Ape Apps

Well, it's late at night as I type this, and I've just put the finishing touches on the v0.93.0 update for My Colony. I'm going to try to get it pushed out to all platforms tonight, but if I end up getting too tired (likely) I will finish the work tomorrow. v0.93.0 is a mix update between content and features, so let's go ahead and take a look at what's new!

My Colony v0.92.0 is now heading out to all app stores and should be hitting your devices within the next few days. This is a very minor update, including a handful of bug fixes reported in the forums, as well as some fixes for Coloniae stat reporting.

I didn't have enough time this week to put out a more substantial update, as I have family coming into town later today and they will be staying with us until next Wednesday. I knew that there were some bug fixes that needed to go out for My Colony, and if I waited to put together a bigger content release, I wouldn't be able to get the bug fixes published until late next week.

Second half of next week I will begin work on v0.93.0. Current plan is to continue with the I.T. infrastructure updates. I will also be adding a new in-game "Flag" creation tool, allowing you to create flags/logos for your Commonwealth or Federation. In addition, I will be adding an in-game way to view a profile of other players, allowing you to see all of a person's colonies by their username.

So anyway, I hope everyone has a good weekend! I will be "off" for the next few days, but will be back at it again mid next week, so stay tuned for more!

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!

After taking a month off for summer travels (and sickness 🤢), I am pleased to announce that the finishing touches are being put on My Colony v0.90.0, which should be hitting all platforms within the coming days! This is a larger update in terms of scale and scope, and contains content, bug fixes, and features. So, what's new? Let's find out!

First, as always, all of the bugs that had been reported through the various app store reporting consoles have been addressed. This mainly encompass hard crashes or syntax errors, which are the types of bugs that get reported to the app stores. So if you were experiencing force close issues, they might be better with this update (although, force closures have been a bit more rare lately).

Next up, I hadn't realized that the Texture Mod feature has been broken for a few updates, since I don't use texture mods myself. Even though there was a thread in the forum prominently saying that the feature was broken 😳. Regardless, texture mods are now working again!

While fixing the texture mod code, I realized that the in-game texture mod browser is in dire need of a UI upgrade, so this has been added to the to-do list. Ideally, I want the in-game texture mod browser to have screenshots, a better description of the mod, and probably ratings and comments.

The next feature I added is available only to Desktop (Win/Mac/Linux) and Windows 10 (store) users, and allows you to change the location that My Colony uses to save data. This new setting is found at the bottom of the Game Data menu.

As the screenshot indicates, this does not move your current saved games, it only changes the game data folder. If you are on the desktop client (or the Ape Apps Launcher), you can move your old saves manually (they are found in your user Documents folder), but on Windows 10 Store installs, this is not possible due to the sandboxed nature of Windows Store apps. If you have cloud sync turned on, you shouldn't have to move anything manually. Unless you know what you are doing, then I do not suggest using this feature, but it is there for those who want it.

For this release, the sort order of the build categories in the sidebar has been changed. They now appear in alphabetical order.

It was always sort of annoying trying to find a specific category, so now that they are sorted properly, it should be easier to find what you are looking for.

I have also added two new keyboard shortcuts to the game with this update, Show Resources Screen (r) and Search Resources (ctrl+r), both of which can be customized in the Engine Settings menu. The Show Resources shortcut brings up the standard Resources statistics screen., whereas the Search Resources shortcut brings up a new popup search bar that lets you type in the name of a resource in an auto-completing form and load the stats window for that resource directly.

The Search Resource function is only moderately helpful at the moment, but to go along with it, I plan a revamp of the resource stat window in the not-too-distant future, where you will be able to launch functions right from the resource stat window, such as trading and gifting.

I made some minor balance adjustments with this update for existing structures. The Zolarg Unholy Core Mine no longer requires the Mysticism tech to build, since Mysticism requires independence, and the Unholy Core Mine is the only way Zolarg can currently get several resources. The Ancient Alien Microchip Factory now requires Gold as an input (a previous oversight). The two tall Residential Towers can now be flipped.

And now for the new content, this update adds 1 new Utility, 1 new Tech, 1 new Resource, and 17 new structures! The majority of the content additions come from the IT Industries Suggestion by @Wadaling , and represent Part 1 of the IT Content Updates.

When I first started coding My Colony in 2016, I actually built it with the ability to have multiple utilities, but I had never tested the functionality out, so I had no idea if it actually worked. When I saw the IT Industries suggestion in the forum, I figured it would be a good time to just see how much work would be required to add a second utility to the game, so I went ahead and added Bandwidth as a new utility alongside Power. Turns out that the old utility code from several years ago handled the new utility flawlessly (so far as I can tell), and virtually no coding changes were required in order to add Bandwidth to the game. Success!

The Bandwidth utility refers to data/network bandwidth, and is generated by the Small Server Building for Humans, the Slab of Processing for Zolarg, and the High Frequency Node for Alpha Draconians.

To go along with the new utility, there are new IT related structures (and a new Information Technology build category) for each race, although most are early/mid-game Human structures at the moment. The next updates will build out the tree for the other races and add later game content as well. All told, here is a color coded list of the new structures, with Black representing Human content, Red for LIS only content, Orange for Zolarg content, and Purple for Alpha Draconian content.

• Small Server Building
• Cybercoin Mine
• Small Server Farm Operation
• Galactic Stock Exchange
• Data Interceptor
• Small Software Studio
• NetSchool
• Advanced Small Research Lab
• Tech Office Building
• Arcade Center
• Colonimulation Hub
• Integrated Civic Center
• High Frequency Node
• Deep Space Interceptor
• Slab of Processing
• Circuit Foundry
• Interstellar Pad of Thought

I am not going to go over what everything does since that will take forever and you can just try the content out for yourself, but I do want to highlight a few things here.

Obviously, the new Small Software Studio is used for generating the new Software resource, which will be hitting the GBT in the next update to the game (v0.91.0). Most of the new structures require Software in one way or another as well.

One of the more important structures for the Zolarg is the Interstellar Pad of Thought, which now allows the Zolarg to generate a bit of Antaura without having independence. There were previously a ton of structures for Zolarg that were only available for independent colonies, and I want to start allowing subcolonies to have these structures too, to encourage being a part of a commonwealth. And with the new Circuit Foundry, Zolarg can now build Microchips also.

The Advanced Small Research Lab and the Integrated Civic Center offer modest upgrades to the existing Small Research Lab and Civic Center, two structures which have long had requests for upgrades. Most of the other new buildings generate large amounts of cash in exchange for Software and Bandwidth.

I think there is a lot of opportunity here to go back and add Bandwidth and Software requirements to existing buildings, ones that are clearly tech related. Over the next few updates, I plan on making these changes, but it will have to be done slowly, with a few buildings at a time. I don't want somebody to log in and have their entire colony go down because they are out of Bandwidth! So be sure to start building up your networking infrastructure!

There is probably more I can say about v0.90.0, but I grow tired of typing, lol. The v0.9x series of My Colony updates is going to feature heavy on new content, and most if it is going to be coming from the Game Ideas, Suggestions, and Feedback forum, since there is currently a lot of good stuff in there. The next update will be Part 2 of the IT update, and will probably be mostly Zolarg and Alpha Draconian. Then there will probably be a Part 3 to top it off. I will also make engine improvements and feature additions with each release, but I am not going to do any major rewrite of a core game component as I was frequently doing with the v0.8x series. I am in a content adding mood.

After v0.99.0 is done, I am going to increment the game to v1.0.0 instead of to v0.100.0. This doesn't really change anything in the way I will work on the game, it just seems stupid to have so many releases of the game without actually calling it v1.0.

So that's all for this update! It should be live on the Web and on the Ape Apps Launcher right now, and will be hitting the other platforms as soon as it is approved by the various app stores. So thanks for playing, thanks for the feedback and support, and stay tuned for more!

Today I am pushing out a minor release to My Colony, patch v0.89.0. There isn't a ton to say about this update, as it just corrects the syntax errors that had been logged and makes a few minor UI tweaks. The only real noticeable change occurs if you are playing with a mouse. Now when you highlight a building, it will get a red outline color, and also bring the highlighted building to the foreground if there is another structure on top of it.

Sorry to all to the slow pace of progress on My Colony and my other apps right now. This summer has proven to be extremely busy for me outside of game development, and it sadly does not appear to be slowing down any time soon, so I expect July to be just as slow as June was. Eventually the busy season will end though and I will be able to get back to doing "real" work, so stay tuned!