Ape Apps

These are just a few ideas that may be obvious things that bast has already decided he will implement, but hopefully some of these ideas may help. And Before you start blasting me about how bast won't ever put a pvp element into my colony, you should check the updates and announcements page under update 75, since bast includes the possibility of a pvp element with federations.

The ideas below represent an entire concept when applied together. This is how I would implement pvp between federations in my colony, but like all of my other concept ideas, it's mainly here to present new thoughts to the developer on how certain concepts could come together, and I don't expect him to just take this entire concept and put it in the game.

First off, I think that any pvp feature should be optional, just as bast said. But I do think that there should be some risk involved with enabling pvp and joining in federation wars/rivalries. I don't think that the risk should be catastrophic, but being attacked by someone else should come with some major disadvantages.

I think that in order for a rivalry/war between two federations to continue, a certain percentage of the federation should be regularly and actively involved. This way, people have to be actively participating in the rivalry in order for it to continue, so time and effort would need to be put in. While a rivalry is going on, all colonies in those federations are given buffs that increase income and production speeds of certain resources, so a rivalry would be good for business, as it also is in real life.

However, those that chose not to participate in a rivalry will not benefit at all from any benefits that come about by attacking enemy colonies, only active colonies do. This way there will be no freeloaders. I also think that there should be a cooldown timer that forces players to remain pvp active for a while after they've attacked another colony. This way colonies can't attack other colonies and then quickly disable pvp mode to avoid retaliation. However, if you accidentally enable pvp and haven't attacked anyone, you can immediately disable pvp. I also think that each colony should only be able to have one debuff affecting them at a time, but they could have multiple buffs in effect. Any further attempts to double-debuff an enemy would result in the attacker wasting a debuff chance and using resources that they could have used on another target.

Now, here comes a system of buffs and debuffs that I think would fit the pvp feature nicely. With these status effects, each colony could specialize in a certain kind of attack, or take on a certain support role in a rivalry, thus adding a bit of an rpg element to this system, but shouldn't need to get too in depth or complex with it. Below is a system of classes, point systems, and buffs and debuffs that a player can cast on other friendly or enemy colonies. Bear in mind that in order to receive a buff or debuff, you need to be in pvp mode. All buffs and debuffs require certain buildings in order to be unlocked and improved, and the best status effects require more complex buildings.

There would also be four different scores attributed to each colony that tell what kind of contribution that colony makes to the war effort and what their specialty/class is. Each class would be specified by a certain building, and only one of six of these buildings can be constructed at once in a colony. Whichever building is built determines the war class of the colony and what it specializes in. The buildings can be upgraded in tiers, giving more and more unique advantages for each tier, but also becoming more expensive. The classes are as follows:

A vanguard heads straight in and attacks the enemy headlong, splitting their focus between offense and defense. They can be capable attackers and defenders, but would more often than not pose as a distraction to the enemy, spreading their attacks and defenses onto multiple colonies at once with the splitter cast, and protecting themselves with the feedback loop cast. They focus on collecting offense and defense points.

Unique advantages: the vanguard's unique advantages focus on reducing the durations of all debuffs that they are targeted with, reducing buff/debuff cooldowns, increasing the amount of targets that a vanguarde can hit with the splitter cast, and on the highest tier, enabling the vanguard to attack an enemy and "taunt" them, thus forcing them to target the vanguard for their next attack. The taunt can also be used in combination with splitter to affect multiple enemies, forcing them all to wait on each other to take turns attacking the same vanguard before they can target another colony.

An empowerer is good at preparing their allies for an initial attack on an unsuspecting enemy. The buff their allies to strengthen them for the battle to come, and they join the ranks of vanguards in attacking and distracting the enemy. The Empowerer can counter some debuffs with buffs, but it proves to be a very inefficient counterer and can easily be picked out by an assassin if it causes too much bother in the heat of battle. It's best for this class to do all of it's buffs before battle and save the debuffs until the heat of battle. An empowerer will rack up offense and utility points, with relatively few defense points.

Unique advantages: The empowerer's unique abilities focus on buff potency, the amount of targets that splitter can reach, duration reduction to any debuffs that it experiences. And on the highest tier buildings, Empowerers gain a 1 in 5 chance to apply a buff to themselves automatically if they cast that same buff onto an ally without negating a debuff or being negated by a debuff. This allows the Empowerer to easily empower themselves while they are empowering other colonies in preparation for a battle, but doesn't help the empowerer during the heat of battle.

An assassin makes calculated strikes. Their attacks are very potent and can be made even more potent thanks to the charge cast. They are often supported by vanguards that strike before the assassins to get the initial attention from the enemies. They need not worry about protecting themselves in battle because of this. Even if they are attacked, they can retaliate quickly by using the dimensional reflection buff, thus giving their enemy a taste of their own medicine. An assassin can be good at countering buffs with debuffs, but not as effectively as they can attack an unprotected enemy. This class will have mostly offense points, with a little bit of silencer points as well.

Unique advantages: the Assassin's unique advantages focus on debuff potency and cooldown, dimensional mirror cooldown and cost reduction, increased potency and decreased cooldown on a buff affected by the charge cast, and on the highest tier, giving the assassin the ability to attack an enemy with an "evasive" attack, thus forcing the enemy to not be able to retaliate against the assassin for a certain amount of time. The enemy can target other colonies during that time though, just not that particular assassin.

The counterer focuses on offense and defense. They use their casts to negate a buff or debuff. They use the splitter and feedback loop buffs to cast negating buffs and debuffs onto themselves and other allies. The assassin might target a counterer with a potent attack at just the right time, during the counterer's cooldown time, if the counterer becomes a bother to it's enemies. So learning when to take action to help your allies and when let up for a while to lose attention from enemy colonies is a must for this class. The counterer gains equal amounts of defense and silencer points.

Unique advantages:The counterer's unique advantages focus on cooldown and resource cost reduction to all buffs and debuffs, increasing the amount of extra targets that splitter can give you, and on the highest tier, a counterer can "silence" an enemy, preventing them from attacking or defending any target for a duration, if they successfully negate that enemy's debuff or buff. The silence effect has a 1 in 5 chance of happening for each successful counter.

The healer is solely a supporter and defender, defending colonists by negating debuffs with their buffs and using buffs on allies just as utilities to boost their performance. The healer gives potent buffs and defenses to other players and is the pillar that holds up the federation in the war. They can use the charge cast to further increase the potency of a buff, which they would use to further strengthen allies. Assassins will target these the most to slow them down so the enemy will be without support, and counterers can also silence Healers by negating their buffs with debuffs. But healers are really good at empowering all of the other classes, which in turn will retaliate if one of their healers is attacked. The healer focuses on collecting defense and utility points.

Unique advantages: The healer's advantages focus on buff potency and cooldown, increased potency and decreased cooldown effects of the charge buff on all buffs, and on the highest tier, if they successfully counter a debuff with a buff, that buff's cooldown is reduced by 75%, allowing them to deal large amounts of counters in rapid succession as long as their buffs aren't re-countered/negated by an enemy.

The Commando is like an empowerer in that it buffs allies in preparation for battle, but instead of joining in the frontline assault like empowerers, commandos hide under cover of distraction and take out enemy defenses with tactical casts. They are extremely efficient with countering buffs with debuffs, yet they can't defend allies against debuffs. The commando is the hardest class to play as their position on the battlefield is an awkward one. And while they are really good at ripping enemy defenses away and preparing allies for battle, they themselves can't directly attack or defend anyone. Only choose this class if you're experienced with the pvp feature and your federation needs people of this class, otherwise you'll find yourself having a really bad experience with the pvp element.

Unique advantages: The commando looses the ability to buff people that are already affected with a debuff and the ability to debuff an enemy that's not protected by a buff, and debuff potency and duration is set to 0 so that if a commando successfully negates a buff, the debuff doesn't affect the enemy as an attack like it regularly would. This forces the commando into it's role turns debuffs solely into a means of breaking defenses instead of attacking directly. The commando also gets cooldown reduction to all debuffs, buff potency, increased splitter targets, and on the highest tier structure, the commando has a 1 in 5 chance of completely removing a buff or debuff's cooldown after casting it successfully. This means that the commando can hit many more targets than any other class in a period of time, allowing it to somewhat carpet-bomb enemy defenses or empower massive amounts of allies before the battle.

Major Benefits in participating in PVP: As factions war against each other, the colonies contributing to the war effect will share in the spoils of war. In order for Federations to start a war, both Federations must fromt a certain amount of money, and then each week after that start of the war, that same amount of money must be paid by each federation. Each week, a tally would be taken of how many successful attacks and counters were dealt by each federation. Both numbers are added together to get the Federation's battle score, and the federation with the highest score wins all of the money from all participating federations for that week. This can be used in a free-for-all war that includes multple federations as well as just a regular rivalry between two federations, and the war can continue as long as the federations want it to continue, provided they have enough money to put forward. The winning federation is required to split the winnings among it's participating colonies, but how much a percentage of the win that it keeps to itself is optional. Just bear in mind that nobody will participate if there is not a big enough reward.

Debuffs:

Benefits of debuffing enemies: When you debuff an enemy that doesn't currently have any status effects without being negated, you permanently gain a small amount of potency towards the debuff you casted and you get offense points that go to your offense score, which can be seen by other members of your federation. If you successfully negate a buffed enemy with a debuff, you gain silencer points towards your silencer score that other members can see and you permanenty gain a very small percentage chance of not being negated each time you cast a debuff or buff, even if your buff or debuff was countered correctly by a defending enemy(this also applies to buffs/debuffs casted with feedback loop). Finally, if you successfully negated a buff or debuff that negated your original buff/debuff on the same enemy, you will gain 2x silencer points and you get 2x more percentage added to your negation-block chance.

Brownout: Forcefully syphon energy from your enemy to temporarily add to your power capacity. Is negated by the Syphon buff but can negate the repair nanites buff. Casting this debuff successfully without having it negated will permanently add a 2% increase to the caster's power capacity that scales with their power capacity.
Category: Techno-warfare

EMP Blast: Blast your enemy with EMP waves that temporarily damage power producing buildings, causing a complete power blackout. the effects of the emp blast are shorter in duration than the brownout, but cannot be countered by simply increasing power production like brownout could. Negates the Syphon Buff but is negated by the repair nanites buff. Successfully casting this debuff without negation would award the caster with a permanent 2% faster build speed on all power producing buildings.

Plague: Inflict an enemy with a nasty plague that lowers the health of it's colonists over time. By treating the population of that colony like guinea pigs, you gain a boost towards research production. A plague will never kill a colonist directly, the lowest that a plague would bring a colonist would be 5%. This is avoid any colony from dying out because of warfare. Negated by the healing nanites buff but negates the probiotic bursts buff. Successfully casting this buff without negation will grant the caster a 2% increase in build speed of hospitals and scientific structures.

Famine: Target your enemy's food supply and reduce the amount of food they produce for a time. Negated by the probiotic bursts buff but negates the healing nanites buff since people can't heal without eating food. Successfully casting this buff without negation will grant the caster a permanent 2% increase in food storage.

World eater: You release a rare silicon-based life form that eats stone and metal into your enemy's colony. The creature quickly reproduces and infests all of the enemy's ore mines, viciously attacking the miners.. The enemy suffers a substantial reduction in production rates from any structure that relies on holes in the ground, including excavation sites, core mines, regolith extraction co.s, fracking plants, etc. The world eaters are trained to build storehouses for the ore they collect and share it with their masters. Successfully casting this debuff without having it negated will permanent multiply the attacker's total storage capacity for raw resources by 1.02, thus adding an extra 2% capacity in relation to the capacity they already have. This scales with resource capacity and applies to all resources that come from the ground, including alien arts, ore, gold, ura, alu, rego,
Category: Geo-warfare

Tectonic disruption: Pummel your enemy with earthquakes that make working in tall buildings extremely hard. The target suffers reduced work productivity depending on how potent your attack is and can't build or destroy any buildings during the duration of the debuff. Successfully casting this buff without negation will grant the caster 2% faster construction of any structure that classifies as a tall building.
Category: Geo-warfare

Splitter: A very costly and high tech buff that allows you to direct your buffs and debuffs toward two targets at once. In order to successfully target two allies/enemies with a particular status effect, you need to cast splitter on both targets in rapid succession(casts are no more than 5 minutes apart), otherwise the splitter buff/debuff would be wasted on only one target and the caster would have to wait the long cooldown in order to cast it again.
Category: Offensive Warfare

Malicious Sanctioning campaign: you target an enemy with a campaign to invite it's population to immigrate to your colony, thus leaching population away from them. Requires tons of civics to cast and a colony would have to be well established in order to have access to this attack and would need to have tons of space for new colonists. Negated by the repopulate buff but negates the Friendly sanctioning buff. Once a caster's housing space is filled up, the campaign will be ended, thus avoiding any homeless people. Successfully casting this debuff without running out of housing space or being negated will grant the caster a 2% increase in build speeds on all housing structures.
Category: Political Warfare

Purge: Purge your colony of any overly complacent colonists, forcing them to immigrate to your enemy. These colonists will immigrate to the enemy regardless of whether they have housing room or not. If the enemy doesn't have housing room, the immigrants because homeless and detract from their happiness score. This buff requires a lot of civics and would have a huge cooldown. Successfully casting this debuff would grant the caster a 2% increase in build speeds for all tourism structures.
Category: Political warfare

Blockade: Block and enemy's trade via gbt and all import/export/immigration buildings other than the Stargate. is negated by the subspace detour buff but negates the hyperspace transport buff. Requires starships to cast. During the blockade, the prices of all of the import/export stuctures besides your highest tier import/export building(stargate for humans) are reduced by 20% and the rewards gain from the exports are increased by 20%
Category: Economic Warfare

Subspace disruption: Disruption your enemy's Stargate connection, rendering their most advanced immigration and trade building useless. Negates the subspace detour buff but is negated by the hyperspace transport buff. During a disruption, your highest tier import/export building gains a 20% import price reduction and a 20% export reward increase.
Category: Economic Warfare

Buffs:

Benefits of buffing allies: There are good benefits to turning your colony unto a support colony that buffs it's allies. When you successfully negate a debuff, you permanently gain a small amount of resistance to the debuff that you negated, and you get defense points that go to your overall defense score that other members can see. When you cast a buff onto an ally while they aren't affected by any status affects, then you gain points towards your utility score, which other members can see as well, and you gain a potency increase to that buff.

Syphon: You temporarily sacrifice a portion of your power to add to an ally colony's power levels. Designed to negate the brownout debuff as long as the caster has enough extra power to successfully supplement that colony's needs as well as the extra demand for power that the brownout debuff adds. Unfortunately, the emp burst debuff negates this buff.
Category: Techno-warfare

Repair nanites: sends a swarm of nanites to repair any damage in an ally's technology caused by an EMP blast, immidiately negating the debuff. The brownout debuff destroys these nanites as the high electric demand causes electronics to overheat, vaporizing the nanites as they try to fix the damage. One side effect of getting hit with this buff is that they repair damage caused by other means, thereby repairing building infrastructure by a significant percentage.
Category: techno-warfare

Healing nanites: you send a swarm of healing nanites to an ally colony to heal it's occupants. Completely negates the plague debuff, but is negated by the dyson sphere debuff. Hospitals also heal sick colonists faster depending on buff potency.
Category: Bio-warfare

Probiotic bursts: gives an ally colony rapid food production for some time. This buff requires a large amount of food and water to charge, but when casted onto an ally colony, it releases massive clouds of genetically modified probiotics in the atmosphere, which help crops grow fast. negates the dyson sphere debuff, but is negated by the plague debuff.
Category: Bio-warfare

Ultrasonic resonance: Blast your ally with ultrasonic waves that purify the earth of any world eaters. Obviously this counters the world eater debuff. The resonance shakes ores and minerals loose from the rocks for easier collection. This adds a significant boost to production in all buildings that rely on holes in the ground. However, this buff does nothing against the tectonic disruption debuff.
Category: Geo-warfare

Cryonic infusion: calm an ally's planet down with the freezing power of cryo-science. Negates tectonic disruption, but world eaters are impervious to the extreme cold. The severe cold causes blue crystalline to grow on the surface of the planet, no matter what planet it is, and there is a percentage chance for each lava tile on a lava map to instantly turn into obsidian. Both of these benefits depend on buff potency.
Category: Geo-warfare

Repopulate: you sacrifice a portion of your population to save an ally from dying off by repopulating their colony. No resource or tech requirements. Not designed to negate any debuff, but designed to prevent any colony from dying off. This is a very low tier buff, and would be the first buff to be unlocked, so it really shouldn't be possible to kill off an enemy colony to where they can't recover, since they could always get reinforcements from allies. In fact, I could see some colonies specializing in this buff by increasing their population size way beyond their population requirements. Negates the sanctioning campaign debuff but people won't want to move to that colony if it been afflicted by a purge from another colony.
Category: Political Warfare

Friendly Sanctioning campaign: Help your ally by welcoming all of their homeless into your colony. The buff only stops when either the caster runs out of housing or the target runs out of homeless. negates the Purge debuff but is negated by the Malicious sanctioning debuff.
Category: Political Warfare

Subspace detour: Allow your ally to connect to your gbt via their stargate, thus allowing them to make trades. This negates a blockade debuff, but is negated by the subspace disruption debuff. Side effects from this buff include a reduced cost in civics for each gbt transaction and the reduction of cost and increase of reward from importing/exporting from the stargate or highest tier import/export building, depending on buff potency.

Wormhole: You create a wormhole above your planet that links to a wormhole above your allie's planet. Because of this, allies can travel more effectively without the need of a stargate. Negates subspace disruption but is negated by blockade. Has the same effect on gbt as subspace detour, but applies the cost and benefit modifiers to every tier other than the top tier import/export building.

SOS: This buff can only be applied to the colony casting it. It's basically a cry for help. Other allies can see a list of SOS reports for their federation and see the colony being attacked and identify the attacker. Afterward they can proceed to buff their ally in danger, or retaliate against the attacker with a debilitating debuff. There is no requirement or cost to cast this buff, you just have to have a communications device, consulate, or capital.
Category: Defensive Warfare

Feedback loop: Can only be applied to the caster, casting requires large amounts of power and the tech required with be pretty high to unlock this buff. Once this buff is casted, the caster can target themselves once with any buff, essentially being able to defend themselves instead of having to rely on another colony for counters. The feedback loop would come with a large cooldown, so the caster would have to choose wisely on.
Category: Defensive Warfare

Dimensional reflection: Reflect a buff or debuff back onto an enemy or ally, thus negating any effect on the caster completely and immediately. A high tech and a lot of resources required to cast this buff and comes with a long cooldown. This buff doesn't prevent an attack, you have to cast this buff during when you are experiencing a buff or debuff.
Category: Defensive Warfare

Charge: cast this buff before casting another buff or debuff to multiply the potency by 5. This also increases the cooldown of the buff being affected by 5. The most expensive buff in the game and comes with the highest cooldown.

-------------------------------

Now with all of that out of the way, I want to remind everyone that I'm not expecting this whole beast of a concept to be plopped into the game. I hope that bast at least takes a consideration of the concept and uses pieces and parts from it, but I mainly just want to see the game grow to become more popular and hopefully some of my ideas play a part in making that happen. I will be making changes to this post to constantly refine it based on what I learn about what is feasible to do and what bast's plans are, so stay tuned.

I have just put the finishing touches on the v0.75.0 update to My Colony, and will begin pushing it out to all platforms tomorrow (Thursday) morning, possibly even tonight if I get time. This is a huge update in terms of "under the hood" changes, and so there is a lot to cover here. It also marks the beginning of a series of "online" focused updates which will be taking place between now and the end of the year.

Now that My Colony has arrived on Steam (which you can find here), I have decided to shift focus a bit more away from the mobile side of things, towards the Desktop and online side of things. My Colony has always played better on the Desktop, but since the majority of users were on mobile, a lot of the design of the game had to be made with that reality in mind. As some of you already know, a few months ago, Google Play blacklisted My Colony from their store search results, cratering the mobile downloads of the game by over 90%. As a result, the My Colony user base has transformed from over 90% mobile users, to now almost 50/50 with Desktop users, spread out between my website, the Ape Apps Launcher, Windows 10, Chrome OS, Facebook Games, and now Steam. And even though the crash ratings on Google Play are back down under 2% and the downloads have picked back up slightly, it is still nowhere near where it once was. On top of that, the experience did open my eyes as to how Google Play operates, and demonstrated the risk involved with being tied so heavily to one platform. On Desktop, things are spread fairly evenly between the distribution networks (too early to tell on Steam yet), so there is a little bit of safety that comes with that situation. Plus, as I said, the game is just 10 times better on Desktop anyway.

So, just to be clear, I am not abandoning Android and iOS, and those platforms will continue to receive all of the latest updates. I am just not going to be focused on mobile first, and some features may not work on mobile platforms, as you will soon see below.

But enough of the intro, you are here to see what is new in this version, and there is quite a bit. So let's take a look!

First I want to go through some of the bugs that were addressed in this release, as one of them has a pretty large impact on later-stage Human colonies. So during this update, I discovered a mistake in the code that was majorly"nerfing" building consumption and production when the building had a very low "tick" phase. The two prime examples where the Ancient Alien Condenser and the Atmosphere Scrubber, but it would also impact buildings with tons of employees, like the Investment Bank.

Essentially, if the production/consumption tick phase was lower than that of the overall simulation's building tick phase, a bunch of update cycles for that building would get skipped, causing it to produce or consume resources at a far slower rate than it was supposed to. As far as I can tell, this issue has been baked into the game for ages, and when adding new content, I have just set the stats in a way to compensate for it, not even realizing it was there. As soon as I fixed the glitch though, the impact on Atmosphere was immediately apparent.

Ancient Alien Condensers and the Atmosphere Scrubber immediately went into "beast mode", chewing through millions of atmosphere in a matter of minutes. This brought my Atmosphere down to zero, causing all of the condensers in the colony to shut down, since they were out of "fuel". This led to an immediate water shortage which was difficult to get on top of, since I could not generate new atmosphere fast enough to keep up with the consumption of the condensers. I eventually just had to import a ton of water from the Star Gate.

Anyway, to address this, I slightly nerfed the stats on the Condenser, and introduced a new upgraded Large Atmosphere Generator to assist in rebuilding Atmosphere. I kept the Scrubbers running in beast mode though, I figured at their new consumption level, one Atmosphere Scrubber can take care of a pretty good sized colony.

So be aware of this new change, and modify your colony accordingly. I already know the bug reports section will be full of "I updated and now all of my Water is gone" reports, so just be aware of what is happening. It is not exactly a bug, but the result of the fix of a bug.

The next fix is related to Creative Mode in Region games. Basically, it didn't work before, and now it should.

Speaking of Regions, there was a glitch where Resource decay would be greatly amplified on Region maps. This has been corrected. I have also implemented several changes which I hope address the issue people have on Regions where tech/resources are lost. I cannot reproduce this issue on my own, so I hope the fix works. I know you will make me aware if it doesn't though!

Next, a lot of changes were made to the server this update. I am getting ready to add in-game moderators to My Colony, which I had hoped to have ready by now, but the server needed so many changes to accommodate for it, that I just didn't get to it. Just know that it is coming soon though.

The first big change comes with authenticated API calls. Aside from the public API's, you basically need to be logged in to your Ape Apps account to do anything on the server now. This requirement seems like a no brainer, but you have to realize that the My Colony server predates the Ape Apps Account server, and there were originally no account requirements at all.

Due to this change, the tie between your Ape Apps Account, your online colony, and the website is now pretty solid. If you happen to get banned from Ape Apps for some unrelated reason, your colony is pretty much inaccessible too, and you will need to send me an email convincing me why you should be able to get back in.

All colony resources are now stored on the server as well. They have actually been stored on the server for some time, but the server would never override the resources saved to your game file. Now it will. The server now keeps a timestamp and checksum synchronized to your online game saves, so that it can detect if you have decided to go back and restore a backup game file. This is to help detect different forms of cheating that are out there, and while restoring a backup does not flag you as a cheater, it is logged and will be available for review by the soon-to-be-announced in-game moderators.

Next up, in-game private messaging has been moved from the my-colony.com servers to the main ape-apps.com servers. As a result, you can now view and reply to your in-game private messages from right here on ape-apps.com. They will also soon be available on my-colony.com. Currently, they don't render very well on the website, but I will be making it all look pretty shortly. In-game it doesn't look much different from before, but in theory the message size limit is gone, although the game still doesn't let you write more characters. The website does though. In the coming updates though, the entire in-game messaging interface will be rewritten to take advantage of the new features available by using ape-apps.com messaging.

The next big change in the game, which I have mentioned already in another thread and some may not be pleased with, is the complete rewrite of how colonial GDP is calculated. In short, it is now an actual GDP calculation, instead of just the sum of all of your resources. So now instead of measuring just how rich you are, which anybody can attain by simply getting a big gift from another colony or from the Galactic Emperor, it is now a measure of the current productive output of all of your buildings, tax collections, and resource collections. In this way, your GDP only grows if your industrial output is growing. If you are maxed out with full storage, then your GDP will be stagnant. I might adjust it next update to have GBT profits figured into the calculation as well, since it is technically a sale of goods. I haven't decided yet.

The game tracks your GDP over time, and will give you both quarterly and annual prints. It takes about two hours of game time to collect enough data to get a full GDP reading, so be aware of that. In your stats, the large GDP number is your current quarterly rate, and the smaller number is the annual rate. One game "year" is roughly equivalent to one real life hour. The quarterly and annual growth percentages also factor GBT price inflation into their calculations, so that large fluctuations in GBT prices do not throw the GDP growth values way off. In addition, the game ai now has "economic analysts" who will try to guess what your GDP growth rate should be every quarter, based on the trends of the last year, and will let you know each quarter if you were on target or below estimates. It's sort of like watching CNBC.

I might start adding other fun little news items to the GBT price ticker on the bottom of the screen too.

Next, there is a new feature that I hope people are able to have some fun with. I have added the ability in-game to stream a live feed of your game play onto your colony website at my-colony.com. On supported platforms, there will now be a "Streaming" button in the bottom right corner of the screen. When you click on it, it will start up your live feed and turn Red, letting you know that it is on.

It also uses your microphone (if available and you give it permission) so that people watching your stream can hear your amazing voice-over commentary. Also when you turn on streaming, the in-game chat channel and the chat channel on your my-colony.com colony site are synchronized, so that you can text-chat directly with those viewing your feed. You will also get a notification in-game when somebody starts watching your live feed.

The in-game streaming works if you are playing on Chrome, Android, Native Client/Steam. It does not currently work on iOS or Windows 10 (Store) edition of the game. I am not sure about Facebook Game Center, as I did not test it.

Moving on, I have decided to merge the in-game popup Commonwealth and Diplomacy windows into the main Statistics window, so that everything is in one place. In-game private messaging will also be moving to this window soon, and eventually, a revamped in-game encyclopedia will be in there as well. I just think it's better to have all of the options in one tidy place.

You may have also noticed a new "Federation" option at the bottom. Federations are headed in-game to My Colony. I have been promising them for a year and a half now, and since I decided to focus on online play for the next couple of months, Federations went ahead and made the cut.

Creating or joining a Federation requires "government level 7", which is game-engine speak for "you need to build the Hall of Congress." This is pretty much the most expensive building in the game, and before now it hasn't really done anything for you. Now it unlocks Federations. Because of this requirement, only United Earth and LIS can make or join Federations, but Reptilians and Zolarg will be getting their own equivalent buildings in 0.76.0.

The only thing you can do with Federations right now is either make one, or join one. Making one is expensive, and joining one is free. However, when you choose to join a Federation, current federation members receive a ballot in their Federation screen and must vote to approve your membership.

Balloting works like this. When a new measure is put up, it will expire in three days. At the end of three days, the yays and nays are counted, and the winner is determined. However, if a measure receives yays (or nays) from over 50% of current Federation members before the three days are up, the vote is also ended.

The balloting system only works for admitting members right now, but it is going to be greatly expanded. Unlike Commonwealths, Federations are an "alliance of equals", with each independent member state getting 1 vote. One colony will be the president, voted on by the other members. The President will be able to put new initiatives up to a vote, and only the president can put a new initiative up, unless that initiative is a vote of no-confidence in the President, which could be needed if the current president goes inactive.

Federations are going to be able to do things that regular colonies cannot do and, for those who wish to enable it, there is going to be an optional PVP element coming for Federations making use of Star Ships. I am not talking about attacking peoples bases or anything, but you might be able to send your fleet to blockade a planet, disrupt communications, etc. I am welcome to ideas on it, but this element will be 100% optional, and you can only do the PVP mode with Federation members who have enabled it. I want people to still be able to play a 100% peaceful mode if they wish.

The Federations are in the early stages, but there will be new Federation stuff with each update, so feel free to start one up and start accepting members, so you are ready for when the fun stuff goes live.

So those are the primary new things in this update, I am sure there are others, but I don't remember off the top of my head. Now I just want to give a quick update on what is coming next.

As I mentioned, Federations are going to be fleshed out over the next few updates. In addition, both Federations and non-federation planets will be able to establish Trade Routes using their Star Ships, and the Colonial Map from the my-colony.com website is going to be accessible in-game soon to aid in this. There are also new interactions coming for Embassies, some of which will only be available to PVP Federations. To support this, both Zolarg and Reptilians are getting new giant 'Hall of Congress' type building soon, as well as Star Ship production.

There are also going to be further changes made to the My Colony website to accommodate all of the new stuff. Federations will each have their own page, and unlike Commonwealths, there will be a few customization options for a Federation page. If you haven't looked at the My Colony website recently, check it out, I've been adding things here and there over the last few weeks: https://www.my-colony.com/

Finally, in-game moderators are on the way. I have several applications, and will be contacting people with offers as soon as the server is ready for them. There is still a bit of server work I need to do to accommodate what I want to do with moderation, but I think when it's all implemented, it will make the online experience a lot better for everybody.

So that is all for this update. This one took me longer than normal to put together, and I have to spend the next few days catching up on other projects, but I should start v0.76.0 mid next-week. Until then, enjoy the update, and it should be hitting all platforms within the coming days!

Today I am putting the finishing touches on My Colony 2 v0.17.0, which should be hitting all platforms over the coming days. In some ways, v0.17.0 on the outside is a minor update, but in other ways it begins to completely change everything for the My Colony series, as several new concepts are coming online. So let's take a look at what has changed and what is new with My Colony 2 v0.17.0 - The Phara Update!


The My Colony 2 engine is starting to gain support for AI controlled civilizations, and the first work has been started in this regard with the introduction of the Phara, a new Desert World native species conceptualized by @GeneralWadaling nearly a year ago. Desert World players will start to notice the new faction and their settlements crop up around their maps.

There is still a ton of work to be done with the AI, and some bugs to work out. At present, the AI doesn't do much except for generate new settlements, so don't expect any interactions or diplomacy quite yet. The AI routines are going to be fleshed out over the next several updates, and the initial AI processing is going to be largely based on the AI code from Colony Wars, but more on that later.

I have wanted AI controlled civilizations in My Colony since the first release of MC1, but have never gotten around to it. You may or may not know that My Colony 1 was initially envisioned as a futuristic version of Sid Meiers's Colonization, and was to have native species to deal with and you would also have to fight against the "king" for independence (in My Colony's case, United Earth). The game never turned out like that, and My Colony 2 will not have fighting for independence either, although the engine might in fact support that scenario soon, but we will get to that later too.

I next want to move on to a new concept I have added to the game, which is progression through both Player and Settlement leveling up.


Settlements now have a Level, which you can increase by using Civics. Behind the scenes, Players also have a level which can be increased using Money, but that part is not yet implemented.

Right now there isn't a huge point in leveling up, although eventually some government type structures and policy options will require either a specific player or settlement level to unlock. This adds extra goals and an additional player progression aspect to the game. Various forms of this have been suggested throughout the years for My Colony 1, so keep an eye on these features as they are fleshed out over the coming updates.

Next, I want to touch on what has been by far the #1 requested My Colony feature since the game first came out - Military and Combat, both of which are now making their way into My Colony 2!


This is another concept in it's initial phases and some of it still doesn't work right, but let's go through it. There is a new early-game tech called Colonial Security which is now needed for the Security Station and also unlocks the new Barracks. From the Barracks, you can now construct the first military unit, which is the Infantry unit. The Infantry is able to either attack or defend. It will automatically attack enemy units if in range, and will attack an enemy structure on command. A lot of the initial combat code has been taken from Colony Wars.

So what constitutes an enemy? The engine now accounts for diplomatic relations between each player behind the scenes. Players can either be Neutral (the default status), Enemies, or Allies. To become an enemy, you open the Players tab in the Statistics window, click on a player, and choose to declare war on them. They will instantly be notified of your treachery.


Now, here are the limitations. The 'Propose Alliance' and 'Sue for Peace' options currently are not functional, so if you do decide to declare war, there is no getting out of it. So keep that in mind.

There is a lot more to say on AI's and the new Combat features, but there have also been some other tweaks to the game that I wanted to touch on before getting too deep into the woods.

Firstly, when you go to build a new unit, it will now appear at the Construction Yard that is the closest to where your current camera position is location. In other words, if you are actively looking at a construction yard and you build a new unit, it will pop out of the construction yard you are looking at. This comes in handy as settlements begin to spread out and grow.

Another big change is that new players who join your public game will no longer start out at chunk 0:0. I know that it could be annoying to have all Landers start the game at the exact same spot, so the new Landers will now be randomly placed, somewhat in the area of the currently settled world, but away from all other players.

Now some kind of bad news. You may know that I recently updated Voxel Paint with some cool new features, such as metallic voxels, transparent voxels, etc. Well, I went to implement those features into the My Colony 2 engine, and it completely kills performance. I don't know why yet, but just having one structure with a metallic texture destroys the game, and that is on a high end PC with a good video card. So until I can get the performance situation worked out, the cool new features from Voxel Paint will have to wait. 🙁

Now I want to dive a bit deeper into some of the new features, and how they tie to what I have planned for My Colony 2 going forward.

Some of you may have heard during some of my Podcast episodes or from various release notes here on the forum that I had long wanted to make a game called 'New World' that involved showing up on a new continent in ships like the Spanish did, and trying to get rich on a land inhabited by natives. Well, Amazon recently beat me to the New World game, but the idea still remains in my mind. A lot of this updates recent changes, including AI civs and combat, go directly towards making that game concept a reality.

Additionally, there has recently been discussion with GeneralWadaling about migrating Colony Wars to the Scroll3D engine. I think that my new strategy instead is going to be to have the My Colony 2 engine be sophisticated and customizable enough to be able to be morphed into a Colony Wars type Real Time Strategy game. This would be great for multiple reasons. Firstly, less game engines to maintain is always a good thing for me. Secondly, it will greatly increase the capabilities that modders have to make different types of games for the My Colony 2 engine. A win for everybody!

So with the above two points in mind, here are some things I need to work out before I can make everything a reality, which should give you an idea of some of the features that will be coming soon to My Colony 2.

Firstly, there needs to be more World options then the current infinite maps. You need to be able to create maps of a specific size, and also maps that have a predefined layout, which means some type of map editor. To get started on this work, the next World type I am adding to the game is going to be the My Colony Classic world, which will be roughly equivalent to an MC1 large sized Red Planet map (probably not suitable for multiplayer). It should be a fun challenge for some players, but will also bring important new features to the engine.

Next of course, the AI needs to be expanded and improved. The first order of business is to get the AI's capabilities to be roughly in line with those in Colony Wars, which will allow basic war and RTS support. In addition though, the AI needs to be able to conduct peaceful diplomacy and trades. And for that matter, players need to be able to trade with each other as well.

Modders need to be able to customize various UI aspects. The game UI needs to be able to basically look like the Colony Wars UI, which means options need to be added to show/hide elements and to more the position of different elements. The new/join game screen also needs to be customizable.

And of course, the game content needs to be expanded as well, and that will happen over time for sure.

So there is a ton of work to do, and absolutely all feedback is appreciated. In the meantime though, check out the v0.17.0 update to My Colony 2, and stay tuned for a whole lot more to come!

#mycolony2 #colonywars #voxelpaint

https://mc1.my-colony.com/api.php?pf=2&g=1&c=0hZgBkjn
(replace 0hZgBkjn with desired charter code)

Returns JSON formatted data on specified colony, as well as mother colony and list of child colonies.

{

    "charter":"EfbgdYs6",

    "name":"EMERALD CITY",

    "civilization":"United Earth",

    "race":"Human",

    "maptype":"Red Planet",

    "founded":"December 16, 2016",

    "independence":"December 18, 2016",

    "population":24718,

    "gdp":1484542777812088300,

    "unemployment":0,

    "mapstage":4,

    "playson":"web",

    "lastactive":"2017-04-28 09:42:03",

    "theme":"#2867ed",

    "screenshot":"https://www.my-colony.com/screenshots/ss-146399.jpg",

    "website":"https://www.my-colony.com/colonies/EfbgdYs6/",

    "sector":"0,1",

    "location":"-90,-442",

    "rrr":72,

    "mothercolony": {

        "name":"United Earth",

        "charter":"earth",

        "website":"https://www.my-colony.com/colonies/earth/",

        "relations":100,

        "sector":"0,0",

        "location":"0,0"

    },

    "childcolonies": [

        {

            "name":"TouristsDieHere",

            "charter":"GE7RmoX0",

            "population":76189,

            "website":"https://www.my-colony.com/colonies/GE7RmoX0/",

            "relations":92,

            "sector":"0,0",

            "location":"0,0"

        }

    ]

}

• charter: charter code
• name: colony name
• civilization: what civ they are playing as, like United Earth or Zolarg Empire (so far)
• race: what species they are.  so far there are human and zolarg.  eventually there may be more than one civilization per race
• maptype: what map they are playing, like Red Planet, Lunar, etc
• founded: when the colony was founded
• independence: when they gained independence, or "0" if they are not independent
• population: their population
• gdp: their total gdp
• unemployment: unemployment rate, times 100, ie  5% would be 5 and not .05
• mapstage: what their atmosphere level based stage is
• playson: what platform they last used, like web, android, ios, windows, desktop 
• lastactive: timestamp of when they last played
• theme: the theme color they chose in their colony website options
• screenshot: if they uploaded a screenshot, the url will be here
• website: the url to their colony website
• sector: the x,y coordinate of what sector their colony is located in
• location: the x,y coordinate of where they are located within the above sector
• rrr: the RRR index of the colony ( http://forum.ape-apps.com/showthread.php?tid=1994 )
• mothercolony.name: name of their mothercolony
• mothercolony.charter: charter for their mothercolony
• mothercolony.population: the population of their mothercolony
• mothercolony.website: mothercolony website
• mothercolony.relations: the relation percentage the colony has with their motherland, times 100, ie 95% = 95, not .95
• mothercolony.sector: the x,y coordinate of the sector their mother colony is in
• mothercolony.location: the x,y coordinate the mother colony is in within their sector
• mothercolony.rrr: the RRR index of the colony ( http://forum.ape-apps.com/showthread.php?tid=1994 )
• childcolonies (array, from largest to smallest):
• childcolonies[x].name: name of child colony
• childcolonies[x].charter: child colony charter code
• childcolonies[x].population: child colony population
• childcolonies[x].website: website for the child colony
• childcolonies[x].relations: percent relation that the child colony has with parent, times 100, ie 95% = 95, not .95
• childcolonies[x].sector: x,y coordinate of the sector child colony is in
• childcolonies[x].location: x,y coordinate of the child colony location within their sector

Greetings!

Around 2 years ago I've created this post which is about the unofficial timeline for the world in My Colony.

Since then, our favorite dev @bastecklein had referenced a lot of things in that post when expanding the actual lore of My Colony, eventually My Colony Universe is officially born which connected various My Colony spin-off games together.

Now I've reviewed my long and old post which isn't really something refined (and somehow grammatically terrible), I've decided to create an revised version of it. While refining and altering some context and contents, there will also be few new major events as new additions.
Another major change is about events during the Old Earth era and the time transitioning to United Earth, which I would like to make them slightly more reasonable, though the progress would still be relatively accelerated compared to reality.

Enjoy!

The unit of time measurement is based on Earth calendar.

---

Time of the Ancients
(Uncertain, estimated to be billions of years before Alpha Draconians)

Once upon a time there was an thriving civilization ruled over the Milky Way Galaxy, which now they are called The Ancients. Even in the Royal Libraries of Alpha Draconians, not much documentations of their unimaginably long history has been recovered, but many of them become legends and folklore among various old and elder civilizations across the Milky Way. The following events are what known to the present-day Milky Way.

👇Just click the text with dotted underline to see the entire section.
Time of the Ancients

The Old Holy Galactic Empire
The oldest trace of The Ancients that can be found in present-day.

Some artifacts from this period reflected worship of pure energy entities, which its sophisticated pantheon have shown distant relationship and influence to cultural and religious beliefs of some races of Milky Way.

Titan War
Perhaps the most well-known conflict in the Ancients' period, it took place around the late Holy Galactic Empire period - A legend of two dominant galactic powers battle for their total domination of Milky Way.
The Titanis was the sole opponent of the Old Galactic Empire at that time, it is a collective of races under the rule of Titans, a race of colossal entities. However, unable to surpass Empire in terms of the ability to manipulate raw energy and matter, the Titans end up defeated and extinct after the war.

Various wartime relics form both Empire and Titanis are discovered. However the reliability of several Titan relics (particularly some Titan remains) are doubted by modern historians and scientists (and even some New Galactic Empire scholars) and the debates still goes on today.

Grand Division of Pharan Empire
Phara was the largest ally of Old Galactic Empire and strongest of the minor powers during the Titan War. However, after a chain of internal political events, the Pharan Empire split into divided Dynasties ruled by their respective Grand Houses.

Most ancient Pharan documentations were permanently lost during the event.

Dark Galactic Empire
The period after the Old Galactic Empire crushed their sole rival of the galaxy and achieved galactic dominance.

For some reason, the Old Galactic Empire abandoned their belief of energy entities, instead, near-fanatical dedication exploring ultimate possibilities of dark matter becomes the major feature of this period.

Despite it is the period after the Holy Empire, unfortunately, information of this period is relatively more scarce - The multidimensional complexity of their relics keeps information in them highly difficult to be discovered and extracted.

Reptilian Exodus to the Milky Way
The first records of Reptilian immigrants into the Milky Way from another galaxy was during the Dark Galactic Empire period. From some documents of Alpha Draconians, Reptilian ancestors started as nomads with only mostly low tech equipment when their "primitive" intergalactic transport landed on the Outer Rim Region.

Empire-Reptilian Conflict
While Reptilians tried to make themselves a new home at Outer Rim Region, Old Galactic Empire was unwelcoming towards the continuous immigration of the Reptilians. As a result several conflicts broke out, but none never end up into a major war.

After several head-on confrontations and negotiations, Reptilians signed permanent truce with the Old Galactic Empire and earned their space of survival, however, the Empire barricaded all the remaining immigrants from entering Milky Way, which the fates of these immigrants remained unknown.

Second Pharan Empire
After millenniums of internal conflicts, Pharans barely reunited themselves, the Second Pharan Empire was established and maintained relative cohesion and peace between Grand Houses for the long period afterwards.

Vanishing of The Ancients
One of the largest mysteries in Milky Way history, which the entire population and objects of the Old Galactic Empire, vanished.
There had been many hypothesizes trying to explain the event, the most popular one being The Ancients successfully achieved certain breakthroughs in science and transcended into higher beings unrestricted by physical plane.

Radioisotopic raw ether are discovered at planets that were once Imperial settlements, which seemed to be remains of physical biomass of Ancients, or a by-product of the process causing the entire vanishing.

---

Interbellum, Rise of Reptilians and Draconian Era
(4 million years ~ 2 million years before human history)

After the vanishing of the Ancients, over 80% of the Milky Way became unoccupied and abandoned. This is the period many young races rose to reshape the galactic balance of power, but only the Reptilians became the most successful - From the foundations and physical legacies left by the Ancients, Reptilians thrived as the new superpower of the Galaxy, the Alpha Draconians.

Rise of Reptilians

Early Atlanians and Kingdom of Aqua
Atlanians was an aquatic race that managed to civilize themselves during the Interbellum, and evolved into amphibious creatures that has strong adaptive ability to both dry land and aquatic environments.
Kingdom of Aqua was the first period of Atlanian history they begin space exploration and primitive extraterrestrial colonization.

Reptilian Kingdoms
As the scout ships returned bizarre news that the Ancients had ceased to exist, the Reptilians saw their long waited opportunity expanding towards the Central Vortex. Deeply inspired by the Old Galactic Empire, many Reptilians dreamed of building their own powerful interstellar regime. As a result numerous Reptilian Kingdoms with relatively primitive organization were established, completely replacing their original nomadic society within few decades.

Great Reptilian Expedition
After years of preparation, various Kingdoms launched their expedition to the deeper regions of the Galaxy, returning with generous amount of salvaged bounties from ancient ruins and locations of the abandoned Ancient cities.

Later, Reptilians colonized the Ancient cities as their new settlements.

Bowuland Insectoid Hive Tribes
The earliest form of Bowuland Insectoid (Later Zolarg Insectoids) civilization known. Before the period of Zolarg Empire, Bowuland Insectoid breeds were relatively mild and much less invasive, and achieved developing a society with great self sufficiency and sustainability of food, with knowledge of primitive metallurgy.

With no ideas and ambitions beyond their home Gaia World planet, Insectoids of the period had never entered process of industrialization and space exploration.

Unity Movement of the Atlanians
According to an Atlanian legend, conflicts between Atlanian colony Kingdoms were very common, until inspired by the idea of balance and peaceful coexistence started an peaceful unification movement which led to founding of the present-day Confederation of Atlanian Kingdoms.

Age of the Warring Lords
Reptilians had shown great interest upon the relics and artifacts they salvaged form Ancient sites, and discovered the unimaginable potency they hold. Impressed by the power of ancient technology, it gave rise to Reptilian ambitions of interstellar conquest.
Seek to destroy other potential internal rivals, Reptilians entered a long period of most merciless infighting, just to control the Ancient artifacts they have yet to understand how to use them.

Reptilian Unification War and founding of Alpha Draconians
Kingdom of Draconis had long been one of the weakest kingdom among the Reptilians, until the time of the genius leader Lord Alphari - Draconis strength and influence rose to new heights, on par with the strongest Reptilian Lords. Lord Alphari defeated all other Reptilian Lords just in 10 years, successfully achieved true unification of the entire Reptilian race for the first time in Milky Way Reptilian history since the immigration.
As the unification had completed, Alphari crowned himself as the first Overlord, establishing the Reptilian empire of Alpha Draconians which marked the beginning of Reptilian golden age.
National motto of Alpha Draconians, "Rising from the Harshest to be the Strongest", was also given by Alphari himself, as an reflection to his early life struggles and success.

First Successful Decoding of the Ancient Artifacts
The Ancient Alien research was one of another most impactful achievements and legacies of Overlord Alphari during his reign, for he had greater insight over the usage of alien artifacts. Alpha Draconians was also among the first ones establishing an dedicated and successful institute studying Ancient artifacts and relics, which Overlord Alphari also personally participated in it in addition to providing material and political support.
From the further understanding over these ancient gadgets, Alpha Draconians effectively reverse-engineered Ancient advancements for their own purpose. The absolute technological supremacy of Alpha Draconians gained from Ancient knowledge effectively turned the Reptilian empire into the sole and most brutal galactic superpower of the time.

Reptilian Galactic Conquest
The next and the largest conquest of Reptilians took place during the reign of fourth Overlord Ks'khip, the infamous Scourge of the Galaxy who led the Draconian legions spread destruction across half of the Milky Way galaxy.
Many of the territories conquered by Overlord Ks'khip formed the foundations of core Alpha Draconian regions in Milky Way Galaxy. In addition, the subjugation of various alien races including Bowuland Insectoids which provided Alpha Draconians productive slave laborers for millenniums.

The conquest was an important point of history which Reptilian power and influence reached its peaks, the time when Reptilians began call themselves ‘the descendants of the Ancients’.

Mystic Galactic Domination Doctrine
While Overlord Ks'khip ruled by brutally asserting direct Draconian dominance over half of the Milky Way, his successor Ka'kropp had a completely different idea, advocating a complete different doctrine of ruling the Reptilian empire.
In a more secretive and unsuspecting approach, Alpha Draconians maintain control over conquered territories with minimal public personnel and have most of the actual administration and enforcement done covertly. Through asserting the ideas that Alpha Draconians were unreachable and all-powerful deity beyond their intellect, subjugated objects and vassals would never dare to resist and defect.

Disassembly of Second Pharan Empire
While the Second Pharan Empire remained relatively unchanged and peaceful since its establishment, many aspects of the Empire itself declines day by day. Eventually, the Pharan Empire officially dissolved themselves.

Pharans are permanently divided into hundreds of independent tribes and scattered across the stars, rapidly degenerating into theocratic medieval civilization technologically and culturally.

Reptilian-Atlanian Conflicts
Years since the Great Conquest, Reptilians had several attempts throwing invasion on the aquatic homelands of Atlanian Kingdoms, however heavy local resistance of Atlanians turned most of the attempts thwarted and to no anvil.
At the end of this series of conflicts over the millennium, Alpha Draconians withdrawn their forces from Atlanian territory and never mentioned invading Atlanian planets since after.

---

The Revival of Insectoid Civilization
(Parallel to 19th~20th century of Human timeline)

Ever since the Alpha Draconians subjugated the Bowuland Insectoids, the history of being enslaved for millions of years was the darkest history of Insectoids. However, from countless of torture and survival struggles, Bowland Insectoids had evolved into highly expansive and adaptive breeds of wide variety. Meanwhile, years without significant challenges or greater ambitions had also turned Alpha Draconians internally corrupt and indolent.
Parallel to the 19th to 20th century of mankind, an slave uprising in Alpha Draconains marked another major turning point of Milky Way history.

The Revival of Insectoid Civilization

Draconis-12 Uprising
In the distant slave farm colony of wetland planet Draconis-12, to no Reptilians' expectation, the Alpha Draconian colony was overthrown by a planetary-scale Insectoid slave uprising led by an enlightened Insectoid named Zolarg, all Draconian personnel either purged or missing.

The first group of freed Insectoids renamed the planet to Zolarg Prime after their leader, which became the new home world of the Insectoid civilization. At the same time, the uprising leader Zolarg himself was crowned emperor for life of the people of Zolarg Prime, and Zolarg Empire is established.

Insectoid Uprising Movements
While Alpha Draconians attempted to cover up the incident, words of Draconis-12 uprising spread quickly among the Insectoids of other Draconian slave colonies.
Encouraged and inspired by the Zolarg's success, other Insectoids followed similar path. Though not all had been successful, the series of uprising movements successfully took over large numbers of Alpha Draconian colonies and cities. Most of the Insectoids who earned their freedom joined the Zolarg Empire's cause in the sacred war toppling their ancestral enemy.

Insectoid Revival War
Soon Alpha Draconians took retaliatory actions against the uprising movements, attempting regain control of the slaves by sheer might of regular military forces. In this 27 year long war of attrition, both sides took heavy losses, however, despite technologically superior, Draconian forces never managed to outmatch Zolarg forces in numbers and replenishment rate. Eventually, Draconian forces were forced to withdraw from Zolarg-controlled territory to regroup after local war reserves had been depleted.
The War ended with Zolarg victory. Zolarg Empire earned their needed time and space to redevelop their civilization, while the internal declining of Alpha Draconians were exposed to the galaxy.

‘Groot Opwekkingsplan’
This period was also known as the ‘Great Revival Period’, the period when Emperor Zolarg formulated the policies and plans for early Zolarg Empire focusing on reconstruction, redevelopment and expansion of the Insectoid civilization, with the ultimate goal acquiring capability to confront Alpha Draconians head-on.
Combining sheer workforce volume of Insectoids, rediscovered ancestral knowledge and industrial knowledge acquired form Alpha Draconian machines, Zolarg Empire quickly established their industrial and technological foundations and rose as a supernova of galactic power.

Declaration of Insectoid Liberation
After the ‘Groot Opwekkingsplan closed with stunning success, Emperor Zolarg made a declaration on behalf of Insectoids to Alpha Draconians - the Zolarg Empire, will liberate the remaining brothers and sisters under the unrightful Draconian slavery at all costs.
The Declaration officially established the ultimate objective of the wars against Alpha Draconians.

---

The Old Earth Era
(Year -2051)

The Old Earth Era is defined as the period before United Earth in human history. The late Old Earth Era is the time when humans begin exploring the deeper space and other stars, as well as beginning extensive colonization beyond Earth.

The Old Earth Era

Jameson Theories (2027)
The quantum physics scientist Professor Lob E. Jameson published a paper about theories associated with space continuum mechanics which provided basis for future development of long range space travel between systems.

First Practical Fusion Propulsion Engine (2031)
As the first commercial-use fusion reactors achieved success in the late 2020s, it provided valuable experience for developing further uses of nuclear fusion power, including the innovative idea to use it for propulsion. First practical fusion propulsion engine for spacecrafts was built in 2031.

First Probe exiting Solar System (2033)
USP Discovery was the first successful probe that traveled beyond boundaries of Solar System and reached another star system (Alpha Centauri). It's launched from Earth at 2033, returning valuable data of planets of Alpha Centauri system starting from 2037.

Space Colonization Race of Solar System (2032-2047)
With long range space travelling became more possible at the time, it kickstarted a space race at larger scale. It was one historical milestone for humanity - first attempts of an extensive space colonization in history.
Both directly and indirectly, at least 65% nations of the world participated in it. Among the governmental bodies and independent organizations in the race, some seek for wealth and influence, some seek for opportunities and a new start, some seek for knowledge and discovery.
At the peak period of the space race, colony activities could be found around and on mainly Moon and Mars, and to certain extent, Venus and Jupiter.
However, the space race came to complete halt around late 2040s, hampered by instability on Earth caused by Earth Resource Crisis.

Earth Resource Crisis (2039-2057)
Catalyzed by political and commercial rivalries on Earth, the space race had escalated to higher levels within a decade. Various parties increased their bets and investments into their colonization projects, leading to resource consumption increasing to unprecedented levels for the following years. Worries regarding depletion of known resource reserves on Earth arises starting from mid 2039, and became actual problems in the 2040s.
In the meantime, uncontrolled industrial activities of the space race had also accelerated climate change which catastrophically turned Earth much less habitable. The climate impacts were strongly associated to occurrence of famine and abnormal morality in major countries starting from 2043.
At 2047, by the severe shortage of various resources, social instability on Earth reached critical levels.
The crisis seen no sign of alleviation until 2057.

The Grand Collapse (2051)
Severely affected by the Earth Resource Crisis, major governmental bodies on Earth lost their economic and political capability to maintain basic functions on an nation, end up either overthrown by displeased mobs of starving people, or disband themselves under pressure. In a chain reaction, similar events happened to nations all across the globe, which all turned into lands of anarchy and chaos.
This event is often referred as the end point of Old Earth era.

---

The United Earth Era
(2051-Present)

Right after the Grand Collapse, on Earth was the absolute chaos of no law and order where civilization degenerates and anarchy scourges the world. In the meantime, colonies outside Earth were left stranded without contact and support, struggling survive on their own.
However, the end of an old era is also the beginning of an new greater era - This is the era when United Earth rises to power and reunify humanity, and elevating human civilization to the greater levels, to beyond Solar System, to the distant stars.

The United Earth Era

Dissolution of United Nations and Formation of United Earth Movement (UEM) (2051-2052)
Without any existing members at all, and at the edge of ‘bankruptcy’, the United Nations officially dissolved, with most of the assets sold and transferred to a group of political aristocrats and plutocrats. The group absorbed the functions and assets of United Nations, and ambitiously rebranded it into United Earth Movement (UEM) during early 2052, which aimed to unify the entire humanity, and restore prosperity and order of the Old Earth era.

Earth Reunification War (2054-2055)
During the 2 years of preparation, UEM rallied manpower and resources from around the globe through black markets and government fire sales, while gaining stable bases of operations by assisting reestablishment of government on mainly Western Europe and Eastern half of North America.
At mid 2054, UEM officially initiated their military campaign with superior (but still rather limited) reserve of resources, rapidly brought major cities under control in the early months, then the cities were used as staging grounds to drive resistance of warlord and anarchists out of the region, ultimately encircling and destroying them.
Near the end of the 1.4 year long war, UEM controlled over 74% of the world. With no hope to topple a rising power, remaining resistances surrendered to UEM one by one, and generally accepted annexation in the post-war negotiations.

Official Establishment of United Earth (2056)
Few months after the Earth Reunification War, United Earth and its official governmental structure was established. United Earth took the form of a presidential republic, which the governmental body and the executive body is lead by President of United Earth, General Assembly responsible for legislation and directly responsible to the President.
The General Assembly is the decision-making centre of the United Earth, composed of representatives from different administrative regions to show a certain extent of democracy. However, the President still has absolute power to intervene or even alter the decisions of the General Assembly, in addition to a series of exclusive powers.

Earth Recovery Program (2056-2060)
While Earth became relatively stable in political conditions, as Earth Resource Crisis was still an existent and urgent issue, economic, industrial and environmental recovery became absolute priority of newly-established United Earth. In late 2056, United Earth initiated the Earth Recovery Program which involved habitat reclamation, industrial and economic reforms, prospecting new sources of resources, and reestablishing contact and activities with colonies outside Earth (to integrate external resources to assist recovery of Earth).
Under the effective and efficient coordination of resources of United Earth, only one year later, basic recovery had successfully been achieved, effectively alleviating and roughly neutralizing the impacts of Resource Crisis with no excess burden to space colonies and people on Earth.
At 2060, the economy of Earth had achieved recovery and development to beyond mid-21st century standards, the Program concluded in success.
The successful example of Earth Recovery Program also provided early basis of future terraforming research.

Reinitialization of Space Colonization Programmes (2061)
United Earth reinitialized most of the colonization projects from the Old Earth Era starting from 2061, with changed made to enhance efficiency, facilitate administration from United Earth government, and change of objectives.
The Old Earth Era plans were generally rebranded and integrated into "Earth-Sphere Development Programme (ESDP)", aimed to construct a larger socio-economic body in Solar System centering Earth. Under ESDP, Moon was developed into logistics center composed of shipyards and spaceports, while Mars became the new major industrial center. Large space stations were also built to support distant colonies on Venus and moon colonies around Jupiter.
With breakthroughs in interstellar communications technology, United Earth also set their ambitions to colonize stars beyond Solar System. Newer generation of long range space probes were also sent to other distant stars in search for new unhabited planets for colonization and exploit undiscovered resources

First Reformation of Security Council (2063-2065)
The national security agency of the United Earth, Security Council, went under a series of reformation from 2063 to 2065, improving and fostering the efficiency of peacekeeping missions on Earth and foreign colonies.
The reform included controversial establishment of military police force CLEI (Colonial Law Enforcement Initiative, nicknamed "clay") and associated high pressure security regulations over colonies.

Colonization of Alpha Centauri (2064)
The long-range colony carrier UES Ark-3 was launched from Moon shipyard at 2062, reaching Alpha Centauri and established colonies at year 2064, it was the first time in history mankind send people beyond Solar System.

Establishment of Space Marines (2068)
In order to protect foreign colonies and Earth from potential Alien threats, United Earth Space Marines (UESM) was established.
Space Marines gradually replaced Peacekeepers of the United Earth as part of the official military and security forces.

Autonomous Movements of Frontier Region (2068)
For years, colonies of frontier regions presented their concern and discontent towards the heavily bureaucratic system and excessively strict security policies of United Earth, but were never taken notice by authorities on Earth.
The situation turned into several prolonged region-wide protests demanding exclusion from the oppressive policies, after the 7th time Secretary of General Assembly refused to include the issue into agenda of next General Assembly meeting.
Refused to give up interests, United Earth attempted to pacify the discontent colonies by simple tax exemption and reassigning new colony governors, and never tried to lift the policies the colonies asked to remove.
Further angered by the "disrespectful" attitude of United Earth authorities, protests turned into anti-UE movements advocating decentralization of power form Earth. Eventually, United Earth was forced to grant few colonies status of autonomous territory to put the political crisis to end and made promises of reforming administrative and security polices on colonies.
While the movement seemed to achieve the objective to free from oppressive policies, some anti-UE movements foresee United Earth will eventually go back on their policies and unreliable promises, believing only liberation through true independence would free colonies from oppression of Earth supremacists - Which lead to founding of several underground radical anti-UE organizations.

First Official Contacts with Minor Alien Civilization (2069)
An newly established United Earth colony discovered an underdeveloped alien civilization on the planet Haken-35. United Earth officially contacted the Hakenduzians, establishing the first diplomatic relations with an alien race.

Alien Membership System (2071)
Upon discovery of more minor alien civilizations, there were opinions of establishing a proper system to handle alien diplomacy in smooth manner, while United Earth also saw an opportunity of wealth and influence. In order to convince them sharing their resources with United Earth, the Alien Membership System was established, allowing alien member states to enjoy a series of benefits including protection provided by Space Marines and preferential treatment on trades. In return, the alien member states had to pay yearly membership fees to sustain the privilege.

First Shuttlepod MK-I Entered Service (2071)
Martian Industries (MarsCorps) completed the first commercial-use model of the legendary multipurpose line of starships capable of fast long range trips, atmospheric take-off and re-entry - the Shuttlepod, which entered service in 2071.
The various innovative designs of Shuttlepod became standards of next generation starships of the following years.

Deimos Events (2072)
It was a legend of the legendary Space Marines elite squad led by Sarge, a story to save Earth from an evil artificial intelligence - though, with some confidential details which United Earth decided to keep it highly classified, rumored to be time travel to erase history of a parallel timeline.

Discovery of Terra Nova and Terra Nova Colony Rush (2074-2080)
Year 2077, a space probe discovered a planet having more than three times surface area of Earth, which its characteristics are also surprisingly extremely similar to that of Earth. Later the planet was named as Terra Nova to commemorate the remarkable discovery, it was the first earthlike planet discovered in human history.
The value and promising prospects of colonizing this planet were soon taken notice by United Earth authorities and other parties in United Earth. Soon as United Earth had officially begun the preparations for colonizing Terra Nova, largest corporations and major non-governmental entities presented their petition to participate in the project for a of major share of the planet's resources and interests.
As the United Earth authority was unable to balance the interests and requests of various parties, United Earth decided to turn this colonization project into an open competition (which United Earth end up as one of the competitors), which the shares of Terra Nova would only be granted to those who create groundbreaking achievements or shown excellent competitiveness.

Wormhole Navigation Technology (2075)
A set of technological advancements in space navigation technology allowed safe traveling of wormholes, which the wormholes act as a great shortcuts and highways of space travelling.

---

Human Civil War
(2087-2089)

Despite most part of the war were centered on conflict of two forces of humanity, United Earth and League of Independent States, the war had seen involvement of other major civilizations of the Milky Way Galaxy, Zolarg Empire and Alpha Draconians. Having great impacts on the history and future political situation of Milky Way Galaxy, it was considered one of the important historical events that contributed to the beginning of New Galactic Era.

Human Civil War

Independent Terra (2068)
Independent Terra is the foundational ideology adopted by League of Independent States (and its predeceasing entities).
In the years since the Autonomous Movements broke out, explicit forms of independentist ideas were given rise in the frontier regions, some branches were eventually developed into radical ideologies adopted by anti-UE entities, including the most well-known ideology of "Independent Terra", which advocates independence revolution against centralists and Earth supremacists, ultimately liberating mankind by overthrowing United Earth and re-establish a new true liberal government on Earth that respects human rights and treat individual colonies as equals.
As colonists were often considered to be the far lower echelons of society than native residents of Earth, the ideas of Independent Terra were even openly welcomed by some colonies beyond frontier regions that were also dissatisfied with authorities on Earth.
Discovery of Terra Nova, the first earthlike planet discovered by humanity in outer space, in 2074 applied an significant impact on the core ideas of Independent Terra ideology, which led to an ideological split within - Pro-revolutionist which continued the original idea of uproot ruling class on Earth, and Second-Terra-ist (SeT-ist) that suggests rivaling Earth influence by establishing liberal government on Terra Nova.

Independence Coalition (2072)
The potential instability associated to the spread of independentist ideologies during the Autonomous Movement were not left unnoticed by United Earth government. Immediately identifying such ideologies as dangers to governmental and political interests, the Security Council increased CLEI presence in frontier regions and colony sectors with high risk of ideological infiltration, to completely outlaw anti-UE entities.
Soon the anti-UE organizations and Independent Terra supporters found operating campaigns became increasingly difficult under the close watch of CLEI secret police.
In 2072, representatives of anti-UE entities of mainly from the frontier region secretly gathered at Terra Nova, forming the Independence Coalition - the predecessor of League of Independent States, establishing cooperation of running campaigns against UE under the nose of United Earth.

First Contact between humanity and Zolarg Empire (2077)
While the first official contact between United Earth and Zolarg Empire took place at 2080, the actual initial contact took place 3 years earlier (2077), during an encounter in uncharted regions between a black market convoy and a Zolarg prospection ship.
The rumors of the encounter spread quickly in black markets, eventually the piece of intel reached the Independence Coalition. Intrigued, the Coalition concluded with an risky decision - sending a secret diplomatic dispatchment to the Zolarg Ship via the black market vessel, in attempt to establish early relations which could help obtaining crucial support for future military campaign against United Earth.
In 2079, the dispatchment returned with cooperation agreements and an unofficial-and-non-disclosed diplomatic and military cooperation pact from Zolarg Empire, which the Coalition offers human technologies to Zolarg scholars in exchange for material and possible military support of Zolarg expeditionary forces.

The Alpha Draconian Conspiracy and Invasion Plan (~2085)
Since the Insectoid uprising events, Alpha Draconians had been in a difficult situation. The economy over-reliant on expansive and expendable insectoid slave labor had been severely hampered, while the reptilians began questioning the faith and pride of their "all-time invincible" empire.
Taking the Insectoid uprising events as the greatest shame to Alpha Draconians, on Alpha Draconis the dissatisfied reptilian lords and nobles urged Overlord Betah'an taking the responsibility to address the crisis.
To the Lords of Inner Circle (who power, ambitions, cunning and brutality were second to only the Overlord), it was a sign of weakened Overlord. Seeing that as an opportunity to seize the Overlord's power rightfully, the Lords of Inner Circle schemed to remove Overlord Betah'an form the throne.
To Overlord Betah'an, the most effective way silencing his political opponents form the Inner Circle and regaining support from nobles while addressing the crisis at the same time, was to start another conquest. The Overloard carefully selected the most suitable target of conquest - United Earth, which was industrially and economically developed but militarily inferior, non-aware of Alpha Draconians' existance, and possible sowing of internal conflict which allows minimal military efforts to eradicate further resistances.

Terra Nova Incident and Battle of Terra Nova (2087)
Burdened by outrageous taxation set by United Earth over the colonies outside Solar-Sphere region since 2079, Terra Nova was the first colony openly boycotting the tax policies of United Earth, refused to deliver tax payments to General Assembly. General Assembly responded the boycotting by enforcing embargo over Terra Nova, followed by immigration interdiction and military blockade, however all failed with little effect on this almost self-efficient colony.
The Independence Coalition, after years of covered military preparation, saw the incident on Terra Nova provided a narrow but the best opportunity to start what they had planned long ago - a revolutionary war to liberate colonies from tyranny of United Earth. Before the military blockade was enforced, the Coalition sneaked additional military personnel to their branch in Terra Nova.
Heat of the debates over follow-up actions against rebellious acts of Terra Nova lasted for months in General Assembly, politicians arguing the effectiveness of measures used to force Terra Nova giving in, while anti-UE organizations on Terra Nova kept provoking United Earth by rallying local people protesting around governmental administrative facilities. Eventually in 2087, with support of politicians who worried Terra Nova incident would evolve into a copy of of Autonomous Movement in 2068, along with manipulation by Alpha Draconian covert agents - By reason of "open revolt against United Earth", President Ronald Tracy issued order to mobilize Space Marines 35th Regiment for military occupation of and martial law enforcement on Terra Nova, marking the outbreak of Human Civil War.
Main forces of Space Marines occupied the capital city of Terra Nova and dispersed protesters with minimal resistance within 2 hours of operation. However, few minutes after the complete occupation, the main forces were ambushed and encircled by local militia forces led by commander Beuford P. Tots in the city. By element of surprise and home turf advantage of militia forces, the well-equipped Space Marines in the capital city took a heavy casualty rate of 63% and were forced to retreat by escaping to troop ship in planetary orbit.
Other militia forces on Terra Nova driven Space Marine and UE garrisons of military facilities into defeat in the subsequent skirmishes over the week. Gaining control over majority of surface-to-orbit defense weapons on the planet, Terra Nova militias forced complete withdrawal of Space Marines 35th Regiment and blockade fleet from Terra Nova at the end of Battle of Terra Nova.
After the battle, the colonial congress replaced the original colonial government. The congress officially sent an formal declaration of independence to Earth, which declared Terra Nova is no longer a chartered colony of United Earth, the once "second earth" was then renamed "Independent State".

Founding of the League of Independent States (2087)
Following the stunning success in Battle of Terra Nova, Terra Nova became the common symbol of freedom and liberty. The rest member organizations and entities of Independence Coalition, along with colonies of neighboring colony sectors inspired by the incident, followed by overthrowing local colonial government and sever ties with United Earth.
The independent colonies and members of Independence Coalition then officially founded the League of Independent States on Terra Nova.

Terra-to-Earth Campaign (2087-2088)
With support of Beaconburg Fleet and arms supplier BSA from Independent State of Beaconburg (previously Autonomous Colony of Beaconburg), mercenaries recruited from black markets and volunteers from liberated colonies, the newly founded League quickly launched the first military campaign against United Earth - the "Terra-to-Earth Campaign" (In United Earth perspective, "The Defense of Solar System"), targeting core territories of United Earth around Solar System.
Despite United Earth ordered nationwide general mobilization against LIS offensive, the mobilization progresses at sluggish pace. This had left LIS gaining most of the strategic initiative and speed advantage in the early to mid stage of the campaign, the scattered and underprepared United Earth forces were being wiped out by LIS with relative ease.

Zolarg Entry into War (2088)
In late 2087, United Earth completed the strategic defense planning, finished preparations of constructing solid defenses by concentrating majority of military assets in sectors near Solar System.
LIS forces launched the Ragnarok Offensive in early 2088 spearheaded by veteran units form the earlier stages of Terra-to-Earth Campaign, in hope to break the defense lines. However, outmatched by United Earth in terms of superior quantity of troops and supplies, the warfare of attrition eventually blunt the LIS offensive, which LIS forces took significant losses.
Knowing crippled forces stood little chance against possible full strategic counterattack of United Earth, LIS urgently needed to delay United Earth from taking initiative. Shortly after the setback, LIS decided to play their trump card - their secret ally, Zolarg Empire.
Using the missile base (deployed with newly built IWSM which its strike range can reach and cover the entire Solar System) established by LIS and (unexpected) assassination of United Earth President Ronald Tracy as distraction, Zolarg Empire responded to LIS call, sent a full battegroup of Expeditionary Force attacking the other side of United Earth territory, forcing United Earth to fight a war of two fronts.
Despite the two-front strategy did divert pressure from LIS, however, as neither side held major advantage over another, the war turned into a stalemate.

Barracuda Blues Event and Preludes to Alpha Draconian Invasion (2088)
In the heat of Human Civil War, Alpha Draconians sneaked groups of pioneer probes into human territory, constructed portal gates in the unnoticed corners where strongholds were set up for preparations of Overlord's surprise invasion plans.
Lords of Inner Circle had been trying to foil the Overlord's plan from the beginning. By a margin of rare opportunity, one covert operative affiliated to Lords of Inner Circle managed to sabotage the cloak device in secret base on planet Barracuda Blues, exposing the dormant portal and droid battlegroup at the site to United Earth and LIS military.
Upon the discovery of the unknown alien facility on Barracuda Blues, both United Earth and LIS dispatched their own task force trying to seize the alien technology that could change the tide of battle. Violent skirmishes broke out between two sides, contesting control of the facility.
As the news on Barracuda Blues were delivered to Zolarg Expeditionary Force. Familiar with Alpha Draconian cunning strategies, the Insectoids immediately identified the alien facility an Alpha Draconian invasion base. The Zolarg Expeditionary Force then sent their urgent message to LIS ally, warned that such discovery was a curse rather than blessing, and presented worries of this war involved orchestrations of Alpha Draconians, the greater evil they were yet to know.
Already at the edge of dishonoring the reptilian ancestors, the sabotage in invasion base on Barracuda Blues and earlier unexpected entry of Zolarg Empire into the war had left Overlord Betah'an with no choice other than launching a premature invasion.

Battle Against Alpha Draconians (2088-2089)
Caught off guard by surprise, near half of the human forces were obliterated by superior war machines of Alpha Draconians during the initial stage of Alpha Draconian invasion.
With a common enemy, military and political representatives of United Earth, LIS and Zolarg Expeditionary Force met on Earth. Shortly, ceasefire agreements were reached, and an temporary alliance against Alpha Draconian invasion was formed.
The alliance organized several joint operations to strategically delay Alpha Draconian invaders with varying outcome, buying time for LIS and United Earth to replenish losses and regroup respective fighting forces.
In mid 2089, United Earth finished reconstruction of the space armadas, later achieved decisive victories in several space battles against Alpha Draconian warfleets, regaining the space superiority and the tables turned to alliance's favor.
With support from United Earth fleets and exploiting the weakness of long replenishment cycle and inferior quantity of Alpha Draconian forces, alliance forces successfully overwhelmed Alpha Draconian forces, storming major invasion bases. The destruction of the largest but last portal gate stronghold during Battle of Barracuda Blues marked the decisive defeat of Alpha Draconian invaders.

Continuation of Human Civil War (2089)
As Alpha Draconians called their fleets back to home territory and aborted control of droid armies following the defeat at Barracuda Blues, the temporary alliance finished its purpose and was then dismissed, both sides returned to status of conflict.
However, exhausted and tired of war, it was impossible to continue the war at the original massive, interstellar scale, both sides came up with conclusion that the war must be ended by an decisive battle as soon as possible.
Zolarg Empire then exited war by signing a white peace with United Earth weeks after the alliance had been dismissed.
At last, remaining main forces of United Earth and LIS coincidentally met near the strategically important wormhole highway node, over the planet of Kaiserground. After a week of fierce back-and-forth battle on the planet and in the orbit, United Earth gained complete control of the planet, setting LIS forces on a full retreat, concluding the final major battle in Human Civil War.

---

New Galactic Era
(2089-Present)

Following the end Human Civil War, marked a major shift in geopolitical patterns of the Milky Way Galaxy - Division of human civilization, decline of Alpha Draconian dominance, rise of the mysterious New Galactic Empire, various smaller civilizations began playing important roles in maintaining galactic balance......
Increasing importance of galactic-scale affairs in this era had reshaped the Milky Way Galaxy, which once again after billions of millenniums, the Milky Way Galaxy thrives under the interaction between civilizations.

New Galactic Era

Armistice of Hoxton (2089)
The Armistice of Hoxton officially ended the Human Civil War, despite an armistice in nature.
The armistice defined the United Earth-LIS border in the future, which the border line was known as the Hoxton Line.
To conclude, nobody achieved total victory in the Human Civil War, however, each side had their objectives completed respectively - United Earth won a tactical victory which LIS could no longer threaten United Earth territory, while LIS achieved their primary aim of independence and establishing a liberal, decentralized government.

Official establishment of League of Independent States (2089)
The main body of the League of the Independent States, the League Council, was officially established 3 months after the Armistice of Hoxton was in effect. By the Joint Declaration of Independent States based on the core ideas of Independent Terra, The League promised fairness, respect, autonomy and freedom to member states.
The League of the Independent States had no actual leader in power. Instead, each member state cooperates under the common principles and shared pacts, bearing the common responsibilities protecting the free people of the League.
Though the establishment of LIS was officially recognized by their ally Zolarg Empire, the United Earth General Assembly declared they would never accept any form of human regime other than itself, the League being an unlawful existence that would threaten the unity and prosperity of mankind.

The Midnight Coup (2089)
With the total defeat of invasion campaign, the core Reptilian society of Alpha Draconians lost all confidence in Overlord Betah'an. Shortly after the end of invasion the Overlord was assassinated by Inner Circle covert agents.
Following the death of the Overlord, the seat of supreme power of Alpha Draconians was then empty. Yet as every Lords of the Inner Circle wished to claim the ultimate trophy of power, political crises escalated to uncontrolled levels by the internal conflicts of the Inner Circle, which later spread all across the administrative body of Alpha Draconians, rendering all but basic administrations of the reptilian empire non-functional.
Catalyzed by the the absence of Overlord and internal political instability, order in Alpha Draconian society was barely maintained, leading to high crime rates and decreased domestic productivity in the following decades.
As a result, dominance of Alpha Draconians began to decline.

Emergence of New Galactic Empire (2089)
Several weeks after the Midnight Coup which had thrown Alpha Draconians into the tarpit of neverending political infighting, control and dominance over the foreign territories of Alpha Draconians were loosened which allowed several vassals and colony broke away with no immediate consequence.
However, majority of these territories were then annexed by another power, which emerged from the Central Vortex region of the Milky Way Galaxy - The New Galactic Empire.
Calling themselves the true descendants of the Ancients, they claimed themselves bearing the destiny to bring the entire galaxy under their grace, a mission of revival to bring the once lost glory of Old Galactic Empire back to life.
Despite lacking the dominating power to contest other major civilizations, the New Galactic Empire had actively been expanding their sphere of influence, and rumored to have unprecedented capacity harnessing the powers of the universe beyond the Ancient technologies.

Bradley's Military Reform (2089-2094)
The new head of the United Earth Security Council, Bradley the Grand Marshal (which was the supreme commander throughout the Human Civil War), threw up a massive military reformation aimed to maintain superiority over the military capabilities of LIS, including expansion and reorganization of Space Marines, modernization of United Earth space fleets, introducing newer professionalism elements in military while maintaining the traditional expansive nature of United Earth military, and incorporation of newer doctrines derived from recent experiences in Civil War.

League Guild of Black Markets (2090)
As United Earth denied LIS from formal foreign trade outside the League territory by blockades along LIS border, LIS had to resort to black markets to maintain crucial supplies of high-end materials and economic activities, given different post-war difficulties suffered member states.
In 2090, the League Guild of Black Markets was established under the League Trade Authority to coordinate external trade beyond United Earth blockade, and management of domestic black market networks.

Restoration of Overlord (2110)
Tired of political turmoils and displeased with absence of powerful supreme ruler, traditionalist nobles on Alpha Draconis collectively put pressure on the Inner Circle for restoration of Overlord, or risk denounced and outlawed by defiling the ancestors.
Fearing the wrath of ancestors, the Inner Circle reluctantly brought Delta'an the exiled brother of Betah'an back to Alpha Draconis, crowning Delta'an the next Overlord.
Despite an Overlord, Delta'an was merely a puppet of the Inner Circle, however, did brought relative stability to disorganized Alpha Draconian society at the time.

Zolarg Scholars Journey to United Earth (2113)
A team of scholars from the Zolarg Empire, led by the Imperial High Scholar Abbamber, set off to United Earth for friendly diplomatic and scientific mission.
Scholars and scientists of the United Earth and the Zolarg Empire exchanged each other's technological advances and cultural knowledge. While Zolarg scholars earned precious knowledge which could help the technological development of the Zolarg Empire, the trip had also ceased the tensions since the Human Civil War between Zolarg and United Earth.

Insectoid Mind Network Technology (2116)
A breakthrough in neuroscience research in the Zolarg Empire had led to an innovation - the Insectoid Mind Network, designed to foster understanding of consciousness and thinking mechanisms, and enhancing advanced, direct communication and coordination within Insectoid society.

Cyberonic Transcendence (2119)
A private United Earth research institute Transcendent Technology successfully prototyped Neuro-microchips (NMC), which were compatible with human neuro systems, small in size, but ten times more efficient than average human brains.
Such inventions initiated a new technological revolution in human civilization in artificial augmentations, impacting all aspects of life.

---

Who knows what the future holds?





Note that these are just my own interpretations over the events, it is not official reference, but hopefully enhance your understanding over the My Colony Universe, and had fun reading it.

Thank you for reading!

xa16x said:i'm new at playing my colony but i'm a fun of war game things... I like the suggestion of xRude, right? But it's a good thing that My colony stays as My colony, but, well I think adding another category in the game except for creative mode like that is adding a new category which maybe named War Mode or whatever, then you might start another colony but is always defense ready... by means of adding defense structures like canons, laser beams, barracks... but onthe other hand, you can only attack others but not defend your colony/base during enemy attacks.. like I don't think I can say it here but sorry for comparing or anything but I Imagine it like the "clash of clans, boombeach" like that thing...
well, I think I can ellaborate further...
---resources might be stolen during attack but only as high as 15% to 20% of the opponents available resources for balance
---able to build structures for defense like...
1. cannon
2. laser beams - because it is a colony in the space so ofcourse it has laser beams
3. barracks or headquarters - where soldiers could be available at defense, soldiers could be acquired by recruiting from the population/colonists. trained for certain amount of time and has a limit of how many could only be produce and what types.
4. defense towers/dispatch units around the colony base where you can put guards in each.
5. war ready activation button or else - ofcourse who wanted to be attacked when you have no defenses yet or your defenses were not ready either.. you'll lost only 15 - 20 % of your wealth by the way

Yeah, most of us who play my colony are a fan of war games too. I love games like starcraft, command and conquer, age of empires, endless space, Star Wars Consortium, and a few other games that allow you to build a base or empire and attack others. That is why bast is making colony wars, so that those who would like war in my colony can go over to the colony wars game and get their war fix. Why would bast add war to my colony if he is creating a game devoted to war, that's just too redundant and illogical.

You have to realize that even if bast makes a separate mode in my colony for wars, it's still in the same game, so bast will have to take my colony(in every mode) and add pay to play IPA's. The really good thing about colony wars is that not only is it going to use a lot of the same graphics and things as my colony, but it's a different game, and that way people who've played my colony for ages won't have to start paying for in-app purchases in order to continue to grow their colony. You want war, go to colony wars, you want to build and manage an empire in peace, go to my colony. It's that simple. My colony will never have war elements, no matter how many times people ask for it.

The time has come for yet another My Colony update, the v0.99.0 patch, aka the Reptilian Content patch! This is a very special release, as it is the very last beta version of My Colony! It's going to be sad to see beta go, but there is a lot in store for you guys with this update. Because of some of the core changes, this update is going to take several days to push out to all platforms, with Web coming today. I actually can't even push it out to the Ape Apps Launcher yet, as the Launcher will require an update itself before this patch should go live, so please stick with me as the v0.99.0 roll-out will be a bit slower than most releases. So what's new in this patch? Let's go over it right now!

This is at it's core a Reptilian update, but there is a ton of other stuff thrown in as well. First off, and the reason for the delayed rollout, is I have taken the game-streaming option out of the core My Colony code, and transferred it to the "Web App Core" wrapper, which is the in-house wrapper I created to be able to port my games to all platforms easily. This changes the behavior by streaming your gameplay straight to your profile on the Ape Apps website, instead of to my-colony.com. I will be updating my-colony.com shortly though that will embed the stream in the same place it used to be, so for the most part it should still look the same.


I made this change for long-term planning, so that I can add streaming capabilities to my other games. The stream viewer on ape-apps.com is improved from what was available on the My Colony website. It now shows how many people are watching and lets you record the stream. It has other capabilities as well that aren't worth mentioning here, but will be implemented in other games in the future. To access your livestream page, go to your profile here on Ape Apps and click on the little video camera button on the left sidebar.

To go along with this change, the in-game streaming interface has been updated, with a new livestream control bar now appearing when you have streaming turned on.


This bar shows you how many people are watching the stream, and lets you turn either microphone or webcam on or off (previously, webcam wasn't even supported). Streaming is currently supported on Chrome, the new version of Edge, on the Desktop version, the Ape Apps Launcher, and on Android. I can't get it working right yet on iOS or Windows Store.

Moving on. Last update was the big Zolarg release, but I had accidentally forgot to make the dazzling hot-pink Etherbug buildable. This is now fixed, and you can now create the Etherbug on your Zolarg maps. Sorry about that!

A lot of people had complained about the massive gold cost on the Zolarg Unholy Pit and Unholy Tower of Stuff. I have reduced theses costs in this update to make them more reasonable. In addition, these two structures have gained storage capabilities for Charcoal, Oil, and Software.

In addition, the Zolarg Customs Processing building can now import and export Diamonds and Software.

I have made a small change to the in-game encyclopedia. Before, under each category (buildings, vehicles, etc) it said Everything you need to know... Now, it shows the number of items that are in each category (number of buildings, vehicles, etc).

I have loosened the building requirements for the Reptilian Brewmasters Den, as it was too difficult to build at the beginning, and is an essential building. I removed Helium-3 and Crystalline from the build requirements. In addition, the building now uses Ant Paste during production, instead of Helium 3.

The Powered Materials Silo has gained Software Storage, and also now acts as a drop-off point for Diamond harvesting.

I don't know if anybody had noticed, but I had inadvertently allowed Ether importing from the Reptilian Medium Range Star Gate. This has been removed. In exchange, this structure can now export Fish and Salt Water.

Speaking of Fish and Salt Water, they have both been added to the Galactic Board of Trade, and will eventually be used in other non-Water World processes. They are the two map-specific resources for the Water World.

While we are on the subject of resources, a brand new one was added to the game this update, Cobalt. Cobalt is a super-rare, because 1) it's only available on the dreaded Lava World, and 2) it only appears after a volcanic eruption.


Why Cobalt? Well, originally Obsidian was going to be the map-exclusive resource for Lava World, but I forgot and ended up adding it to everything, so that wasn't going to work. So now we have Cobalt. It's all good. Anyway, right now only the Reptilians can harvest it, but other civs will be able to after v1.0. It will be coming to the GBT on the next update as well, and will be used for new super-high-end structures on all civs. Being tied to the Lava World, I suspect it will command a pretty good price on the GBT once trading opens up.

Moving on. Since probably v0.1.0 of My Colony way back in 2016, people have been requesting to be able to move buildings once built. I haven't counted, but it's probably the top request in the game, or a close second to Mass Transit. I understand why it's been wanted. Most My Colony players are on Android, and most mobile builder games allow you to move structures. Of course, most mobile builder games are also IAP filled "diamond" (or gems or special coins) festivals that nickel and dime players by making buildings take 5 days to build unless you pay real money. My Colony isn't like that, and I never thought a move building option was realistic enough for the game, but nonetheless people still request it all the time, so for this update, I have now added an option to move buildings, with caveats.


You can now move any structure in the game, unless it is a harvest drop-off location or has it's own move function, like the Lander, Queen/Mound, or the deployed Construction Mech.

I do want to give people the option to configure and organize their base as they see fit, and I understand that as a colony grows from a small settlement to a major city, you might want to rethink the way you placed buildings at the beginning, so that is why I am allowing the move option. The reason I do not allow it on harvest drop-off spots though, should be obvious. I'm not going to let players just, for example, keep moving their Ore Refinery right next to the Ore every time a deposit is dried up. That would be lame.

Next, I have made an interface change to the mobile version of the game. Now when you are building a structure on mobile, you get the same (well, a minified) "new construction" bar that desktop players have.


This makes it easy to see what you are building will cost, and to flip structures before placing them.

So now let's talk about the meat of the update, the new Reptilian content. There are two new vehicles, the Diamond Extractor and the Cobalt Extractor (I think you can figure out what each does), and 19 new buildings, which I will list below and then talk about some of them in detail afterwards.

• Galactic Star Gate
• Radiated Crystal Farm
• Advanced Materials Silo
• Subterranean Slum
• Raw Fish Diner
• Deep Sea Drilling Platform
• Coral Radiator
• Offshore Slum
• Dracarus Mint
• Turbo Microreactor
• Diamond Cobalt Microreactor
• Basic Crystal Furnace
• Suppertime Arena
• Primitive Robotics Lab
• Advanced Chip Transporter
• Automated Software Node
• Antanium Radiator
• Ultra High Frequency Node
• Near-Infinite Materials Silo

My core of thinking with this update was to make the Reptilians more playable, or rather enjoyable to play, and reduce the sheer idling time required to play a Reptilian colony. Starting with Reptilians was so slow before, that a new colony would have to idle for hours just to get anywhere, which isn't really feasible on mobile. So a lot of this content is geared towards early to early-mid game, but there are a few later-stage items as well. Structures like the Basic Crystal Furnace, the Coral Radiator, and the Dracarus Mint should help speed along early-game a bit.

Reptilians also get a couple of new housing units, both slums (of course). The Subterranean Slum is a high-density building for all maps, and the Offshore Slum is a way to gain more space on the traditionally space-limited Water World islands.


I added a couple of new Tourism related structures for Reptilians, in the form of the new Raw Fish Diner and the Audrey II inspired Suppertime Arena, where Reptilians and tourists alike can watch an evil plant eat Insectoids.


There are new much-needed upgrades to Reptilian Storage, Power generation, increased import/export capacity, Microchip production, Software production, and Bandwidth generation. Reptilians also gain the ability to build robots with the new Primitive Robotics Lab, and the ability to build Triantanium with the Antanium Radiator.

All in all, this is a fairly large update that adds some nice QOL improvements to the game, and adds much needed content and improvements to the Reptilian race (a bit for Zolarg too).

Now, to talk a bit about the future. If you missed it, I published a new episode of the My Colony Podcast last night about the coming end of beta for My Colony. v0.99.0 is in fact the 99th feature release of My Colony (which was originally published on May 16, 2016), which will make the next update the 100th feature update of My Colony, in which it will finally be bumped up to v1.0.0.

Now to me it's just a number, but since 100 of anything is generally seen as special, I think something special should happen for the next update to the game. To help kick off the v1.0.0 release, I would like to do another classic episode of the My Colony Podcast with a community group voice chat, the way the old episodes were done a couple of years ago. I would like to host the episode on one of the federation Discord channels, possibly the NOZ channel if they will allow it, and have anybody and everybody from the community be able to participate if they want to. We will just be talking about the growth and changes of the game over the last few years and bumping suggestions and ideas off of each other for the coming updates. You can also ask me anything you want about My Colony or otherwise. I think it will be a fun episode for everybody, and I hope a lot of people participate. I just need to nail down a location, time, date, and re-figure out how to record the thing. So be looking out for more information about that.

As for the update itself, I plan on adding something of an online leader-board to the game, featuring multiple in-game challenges and awards that people can participate in if they choose to. It will be optional, so you can still play as normal without doing the leader-boards, but the purpose is to have something to do in the game after you have a million people in your colony and all buildings unlocked, but it's also going to be set up in a tiered way so that new players can also participate. I still have some things to work out with it, and so you have some time to make suggestions in the forum if you want your ideas implemented!

As for a timeframe, the next release is going to take longer than normal. I go over the reasons in the latest podcast, but basically we have Thanksgiving in the U.S. coming up soon with holiday travels, and I also need to take some time away from My Colony to get work done on my other projects before the holiday season, since December is the biggest month of the year for the app business, and with my schedule I am going to be pressed for time to get much work done later in this month. So I would shoot for early-mid December for the v1.0.0 release, although there might be a couple of platform-specific bug patches between now and then, should the need arise.

Further out, v1.1.0 and v1.2.0 will probably be performance tweak related updates, since I am getting a lot of requests for those, particularly on the Android side of things, so I will have to try to see if I can squeeze more juice out of the engine. So they will still have new content, but not like 10-20+ new items like the last few updates have had. After that, I want to add crime and law enforcement to the game, and even further out, I want to add the ability to have a map with an AI controlled faction, as I want to add a new map type that is inhabited with primitive ewok-type creatures that you have to either coexist with or... something else. So stay tuned for that...

Anyway, that's all for v0.99.0. I hope you guys enjoyed it, let me know if you did (or didn't)! Like I said at the beginning, the roll-out will take several days here, but it's live and final on the Web now. Launcher will probably be next, then Steam, then Android, then Windows, and lastly iOS. I expect to have it published to all stores by Wednesday, so stay tuned!

So today I am pushing out My Colony v0.70.0 to all platforms, and it should be arriving soon to a device near you.

This release brings an experimental new feature to premium users called Regions, which are essentially collections of game files places together on a single large map. You can read more details about the feature in this thread, and although the feature is listed as experimental, it actually seems to be functioning pretty good, mostly.

A Region is basically a mega-colony that consists of many small colony files which share Technology, Resources, Power, and Atmosphere. Each colony is still a separate game file like how My Colony currently works, and they each have their own population and industry. However, they are all taxed the same by their home colony, and they all declare independence from their main colony as a single entity.

Regions are going to be the primary focus over the next two or three updates, so any suggestions you have on how to improve the feature would be great.

Some questions I have gotten before which I will answer here for all. People have asked if they can import an existing city into a region. Right now, that answer is no. It might be possible in the future, but probably only for offline games, and the size of the existing city would also have to conform to the grid of the main region map. For instance, if you have annexed land on an existing map, land is annexed in chunks that make its dimensions no longer able to fit on the main region grid.

You can currently build both Small and Medium sized maps on the Region screen. I might add Large on the next update, but probably not Extra Large or Mega. Most of the issues in My Colony stem from the large, extra large, and especially Mega maps, so one of the goals with Regions is to be able to build a giant colony without having to use one of the giant maps.

The Region area is very big. While it is only a 50x50 grid, that technically allows it to hold 2,500 separate city maps, if the small map size is chosen. I don't really expect anybody to ever fill up an entire region map, but you never know with you guys 🤔

So anyway, there will be a lot more about regions over the next several updates. This update lays the foundation for the feature, as quite a few engine changes were required to allow the sharing of utilities and resources between maps. Now that the foundations are laid, work can be done adding new features to Regions, and also fleshing out the Region overview UI, which is pretty basic right now.

Moving on from the Region stuff, I wanted to quickly touch on the ongoing issues with My Colony on Android. I have actually gotten the crash rate reduced from the nearly 10% range to the 5% range. Looking through the crash stats, the majority are coming from users running Android v8.1.0, leading me to believe something is happening specific to that particular release. For instance, the crash rate on that specific version of Android is over 11%, while it is much lower on other versions. Regardless, this update contains several bugs fixes from both the latest Antiquitas release, and other stuff I found while going over the code, so perhaps I can reduce the crash rate even further.

The good news is that the game is at least no longer tanking on Android and seems to have leveled off, albeit at a far lower level than it was before. Still, things are still going good on Windows and iOS, and the Android version of My Colony now accounts for less than 1/3 of the games revenues, so I am not going to cry about it too much.

While I do like Android, I have been sort of disillusioned by the large spike in non-reproducible errors with totally unhelpful reporting in the Google Play Error console. I am also somewhat suspect when Google claims upwards of 10% of all sessions are force-closing, yet there are almost no reports in the Play Store comments about the app force closing. Not to mention the fact that an almost identical binary of the game is on the Amazon App Store, yet these same crashes are almost nonexistent on that platform.

The whole experience though has convinced me that My Colony may have a better future on Steam than the Google Play Store, and over the coming updates I will be taking steps to put Antiquitas and My Colony on Steam. They will be available unlocked at the regular purchase price of the Premium Upgrade. Now, if you have already purchased a premium license, there is really no point in buying it on Steam, you can just use the Native Client or Ape Apps Launcher edition, which will essentially be the same thing.

If you do purchase it on Steam though and sign in using your Ape Apps Account, it will check steam to verify your purchase, and sync that to your account, unlocking Premium on all platforms.

There is really no way (that I am aware) of allowing current Premium users to unlock the Steam purchase. I don't know. Really though, if you already own Premium, there is little point of buying it again on Steam, unless you like the game and wish to support it!

I do think that the My Colony/Antiquitas interface works a lot better as a Desktop game though (vs mobile), and so possibly Steam will be a good match for it. It is also very reasonably priced VS other Steam games, especially considering the vast amount of content/play time available in My Colony.

Speaking of interfaces though, My Colony is actually seeing a great surge in users on the Amazon Fire TV. This is great, although after playing it on my Fire TV for a bit, I realized that the TV interface could use some polish, so that will be coming in the next few updates.

Moving on, starting in v0.70.0, I have completely removed the auto-blacklist banner from the game. As resource checks and trade verification are now done by the server, this feature was no longer necessary, and was resulting in too many false-positives. It is much easier now to just ban bad actors on an account-wide level from the server, rather than trying to make the game monitor and looks for hacking on the individual colony files. A colony can still be banned into permanent offline mode, but there will now be actual human moderation before it is done.

Next, I have started the process of reorganizing the list of build-options in the construction sidebar, grouping like-structures together, instead of just putting all of the newest stuff on bottom. I will continue this over the coming updates.

Another small change, when a new colonist arrives, the "XXX Has Joined The Colony" popup message is now gone. I think the popup was more annoying than anything, especially on phones.

Another minor change, but one which might help ultra large colonies, is a further reduction in game file save sizes. I don't know if it will be noticeable to everyone, but it should help some files out.

Finally, there are two new structures available. Humans get the new Transcendent Triantanium Generator, which is far better than the current Triantanium factory. Additionally, Reptillians get a new Raw Materials Extractor, which is a significant improvement over the current (and horrid) Insectoid Mining Operation.

So that about rounds out today's update. The update frequency will probably increase going forward. I am pretty much giving up on trying to collect error diagnostics on the Google Play version of the game, and as such, I no longer need to keep one stable version number in the store for weeks at a time. Google has already blacklisted the game for "bad behavior", and I have reconfigured with the settings in every possible way I could think of on Android, and nothing made a significant difference. Considering there have never been any wide-scale complaints about crashes on Android, I do not think the users are suffering from the games "bad behavior" any. I am sort of just accepting the fact that Google Play is what it is, and focus on making the game as good as it can be, and not worry about trying to fix the crash stats on GPlay.

As I said before, the next few updates will add things to the new Regions feature, as well as new content to be added to all civilizations, but more especially the Reptilians. Thanks for playing the game, and enjoy the update!

This idea would change the method of colony organization by maps for region colonies. Default style colonies with just one map would continue to be shown on the map as normal. Note that this idea is solely for premium features and would not impact the free to play aspect of mc.

I imagine a map with planets, not one planet per colony, but one planet that houses many colonies.

ONLINE PLAYERS:

For online colonies, when a player starts a new colony, their choice of planet type will determine what planet they get added to. Each planet would have a square planetary map with procedurally generated oceans, land masses, mountains, and other terrain features that bast would like to add. The terrain features would be spread naturally across the planet. The planet would have a grid that would split the map into sections/regions that would house many colonies per planet. The player would be able to choose a region based on it's position to certain terrain features, and once they choose a region, a new region colony is formed. They will not be able to chose regions occupied by other colonies.

Yes, this means that multiple players would be able to make colonies on the same planet. All region colonies would contribute to the same atmosphere level, but their civics, power, research, antaura, money, and other resources would not be shared with other region colonies on the same planet.

This would pose a challenge for region colonies that would balance the game out and prevent paid gamers from having more of an advantage than free gamers, because they would need to work together in order to ensure that the planet is terraformed. So by working together, players will ensure that all players on a given planet are able to advance through the game. The advantages to this would be that each region colony would be able to set up trade routes with other colonies and regularly ship products to each other without the cost of civics, and would be able to communicate with each other without the communications array.

However, there is one setback that could happen with this idea. What if one of your fellow region colonies on the same planet doesn't play nice, refuses to contribute to the team, goes inactive indefinitely, or decides to isolate themselves from the rest of the regions. what do we do then? This is where the idea of exiling comes into play. All of the region colonies on a planet can vote together to remove a colony from their planet to free up a region for another colony to come in and take over.

However, exiling should take time to do, and the colony in jeopardy would have lot's of time to act and repent before they are exiled. I propose a merit system. Each colony will have a merit score that will go from -250 to 250. Everyone starts with a score of 0. Each day, that colony will be able to go through all of the other colonies on their planet and either add a +1 or a -1 to each colony's score. Since there would probably be about 36 region colonies to a planet, that means that the most that any one colony could ever be demerited in one day would be -35 points per day. That means that it would take a little over a week for that colony to be exiled.

The exiled colony would be moved to an orbiting moon of the same planet, and would still be able to trade freely with the region colonies on the planet, would still keep their terrain, and would still be categorized under tha planet in the galactic map, but would have to build up it's own atmosphere(albeit the amount of atmosphere needed would be decreased as the moon would be smaller.). Each planet can have infinite moons, and they wouldn't show up under the planetary map view, but would be hidden until a player wishes to search through them for an exiled player to trade with..

OFFLINE PLAYERS:

Now for offline players. I imagine a more campaign-like gameplay to keep things interesting for offline paid players.

Upon creating a colony, the player would need to pick a race. Once the race is picked, a solar system would be generated which would contain all of the planet types available to that race. The player must then choose where to establish their first colony in this new-found solar system. They would do this be selecting a planet, selecting a region of that planet to develop as the first colony based on the terrain features of each region, and then proceed to build up their first region. Once their first region is well established, they can proceed to colonize other regions and establish trade routes between each region of the same planet.

All regions of the same planet would share research, civics, and contribute to the planets atmosphere level. However, they will each have their own money and resource supplies, and the player would only be able to operate in one region at a time, and only in one map in that region at a time. So you can see how involved a player would need to be to make sure that their planet prospers.

Eventually, once the regions of the planet have been well established and have declared independence(civics requirement should be raised significantly to require the contribution of all regions on a planet). The player can proceed to colonize other planets. They will need lots of civics to organize the movement and research to develop new technologies, and they will need startships to be produced in order to send colonizers, and of course, with any good space endeavor, lots of money is involved.

Each planet would be able to set up trade routes with other planets, but with a regular cost of civics and money, and a very small but regular cost of starships. The resources of each planet would be able to be produced while on the solar system screen, albeit estimated and not real time. These would be based on the production rates of the entire planet right before the player last exited the planet. The downside to this would be that you wouldn't be able to tell if one of a planet's regions is starving just by looking at the solar system view. That is unless you add a small symbol that appears next to the planet name that would indicate that some parts of the planet are starving.

Through this feature, the player would be able to set up an empire that spans an entire solar system of planets. But if you wanted to take this even further, you could implement the use of multiple solar systems. This would be crazy in-depth. However, I doubt that any player would ever get to that level. It is a long process to develop a single region now, so an entire planet of regions would take ages, and a solar system of planets would take ages of ages to develop, so I wouldn't implement multiple solar systems unless you can come up with a way to let the player auto-generate cities on each map based on the player's needs, and then eventually autogenerating cities in every map of a region based on the player's needs, and then tying both of these to certain techs that would need to be researched. This would help the player to quickly be able to splash some resources at a region and completely develop it in a few minutes time, but only after they've spent lots of time developing their empire to be able to do that.

Just as a reminder, this would all be for premium players that play offline only.

I hope that this idea is understandable and helpful to the developing of my colony.

In time for the weekend, My Colony 2 has just been updated to v0.27.0 and should be hitting all platforms shortly! This update has a critical fix that might actually end up killing some existing colonies, so you are going to want to read on to find out what's new!


First for the big change. As I was implementing one of the new buildings for this update (the Ancient Alien Microchip Factory), I noticed that during it's production cycle, it was not consuming any Alien Artifacts. I tweaked with the building in the game editor a bit, and still no consumption. Upon further investigation, I noticed that no building was consuming any resources, and it's been like this all along!

How I missed such an obvious flaw is beyond me, although I don't know if anybody else really noticed it either. It's easy to overlook a bug that actually benefits you, I suppose. Looking back though, stockpiling resources did always seem a bit easier in MC2 as compared to MC1.

Anyway, I went ahead and fixed the issue, loaded up my main colony, and it immediately died. Stockpiles of Ore, Gold, Wood, Charcoal, Crystalline, Rum, Uranium, you name it, all quickly evaporated. My settlements had been running so long on a balance based on zero resource consumption, I never built up the necessary production and gathering capabilities to handle the industrial output. Needless to say, it pretty much brought my entire colony to a standstill. Not only that, but since I had several settlements connected to the same resource pool using trade depots, every single one was brought down to a grinding halt!

It actually took me several hours to recover my game from this calamity. In fact, the fix required me to alter the stats of several buildings, because it became plain once resource consumption was factored in that many buildings were either under producing or over consuming resources. Because of this, production and consumption stats have been altered in this update for the Sugar Extraction Lab, Tree Farm, Charcoal Factory, Uranium Enrichment Facility, Canteen, Gold Synthesis Lab, Ore Fracking Operation, and Rum Distillery. I think I have a reasonable balance going right now, but of course there are likely things that I have overlooked. If you find structures that need rebalanced because of this changed, either buffed or nerfed in some way, let me know in the comments to this post.

Now, while I was trying to figure out this new balance, it was actually quite difficult to do at the beginning, as My Colony 2 lacks detailed resource consumption/production stats like you would find in My Colony 1. At least it did lack those stats, as this update now adds a new Resources tab to the Statistics window!


As in My Colony 1, you can select each resource to see the breakdown on which buildings are providing/using a specific resource, which is a huge help when trying to work out and balance your settlement production levels.


Of course, the resource stats are not exactly, and cannot be exactly as they are in MC1, due to the nature of resource pools in MC2. Resources in this game are not kept per-player or even per settlement, but are rather stored in dynamic "pools" that can change as time goes on based on the existence of logistics stations, outposts and other such structures. This made putting together the stats collection and reporting a bit more difficult than it was in MC1, but it's mostly working here now. To view the stats of a resource pool, you have to move your camera/viewport to a settlement first, and you will be shown the stats for the resource pool that you are currently active in. At some point I will probably make it possible to view a list of all resource pools and which settlements they are connected to, I just have not gotten to it yet.

Moving along, this update brought a few big changes to roads, changes that I started working on a few updates ago and neglected to finish until now.

Firstly, roads with either production or consumption properties (such as the Solar Road) are now finally functional. Prior to this update, you could build a huge Solar Road network with 200 tiles, and it would only produce power based on the first tile placed. Now, they work as you would expect.

Next, Roads are now actually factored in to the path finder, and their "drive speed modification" stats now actually work! You may or may not have noticed, but before this update roads had basically no impact on what your Rovers did, other than providing an aesthetic look. Roads are now fully functional, and will work in basically the same manner as they do in MC1.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, you can no build roads (and some other structures) anywhere you want, no settlement required!


Wouldn't it be nice to build a big beautiful highway connecting all of your settlements together? You couldn't do it before, but you can now! Roads can now be built anywhere, as long as you have an appropriate Rover in range. The resources used to pay for the roads will come from your closest settlement to the road in question (the closes settlement owned by the player building the road). The only restriction is that you can not build a road in a chunk/settlement that is "owned" by another player.

The Game Editor now also allows you to specify other buildings, besides roads, that can be built out-of-settlement. The only one right now is the Commemorative Plaque, since I figured it would nice to be able to place signs along the side of your highways.

Moving along, I did a lot of focus and work on performance optimizations in this release. When a map had larger settlements, the game was starting to get so laggy (at least on my M1 Mac) that it was barely playable anymore, so something had to be done. Obviously there is always more performance work to be done, but here are some of the changes so far.

Firstly, I reduced the radius of chunks that are generated around the camera, and I lowered the time that it takes before the engine clears out chunks that are no longer active around the camera. This provides a pretty large reduction in memory usage when you are in a big settlement, as it can reduce the number of .vpp models loaded in memory significantly. At some point I will probably make this a setting in the Engine Settings window, so people with epic desktop computers and RTX video cards can turn their chunk render distance way up if they want to, but since most players right now are using a smart phone, I decided to lower the default setting.

Speaking of default settings, most of the "pretty" engine settings, such as Anti Aliasing, Depth of Field, Dynamic Shadows, Fancy Water, etc, are now turned off by default. These you can always just turn back on in the settings menu if your machine can handle them, but I wanted the default settings to be low so that a new player wont get in the game and immediately experience lag if they are using a lower end machine.

A lot of improvements have also been made to the server code, which runs on a separate thread from the renderer. There was a pretty big issue where the game server would lag down hard if you had a ton of rovers in your game, since every "tick" a rover checks to see if it should be building something or not. To address this, the server now keeps track of whether or not there are actually buildings under construction, and so Rovers will only check if they should be building when there is actually something to build. Makes sense, right?

Moving along, since the last update introduced the Excavator and digging, it basically became possible to turn the Desert World map into a little water world by digging out your own lakes and rivers. Because of this, it only made sense to allow all of the water based structures and units to be constructed on the desert map.


You are now free to terraform your Desert World map into the holiday paradise that your colonists have been yearning for.

Next up, this update adds the classic Crystalbot from MC1, and with it comes the ability to create and grow Synthetic Crystalline Deposits. Be careful though, because the Synthetic Crystalline is a cancer that is as aggressive as ever, so I would suggest not building it too close to your settlement...


My original inspiration for Crystalline (back in MC1) was the Tiberium from Command and Conquer, a substance that provides power but that also spreads and can become an environmental catastrophe. For this reason, you need to take extra precautions when dealing with the synthetic stuff, as it can easily get out of hand if you let it.

I think I mentioned earlier in this post that the Ancient Alien Microchip Factory has been added to the game. This along with the Crystalline stuff requires two new techs, Ancient Alien Manufacturing and Crystalline Synthesis. I also added the new Luxury Townhome, a decorative housing unit for Premium players.

Since I was on the topic of new Research, I will mention the final engine change to this update. Players who are either in a hurry or want to speed through a new game can now instant-unlock new research using Ape Coins. Like I mentioned in the last My Colony 1 release notes, I am going to be looking for better ways to monetize the My Colony games without resorting to heavy advertising, and this seemed like a reasonable way that is totally optional and does not fundamentally change the game for existing players.

So all in all, this was a pretty big update for My Colony 2. I would suggest that all players be careful when they first open their games after the update, and to comb over your settlements and their research stats, because there will probably be things you need to change, particularly if you have an older established colony.

Moving forward, my near-term plans are to continue expanding the Alien/Quantum tech trees. I am also going to be bringing a Galactic Board of Trade to My Colony 2 in some form (gotta work out the details on that one), and I will also probably be adding a Spice World (not related to the Spice Girls) to implement some of the Spice suggestions from @Architecture1134 and others. There is also a lot coming soon to the original My Colony and to Colony Wars, but more on those another day. All in all, a lot of excitement coming to the My Colony Universe of games, and I should probably put together another episode of the My Colony Podcast to discuss it all. But until then, check out the new update, enjoy, have a good weekend, let me know what issues you find or suggestions you have, and stay tuned for more!

https://www.apewebapps.com/my-colony-2/

#mycolony2

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!

Starting with v0.75.0, a massive realignment of colonial GDP will be taking place, and some of you with massive GDP figures numbering in the quadrillions or more may not like it (or may not care), but on the whole, it will be a lot better.

Before v0.75.0, GDP has been just a lazy calculation, adding up the market value of all resources in a colony, along with all of the money that colonists had in their wallets. This was an easy way to set it up at the beginning, and it sort of worked, and not too many people cares, so I left it as is.

The problem, is that anybody who knows about economics will know that this calculation has nothing to do with GDP, making the number totally meaningless as a measure of economic output. The result was that a colony could have a massive GDP just by getting gifts, making an epic trade, or simply existing for a long time and building up massive resource stockpiles. Again, all of this is fine, but it really gives no valuable information about the health of your colony's economy.

With this update, I decided to just totally scrap the old GDP figures, and implement a real GDP calculation, in the economic sense. Going forward, GDP is now a rolling calculation of the gross industrial output of your colony over the span of one "year." This makes it a far more accurate and meaningful measure of the industrial strength of your colony.

So, in order to be able to make the calculation, I first had to definitively determine what one "year" is in My Colony. After reviewing some of the existing game mechanics, I came out with one year being 120,000 "tick" cycles in the game, or roughly one hour of play time. So going forward, the GDP of your colony will be the sum of all industrial output over the last hour of play time.

The part that will sting at first, is that since it is a rolling calculation, that means the GDP figure will be incomplete in your colony until you have played for an hour. I could probably just check the current output and extrapolate it out to fill in the gaps, and I might at some point, but since the issue is irrelevant after an hour of play, I haven't bothered to do it yet.

Now the other part that might sting, it that this represent a complete and total realignment of the various GDP's across the galaxy, especially among older more established colonies that are hoarding epic amounts of resources. Just now that the intention is not to punish those colonies in any way, but to create a more accurate measure of the industrial output of the colony. And really the fact that you just have millions and millions of resources stockpiled, doesn't really say much about the health of your colony's economy.

Because of the change, most people (probably everyone) will be seeing a massive reduction in their GDP. I mean massive. On the flip side, it is happening to everybody across the board, and you will now now for sure what the economic strength is of your colony.

Honestly, the old way of computing it was dumb. A brand new colony with 2 people could get an epic gift from their commonwealth and suddenly have a GDP rivaling colonies that have build up millions of population over the years.

And speaking of gifts, they are not computed in the new GDP calculation. It is solely based on the industrial output of the colony. Although taxes you collect from your charter colonies DO factor in.

Anyway, this actually gives way to new game mechanics that will be able to take advantage of a new GDP calculation. The GDP now gives you a real measure of the strength of your economy, and you will be able to monitor and respond to the boom/bust cycles of the colony. It's not in there as of this writing, but I will be soon adding the GDP Growth % statistic so you can monitor if your colony is growing or in a recession. A growing economy will boost your approval, while a recession will harm it. If your colony enters a great depression, you will get protesting.

Finally the GDP growth rate stat will also be added to the online database, so there will be a ranking coming soon of which economies are growing the fastest. Sort of like in real life!

Anyway, that is the change that is coming. I hope not too many people are upset about their massive GDP numbers being cut down to size, but I think in order to move things forward, it had to happen eventually.

I hope everybody is having a good week! Today after several weeks of work, I am putting the finishing touches on My Colony v1.0.0 which will be heading out to all platforms over the coming days, just in time for the holidays! There is not a lot of new content in this update, and pretty much nothing that I had originally planned to add to it is here, but that is ok! What you get instead is almost a total re-write of the underlying simulation engine, which I think will improve performance on most devices, greatly reduce save-file sizes (and save corruption instances), and greatly expand the possibilities for new features in the coming updates. With all of that said, let's take a look at what has changed. This will probably be a longer write-up than most, so sit tight!

First of all, I really wish I had more time to work on this update, as I do not consider it to be complete by any stretch of the means. Sadly though, because of the time of year I had to push the update now, otherwise I would not be able to release until sometime in January. For one reason, I have a lot of family stuff coming up for the holidays. Also, the various app stores do not process submissions during this time of year (so that their employees can have some holiday time off), particularly iPhone, so I have to get the update in now before the release window closes. So I want to apologize to everybody for the lack of new content and incomplete nature of this update, given what I had promised previously. I hope you are not too mad at me, especially since it has been about a month since the last update! I did put a ton of hours into this one though, and I think (hope!) in the long run the game will end up being a lot better for it.

Since these patch notes are longer than normal, I will split them up into sections.

Game Data

First I want to talk about some game file changes. Since the format of the game has evolved a bit since the first release of My Colony in 2016, there have been a lot of properties and settings added over the months and years that are no longer applicable today. I have done a little bit of cleanup and reorganizing of the game data in this release, and if you have an older, larger colony, the first time you open it in v1.0.0 it might take a little longer to load as this cleanup procedure takes place on your game data, possible up to a minute or more. This is normal. Afterwards, the disk size of your game data should be a lot smaller, which should be great for all versions of the game, as save file corruptions are sometimes a problem on various platforms. It should also make cloud sync a whole lot faster and more reliable. I believe it will also help with issues where web browsers like Chrome delete My Colony saves to keep the game under the browser's storage quota. Just for an example, the save file for my main colony which has around 270k population is now only about 600kb, which is a massive reduction from before.

I am working on a way to export an entire region game (and all of it's sub colonies) into one single backup file. I had meant to have this feature ready to go for this update, but simply ran out of time. Be aware that it is coming soon though. The new file size reduction is one of the reasons why I am able to implement this feature properly!

Regions

There is a large change to how Regions are generated now, when playing on a map type that features a river terrain, such as Earthlike, Abandoned World, and Lava World. The River formations are now generated on a region-wide basis, instead of on a map-by-map basis, giving the entire region a more continuous look and feel. So now when you start a new region on one of these map types, it will have to generate the river template, which may take a minute on slower devices. It is a one-time thing though, so I think the time trade-off is worth it.


In addition to automatic region generation, you can now also include a template file that the game will use to create your region. The template parser works best when using a 250x250 black and white image, but it will accept any image file you have. For example, consider the following template file:


When applied to a Lava World region, will create the following regional map:


These new region generating and templating features can make for some very interesting regional maps!

Once you are inside of a region map, you will notice some additional changes. There is now a 1 tile green border surrounding regional cities. If you mouse-over this border, you will see the name of the adjacent city in the region and if you click on it, it will ask you if you want to switch over to that city, without having to back out to the overall regional map first.


In addition, you can now order a rover or other unit to drive onto that green border area, and the unit will be transferred to the adjacent city. Players have wanted this feature since regions first came out, and it basically works just as you would expect it to.

Simulation Changes

This is where the changes start getting big, but I have tried to implement them in a way that will hopefully be unnoticeable to most players. For v1.0.0, I have rewritten the core simulation engine from scratch, moving it from an individual colonist based simulation, to more of a macro simulation using buildings as the core point of focus for the game. This change was mainly done for performance and scale. When I had originally created the game, I did not really expect colonies with more than a few hundred colonists at most. My original inspiration for the colonist part of the game was a title I found on Steam called Spacebase DF-9, which sadly got abandoned by it's creators. But in that vain, each colonist had it's own stats, it's own bank account, it's own mood, name, health, happiness level, job, house etc. With a few hundred colonists, this works out pretty good. With 100,000 or even 1,000,000, this becomes a CPU and memory nightmare.

Over the years I have done various tweaks and hacks to try to get around this design issue, but it's never worked out perfectly. At the end of the day, there was no way to get around the fact that the way that the game was originally envisioned and designed was simply no longer compatible with the way that the game had eventually turned out. My Colony has become, at it's core, a city simulator game based in outer space. It does feature things that you will not find in a traditional city simulator game, but at the end of the day, this is what it has basically morphed in to. So I have made changes to the game to better reflect this reality.

The individual colonist, as he has existed in prior versions of the game, no longer exists. He has been replaced by statistics. The game now operates on a system based on the residential structure and it's proximity to available amenities, such as entertainment, medical, educational, and work. This is now reflected by clicking on a building and looking at it's stats screen.


Where a colonist decided to live is based on the overall value rating of the residential property. Where a colonist decides to work is based on the location of the job site in relation to occupied residential buildings. Therefore, maintaining full productive capacity requires balancing all of the desirability factors for your residential buildings and keeping your job sites in range to those buildings.

It may sound complicated, but it's really not. In general, a colony that was well designed and balanced before this update should still work without too many issues. I have tried to design this in a way that would be as minimally disruptive to existing colonies as possible.

The largest potential issue people will see is in regards to medical care. Simply put, before medical care was barely required, and now it is absolutely required. If your colony lacks medical facilities, people will die. If you start seeing people die every month for no reason, make sure that you have enough medical clinics!

This new simulation engine has changed the way approval rating is calculated. It is now a function of the overall value of every residential structure, weighted by the number of colonists living in that structure. Overall colony approval rating will impact production in this way: if overall approval falls below 30%, you will start to see riots, which will in turn decrease the number of people who go to work. To make the transition to v1.0.0 easier, I have disabled rioting for this release, to give players time to balance their colonies. It will be activated in v1.1.0 though, so you should not ignore it.

In a way, it is sad to make this change, as I've always liked having the ability to select a colonist and see where they live, how happy the are, give them money, etc. These options are now gone from the game, along with certain policy items that were related to individual colonists. That said, the change has reduced the memory consumption of the game significantly, and will also allow the game to grow in ways never before possible, so I think that overall it will be a good thing, and I hope people are not too disappointed by it!

Colonist Lifecycle

Colonists now age properly in this update, and they will also have babies. You now need to balance your colony in a way that can support children and elderly, who are unable to work. Before you could just have a 1:1 ratio of population to jobs, now you cannot. A new section has been added to the population stat screen that lets you see the current age distribution of your colonists.


Colonists will work between the ages of 16 and 70 and they will have kids between the ages of 16 and 40. After the age of 50, they have a chance to die of natural causes, and that chance is higher or lower based on the health rating of your colony.

This has been the hardest part of the game to balance in this update, and will probably take several updates to get it right. You do not want the birth rate to be too high at the beginning of the game, because it is hard to take care of babies when you are just starting out. However, you do not want it to be too low later on, because you need enough new workers to support the aging population.

As I said, this will probably take some time to get right. It will be a bit more difficult for large existing colonies, because before this update, almost all colonists were aged between 20-35 years old. If you have a large existing population, all of these people will probably be retiring around the same time. To ease these issues, I have added new deportation policies to the game, with the options to deport all elderly and children.

Random Changes and Improvements

The Stats screen now has two new sections, Utilities and Game Data, both of which were going to be a lot cooler than they are now, but I ran out of time. Keep an eye on these, because they will be getting better in the future.

On the main construction sidebar, you can now right-click on a building to quick-jump to the encyclopedia article for that structure. In addition, mouse-hovering over a building now shows a bit more information, such as the entertainment/medical/educational capacities of the structure.

For vehicle construction buildings like the Small Vehicle Factory, you can now mouse-over them when they have multiple units queues up to see exactly which types of units are currently in the queue.

On regional maps, the day/night cycle is now synchronized across the entire region. Before now, one city could be daytime, and the city right next to it could be night.

Tourism has been revamped, much in the way the rest of the simulation has. You will now probably make a lot more money on tourism than you had previously.

The Overview statistics window now displays the total number of real-life hours you have played the game (since v0.91.0, as it was not tracked before then), as well as the amount of game-time that your colony has been around.


There is now a new Medical build category.

When a colony under embargo starts paying taxes again, they now regain their "motherland relations" at a faster rate.

The Brood Training Center now provides some education.

Increased the number of students for the Transcendent Academy, Mound of Scholars, and Internet Relay Booth.

Increased medical capacity of the Bloodletting Station, Healing Pods, and First Aid Station.

Increased the guest capacity of the Large Park, Paste Treatment Spa, Torture Booth, Live Autopsy Slab, Suppertime Arena, and Internet Relay Booth.

Added slight Entertainment and Education boost to the Real News Station.

Added slight Education boost to the Live Autopsy Slab.

New Content

New Unit: Ether Rover
New Structures: Ether Storage, Integrated Medical Clinic, Small Hospital, University, Ant Paste Rejuvenation Clinic

What's Next?

There is still much to be done. I would have preferred to just work on this update for three months and add everything I want to it, but I did want to give everybody something to play over the holidays. My immediate plan for My Colony v1.1.0 is to add the #1 most requested feature since the game originally came out, Mass Transit. I already have the entire system mapped out in my head and I think it's going to work well, and will function within a single city and even across region. This means you will also be able to have houses in one region map where people work in the adjacent region map. So this is what will be coming in v1.1.0, unless there are major issues with this update, in which case it will be v1.2.0.

After that, I want to implement crime and security, which will be the focus of the next update. Crime is already factored into the land value rating of all buildings, so a lot of the work is already done. I just need to do the work to finish it off. If I had more time, Mass Transit and Crime would have been done in this release, since I have already started implementing both "under the hood."

Finally, I promised online competition and leaderboards for this update, and I just didn't get to them. I have not forgotten about it though, but I am pushing it out until after Mass Transit and Crime, as I have already sort of started on Mass Transit and Crime, and I think people will probably get more out of those two features anyway. So I am tentatively scheduling the online competition update for v1.3 or v1.4.

Beyond those, that is all I have planned in the near future for major gameplay changing updates. After that it will be back to the regular bug-fix and content update grinds. I do still need to flesh out the other civs a bit more. At some point I want to add AI controlled factions, as I want to add a new map type that is already inhabited by a primitive species and you will either have to coexist with them or exterminate them. But that is a little bit further down the line.

So that's all for v1.0.0. It should be hitting all devices over the coming days, so be on the lookout. Let me know in the forum what issues and requests you have. There are literally a ton of engine changes to this update and so I do expect problems, but with your help I will get them all ironed out over the coming updates.

This happens to be the 100th major update to My Colony, and I want to thank everybody who has been with me over the years, helping me create this amazing game that we all love! I never could have imagined when I first started on it in 2016 what it would have eventually morphed into. A lot of the greatness in the game comes directly from suggestions I have gotten from you guys, so thank you to everybody who has supported the game over the years, and stay tuned for a lot more to come in the future!

My Colony v1.10.0 has started going out recently and is hitting various platforms at different times and in different iterations. This is a bit of a different update, as there is nothing new to My Colony itself.

Over the last few weeks, I have been busy doing a total rewrite of Web App Core, the cross-platform app wrapper that hosts most of my apps and games, including My Colony. This rewrite cleans out years of outdated/unused code, is more efficient, and should bring more consistency between all of the various platforms. The problem though, is that this project is massive and is taking me longer than I anticipated.

Since the rewrite is quite massive and touches every single function available to Web App Core, I went ahead and published it on my two biggest cross-platform applications, My Colony and PDF Document Scanner, so I could collect crash reports and see what is and isn't working. I know that this isn't something a "professional" company would necessarily do, but I did (mostly) test everything beforehand 🤐

Anyway, you may see several iterations and releases of the 1.10.x branch on each platform over the coming weeks as I work everything out, so you can report all issues you find in this thread.

While I am talking about Web App Core, I might as well give an overview of what I am changing on that product, since it is a large part of My Colony as well. My Colony is currently running on v3.7.6, and after I have all of the bugs worked out on all platforms, Web App Core will be bumping up to v4.0.0 and getting a ton of cool new features that will help My Colony and other products as well.

If you are not aware, Web App Core is basically an abstraction wrapper I wrote starting in 2013 or so that allows my apps and games to use device-specific native functions while sharing the same code base. It's basically what allows me to release updates to all platforms in a fairly short amount of time. It's not a third party library or anything, so I have total control over it's features and capabilities.

One of the new features coming to Web App Core v4 is the ability to fully customize the theme/look of the wrapper. For example, on all of my current apps, the default left-hand slide-out menu looks the same for every app on a specific platform. So all of my Android apps have the exact same looking slide-out menu, same looking title screen, same looking dialog popups, etc. They are all very generic and the same across the board. A productivity app like PDF Document Scanner uses the exact same looking menus and dialogs as a game like My Colony. With Web App Core v4, My Colony (and other games) will be able to have their own customized UI and look more "game" like.

Web App Core v4 will also bring full local filesystem access to My Colony on the Web. This means that on the My Colony web app, you will be able to choose a local folder on your PC or Android device that you want My Colony to use, and all game data will be saved there, instead of on the cloud or in the browser's internal database. Since saves will no longer be limited to using the database, game compression should be unnecessary, and this change should virtually eliminate file save corruption on the web edition of the game. This will also make backing up your data trivial, as you can just copy/paste your save files any time you want.

Web App Core v4 will also start making way for upcoming web technologies that are not yet available in stable channel browsers, but will be coming in the months ahead. For example, installed Progressive Web Apps (PWA's) will soon be gaining the ability to become the default application for certain file types. For example, if you had the My Colony PWA installed on your device, you will eventually be able to simply double click on a game file on your desktop, and it would automatically launch the game (and your colony). Same thing with apps like Voxel Paint, simply double clicking on a .vpp file would launch the app and the voxel model.

Anyway, there are a lot more capabilities coming soon that have nothing to do with My Colony, so I wont bother polluting these release notes any further. If you've been following my work for any length of time, you may know that I really dislike the various App Stores, their draconian content rules and restrictions, their 30%+ cuts on all transactions, etc. My ultimate goal is to have the web editions of all of my products just as capable (or more) than their native counterparts. I am a big fan of Progressive Web Apps, and as time goes on I believe they are going to become more and more indistinguishable from native applications. I am going to continue to be on the bleeding edge of the PWA side of things!

The My Colony Universe Real Time Strategy (RTS) game Colony Wars has just been updated to v0.8.0, which is live now at it's new web domain and should be hitting Android over the coming days. This is the first real update to Colony Wars in about two years, so the game was long overdue. v0.8.0 contains a lot of updates "under the hood" and some quality of life improvements throughout, so let's take a look what is new!


The biggest change "structurally" to the game is one I mentioned in a thread earlier this week, which is that Colony Wars has been migrated off of the Web App Core framework and is now a stand-alone web app hosted at https://wars.my-colony.com/. If you previously had the Colony Wars progressive web app (PWA) installed to your device from the old Ape Web Apps location, you should uninstall it and reinstall the new one from the new URL.

The next change is the revamped title screen, which you can see in the screenshot above. The old title screen was also a component of Web App Core, so after migrating off of the library, I had to re-write the title from scratch. I sort of tried to copy off of the Red Alert 2 title screen (at least in terms of layout), since many of the game concepts are borrowed from RA2 anyway. Eventually, the background image on the title is going to cross fade between different battle scenes.

You will notice on the title screen that there is a new Quick Match button. This was added in response to Play Store feedback that setting up a new game could sometimes be too complicated on mobile devices. Now if you just want to quickly play a match, hop in the game and click on Quick Match. You will instantly be taken to a random map in Skirmish mode against how ever many AI opponents the map supports.


Improvements have been made to the New Game Lobby. You can now finally assign different teams to AI players, and change the color of the AI opponents as well. You can even assign AI players to be on your own team, if you wish. You might also notice a new map available called Crossroads. This was created by @GeneralWadaling , so if you enjoy the map please let him know!

Since we are on the subject of new maps, the Map Editor has also been improved. Namely, all of the functions on the map editor now work. Before, the abilities to import a map or open a saved map were not functioning, but now everything should be working properly (at least on the web app, Android might still have some bugs, but that will be sorted out in 0.9.0).


There was a lot of feedback on both the Play Store and through my email that the game was too difficult to control with touch screen, so several changes have been made to hopefully improve the situation:

• Tapping on a unit twice will now select all units of the same kind in a 6 tile radius
• Units will now automatically attack all in-range defensive turret type structures (pillboxes, SAM sites, etc)
• When units are selected, you can simply tap on an enemy structure to order an attack, instead of having to click on the "move units" button first

In addition, Colony Wars previously had an issue where you could not cancel an in-progress construction. On the desktop, you could hold/cancel a build with a right-click, but this did not work on mobile devices. Now, a small hold/cancel button has been added to the build item on the construction sidebar, that you can tap on to hold or cancel a building that is under construction.


This also works for units. If you have multiple units queued up, you can click on their number in the sidebar to cancel the build.

Another much-requested feature has been added. You can now see the health bar for a structure by clicking on it (or mouse-hovering it, if your device has a mouse). In addition, there is now an option to sell a building, or to quickly set a rally point for new units. You could previously do the rally point with a keyboard shortcut, but now you have access to the option on touch screen too.


Once in the game, you will notice a couple of additional changes. Firstly, all of the interface voice recordings ("construction complete," "low power," "harvester under attack," etc) have been re-recorded. My wife was kind enough to lend her voice for the recordings, so perhaps the sound will be more "soothing" now that it was before!

The AI's "brain" has been ratcheted up a bit in this release, especially as it relates to attacking your base. Previously, an AI would send some tanks into your base, destroy one building, and then just sit there like an idiot. Now the AI will actually go all-in and continue attacking your base until the job is done (or his attack force is destroyed).

Overall in-game performance should be better as well in this release, as the underlying Scroll2d engine has been updated to the latest iteration, which has about two years worth of improvements baked in over the previous release.

Finally, the multiplayer experience should be greatly improved in this release. As with Scroll2d, there are also two years of improvements brought over from my in-house multiplayer library, many of the code improvements coming thanks to the real-time multiplayer nature of My Colony 2. Multiplayer games now feature better performance, and much better handling of error states, such as player disconnects.

So the main focus of this release was to get Colony Wars migrated to its new home and bring about some of the most requested interface improvements. The next update is going to focus on adding new units and structures to the game. United Earth still needs a few things added before it's considered a complete faction, and if you have any suggestions on new structures and units for United Earth, now is the time.

Once the United Earth faction is done, I will focus on adding LIS to the game. Like in My Colony, LIS will have some similarities to United Earth, but with a few different specialized units and structures.

Once LIS is implemented, it will be time to add Zolarg into the game, and maybe the Alpha Draconians too for good measure, I haven't decided on that yet.

Finally, once all factions are done, the focus will switch to implementing the single player campaign, which will play through the story of the Human civil war, and the LIS's break-away from United Earth. I mentioned in a thread the other day that I want to have RA2 style cheesy cutscenes in the game. I might make them using Death 3D, but I also might get myself a greenscreen and an "Admiral Tots" costume. Haven't decided yet...

All the while adding the above mentioned items, I want to add other improvements as well. More options to the Multiplayer/Skirmish lobby, like setting your starting funds, game speed, AI difficulty, and tech level. The game needs Super Weapons too.

So that is it for this update. Expect more frequent Colony Wars updates, and let me know what you want to see added (as well as what issues you find with this release). Thanks for playing, and be sure to bookmark/install Colony Wars from it's new URL at my-colony.com:

https://wars.my-colony.com/

#colonywars

Today I am putting the finishing touches on and releasing the v1.21.0 update to the original My Colony! Since interest in the original My Colony remains high, I am putting it back on the front burner, and we will discuss that more in a bit. Until then, let's take a look at what is new!


First off, and as every Ancient Astronaut Theorist knows, the Ancients were experts at brick making, and now their secrets have finally been unlocked with the introduction of the new Ancient Alien Brick Factory! A couple of these should easily take care of most or all of your colony's brick needs.

There have been requests to beef up the transportation capabilities between regional cities, so there is now a new upgrade to the Regional Bussing Authority called the Deluxe Bussing Authority! There is nothing earth-shattering here, but it does have a vastly higher bussing capacity than the current structure, which should come as a big help for many Regional players.

The last update introduced a new tech called Advanced Simulation Theory, and this update brings a long-awaited upgrade to the I.T. Studio Complex called the Simulated Software Studio! Here, virtual people, created by software, are in turn used to produce even more software. It seems unholy, but one building full of these sims can output about as much software as 50 buildings full of human workers. The A.I. is taking over!

Next up, a new late game technology has been added called Simulated Fabrication. Basically magic, this tech allows simulated people to create real things. How does it work? Who cares? Because it unlocks the shiny new Simulated Nanite Factory!


Here we have Nanite production on steroids. I don't know what the math is, but one of these things is roughly equivalent to 600 regular Nanite Factories, so it's a big deal. It might seem OP right now, but you can assume that some larger scale Nanite consumption is coming in the not-too-distant future...

There have been a couple of minor changes as well, based on user feedback. The Bulldozer behavior has been changed. Now instead of destroying buildings, it sells them, so it's basically a quick-sell toggle. Additionally, I have made all Encyclopedia entries alphabetically sorted so it's easier to actually find things.

I know there have been a lot more suggestions/requests lately, so if I did not get to yours yet then don't worry. I am reviving My Colony back to full-time production, so it will be updated a whole lot more in the weeks and months ahead (along side My Colony 2 and Colony Wars, but more on those later 🤐).

This brings me to the future of My Colony. Based on comments here, the in-game feedback and on the app stores, it's clear that people want me to continue working on and expanding the original My Colony. I am fine with doing so, but there is also the reality that it is an almost seven(!) year old game, and since it's not really a pay-to-win type In App Purchase festival, it's big income generating days have largely come and gone. So to be worth my time to keep pouring time into the original My Colony at the expense of other projects, I need to find a way to be able to make it generate a return.

So I was considering ways to do this that would not be annoying or disruptive. There are a lot of new ad formats available on mobile now, but I really didn't want to flood My Colony with annoying pop ups like every other mobile game. Then just this morning, a friend of mine told me he had spent some money buying collectors items in the game World of Tanks, and it gave me an idea for My Colony.

What if, on occasion, I made available "special edition" or limited time only releases of certain buildings, such as holiday themed variants of current buildings, that people who wanted them could buy with Ape Coins? So for instance, there could be the "Halloween 2022 Themed Investment Bank" (or anything really) that you could only buy during a two or three week period, then it's gone for good (gone for sale, if you buy it then you always have it on your account).

So anyway, people who like to collect things could get all these extra buildings. Even tough they wouldn't necessarily provide a leg up on the game, they would let you make your colony look a lot cooler, and also satisfy the collection itch. Most importantly, it would help support the continued development of this "oldy but goldy" game.

That is all just an idea though, I have not decided one way or another. I might just add that to MC2 instead.

Anyway, there is a lot more to come, not just for MC1, but for the entire My Colony Universe. I plan to get another MC2 update in this month, and I've got some really cool things headed to Colony Wars, such as Super Weapons. So stay tuned, because there is a lot of exciting My Colony goodness headed your way!

If anybody was looking for a massive My Colony 2 update this month, I've got you covered! v0.34.0 is dropping now on the Web and the Ape Apps Launcher and is packed with goodies that you will not want to miss, so let's take a look at what is new!


The first change you might notice is that the title screen has been reworked, matching the layout from the title screen of Terra Nova 4X. This is a fairly minor change at the moment, but as MC2 had been using the generic Web App Core title screen, I was limited on what I could potentially add to it in the future, so now I will be able to make some changes and improvements going forward.

I also did quite a bit of work on Player Mode in this update, which had been completely borked until now. There is now a new HUD/UI for the mode, complete with health bar, radar, current location stats and more!


There remains a ton of work to be done on Player Mode. Right now there are still glitches and the controls are a bit wonky, but it is functional if you want to give it a test. My Colony 2 is eventually going to contain an entire sub-game based on Player Mode, but for now it's still fun to just walk around your colony and check things out.

There are new options on the Statistics screen for server operators in this release, and the first one is actually quite important.


You can now toggle your server's Private/Public status on the World statistics, which was a long requested feature. You can also toggle on/off the My Colony Online feature (which gives access to online trading through the GBT, among other things). However, and this is important, worlds created before MC2 v0.29.0 will all be in offline mode until activated on the World screen! This is because the MC Online flag in the save file was ignored until this update, and it defaulted to Offline before v0.29.0. Now that the flag is no longer ignored, worlds with the old default will be set to offline.

So the first time you load up your world in v0.34.0 (or higher), you must go into the Statistics screen and turn My Colony Online back on, if you want to use the GBT. You do not have to worry about losing resources or anything like switching between online/offline in the original My Colony. MC2 takes care of this by blocking all connections from modded games.

In addition to the above, server managers can now set the maximum number of online connections allowed in their game. You could previously set this using a chat text command, but now it's just a lot easier to do it from the UI.


Moving on, I have tried to make some interface changes to make My Colony 2 easier to play on mobile devices. The 3D nature of the game makes placing structures more difficult than it was on the original version of My Colony, but I think some changes in this update will help.


Firstly (as seen above), the ground grid lines are now turned on by default on touchscreen devices, allowing you to more easily see where you are placing structures. If you do not like this setting, it can be turned on/off in the Engine Settings menu under the Interface section, but on touch I think it makes a significant different in making the game more playable.

Next, I have tried to make it so that, no matter what orientation you have the camera rotated, placing a new structure will always originate from the top-left tile corner of the tiles to be occupied. On a touch screen there is no "hover" like with mouse input, so it's hard to tell where the building is going to be placed, and a lot of times with the camera rotated, you would have no idea where the building was going to show up once you tapped the screen, so now it should be fairly consistent no matter how you are rotated or zoomed. This was actually more difficult to implement then it might seem, since what tile constitutes the top-left corner is sort of subjective, especially depending on how far the camera is rotated in one way or another. At what angle is the cutoff where top-left becomes top-right, etc? Anyway, after hours of fiddling with the angle cutoffs, I think I have it to where it "feels" good, but you can play with it on mobile and let me know.

Moving right along, I have expanded the building stats that appear when you click on a structure's stats icon. You can now view the production/consumption ratings of Money, Civics and Research. There is still more expansion to be done on building stats, but this change alone makes a pretty big difference, IMO.


Now let's move on to new content, as there is a lot in this update. This release includes 22 new structures, two new techs to unlock, and one new unit. Among the new content in this release are 3D model contributions from @rahtdrgn @therealchromedino @GeneralWadaling and @spamdude so please be sure to show them appreciation for their great works!

Since there are so many new structures, I am just going to list them all out, and then comment on a few of them afterwards. A lot of the structures in this release are of the "Advanced" variety, needed upgrades to existing buildings.

• Advanced Robotics Factory
• Ether Reactor (art by rahtdrgn)
• Ancient Alien Gold Synthesis Lab (art by therealchromedino)
• Star Gate
• Advanced Microchip Factory (art by GeneralWadaling)
• Advanced Plastic Factory
• Underground Drop Room (art by spamdude)
• Spice Drilling Operation (art by therealchromedino)
• Advanced Spice Silo (art by therealchromedino)
• Quantum Spice Silo (art by therealchromedino)
• Quantum Oil Tank (art by therealchromedino)
• Advanced Regolith Synthesis Lab (art by spamdude)
• Quantum Offshore Drill
• Advanced Vocational Training Center
• Spice Den
• Galactic Trade Authority Office
• Ether Crystal Reactor
• Plaza Mosaic Tile
• Investment Bank
• Advanced Helium 3 Extractor
• Black and White Checkered Pavement
• Street Sign

First I want to discuss the new Interdimensional Transportation tech which unlocks the new Star Gate, because this is going to tie in big with a Player Mode feature in the future.


Basically, the Star Gates are going to allow characters in Player Mode to seamlessly travel between worlds/servers. Ultimately, the area around your Star Gate will be the first thing a player sees when they enter your world from that perspective, so you may want to include things like informational signs about your world, and you may want to leave some space to build specific Player Mode related structures that will be available in the future. You may also wish to have at least one security turret nearby, as you never know what is going to be coming through the Star Gate. The Star Gates will also allow fast travel of players/colonists/units between distant settlements both on and off world.

The Star Gates are going to be a critical component of the Player Mode. I wanted to get them in the game sooner rather than later, because the My Colony Online database is keeping track of every star gate in the "universe," and I need to get that database built up before I can enable the fast travel and other features.

Moving along, an old favorite from the original My Colony has returned, as the Bank can now be upgraded to the Investment Bank!


You can start bringing in some pretty good money for your settlement with the Investment Bank, but it's not actually the best money maker in this release. That honor goes to the new Spice Den!


The Spice Den is a brick structure repurposed from an old food production model that GeneralWadaling had made a couple of years ago, and as long as you are able to keep it running with Spice, you will make some nice profits, as the rich and famous in your settlement will pay top dollar to get their Spice fix in a safe and discrete way. Obviously if you are not on the Spice World you will need to procure your Spice from the GBT, so you might want to stock up whenever it becomes available, as I suspect this is not the only Spice related structure we will be seeing added to non-Spice worlds.

Note that the Spice Den is the first structure in the game that actually has a negative Security rating, so you may need to offset that with an extra security headquarters.

Now, you have heard of the noble Extraterrestrial Builder, but what about his equally noble cousin, the Extraterrestrial Sea Rover?


The old offshore drill got a Quantum Offshore Drill upgrade in this release, so it needed a new boat to build it. Not only is this new version of the offshore drill faster, but it also brings up Alien Artifacts! This was badly needed I think, since artifacts are fairly rare on the desert world, and you just can't dig much at all on the water world, so these new Quantum Offshore Drills will come in handy.

Speaking of badly needed, you can now easily generate Helium 3 on any world with the new Advanced Helium 3 Extractor. You will need Regolith to operate it, but that shouldn't be a problem once you construct the new Advanced Regolith Synthesis Lab.

So what happens when you want to conduct big trades on the GBT but you don't want to build hundreds of Trading Depots? That's where the new Galactic Trade Authority Office comes into play!


This is another decent money making structure, but it also greatly increases your gift/trade capacity (I forgot the number, but it's big).

A lot of the buildings that needed upgrades got them in this release. We now have the Advanced Robotics Factory, the Advanced Microchip Factory, the Advanced Plastic Factory, Advanced Vocational Training Center, and the Underground Drop Room (upgrade to the Storage Yard), just to name a few.


In addition, the Spice World now has the new Spice Drilling Operation, which is basically an Ore Fracking Operation for Spice. There are also the new Advanced and Quantum Spice Silos for superior Spice storage.

There is also the Quantum Oil Tank upgrade, for storing larger amounts of Oil.

Finally, all of these new structures will require a great deal of power. That is where the brand new Ether Crystal Reactor comes into play!


You will need a continuous source of both Ether and Crystalline to run this thing, so you may need to watch the GBT for deals. If you can afford it though, the Ether Crystal Reactor will provide you with a 55,000 power rating, far eclipsing the current Integrated Nuclear Reactor.

At the end of the day, there was a ton of work put into this update, so I hope you all enjoy it! There is a lot more excitement for My Colony 2 on the horizon. My goal is to have, by the end of this year, full gamepad/tv support, full VR support, music, sounds, a Steam release, and to have enough content and features to overtake the playability of the original My Colony. So stay tuned for more large updates like this one, because this size of release is going to be the norm, not the exception!

Thank you again for playing My Colony 2 and remember, build up your parameter defenses, because @poumm is out there, lol!


Just kidding, poumm. You're ok!

#mycolony2

Happy Friday to everyone here, and it's time for another My Colony patch, v0.82.0! This update continues the bug fix series that I have been doing while I work on Colony Wars, but I've also added a couple of features that you will hopefully find helpful. Let's dive in and take a look.

Firstly on the bug fix front, every issue that had been tracked to the automatic bug tracker from both My Colony v0.81.0 and Antiquitas v1.22.0 has been resolved, along with a few other issues that I noticed while digging through the code.

One of the biggest issues in My Colony deals with corrupt save files. While working on this update, I noticed that ever since I implemented Regions way back in September, the game was no longer saving backup copies properly for single city maps or region overview maps. This means that besides for sub-city files, no backup saves (the *.mcb files) were being done properly.

For those who are not aware, when you save a game in My Colony, it creates the compressed (if compression is turned on) *.mcz save (that also syncs to the cloud if you have cloud sync turned on), and also an uncompressed *.mcb file that saves only to the local device. When you go to load your colony, it first tries to load the *.mcz cloud save, then the *.mcz local save, and if those do not work, it tries for the uncompressed *.mcb backup save.

What was happening in the code is that first it was saving the uncompressed backup save as a *.mcz file, and then saving over it with the final compressed *.mcz file. So there was no backup. This means if that there was an error in the compression for some reason, there was no uncompressed backup to fall back on.

It also means that if there is an old backup *.mcb file saved somewhere on your device from before the error occurred, opening a file could potentially restore that old backup and override everything you had done in the meantime.

I also noticed that a majority of the save corruptions seemed to be happening on Windows 10, Android, and Desktop. These also happen to be the three platforms where save compression was turned off by default. I had it turned off because compression can cause memory issues when saving cities that have been expanded multiple times and have millions of citizens. Since I am more moving towards Regions being the default play mode though, I decided to turn the compression on by default on all platforms to see if it helps. You can still turn it off on a per-colony basis if you want to.

Next up, I made it so that importing and exporting goods through the Mass Driver/Star Gate (etc) type buildings no longer has to be done in fixed lot sizes. Now when you go to make a trade using these buildings, you will be presented with a slider dialog that lets you make trades up to the max that the structure supports.

I still need to make improvements to the dialog, but it should make some of the buildings with the ultra-large capacities a little more useful.

Next, I have also made changes to the in-game notifications and especially that chat, which should hopefully make them more useful. First, if you are using the "Desktop" style interface (the one with all of the build options appearing in the right-side sidebar), in-game notifications will now show up in a notification area at the bottom right of the screen, instead of popping up in the bottom middle. When you have notifications there, there will be a new red x icon in the bottom right corner that lets you clear all notification messages at once.

The other change is that all chat messages now show up in the notification area. This only works when you are signed in to the chat server, but now once you sign into the chat server for a colony at least once manually, you will automatically be signed in each subsequent time that you open your colony. That way, if you are playing your colony and somebody is trying to talk to you on chat, you will know it without actually having the chat window open. You will also get livestream chat notifications, and notifications when somebody decides to watch your livestream.

On mobile (or if you are not using the "Desktop" interface), you will still get new chat notifications, but they will pop up in the same way notifications currently work, in the bottom-middle of the screen. As always, you can turn off all notifications in the engine settings menu.

Finally, the Russian language translations by Anton zlo have been expanded in this release, and a full set of French translations has now been provided by @Sobeirannovaocc and @Freedmoon ! This is great news for players using Russian and French, so please be sure to show your appreciation for their hard work and efforts.

Just a few final words before I go here. I plan on doing another episode of the My Colony Podcast soon, probably at the beginning of next week. People seem to be enjoying the show, so I will be making it a regular thing again. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do! Next, I plan to have a multiplayer beta for Colony Wars soon(ish). I wanted it to be done by the end of this month, but coding the AI is taking a bit longer than I had planned. I've got it now to where the AI will build their base, but they are still a bit too stupid at it. The beta will be coming before long though, and it is going to include the map editor, as well as multiplayer, supporting LAN/Online/ and AI skirmish. I hope to have the multiplayer matchmaking server running by the end of next week, so that I can get some people online to test the multiplayer out.

Anyway, that is all for today's My Colony update. It should be hitting all platforms throughout the weekend here. I plan on starting the next My Colony update (v0.83.0) on March 1 (I am actually half way planning things now), so get those bug reports filed before then. I know a lot of people think I do not read the reports since I do not post replies, but that is not the case. I just do not see the need to post "Ok" or "Thanks" at the end of each bug report.

Stay tuned for more, and thanks for playing the game!!

Here is a collection on concepts that I am leaning towards for My Colony 2 as of today (20200624). This is all subject to change and I can be convinced by the community of anything, so keep the suggestions and feedback coming. This is going to be a super long post featuring all of my thoughts on MC2 thus far. Feel free to criticize anything and everything here. My feelings will not be hurt and nothing is set in stone. This is a starting point for community discussion to help make MC2 the best game it can be!

Relationship to My Colony 1
MC2 is an entire new game, not an upgrade to the original, or a version 2.0. It may use completely different concepts. It will not be tied in to the same server. Game files will not transfer over, as MC2 will probably have completely different buildings/tech tree, etc.

This does not mean that MC1 will be going away. I will continue to support the original and the server indefinitely. I realize that a lot of people like the style of game that MC1 is and do not want anything to change, so the original is staying where it is. It may continue to receive new content as well as bug fixes, but I do not plan on any further changes to the gameplay mechanics or core engine going forward.

That said, as long as MC1 remains popular and people keep playing it and paying for it, I will keep the game going.

Business Model/Monetizing
This is the least fun part of development, but a necessary one in order to make creating a game feasible. The business model for MC1 was tacked on as an afterthought, and reflecting back I do not like the concept of certain structures and units being premium.

None of this is set in stone, but here are my initial thoughts on the business model. My Colony 2 will be a straight paid app on all app stores, with everything unlocked at the base price, no in-app purchases. No advertising anywhere. The exception is on Ape Web Apps and the Ape Market, where it will be free, everything unlocked, but with no access to multiplayer or custom content. Maybe only one map type available.

Current My Colony 1 is basically already like this on Desktop, with the mobile client being free with additional IAP, so this change just makes the mobile version match up with what is already on desktop.

Now, I do anticipate the dissatisfaction of Android players not having the free version in the Play Store. However, Android support for Progressive Web Apps is sufficiently advanced now that you can just install the Web version to your homescreen like an app and it's hardly any different. Same with iOS. And MC1 will still be available for free like it always has been.

No free version on the mobile app stores will likely mean less players, and I understand this. But I like the idea of just buying a game and having the whole thing, not worrying about IAP's and not having any advertising.

Client/Server Structure
The biggest change to MC2 is it's design from the ground up as a multiplayer game. This does not mean that you cannot play single player, but it is being designed specifically for multiplayer.

MC1 has limited multiplayer, which basically consists of chat and trading/gifting resources. You can play together on a multiplayer region, but all you are really doing is sharing atmosphere and seeing thumbnails of other players' colonies. Not really very multiplayery (is that a word?). The MC1 multiplayer is also global and centralized, meaning everything has to go through the global My Colony server.

My Colony 2 multiplayer will be decentralized, meaning no global server that everybody plays on. Why am I doing this, because it seems like a downgrade? Look at every game out there with real global multiplayer, not just chat and trading. That takes massive infrastructure, and you pay for it with either a monthly subscription or endless IAP's. That's the only way it's really possible, and I don't think anybody wants that if you really stop and think it through.

The only realistic way to add real multiplayer to the game without investing in a massive infrastructure and charging big money for the game is to decentralize it. And since I am not Blizzard and do not want to spend my whole life maintaining MC2 servers, I am adopting a decentralized approach.

What does this mean? My Colony 2 will actually be designed as two separate applications in one, the client and the server.

The game client will be fairly light weight. It's job is to receive data from the server application and render it to the screen, and pass instructions as to what the player wants to do onto the server. That's pretty much it, and it should be fairly performant. Even though the game is moving to 3d, I still expect it to perform better than MC1, simply because 3d hardware rendering performs better than 2d software rendering.

The game server is much more interesting and is where all of the game mechanics take place, but since the server does not have to worry about handling the UI or making drawing calls, it actually has a bit more overhead to work with than on MC1. The two most expensive operations in MC1 are the rendering and the pathfinding. In MC2, the server is eliminating the rendering, and I also want to greatly reduce the pathfinding, leaving more headroom for actual fun stuff, like game mechanics simulation.

So in MC2, the game relationship is between client(s) and server. Whenever you create a new game in MC2, you are creating a new server, and then connecting to it with a client. The server is saved and retained between plays, where the client only exists while it is in use, and is not saved. So the point I just want to get across is that the client is really not that important, the server is.

The server and client code are both included in the My Colony 2 game. You will have the option of starting a regular game or creating a dedicated server. When you start a regular game, you are spinning up both a client and server and creating a 1-1 connection between the two right on your device. You can also make your game joinable by friends or others on your local network for multiplayer.

You can also create a dedicated server. When you create a MC2 dedicated server, you will be presented with a special server GUI that allows you to be in full control of the game. The server will continue to process game data as long as it is running, even if no players/clients are connected. A dedicated server will be able to establish custom game rules and parameters, and have mods installed that will be transferred to any client who connects. You will be able to make a dedicated server open to the public, or by invite only, or by specifying a list of accounts who are able to join. It's up to the server. A dedicated server will be able to moderate it's players however they want, the server can adjust resource levels, ban players for cheating, or anything. It's all up to the server owner.

The game data is saved only on the server, and the server owner will be responsible for making backups. I expect game files to be a lot bigger than MC1, so I am not going to be implementing Cloud Sync, which is known to cause corruption on larger files anyway. The ability to export and backup data will be built right into the game as usual.

Because of the way it's designed, even if you only want to play single player, it still may be desirable to set up a private dedicated server. For instance, you could run a private MC2 dedicated server on your powerful home PC that is always on/connected to the internet. Then you can connect to your server from your tablet/phone/laptop/another window on your computer, wherever you are, and your game is always there waiting for you, and all of the processing is being done on the more powerful computer.

The Game World/Game Files
In MC1, the game world is divided into cities and regions, and each city is a separate game file. In MC2, there are no cities and regions, there are planets.

This is something I am aping from Minecraft. A planet is like a regular city file in MC1, except is extends out in every direction to infinity, so you do not have to worry about running out of space for your city. A planet can have multiple cities and multiple players building cities at the same time.

Planets will be procedurally generated, and new areas will be generated in real-time as needed. Each planet type will have different biomes like in Minecraft, so that different environments and different resources are available in different parts on the planet.

This system means that you will have to build up trade networks with other cities or make additional settlement outposts across the planet in order to bring more resource types back to your colony. In MC1, practically every resource in the game is available with a square mile of your lander. This doesn't really make sense. In MC2 you will have to go out and find resources, and then build up a network for bringing them back into your city.

Technically, the MC2 world is still a big 2d grid like in MC1, but each tile does have an elevation, a z-index, for varied terrain elevations. Different resources might be found at different elevations and in different biomes. You will also be able to adjust the terrain in-game, like building up dirt to level out construction areas. There will be flat areas good for building, low canyons, and hilly or mountainous areas.

Also like in Minecraft, the terrain is generated on the fly and only transferred to the client in "chunks" as needed. So your client will only contain the data for the area that you are currently looking at, and the immediate surrounding areas. As you scroll around the map, areas you are no longer looking at will be disposed from memory as new areas are loaded from the server.

Construction / Resource Gathering and Rovers
I would really like to get rid of Rovers completely and simulate everything. It's not that I hate rovers, they are so helpful and adorable. The issue is with the pathfinding. Just driving rovers around the map takes up a huge percentage of the MC1 processing time, for what is essentially a visual effect.

Pathfinding is both CPU and memory intensive on anything larger than a medium sized MC1 map, and in MC2 the map sizes are being expanded infinitely larger. It's not just as simple as "only path finding around a certain area from the rover." Before you can even calculate pathfinding operations, you first have to generate a pathfinding map and load it into memory. The maps will be more expensive than in MC1 owing to the introduction of terrain elevation, as there will now be cliffs to work around. Each time a new structure is placed the pathfinding map needs to be recalculated. With the game being multiplayer, this will have to be taking place on a larger scale. It is one of the features holding MC1 back, due to all of the CPU time that must be dedicated to solving rover paths.

The issue of course, is that everybody likes rovers. Even I like rovers. Would the game be less fun without them? I don't know. If you could just turn off Rover Rendering in the engine settings and you didn't even see them, but everything continued to operate as normal, would it make a difference to the game, or would it matter? Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't.

Everything a Rover does can be simulated for a fraction of the CPU and memory cost.

This is the largest part of MC2 that I don't have an answer to. I can't just remove rovers because that would be a blow to the fans of MC1. I also cringe thinking of all of the months wasted on optimizing path finding and the 1 star complaints about performance, all relating to a path finding feature in what is essentially a city building game.

There are options.

I could always just keep rovers in the game as they are and just keep working around the processing issues that come with it. In a single player game or a server with only a few active players at once, it probably wouldn't be a very big hit.

I have also considered just simulating rovers, sort of like colonists are just simulated in MC1. For example, you don't even have to build your own rovers. But when you place a new construction order, little rovers drive up onto the construction site and build your building anyway. These rovers do not exist on the server, but you see them building on the client. Same way for moving resources around. On the server it is just simulated, but on the client, you see a rover driving around doing all of the work. This would still require path finding, but each client would be doing their own path finding on the visual rover effect, and the player could turn it off if it became a performance issue.

If the client could just visually simulate things like rovers, colonists, police cars, busses, etc, they would all still be there visually making your city look alive, but the server wouldn't even have to worry about them.

Maybe there are other options too that I am not thinking of? All feedback on Rovers is welcome. I want the game to be performant, but I also don't want to go against the fans, so please let me know what you think either way.

Graphics
MC1 is a software rendered game using the HTML5 canvas element, arranging .png and .svg tile images onto a 2d isometric grid. Most of the graphics processing is done by the main CPU and not the graphics card, so graphics performance is largely defined by how good your processor is. This is why the game runs a lot better on desktop vs mobile, or even on iPhone vs android, and iPhone processors tend to be a bit better.

The problems is that the CPU also has to process the game, so trying to do everything at once gets expensive, especially on mobile devices.

My Colony 2 is moving to WebGL for graphics processing, which is a javascript based implementation of OpenGL that handles rendering on the GPU. This should lead to far better performance on most devices.

My original idea was to use Blender for all of the games building models. The graphics were going to be awesome. But when I dug into Blender and started working with it, I remembered how I am not actually a graphics designer, and it was going to take me forever to make all of the models for this game.

My other idea was to make blocky pixelated type graphics using my own Voxel Paint application (https://www.apewebapps.com/voxel-paint/). This means lower quality visuals but much higher output and probably better rendering performance as well. It's also so easy to use that anybody could make their own MC2 models, my wife even offering to help design structures for the game (she is a big Minecraft fan).

At the end of the day, My Colony 1 was never known for high quality graphics, but I thought that with MC2 I could really make it look great. After putzing around with Blender though, I have to acknowledge my own personal limitations. Basically, I can either spend months learning how to make great 3d models in Blender, or I can spend months working on the game code. I know which one I'd rather do. So I am probably going to go with the pixelated look, simply because it is something that I can actually do myself within a realistic timeframe, and it will also go well with the next point I'm about to explain, which is modding.

I know some people will not like a pixelated looking game. This is one of those areas where I have to say "tough," unless somebody is willing so supply me with hundreds of 3d models free of charge, which is what it is going to take in order to do this properly.

Modding
Customization is going to be huge in MC2 compared to the original. Given the global online multiplayer in MC1, custom content could not realistically be allowed in the game. The decentralized nature of MC2 changes everything though, and modding and customization, as well as all of the tools needed to make it happen, are going to be baked right into the client.

In MC2, the basic "unit" of the game is the building. Everything is going to be pretty much based on buildings, and their relationship to each other. This is basically how MC1 works as well, so this is nothing new. What is going to be knew is My Colony 2's build in Building Editor.

I am going to be creating MC2 using the games' bulit-in editor, and so the same editor I use to make the game is going to be available to all players.

Each building in the game is going to be stored as a building file, and the base game will ship with all of its standard building files, which will be loaded at runtime. This differs from MC1 where all building data is stored in a single JSON file that is shipped with the game, which cannot be easily edited.

A building file will contain three parts.

The first is the JSON formatted definition data, with information about the name of the building, what it does, what it generates, etc. All of the properties that a building can have will be stored in that data.

The second part is the model information, which will essentially be an embedded Voxel Paint file.

The third part is a small (maybe like 64x64 pixel) thumbnail or icon representing the building, which will show up on the construction sidebar and various places throughout the UI.

The three above parts are all packaged into a single file which can be added to the game client, posted online for easy sharing, or what have you. A dedicated server can include custom building files that will automatically be distributed to clients when they join the game. Each building file will have a unique UUID and version information, so if a client already has the same version of a building file that a server does, it will not need to re-transfer the data upon connection.

This system is actually a very powerful change over the original My Colony, and unlocks essentially limitless possibilities for the game. This also makes it a lot easier for the community to participate in development of the game. A creator who makes a great building idea can distribute it online where it is tested out and balanced by the community. If it works in practice and everyone likes it, the file can be included in the base game.

If you want to host a crazy dedicated server with a bunch of custom buildings that totally change the game, you can do so.

I have no idea what kind of buildings people will dream up, but including the content creation tools right into the base game will be huge, I hope. And I plan on making the process as easy as I possibly can, so that anybody can create a building. Using Voxel Paint, if you have an idea and the ability to build a house in Minecraft, you should be able to make it a reality. And being able to make something and then instantly import it into your game makes it simple to test out concepts and balance them right there on your own device.

It's possibly that nobody will care about modding or making buildings, but it still doesn't hurt to add the tools right into the game. If nothing else, it will still make it easier for me to create new content for updates, versus having to go through and edit JSON data manually.

However, it's also possible that everybody will be making custom content and the game takes off in crazy directions that we never even imagined!

It could even be possible to allow mod creators to somehow sell their mods in-game and get paid in real money, maybe through PayPal or something. That is a thought for another day though, and not a current actual plan.

Conclusion
These are my current thoughts on MC2 as of this day. Like I said, nothing is set in stone yet and everything is subject to change. I wanted to put everything out there so that the community knows what page I am on and where I am headed, and has time to stop me if I am about to drive over a cliff.

Remember that I am open to all feedback, so if you have ideas, please don't just be quite about it, or don't just complain about them in a Discord chat somewhere, because I probably will not see them. Part of being a game developer is getting hate e-mail on a regular basis on why my games suck, so believe me that your being critical of the above ideas will not hurt my feelings, and will be nothing new to me.

The whole purpose of doing all of this beforehand is to get real feedback from the community so that MC2 can go in a direction that we all like and we will all have fun playing. Once I start getting into the code, it gets harder and harder to make changes, so if there is something you don't like, now is the time to mention it. Think of all of the things I could not effectively implement in MC1 because they would require massive time-consuming changes to the entire engine. So getting ideas in right now is how we avoid that.

Like MC1, I'm trying to make something fun that I myself want to play, not a game that is going to just nickel and dime players with constant ads and IAPs so I can sit on a yacht somewhere. I think the new decentralized play model will allow the game to outlast the original. Basically, if I get in a wreck and die, the MC1 server will be forever down within a few weeks. With MC2, once players can make their own servers and create their own content right from within the game, what happens to me becomes more irrelevant, which is the way it should be.

Anyway, if you got this far, then thanks for reading my small novel. Please give some thoughts to where you want to see the game go, or discuss it with other players and really think about all of the concepts I laid out here. I want to start working on the game soon, maybe as early as mid-next month. I plan to start with the world-generating engine and the in-game building creation tools first, so people can start testing that out and seeing what it is like to make their own content.

So between now and then, if any of the above ideas are way off the mark, I need to know now. So think about it, let me know, and thanks for helping me create the follow-up to My Colony. I think it's going to be fun!

Hello guys!

In this era of first extensive colonization, there must be lots of stuff to be pioneered in a colony. Management system will be one of them, of course. Define what to do and not to do, achieve efficiency and success.
Basic policies are unlocked once the Governor's Office has been built and is functional in the colony, just like the consulate in MC1.
However, the remaining policies, has to be unlocked through researches. Each policy has their required technology respectively (instead of buildings in MC1).

Before going into the actual policies, I'll first introduce the related technologies of the policies.

Related Technologies

• Localised Clock
  The day-night cycle on your planet you colonized can be largely different from that on Earth. This research will help obtaining a reasonable local clock for the colony through some calculations, allow the colony to establish an efficient timetable for workshifts.
• Basic Adminstration
  To run a colony smoothly it cannot goes without a management system. By studying the colony environment and using our existing knowledge, a basic administration can be established.
• Emergency Response System
  It is always important to prepare for any possible emergencies. From establishing a prediction mechanism to finding ways to respond adverse events, these can reduce the loss in your colony during hard times.
• Colony Security
  You cannot get rid of all troublemakers away from your colony. Establishing a security system can keep your colony safe from rampaging native aliens and saboteurs from other rivals.
• Repatriation Mechanism
  Not all people are needed by the colony, some kinds of colonists can be problematic if they are in overwhelming numbers. Repatriating them back to Earth, or find another colony to accept them, can be a good choice without breaking moral conduct.
• Convict Workers (example faction exclusive)
  Exclusive technology from Red Satellites Treaty Union.
  In case there are not enough labours in your colony, there is another choice provided by the Union - The convicts. These cheaper labours, although they require extra security control, they are cheap to hire, working for the colony to redeem their crimes until the end of their sentence.
• Native Diplomacy
  We are not the only smartest being on the alien planets, sometimes you will encounter native species. Finding ways to communicate and deal with the natives can help the colony access to precious resources needed.
• Inquisition (example faction exclusive)
  Exclusive technology from Brotherhood of Polaris.
  Since the faith is the only power that keeps the Brotherhood together, the faith should be protected at all cost. Establishing Inquisitors will keep the colonists questions nothing about our faith.

These are my ideas so far.
If you have some better ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments! :D

Oh boy! Today I am publishing the v0.19.0 patch for My Colony 2 which should be hitting all platforms over the coming days. This is by far the biggest update to My Colony 2 yet, featuring significant changes both under and... above(?) the hood. Given the scope of the changes, I would expect some issues to crop up, so please file those bug reports here in the forum. In the mean time, lets take a look at what's new in this release!


The first and biggest change to the game is the addition of the new Mod Shop, which you can access from the title screen if you are a Premium user and signed in using an Ape Apps Account. You can consider the Mod Shop to be very beta at this point, and there is still a lot of work to do. I do not yet have auto updating working for mods, and I still need to build out detailed Mod pages that let you leave feedback to the Mod developer. I also suspect that Total Conversion type mods might not work as planned from the Mod Shop yet, but the basic framework is now there and operational at least.


Mods can now be activated and deactivated from the Play Game menu. If you download a mod from the Mod Shop and want to add it to your game, click on the Settings gear icon next to your saved game, and select "Manage Mods" to add and remove mods to your file. If the Manage Mods option does not show up, then play your save, save it, and try again, because the option will not show for older saves that are not using the latest file format.


The next update is going to involve cleaning up, improving and fixing things wrong with the Mod Shop, so please let me know about all Mod Shop related issues that you discover, because I really think that the Mod Shop has the potential to be a great game changer for My Colony 2 going forward, unlocking access to way more content than could ever be added to the game by a single developer.

On the subject of mods, this update includes a complete and total rewrite to the way in which mods are saved and loaded, and there is a strong potential that Modded games created before v0.19.0 may now be broken, so if that is the case for you, then I apologize. Sadly, the massive changes were necessary though. I suspect that Total Conversion mods might currently be broken, although I have not verified that as of yet.

There is a big change that Mod authors need to be aware of in this update as well. If you mod makes changes to the Metadata object in the game, there is a new Game Identifier field. Saved game files are now associated to this identifier, and unless your mod is a Total Conversion mod, it's Meta object should have the same Game Identifier id as the base My Colony 2 game. Otherwise, save files using your Mod will no longer show up in the saved game list. So if you have a mod that makes changes to the Meta object, and it's not a Total Conversion, make sure it uses the same Game Identifier as the base game ( which is: a999fe76-ff1c-5935-e365-755089ba8982 ). Likewise, if you are making a Total Conversion mod, your mod should NOT use the base game identifier.

This update also introduces a significant rewrite to the way games are saved and loaded. It turns out, that if you were signed in using an Ape Apps Account, almost all of your saved games have been synced to the Ape Apps Cloud since the first release of My Colony 2. You may therefore see a bunch of old saves in your game listing the first time you load up v0.19.0 that you might not have known still existed. You should now be able to delete those old saves, and they will also be removed from the cloud. The game was actually loading all of this old saved data each time it opened, so if you delete old games that are no longer being used, your My Colony 2 startup times should be greatly improved.

Moving on, the internal game server has also undergone a massive overhaul, removing all web browser specific functions and logic from the code. This was done so that I could create a command line based dedicated server application, which had previously not been possible since some of the code in the game server itself could only be run in a web browser context. This change will not be very noticeable to the end user, but was a pretty big effort on my part, and will enable the creation of a separate dedicated server application, which will allow 24/7 cloud based My Colony 2 servers in the (hopefully not too distant) future.

Next up, units in the game can now be scaled. Modders will see the new scaling option in the Unit editor. This change also applies to colonists, which are now scaled to a more realistic size for the first time ever in My Colony history! And speaking of colonists, worlds that theoretically have a breathable atmosphere will now be able to use My Tokens characters as colonists models, which can now be seen on the Water World and the Desert World, giving a nice variety to the game.


And speaking of Colonists, you can now take control of them and walk around your settlement! Click on a colonist to enter the new Player mode, to get up close and personal to your base. There isn't much to this feature yet, but in my opinion it comes with huge potential, especially for modders to create totally different types of games on the back of the My Colony 2 engine. Try it out, let me know what you think, and throw out some suggestions of ways this cool new mode can be expanded!


You may notice that the graphics in My Colony 2 are a bit "cleaner" than they were prior to v0.19.0. I didn't even realize it until working on this update, but the anti-aliasing engine was completely broken in Scroll3d. Anyway, it works now and you should be able to notice a subtle difference in the visuals of the game.

I have started to add more detailed building-level statistics to the game. Now when you select a building, there is a stats button that you can click on to expand additional information about the structure, including items like workers and production levels. More will be coming to this expanded interface in the future.


Speaking of statistics, both the World and Settlement level statistics screen have been updated. And there are now settlement level penalties for not having enough Food, Medical, Entertainment, Security, and Education. Settlements now also have a separate "Overall Health" stat, not to be confused with the Medical stat. The Medical tells you what your settlement's medical coverage is, but the Overall Health also takes into effect things like food/water shortages, homelessness, etc. When the overall health gets to low, people will now start to die, so make sure to stay on top of that. You also now have an approval rating for each settlement, which is derived from all statistical factors.

Staying on the topic of statistics, the GDP calculation has now been fixed, as it was previously borked and often showing negative numbers. If you have an already existing colony, it will take a few cycles for your GDP to fix itself, as the game does not go back in time and fix the historical numbers that were calculated using the old, broken calculation.

Moving on, Gifting has now been added to the game! Gifting is done from settlement to settlement, and your gift capacity is determined by the number of Trading Depots you have in your settlement. To gift, make sure your camera is in a settlement that you want to gift from. Then open statistics, and choose the settlement you wish to gift to. After that, the process is fairly straightforward. This should be a big help to multiplayer games.


I have begun expanding the Encyclopedia to include information on Units and Game Contributors. There isn't much there on those sections yet, although I did add an in-game way to send a donation of Ape Coins to the various game contributors who have helped make My Colony 2 what it is today, if you wish to say "thank you" for their efforts.

Some of the existing structures have been modified in this release. The Greenhouse Park will now slowly generate trace amounts of Wood, making Wood available to all map types now. The Warehouse storage capacities have been expanded. The Expansion Barge can no longer be built at the Watercraft Station (there is a new larger water construction yard now for the barge). The Internet Relay Booth now generates a small amount of Research, giving a research head start before players are able to build the Small Research Lab. The output of the Ore Fraking Operation and the Gold Synthesis lab have been increased. The existing Landing Field has been replaced by the smaller Landing Pad, using updated models provided by @GeneralWadaling . I think there were more changes too, but I don't recall them all at the moment.

There are some new Ancient ruins to be found on the Abandoned World, which you will see if you scroll around the map, remnants of a time when the Ancients once controlled the galaxy. There are even some "H Blocks" inspired from the ruins of Pumapunku!


Let's move on to the new content added to the game. Model contributors for this release (besides myself, of course) I believe include @GeneralWadaling , @DoYouHaveAnyOats , and @spamdude . If there are others and I forgot to mention you, then I'm sorry! It's not personal! 😳

Firstly, the new technologies of Advanced Chemical Synthesis, Low Gravity Oil Production, and Advanced Charcoal Production have been added to the game. With these additions bring two new resources into the fold, which are Oil and Plastic (as you might have guessed).

Many of the new structures in this update directly benefit the Water World, although all planet types are benefited to some degree. The new Micro Nursery allows you to get more Trees early game, before you are able to move off of your initial island. That is complimented by the Gold Extractor, which is a slow but easy way to get Gold in the game early on, which was also traditionally difficult on the Water World. Once you advance, there is a new Tree Farm for producing trees at a faster rate, without needing to continually expand and harvest. The new Construction Quay is a larger off-shore ship yard for building larger sea craft, and the new Small Offshore Drill will allow you to extract different minerals, including Oil, from the bottom of the sea. On the Military side of things, there is a new Patrol Boat which is basically like a water based version of the current Infantry unit.


The Landing Field has been moved further down the tech tree, and is replaced by the smaller early game Landing Pad. There is a new Wood Grower for generating more wood, an Oil Tank for storing Oil, and a Synthetic Oil Lab for creating Oil out of Food. Once you have Oil, you can convert it into Plastic using the new Plastic Factory. You can also get a small amount of Plastic from the new Recycling Center.

I think that is all of the new content, although I might have missed something. Looking forward though, now that we have Oil and Plastic in the game, it might be time to introduce Robotics in to the mix, and start going down that branch of the tech tree, so stay tuned for all of that.

At the end of the day, there were so many under the hood changes to this update, that something is bound to be broken. Please be on the lookout and let me know what issues you find. I have been working on this update for the better part of two months, so it is entire possible that I started working on a mechanic weeks ago, and forgot to finish it up. All in all though, I think this is a fair update to the game, and I hope you guys like it!

My Colony 2 v0.19.0 is available now on the Web, Launcher, and Windows Store, and will hopefully be hitting Google Play and the App Store within the next few days, depending on app store review times (even Android requires review now too). So stay tuned for that, let me know what you think, and stay tuned for more in the weeks and months ahead!

https://www.apewebapps.com/my-colony-2/

#mycolony2

bastecklein said:I haven't developed any "lore" yet exactly, but I do consider My Colony to fit in to the "universe" of a few of my other games, and that gives it some slight backstory. I have also thought of the timeline of these games and where everything fits in.

The games are Deimos, End of the Earth, Sarge, My Colony, the upcoming Death 3d, the upcoming High Noon, and the upcoming Colony Wars. If somebody wanted to play them in a chronological order, it would roughly be like this:

1. High Noon (half)
2. Deimos
3. Sarge
4. End of the Earth
5. High Noon (half)
6. My Colony
7. Death 3d
8. Colony Wars

The positioning of My Colony is not hard set, because it doesn't necessarily have a story line and can really fit in anywhere, but I put it before Death 3d because the Zolarg and the LIS are both known to United Earth by the time of Death 3d.

The basic universe centers around a future (don't know the exact year, but it is later than 2050) where all of the countries of earth have been absorbed into the United Earth, which is joint ruled between the United Earth General Assembly and the President of United Earth. There is a military wing of the United Earth called the United Earth Space Marines, among whom Sarge and his squad are heralded as legends by the citizens of earth.

Sometime before the events of Deimos, a breakaway faction calling themselves the League of Independent States decided to declare independence from United Earth. The U.E. does not yet formally recognize their independence, and they are currently in a sort of cold war, which will be going hot starting in Death 3d (to be released before christmas) and in the game Colony Wars I am currently planning, which will be a real time strategy game based on a modified My Colony engine that I hope to release next year. The basic story in Colony Wars is that U.E. and LIS go to war, and then shortly after the Zolarg invade.

Also next year will be releasing High Noon RPG which will be the final chapter in the 'Deimos' story line and takes place in both the "present" (the 'future' present) and in the 1880's, and will also shed further light on the 'Ancient Aliens' who left artifacts in My Colony.

As for the Zolarg, they gained independence from a currently unknown race many years ago, and were freed by an insectoid named Zolarg, which is what their civilization is named after, who was named Emperor after freeing his fellow insects. They will soon be launching an invasion of United Earth and the LIS in the Colony Wars game.

So that is where the story basically stands right now. It is not very fleshed out, just enough for the purpose of the games.

Woah woah woah woah woah woah WOAH! btw new game colony wars WOAH, will it become a thing?

After several weeks of work and dealing with a suspension from Google Play, My Colony is back with patch v0.98.0, the Zolarg Update! The Zolarg have long lagged behind the Human races in terms of content, and they are still behind with this patch, but the gap is closing, and will continue to close in the months ahead. But this is a good step in the right direction, as this update adds 20 new structures to the Zolarg lineup, as well as a couple of new techs and units, and access to the Abandoned World map. There are a couple of other goodies thrown into the mix as well, so let's take a look at what is new!

Firstly, My Colony is now available to players on the Kongregate platform, which you can find by clicking here. So if you get a new commonwealth member who plays on Kongregate, be sure to welcome them to the My Colony family!


Next up, there has been a long-standing bug related to Entertainment, Medical, and Education stats on certain buildings. This was only reported by certain players, but after finally isolating the bug, I believe more people were probably experiencing the issue, even if they did not realize it. Essentially, a certain condition would lead to a routine in the code that was supposed to check if a building had more guests/students/patients than the building allows, and instead of a greater than symbol in the code, I had accidentally typed an equals sign, which was altering the in-memory game definition for the building class in question, changing the number of guests/students/patients that the game thought the building allowed. This would actually have far reaching effects throughout the entire colony, making entertainment buildings think they did not accept guests, and so on. The game would be fine again once the game definitions were reloaded from memory, but would get messed up again during gameplay.

So anyway, that bug is now fixed. Things like that are easy to miss when there are tens of thousands of lines of code to deal with! Really though, the impact should have been pretty deep on most colonies, so do not be surprised if there are changes to the way the simulation runs now going forward.

I have made a tweak to the existing Zolarg Customs Processing structure, increasing the rate that it receives tourists by about 2.5x. It was just taking forever for new Tourists to arrive on Zolarg maps, and there was no real reason why the building needed to be so slow to begin with.

So now we move on to the new Zolarg content. Since there is so much, I am just going to list everything out and then offer an overview in the following commentary.

New Techs

• Mega Construction
• Insectoid Dominion

New Units

• Regobug
• Etherbug

New Structures

• Polished Water Vats
• House of Running Rum
• Labor Camp
• Megamound
• Potterbug's Mound
• Deluxe Command
• Unholy Tower of Stuff
• Glazed Mound
• Smart Power Spire
• Quantum Slab of Processing
• Quantum Wet Cone
• Quantum Circuit Foundry
• Unholy Gold Grower
• Crystalline Growth Chamber
• Tower of Truth
• Antanium Blast Furnace
• Ether Powertube
• Designated Swim Area
• Regolith Incinerator
• Pot of Ether

To start with, I wanted to address some of the long-standing complaints with Zolarg maps. One of the big ones was the super low giftcap as compared to other civs. With that in mind, Zolargs have gained another upgrade to their Capitol structure, the Deluxe Command.


This brings the Zolarg gift capacity up to 500,000,000, which I believe is reasonably sufficient for any colony. Likewise with storage, Zolarg get another large boost with the upgraded Unholy Tower of Stuff, which has a capacity of 3,500,000 for most goods.

For power generation, Zolarg gain two new power plants, the upgraded Smart Power Spire and the new Ether Powertube. The Ether Powertube is the most powerful, offering 12,000 power generation, but it requires Ether to operate. This is no problem on the Abandoned World map which the Zolarg can now populate, but the structure will otherwise require receiving a gift of Ether or purchasing it from the GBT. There will be more Ether specific structures coming to the other civs as well, and I plan on adding other map-specific resources to other planets too, as I have previously outlined a few months ago.

For those who can't get Ether though, the also-new Smart Power Spire still offers 3,500 power generation, making it no slouch either. Realistically, it would only take a handful of Smart Power Spires to run a full medium sized map.

Zolarg can now be played on the Abandoned World map, which required the addition of the new Regobug and Etherbug, as well as the ability to convert Regolith into Ore using the new Regolith Incinerator.


Now I would rate a Zolarg Abandoned World as "not for beginners," as without proper management, you will quickly run into shortages of Food, Water, and Sugar right off the bat. Ore production is also expensive in terms of Sugar and Regolith, at least until you unlock other Ore generation methods. It is the only map though where Ether can be obtained (for any civ), and it should be fully playable once you get past the initial stages.

Zolarg Alien Tech gets a boost in this update, with much needed "quantum" upgrades for several existing structures. Zolarg also gain Pottery production, automated Wood harvesting (through the new Labor Camp), and automated Crystalline generation (through the Crystalline Growth Chamber). All of these changes make running a Zolarg resource farm a lot less of a chore than it was before.

Obviously there is still a lot more to do with Zolarg, but this update does make it a lot better. Once Zolarg are up to speed on most of the resource generating buildings, they will also need to be filled out with regular diversity type buildings. Things Humans have that make a colony not look so uniform and bland, multiple ways to create and use resources in different combinations. This will all come, it just takes a bit of time!

So there is still a lot more coming for Zolarg in the future, but not in the next update. v0.99.0 will be focusing on the Reptilians, and they will be getting a similar "shot in the arm" that the Zolarg just got in this release. Following that, My Colony will finally be hitting v1.0.0, and I am going to finally stop calling it Beta. I figure after 100 feature updates and countless platform-specific bug updates (152 on Android alone), the game can finally be referred to as 1.0, lol.

To celebrate the 100th feature release of My Colony, I plan on doing a special public edition of the My Colony podcast, where anybody in the community will be free to join me for the recording session, as we discuss the past 3 1/2 years of My Colony and talk about the future! I am either going to use Discord for the recording, or embed recording and group voice capabilities into the My Colony streaming mechanism and record the Podcast while I stream gameplay. I haven't decided yet, but after research, I think adding the capabilities to the site would be trivial. It's just a matter of whether or not I want to take the time to implement them :-/

So anyway, that is all for today's update. It should be rolling out to all platforms over the coming days, so be on the lookout! As always, leave your feedback and suggestions, and stay tuned, because there is a whole lot more My Colony to come!

I generally save posts in the Updates section of the forum for My Colony release notes, but the upcoming update (which I will hopefully be releasing before this weekend) introduces some major changes to the game engine which people should be aware of, particularly those with large single-city (non-region) maps.

Firstly, I had originally said that the main update to v1.0.0 was going to consist of online leaderboards and that sort of stuff. Once I started coding on it though, one small engine tweak here and there ended up leading to another, then another, then another, and before I knew it I had rewritten significant parts of the underlying game engine. At this point, I have used up so much of my time on engine updates that trying to implement the leaderboard stuff would push the update back until mid-January, since I am going to be traveling soon for the Holidays and will not have any time to work on My Colony.

The core of the engine changes will be explained in detail in the release notes, but I wanted everybody to be aware of several issues that will effect players, particularly those with large colonies.

Age

My Colony always kept track of colonists' age internally, but because of the way the game simulated colonists prior to v1.0.0, almost every single colonist was stuck in the 18-35 year old age range. Starting with My Colony v1.0.0, a new Birth/Death model has been added to the game, where colonists will now age properly, have children, and eventually die. Life expectancy is based on a variety of factors (mostly medical access).

Colonists can give birth when they are between 16 and 40 years old. For a new colony this is fine, but consider an existing colony, particularly a large one with several hundred thousand colonists or more. You will be starting out with a huge group of colonists in birthing range, so you will experience something of a baby-boom right at the beginning. However, these colonists will begin aging, and will eventually all retire and ultimately die at the same time. New births will also quickly taper off once the initial group of colonists moves out of the starting range.

For brand new colonies, I do not expect this to be much of an issue, as populations will start out small and the distribution will be more evenly spread out. But for the existing colony, there might be some issues associated with the Demographic Cliff that your colony might find itself falling off of (Perhaps My Colony is a preview for Japan/Europe).

Now ultimately, I do not believe that this will be as big of an issue as it seems, at least not the death part. Pretty much all large colonies already have the ability to scale up population quickly if needed, using Cloning Vats, Star Gates, and the like. New immigrants and new clones all show up to the colony in the 18-35 age range, so I do believe that any massive loss or mishap can be quickly corrected with little effort. If you know how to grow a colony into the 6-figure population range, you probably already know how to get new colonists fast.

A bit more complicated is the retirement part of the equation, however this also may not be as bad as it seems. With other changes to this update, productivity output is (in most cases) significantly higher than it was before, and a large non-working population can pretty easily be sustained by a smaller working population, particularly in late-game which is where most people will be who are impacted by the demographics issue. You just need to have more housing now than you would of had to before non-working minors and retired people were a part of the mix, but I think that this is a reasonable and realistic feature for a game such as this.

Amenities

The other large factor coming in this update is the increased need for amenities, like Education, Medical, and Entertainment. Before, these things were more of an afterthought, and you really didn't need them to keep your colonists happy. Now they are an important part of the game. You will need to have sufficient Education, Medical, and Entertainment facilities within range of your housing in order to keep your colonists happy and healthy.

Work Range

Simply put, after v1.0.0, colonists will not travel more than 50 tiles distance from their home to get to work. There isn't a lot more to say on this, but you might need to look at the layout of your city and make sure things are in the right place to account for this change.

Why the Changes?

Although I will go over this in great detail in the full patch notes, I believe that after the initial shock of the changes, most players will think this update is a major step forward. I can tell you from the testing I have done so far on colonies of all types and sizes, I have found overall game performance to be improved across the board, for pretty much every colony type and scenario. Running a 200x200 map with almost 300k colonists and virtually no lag is a fairly enjoyable experience.

The new engine updates are also going to lead to a couple of features that have been long sought after by the My Colony community - Mass Transit and Crime.

The changes also offer a significant reduction to game save file sizes, which should reduce the occurrence of save file corruptions (which are usually caused by failed cloud-sync).

Again, I will go over everything in more detail in the patch notes, but please be aware of what is coming!

The My Colony Universe website uses the same base code as the main Ape Apps site (the site you are on right now), but has been lingering for months on an older build of the code. As a result, a lot of things on the site were just broken, one of which being the entire Comics section of the site.

As of now, both this site and the My Colony Universe have been migrated to the latest code, and this brings improvements all around, but particularly to the aforementioned Comics functionality.

https://www.my-colony.com/viewpage.php?p=comics

The Comics section will now display each available comic book in "book cover" format. In addition though, there have been major upgrades to the Print layout for a comic book. I had originally envisioned that a reader, if he or she wanted, would be able to print a comic book out using their own printer. Now when you are inside a comic book (see the Deimos Comic for example) and choose to Print from your browser, all extraneous site information is hidden and you are given a clean comic header including title and page number (for best effect, you should turn off the browser provided headers and footers). The pages are formatted to come out right on either US Letter or A4 paper sizes in portrait mode.


Anyway, the Comics section is currently not very utilized, but I do plan to eventually have the entire Deimos trilogy story on there, as well as the Death 3D story, and probably some other My Colony related stores as well. The comics are built using characters from My Tokens, but can also be made using any custom artwork, as seen from @GeneralWadaling 's comic The Ancient Archives. In addition, anybody with an Ape Apps Account should be able to create their own My Colony Universe fan comic in the Comics section at My Colony Universe.

And coming to the My Colony website next week, something awesome for all My Colony 2 modders, but stay tuned for that.....

#deimos #mycolony #mycolonyuniverse #mytokens

I know that many are anxiously waiting the next updates to My Colony 1 and 2, so since they are still a little ways off, I thought I would share with everyone what their current status is, and what my plans are going forward!

First, the reason for the lack of updates this month is that I have created a new Google Play account called My Colony Universe to house all of the games in (you guessed it) the My Colony Universe, so that everything is combined together and easy for players to find. Since the titles were spread out across three different accounts, it took me some time to get everything transferred over, as each transfer request takes several days and must (I assume) be done manually by employees at Google.

Going forward though, all My Colony related content on Android is available on the same Google Play account which you can view here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=6753488031908307666

While I was waiting for the transfers though, I started the process of going back and updating my entire catalogue of apps and games so that they all target the latest versions of Android/iOS/Windows and run the latest SDK's and so on. This has been a slow-ish process, and I expect it to take me most of the rest of the month, but it is important work to do, since the My Colony games themselves do not generate all that much revenue, and are largely subsidized by the rest of my catalogue of apps and games. For that reason, it is important to keep the other titles up to date and functioning properly on the latest mobile hardware, and since some of my apps I had not touched in several years, time was well overdue to go through and complete this process.

Next, let's look at the future plans for the original My Colony. I do not know if it will be ready for the next update or not (really depends on GirlyGamerGazell's timeline), but the next big content update to the game will be the completion of the Dark Matter update. This will probably be the last really big content update that MC1 receives, other than a regular stream of weekly premium structures. I really want to focus my time for new content and features into My Colony 2 which has really begun to mature over the last few updates, so that is what I will be doing. Rest assured though, MC1 will continue to receive updates on a regular basis to fix things that need fixed and to stay current for the latest devices and whatnot.

I am also going to be making a change to the Challenges system, as it turns out that it is a lot of work for me to keep coming up with new challenges on a daily basis. Instead, every day the MC server is going to automatically generate a new daily challenge using a random resource, this way I do not have to keep coming up with challenges and logos manually. In addition, randomly throughout the day, the server may generate a 1-2 hour long "snap challenge," which I think should give more players a chance to gain trophies.

As the challenge system goes on, it may make sense to implement something like "seasons" where all trophies reset after a time. There can be a record of course of which players/federations won each season. But at some point it might get to where first place is so far ahead on trophies that nobody can even catch up.

Anyway, you guys can let me know what you think of the system. Remember that challenges are completely optional, and while some people have expressed disdain for the system, many others seem to really like it, so it will be staying around for sure, and might even come to MC2 as well.

Now on to My Colony 2, which is going to have a big year in 2023. A lot of new features/fixes/and mechanics have come to MC2 over the last few updates, bringing it closer to being on par with the original. That is going to continue, and it will eventually far surpass MC1 in terms of "stuff to do."

First, I have done some work behind the scenes over the last couple of weeks on the server side of things, mostly aimed at improving MC2 dedicated servers. I noticed that when running an MC2 dedicated server for several days, what would happen is that the user's account token would expire, and then all game saves to Cloud Sync would fail due to an expired token. Thus the next time the server was rebooted, several days of game data would be lost. This issue should now be fixed on the web app version of My Colony 2, so it now should be safe to run an MC2 dedicated server using the web browser for days on end with Cloud Sync enabled. I currently have three servers running at my house to put this theory to the test.

To further help with dedicated servers, I am going to be adding an automatic daily backup for all public dedicated server games directly to the My Colony 2 server (which is on different hardware than the Cloud Sync server) which server owners will be able to restore from in the event of a catastrophe. Perhaps I will retain the last several days worth of backups that an owner can restore from.

Since I noticed there has been a lot more MC2 dedicated server activity lately, I wanted to make sure that this system is as solid as I can make it, so more improvements will be coming to it as time goes on.

In terms of new content, the next MC2 update will be fairly large, as I am pleased to report there have been quite a few new model submissions on the Discord server and elsewhere, so there is a lot of exciting content coming soon to MC2.

I am also going to be making a way for people to submit the link to their custom News Feed servers, so that the game will come standard with several that players can choose from.

I would like to also finally release MC2 to Steam in 2023, which I know is something some people have been asking/waiting for. Before it gets there, I want the game to have sound effects and a music track. I have already compiled a few original tunes for the game using Garageband, but I am no musical expert, so if anyone out there wants to take a stab at creating some songs for MC2, please feel free to do so!

Big things are going to be coming to the Player mode in My Colony 2 (the mode where you become a little colonist and walk around). I sort of have a vision in my mind where MC2 is kind of two types of games in one, the city builder type game that it already is, and something of an adventure/role playing game using the Player mode, except that the universe you play in consists of the network of online dedicated servers built by other players. I am thinking that the Star Gate from MC1 needs to return, but this time it will act as a means for players to travel from planet to planet in player mode in order to adventure, complete quests/missions, find items, or just explore other worlds from that perspective. I have spent some time just walking around some MC2 worlds in the VR mode, and it is pretty cool, but would be far more so if there was actually something to do besides just look.

Basically, each player/account is going to have one player mode avatar on the entire universe server, instead of a different guy for each world. You will have a "home" planet that you can respawn on if you die or if the server you are currently on goes offline. You will have stats/inventory and be able to party up/communicate with other players. You will be able to visit other worlds via Star Gates, even if you do not have a settlement on that world. When you are in building mode, you will be able to see Player Mode people as they come through your star gate, and so really you can build some kind of special welcoming area/lobby in your world around your Star Gate. Maybe buildings will be added that you can build that have specific functions for player mode. The game will also generate some NPC type characters in each settlement that players can interact with or get quests from. You will be able to do some sort of prospecting/mining, and maybe each world will have unique materials that you can only obtain in player mode. There are a lot of options.

Player Mode characters will also be able to control vehicles, whether driving/air/water vehicles, as well as combat type vehicles. There are a lot of options. Players will also be able to fight each other if they choose to do so.

So that is sort of my idea for the "two games in one" approach to MC2. Although the classic My Colony style of play will always be the primary mode, I think realtime multiplayer and dedicated server model that MC2 has unlocks the ability to add the cool secondary mode that can potentially add replay value to the game for years to come, and also open the world up to players who maybe don't care about the building aspect of the game, but would have fun adventuring through worlds that others have built up.

So those are the 2023 plans for MC2. Content and feature wise, I want it to be close to on par with MC1 United Earth faction, with the added bonus of infinite world sizes, real time online multiplayer, and a network of worlds that are truly connected. On top of that, I want to start adding a secondary adventure game to the mix that players can interact and explore in, whether on a PC, touch screen, TV/gamepad, or in VR. Finally, I want the polish and presentation to get to a point where the game is ready for Steam. I think all of these updates will add up to some exciting times ahead for MC2!

Just as an aside, I also plan to keep updating Colony Wars throughout the year, I have not forgotten about that game. At some point also, Terra Nova 4X will become a thing, I just need to find the time to work on it!

#mycolony #mycolony2

Today I am releasing the v1.28.0 patch for the original My Colony, and it represents a significant under-the-hood transition of the game, moving away from the Web App Core framework and on to it's own server and domain.


So a few weeks ago, My Colony 2 was transitioned over to it's own domain, and today the original My Colony gets the same treatment. Players of the Web App version of My Colony 1 will need to update their bookmarks or uninstall/reinstall their PWA's to point to the new home of MC1 online:

https://mycolony.online/

On top of the URL change, the actual backend game server was also migrated over to new hardware. This change actually took place about a week ago, and since I have not seen any complaints or issues in relation to it yet, I assume that it has gone smoothly.

The original My Colony had a ton of hooks and references in the code to the old Web App Core library, and so there may be some bugs in there that I have not yet found or things I missed in making the migration. Please use this thread to post about any issues you find. If all goes well, I will use the code base of this release to migrate Antiquitas over to it's own server next.

Beyond the migration, the only major change in this release is that players on the Steam version of MC1 are now able to make Ape Coin purchases through their Steam account. Prior to this release, Ape Coin IAP's were disabled on Steam, but it should now be working without issue.

The Future of My Colony 1

I want to take a moment just to dispel any notions that people may have about new future techs or structures coming to the original My Colony. Simply put, there is no new content planned for My Colony 1, and no new game features are planned either. The only things that will be added to the game going forward are limited run premium structures. All future content development for My Colony is focused on My Colony 2.

This does not mean that the game has reached "end of life." It will stay live and available to play indefinitely, and the servers will remain online, operational and updated until I get hit by a bus and die. However, all of the cool new content and features are coming to My Colony 2, as I simply do not have time to focus on both games, and the MC2 engine allows for far greater gameplay and development potential anyway.

I will probably do a new episode of the My Colony Podcast later this week to discuss some of the cool new features coming to My Colony 2 over the coming months, so stay tuned for that.

Anyway, that is today's update in a nutshell. Try it out and let me know what issues you find. The update is live right now on the Web and the Ape Apps Launcher, and should be hitting all other platforms over the coming days.

https://mycolony.online/

#mycolony

I haven't developed any "lore" yet exactly, but I do consider My Colony to fit in to the "universe" of a few of my other games, and that gives it some slight backstory. I have also thought of the timeline of these games and where everything fits in.

The games are Deimos, End of the Earth, Sarge, My Colony, the upcoming Death 3d, the upcoming High Noon, and the upcoming Colony Wars. If somebody wanted to play them in a chronological order, it would roughly be like this:

1. High Noon (half)
2. Deimos
3. Sarge
4. End of the Earth
5. High Noon (half)
6. My Colony
7. Death 3d
8. Colony Wars

The positioning of My Colony is not hard set, because it doesn't necessarily have a story line and can really fit in anywhere, but I put it before Death 3d because the Zolarg and the LIS are both known to United Earth by the time of Death 3d.

The basic universe centers around a future (don't know the exact year, but it is later than 2050) where all of the countries of earth have been absorbed into the United Earth, which is joint ruled between the United Earth General Assembly and the President of United Earth. There is a military wing of the United Earth called the United Earth Space Marines, among whom Sarge and his squad are heralded as legends by the citizens of earth.

Sometime before the events of Deimos, a breakaway faction calling themselves the League of Independent States decided to declare independence from United Earth. The U.E. does not yet formally recognize their independence, and they are currently in a sort of cold war, which will be going hot starting in Death 3d (to be released before christmas) and in the game Colony Wars I am currently planning, which will be a real time strategy game based on a modified My Colony engine that I hope to release next year. The basic story in Colony Wars is that U.E. and LIS go to war, and then shortly after the Zolarg invade.

Also next year will be releasing High Noon RPG which will be the final chapter in the 'Deimos' story line and takes place in both the "present" (the 'future' present) and in the 1880's, and will also shed further light on the 'Ancient Aliens' who left artifacts in My Colony.

As for the Zolarg, they gained independence from a currently unknown race many years ago, and were freed by an insectoid named Zolarg, which is what their civilization is named after, who was named Emperor after freeing his fellow insects. They will soon be launching an invasion of United Earth and the LIS in the Colony Wars game.

So that is where the story basically stands right now. It is not very fleshed out, just enough for the purpose of the games.

These would be four separate games based on My Colony. Will not be in the actual MC app, as they go against the basis of My Colony

My Colony Survival Edition:
You start out with a Red Planet base and a large lander with 160 people. They are there because they were chosen to be the last survivors of Earth from a huge disaster.
Gamplay: This will not be a very casual play as there will be random events and disasters. You will manage your colonists more (less people = more emotions/detail), and most of the buildings will be temporary, as the lander will quickly disappear. To win the game you have to keep 75% of your colonists for 5 in-game years and research permanent colonies and terraforming by then.
Based off of the CBS show "Salvation."

My Colony Competition Edition:
This will be a Multiplayer/PvP version of My Colony.
Set-up: Once you start-up the game, you will come to a My Colony like screen. You click new map and you have the options of Offline and Online. Offline is you versus a computer generated opponent(s). Online takes you to New Map and Existing. Existing are premade maps by other people. Every option pulls up a menu that says "Name, Civilization, Size, Resources, and Number of Players." Civilization choices are UE, LIS, and Zolarg. You can have up to 7 player spots. The rest are the same as My Colony. The maps for each civilization are the same.
Gameplay: Once your map is generated you are given a base that includes a lander/mound with solar panels, ore and gold rovers/bugs, An ore refinery, a gold refinery, a research station, housing, and a storage facility, all engulfed by a wall/fence. There is also a new exploration probe that builds claiming structures and walls and fences and flags. Your goal is to claim all of the bases of the other players. You use the exploration probes to claim more land and protect your holdings. Please add to this.

My Colony Educational Edition:
This will be an educational/accurate version of My Colony.
Gameplay: The design and setup of the game will be the same, but the gameplay will be different. There will be three playable factions, the International Space Agency, the Space Corporation, and the League of Independent States. The ISA gives you a 50% Research increase and a 25% government decrease. The Space Corp. gives you a 50% economic increase and a 25% government decrease. The LIS gives you a 50% government increase and a 25% production decrease. Each faction has the Mars, Moon, Venus, Europa, and Titan maps. They all start with a lander, miners/builders, a solar panel, a water pump, a greenhouse, base resources, and 5 colonists. The resource consumption and production should be as accurate as possible and so will be the terraforming process (pressure, O2, heat, biomass, N2, CO2). The gameplay will be more dynamic and realistic (natural disasters, riots, immigration, etc). Heavy influence from the game TerraGenesis.

My Colony Lite:
Due to My Colony's large file size, slower devices such as Android and lesser know formats can't handle the game anymore. My Colony Lite would be an offline only version of MC. It would be less dynamic and many structures and maps would be missing. The two civilizations would be a generic human and a generic alien. The maps for the humans would be Red Planet, Lunar, and Forest. The alien maps would be Desert, Ice, and Sugarland. Each map is not random, all of the resources and base structures would be in the same spot each time. Online and human alien structures would be missing. No animations nor lighting. One type of road and no super builders. There would be no premium (ad free already). All of these changes make the game much less fun, but still a good game for people who can't handle the large file size and FPS.

This is all I have for now. Please comment and add to this. Thanks!

Hello everyone, I have just finished up work on My Colony v0.69.0, and it will be going out to all devices shortly.

My Colony v0.69.0 is yet another engine stability and bug fix release. In the last changelog, I talked about how My Colony has been basically blacklisted on Google Play due to having a high number of crashes. To combat this, I made several changes to the Android version of the game, including limiting map sizes, removing ads, removing the Galactic Emperor rewards, etc.

Amazingly, these changes had absolutely zero impact on the crash rate of the game. So most of them have been reversed in this update. My Colony v0.69.0 also rolls up two Antiquitas updates worth of engine patches, including a new Engine setting which allows users to disable the multi-threaded path finding engine.

For those who have been playing a long time, way back in v0.40.0, I moved all path finding operations to a separate worker thread in order to improve performance, and at the time it made a pretty big improvement. The only downfall to this was that it cost more RAM usage in order to work, because the games collision map had to be cloned and copied over to the worker thread in order for the pathfinder to be able to use it, since a Javascript object can not be accessed across two different threads. On PCs with a lot of RAM or on smaller maps, this was not such a big deal. On Android though, which restricts RAM available to each app far more than other platforms, it is possibly problematic, particularly on larger maps.

With this change, multi-threaded path finding is now turned off by default on Android only. I am testing to see if this has any impact on the crash rate. The new engine setting option is found at the very bottom of the Engine Settings list if you want to test the difference between the two path finding methods on different platforms. I suspect this might also help the issues some people have when they order a bot to go build something, and it just sits there. I am thinking the path resolution instructions were somehow getting lost in the cross-thread communications. We will see.

In my testing, turning off the multi-threading does not significantly lower performance. Back when I initially implemented the multi-threaded feature, the game calculated every path for every rover and colonist on the map. I have since made changes to where all paths are simulated, unless the unit starting or ending position is within the players viewport, as there was no reason so show an accurate path of a colonist walking from his house to his job if the player is not even going to see it happening.

There were several more bug fixes added that were carried over from the two most recent Antiquitas updates, but the path finding change was the major one, and represented a somewhat significant change in the underlying code, allowing the game to now support either single or multi-threaded operation.

Hopefully some of these changes do something to help the crash rate. My Colony has a crash rate on Android of around 7%. Oddly, Antiquitas, which runs on the exact same code base, has a crash rate of under 1%. Even more strange is the fact that Antiquitas features background music and higher resolution graphics, leading to more RAM consumption over My Colony, yet there are almost no crashes. Also strange is how I get virtually no support emails or forum posts from actual people about My Colony just force closing on Android, yet it is apparently happening to nearly 10% of users.

Regardless, the ongoing issues on Google Play have basically killed My Colony from a business standpoint. The following snippet from My Colony's weekly usage chart shows the exact point Google blacklisted the game on the Play Store:

Ignore the huge drop at the end, as that represents this week which is only half way through. The game has basically leveled off because that is the usage on Web, Desktop, Windows 10, and iPhone. There are essentially no new downloads coming from Android devices at this point, which as you can tell by the chart, amounted to about half of the My Colony userbase.

Here you can see the last 6 months worth of downloads from Google Play:

So anyway, that is where My Colony currently stands on Android. I have not added any new content this time, as I am trying to focus my time on getting the crashes resolved, if there is indeed any way to resolve them. And even if they are resolved, there is no guarantee that Google would ever un-blacklist the game anyway, so there is that.

Regardless though, there is another small change I added to the game this release. It has always bothered me that the regular textile mill was animated, by the synthetic textile mill was not. So I added animation to it!

So that's all for today. Similar to the v0.68.x series of updates, My Colony on Android will probably receive several more updates than the other platforms. It saw a 0.68.1, 0.68.2, 0.68.3, and a 0.68.4 update, and the same may happen with the release. Just trying to get it fixed. Even if the game never returns to profitability, I at least can hopefully get the engine fixed up so that it works properly for the next game.

Thanks for playing, much more to come!

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!

So I am just now putting the finishing touches on My Colony v0.91.0, and the update should be going out to all platforms throughout the weekend. I had originally planned on a bit larger of an update, but since it's already Friday evening and I don't want to spend the weekend working on My Colony, I decided to just go ahead and release what I have now and save the rest for next time! Hope you can forgive me 🤔!!

So this update adds a handful of new features and some more IT related content, mostly for Zolarg and Alpha Draconians, but there is some new human stuff too. There is also a "balancing" change that will probably get me a few "you broke the game" 1 star reviews in the app store, but It will be ok in the long run. I'll explain later, until then let's see what's new!

The first new engine change I made is something that has been requested for quite some time now - a variable volume slider for the in-game sound effects, which you can find in the Engine Settings menu:

So now instead of just on or off, you can set the in-game volume to whatever you want. People have been asking for this since I first added sound effects, so I hope you guys get some use out of it!

Next up, if you look at the statistics window for a specific resource, you will see a new "Trade" icon in the top-right corner, if you are playing an online game and you have the GBT.

This is just a simple shortcut that goes straight to the GBT trading screen for the particular resource you are looking at. I will probably be assigning a keyboard shortcut to this soon also, like press T to open the trading window.

Next, as requested in this thread, the global My Colony chat room is now accessible from within the game. This is the chat channel that is embedded on the my-colony.com website, and can also be accessed by clicking on the below button.

The chat channel is available whether you are playing an online or offline game, as long as you are signed into the game using an Ape Apps Account. And speaking of chat, as requested in this thread, I will probably take a couple of days off early next week to create a dedicated Ape Chat app for Android and iPhone. It's probably not necessary on Windows since the detached chat window is pretty easy to use on Desktop, and the Ape Apps Launcher also has chat built in now.

Moving on, the first time you open your colony in v0.91.0, if you had a bunch of embassies from colonies that are no longer active on the server, you will notice a few moments of explosions, as those embassies are all leveled to the ground. Moving forward, the game now verifies all of your embassies to see if they are attached to working colonies. This change is necessary because I plan on adding a couple of embassy interactions to the game over the next few updates, and they need to be attached to real colonies on the server.

Next up, as of this version, the game now keeps track of a couple of extra stats, including the total amount of hours you have played a specific colony. This stat will appear on your stats screen in the next couple of updates, but for existing colonies, the time is relative to the release of v0.91.0, since this data was not tracked beforehand.

Moving right along, you will now notice that Software is available in the GBT now for trading, so have at it!

Ok, now for the change that some people may get upset about. In the last release notes, I said that I would be going back and adding Software requirements to several existing buildings. Well, I decided to start with the biggest one first. The Robotics Factory and the Advanced Robotics Inc. now require Software to build, but more importantly, Robots now require Software as a building material. For a colony with a lot of Advanced Robotics Inc., this can be a major development, since that particular building pumps out Robots so fast, it will really suck up the Software in order to stay running. There is a new building available to help mitigate this change, but I know a lot of people are going to log in to their colony on v0.91.0 and wonder why all of their Robot production has suddenly ground to a halt. I am prepared for the hate though!

So those are the major changes in v0.91.0, let's move on to what is new. This update mainly brought a bit more Information Technology content to the Zolarg and Alpha Draconian races, but there is one new Human structure and even a brand new Premium bot, since it's been a few months since I've added anything new for the loyal paying customers.

As last time, here is a color coded list of the new structures added with this release, with Black representing Human content, Orange for Zolarg content, and Purple for Alpha Draconian content.

• Center for Automation Coding
• Tower of Thoughts
• Hall of Elders
• Mound of Online Business
• Automated Art Display
• Integrated Antanium Impactor
• Coders Den
• I.T. Studio Complex

In addition, Humans have a new technology, Advanced Networking Infrastructure, which is required for the new I.T. Studio Complex, and humans also have a new Premium-Only bot, the Megabot Deluxe, which is a snazzy gold-plated Megabot with 30x the build speed of the normal Megabot.

So the new I.T. Studio Complex pretty much makes the existing Small Software Studio look like a dumpster fire, as it really spits out the Software like nobody's business. Which is good, because you're going to need it to keep those Advanced Robotics, Inc. up and running. I did a rough(ish) calculation, and it takes about 0.75 I.T. Studio Complex structures to supply 1 Advanced Robotics, Inc., which is a pretty intense ratio. I'm sure at some point there will be an even bigger Software studio, but this is what is available at the moment. If you are not building a ton of Robots though, you will be able to keep the GBT well stocked using this new Software studio.

With the rest of the new structures, all races should now be able to produce at least a modest amount of Software. For the Reptilians, I added an earlier game Automated Art Display for producing a few paintings, as it was otherwise difficult early on to build structures like the Potter's Den and the Galactic Fine Arts Exposition.

All of that said, I still have quite a bit to do in terms of adding Information Technology content, but it is coming along somewhat. It's probably going to take at least a couple of more updates, and then moving forward, Software and Bandwidth will probably be important inputs for new content. I am thinking of adding Ether requirements to some of the later-game I.T. stuff too, but not too much since on most games Ether is only going to be available for online players.

So that is all for today's update. As I mentioned at the beginning, I plan on taking the weekend off here (although I might do a new My Colony Podcast episode if I get bored) and then spending the early part of next week on a new chat client for mobile, then I will be back to work, so keep those helpful bug reports and suggestions coming! And as always, thanks for playing My Colony, and stay tuned for more!

If any of you have ever peeked at the source code of My Colony or many of my other games, you might notice a common script in all of them called scroll2d.js. Back in 2013, I thought it would be neat to create a web browser based game engine that could be used to render and manipulate 2d tile maps in either normal or isometric mode. Scroll2d is the engine I came up with, and My Land was the the original technical demonstration for that engine.

Since then, I have reused that engine in many different projects, including Gone Rogue, My Colony, Musical Kittens, Antiquitas, EZ Composer, Hell and Back, My Starship, Epic Adventure, the map editor in Death 3d, and more. I think it's fair to say that over the last 7 years I have gotten a got bit of mileage out of the engine, but I think it's also fair to say that the engine is a bit dated. From a technical standpoint, I did a lot of things weird in Scroll2d that, if I could redo it all, would have been done a lot differently. The problem is, the engine is used in so many projects I can't really just make huge changes to it without breaking everything.

I have been thinking of this for a while, and I am considering "sunsetting" the Scroll2d engine and all of it's associated projects and moving completely into 3d/WebGL. I am thinking of creating a brand new engine, unimaginatively called Scroll3d, which will offer similar capabilities of scrolling around a map and manipulating tiles, but will be entirely 3d and use 3d models instead of 2d sprite graphics.

Now, when I say "sunsetting," it's not as though I am going to discontinue any of my Scroll2d apps and games. Really, nothing with Ape Apps ever reaches an "end of life" and I will probably support all projects until I fall from the virus or some other tragedy. That said, I do plan on moving all of the current Scroll2d projects down from the priority list and start working on new titles using the new 3d engine.

I currently have two fairly extensive Scroll2d projects that I do plan on completing first before making this switch, Colony Wars and My Empire. I am pretty far along into both projects, so it only makes since to finish them and get them published to the markets.

So all of that said, here is my roadmap going forward for Ape Apps:

1. Complete Colony Wars. This is my current #1 priority project starting now, and pretty much the only thing I am going to be working on until it's done. Time to get this game finished and released.
2. Complete My Empire. As soon as I am done with Colony Wars, I am going to go straight full time into My Empire and get that game done as well.
3. Begin Scroll3d development. I am then going to be moving all attention into creating the new game engine, which will be a combination/mix of everything I have learned over the years between the Scroll2d engine and the Death 3d engine. Of course, the new engine needs its maiden project, and I think that maybe the time is right to start working on:
4. My Colony 2: the first project to be based on the new engine.

Why My Colony 2? Just like Scroll2d, I have learned a lot since I started writing My Colony, and that engine is full of legacy code and strangeness and concepts that I would never even think about today. My Colony 2 is a great opportunity to take all of the best parts of the original, leave out the things that don't work, and bring in new ideas from the suggestions forum that can't be implemented in the current game without overhauling everything anyway.

My Colony 2 is only a concept right now, so all suggestions are on the table. Think of all of the things you wish were in the current My Colony. Ideas that would require a total rewrite of the game are now on the table, because I am literally doing a total rewrite of the game, which will also include a new server. I can make multiplayer that actually works properly if I design the game with multiplayer in mind from the beginning. All units and buildings will be 3d modeled using blender. I don't have a lot of the concepts worked out, but I am thinking that My Colony 2 will only feature United Earth instead of 4 different civs, so I can keep my focus this time.

So anyway, that is what's happening. I plan to finish Colony Wars sometime this month and My Empire next month, and I will then begin work on MC2, which will be built in complete open beta and all feedback and suggestions will be taken into account. So stay tuned for more!

Greetings and salutations prospective colonists.


FIRST AND FOREMOST ORIGINAL COLONY NAMES GET A SUPER STARTER PACK.
JOINING DISCORD MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER.

Join NOZ.

NEW COLONY'S NAMED "MY COLONY" WILL BE (Mostly) IGNORED UNLESS YOU PERSONALLY MSG ME, JOIN DISCORD AND/OR SHOW ACTIVE DEVELOPMENT.

USING PROFANE COLONY NAMES WILL BE TAXED AND -REP TO KINGDOM COME AND KICKED OUT.


I always accept Annex requests regardless of the debts you owe to your tyrannical Overlords.
Now onto the introductions.

I am the Nomad commander of the Desert Nomads
We thrive while others merely survive.

Desert Nomads are the descendants of the early pioneers who first began to explore the far reaches of space, in search of freedom from persecution and the preservation of free will.

Due to the United Earth Commonwealth's corruption and the high leaders trying to subdue and rape their own colony's the Desert Nomads were forced into action thus forming what is now known as the shadow legion by forcibly taking over a (nearly) forgotten pre-war military testing facility located near Groom Lake in what was once the fabled silver state of Nevada.

Today the Desert Nomads have spread their influence all over the galaxy and standing as Peacekeepers and enforcers.

United we stand or separate we shall fall.

Eternal Glory to The Nomads of the Federation
Once a Nomad always a Nomad.

We are dedicated to helping the last few survivors get a self-sustainable colony up and running with minimal early on struggles due to the UEC's domineering tyranny.

To receive your fabulously generous starter join us on discord and sound off on #signup
Additional gifts are given periodically so long as you are active.


The longer you have been in the colony and grown the more likely to be granted more expensive resources eg cloth, uranium, aluminum, and artifacts.

!! ATTENTION!!
Discord makes everything better including my gifts and your My Colony Experience.
!! ATTENTION!!

Emergency food/water supply's always available upon request via in-game or forum msg...honestly, if you get to the point in which your colony is starving the first possible reason is that your name is "My Colony" and thus did not receive your fabulous starter pack.
The second possible reason is you never asked for help and let the poor buggers starve.....

Incidentally, the price of rocket fuel is directly proportional to the price of tea in China... Who knew?

Apparently, radiation makes it hard to grow. :D

If you join send me a PM with your colony name or just join Discord and I'll send an extra gift.



Having trouble with Taxes? Just ask for money Or Rum to keep em pacified

Hope you enjoy, NOZ has an awesome Discord server.
Join here and have fun!


A Brief bit of wisdom from The Nomads of the Federation.

Check for announcements and updates on the My Colony Forum often.

Never fear to ask your fellow members for help and support that's why the forums are here.
If the worst should happen remember to hang together or else we will most assuredly all hang separately.


The most important bit of wisdom in both life and gaming is to always remember to keep your mouth from writing checks that your posterior can't cash and telling the boss that the reason you did was cause you accidentally slipped and broke your word won't make the hammer hurt any less.


When the soldier in front of you is killed pick up his rifle/ammo and then shoot until you either kill the enemy or are killed by the enemy in which case know that the man behind you thank's you for the bullets you saved him from and that the rifle you dropped upon death will be used to kill more after you have fallen.

DONT PANIC or as the Brits say KEEP CALM CARRY ON.
And remember to bring your towel.

The Legion awaits your arrival.


Desert Nomads WebPage.

I decided to put a few things here in this one post, since I don't want to make a bunch of posts on a site that severely hurts my eyes because of how very white it is on a screen at night.

Sending Messages
Currently the game's message system sucks, badly. 120 characters, and it doesn't even show a counter of how many characters you have left, it just fails to send message and you have to type it all out all over again....

We need to be able to send longer messages than this. I don't know if this is just non-premium accounts, but there's no indication that premium users can send longer messages. Messages in this game need to be detailed so we can cooperate better with each other. I'd say, up the non-premium message length to 200 characters, and give premium users a message length of 2000 characters.

I think of myself as the diplomatic type, and I type a lot and in highly detailed messages. I can't do this with a message limit so small even a text message app would be ashamed.

Not to mention, I think messages should go to accounts, rather than colonies. But thats up to you, it would be nice to have colony messages and account messages for users with accounts. So they don't even have to load a colony to see and reply to a message. Perhaps it shows "Colony has 2 messages" when you are about to load some colony. Account messages would be nice because then you can talk to someone regardless of deleting a colony or not to start over.

Trade
Trade right now sucks, and isn't possible really. All you have is the ability to send gifts of 2500 of something max.

I'd like the ability to send actual trade offers, either targeted trade offers to a specific person, or open trade offers that players with a structure of some kind can access by loading a list of available trades.

E.G. I want to send an offer to a specific person, trading 1000 steel to get 200 wood.
Or perhaps I want to send an open offer, trading 1500 steel to get 350 wood.

Perhaps this can be another premium lock area too, where free accounts max at 1 active trade at a time, premium accounts max at 10. Free accounts can trade out a max of 3000 of anything and receive a max of 3000 limiting their trade offers to 3k of anything in and out. Premium accounts getting 250,000.

Aiding other colonies
Wouldn't it be nice if you could gain a bonus from sending aid? When a colony is rioting you can click "send $200 worth of aid", but you don't get anything out of it. Perhaps you should get tax breaks, or happier people, or some such.

It would also be nice to be able to specify how much aid to send, rather than just click a button to send $200 of aid when you got $200,000. Aid packages would be nice too, allowing you to design your own aid packages, so you can click a "send aid package 2" to someone, and you had set aid package 2, to be {$2000, 2000 food, 2000 water, 1000 steel, 1000 ore}. I'd say allow users to specify up to 3 aid package types.

Colony ships could be an aid method too, sending some number of your population over to the other colony. A humanitarian ship full of volunteers who go to the colony you sent it to and work for that person, and either choose to stay, or leave, and they can leave by going to the map edge and appear back in your colony with "name returned to the colony" message instead of "joined colony" messages, either by walking in by map edge or appearing at your landing pads during next arrival.