Ape Apps

So I've just put the finishing touches on My Colony v0.79.0 and it should be hitting all platforms within the next few days. I had initially planned a great content update for this release, but I have been getting a lot of requests in email and in the app store comments to stop adding content and work on engine improvements instead, so that is what I did for today. There are a few new things in this release, so lets take a look!

As with every update, all of the hard syntax bugs reported through the app store error consoles have been addressed. In addition, I think I finally have the duplicate Federation balloting issue resolved.

I have also made a handful of improvements to the rendering engine. You will particularly notice that on a Water World map, there are no longer "waves" where the water tiles were not lining up properly when you zoom out.

I have also corrected a long standing rendering issue where some of the edge tiles would either a) not show up at all, or b) flicker on and off continually. Other small rendering improvements were made, but are not worth a write-up. Performance should be slightly improved as well.

I noticed (and corrected) an issue where colony resource stats were not being synced at all to the server if you were playing a sub-city to a Region game. This was not a major issue if you saved/quit your region game completely back to the title, but for users who didn't, it would result in lost resources the next time they started their region and it pulled their saved resource levels from the server. This is now resolved, and hopefully it helps the issues some people have with their regional resources not saving right.

Next up, I added a new feature which should hopefully help with debugging all of those odd issues that are reported by only 1 or 2 people and are almost impossible to reproduce and debug on demand. Since back when I tied online games to your Ape Apps Account, I have been unable to access and debug other players save files when they are having an issue. To get around this, I have added a new 'Offline Copy' option to the bottom of the stats screen.

This creates an exact clone of your game, except offline (and with a different file name). You can then export this cloned copy and send it to me if you have an issue you want me to look at. It is also handy if you want to test out some big changes to your online colony before actually committing them to your main save file. If you make a clone of a sub-region file, it becomes its own stand-alone map, it does not duplicate the whole region.

I have had several requests to add vehicle build counts to the construction side bar. Here they are.

Also, I did get one new structure added to this build, the Research Converter.

This is a late game Human structure for burning off your excess Research and converting it into raw materials. Might still need some balance tweaking, you can let me know what you think. It's basically like a Black Market Bazaar on steroids, and it also consumes Research.

Finally, this release includes the first batch of Russian language translations, there are just about 300 translated strings in total, but it covers most of the common ones. Russian is by far the most requested translation for the game, as Russia is the #2 market for My Colony in the Play Store outside of the U.S. More translations will be forthcoming.

That wraps it up for this update. Keep your eye on the app marketplaces over the next few days for the release to hit your platform, and stay tuned for a lot more My Colony goodness to come!