Search - Virtual
The list of complete changes coming to My Colony v1.0.0 just keeps growing. So far Regional map generation and Power/Bandwidth utility grids have been completely rewritten, and now I am adding another major change to the list. Currently in testing, the way the engine handles colonists is now also being completely rewritten, as it applies to their jobs, entertainment, housing, education, and medical. Basically, the entire colonist simulation engine is being rewritten, which, along with the other changes already mentioned, is making v1.0.0, at least under the hood, almost a completely different game....
Before discussing the new changes in detail, I should explain how/why the existing system came to be. Colonists were first introduced to the game in v0.3.0 (July 30, 2016) at a time when the biggest housing unit was the actual Lander that you started out in. The game was designed as the Colonist being one of the central features of the simulation. Each colonist had a name, a job, his own stats, and went about his life in the colony. He had an energy level, a happiness level, a day/night sleep cycle, and so on. The intention was for each colonist to be a unique entity with it's own relationships, feelings, etc, sort of like in the Sims.
As time went on and the game grew though, it started morphing into more of a city-builder type game VS an individual colonist simulator. So as more (and bigger) buildings and features got added to the game, the original system based on the individual colonist was simply expanded and adapted in order to keep pace. Eventually the game got to where colonies with populations in the hundreds of thousands and even millions were possible, but the core colonist simulation engine remained as it always had been.
Simulating that many individual colonists brought along major performance and memory issues, especially on mobile. I tried to work around it by implementing a "virtual avatar" system, whereby after a certain population, the game just extrapolated out statistics based on a virtual avatar, where by one "real" colonist would represent 5,000 or more "virtual" colonists. This worked OK for performance, but it always caused strange statistical problems for things like Entertainment, Schooling, Medical, and Work. For example, if one colonist would get sick or unhappy for some reason, all 5,000 of the "virtual" colonists he represented would also take on his sickness/anger, which would lead to situations where 500 virtual colonists are not working.
For the last few years, each update is a constant battle against the old colonist system, with performance issues and complaints about certain stats not lining up as expected. Game functions like Entertainment/Medical,Education barely work in a consistent manner. Moreover, the colonist day/night cycle, which I thought was somewhat neat/unique/realistic to the game, was often confusing for new players who couldn't understand why nobody was at work in their buildings.
Anyway, I think it's long been time for a change, so with v1.0.0 I am stripping out pretty much all colonist-level individuality and data, and moving to a pure statistical model, more in line with a traditional city-simulator type game. After this update, the colonists you see walking around are pretty much for show only, and will no longer have their own individual stats. You will not be able to click on a colonist to see his name, where he lives, what is job is, etc. You will not be able to assign a colonist to a specific job. The individual colonist no longer matters.
So that's the sad part. It's sort of sad because I liked all that stuff about the game, but the reality is that those kinds of things are for a different type of game that My Colony no longer represents, and keeping them in the game has only caused performance issues and forced strange workarounds in the code.
So let's discuss the new system that is currently being tested. Starting with My Colony v1.0.0, all colony stats, including productivity, health, happiness, IQ, etc, are based on (roughly) on the overall land value/approval rating of the specific areas of your colony. It sounds more confusing, but I will explain more.
Housing structures are now the basic unit responsible for generating statistics in the game, taking place of the individual colonist. Housing structures now have internal statistics based on the availability of Schools, Entertainment, and Medical facilities in their proximity. While not yet implemented, there are also internal stats for Crime, which I plan on adding (along with Police Stations/Prisons) in v1.0.1 or v1.0.2.
While these numbers might be tweaked before the final release, you basically need enough Medical to accommodate 5% of your population, enough Schools for 20% of the population, and enough Entertainment for 15% of the population. These facilities must also be within range of the housing units. Medical facilities need to be within a 50 tile radius, schools 35 tile, and entertainment 25 tile. So basically, on a small sized map, an entertainment facility in the center of the map can theoretically service the entire map.
For work, job sites have to be within a 50 tile range of available housing. Jobs are prioritized by distance to house, IQ requirements, and pay. IQ level is impacted by the School rating of the housing unit. Each housing unit keeps track of the average travel distance it's residents must take to get to work, which impacts it's land value/approval rating.
The approval/land value rating of a structure is based on how fully it's needs are met in those categories, with Crime soon to be added as well. When colonists look for new places to live, they will place priority on high value dwellings first, and only reluctantly fill in the slums if necessary. When crime is implemented, criminals will originate from slum areas of town, so the more low-value areas your colony has, the more crime will be generated. Crime in turn will further lower the value of the area.
With this new system, the colonist day/night cycle is gone. As long as approval/land value conditions are good, buildings will be operating at full capacity at all times, so there is no more sitting there waiting for workers to come back on duty.
Some people will not like this new system as the change is large and will probably render many existing city layouts ineffective. You now have to think about the macro-conditions of each area of your city, making sure that there is sufficient medical, education, and entertainment for all residential areas. Since these stats were largely underutilized before, most existing cities will probably have shortages right off the bat. I plan on introducing new education and medical facilities as I get further along on the v1.0.0 update, as they will probably be needed.
There are some positives that come along with this change. Firstly, save file size and memory usage is greatly reduced, as the game no longer keeps a reference table of all workers/buildings. The game no longer conducts the expensive job/medical/school/entertainment search routines for individual colonists, which involved expensive operations of sorting all in-game structures by distance from each colonist, and then weeding through destination candidates one by one.
I estimate that most colonies will see improved performance with this change, particularly on the high end. In addition, this new system will allow me to implement probably the most requested feature of the last 3 years - mass transit, which I tentatively plan on introducing in v1.0.3 with either a new subway or monorail system (depending on what I want to draw). Since the engine no longer has to figure out paths for each individual worker, it now only needs to make sure that a mass-transit system is fully connected to itself, and then figure out a building's distance to the overall transit network, making it's implementation much, much simpler and less performance intensive than trying to resolve mass transit paths for each individual colonist.
So I've written a book here, but the reason for the long write up is because this is probably absolutely the single largest engine change to the game since it first came out, and it represents a complete rewrite of one of the core mechanics of the game. I am trying to design it in a way that will not feel overly different to long-time players and will not be overly disruptive to existing games, but with a change on this scale, you know some people will be impacted.
If you have issues/observations with the new system, you can post them in this thread. I will be working on this particular part of the game for a few more days here. Be advised, that if you open a colony on v1.0.0 from this point on, the engine changes are sufficiently large that re-opening your game in a pre-v1.0.0 client may cause issues, as v1.0.0 deletes a lot of depreciated properties from in-game objects.
Before discussing the new changes in detail, I should explain how/why the existing system came to be. Colonists were first introduced to the game in v0.3.0 (July 30, 2016) at a time when the biggest housing unit was the actual Lander that you started out in. The game was designed as the Colonist being one of the central features of the simulation. Each colonist had a name, a job, his own stats, and went about his life in the colony. He had an energy level, a happiness level, a day/night sleep cycle, and so on. The intention was for each colonist to be a unique entity with it's own relationships, feelings, etc, sort of like in the Sims.
As time went on and the game grew though, it started morphing into more of a city-builder type game VS an individual colonist simulator. So as more (and bigger) buildings and features got added to the game, the original system based on the individual colonist was simply expanded and adapted in order to keep pace. Eventually the game got to where colonies with populations in the hundreds of thousands and even millions were possible, but the core colonist simulation engine remained as it always had been.
Simulating that many individual colonists brought along major performance and memory issues, especially on mobile. I tried to work around it by implementing a "virtual avatar" system, whereby after a certain population, the game just extrapolated out statistics based on a virtual avatar, where by one "real" colonist would represent 5,000 or more "virtual" colonists. This worked OK for performance, but it always caused strange statistical problems for things like Entertainment, Schooling, Medical, and Work. For example, if one colonist would get sick or unhappy for some reason, all 5,000 of the "virtual" colonists he represented would also take on his sickness/anger, which would lead to situations where 500 virtual colonists are not working.
For the last few years, each update is a constant battle against the old colonist system, with performance issues and complaints about certain stats not lining up as expected. Game functions like Entertainment/Medical,Education barely work in a consistent manner. Moreover, the colonist day/night cycle, which I thought was somewhat neat/unique/realistic to the game, was often confusing for new players who couldn't understand why nobody was at work in their buildings.
Anyway, I think it's long been time for a change, so with v1.0.0 I am stripping out pretty much all colonist-level individuality and data, and moving to a pure statistical model, more in line with a traditional city-simulator type game. After this update, the colonists you see walking around are pretty much for show only, and will no longer have their own individual stats. You will not be able to click on a colonist to see his name, where he lives, what is job is, etc. You will not be able to assign a colonist to a specific job. The individual colonist no longer matters.
So that's the sad part. It's sort of sad because I liked all that stuff about the game, but the reality is that those kinds of things are for a different type of game that My Colony no longer represents, and keeping them in the game has only caused performance issues and forced strange workarounds in the code.
So let's discuss the new system that is currently being tested. Starting with My Colony v1.0.0, all colony stats, including productivity, health, happiness, IQ, etc, are based on (roughly) on the overall land value/approval rating of the specific areas of your colony. It sounds more confusing, but I will explain more.
Housing structures are now the basic unit responsible for generating statistics in the game, taking place of the individual colonist. Housing structures now have internal statistics based on the availability of Schools, Entertainment, and Medical facilities in their proximity. While not yet implemented, there are also internal stats for Crime, which I plan on adding (along with Police Stations/Prisons) in v1.0.1 or v1.0.2.
While these numbers might be tweaked before the final release, you basically need enough Medical to accommodate 5% of your population, enough Schools for 20% of the population, and enough Entertainment for 15% of the population. These facilities must also be within range of the housing units. Medical facilities need to be within a 50 tile radius, schools 35 tile, and entertainment 25 tile. So basically, on a small sized map, an entertainment facility in the center of the map can theoretically service the entire map.
For work, job sites have to be within a 50 tile range of available housing. Jobs are prioritized by distance to house, IQ requirements, and pay. IQ level is impacted by the School rating of the housing unit. Each housing unit keeps track of the average travel distance it's residents must take to get to work, which impacts it's land value/approval rating.
The approval/land value rating of a structure is based on how fully it's needs are met in those categories, with Crime soon to be added as well. When colonists look for new places to live, they will place priority on high value dwellings first, and only reluctantly fill in the slums if necessary. When crime is implemented, criminals will originate from slum areas of town, so the more low-value areas your colony has, the more crime will be generated. Crime in turn will further lower the value of the area.
With this new system, the colonist day/night cycle is gone. As long as approval/land value conditions are good, buildings will be operating at full capacity at all times, so there is no more sitting there waiting for workers to come back on duty.
Some people will not like this new system as the change is large and will probably render many existing city layouts ineffective. You now have to think about the macro-conditions of each area of your city, making sure that there is sufficient medical, education, and entertainment for all residential areas. Since these stats were largely underutilized before, most existing cities will probably have shortages right off the bat. I plan on introducing new education and medical facilities as I get further along on the v1.0.0 update, as they will probably be needed.
There are some positives that come along with this change. Firstly, save file size and memory usage is greatly reduced, as the game no longer keeps a reference table of all workers/buildings. The game no longer conducts the expensive job/medical/school/entertainment search routines for individual colonists, which involved expensive operations of sorting all in-game structures by distance from each colonist, and then weeding through destination candidates one by one.
I estimate that most colonies will see improved performance with this change, particularly on the high end. In addition, this new system will allow me to implement probably the most requested feature of the last 3 years - mass transit, which I tentatively plan on introducing in v1.0.3 with either a new subway or monorail system (depending on what I want to draw). Since the engine no longer has to figure out paths for each individual worker, it now only needs to make sure that a mass-transit system is fully connected to itself, and then figure out a building's distance to the overall transit network, making it's implementation much, much simpler and less performance intensive than trying to resolve mass transit paths for each individual colonist.
So I've written a book here, but the reason for the long write up is because this is probably absolutely the single largest engine change to the game since it first came out, and it represents a complete rewrite of one of the core mechanics of the game. I am trying to design it in a way that will not feel overly different to long-time players and will not be overly disruptive to existing games, but with a change on this scale, you know some people will be impacted.
If you have issues/observations with the new system, you can post them in this thread. I will be working on this particular part of the game for a few more days here. Be advised, that if you open a colony on v1.0.0 from this point on, the engine changes are sufficiently large that re-opening your game in a pre-v1.0.0 client may cause issues, as v1.0.0 deletes a lot of depreciated properties from in-game objects.
It is not just arcologies, really. Most colonists in a big colony are simulated/virtual, but when you click to look at the residents or workers of any given building, it has to destroy all of the virtual colonists and create new real/non-virtual colonists, and generate new stats for each one, which can be a large CPU/memory load on a giant building like the arcologies, one of the reasons I was hesitant to add them in to begin with.
The ability to see the list of residents in a building is really a relic of the way the engine used to work with every colonist being unique, and it will probably be removed eventually.
The ability to see the list of residents in a building is really a relic of the way the engine used to work with every colonist being unique, and it will probably be removed eventually.
The other day I was telling my son about the Virtual Boy, which was an old Nintendo console I had when I was a kid, and I decided to see if there were any emulators available. I found one on Google Play that said it supported the Google Cardboard headset. I had a Google Cardboard headset a few years ago, but I couldn't find it anymore, so I went on Amazon and saw that the market is now flooded with tons of cheap phone VR headsets. These are headsets that you insert your phone into that allow you to watch 3d content or play 3d games. YouTube for instance supports these headsets and even has some neat 360 degree VR videos available.
So anyway, I was determined to recreate the old Virtual Boy experience, so I picked up the following headset on Amazon:
This thing was under $30 and it worked pretty well on YouTube and the Virtual Boy emulator (although I had problems mapping all of the controls in the emulator to my gamepad), but the experience got me thinking - what if I could make this work with Death 3d? So I did a bit of research, got to coding, and within an hour or so I had this going on:
Above is my initial experimental work on the new VR mode for Death 3d! This is in the very early stages, but I do have the 3d effect working reasonably well at this point. I still need to rework the entire UI to support VR mode though, and playing in VR mode does require a bluetooth gamepad. But this new experimental VR mode will be shipping in the upcoming v0.17.0 update to Death 3d, and should be playing on either an Android or iPhone device using either a Google Cardboard type device, or something similar to what I posted above.
So anyway, I will write more on the new VR mode once the update is complete, and I might even do a My Colony Podcast episode over it. It's still a cool effect though, and a fun way to make you feel like you are really escaping from the prison on Lunar 3!
So anyway, I was determined to recreate the old Virtual Boy experience, so I picked up the following headset on Amazon:
This thing was under $30 and it worked pretty well on YouTube and the Virtual Boy emulator (although I had problems mapping all of the controls in the emulator to my gamepad), but the experience got me thinking - what if I could make this work with Death 3d? So I did a bit of research, got to coding, and within an hour or so I had this going on:
Above is my initial experimental work on the new VR mode for Death 3d! This is in the very early stages, but I do have the 3d effect working reasonably well at this point. I still need to rework the entire UI to support VR mode though, and playing in VR mode does require a bluetooth gamepad. But this new experimental VR mode will be shipping in the upcoming v0.17.0 update to Death 3d, and should be playing on either an Android or iPhone device using either a Google Cardboard type device, or something similar to what I posted above.
So anyway, I will write more on the new VR mode once the update is complete, and I might even do a My Colony Podcast episode over it. It's still a cool effect though, and a fun way to make you feel like you are really escaping from the prison on Lunar 3!
SO The issue is with the "virtual" colonists, if one avatar is assigned too many virtual colonists, it produces a large delay in processing. I am addressing the issue for 0.77.0, but having your colony "fix" itself after the update will require it to idle for a while, while the engine sorts our your game data.
I am finally putting the finishing touches on the My Colony v0.86.0 patch, which should be hitting all devices within a few days. I had planned for this to be a huge exciting content update, but then once I started working on it, I began running into one problem after the other and it ended up taking way longer to complete than I had anticipated. As a result, there are a lot of engine changes in this update but no content additions, so from the outside it may look like I've spent the last two weeks doing nothing. Rest assured though, there are some improvements to the game in this release, so let's take a look!
The first major change, which actually inadvertently started a domino effect of changes to the engine, was a total rewrite of the way the game saves files. As most of you know, when My Colony first came out there was no such thing as Regions, and so the concept wasn't even considered during game saving. Once Regions came out, many of the engine mechanics had to change to accommodate having multiple game objects processing at the same time (the individual city you are playing, the region itself, and the minor updates to the surrounding region files).
With all of these changes happening to different game objects at the same time, the game saving function remained the same as before. I sort of duct taped a solution together which worked pretty good for the most part. For instance, I had never personally run into any major issues with saving a Regions game. However, there were always reports of problems with saving in Regions, particularly with Resources and Technology levels not saving. This is unique to Regions, as it shares a single Resource and Technology pool among many different game files.
In addition to Regions, the structure of the game itself has changed considerably over the last three years, and over time, layers upon layers of different ideas have been cobbled together in the code creating a mess of sorts. To resolve all of this, I decided to completely change the manner in which game data is saved to the system. The new method allows making saves to multiple game objects at a time, instead of just the currently active game object. For example, prior to this update, when you were playing a region, the overall Region file did not save until you chose "Exit to Region" from the game menu. With this new update, you no longer have to Exit to Region for all regional data to be saved.
This is all well and good, but I didn't anticipate, or rather appreciate, just how many parts of the code were tied into the previous game saving functions. This lack of preparation on my part led to a major issue in the pre-release code on Ape Web Apps where saving a regional city would cause all colonists to lose their jobs and become homeless. Which is not good. It was like doing a fire-drill with each save, except after the fire-drill, the colony would never recover. So that was fun, and working through that led me on a breadcrumb trail that resulted in little changes and fixes all throughout the engine.
As if that wasn't enough though, I also decided to make major changes to the way virtual colonists work. Virtual Colonists are the "colonists" in your colony when your population exceeds 2000. These colonists do not actually exist, but the game instead uses statistics to simulate their education, housing, entertainment, and industrial output. With today's changes, the accuracy of this simulation should be greatly increased, especially in regards to education, which was barely simulated before.
On top of those significant engine changes, I also decided to completely rewrite the way colonists find jobs! I know, too many big changes for one update. There were so many changes here that I could write a whole article about it, but to avoid putting you to sleep, I will give the general overview. With this latest update, the game now keeps track of a "now hiring" list, sort of like a classified advertisement page. Whenever a business has an open job, it adds a now hiring record containing the x:y location of the job, the IQ requirement, pay, etc. Whenever a colonist doesn't have a job, the game takes the now hiring list, and sorts it for that colonist based on location from their house, how it matches their IQ, how it pays, etc. They then start at the top of the list and apply for the jobs. If the job is within a certain range of their house (40 tiles I think) and they meet the requirements, they will take the job. If they don't find one, they will lower their standards a bit. If they still don't find one, they will enroll in school. If they don't find a school to enroll in, they will be mad and complain about lack of education.
This change actually works pretty good, but there is a computational penalty when sorting the job openings. When only a handful of colonists are looking for jobs, it's no big deal. But if you conduct a fire-drill and the entire colony looks for work at once, you might experience a lag in the game of several seconds or more. I will need to look into a fix for this at some point soon.
Ok, so that addresses the bulk of the engine changes I made. There are some other little things here and there that you might notice, as I actually changed so much that I can't remember it all. But since there were so many changes, I would expect to see bugs as a result. Please let me know in the forum what you find!
Let's move on to non-engine related changes. First off, on the main Region city selection screen, the game now shows the name of the city on the overall map.
I will probably add a toggle to turn this on/off, I just did not get to it this time. This is mainly for mobile/touch players, since they don't have a mouse and therefore do not see the mouse-hover popup box that Desktop players see on this screen, making it hard to tell which colony is which.
Next up, I have consolidated most of the Commonwealth management settings into the main Commonwealth section of the statistics screen, so you no longer have to dig through the Policy menu to find everything.
If you look closely at the above, you will probably also notice the next thing I added. That's right, you can now finally change your Commonwealth Tax Rate! This has been requested since Commonwealths first came out, and I apologize for not adding it sooner, but it's there now. I have also capped the Commonwealth Payroll Assistance at 500%, since some of the levels on the server were insane.
Moving on, I have added a new feature called Layout Templates. This is mainly for Regions, but you can now save a "Template" of your current map and export it to the file system to share with other players. When you activate a template on your map, you see a ghosted image of the template buildings overlayed on your colony (you can turn the image on/off) that you can use as a guide for building. This is mainly for players who have designed certain build layouts and want to share the layout with others. I imagine it would work best on an empty regional map with no resources. You can find the template options on the bottom of the General Statistics screen.
There is a new engine setting that allows you to turn Gamepad input on or off. It has always been turned on from the beginning, but there was a concern that if you were playing another game on your desktop while My Colony was open, My Colony would be processing the gamepad inputs from the other game. If you find yourself in this situation, you can now turn off gamepad input completely from the Engine Settings screen.
There have been some minor changes to Colonist processing. Entertainment facilities now increase energy and happiness at a faster rate. In addition, colonist happiness will also slightly increase when they are at home. I have also increased the starting colonist IQ range to make them a bit smarter by default (will not impact current colonists, only new arrivals). And finally, I have further increased the rate that colonists age, since I still think it's too slow.
And last but not least, there were a couple of changes to existing buildings. The Mass Driver trade capacity has lifted from 100 to 300, and the basic Greenhouse now has a slightly faster production rate and a higher storage capacity.
So anyway, for me this was one of those updates that was pretty large, but for the general players of the game, it should seem like a pretty small patch. Hopefully nothing major has been broken, but continue to let me know what bugs you find. I should note that on the Android and Windows clients, there is a new "Send Feedback" button on the My Colony sidebar that will allow you to send a message or bug report directly to my Inbox, and I will add this to the Desktop, Web, and iOS versions at some point too. A lot of times people leave bug reports in the app store comments, and those are easy for me to miss.
That's all for today;s update though, let me know what you find, stay tuned for more, and thanks for playing My Colony!
The first major change, which actually inadvertently started a domino effect of changes to the engine, was a total rewrite of the way the game saves files. As most of you know, when My Colony first came out there was no such thing as Regions, and so the concept wasn't even considered during game saving. Once Regions came out, many of the engine mechanics had to change to accommodate having multiple game objects processing at the same time (the individual city you are playing, the region itself, and the minor updates to the surrounding region files).
With all of these changes happening to different game objects at the same time, the game saving function remained the same as before. I sort of duct taped a solution together which worked pretty good for the most part. For instance, I had never personally run into any major issues with saving a Regions game. However, there were always reports of problems with saving in Regions, particularly with Resources and Technology levels not saving. This is unique to Regions, as it shares a single Resource and Technology pool among many different game files.
In addition to Regions, the structure of the game itself has changed considerably over the last three years, and over time, layers upon layers of different ideas have been cobbled together in the code creating a mess of sorts. To resolve all of this, I decided to completely change the manner in which game data is saved to the system. The new method allows making saves to multiple game objects at a time, instead of just the currently active game object. For example, prior to this update, when you were playing a region, the overall Region file did not save until you chose "Exit to Region" from the game menu. With this new update, you no longer have to Exit to Region for all regional data to be saved.
This is all well and good, but I didn't anticipate, or rather appreciate, just how many parts of the code were tied into the previous game saving functions. This lack of preparation on my part led to a major issue in the pre-release code on Ape Web Apps where saving a regional city would cause all colonists to lose their jobs and become homeless. Which is not good. It was like doing a fire-drill with each save, except after the fire-drill, the colony would never recover. So that was fun, and working through that led me on a breadcrumb trail that resulted in little changes and fixes all throughout the engine.
As if that wasn't enough though, I also decided to make major changes to the way virtual colonists work. Virtual Colonists are the "colonists" in your colony when your population exceeds 2000. These colonists do not actually exist, but the game instead uses statistics to simulate their education, housing, entertainment, and industrial output. With today's changes, the accuracy of this simulation should be greatly increased, especially in regards to education, which was barely simulated before.
On top of those significant engine changes, I also decided to completely rewrite the way colonists find jobs! I know, too many big changes for one update. There were so many changes here that I could write a whole article about it, but to avoid putting you to sleep, I will give the general overview. With this latest update, the game now keeps track of a "now hiring" list, sort of like a classified advertisement page. Whenever a business has an open job, it adds a now hiring record containing the x:y location of the job, the IQ requirement, pay, etc. Whenever a colonist doesn't have a job, the game takes the now hiring list, and sorts it for that colonist based on location from their house, how it matches their IQ, how it pays, etc. They then start at the top of the list and apply for the jobs. If the job is within a certain range of their house (40 tiles I think) and they meet the requirements, they will take the job. If they don't find one, they will lower their standards a bit. If they still don't find one, they will enroll in school. If they don't find a school to enroll in, they will be mad and complain about lack of education.
This change actually works pretty good, but there is a computational penalty when sorting the job openings. When only a handful of colonists are looking for jobs, it's no big deal. But if you conduct a fire-drill and the entire colony looks for work at once, you might experience a lag in the game of several seconds or more. I will need to look into a fix for this at some point soon.
Ok, so that addresses the bulk of the engine changes I made. There are some other little things here and there that you might notice, as I actually changed so much that I can't remember it all. But since there were so many changes, I would expect to see bugs as a result. Please let me know in the forum what you find!
Let's move on to non-engine related changes. First off, on the main Region city selection screen, the game now shows the name of the city on the overall map.
Next up, I have consolidated most of the Commonwealth management settings into the main Commonwealth section of the statistics screen, so you no longer have to dig through the Policy menu to find everything.
Moving on, I have added a new feature called Layout Templates. This is mainly for Regions, but you can now save a "Template" of your current map and export it to the file system to share with other players. When you activate a template on your map, you see a ghosted image of the template buildings overlayed on your colony (you can turn the image on/off) that you can use as a guide for building. This is mainly for players who have designed certain build layouts and want to share the layout with others. I imagine it would work best on an empty regional map with no resources. You can find the template options on the bottom of the General Statistics screen.
There have been some minor changes to Colonist processing. Entertainment facilities now increase energy and happiness at a faster rate. In addition, colonist happiness will also slightly increase when they are at home. I have also increased the starting colonist IQ range to make them a bit smarter by default (will not impact current colonists, only new arrivals). And finally, I have further increased the rate that colonists age, since I still think it's too slow.
And last but not least, there were a couple of changes to existing buildings. The Mass Driver trade capacity has lifted from 100 to 300, and the basic Greenhouse now has a slightly faster production rate and a higher storage capacity.
So anyway, for me this was one of those updates that was pretty large, but for the general players of the game, it should seem like a pretty small patch. Hopefully nothing major has been broken, but continue to let me know what bugs you find. I should note that on the Android and Windows clients, there is a new "Send Feedback" button on the My Colony sidebar that will allow you to send a message or bug report directly to my Inbox, and I will add this to the Desktop, Web, and iOS versions at some point too. A lot of times people leave bug reports in the app store comments, and those are easy for me to miss.
That's all for today;s update though, let me know what you find, stay tuned for more, and thanks for playing My Colony!
This would be a good time to produce a building that specifically brings in one type of race, like maybe an upgrade to the slave gate that allows immigration from the Zolarg Empire. Then there could be jobs that could be specific to one race...arbiters and brewmasters could be draconian only, or jobs could be set to only allow certain races as workers, that way it makes more sense for insectoid housing to exist, and for insectoid specific jobs to exist. It's just an idea, something I've thought should be in place for a while.
Regardless of if bast does that or not, what about:
Insect Fattener- It turns out if you overfeed your insects, they will start to vomit up sugar and ant paste as they get sick from overeating. Collect both these resources from the poor bugs! Consumes Food to keep those insects fed, and water to clean up the gross insectoid germs!
Slave Labor Camp- Using state-of-the-art insectoid technology, create your own Labor Camps for those insects to work! Creates many valuable resources for your colony! (This is the draconian version of the labor camp like they have their own version of the mining pit too). Requires a couple of Reptillian supervisors to make sure those insects don't slack off!
Drunken Market- It's a well-known fact that tourists and citizens alike act much dumber when they're drunk. Here you can get people drunk and sell them terrible knockoffs for high prices while their inhibitions aren't in the way! Transforms 2 rum, 1 pottery, 1 painting into $3000, and creates unhappy people! Can entertain 30 tourists (I'm not sure how many it should entertain, 30 seemed reasonable).
Plastic Polymerizer- I'm sorry, I couldn't come up with something clever for this one. Uses bandwidth, power, 1 oil and 1 water to make 80 plastic.
Hacker's Den- Tired of how all that coding work nets you so little software? How about having that code be used to steal other people's programs instead! That coder will bring in much more software now! Uses much more bandwidth and a bit more power to net you much more software.
Triantanium Impactor- Using antanium, uranium, and helium, you can create a decent amount of triantanium to use to usher in the newest age of technology. Uses 1 u, 1 an, 1 he to make 40 triantanium. Requires bandwidth, power, and software as utilities.
Robomaker's Den- Provides housing and job(s). Uses aluminum, software, microchips, and crystalline to make robots.
Cell Phone Factory- Tired of hearing your younger citizens complain about the slow postal system? Want to make the elderly colonists feel stuck in the past? Well, start making and selling cheap cell phones that will stop working as soon as the warranty ends! (Warning: small chance phones may explode!) Produces civics as a byproduct of people feeling the illusion of being able to contact customer service (even if they are always on hold). Transforms 1 microchip, 1 plastic, 1 software into $200. Uses power, robots, and bandwidth as well.
New Tech- Next-Gen Technology: Costs 30 million research, 3 million civics, $8 million, 5k plastic, robots, and triantanium. (Can modify costs, just what I thought of based on other draconian techs) Needed for everything after this point:
Next-Gen Chip Transporter- Tired of how slow the normal transporter is? Using plastic and other state-of-the-art materials you can upgrade those last-gen transporters into the future! Now requires bandwidth, but produces 30 microchips per round in return. (or alternatively, produces chips at the same conversion ratio, but at a drastically increases speed).
Ultra-High Frequency Node- Are your people complaining about not having enough internet access? Does it feel too slow for you? Well never fear! Using next-gen fiber optic technology, you can make superior nodes to provide all your people with bandwidth!
Deep Space Hacker- Using next-gen data-stealing technologies, upgrade your deep space interceptors to hack even the most secure transactions and communications! (not sure how much of an upgrade it should be, but should definitely give you more money and research, but should now also get you civics from hacking into secure government databases halfway across the universe).
Next-Gen Triantanium Impactor- Using next-gen technology you can create massive amounts of triantanium! Creates 140 triantanium from 1 an, 1 u, 1 he. Utilities: robots, bandwidth, and power
Next-Gen Polymerizer- you know the words by now, using next-gen technology, blah blah blah :P. Produces 160 plastic per round using same components as original polymerizer.
Next-Gen Microreactor (upgrade from hybrid microreactor, because I thought of this idea but don't want to step on wadaling's toes)- Using the power of next-gen technology, create absurd amounts of electricity! Uses bandwidth, triantanium, and helium to make power. Also requires water to stop from overheating.
Next-Gen Materials Extractor- Uses crystalline and helium to make 50 of each of the raw materials instead of 15.
Actual Reality Gaming Station- Using next-gen "virtual reality", make video games so realistic they are actually happening! You can drop blocks on insectoids in Antetris, crush them with candy in Sugar Crush, stomp Sectoombas like your favorite video game characters Drario and Druigi, and best of all, play first-person shooters like Crush of Insects: Drac Ops as yourself! Requires sugar to keep those "virtual" insects fed, as well as software and robots to add that extra realism to the game! Produces money that draconians have mooched from their parents, as well as civics for helping the draconian military crush any insectoid rebels. Provides entertainment for citizens and tourists.
I'll add more ideas if I think of them, just had a couple of immediate ones and I wanted to post them.
Regardless of if bast does that or not, what about:
Insect Fattener- It turns out if you overfeed your insects, they will start to vomit up sugar and ant paste as they get sick from overeating. Collect both these resources from the poor bugs! Consumes Food to keep those insects fed, and water to clean up the gross insectoid germs!
Slave Labor Camp- Using state-of-the-art insectoid technology, create your own Labor Camps for those insects to work! Creates many valuable resources for your colony! (This is the draconian version of the labor camp like they have their own version of the mining pit too). Requires a couple of Reptillian supervisors to make sure those insects don't slack off!
Drunken Market- It's a well-known fact that tourists and citizens alike act much dumber when they're drunk. Here you can get people drunk and sell them terrible knockoffs for high prices while their inhibitions aren't in the way! Transforms 2 rum, 1 pottery, 1 painting into $3000, and creates unhappy people! Can entertain 30 tourists (I'm not sure how many it should entertain, 30 seemed reasonable).
Plastic Polymerizer- I'm sorry, I couldn't come up with something clever for this one. Uses bandwidth, power, 1 oil and 1 water to make 80 plastic.
Hacker's Den- Tired of how all that coding work nets you so little software? How about having that code be used to steal other people's programs instead! That coder will bring in much more software now! Uses much more bandwidth and a bit more power to net you much more software.
Triantanium Impactor- Using antanium, uranium, and helium, you can create a decent amount of triantanium to use to usher in the newest age of technology. Uses 1 u, 1 an, 1 he to make 40 triantanium. Requires bandwidth, power, and software as utilities.
Robomaker's Den- Provides housing and job(s). Uses aluminum, software, microchips, and crystalline to make robots.
Cell Phone Factory- Tired of hearing your younger citizens complain about the slow postal system? Want to make the elderly colonists feel stuck in the past? Well, start making and selling cheap cell phones that will stop working as soon as the warranty ends! (Warning: small chance phones may explode!) Produces civics as a byproduct of people feeling the illusion of being able to contact customer service (even if they are always on hold). Transforms 1 microchip, 1 plastic, 1 software into $200. Uses power, robots, and bandwidth as well.
New Tech- Next-Gen Technology: Costs 30 million research, 3 million civics, $8 million, 5k plastic, robots, and triantanium. (Can modify costs, just what I thought of based on other draconian techs) Needed for everything after this point:
Next-Gen Chip Transporter- Tired of how slow the normal transporter is? Using plastic and other state-of-the-art materials you can upgrade those last-gen transporters into the future! Now requires bandwidth, but produces 30 microchips per round in return. (or alternatively, produces chips at the same conversion ratio, but at a drastically increases speed).
Ultra-High Frequency Node- Are your people complaining about not having enough internet access? Does it feel too slow for you? Well never fear! Using next-gen fiber optic technology, you can make superior nodes to provide all your people with bandwidth!
Deep Space Hacker- Using next-gen data-stealing technologies, upgrade your deep space interceptors to hack even the most secure transactions and communications! (not sure how much of an upgrade it should be, but should definitely give you more money and research, but should now also get you civics from hacking into secure government databases halfway across the universe).
Next-Gen Triantanium Impactor- Using next-gen technology you can create massive amounts of triantanium! Creates 140 triantanium from 1 an, 1 u, 1 he. Utilities: robots, bandwidth, and power
Next-Gen Polymerizer- you know the words by now, using next-gen technology, blah blah blah :P. Produces 160 plastic per round using same components as original polymerizer.
Next-Gen Microreactor (upgrade from hybrid microreactor, because I thought of this idea but don't want to step on wadaling's toes)- Using the power of next-gen technology, create absurd amounts of electricity! Uses bandwidth, triantanium, and helium to make power. Also requires water to stop from overheating.
Next-Gen Materials Extractor- Uses crystalline and helium to make 50 of each of the raw materials instead of 15.
Actual Reality Gaming Station- Using next-gen "virtual reality", make video games so realistic they are actually happening! You can drop blocks on insectoids in Antetris, crush them with candy in Sugar Crush, stomp Sectoombas like your favorite video game characters Drario and Druigi, and best of all, play first-person shooters like Crush of Insects: Drac Ops as yourself! Requires sugar to keep those "virtual" insects fed, as well as software and robots to add that extra realism to the game! Produces money that draconians have mooched from their parents, as well as civics for helping the draconian military crush any insectoid rebels. Provides entertainment for citizens and tourists.
I'll add more ideas if I think of them, just had a couple of immediate ones and I wanted to post them.
Death 3D Virtual Reality Mode
As of v0.17.0, Death 3D now supports Virtual Reality mode on mobile (and mobile web) using a VR headset and bluetooth gamepad! This feature is still experimental and may not work on all devices. This thread will explain how the feature works, how to set it up, and what equipment it was tested under.
First, to enable VR Mode, you must open the Engine Settings menu and enable the VR Mode option. You shouldn't have to restart the app, but you may have to if it doesn't work right away. You will know if your game is in VR mode if you see a VR Mode Help option on the title screen.
VR Mode consists of the following components working together:
Stereoscopic 3D Rendering: The game scene is rendered in stereoscopic mode for use in a VR headset (the kind that you put your phone into). You can use a headset such as Google Cardboard, but for testing and development, the following low-cost headset from Amazon was used, and I can confirm that it displays the 3D effect properly on both an Android Motorola G6 phone and on an Apple iPhone 12 Mini phone:
Bluetooth Gamepad: Since your phone will be inside of a VR headset, you will not be able to use the touchscreen controls, obviously. Luckily, Death 3D has full in-game controller support (you may need to use the touch screen to navigate menus though). On Android, pretty much any gamepad will work, but the iPhone only works with specific models, such as the official Xbox and Playstation controllers. The controls are mapped and tested using an Xbox gamepad, so if your controller has a similar layout to an Xbox controller, you should be fine. VR Mode will probably work with a keyboard and mouse as well, although I haven't tested it.
Compass and Gyroscopes: Death 3D will use the internal sensors on your device to track head movement and which way you are facing. When you are playing the game in VR mode, it is suggested that you stand up so that you can turn around a complete 360 degrees. You can also turn yourself using the gamepad, but it's more fun to get the full VR experience by moving your whole body! The motion controls currently only work on Android, but I am working on getting them running on iOS as well.
Troubleshooting
When you are playing in VR Mode, there will be a white line down the middle of the screen, which should be lined up with the center of your VR headset for best results.
If the picture is blury, you may need to adjust the lenses on the headset. If you get the VR headset from Amazon that I linked above, you can adjust the lenses left/right or forward/back. For me, I got the best results by moving the two lenses all the way forward (towards my face) and as far apart as possible. You may need to adjust that based on your head size and vision.
VR mode on Death 3D is quite fun, and if you have the equipment (or don't mind getting it, it's fairly cheap), I think it's pretty neat. I have tried some of the other VR experiences on Android, and I think that Death 3D is already one of the better ones, even in it's early experimental stages. I plan on bringing VR Mode to Dungeon Infinity soon as well, and if people enjoy the effect, I will probably create more VR related content in the future. I sort of wanted to remaster the Deimos trilogy in full 3D at some point, and it would go great with VR as well.
So anyway, give it a try and see what you think, and if you have issues with the effect or feedback/suggestions, let me know here in the forums!
I know that many players have been patiently waiting for the next My Colony 2 update, but now the way is finally over as MC2 has just been updated to v0.31.0, and along with the usual bug fixes, this update brings with it a massive new content dump! So what all is inside? Let's take a look!
If you look at the screenshot above and think that something seems a bit fishy, then you would be correct. This update adds fish as a new resource, and you will now see them swimming around in the oceans on the Water World map! Fish are technically a Terrain type object in the game engine much like Ore and Gold deposits, except this is the first terrain class that can be generated in the water. The object also rotates in a circle, to give the appearance that the fish are swimming. They will spread too, similar to synthetic crystalline (although at a slower rate). The oceans on Water World are so overflowing with fish, that I doubt anybody will ever run out.
To go along with the new fish resource are the also-new Fish Dropoff structure and the Trawler unit, which are available pretty early on in the game and made with models provided by @spamdude . The Fish Dropoff can store 2500 Fish and also converts some of it into food, but once you unlock Salt Water production, you can also build the shore based Refrigerated Fish Bins for additional Fish storage. In addition to the new content, the existing Fish Hatchery gains fish storage and slight generation.
Moving on, there was a massive dump of community submitted MC2 models on the Official Discord Server recently, with contributions coming in from @spamdude , @SPARKY0303 and @DoYouHaveAnyOats , so please take a moment to thank these three users for their contributions to the game! In the screenshot below, you can see many of the new structures.
New buildings provided by @SPARKY0303 are the Hospital, the Virtual Music Experience and the Integrated Nuclear Reactor. The Hospital was a much needed upgrade to the two infirmary structures which were increasingly unable to keep up with the medical demands of larger colonies. The Virtual Music Experience adds a new semi-early game entertainment structure for your colonists (which also generates some money) and the Integrated Nuclear Reactor is another much needed structure, providing a power boosting upgrade to the existing Small Nuclear Reactor.
In addition to the new Fish related content already mentioned, further contributions from @spamdude include the new Medium Software Studio, Advanced Drilling Platform, Integrated Warehouse, and Medium Security Station. The Medium Software Studio, Integrated Warehouse and Medium Security Station each represent new mid-game upgrades to some of the existing structures that badly needed upgrade options, with the new Integrated Warehouse in particular adding storage for many resources that the regular Warehouse did not cover.
The new Advanced Drilling Platform might just be everyone's new favorite structure. Currently the most expensive building in the game and requiring the new Ultra Deep Excavation tech, the Advanced Drilling Platform consumes Helium 3 (as well as a fair amount of Power, Water and Bandwidth) while producing Ore, Regolith, Gold, Aluminum, Oil, Salt Water, the new Clay resource, and even a few Alien Artifacts! Clearly you are going to need to get your hands on some Helium 3 in order to operate this thing, but you can either find it in the Galactic Board of Trade, or the new Integrated Nuclear Reactor also produces enough Helium 3 to operate one Advanced Drilling Platform. I have also added a new Helium 3 Tank to the game, since it is clear that more He3 storage will be needed going forward.
From @DoYouHaveAnyOats we have three new structures, the Elementary School, High School and the nonsense Fish 'R Us building.
The two school models to me looked like they required an Atmospheric environment, so they are only available on worlds which would have an atmosphere. They both sit below the current Vocational Training Center in terms of education output, but are good early game education structures. The Fish R Us is similar in mechanics to the existing Canteen, except it utilizes Fish instead of Rum. I'm not going to post a picture of it here, you just have to see it in-game.
There are a few other new structures to arrive in this update as well. The new Ancient Alien Quantum Physics tech unlocks two new Alien structures, the Alien Solar Tower and the Quantum Food Silo, which both represent much needed Alien upgrades to existing structures. Climate Science Theory tech has also been added to the game, and unlocking it will allow you to build the new Nuclear Water Synthesis Plant, which I felt was needed particularly on the Lunar and Abandoned Worlds.
On top of all of the new content, some tweaks have been made to some of the existing items in the game. I have increased the charcoal output of the Charcoal Factory, slightly reduced the rum consumption of the Canteen, increased the spice and ether storage on the Lander, added a small amount of Helium 3 and Salt Water storage to the Lander, and added several new upgrade paths for existing structures to take advantage of the new content.
There are also some technical changes and fixes. Firstly, I corrected an issue where players who were not logged in to an Ape Apps Account were unable to play the game. I fixed a bug where MC2 was unable to load using the new Ape Apps Launcher. Structures can now be placed directly over Terrain objects, doing so will automatically bulldoze the terrains underneath. I corrected several technical issues with the Galactic Board of Trade. Fixed a bug where you could no longer properly build Palm Trees or Synthetic Crystalline deposits. There were also several minor fixes and UI tweaks made to the game.
All in all, this update includes 1 new Terrain object, 3 new Techs, 2 new Resources, 1 new Unit, and 16 new Structures. I want to thank everyone who contributed content to this release (as well as bug reports and suggestions), and I hope that you all take a moment to show them some gratitude as well! This update took a bit longer than normal, but I think you will find that it was worth the wait. It should be available to play right now on the Launcher and on the Web, and should be hitting Android and iPhone over the coming days, so let me know what you think, let me know what issues you find, and stay tuned for more!
https://www.apewebapps.com/my-colony-2/
#mycolony2
If you look at the screenshot above and think that something seems a bit fishy, then you would be correct. This update adds fish as a new resource, and you will now see them swimming around in the oceans on the Water World map! Fish are technically a Terrain type object in the game engine much like Ore and Gold deposits, except this is the first terrain class that can be generated in the water. The object also rotates in a circle, to give the appearance that the fish are swimming. They will spread too, similar to synthetic crystalline (although at a slower rate). The oceans on Water World are so overflowing with fish, that I doubt anybody will ever run out.
To go along with the new fish resource are the also-new Fish Dropoff structure and the Trawler unit, which are available pretty early on in the game and made with models provided by @spamdude . The Fish Dropoff can store 2500 Fish and also converts some of it into food, but once you unlock Salt Water production, you can also build the shore based Refrigerated Fish Bins for additional Fish storage. In addition to the new content, the existing Fish Hatchery gains fish storage and slight generation.
Moving on, there was a massive dump of community submitted MC2 models on the Official Discord Server recently, with contributions coming in from @spamdude , @SPARKY0303 and @DoYouHaveAnyOats , so please take a moment to thank these three users for their contributions to the game! In the screenshot below, you can see many of the new structures.
New buildings provided by @SPARKY0303 are the Hospital, the Virtual Music Experience and the Integrated Nuclear Reactor. The Hospital was a much needed upgrade to the two infirmary structures which were increasingly unable to keep up with the medical demands of larger colonies. The Virtual Music Experience adds a new semi-early game entertainment structure for your colonists (which also generates some money) and the Integrated Nuclear Reactor is another much needed structure, providing a power boosting upgrade to the existing Small Nuclear Reactor.
In addition to the new Fish related content already mentioned, further contributions from @spamdude include the new Medium Software Studio, Advanced Drilling Platform, Integrated Warehouse, and Medium Security Station. The Medium Software Studio, Integrated Warehouse and Medium Security Station each represent new mid-game upgrades to some of the existing structures that badly needed upgrade options, with the new Integrated Warehouse in particular adding storage for many resources that the regular Warehouse did not cover.
The new Advanced Drilling Platform might just be everyone's new favorite structure. Currently the most expensive building in the game and requiring the new Ultra Deep Excavation tech, the Advanced Drilling Platform consumes Helium 3 (as well as a fair amount of Power, Water and Bandwidth) while producing Ore, Regolith, Gold, Aluminum, Oil, Salt Water, the new Clay resource, and even a few Alien Artifacts! Clearly you are going to need to get your hands on some Helium 3 in order to operate this thing, but you can either find it in the Galactic Board of Trade, or the new Integrated Nuclear Reactor also produces enough Helium 3 to operate one Advanced Drilling Platform. I have also added a new Helium 3 Tank to the game, since it is clear that more He3 storage will be needed going forward.
From @DoYouHaveAnyOats we have three new structures, the Elementary School, High School and the nonsense Fish 'R Us building.
The two school models to me looked like they required an Atmospheric environment, so they are only available on worlds which would have an atmosphere. They both sit below the current Vocational Training Center in terms of education output, but are good early game education structures. The Fish R Us is similar in mechanics to the existing Canteen, except it utilizes Fish instead of Rum. I'm not going to post a picture of it here, you just have to see it in-game.
There are a few other new structures to arrive in this update as well. The new Ancient Alien Quantum Physics tech unlocks two new Alien structures, the Alien Solar Tower and the Quantum Food Silo, which both represent much needed Alien upgrades to existing structures. Climate Science Theory tech has also been added to the game, and unlocking it will allow you to build the new Nuclear Water Synthesis Plant, which I felt was needed particularly on the Lunar and Abandoned Worlds.
On top of all of the new content, some tweaks have been made to some of the existing items in the game. I have increased the charcoal output of the Charcoal Factory, slightly reduced the rum consumption of the Canteen, increased the spice and ether storage on the Lander, added a small amount of Helium 3 and Salt Water storage to the Lander, and added several new upgrade paths for existing structures to take advantage of the new content.
There are also some technical changes and fixes. Firstly, I corrected an issue where players who were not logged in to an Ape Apps Account were unable to play the game. I fixed a bug where MC2 was unable to load using the new Ape Apps Launcher. Structures can now be placed directly over Terrain objects, doing so will automatically bulldoze the terrains underneath. I corrected several technical issues with the Galactic Board of Trade. Fixed a bug where you could no longer properly build Palm Trees or Synthetic Crystalline deposits. There were also several minor fixes and UI tweaks made to the game.
All in all, this update includes 1 new Terrain object, 3 new Techs, 2 new Resources, 1 new Unit, and 16 new Structures. I want to thank everyone who contributed content to this release (as well as bug reports and suggestions), and I hope that you all take a moment to show them some gratitude as well! This update took a bit longer than normal, but I think you will find that it was worth the wait. It should be available to play right now on the Launcher and on the Web, and should be hitting Android and iPhone over the coming days, so let me know what you think, let me know what issues you find, and stay tuned for more!
https://www.apewebapps.com/my-colony-2/
#mycolony2
The Galactic Board of Trade (GBT) should be reworked with limits implemented so new colonies can buy and sell cheap resources for a reasonable price. A less than 3x (or something) import cost limit should be established (from the galactic freight cost ect.) and an import/export cap of (idk) 1 million should be placed. This will allow a reasonable flow of reasonable priced goods for new colonies.
Now for older, late game colonies you should introduce a "Galactic Stock Market" GSM. It'll pretty much be the same as the current GBT but you can only deal in bulk amounts of over 1 million (or something). With no price limits. An all out, resource trading battle.
For both the GBT and GSM their should be a limit on how many open requests to buy/sell a colony can have (like 10ish) this will stop spammers.
Personally, upon reaching late game (All techs researched, nothing really necessary to build) the game gets somewhat stagnate. Yes the new content is always exciting, but what I find most fun after reaching this point is the buying and selling in the GBT, and growing my colonies wealth with good trading strategy. It keeps me logging in to see what the markets up too. I think there's a lot of opportunity for fun with resource trading.
We might need better storage options for a GSM to work well. Alternatively you can add a "credit" option within the structure itself for keeping larger quantities of "virtual resources" that can be deposited and withdrawn when needed. Its kinda meta and makes storage pointless but maybe it could be taxed or something its just a thought.
I think the fun that comes from trading is why some players get upset when the Evil Galactic Ghost God takes 99% of the money they earned trading fairly. Yeah we have more money then anyone can spend. But that's what we were going for.
Perhaps as the game continues to develop we can have uber-expensive, 1 build limit, super structures. Nothing overly unfair, maybe a power structure that generates 100k power that requires no resources or people to run it. A "perpetual motion machine" for (idk) 500 quintillion. The cost will be set based on average wealth growth of all colonies.You could also make an auto-atmosphere condenser that turns on and off depending on the current necessity.
Sorry for throwing so much out there but the TLDR is: keep resource trading. Make a fair market for newbies, don't let the Evil Galactic Ghost God levy 99% of traders profit, and try to expand how trading works for well established "late game" colonies.
Now for older, late game colonies you should introduce a "Galactic Stock Market" GSM. It'll pretty much be the same as the current GBT but you can only deal in bulk amounts of over 1 million (or something). With no price limits. An all out, resource trading battle.
For both the GBT and GSM their should be a limit on how many open requests to buy/sell a colony can have (like 10ish) this will stop spammers.
Personally, upon reaching late game (All techs researched, nothing really necessary to build) the game gets somewhat stagnate. Yes the new content is always exciting, but what I find most fun after reaching this point is the buying and selling in the GBT, and growing my colonies wealth with good trading strategy. It keeps me logging in to see what the markets up too. I think there's a lot of opportunity for fun with resource trading.
We might need better storage options for a GSM to work well. Alternatively you can add a "credit" option within the structure itself for keeping larger quantities of "virtual resources" that can be deposited and withdrawn when needed. Its kinda meta and makes storage pointless but maybe it could be taxed or something its just a thought.
I think the fun that comes from trading is why some players get upset when the Evil Galactic Ghost God takes 99% of the money they earned trading fairly. Yeah we have more money then anyone can spend. But that's what we were going for.
Perhaps as the game continues to develop we can have uber-expensive, 1 build limit, super structures. Nothing overly unfair, maybe a power structure that generates 100k power that requires no resources or people to run it. A "perpetual motion machine" for (idk) 500 quintillion. The cost will be set based on average wealth growth of all colonies.You could also make an auto-atmosphere condenser that turns on and off depending on the current necessity.
Sorry for throwing so much out there but the TLDR is: keep resource trading. Make a fair market for newbies, don't let the Evil Galactic Ghost God levy 99% of traders profit, and try to expand how trading works for well established "late game" colonies.
High Rise Security Raises colony Happiness by scanning your colony and protecting your citizens under its watchful eye form illegal contraband such as illegal relics,artifacts Crystals. and Ant Paste small amounts of contraband is added to your resources every 15 cycles To build this building Steel 100000, Gold 300000 Ore 300000, Aluminum 10000 Uranium 2000, Artifact 1000 and 60000 micro chips . * High Rise .
Entertainment Building makes lots of cash and provides entertainment to citizens and 2000 tourists my building gaming systems and providing Virtual Reality Parks and Movie Theaters inside them. Coast same as High rise investment bank but half the Gold same amount of workers .Security building has 700 jobs
Entertainment Building makes lots of cash and provides entertainment to citizens and 2000 tourists my building gaming systems and providing Virtual Reality Parks and Movie Theaters inside them. Coast same as High rise investment bank but half the Gold same amount of workers .Security building has 700 jobs
could be running out of memory during compression since it is a large colony, you can try turning off compression. If it's already off, are you using 32 bit chrome? could be reaching limit to amount of data that can passed through a javascript function. If you are using cloud sync, your game file might be so big that it is timing out saving to server.
It is tough to know, alot of these insane large colonies start pushing up against the limits of the engine and/or browser. consider a large colony with lots of buildings and millions of colonists is probably several hundred megabytes in size uncompressed just when saved as a file, and will be quite a bit larger once loaded into RAM.
You can try downloading the desktop client and see if that saves better. It saves into physical storage instead of the browser's virtual filesystem, which may be more reliable.
It is tough to know, alot of these insane large colonies start pushing up against the limits of the engine and/or browser. consider a large colony with lots of buildings and millions of colonists is probably several hundred megabytes in size uncompressed just when saved as a file, and will be quite a bit larger once loaded into RAM.
You can try downloading the desktop client and see if that saves better. It saves into physical storage instead of the browser's virtual filesystem, which may be more reliable.
DragonCrypt said:Things seem to have gone back to normal in the GBT for now. And by that i mean the ridiculous price offers are back. I just saw one that wanted 10 Bil coins for 10k steel.... ABSURD!!
No more Incredible resource spam for now tho, it seems everyone bought it all
Lol that guy prob fishing for the script to buy it. I dont think this game has reached the level where people pay cash for virtual commodities. Most likely doing it just becos they can
Ignore the stat bar numbers for that. Over 3k colonists, they become virtual instead and that bar hasn't been able to read them right since that was done. The stat page instead has the correct numbers.
Beginning in mid January with the next update to My Colony and rolling out to several other apps in the coming months, My Tokens are an upcoming part of the Ape Apps accounts system that will add a bit of (optional) variety to several different games.
So, what are Tokens? Basically they are little avatars you can customize and make and save to your account. You can store however many you want to your account, but you can only set one as your primary Token. If you don't care about Tokens, you can have none.
Tokens can be used as your avatar/profile picture on the Ape Apps site and within the different apps, but their real feature comes with how they tie into different games. Take My Colony for instance. Right now when you have tourists come to your colony, they all look like the same dopey guy walking around with a camera in his face. Sort of boring.
With the addition of Tokens though, there will now be thousands of unique user-created tourists showing up to your colony from all across the galaxy. Note that this feature will be optional, and you can turn it on or off at any time. In a similar way, the visitors to your farm in My Land will also be replaced with user-generated Tokens.
One of the coolest implementations though will be in the upcoming game Death 3d. As I alluded to in this blog post, people will be able to play online multiplayer deathmatch games using their own custom Tokens as their characters. This game is essentially the reason I created the entire Token system, so that I would not have to manually create a bunch of deathmatch characters. You will also be able to play against global Token characters during offline single-player skirmish deathmatch games. There will be so many possibilities that you may never have to kill the same AI bot twice!
The Forum chat will also be getting some Token love. In addition to the regular text based chat, there will also be a new option to switch into "token chat" mode, which lets you chat like normal, but also walk your little token guy around a virtual room. It might evolve into a basic RPG type game at some point. Might be totally pointless on the main Ape Apps chat channel, but could have some cool uses on the RP Forums channel.
My classic game Level Up will also get it's own token upgrade in the form of an all new multiplayer arena mode, where you can go head to head and fight other players online, earning coins and experience to upgrade your online-only character. Also, I was playing the classic NES game Punch Out over the Christmas weekend and was thinking of making an over-the-top boxing arcade type game using Tokens as the characters. It would have both offline and online multiplayer and I could probably make it in just a couple of weeks or less, since Tokens would take care of most of the visuals. We will see.
Anyway, these are just some of the initial features coming with Tokens next month. If people like them I might add more stuff. I was thinking of adding a way to somehow send 'gifts' of some sort to other players through the token system. Like if somebody's Token visits your farm in My Land, you can click on them and give them a pumpkin or something which in turn can be used in My Colony or Level Up somehow. But I haven't totally thought it out yet. Like I said before though, everything Token related will be completely optional, since I know there are many people who don't like this sort of nonsense. But for the people who do, it will be just one small thing to sort of tie the different Ape Apps games together in a fun little way!
Tokens can be used as your avatar/profile picture on the Ape Apps site and within the different apps, but their real feature comes with how they tie into different games. Take My Colony for instance. Right now when you have tourists come to your colony, they all look like the same dopey guy walking around with a camera in his face. Sort of boring.
One of the coolest implementations though will be in the upcoming game Death 3d. As I alluded to in this blog post, people will be able to play online multiplayer deathmatch games using their own custom Tokens as their characters. This game is essentially the reason I created the entire Token system, so that I would not have to manually create a bunch of deathmatch characters. You will also be able to play against global Token characters during offline single-player skirmish deathmatch games. There will be so many possibilities that you may never have to kill the same AI bot twice!
The Forum chat will also be getting some Token love. In addition to the regular text based chat, there will also be a new option to switch into "token chat" mode, which lets you chat like normal, but also walk your little token guy around a virtual room. It might evolve into a basic RPG type game at some point. Might be totally pointless on the main Ape Apps chat channel, but could have some cool uses on the RP Forums channel.
My classic game Level Up will also get it's own token upgrade in the form of an all new multiplayer arena mode, where you can go head to head and fight other players online, earning coins and experience to upgrade your online-only character. Also, I was playing the classic NES game Punch Out over the Christmas weekend and was thinking of making an over-the-top boxing arcade type game using Tokens as the characters. It would have both offline and online multiplayer and I could probably make it in just a couple of weeks or less, since Tokens would take care of most of the visuals. We will see.
Anyway, these are just some of the initial features coming with Tokens next month. If people like them I might add more stuff. I was thinking of adding a way to somehow send 'gifts' of some sort to other players through the token system. Like if somebody's Token visits your farm in My Land, you can click on them and give them a pumpkin or something which in turn can be used in My Colony or Level Up somehow. But I haven't totally thought it out yet. Like I said before though, everything Token related will be completely optional, since I know there are many people who don't like this sort of nonsense. But for the people who do, it will be just one small thing to sort of tie the different Ape Apps games together in a fun little way!
Yep that is rovers or any bot build bug worlds type .
they can Teleport ( neat hu ? ) see bots become virtual when not in view so when bots are mining and the area is not in view they exist in quantum space . Which means they ecist in every part of the my colony universe at once .
PA alien teck who needs it lol .anyway the bots can teleport through walls buildings what every ( got bot stuck in a building find another of the same type dobble click move to a out of view area and bot becomes unstuck .
Many people consider this a Bug even bast has once or twice But I consider it a game tool .
PS thsi also means bots can INSTANCE Travel ( hard to get them to do it but can be done .
slect all bots you want to go to far side of map select move then go to far side let go then move out of view quickly and poof bots start popping in .
they can Teleport ( neat hu ? ) see bots become virtual when not in view so when bots are mining and the area is not in view they exist in quantum space . Which means they ecist in every part of the my colony universe at once .
PA alien teck who needs it lol .anyway the bots can teleport through walls buildings what every ( got bot stuck in a building find another of the same type dobble click move to a out of view area and bot becomes unstuck .
Many people consider this a Bug even bast has once or twice But I consider it a game tool .
PS thsi also means bots can INSTANCE Travel ( hard to get them to do it but can be done .
slect all bots you want to go to far side of map select move then go to far side let go then move out of view quickly and poof bots start popping in .
Use to be able to, but because of the possibility of such large colonies, most of the colonists above the 3k mark are 'virtual' so those functions were removed as they no longer worked correctly.
I'm looking forward to it too. Maybe we wouldn't need virtual avatars anymore and some problems would be evaded, but still it's complicated as it's still needed to simulate the production of the other districts and therefore it would always create some lag if there are a lot of districts
Edit: also, it can be hard to simulate accurately the production of the other districts without some lag
Edit: also, it can be hard to simulate accurately the production of the other districts without some lag
When playing on Android, it would be nice if the gifting form called the numeric keyboard like the GBT selling form, instead of the text keyboard like the send message form.
Also, something to avoid selecting a road when we don't want to.
For example, when I try to select a small building between larger ones and the perspective isn't helping, or (a lot more often) when I try to click on a moving unit/citizen, I get the popup for the road under the unit and then I need to close it.
Maybe showing a small window like when clicking on a ressource, so we don't get something covering the screen?
Also, something to avoid selecting a road when we don't want to.
For example, when I try to select a small building between larger ones and the perspective isn't helping, or (a lot more often) when I try to click on a moving unit/citizen, I get the popup for the road under the unit and then I need to close it.
Maybe showing a small window like when clicking on a ressource, so we don't get something covering the screen?
I was never sure why Bast made that big old menu for the roads anyway. We could do we the regular menu that all of the other buildings have honestly. I also think that we should have an option to turn unlit pavement into lit pavement without bulldozing the pavement and then placing down lit pavement. An "add lighting" command, similar to the upgrade command, would change the road to it's lit version of the same material. Then, a "remove lighting" option would change the lit road tiles back into unlit tiles.
I think that these options would make road placements much smoother, because you can go ahead and build all of your roads, and then you can select individual road tiles, press the "add lighting" key, whatever letter it would be, and that road tile would turn into scaffolding and wait for rovers to come and build the lit road tile where the unlit road tile used to be.
I think that these options would make road placements much smoother, because you can go ahead and build all of your roads, and then you can select individual road tiles, press the "add lighting" key, whatever letter it would be, and that road tile would turn into scaffolding and wait for rovers to come and build the lit road tile where the unlit road tile used to be.
Strange. So NetHood is like a virtual folder that relates to a shared network location. Is there anything about your home folder setup that isn't "standard"
@MasterHutchGaming I am sorry you think I have been ignoring this issue, but you are mistaken big time. Just look at how many months old this thread is, and how long it has been since the last reply before yours. There has been considerable progress made on the worker bugs since then, compared with how the issue was at the time. I am not claiming it is "fixed" now, but I think many would agree that it has improved significantly, rather than being ignored for a year+ as you suggest. For many colonies the issue is now completely non-existent.
I am aware that there is an issue on Android and iOS when a colony reaches around 500 colonists, which is the virtualized-citizen cutoff level on those devices, that causes issues when the colony is transitioning from 100% "real" colonists towards a real/virtual colonist mix. The issue is more pronounced on those platforms, because the cutoff level is at 500 population, vs 2000 on the other platforms. This is because of the reduced memory available to iOS and Android apps, Android in particular. In contrast, on Desktop when a colony already has over 2000 colonists, it is harder to notice when the engine starts to virtualize workers and simulate their stats, as there is a much larger tool of colonists to draw the generalized stats from.
That all said, your issues may be totally unrelated to this. What I gathered from all of your posts is that your issue is that whenever you build new buildings, you suddenly get massive riots and unemployment, which are made worse by a fire drill.
I just think it is possible that the issues are not exactly the same as those in the threads you replied to, many of which are very old and have since been addressed. I realize I do not reply to every single bug post, but I do look at them when I work on each update. If one has gone for months or a year with no reply, there is a pretty good likelihood that most people are no longer experiencing the same issue. Especially when it comes to employment related issues. There have been many updates since the last post to this thread that have totally overhauled the way the game assigns employees and deals with education.
What are the stats of the colony? What types or buildings are you making, does it happen with just one class of building, or all? It would also be helpful to know what your engine settings are, which you can find a link to in the game's slide-out menu. All of this information will help to research the issue. It is very difficult to debug or fix something with limited information and no way to reproduce, but believe me, I would love to get the bug fixed. Despite what you seem to believe, I do not like the game to have bugs, nor do I just ignore them.
I am aware that there is an issue on Android and iOS when a colony reaches around 500 colonists, which is the virtualized-citizen cutoff level on those devices, that causes issues when the colony is transitioning from 100% "real" colonists towards a real/virtual colonist mix. The issue is more pronounced on those platforms, because the cutoff level is at 500 population, vs 2000 on the other platforms. This is because of the reduced memory available to iOS and Android apps, Android in particular. In contrast, on Desktop when a colony already has over 2000 colonists, it is harder to notice when the engine starts to virtualize workers and simulate their stats, as there is a much larger tool of colonists to draw the generalized stats from.
That all said, your issues may be totally unrelated to this. What I gathered from all of your posts is that your issue is that whenever you build new buildings, you suddenly get massive riots and unemployment, which are made worse by a fire drill.
I just think it is possible that the issues are not exactly the same as those in the threads you replied to, many of which are very old and have since been addressed. I realize I do not reply to every single bug post, but I do look at them when I work on each update. If one has gone for months or a year with no reply, there is a pretty good likelihood that most people are no longer experiencing the same issue. Especially when it comes to employment related issues. There have been many updates since the last post to this thread that have totally overhauled the way the game assigns employees and deals with education.
What are the stats of the colony? What types or buildings are you making, does it happen with just one class of building, or all? It would also be helpful to know what your engine settings are, which you can find a link to in the game's slide-out menu. All of this information will help to research the issue. It is very difficult to debug or fix something with limited information and no way to reproduce, but believe me, I would love to get the bug fixed. Despite what you seem to believe, I do not like the game to have bugs, nor do I just ignore them.
Over the last week I have started working on 0.77.0 on the web client. I have been really busy with other non-app related things though, so the update has been going slowly. Towards the end of the week, I will have a lot more time to start developing again, so I will be able to go full steam ahead on My Colony. Here is what I have planned going in and what to expect. By the way, v0.77.0 is the Christmas Update, and as such, I plan on making it a big one!
Firstly, there are a great many bugs that need to be ironed out. Some have already been addressed, but more yet remain. If you are playing on the web with v0.77.0, please report bugs in this thread so they are easier to find.
Next, I am going to be totally revamping the in-game encyclopedia and owners manual for the game. The new encyclopedia is going to be merged into the Statistics window and is being totally rewritten.
The former printable owners manual is being totally rewritten and reworked. It will now be a complete comprehensive tome of My Colony data and information, and will be viewable in-app, exportable as a .pdf or .txt file, or printable. It will contain information on the game, outline the controls, all of the play modes, give a basic "starting-out" walkthrough, some backstory for all civs, and lay out the full statistics for everything in the game.
As I said, you will be able to view the full text in-app, and most people should use it that way. Not that I expect most people on the forums here to actually need a manual, but for new players it might help. If you really want it though, you can print the whole thing. The printout in total so far runs about 200 pages though (and it's still not done yet), so if you are really wanting to print it out, I would suggest having a duplex printer, or (better yet) printing it at school or work. Then you can throw it in a three ring binder and read about My Colony all day.
There have been many comments in the various app stores related to a lack of instructions or a proper owners manual, so this ought to cover just about everything. The new manual is not yet complete, there are still a couple of sections which need added, but you can see what it has so far by accessing it from the old (soon to be removed) encyclopedia interface.
Next up, I am adding a new 'Water World' map. I am thinking that each civilization will have access to the map, and it will basically be an ocean with some large islands on it. I am also considering having a random hurricane disaster on the map, although it wouldn't be near as brutal as the Lava World disaster.
Zolarg and Reptilians are going to get starship production, which is going to require several new buildings and techs in order to get there. Once all civs have starships, 0.78.0 should start to have the Trade Routes option I am planning, much of which is already ready to go on the server.
Finally, Federation voting seems to be having issues that need to be cleaned up. I also need to add the option to call a custom vote in the federation, so that the members can vote on Federation President. I will be adding Federations to the website, but this will happen between the 0.77 and 0.78 updates.
I have not forgotten about in-game moderators. There is just a lot more infrastructure that needs to be in place first. Of more immediate concern, I could use a moderator for the forum here to help fight some of the spam and to keep everything in line, if anybody is interested in that, you can PM me.
So far in 0.77.0 I have totally changed how "virtual" colonists operate (the fake colonists that 'exist' after your population crosses the 2000 line), so let me know if you are experiencing anything strange in relation to that.
Anyway, the last few weeks have been ultra busy at our house with non-Ape Apps related stuff, but everything should be calmed down by friday (at least until christmas week), which is why I hope to get a lot of My Colony work done in the downtime. Stay tuned!
Firstly, there are a great many bugs that need to be ironed out. Some have already been addressed, but more yet remain. If you are playing on the web with v0.77.0, please report bugs in this thread so they are easier to find.
Next, I am going to be totally revamping the in-game encyclopedia and owners manual for the game. The new encyclopedia is going to be merged into the Statistics window and is being totally rewritten.
The former printable owners manual is being totally rewritten and reworked. It will now be a complete comprehensive tome of My Colony data and information, and will be viewable in-app, exportable as a .pdf or .txt file, or printable. It will contain information on the game, outline the controls, all of the play modes, give a basic "starting-out" walkthrough, some backstory for all civs, and lay out the full statistics for everything in the game.
As I said, you will be able to view the full text in-app, and most people should use it that way. Not that I expect most people on the forums here to actually need a manual, but for new players it might help. If you really want it though, you can print the whole thing. The printout in total so far runs about 200 pages though (and it's still not done yet), so if you are really wanting to print it out, I would suggest having a duplex printer, or (better yet) printing it at school or work. Then you can throw it in a three ring binder and read about My Colony all day.
There have been many comments in the various app stores related to a lack of instructions or a proper owners manual, so this ought to cover just about everything. The new manual is not yet complete, there are still a couple of sections which need added, but you can see what it has so far by accessing it from the old (soon to be removed) encyclopedia interface.
Next up, I am adding a new 'Water World' map. I am thinking that each civilization will have access to the map, and it will basically be an ocean with some large islands on it. I am also considering having a random hurricane disaster on the map, although it wouldn't be near as brutal as the Lava World disaster.
Zolarg and Reptilians are going to get starship production, which is going to require several new buildings and techs in order to get there. Once all civs have starships, 0.78.0 should start to have the Trade Routes option I am planning, much of which is already ready to go on the server.
Finally, Federation voting seems to be having issues that need to be cleaned up. I also need to add the option to call a custom vote in the federation, so that the members can vote on Federation President. I will be adding Federations to the website, but this will happen between the 0.77 and 0.78 updates.
I have not forgotten about in-game moderators. There is just a lot more infrastructure that needs to be in place first. Of more immediate concern, I could use a moderator for the forum here to help fight some of the spam and to keep everything in line, if anybody is interested in that, you can PM me.
So far in 0.77.0 I have totally changed how "virtual" colonists operate (the fake colonists that 'exist' after your population crosses the 2000 line), so let me know if you are experiencing anything strange in relation to that.
Anyway, the last few weeks have been ultra busy at our house with non-Ape Apps related stuff, but everything should be calmed down by friday (at least until christmas week), which is why I hope to get a lot of My Colony work done in the downtime. Stay tuned!
Good news everyone, tonight I will be pushing out the long awaited v0.77.0 release of My Colony! This is actually a pretty big update, and truth be told there is a lot more I wanted to get added in there, but I ran up against a time limit since the Apple App Store will not be accepting any new app submissions after tonight due to the holiday, so I had to push it out now. There is still a ton of new stuff and changes in this update though, so let's dive in.
First, want to mention some engine changes, since several key components of the game have been totally reworked. The code for the simulated or "virtual" colonists has been completely redone. Because of the change, some extra large colonies might experience intermittent delays every minute or so that will look like short freezes. After a few hours of play, this should sort out as things in your game file are rebalanced. Normal sized colonies should notice any impact.
The path finding has been totally overhauled, again. Because of a new map class which I will discuss in a bit, I needed to rewrite the pathfinding to work with different types of passable terrain. I do not see any serious bugs with the new system, but of course let me know if I am wrong.
Several changes and updates have been made to Regions. The main region map has been updated and will now group connected cities into "metropolitan areas." Hovering over a city will now show what it's top resource outputs are. Capitol cities will have a Star on them. And when you start a new Region game, you can either pick a normal resource distribution, or have a completely blank map. Now if you look at your Resource stats in the Statistics screen while on the Region overview map, you will get pie charts showing which cities are producing what share of the resources. And now when you are inside of a city, instead of seeing "Regional" as a resource input/output source, you will see "Regional (City Name)", so you know which city is providing or consuming the resources.
Next up, infrastructure repair costs have been dramatically lowered. The price also scales down with the size of a building, so you will not see a giant building like the Hall of Congress drain your entire treasury on repair costs. Large buildings also decay at a slower rate than before.
I had a list of about 40 or so hard crashes that were reported through the various app marketplaces which have been corrected, as well as all Javascript based crashes that were reported through the analytics console.
Alpha Draconians have gained access to the Abandoned World map. The stats on many buildings have been slightly tweaked to balance gameplay and also to allow each Civilization to use the new Water World map.
Which leads to the next new item, the brand new Water World map.
I have wanted to implement this map for a long time, but I knew it would require a rewrite of the pathfinding code and I was not looking forward to it. But now the work is done and we have Water World! I wanted Water World to be available to all civilizations, and making that happen required a handful of changes to existing building stats, as well as a bunch of new buildings to support the new map across different tech trees. Here is the new content added that is related directly to Water World:
Next up, both Insectoids and Reptilians now have Starship building capabilities. I am going to be adding Trade Routes soon, and so I needed to get all civs up to Starships in order for it to work. Draconians also got a new Level 3 capitol which is probably the tallest building in the game by far, the Chamber of Kings:
Next on the list, the GBT will now let you know what the minimum and maximum accepted trades by the server are, that way you do not submit a high or low trade and get the "Strike" message from the server.
There was a complete rewrite of the in-game Encyclopedia and the printable Owners Manual. Both are now found inside of the main Statistics screen:
The Owners Manual is now a lot more complete and can be viewed in-game, exported as a file, or printed. The printout is about 200 pages long though. The Encyclopedia is way more detailed than before and everything is hyperlinked together. It is now actually a useful tool for beginners. The Video Tutorials are now watchable in-game. I removed the link to the reference Google Docs spreadsheet as it has not been updated in over a year and the encyclopedia basically renders it useless anyway.
There is probably more that I forgot to mention, but I need to hurry and post this so I can start getting the update pushed out to all platforms before tonight. Hope you enjoy, let me know what issues you find, and stay tuned for more!
First, want to mention some engine changes, since several key components of the game have been totally reworked. The code for the simulated or "virtual" colonists has been completely redone. Because of the change, some extra large colonies might experience intermittent delays every minute or so that will look like short freezes. After a few hours of play, this should sort out as things in your game file are rebalanced. Normal sized colonies should notice any impact.
The path finding has been totally overhauled, again. Because of a new map class which I will discuss in a bit, I needed to rewrite the pathfinding to work with different types of passable terrain. I do not see any serious bugs with the new system, but of course let me know if I am wrong.
Several changes and updates have been made to Regions. The main region map has been updated and will now group connected cities into "metropolitan areas." Hovering over a city will now show what it's top resource outputs are. Capitol cities will have a Star on them. And when you start a new Region game, you can either pick a normal resource distribution, or have a completely blank map. Now if you look at your Resource stats in the Statistics screen while on the Region overview map, you will get pie charts showing which cities are producing what share of the resources. And now when you are inside of a city, instead of seeing "Regional" as a resource input/output source, you will see "Regional (City Name)", so you know which city is providing or consuming the resources.
Next up, infrastructure repair costs have been dramatically lowered. The price also scales down with the size of a building, so you will not see a giant building like the Hall of Congress drain your entire treasury on repair costs. Large buildings also decay at a slower rate than before.
I had a list of about 40 or so hard crashes that were reported through the various app marketplaces which have been corrected, as well as all Javascript based crashes that were reported through the analytics console.
Alpha Draconians have gained access to the Abandoned World map. The stats on many buildings have been slightly tweaked to balance gameplay and also to allow each Civilization to use the new Water World map.
Which leads to the next new item, the brand new Water World map.
- Resource: Fish
- Terrains: Salt Water, Palm Trees 1 & 2
- Units: Enslaved Worker Drone, Enslaved Fisherbug, Fisherbot, Fisherbug, Used Ore Miner
- Structures: Small Wooden Bridge, Steel Bridge, Aluminum Bridge, Gold Bridge, Electromagnetic Bridge, Gold Reducer, Sand Path, Fisherbot's Hut
Next up, both Insectoids and Reptilians now have Starship building capabilities. I am going to be adding Trade Routes soon, and so I needed to get all civs up to Starships in order for it to work. Draconians also got a new Level 3 capitol which is probably the tallest building in the game by far, the Chamber of Kings:
There was a complete rewrite of the in-game Encyclopedia and the printable Owners Manual. Both are now found inside of the main Statistics screen:
There is probably more that I forgot to mention, but I need to hurry and post this so I can start getting the update pushed out to all platforms before tonight. Hope you enjoy, let me know what issues you find, and stay tuned for more!
If you have a large map and/or a lot of colonists, it is having to do a conversion on how the 'virtual' colonists are handled.
Edit: v0.81.0: I'm not going to make a new post for this, but I am now pushing out patch v0.81.0 that fixes an issue where the build options menu for vehicles would not appear. Sorry for the issues!
Today I am pushing out the v0.80.0 release of My Colony, and it should be hitting all platforms within the coming days. As I mentioned in the last update, I have been getting a lot of requests to slow down on content updates until some of the bugs and issues in the game are ironed out, and so that is what I plan to do over the next few updates, before I dive into the big Federations expansion which will probably leave the game broken again 😳 Just kidding (hopefully)! Anyway, let's see what is new with this release of My Colony.
Firstly, I have nerfed the Research Converter a bit, as it was slightly overpowered. It might still be overpowered, but it's a little better now. It now consumes more money and research, costs more to build, and produces at a little slower rate.
Next up, the little popup window on the construction options sidebar will now display how much housing a building provides, which was a request I was in the suggestions forum:
Moving on, many people have asked me to change the file names for region subcities, which were previously named with a timestamp, making it hard to tell what they were. So going forward, new regional subcities will be named like this: [region-name]-[subcity-name].mcz, making it a bit easier to tell what they are. This does not impact current cities though.
I have made it easier to share a saved file that is tied to an Ape Apps Account. You might recall that in the last update, I added the option to make an offline copy of a colony so you can share it with others. This has now been expanded a bit, to where if somebody gives you a colony file that is NOT a copy but is tied to their account, the game will automatically make it an offline-only non-account copy when another user tries to import the file into their game.
Next, the often requested 'Leave Federation' option has been implemented. It is fairly straightforward, you will see the new Leave Federation button on the Federations screen.
On all platforms, the Achievements window has been updated. It now shows achievement point values and total progress. Newly unlocked achievements are now also synced to your Ape Apps Account when you are logged in, keeping your achievement progress up to date across platforms. I might add more achievements to the game in the coming updates, so let me know what types of achievements you are interested in!
Next up, I have added a new policy to the Policies menu that allows you to block new tourists from coming to the colony, just like you can currently block immigration. The new option requires government level 3 or higher.
There were also a ton of bug fixes and improvements in this update, and I will just discuss a few of the larger ones. First, I think I have finally solved the issue where incinerators (and similar buildings) would shut down forever if you ever ran out of trash. You can let me know if you are still having the problem, but I think it's fixed.
Next, there was a huge issue involving how virtual colonists were organized and processed that, in large colonies, could potentially cause freezes and hangups of several minutes on regular intervals. The issue has been corrected in that it will not happen anymore on new colonies, but on existing colonies, the engine will slowly sort itself out. Slowly is the key word though, as a colony with over a million population would require more than a day of idle time to get sorted out. The slowness was required to let the colonists sort themselves out without completely killing the economy of the colony. If you want it to go faster, you will have to just kill off all of your colonists and let your population regrow. Most colonies are impacted by the issue, but the real problems are not apparent until populations are in the millions, so most people should be fine just letting the fix sort itself out behind the scenes.
Several optimizations have been made in regards to tourism. Tourism had the potential to really kill the performance of a colony, especially on large map sizes. The game was designed to place new tourists into 'simulated' mode so that they find entertainment without using the pathfinder, after you had so many tourists. However, this function was written when tourists only showed up a few at a time, so it was able to keep up. With the introduction of the Space Ports, tourists were able to show up way faster than the game could keep up with, and you would run into a situation where the pathfinder could not keep up and would cause memory consumption to keep growing and growing.
The engine is now much more aggressive at simulating tourists than it was before. Also, if a tourist does not find a tourist destination within a 60 tile radius of their arrival spot, they will now just leave instead of making the engine keep searching for a destination in a larger and larger radius. There are further optimizations planned for tourism in the coming updates, but if you have a large map with 10k or more tourists, consider using the new policy to block tourists from coming to the colony, which will let them slowly dwindle down as they run out of money. I do not think these tourism issues have much of an impact on small and medium sized maps, but on maps where people have done the Annex policy several times, it can really kill the game.
I have set up a small My Colony online merchandise store with a few things that I will probably expand on over the coming months, whenever an idea pops in my head. There are a few Lander items and a United Earth 'Make Earth Great Again' mug. I am drinking coffee out of the lander mug as we speak, and it really improves the taste of the coffee. 😜 Feel free to check it out and leave suggestions on items you would like to see:
https://teespring.com/stores/my-colony-store
Next, after literally years, I have posted a new episode of the My Colony Podcast. Feel free to check it out, and let me know if you would like to see me bring the My Colony Podcast back from the dead. If I limit it to shorter 10 minute(ish) episodes, it wont be too much or a burden to do.
https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=2655
Finally, I just want to let everybody know that after years of talking about it, I have finally begun full scale work on Colony Wars, the multiplayer RTS game taking place in the My Colony universe! I plan (hope) for a release to all platforms this spring (steam included), with the first public beta coming to the Ape Apps Launcher later this month, so stay tuned, and check out the new Colony Wars forum for info:
https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=28669
That's all for today's update. Should be hitting all platforms over the weekend, so keep a lookout. Let me know what issues you find, as I will be going hard after bugs and performance over the next few updates. Thanks for playing, and stay tuned for more!
Today I am pushing out the v0.80.0 release of My Colony, and it should be hitting all platforms within the coming days. As I mentioned in the last update, I have been getting a lot of requests to slow down on content updates until some of the bugs and issues in the game are ironed out, and so that is what I plan to do over the next few updates, before I dive into the big Federations expansion which will probably leave the game broken again 😳 Just kidding (hopefully)! Anyway, let's see what is new with this release of My Colony.
Firstly, I have nerfed the Research Converter a bit, as it was slightly overpowered. It might still be overpowered, but it's a little better now. It now consumes more money and research, costs more to build, and produces at a little slower rate.
Next up, the little popup window on the construction options sidebar will now display how much housing a building provides, which was a request I was in the suggestions forum:
I have made it easier to share a saved file that is tied to an Ape Apps Account. You might recall that in the last update, I added the option to make an offline copy of a colony so you can share it with others. This has now been expanded a bit, to where if somebody gives you a colony file that is NOT a copy but is tied to their account, the game will automatically make it an offline-only non-account copy when another user tries to import the file into their game.
Next, the often requested 'Leave Federation' option has been implemented. It is fairly straightforward, you will see the new Leave Federation button on the Federations screen.
On all platforms, the Achievements window has been updated. It now shows achievement point values and total progress. Newly unlocked achievements are now also synced to your Ape Apps Account when you are logged in, keeping your achievement progress up to date across platforms. I might add more achievements to the game in the coming updates, so let me know what types of achievements you are interested in!
There were also a ton of bug fixes and improvements in this update, and I will just discuss a few of the larger ones. First, I think I have finally solved the issue where incinerators (and similar buildings) would shut down forever if you ever ran out of trash. You can let me know if you are still having the problem, but I think it's fixed.
Next, there was a huge issue involving how virtual colonists were organized and processed that, in large colonies, could potentially cause freezes and hangups of several minutes on regular intervals. The issue has been corrected in that it will not happen anymore on new colonies, but on existing colonies, the engine will slowly sort itself out. Slowly is the key word though, as a colony with over a million population would require more than a day of idle time to get sorted out. The slowness was required to let the colonists sort themselves out without completely killing the economy of the colony. If you want it to go faster, you will have to just kill off all of your colonists and let your population regrow. Most colonies are impacted by the issue, but the real problems are not apparent until populations are in the millions, so most people should be fine just letting the fix sort itself out behind the scenes.
Several optimizations have been made in regards to tourism. Tourism had the potential to really kill the performance of a colony, especially on large map sizes. The game was designed to place new tourists into 'simulated' mode so that they find entertainment without using the pathfinder, after you had so many tourists. However, this function was written when tourists only showed up a few at a time, so it was able to keep up. With the introduction of the Space Ports, tourists were able to show up way faster than the game could keep up with, and you would run into a situation where the pathfinder could not keep up and would cause memory consumption to keep growing and growing.
The engine is now much more aggressive at simulating tourists than it was before. Also, if a tourist does not find a tourist destination within a 60 tile radius of their arrival spot, they will now just leave instead of making the engine keep searching for a destination in a larger and larger radius. There are further optimizations planned for tourism in the coming updates, but if you have a large map with 10k or more tourists, consider using the new policy to block tourists from coming to the colony, which will let them slowly dwindle down as they run out of money. I do not think these tourism issues have much of an impact on small and medium sized maps, but on maps where people have done the Annex policy several times, it can really kill the game.
I have set up a small My Colony online merchandise store with a few things that I will probably expand on over the coming months, whenever an idea pops in my head. There are a few Lander items and a United Earth 'Make Earth Great Again' mug. I am drinking coffee out of the lander mug as we speak, and it really improves the taste of the coffee. 😜 Feel free to check it out and leave suggestions on items you would like to see:
https://teespring.com/stores/my-colony-store
Next, after literally years, I have posted a new episode of the My Colony Podcast. Feel free to check it out, and let me know if you would like to see me bring the My Colony Podcast back from the dead. If I limit it to shorter 10 minute(ish) episodes, it wont be too much or a burden to do.
https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=2655
Finally, I just want to let everybody know that after years of talking about it, I have finally begun full scale work on Colony Wars, the multiplayer RTS game taking place in the My Colony universe! I plan (hope) for a release to all platforms this spring (steam included), with the first public beta coming to the Ape Apps Launcher later this month, so stay tuned, and check out the new Colony Wars forum for info:
https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=28669
That's all for today's update. Should be hitting all platforms over the weekend, so keep a lookout. Let me know what issues you find, as I will be going hard after bugs and performance over the next few updates. Thanks for playing, and stay tuned for more!
sirdrewdude said:I would also like to ask if you changed anything regarding homelessness? I have literally double the amount of housing for my people, yet almost 90% of them don't have a job (Which I have enough for all of them) and are homeless...
I can look, but I really haven't changed anything in that regard. There were updates to how virtual colonists work, but those don't even kick in until your population is over 2000.
otherwise, I'd say that this is pretty stable and it has fixed that problem of losing things. Also, what did you change with the virtual colonists?
Hello guys!
The name is Wadaling.
How important are the IT industries? You know it, otherwise you may not to able to read this thread, and I will not able to type this topic on phone.
The settings in My Colony is in a futher future - The age of space colonization. IT technology and skills are neccessary. That’s the reason I am having this idea today.
Today I will present the building ideas, of caz, related to internet and IT stuff.
Current ideas
1. Small Server Building
This is a very important element to develop a better internet and mass-data management. This building is the most basic of all for everything. Provides 50 data usage cap and storage for software.
2. Cybercoin Mine (LIS only)
Wonder why there are some people can stay in their small workshop for the entire day? They are trying to mine the most valuable Cybercoins and sold them for profit.
3. Small server farm operation
A server farm can definitely earn some money using your servers. Occupies 25 data cap and consumes some microchips along the operation.
4. Galactic Stock Exchange
Open your colony business for investment! Input civics and a little shiny pennies, it will return you with more money.
5. Data Interceptor (LIS only)
Just a large hacker gadget to steal the informations bypass... You can have some money and research in your pocket if you are paitent enough.
6. Data Interceptor (Alpha Dacronians only)
An evil full-auto data stealth machine that will download every bypass information in a redicilously fast rate nobody ever reached.
7. Small software studio
This little studio will create softwares (and its updates) for all sorts of use.
8. NetSchool
Why you have to educate new generation in traditional way when you can make use of softwares and internet.
9. Advanced small reaearch lab
Based on the tiny small lab, it is upgraded with various new appratus and smart softwares that will boost your research greatly.
10. Online business office building
Who will make softwares when there’s no demand? This online business office building will provide demand for the softwares and you can make money from them!
11. Arcade centre
Where you can find all sorts of fun (remastered version of) classic arcade games.
12. Colonimulation Hub
Colonimulation is definitely a new entertainment experience to your colonists - Welcome to the simulation entertainment that is more realistic than VR!
13. Intergrated (or advanced) civics centre
With some new management gadgets installed with newest softwares, it will make civic services easier!
More ideas? Or some improvements? Just comment!
Scraped ideas
• Cybercoin exchange (LIS only)
Cybercoins are valuable virtual currencies, but just you cannot exchange these for money in United Earth. What you can do is sell them when their prices are high (and your men will do this for you) in the secret interstellar network.
• Cybercoins resource
The name is Wadaling.
How important are the IT industries? You know it, otherwise you may not to able to read this thread, and I will not able to type this topic on phone.
The settings in My Colony is in a futher future - The age of space colonization. IT technology and skills are neccessary. That’s the reason I am having this idea today.
Today I will present the building ideas, of caz, related to internet and IT stuff.
Current ideas
1. Small Server Building
This is a very important element to develop a better internet and mass-data management. This building is the most basic of all for everything. Provides 50 data usage cap and storage for software.
2. Cybercoin Mine (LIS only)
Wonder why there are some people can stay in their small workshop for the entire day? They are trying to mine the most valuable Cybercoins and sold them for profit.
3. Small server farm operation
A server farm can definitely earn some money using your servers. Occupies 25 data cap and consumes some microchips along the operation.
4. Galactic Stock Exchange
Open your colony business for investment! Input civics and a little shiny pennies, it will return you with more money.
5. Data Interceptor (LIS only)
Just a large hacker gadget to steal the informations bypass... You can have some money and research in your pocket if you are paitent enough.
6. Data Interceptor (Alpha Dacronians only)
An evil full-auto data stealth machine that will download every bypass information in a redicilously fast rate nobody ever reached.
7. Small software studio
This little studio will create softwares (and its updates) for all sorts of use.
8. NetSchool
Why you have to educate new generation in traditional way when you can make use of softwares and internet.
9. Advanced small reaearch lab
Based on the tiny small lab, it is upgraded with various new appratus and smart softwares that will boost your research greatly.
10. Online business office building
Who will make softwares when there’s no demand? This online business office building will provide demand for the softwares and you can make money from them!
11. Arcade centre
Where you can find all sorts of fun (remastered version of) classic arcade games.
12. Colonimulation Hub
Colonimulation is definitely a new entertainment experience to your colonists - Welcome to the simulation entertainment that is more realistic than VR!
13. Intergrated (or advanced) civics centre
With some new management gadgets installed with newest softwares, it will make civic services easier!
More ideas? Or some improvements? Just comment!
Scraped ideas
• Cybercoin exchange (LIS only)
Cybercoins are valuable virtual currencies, but just you cannot exchange these for money in United Earth. What you can do is sell them when their prices are high (and your men will do this for you) in the secret interstellar network.
• Cybercoins resource
I've sent you a similar message to this in the conversation you made by accident.
Another structure type you could add to the IT industries idea is a new money and research production building.
Humans: R&D facility
This building would have a footprint of 20x20 and requires 25,000 whilst providing 500 entertainment by using the wonders of VR to allow virtual tours of the facility.
The structure would produce money equivalent to 20 investment banks and research equivalent to 10 centre for AI.
However, to combat these massive production rates the building will consume lots of ore, steel, gold, microchips, regolith, Helium 3, robots and software whilst also requiring lots of power and bandwidth.
Insectoids: Hive Mind Investments Centre (This would replace the insectoids investments centre)
This building is similar to the human version but instead of regolith and helium 3 it would require lots of antaura and antpaste.
Alpha Draconians: Insect Autopsy Facility
To continue the Draconians cruel control over the insectoids they decide to investigate the anatomy of there slaves to further inflict pain on them.
The building would use antanium and ether instead of the regolith and helium 3 like the human structure.
The idea for these structures is to have a high demand on the utilities and basic resources which the civilizations can produce lots of in exchange for an improved method of producing money and research.
I'd be happy for the rates and requirements to be changed to allow for a more balanced game
Another structure type you could add to the IT industries idea is a new money and research production building.
Humans: R&D facility
This building would have a footprint of 20x20 and requires 25,000 whilst providing 500 entertainment by using the wonders of VR to allow virtual tours of the facility.
The structure would produce money equivalent to 20 investment banks and research equivalent to 10 centre for AI.
However, to combat these massive production rates the building will consume lots of ore, steel, gold, microchips, regolith, Helium 3, robots and software whilst also requiring lots of power and bandwidth.
Insectoids: Hive Mind Investments Centre (This would replace the insectoids investments centre)
This building is similar to the human version but instead of regolith and helium 3 it would require lots of antaura and antpaste.
Alpha Draconians: Insect Autopsy Facility
To continue the Draconians cruel control over the insectoids they decide to investigate the anatomy of there slaves to further inflict pain on them.
The building would use antanium and ether instead of the regolith and helium 3 like the human structure.
The idea for these structures is to have a high demand on the utilities and basic resources which the civilizations can produce lots of in exchange for an improved method of producing money and research.
I'd be happy for the rates and requirements to be changed to allow for a more balanced game
Prepare for the idle adventure of a lifetime, because Idle Token Quest is now complete and available for download for free on Android, iOS, and Windows 10!
Idle Token Quest is an idle role playing adventure game where you will fight your way through different worlds, going up against powerful enemies, collecting valuable loot, and purchasing awesome weapons and power-ups! You can use the two default characters, or create your own using the free My Tokens app. Tokens you create using your Ape Apps Account are linked to the game, and will adventure while you are away. The more Tokens you create, the more money you make!
Idle Token Quest is the ultimate companion game for My Tokens. Your virtual token avatars will become powerful heroes as they battle through the entire lineup of worlds and enemies from the game Level Up. You are also able to increase their power by equipping them with powerful Weapons, super fast Boots, and magical lucky Amulets!
In addition, all of your game progress is automatically synced to your Ape Apps Account, so you can take your token adventure with you on the go, or keep it open in a window hidden under your e-mail client while you are at work! The boss will never know that you just slayed an evil t-rex, which is way more important than filing another TPS report!
Idle Token Quest is a title that you definately do not want to miss. You can download it right now for free on Android, iOS, and Windows 10. It is also available on the Ape Apps Launcher, and even in your browser at Ape Web Apps. So what are you waiting for? Your poor My Tokens characters are just sitting there waiting for you to let them go outside and play! You don't want to make them cry, do you? Of course not, so download Idle Token Quest today!
https://apps.ape-apps.com/idle-token-quest/
#idletokenquest #levelup #mytokens
In addition, all of your game progress is automatically synced to your Ape Apps Account, so you can take your token adventure with you on the go, or keep it open in a window hidden under your e-mail client while you are at work! The boss will never know that you just slayed an evil t-rex, which is way more important than filing another TPS report!
Idle Token Quest is a title that you definately do not want to miss. You can download it right now for free on Android, iOS, and Windows 10. It is also available on the Ape Apps Launcher, and even in your browser at Ape Web Apps. So what are you waiting for? Your poor My Tokens characters are just sitting there waiting for you to let them go outside and play! You don't want to make them cry, do you? Of course not, so download Idle Token Quest today!
https://apps.ape-apps.com/idle-token-quest/
#idletokenquest #levelup #mytokens
Awesomeeee! Thanks that you added the Ore Fracking Operation I made, you can actually see the virtual signature in action, that's really cool
Today My Colony 2 is being updated to v0.7.0 on both the Web and the Ape Apps Launcher. This update introduces some breaking changes that Mod developers will need to be aware of, so let's take a look at what's new!
The largest change that Mod creators will need to be aware of is that My Colony 2 now has support for multiple civilizations!
There is no requirement to have multiple civilizations, but the game does need to have at least one civilization, with a starting unit specified. Prior to this release, the starting unit was tied to the World object, which still shows up in the editor for legacy purposes, but will be going away soon. Going forward, the starting unit will be based on which civilization is chosen by the player, so this absolutely needs to be set for any mod going forward.
The engine now also recognizes and honors the 'Starting Amount' of resources. For instance, you will now begin the game with 50 food (more on that in a moment). Any resource can specify a starting amount, but the player will only get the "starting" amount of a resource upon creating their first settlement.
So speaking food, there is now food in the game, and your colonists will eat it. I still have to mess with the food consumption rate, as it seems a bit slow to me. It will probably be sped up in the coming updates.
Also, the landing pad now brings in new colonists! Eventually, you are actually going to see the shuttle landing and dropping off the colonists, but I just didn't get to that part yet. Still, new colonists will now arrive if you have a landing pad and available housing.
Resource storage and processing by the engine has been totally overhauled in this update. Prior to v0.7.0, resources were stored at the Settlement level. Now, the game has virtual "Resource Pools" that can span between multiple settlements. This change was made to accommodate the new functionality of the Logistics Station structure, which has been changed in the following way:
The Logistics Station now comes with (and as the ability to build) the Mobile Outpost unit, and now works as a "Resource Hub" with a radius of 400 tiles. If two or more same-player owned settlements are within each other's Resource Hub radius, their resource pools will be merged automatically. The Mobile Outpost, when deployed to a regular Outpost, has the ability to connect to the Resource Hub, but does not serve as a Hub itself. So an outpost can be 400 tiles away from a main settlement and use it's resources, but a second outpost cannot be 400 tiles away from the first outpost and still be in the network (unless the first outpost builds it's own logistics station).
Anyway, my description of it may be convoluted, but the actual execution of it is pretty simple in-game. Basically, players can now use Logistic's Stations and Outposts to combine resource pools between settlements. This means you can have a Gold Mining outpost far away from your primary base, but by using Logistics, the resources will still come back to the main base. Theoretically, you could end up constructing massive resource networks using Logistics Stations. Keep in mind that this works only for resources, and does not share utilities or population.
I will probably be adding a way for players to invite other players into their settlement resource pools as well.
Anyway, I am getting closer to having the structure of the game data nailed down, which means that before long I will be able to implement saving into the game. I don't know what order I am going to work on things next, but I think next I am going to be adding worker requirements to buildings and probably medical/entertainment etc. I also need to code enforcement for storage capacities into the game. So there is always a lot to do, so stay tuned and keep the bug reports and suggestions coming, and if you haven't tried My Colony 2 yet, you can find the early access game in your web browser at the following address:
https://www.apewebapps.com/my-colony-2/
#mycolony2
The largest change that Mod creators will need to be aware of is that My Colony 2 now has support for multiple civilizations!
There is no requirement to have multiple civilizations, but the game does need to have at least one civilization, with a starting unit specified. Prior to this release, the starting unit was tied to the World object, which still shows up in the editor for legacy purposes, but will be going away soon. Going forward, the starting unit will be based on which civilization is chosen by the player, so this absolutely needs to be set for any mod going forward.
The engine now also recognizes and honors the 'Starting Amount' of resources. For instance, you will now begin the game with 50 food (more on that in a moment). Any resource can specify a starting amount, but the player will only get the "starting" amount of a resource upon creating their first settlement.
So speaking food, there is now food in the game, and your colonists will eat it. I still have to mess with the food consumption rate, as it seems a bit slow to me. It will probably be sped up in the coming updates.
Also, the landing pad now brings in new colonists! Eventually, you are actually going to see the shuttle landing and dropping off the colonists, but I just didn't get to that part yet. Still, new colonists will now arrive if you have a landing pad and available housing.
Resource storage and processing by the engine has been totally overhauled in this update. Prior to v0.7.0, resources were stored at the Settlement level. Now, the game has virtual "Resource Pools" that can span between multiple settlements. This change was made to accommodate the new functionality of the Logistics Station structure, which has been changed in the following way:
The Logistics Station now comes with (and as the ability to build) the Mobile Outpost unit, and now works as a "Resource Hub" with a radius of 400 tiles. If two or more same-player owned settlements are within each other's Resource Hub radius, their resource pools will be merged automatically. The Mobile Outpost, when deployed to a regular Outpost, has the ability to connect to the Resource Hub, but does not serve as a Hub itself. So an outpost can be 400 tiles away from a main settlement and use it's resources, but a second outpost cannot be 400 tiles away from the first outpost and still be in the network (unless the first outpost builds it's own logistics station).
Anyway, my description of it may be convoluted, but the actual execution of it is pretty simple in-game. Basically, players can now use Logistic's Stations and Outposts to combine resource pools between settlements. This means you can have a Gold Mining outpost far away from your primary base, but by using Logistics, the resources will still come back to the main base. Theoretically, you could end up constructing massive resource networks using Logistics Stations. Keep in mind that this works only for resources, and does not share utilities or population.
I will probably be adding a way for players to invite other players into their settlement resource pools as well.
Anyway, I am getting closer to having the structure of the game data nailed down, which means that before long I will be able to implement saving into the game. I don't know what order I am going to work on things next, but I think next I am going to be adding worker requirements to buildings and probably medical/entertainment etc. I also need to code enforcement for storage capacities into the game. So there is always a lot to do, so stay tuned and keep the bug reports and suggestions coming, and if you haven't tried My Colony 2 yet, you can find the early access game in your web browser at the following address:
https://www.apewebapps.com/my-colony-2/
#mycolony2
Today I have finalized the code for Death 3D v0.17.0, which should be hitting all platforms in the coming days. This is an exciting update, because it adds a "killer" new feature to Death 3D: experimental stereoscopic 3D Virtual Reality Mode!
VR Mode is designed to work with the type of VR Goggles that you put your phone inside of. See this thread for a full breakdown on how to use VR Mode and what equipment is required. I have personally played through the entire game (all of EP1 and what exists thus far of EP2) in VR Mode and I did not have a single seizure, so I am rating it good enough for public use 😃
On top of the new VR mode, this update makes changes to a handful of maps, mainly increasing the brightness on some of the Episode 2 maps which are pretty dark. I have also increased the default rendering distance on mobile devices, although I still have "Low Quality Mode" set as the default on Android and iOS.
All in all, this is a pretty cool update for Death 3D, and I look forward to improving the VR rendering and possibly introducing new VR games and experiences in the future!
Death 3D is available on Ape Web Apps and on all of the app stores, and you can find download links here:
https://apps.ape-apps.com/death-3d/
#death3d
VR Mode is designed to work with the type of VR Goggles that you put your phone inside of. See this thread for a full breakdown on how to use VR Mode and what equipment is required. I have personally played through the entire game (all of EP1 and what exists thus far of EP2) in VR Mode and I did not have a single seizure, so I am rating it good enough for public use 😃
On top of the new VR mode, this update makes changes to a handful of maps, mainly increasing the brightness on some of the Episode 2 maps which are pretty dark. I have also increased the default rendering distance on mobile devices, although I still have "Low Quality Mode" set as the default on Android and iOS.
All in all, this is a pretty cool update for Death 3D, and I look forward to improving the VR rendering and possibly introducing new VR games and experiences in the future!
Death 3D is available on Ape Web Apps and on all of the app stores, and you can find download links here:
https://apps.ape-apps.com/death-3d/
#death3d
I have mentioned on here before how I have recently purchased an Oculus (aka Meta) Quest 2 VR headset, and with it created my first (free) WebXR game Barrel River 2. Now, as work begins on the v0.20.0 update to My Colony 2, I have begun adding initial WebXR immersive virtual reality support to Scroll3D, my custom game engine that powers not only My Colony 2, but other titles such as My Empire and the 3D modeling tool Voxel Paint. Support is still in it's infancy and will not be complete by the time v0.20.0 ships, but I have included a video below that demonstrated walking through a MC2 settlement in VR mode.
Obviously on the headset it is full 3D and you can look all around yourself. So far, it's not perfect. I had to turn the graphics quality in the engine settings all the way low to get this fairly large colony to run properly (on a small settlement, I was able to keep all settings on high). What is demonstrated above is the game being played using the "man on the street" view mode that was introduced in v0.19.0, but the player on an Oculus, Google Cardboard, Windows Mixed Reality, or other VR headset will be able to play the regular city-building mode of My Colony 2 in VR as well. It's actually pretty neat to be hovering "up in the sky" and looking down upon your settlement, using the VR controls to fly around the world and place structures!
Of course, VR is a cool feature, but not entirely necessary in a game like My Colony 2, but having the capabilities baked in to the Scroll3D engine will open opportunities to future projects. For instance, I am thinking about a Gone Rogue 2, where you can play the normal "classic" top down way, or you can actually explore the dungeons in first person immersive VR mode, fighting enemies up close and personal. A Scroll3D based remake of Epic Adventure could also basically become like a VR version of Minecraft. There are a lot of different possibilities, but I mostly want to make sure that Scroll3D titles can always be played on any device, whether it's PC, mobile, TV, or now VR.
VR support is basically a sideline addition to the forthcoming v0.20.0 update, which should be hitting all platforms next week. I am primarily focused on cleaning up and fixing some of the issues related to the massive changes to the modding system from the last update, along with a few UI improvements and the obligatory addition of new structures, etc. But little by little over the coming months, VR support will be refined and improved to the point where MC2 is 100% fully playable from an immersive VR mode on a supported headset, or even a cheapo Amazon headset + bluetooth gamepad in Google Cardboard mode.
So anyway, just wanted to share the VR future that will be fully hitting MC2 later this year, along with the possibilities it brings to other Scroll3D related projects. I will leave you with a few other screenshots I captured from within the Oculus headset of a MC2 water world. Enjoy!
#mycolony2 #barrelriver2 #scroll3d #vr #webxr
Obviously on the headset it is full 3D and you can look all around yourself. So far, it's not perfect. I had to turn the graphics quality in the engine settings all the way low to get this fairly large colony to run properly (on a small settlement, I was able to keep all settings on high). What is demonstrated above is the game being played using the "man on the street" view mode that was introduced in v0.19.0, but the player on an Oculus, Google Cardboard, Windows Mixed Reality, or other VR headset will be able to play the regular city-building mode of My Colony 2 in VR as well. It's actually pretty neat to be hovering "up in the sky" and looking down upon your settlement, using the VR controls to fly around the world and place structures!
Of course, VR is a cool feature, but not entirely necessary in a game like My Colony 2, but having the capabilities baked in to the Scroll3D engine will open opportunities to future projects. For instance, I am thinking about a Gone Rogue 2, where you can play the normal "classic" top down way, or you can actually explore the dungeons in first person immersive VR mode, fighting enemies up close and personal. A Scroll3D based remake of Epic Adventure could also basically become like a VR version of Minecraft. There are a lot of different possibilities, but I mostly want to make sure that Scroll3D titles can always be played on any device, whether it's PC, mobile, TV, or now VR.
VR support is basically a sideline addition to the forthcoming v0.20.0 update, which should be hitting all platforms next week. I am primarily focused on cleaning up and fixing some of the issues related to the massive changes to the modding system from the last update, along with a few UI improvements and the obligatory addition of new structures, etc. But little by little over the coming months, VR support will be refined and improved to the point where MC2 is 100% fully playable from an immersive VR mode on a supported headset, or even a cheapo Amazon headset + bluetooth gamepad in Google Cardboard mode.
So anyway, just wanted to share the VR future that will be fully hitting MC2 later this year, along with the possibilities it brings to other Scroll3D related projects. I will leave you with a few other screenshots I captured from within the Oculus headset of a MC2 water world. Enjoy!
#mycolony2 #barrelriver2 #scroll3d #vr #webxr
My Colony 2 v0.20.0 is out now on Web, Windows, and the Ape Apps Launcher, and should be hitting Android and iOS sometime later this week. I don't have any new structures in this release, and instead focused on cleaning up some of the issues from v0.19.0, and started laying the groundwork for future greatness! So what's new? Let's take a look!
To start off, many of the video settings in the Engine Settings menu no longer require an app restart in order to take effect. Realtime Shadows, Antialiasing, and DOF effect can now all be toggled on/off while in-game. I am working on making it so that all engine settings can be toggled on and off while the game is running, so stay tuned for that.
I started adding initial gamepad support to the game. Right now the gamepad only controls the camera and the Player Mode controls, but eventually I intend to have the game 100% playable with the controller. This will allow be to publish the game to Android/Fire TV devices, as well as the new Steam Deck device for when I finally port the game over to Steam.
The top-right toolbar has been expanded, and I might have to start adding UI toggle switches to let players turn more items on/off as they see fit.
The new buttons (starting at the left) are the Player Mode toggle, and the VR Mode toggle, both of which I will expand on in a bit. The VR Mode button will only appear on the Windows 10 or the Web version of the game, and will only be there if you have supporting hardware (like Google Cardboard viewer on an Android phone, or Windows Mixed Reality headset, or if you are playing the game on an Oculus stand-alone device).
You will also notice on the bottom-right mini toolbar next to the Clear Chat button is a new microphone button:
My Colony 2 now comes with built-in voice chat support. This is not a global voice chat, just a group chat for the people online in the current world. This was added as a way to communicate in the new VR Mode, but also works in all modes of play for players who just want to talk to each-other instead of type. The icon will turn green if your microphone is active, and red if your microphone is muted. Click on the microphone icon to mute/unmute. You will also see an indication that tells you which player is talking while they are speaking.
In v0.19.0, I added a rudimentary "Player Mode" that allowed you to click on a colonist and walk around the city from their point of view. This feature has been expanded in this release, and will continue to be expanded as time goes on. In v0.20.0, you no longer have to try clicking on a tiny colonist, there is a new Player Mode icon on the top toolbar. The first time you click on the Player Mode toggle, you will be asked to place your token. Now instead of assuming the body of an existing colonist, you actually join the world as yourself. You can pick any starting location you want, but after your token is places, you will have to physically walk to wherever you want to go.
Right now your token just looks like a standard colonists, except whose space suit is matched to your player color in-server. I plan to allow players to also customize their guy buy picking one of their Tokens from the My Tokens app.
Your Player Mode player location and movements are now synced to the server, and all players can see each other's guys walking around the world. In the coming updates, each player will have a personal inventory attached to their Player Mode character, as well as stats, equipment, etc, and Player Mode characters will be able to interact with each other, and maybe even do joint quests, depending on how far I take this. I also think it will be cool to let Player Mode characters enter vehicles, whether land, sea or air vehicles, and travel around the world in that manner.
Eventually there can be a whole Player Mode game within a game associated to MC2, but I also want the modding tools to have the ability to create a game that is 100% based on the Player Mode, so there is going to be a lot more coming to this feature in the coming updates. As always, suggestions are welcome!
Somewhat related to Player Mode, a new Virtual Reality Mode has been added to the game! This one is an even earlier and more experimental state than Player Mode, but players with supporting hardware can test it out today and leave feedback.
Eventually, the entire My Colony 2 game, both regular build mode and Player Mode, will be 100% playable from both the Gamepad and the VR interface. Right now it's basically a tech demo, although Player Mode in VR is pretty much equivalent to the non-VR player mode at this time.
To test out VR Mode today, you will need some hardware. The cheapest way to get into it is to get a Google Cardboard viewer, or one of the many Android VR headsets that are cheaply available on Amazon (you would need the Google Cardboard app installed as well). You will also have to use the PWA version of My Colony 2 (https://www.apewebapps.com/my-colony-2/) as it does not work on the installed .apk. Playing on Android will also require you to have a bluetooth gamepad paired to your phone.
You can also try it from a stand alone VR Headset like the Oculus (meta) Quest 2. Just fire up the headset browser and navigate to the My Colony 2 web app. You will not need an extra controller on the Oculus, as the devices controllers work just fine.
There is nothing you can do in the standard build mode while in VR except scroll around, so you are best off switching your game into Player Mode before activating VR (as you can't do it while in VR yet). Once in VR Player Mode though, you can walk around the entire world as your Player Mode character. Even though you can't do anything yet, it's a pretty cool experience. With multiple players in a game with VR Player Mode and microphones activated, it can be a cool VR social experience. Especially in the future, if you can group up and go on a quest.
Keep in mind that more computing horsepower is required for VR Mode. On the Quest 2, I had to turn all engine settings down before starting up the game, as the Water World map in VR completely lagged my headset out, which was kind of disorienting. So if you are going to try VR Mode, please turn down graphics settings before entering the game!
If you have a VR Headset or Cardboard type viewer, give it a try and let me know! I think there is a lot of future potential for VR Mode in MC2.
Moving on, there are a few quality of life improvements in this update. Now when you click on the scrolling resources counter, it will switch to a static, non-scrolling list like in MC1.
I have also implemented one of the most long-standing feature requests to the game (besides pavement bulldozing), building progress bars!
Progress Bars were actually a lot harder than they seem like they should be, since MC2 is rendered in 3D unlike MC1, each resource bar has to be an object in the 3D world. To save performance, there is only 1 resource bar object that gets reused as you mouse around the world, and a new texture is redrawn with every tick update.
There are some modding improvements too. Mod Shop downloads are now checked for updates automatically on game launch and are automatically kept updated in the background. Also, support for Total Conversion mods has been unbroken, and these types of mods should be working again, both through manual import and from the Mod Shop.
So these are the major changes in this update. There is also a laundry list of bug fixes that I will not bore you with.
The next update will have to focus on content again since I did a non-content update this time. Moving ahead, I am going to expand Gamepad support to cover the full game, and get full building mode working in the VR mode. I also want to add new play experiences to the Player Mode, so if you have suggestions, feel free to let me know. Other than that, thank you for playing the game, let me know what you want to see next, and stay tuned for more!
#mycolony2
To start off, many of the video settings in the Engine Settings menu no longer require an app restart in order to take effect. Realtime Shadows, Antialiasing, and DOF effect can now all be toggled on/off while in-game. I am working on making it so that all engine settings can be toggled on and off while the game is running, so stay tuned for that.
I started adding initial gamepad support to the game. Right now the gamepad only controls the camera and the Player Mode controls, but eventually I intend to have the game 100% playable with the controller. This will allow be to publish the game to Android/Fire TV devices, as well as the new Steam Deck device for when I finally port the game over to Steam.
The top-right toolbar has been expanded, and I might have to start adding UI toggle switches to let players turn more items on/off as they see fit.
The new buttons (starting at the left) are the Player Mode toggle, and the VR Mode toggle, both of which I will expand on in a bit. The VR Mode button will only appear on the Windows 10 or the Web version of the game, and will only be there if you have supporting hardware (like Google Cardboard viewer on an Android phone, or Windows Mixed Reality headset, or if you are playing the game on an Oculus stand-alone device).
You will also notice on the bottom-right mini toolbar next to the Clear Chat button is a new microphone button:
My Colony 2 now comes with built-in voice chat support. This is not a global voice chat, just a group chat for the people online in the current world. This was added as a way to communicate in the new VR Mode, but also works in all modes of play for players who just want to talk to each-other instead of type. The icon will turn green if your microphone is active, and red if your microphone is muted. Click on the microphone icon to mute/unmute. You will also see an indication that tells you which player is talking while they are speaking.
In v0.19.0, I added a rudimentary "Player Mode" that allowed you to click on a colonist and walk around the city from their point of view. This feature has been expanded in this release, and will continue to be expanded as time goes on. In v0.20.0, you no longer have to try clicking on a tiny colonist, there is a new Player Mode icon on the top toolbar. The first time you click on the Player Mode toggle, you will be asked to place your token. Now instead of assuming the body of an existing colonist, you actually join the world as yourself. You can pick any starting location you want, but after your token is places, you will have to physically walk to wherever you want to go.
Right now your token just looks like a standard colonists, except whose space suit is matched to your player color in-server. I plan to allow players to also customize their guy buy picking one of their Tokens from the My Tokens app.
Your Player Mode player location and movements are now synced to the server, and all players can see each other's guys walking around the world. In the coming updates, each player will have a personal inventory attached to their Player Mode character, as well as stats, equipment, etc, and Player Mode characters will be able to interact with each other, and maybe even do joint quests, depending on how far I take this. I also think it will be cool to let Player Mode characters enter vehicles, whether land, sea or air vehicles, and travel around the world in that manner.
Eventually there can be a whole Player Mode game within a game associated to MC2, but I also want the modding tools to have the ability to create a game that is 100% based on the Player Mode, so there is going to be a lot more coming to this feature in the coming updates. As always, suggestions are welcome!
Somewhat related to Player Mode, a new Virtual Reality Mode has been added to the game! This one is an even earlier and more experimental state than Player Mode, but players with supporting hardware can test it out today and leave feedback.
Eventually, the entire My Colony 2 game, both regular build mode and Player Mode, will be 100% playable from both the Gamepad and the VR interface. Right now it's basically a tech demo, although Player Mode in VR is pretty much equivalent to the non-VR player mode at this time.
To test out VR Mode today, you will need some hardware. The cheapest way to get into it is to get a Google Cardboard viewer, or one of the many Android VR headsets that are cheaply available on Amazon (you would need the Google Cardboard app installed as well). You will also have to use the PWA version of My Colony 2 (https://www.apewebapps.com/my-colony-2/) as it does not work on the installed .apk. Playing on Android will also require you to have a bluetooth gamepad paired to your phone.
You can also try it from a stand alone VR Headset like the Oculus (meta) Quest 2. Just fire up the headset browser and navigate to the My Colony 2 web app. You will not need an extra controller on the Oculus, as the devices controllers work just fine.
There is nothing you can do in the standard build mode while in VR except scroll around, so you are best off switching your game into Player Mode before activating VR (as you can't do it while in VR yet). Once in VR Player Mode though, you can walk around the entire world as your Player Mode character. Even though you can't do anything yet, it's a pretty cool experience. With multiple players in a game with VR Player Mode and microphones activated, it can be a cool VR social experience. Especially in the future, if you can group up and go on a quest.
Keep in mind that more computing horsepower is required for VR Mode. On the Quest 2, I had to turn all engine settings down before starting up the game, as the Water World map in VR completely lagged my headset out, which was kind of disorienting. So if you are going to try VR Mode, please turn down graphics settings before entering the game!
If you have a VR Headset or Cardboard type viewer, give it a try and let me know! I think there is a lot of future potential for VR Mode in MC2.
Moving on, there are a few quality of life improvements in this update. Now when you click on the scrolling resources counter, it will switch to a static, non-scrolling list like in MC1.
I have also implemented one of the most long-standing feature requests to the game (besides pavement bulldozing), building progress bars!
Progress Bars were actually a lot harder than they seem like they should be, since MC2 is rendered in 3D unlike MC1, each resource bar has to be an object in the 3D world. To save performance, there is only 1 resource bar object that gets reused as you mouse around the world, and a new texture is redrawn with every tick update.
There are some modding improvements too. Mod Shop downloads are now checked for updates automatically on game launch and are automatically kept updated in the background. Also, support for Total Conversion mods has been unbroken, and these types of mods should be working again, both through manual import and from the Mod Shop.
So these are the major changes in this update. There is also a laundry list of bug fixes that I will not bore you with.
The next update will have to focus on content again since I did a non-content update this time. Moving ahead, I am going to expand Gamepad support to cover the full game, and get full building mode working in the VR mode. I also want to add new play experiences to the Player Mode, so if you have suggestions, feel free to let me know. Other than that, thank you for playing the game, let me know what you want to see next, and stay tuned for more!
#mycolony2