Ape Apps

Today's update to My Colony brings a few UI changes that might still need fleshed out a bit, but I think in the long run will be seen as an improvement over what we had previously. Here is a look at what is new:

My Colony v0.60.0 Changelog

New Stuff

• New Structures: Advanced Clothing Sweatshop, Transcendent Academy, Auntie Belles Cupcake Factory, Synthetic Diamond Laboratory, Universal Commodities Exchange
• New Tech: Transcendence
• New Resource: Ancient Instructions

Changes

• New UI for the main resources readout
• Lowered worker IQ requirements for the Small Research Lab
• 'River' tiles can now be bulldozed on the Earthlike map
• Increased the cost of the Center for Relic Studies
• Lowered building repair costs
• Obsidian has been added for trade on the GBT
• Synthetic Crystalline can now be built on all Zolarg maps (probably LIS too, forgot to test that)
• All humans can now unlock the Diamond Mining tech
• Center for Artificial Learning now generates the new Alien Instructions resource
• Added two new UI engine settings

Notes

The biggest change in this release is the new UI for the resources. You can see a more detailed discussion about it in this thread. Essentially, anybody who has played on mobile, particularly in the later stages of the game, knows that the resource layout would end up taking up half of the screen, making is hard to play the game properly. To fix this, the resources section has been condensed to between 1 and 3 (depending on your UI options and screen size) lines at the top of the screen. The resources now scroll by in a ticker-type banner, instead of all being displayed at once. You can toggle between this view and the old view by tapping/clicking on the resources display.

Also to reduce resource clutter, the numbers have been abbreviated and the total storage capacity has been removed by default. For example, where your food storage may have once said: 2,567,321/4,000,000, it will now just say 2.6M. If you want to go back to the old way, go to engine settings from the slide out menu and you can customize the readout any way you like it.

Anyway, I see this as a good change to clean up the main interface a bit, but please let me know your comments or ways to improve it further (or tell me if you don't like the change at all). The option is there to completely go back to the way it was before, so it should work out fine for most people, but again just let me know how you guys like it to be.

Moving on, some later-game tech and structures have been added for the Human races. The new Human updates allow the production of Diamonds on all colonies, and introduce a new resource which unlocks the production of Alien Relics for human players. These updates are necessary for offline colonies to be able to produce these resources, but are expensive enough to where they shouldn't destroy those resources for online players on the GBT.

Speaking of the GBT, Lava World players who are actually able to survive long enough to unlock the global market can now export Obsidian. Obsidian will become an important resource soon, so stay tuned for that.

Zolarg colonies now have the ability to create synthetic Crystalline on all maps, including the Sugarland map, also unlocking several Crystalline related structures.

As for the Reptilians, they now have access to the GBT through the new Universal Commodities Exchange structure. The Universal Commodities Exchange is actually like a mix of the GBT and the Black Market Bazaar, as it also brings in a slow steady stream of rare resources from across the galaxy (through theft).

Coming Soon

My plans for the next few updates include Reptilian independence structures, with a capitol building and others. Also, all three races will be getting new Obsidian related structures, and Humans will be seeing some new ultra-expensive later-game content. Alien Instructions will also be coming to the GBT with the next update.

So that's all for today's update. I will be working on another Gaul update for Antiquitas next, and before the month is out I plan on releasing My Tokens and a cross-platform multiplayer beta for Death 3d. Between all of that though, there should be at least 2 more My Colony updates this month, so stay tuned!

The My Colony update is live now on Web and the Ape Apps Launcher. Should be arriving very soon on Android, and will probably hit iOS, Windows Store, and Native Client later this week. Enjoy!