CC BY-SACreative Commons licenses. The development has moved to a new repository for theGodot port.
The player guides a group of people settling in a newly discoveredarchipelago of islands. The player must provide miscellaneous goods (including food, lumber and tools[2]) 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[3] and more than 40 different buildings available.
The starting increment is called "Sailors". 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 "Settlers" and progress is shown by half-timbered buildings.The remaining three increments "Citizens", "Merchants" and "Aristocrats" are designed, but not yet implemented.
Unknown Horizons originated in theOpenAnno project from 2005 which aimed for being aclone ofAnno 1602.[4] The project uses Flexible Isometric Free Engine (FIFE) asgame engine and featuresisometric 2D graphics. Since FIFE also is in development stage andUnknown Horizons is the first major project based on this engine, the developers ofUnknown Horizons have agreed to help with development on FIFE.[5]Python was chosen as the language for this project because it is the language best supported by FIFE, guaranteescross-platform compatibility, and allows rapid development. The models forUnknown Horizons are created usingBlender and then rendered in four rotations (eight for units).
The first publicalpha version was released on October 1, 2008. Development currently focuses on implementing more gameplay content (buildings, resource production lines). Next major steps in development includeusability improvements and anisland editor.[6]
In 2009 the project was renamed fromOpenAnno toUnknown Horizons.[4]
Unknown Horizons took part at theGoogle Summer of Code 2011 as a mentoring organization[7][8] and participated again in 2012.[9][10]
In 2019, the project moved the codebase from Python 2 to Python 3. In addition, the developers asked for assistance with porting to theGodot game engine due to concerns that FIFE was no longer in active development.[11][12] A separateGitHub repository was opened to manage the new codebase.[13]
Unknown Horizons was selected in October 2011 as "HotPick" byLinux Format.[14]Despite itsalpha state,Unknown Horizons already appeared in issue 24/09 of the Germanc'tcomputer magazine, as a part of theHeise software collection 6/09.[15] Between 2009 and 2016Unknown Horizons was downloaded fromSourceForge alone 250,000 times.[16]
