''Unknown Horizons'' is a

city-building game A city-building game, or town-building game, is a Video game genres, 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 man ...

and

real-time strategy game Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that does 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 pl ...

, 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 software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

. Much of the artwork is

open content Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software, software program, or any other creative Media (communication), content for which there are very minimal ...

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 CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bui ...

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 CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bu ...

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. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...

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. While the term ''sailor'' ...

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 or a colonist is a person who establishes or joins a permanent presence that is separate to existing communities. The entity that a settler establishes is a Human settlement, settlement. A settler is called a pioneer if they are among ...

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

Citizen Citizenship is a membership and allegiance to a sovereign state. Though citizenship is often conflated with nationality in today's English-speaking world, international law does not usually use the term ''citizenship'' to refer to nationality ...

s", "

Merchant A merchant is a person who trades in goods produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Merchants have been known for as long as humans have engaged in trade and commerce. Merchants and merchant networks operated i ...

s" and "

Aristocrat The aristocracy (''from Greek'' ''ἀριστοκρατία'' ''aristokratía'', "rule of the best"; ''Latin: aristocratia'') is historically associated with a "hereditary" or a "ruling" social class. In many states, the aristocracy included the ...

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''.Thomas Kinnen
Unknown Horizons - An Open Source Project Evolves
TDT10 - New Software Technology: COTS and Open Source Software 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 which generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is akin to the term " software engine" u ...

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 (prog ...

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

cross-platform Within 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 platform, computing platforms. Some ...

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

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer (from Latin ''mixus, the PPP of miscere eng. to Mix)'' or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsify food and other substances. A stationary ...

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

alpha version The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

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 Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a softw ...

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 () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

repository was opened to manage the new codebase.

Reception

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

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

. 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 biweekly German computer magazine, published by the Heinz Heise, Heinz Heise publishing house of Hanover. file:Ct jubilaeum 30 turm.jpg, The 5.71 meter high tower from the 587 published ...

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

, 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 Germ ...

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

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...

alone 250,000 times.unknownhorizons - stats
on sourceforge.net

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