bastecklein's Recent Posts
Network Browser v3.6.0 has just been released, and along with fixed and new feature upgrades, I have implemented a new community string translation feature. I have had many Network Browser users email me over the years offering to help translate the app into their own specific language, but I really didn't have a good method set up to allow for it. Now, if you go into the main Settings menu in the app, you will see a "Help Translate" menu option (if you are using an un-translated language on your device) where you can submit localized string translations for your default language. Once they are reviewed and approved, your translations will help all users of your language use Network Browser.
#networkbrowser
#networkbrowser
Today I have finally published the v0.50.0 update to My Colony 2. This is a technical update, brining in a complete refactoring of the engine code in order to make it work with all of the new "modular" Ape Apps libraries.
Aside from the technical changes in this release, I also tried to make some improvements to the mobile experience of the game, which has always been more of an afterthought in My Colony 2. I made improvements to the map scrolling/zooming which has always been complete jank with touch screen on MC2. I also made some minor UI adjustments and improvements to the pending building queue on touch screen. Touch-screen controls for the person mode have also been improved.
I also restored the Depth of Field/Bokeh post processing effect, that had been removed some versions back because I didn't have it working properly.
Moving forward, I am not sure what the future direction for MC2 should be. I have come to the conclusion that voxel art was a stupid design decision for the game as it is completely inefficient, and in all honesty I don't think there will ever be a way to make the game more performant than it currently is when there are a lot of models on the screen, especially big models.
I am thinking for the long term, my time might be better spent just finishing up locking down the UI/controls of the game, getting it as good as it can be on mobile, getting music/sound effects added to the game, and then start planning a new My Colony game with actual 3D models instead of voxel art models.
The issue is with how 3d graphics work. Basically everything is rendered in triangles. If you draw a scene with a single 2d plane on it, like a plain square, it is generally made by connecting two triangles together. A 3d cube would be 6 squares put together, aka 12 triangles. So suppose you want to make a skyscraper model. Theoretically, you could do it using one long cube (rectangle) with a texture mapped to it, aka 12 triangles. However with the voxel model, it is made up of thousands of small cubes which each have their own 12 triangles, so on one tall rectangular skyscraper with 12 triangles could end up having 500,000 triangles on a voxel model.
Anyway, that is a gross oversimplification of how it works, and in the real world even the true 3d models would be more detailed than what I am describing, but you can imagine how over a large colony with thousands of structures on screen at a time, the voxel art setup is not very performant. I have done a lot to get it running as good as it is, but I don't think it would ever be as great as it could be.
I also don't think that the real-time same-world multiplayer is as good of a feature as it seemed like in my head. People seem to prefer the more limited multiplayer of the original My Colony, which is actually probably better for a city building type game anyway.
But you all can let me know what you think on the matter. Until then , enjoy the latest MC2 build and stay tuned for more!
#MyColony2
Aside from the technical changes in this release, I also tried to make some improvements to the mobile experience of the game, which has always been more of an afterthought in My Colony 2. I made improvements to the map scrolling/zooming which has always been complete jank with touch screen on MC2. I also made some minor UI adjustments and improvements to the pending building queue on touch screen. Touch-screen controls for the person mode have also been improved.
I also restored the Depth of Field/Bokeh post processing effect, that had been removed some versions back because I didn't have it working properly.
Moving forward, I am not sure what the future direction for MC2 should be. I have come to the conclusion that voxel art was a stupid design decision for the game as it is completely inefficient, and in all honesty I don't think there will ever be a way to make the game more performant than it currently is when there are a lot of models on the screen, especially big models.
I am thinking for the long term, my time might be better spent just finishing up locking down the UI/controls of the game, getting it as good as it can be on mobile, getting music/sound effects added to the game, and then start planning a new My Colony game with actual 3D models instead of voxel art models.
The issue is with how 3d graphics work. Basically everything is rendered in triangles. If you draw a scene with a single 2d plane on it, like a plain square, it is generally made by connecting two triangles together. A 3d cube would be 6 squares put together, aka 12 triangles. So suppose you want to make a skyscraper model. Theoretically, you could do it using one long cube (rectangle) with a texture mapped to it, aka 12 triangles. However with the voxel model, it is made up of thousands of small cubes which each have their own 12 triangles, so on one tall rectangular skyscraper with 12 triangles could end up having 500,000 triangles on a voxel model.
Anyway, that is a gross oversimplification of how it works, and in the real world even the true 3d models would be more detailed than what I am describing, but you can imagine how over a large colony with thousands of structures on screen at a time, the voxel art setup is not very performant. I have done a lot to get it running as good as it is, but I don't think it would ever be as great as it could be.
I also don't think that the real-time same-world multiplayer is as good of a feature as it seemed like in my head. People seem to prefer the more limited multiplayer of the original My Colony, which is actually probably better for a city building type game anyway.
But you all can let me know what you think on the matter. Until then , enjoy the latest MC2 build and stay tuned for more!
#MyColony2
I actually have plane models created and I originally had them in the game, but they were glitched out so I removed them :-/
Today as a part of the ongoing overhaul of the Ape Apps Account system, I have released v4.0 of the Ape Apps Launcher, and with it comes a handful of changes that will soon be appearing throughout the entire Ape Apps ecosystem, so let's take a look!
Over the years I have built up multiple different communications methods for Ape Apps, all spread out over different competing apps, services and databases. For a while now, I have been thinking of what is the best way to unify everything in a way that makes sense, and what I have come up with is the Ape Apps social feed, which is based on the open ActivityPub protocol, the same protocol that powers Mastodon and other Fediverse related sites and services.
The protocol is built around publishing activities (I'm guessing that's where the name comes from). The way I am using it, is that every time you do a certain event in an Ape Apps game, such as unlock an achievement or create a screenshot, an activity record is now created with the time and date, details, what app they are tied to, etc.
Basically, I got the idea from the Community hub feature in Steam, and thought this would be a good way to implement something similar across Ape Apps, and the Launcher was a natural testbed for the system. Right now the data is sparse because it hasn't been tested by anyone besides myself, but eventually a game's page in the Launcher (and in other places around Ape Apps) will show a new social feed of screenshots, reviews, achievement unlocks, comments, and discussion.
Right now every activity in the feed is rendered as a regular comment/post so it kind of looks like a twitter timeline at the moment. Once data starts getting added to the system though and I am able to do a proper test, I plan to render things like screenshots, achievement unlocks and reviews differently than regular comments, so it will look a bit more in line with a Steam community hub, and less like a social network feed.
Of course since it is based on a social networking protocol, it does support standard Twitter/X style features, including likes, reposts, and comments/replies. And now an Ape Apps Account can be followed on other ActivityPub compatible Fediverse clients, such as Mastodon. I know they aren't very popular compared to major social networks, but I figure it can't help from a marketing standpoint to have screenshots of my different games posted and linked back to the game's download page...
If you happen to be a member of a different Fediverse site like Mastodon, you can easily follow your Ape Apps profile to see how it works. Just format your username like @username@accounts.ape-apps.com.
So anyway, the update is live now on the web. I will update the desktop clients once v4.1.0 is released. I just want to get some more data in so I can get everything formatted and working right before I spend all of the time packaging for desktop clients!
https://launcher.ape-apps.com
#ApeAppsLauncher
Over the years I have built up multiple different communications methods for Ape Apps, all spread out over different competing apps, services and databases. For a while now, I have been thinking of what is the best way to unify everything in a way that makes sense, and what I have come up with is the Ape Apps social feed, which is based on the open ActivityPub protocol, the same protocol that powers Mastodon and other Fediverse related sites and services.
The protocol is built around publishing activities (I'm guessing that's where the name comes from). The way I am using it, is that every time you do a certain event in an Ape Apps game, such as unlock an achievement or create a screenshot, an activity record is now created with the time and date, details, what app they are tied to, etc.
Basically, I got the idea from the Community hub feature in Steam, and thought this would be a good way to implement something similar across Ape Apps, and the Launcher was a natural testbed for the system. Right now the data is sparse because it hasn't been tested by anyone besides myself, but eventually a game's page in the Launcher (and in other places around Ape Apps) will show a new social feed of screenshots, reviews, achievement unlocks, comments, and discussion.
Right now every activity in the feed is rendered as a regular comment/post so it kind of looks like a twitter timeline at the moment. Once data starts getting added to the system though and I am able to do a proper test, I plan to render things like screenshots, achievement unlocks and reviews differently than regular comments, so it will look a bit more in line with a Steam community hub, and less like a social network feed.
Of course since it is based on a social networking protocol, it does support standard Twitter/X style features, including likes, reposts, and comments/replies. And now an Ape Apps Account can be followed on other ActivityPub compatible Fediverse clients, such as Mastodon. I know they aren't very popular compared to major social networks, but I figure it can't help from a marketing standpoint to have screenshots of my different games posted and linked back to the game's download page...
If you happen to be a member of a different Fediverse site like Mastodon, you can easily follow your Ape Apps profile to see how it works. Just format your username like @username@accounts.ape-apps.com.
So anyway, the update is live now on the web. I will update the desktop clients once v4.1.0 is released. I just want to get some more data in so I can get everything formatted and working right before I spend all of the time packaging for desktop clients!
https://launcher.ape-apps.com
#ApeAppsLauncher
Premium keys do not transfer over to steam. You can download the non-steam desktop client instead from here:
https://market.ape-apps.com/app/my-colony
https://market.ape-apps.com/app/my-colony
Since I have been giving my other Steam released titles an asset and title screen facelift, I decided, "why not My Empire too?" So here we are My Empire v2.1.0, available now!
The new title screen is interesting on this release. I basically tool the old feature image for My Empire, which consisted of the title logo, the Legion and Frigate units, just superimposed on a brown parchment texture, and asked Chat GPT to spruce them up a bit. I think the result turned out pretty cool!
The new builds of My Empire should be hitting all platforms over the coming days. As with the new My Colony and Antiquitas builds, macOS on Steam has returned to the lineup, so the few mac users out there can rejoice and be glad!
Thanks for playing!
https://myempire.ape-apps.com/
#myempire
The new title screen is interesting on this release. I basically tool the old feature image for My Empire, which consisted of the title logo, the Legion and Frigate units, just superimposed on a brown parchment texture, and asked Chat GPT to spruce them up a bit. I think the result turned out pretty cool!
The new builds of My Empire should be hitting all platforms over the coming days. As with the new My Colony and Antiquitas builds, macOS on Steam has returned to the lineup, so the few mac users out there can rejoice and be glad!
Thanks for playing!
https://myempire.ape-apps.com/
#myempire
There is no built in limit. It must be running into a parse error with a filename it does not like.
How many did you purchase and from which app store (google, iphone, paypal, etc) and I will get it fixed for you @DarkPhoenix
Following the recent My Colony v2.0.0 release, all engine updates and features from that update have now been ported over to it's sister game Anitquitas, and v2.0.0 is now rolling out to all supported platforms!
Of course, since My Colony received a minor promotional graphics overhaul, I did not want Antiquitas to feel left out of the fun. The game now sports a new title screen and updated icon, as well as minor UI refreshes throughout.
In addition, and as with My Colony, the macOS release has returned to both Steam and the stand-alone Desktop installer (available on the Ape Market).
https://play.antiquitas.app/
#antiquitas
Of course, since My Colony received a minor promotional graphics overhaul, I did not want Antiquitas to feel left out of the fun. The game now sports a new title screen and updated icon, as well as minor UI refreshes throughout.
In addition, and as with My Colony, the macOS release has returned to both Steam and the stand-alone Desktop installer (available on the Ape Market).
https://play.antiquitas.app/
#antiquitas
Today I am announcing the release of My Colony v2.0.0, which should be rolling out to all platforms and devices over the coming days. There isn't anything in the way of new content, but under the hood the game has undergone major changes, so let's see what happened!
Firstly, since the sheer scale of the technical changes was so great, I decided to bump the game up to v2.0.0, and to help celebrate the version bump, I decided to spruce up the game's icon and title screen a little bit. Nothing major, just a little coat of paint. Hope nobody is too offended by the change!
Moving on to more technical stuff, many of you noticed I have not been very active in the community over the last few months. I have nonetheless been quite busy with Ape Apps, as I have been under taking the massive task of updating and modernizing all of my code and libraries across the entire business. I have been converting all of my code into modules so that I can reuse things easier, and I have been moving things to version control to better keep track of everything that I have. This has been a massive undertaking, especially getting all of my old apps and games onboard with the new changes, and My Colony was one of the larger projects that I have, so it required a ton of changes.
One of the main challenges was updating the game to work with the new version of my Scroll2d Engine, which itself has also been converted into a module, and even open sourced. For those curious about the Scroll2d engine that powers My Colony and a handful of my other games and apps, you can now find the Scroll2d code on GitHub (although I have not had time to document anything yet):
https://github.com/bastecklein/scroll2d
My new process for app building that I am rolling out, My Colony included, is going to make it a lot easier and faster for me to update and fix things. For other developers and tinkerers out there though, there is one downside to my new process. Since the game is now completely module based and packaged together with a bundler, it's not quite as easy as it once was to pull open the source code and see how things work (which is how tools like Coloniae came about). I think the tradeoff it ok though, since the game will be alot easier for me to maintain going forward.
On the Desktop side of things, all desktop packages (except for Windows on ARM) are now digitally signed, so you should no longer get security warnings and popups when trying to play the games after downloading. In addition, My Colony for macOS has returned to both Steam and as a standalone desktop app, since I know there are a handful of Mac players out there who were not happy when I discontinued the macOS builds.
Looking ahead, although most work in the My Colony Universe will be focused towards My Colony 2, I have been toying around with the idea of using AI to remaster all of the building graphics for the original My Colony. I have done a few tests and I think it is doable, but I don't trust it enough yet to do it properly full-scale. Potentially though, I might be able to make the game look pretty good, but we will see.
Anyway, a lot technically has changed in this update, so if you find issues, post them here and let me know. I want to be sure that the MC1 update is solid before porting it over to Antiquitas.
Thanks for playing My Colony!
https://mycolony.online/
#mycolony
Firstly, since the sheer scale of the technical changes was so great, I decided to bump the game up to v2.0.0, and to help celebrate the version bump, I decided to spruce up the game's icon and title screen a little bit. Nothing major, just a little coat of paint. Hope nobody is too offended by the change!
Moving on to more technical stuff, many of you noticed I have not been very active in the community over the last few months. I have nonetheless been quite busy with Ape Apps, as I have been under taking the massive task of updating and modernizing all of my code and libraries across the entire business. I have been converting all of my code into modules so that I can reuse things easier, and I have been moving things to version control to better keep track of everything that I have. This has been a massive undertaking, especially getting all of my old apps and games onboard with the new changes, and My Colony was one of the larger projects that I have, so it required a ton of changes.
One of the main challenges was updating the game to work with the new version of my Scroll2d Engine, which itself has also been converted into a module, and even open sourced. For those curious about the Scroll2d engine that powers My Colony and a handful of my other games and apps, you can now find the Scroll2d code on GitHub (although I have not had time to document anything yet):
https://github.com/bastecklein/scroll2d
My new process for app building that I am rolling out, My Colony included, is going to make it a lot easier and faster for me to update and fix things. For other developers and tinkerers out there though, there is one downside to my new process. Since the game is now completely module based and packaged together with a bundler, it's not quite as easy as it once was to pull open the source code and see how things work (which is how tools like Coloniae came about). I think the tradeoff it ok though, since the game will be alot easier for me to maintain going forward.
On the Desktop side of things, all desktop packages (except for Windows on ARM) are now digitally signed, so you should no longer get security warnings and popups when trying to play the games after downloading. In addition, My Colony for macOS has returned to both Steam and as a standalone desktop app, since I know there are a handful of Mac players out there who were not happy when I discontinued the macOS builds.
Looking ahead, although most work in the My Colony Universe will be focused towards My Colony 2, I have been toying around with the idea of using AI to remaster all of the building graphics for the original My Colony. I have done a few tests and I think it is doable, but I don't trust it enough yet to do it properly full-scale. Potentially though, I might be able to make the game look pretty good, but we will see.
Anyway, a lot technically has changed in this update, so if you find issues, post them here and let me know. I want to be sure that the MC1 update is solid before porting it over to Antiquitas.
Thanks for playing My Colony!
https://mycolony.online/
#mycolony
Going forward, all discussion related to the Level Up Player, various Level Up games, the Level Up Builder, or the Tiny Level Up Builder will be redirected to the new Level Up Player section on Discussions:
https://discussions.social/?server=https://chat.ape-apps.com&channel=levelupplayer
If you already have the Discussions app or PWA installed on your system, you can use the following link to quickly join the new channel:
web+discussions://channel/levelupplayer
https://discussions.social/?server=https://chat.ape-apps.com&channel=levelupplayer
If you already have the Discussions app or PWA installed on your system, you can use the following link to quickly join the new channel:
web+discussions://channel/levelupplayer
Today I am releasing the v2.6.0 update to Voxel Paint which includes a handful of bug fixes, as well as the new glTF exporter for premium users.
Voxel Paint has had the .obj exporter for a long time, but the issue is that the .obj spec does not allow for adding color data to the object models. This was fine for 3D printing uses (which is what I had originally added the function in for), but for importing models into programs like Blender, it was less than optimal.
The new glTF exporter uses the open glTF standard which is supported my many different applications and includes all color data with the exported models.
There have also been some minor theme changes to the app. Let me know if you find any issues, and have fun voxeling!
#voxelpaint
https://voxelpaint.online/
Voxel Paint has had the .obj exporter for a long time, but the issue is that the .obj spec does not allow for adding color data to the object models. This was fine for 3D printing uses (which is what I had originally added the function in for), but for importing models into programs like Blender, it was less than optimal.
The new glTF exporter uses the open glTF standard which is supported my many different applications and includes all color data with the exported models.
There have also been some minor theme changes to the app. Let me know if you find any issues, and have fun voxeling!
#voxelpaint
https://voxelpaint.online/
Antiquitas has been updated to v1.33.0 and the release should be hitting all platforms over the coming days. This update includes a roll-up of all engine fixes and improvements from My Colony v1.34-v1.37. This includes a new music rendering engine that reduces CPU usage, bug fixes for saving very large game saves, a redesign of the in-game menus and more!
https://play.antiquitas.app/
#antiquitas
https://play.antiquitas.app/
#antiquitas
bastecklein
Developer
Member Since
September 2nd, 2017