Colony Wars, the real time strategy (RTS) game based in the My Colony Universe, has just been updated and for the first time is now available to download from the Windows Store!

Before this update, Colony Wars was in a bit of a rough spot with bugs. Skirmish and Online Multiplayer were not working properly, and on a game where the campaign has not yet been created, that is pretty much an extreme limit on its functionality! Not to worry though, all functions are now back up and operational, so the war may not continue.

This release of Colony Wars also makes multiplayer game discoverability and joining a lot easier through tighter integration with the Ape Apps Launcher. Now if you have the Launcher running, you will receive a system notification (if you have them enabled) when a friend is playing, and you will also see a "now playing" card on the main launcher home screen, with a one-click "Join Game" button that will bring you straight into their game lobby!

I am trying to decide on the future of Colony Wars. I sort of want to convert the game to 3d using the Scroll3d engine and Basic Modeler based graphics, or perhaps even Voxel Paint based 3d voxel graphics. Using the Voxel Paint route, I could in theory utilize a lot of the models already created for My Colony 2.

The reason for wanting to change is basically I think the 3d artwork is actually a lot easier to do than sprite artwork. If I ever want to add a new unit to the game, I have to create every frame of its animations 8 times over, since there are eight directions in which a unit can be facing. For terrain graphics as well, the cliff texture, which is the only way the game has to show actual elevation, requires 20 unique sprites to fit everything together, which is a lot of work if I ever wanted to add another variation. In 3d, a single cliff texture could be used on all side walls, and the Scroll3d engine also supports automatic blending of nearby textures, as demonstrated below by this screenshot of the Scroll3d/Basic Modeler based game Realms of Conflict.

The downside to a 3d transformation would mean that all of the current maps would need to be scrapped and reworked, including maps made by players and submitted to the map shop. I hate to just invalidate everyone's work.

So those are my thoughts for the project as of now. If I am going to migrate to 3d, I'd rather do it before creating any more units or maps and especially the campaign. If you have any thoughts on the matter, feel free to let me know in the Discord.

Colony Wars is now available for free on the Web, Android, Windows and through the Ape Apps Launcher. Try it out today!

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