Ape Apps

Today I am finishing up and releasing the v1.22.0 update to the original My Colony, which includes a whole bunch of under-the-hood changes and a bit of new content. So what are we looking at in this release? Let's find out!


In the previous release notes for MC1, I mentioned that I was thinking about offering limited time release "collectors" edition buildings that you could get with Ape Coins for those who were interested. In this update I am testing the system out to see how it works, with the trial of a Dev Solar Panel structure (which you can see in the image above, modeled after the MC2 solar panel somewhat).

Here is how the system is (supposed) to work, which will probably need ironed out over the coming updates, but is in active testing right now. From time to time, new limited edition buildings will be made available that you can get with Ape Coins. When there is a new building available, you will see a notice on the construction sidebar like this:


Clicking on the notification will bring up a window that shows all of the current limited edition structures that are available (currently, only the testing structure is there).


This structures are purchased with Ape Coins and are tied to your Ape Apps Account, meaning that you can use them on any city on your account, and you can build as many of them as you wish. You will notice that you are able to buy multiple "copies" of them as well. The reasoning is to facilitate either trade, or to allow you to gift them to your friends who may not be able to afford them.

To trade structures with other players, you can bring up their profile card by either clicking on one of their chat messages as usual, or selecting them from your Friends list in the statistics window. Once opened, you will see two new buttons in the corner.


The Coin button allows you to just gift Ape Coins to another player. This is generally so that you can help a friend/family member buy Premium or extra content themselves using Ape Coins. You could already donate Ape Coins to another player using the Ape Apps website, but this just makes it easier, and since people have asked for the feature, they obviously did not know that the option existed on the website anyway.

The Trade looking button allows you to offer one of your purchased buildings to another player. You first select one of your owned buildings, and you then select a price. You are able to select anything between Free and 500 Ape Coins. If you want to work out a deal for more than 500 Ape Coins or for something other than Ape Coins, you will have to facilitate it outside of the app, and that is up to you. Once the offer is made, it is sent to the other player who then has one week to either accept or reject it. If they accept, the ownership of the structure is transferred over to their account.

If you look at the image above, the little golden wrench in the corner of the solar panel icon is the Set/Series icon for the structure. Collectable structures will be grouped into different sets. I am going to be working on adding a Collectables section to the Encyclopedia that will show all of the sets, all of the buildings in them, and their rarity, or how many "copies" of each building are in existence, this way in the future, people who are collecting or trading them will have an idea of their relative value.

So that is what I have so far on the collectables system. This update is for testing and refining the system, and in mid-October I plan to start releasing the first "real" buildings and sets, starting with a Halloween themed set.

I want to note that the whole collectable buildings system is meant for people who are interested in collecting things and also just want to add some extra "flare" to their colonies, and also to help support the further development of the game. There will not be any OP type structures, or structures that give a big leg up in the game. This system is going to be more for fun.

Ok so moving past the collectables stuff, this update makes a change to Poverty and Wages. Before now, it really didn't matter if you paid your colonists or not, but now it does. Colonists living under the poverty line will contribute to your disapproval rating, as will colonists earning a wage that is far below your GDP per capita. To help work your numbers out, I have added a breakdown of the monthly income and poverty levels, since the colonist salary settings are set on a monthly basis.


Right now excessive poverty will cause the crime rate in your city to rise, further damaging work efficiency and approval rating. I was planning on also making the workers go on strike, but upon testing it ended up bring pretty brutal, so I will hold off on implementing that part of it, until people can get their workers wages normalized.

This update also brings a change to Charter Codes. Since there have been a lot of charter code collisions with new colonies, all new charter codes are now 10 characters long instead of 8. @Sobeirannovaocc I hope that does not cause problems for Coloniae or any of your other tools!

Moving on. I have also basically rewritten the entire layout for Desktop, Mobile and TV of the game. I have done testing on each platform, so I hope it's not messed up, but please let me know in this thread if the layout is jacked up anywhere so I can get it fixed. For those who do not know, My Colony is written in HTML/Javascript, and I have moved the HUD UI from using absolute positioned elements to using CSS grid, like My Colony 2 does. Again, I pretty much changed everything in the stylesheets, and I think it basically looks the same as it did before, but please let me know if I borked something!

Next up, buildings in the Construction sidebar are now sorted, instead of just being thrown in there in the order that they were added to the game. The sorting uses pretty much the same scheme that My Colony 2 does, putting roads at the top, and then sorting everything else by price. Whether or not you think this is better or worse I suppose will depend on the player.

Finally, let's get to the new content in this update! I have added a new tech called the Military Industrial Complex, which in turn unlocks a new Weapons Factory which produces a new resource of Weapons of Mass Destruction! Once you have some WMD's, you can create the new Octagon structure, a military HQ that sends Starships and WMD's out into space and brings back plunder. It should be noted that the Octagon was originally going to be the Hexagon which I think sounds cooler, but I tell you that I spent a whole afternoon trying to draw a decent looking Hexagon shaped building and I just couldn't make it look right, so here we are with an Octagon instead. Deal with it!

So anyway, that about covers it for this release. The new Starship and Military content I think will fit hand-in-hand with the content coming next update, a new Dark Matter tech tree with accompanying structures that is being created by @Electrogamer1943 that you can all expect in the next update. On top of that, you can look for the new Halloween content pack coming later next month!

As always, thanks for playing the game, let me know what issues you find, and stay tuned for more!

#mycolony