Last fall, I realized that the voxel-art based direction I was taking with My Colony 2 wasn't going to scale very good and after taking a hard look at the game, I decided it was not going to be the best direction to go for a proper My Colony sequel. Since the game did still have it's own fanbase, I rebranded it to MC2 Classic where it will continue to live on in it's own way.

So then I thought about starting a proper My Colony 2 with the lessons I had learned with MC2 Classic development, but after a few weeks of work, I decided to wait on the project and do a final performance update for the original My Colony, which was approaching it's 10th anniversary since release. This was going to be just a final cleanup and performance update, something to give the fans of the original one last hurrah before moving on to MC2 proper. But of course, as I started working on the original code, one thing ended up leading to another, plans changed, and I ended up actually rewriting the entire My Colony engine from scratch. The result? My Colony v3.0.0 - The 10th Anniversary Update! There is a ton to talk about here, so if you like reading then press forward, or just go play the game already and see for yourself!

It would be an understatement to call this the largest update since the first release of My Colony. What was originally planned as an "end of an era" release has become a second beginning. As I mentioned before, I have completely rewritten the entire game from scratch, taking many of the lessons I learned from MC2 Classic and the ideas planned for a proper My Colony sequel, and instead molding them to fit with the original My Colony game assets and data. The result is basically a brand new game, although I have taken great pains to try to make sure it still "feels" like it should, and to make sure your old save games will still run and operate as normal. I might not have it 100%, but I think it's close.

As a result of the rewrite, many features are now different, things don't work exactly the same, and some things have been changed or missing. In this document, we are going to go over everything so you have an understanding of what I changed, and why.

Architecture Overhaul

My Colony was always a single threaded software rendered game, with all game rendering and simulation logic happening on the same thread. This would lead to massive performance degradations for large colonies (or even on small colonies, when played on mobile).

My initial plan for this update was to move the renderer to it's own thread and draw the graphics using a new hardware accelerated renderer. This was going to allow for much faster rendering as well as neat special effects. The great irony is that now with the release of 3.0, the hardware accelerated renderer is basically the only thing that did NOT make the final cut into the game!

Instead I split the game into a new client/server architecture similar to what was used in MC2 Classic, where the client running on the main CPU thread handles the rendering and HUD elements, and all simulation logic is split off into worker threads managed by an off-thread logical server. So basically, each time you load up a map, the data is transferred off to the server thread, and your client then "logs in" to your own private server running on your own device.

There are several benefits to this new model. If you ever played MC2 Classic, the world sizes were potentially massive. Game worlds are now broken into 32x32 tile chunks, and the game client now only has knowledge of the chunks that it needs in it's current viewport. For it's part, the server actively processes the current visible chunks, buffered by a few chunks around the view area, and then simulates the rest based on a more efficient statistical formula.

As a result of this, map sizes are now pretty much limited by whatever your hardware can handle. Now as you might guess, generating thousands of chunks can potentially blow up save file sizes tremendously. But with another new change added, every save file gets a random seed upon creation, making chunk generation deterministic. So when you go to save your game, the engine will just discard any chunk that you haven't actually manipulated, cutting save file sizes down significantly.

The client/server architecture also now theoretically supports multiple clients connected to the same server. This is going to allow for new gameplay modes in the future, such as visiting other colonies in real time, or even allowing multiple players to build on the same map, as you could in MC2 Classic. But that is for another day, just a hint at what is to come in the future...

Regions Replaced By Infinite Map Sizes

With this new chunk based setup, the old Regions system no longer made any sense. I know players liked Regions, but they were implemented in such a poor way, as any player knows who has a region where half of the sub-maps no longer load.

So in the new engine, Regions are just gone. When you load one of your old region saves in the new engine, it will attempt to convert your region into a new big single-map save. Individual sub-cities will be automatically converted into multi-chunk Districts.

Now, this isn't perfect. Old region sub-cities were either 50x50 or 100x100 tile grids, and the new chunks are 32x32, so district boundaries do not always line up right. This can also be rough for water type maps, as the old way of water generation was quite a bit different than the new seeded terrain generator.

I tried really hard to get these conversions to work as best as I can, and I am truly sorry if your game save ends up getting borked in the conversion. This is kind of a "rip the band-aid off" moment, as I think the new terrain generator and save file format are vastly superior to the old, and if this game is going to move forward into the next 10 years, the change needed to happen at some point.

Statistical Simulation

This is a change that some players may not like, but it is something that is going to let this game scale big time in the long run. My Colony is no longer doing expensive frame by frame processing of all of your buildings and workers. Instead, I have implemented a statistics based model where building production is based on a multi-tiered efficiency rating given to the chunk in which the building resides.

There is a new Tier system for job sites, housing, entertainment, etc. Your population is divided into tier buckets based on their IQ, and colonist in each tier prefer to take jobs, use entertainment, and live in houses that match with their IQ tier. In other words, smart/rich colonists do not like being around poor/dumb ones. And your approval rating will be based in part upon how well you are able to match these tiers together.

Luckily, the system is a bit less complicated than it may seem. I have made the Tier system fairly loose in order to keep the game fun. Colonists will readily do things outside of their tiers, so you really don't have to worry much about mismatches grinding your colony to a halt. But it is one more metric to consider for players who wish to "max" their colonies.

In order to assist with the management of your colony, you will find a new statistical overlay mode, with different metrics you can toggle through, so that you can monitor the current status of your colony on a chunk-by-chunk basis.

In addition, the updated Labor statistics panel will allow you to manage your colonist wages on a tier-by-tier basis, which sort of replaces the occupation-by-occupation basis in the old engine.

The Return of Deportations

Much like in the real world, Deportation policies have made a return in My Colony, as well as a whole host of new policies that you can enact or modify. There is a new Policies panel in the game, where you can control food rationing, immigration policy, production focus, safety net, retirement age, and initiate mass deportations of people you don't want living in your colony.

Also of note is the new Production Focus policies. Here you can instruct workers to focus on the production of certain resources over others, which can help in situations when you are facing shortages in some areas.

All Premium Structures Are Now Available

For years, I have been asked to re-issue previous runs of Premium Content structures for people who missed the initial offer windows. I didn't want to do re-issues though, since I thought it would be unfair to those who bought them with the understanding that they were only available for a certain time. Well, I decided on a compromise. You can now buy all previous-run premium structures, they will just be 2x the price after their initial run, that way there is still the benefit for players who picked things up during their initial window.

All Worlds Now Available for All Civs

If you ever thought "wouldn't it be nice if you could play any civ/world combo you wanted," then you are in luck, because now you can! I have now expanded the content in the game so that all civs can now play any map type without getting resource soft-locked.

Making this work required the addition of many new structures, and I didn't actually write them down or make a list, but you will notice them as you go.

Removal of Online Trading

I nuked the Galactic Board of Trade in this release. I mean the building is still there, but the peer-to-peer trading contracts are gone now. Instead, you can just buy as many resources you want from the Galactic Emperor in the new Trade tab of the command center, without the crazy old 99% markups.

In addition, prices are now fixed to their base value as defined in the main game file. In the trade tab, you can also set up automatic buy/sell orders, so your stocks will automatically offload or refill when needed.

Why the change? Well honestly, the online trading caused more issues than it was worth. It doesn't make sense to be able to goose GDP's by manipulating the market prices of resources, or to be stuck unable to buy anything when there are no contracts up for sale. The GBT (and other civ related buildings) are still valuable as they increase your overall trade capacity, but it no longer unlocks a global online trading market.

Speaking of trade capacity, the way it works is a bit different now. Instead of your trade capacity being set by the highest capacity allowing building you own, it now is cumulative. So in other words, you could now build 20 GBT buildings and get a larger trade capacity.

Leaderboards and the Removal of Challenges

The weekly resource challenges/trophies/seasons have been removed from the game. I am sorry to those who liked them, but there really wasn't much of a point and it was too easy for a handful of mega whale colonies to just win over and over anyway.

Instead there is a new Leadarboards tab where you can see the top online active colonies in terms of population, gdp and commonwealth size.

Diplomacy and Federations

Neither are currently in the game, but that does not mean they are going away for good. I want to rework these areas into something more meaningful, so stay tuned for more...

Coloniae

This update removes reporting to the Coloniae server. I liked Coloniae, but with the removal of online resource trading and with many of the stats being moved into the game itself, I think it might not be needed any longer. In addition, it really hasn't been updated or maintained for quite a while now, and I know for a fact that the server it is currently hosted on is about to die any day now.

The Spice Must Flow

The Spice World has been added as a new map type in this release, along with the new Spice resource. This map type was a fan favorite in MC2 Classic, so I felt it needed to be added to the revitalized My Colony. Spice World is of course playable by all factions, and introduces a whole chain of new structures for each civ in order to allow them to operate in this spicy new environment.

Reworked Sidebar

The construction sidebar has been revamped, although it should feel familiar to long-time players. You might recognize a lot of elements from MC2 Classic have been brought over to the new sidebar.

There is now a radar, which is handy for the large maps, along with a new bookmarks section, where you can and quick jump points to any position in your colony (they show up on the radar too). The sidebar also has a compact mode which works good on mobile devices.

Return of the Chat Sidebar

There was a lot of anger when I removed the dedicated chat sidebar from the game a couple of years ago. The old chat was powered by an external chat server of mine called Ape Chat. I discontinued the Ape Chat service since it was out of compliance with new European age verification laws, and I really have no interest in checking players ID. But players still wanted the dedicated chat area, so I came up with a compromise for this release.

The dedicated chat sidebar is back, but it does not run on a hosted chat server anymore. When you send a message in in-game chat, it just spits it out over the relay server to the other connected clients and then it is off of my server forever. Your game client though will now save it's own private log of recent chats. At some point I am going to let each player implement their own blocking/muting controls as well. Regardless, this new chat sidebar feels similar to the old way, and I think players are going to like it a lot better.

Night Time and Lightmaps

I have made considerable improvements to the day/night cycle in the game, especially on desktop devices. Mouse users will now have a flashlight that illuminates the area below their cursor, making it easier to operate your colony at night. In addition, building sprites now support lightmaps, so that things like windows and lights can actually glow in the dark, making for a nice looking effect.

Not all buildings have light maps yet (there are almost 600 in the game, that is a lot of light maps to make) but I will add more and more as the updates move forward.

What Is Next?

At the beginning, I said my plan was to give the original My Colony a last hurrah before switching to MC2, but instead of an ending, this is now a new beginning. My Colony has sort of become its own sequel, and I think with the new engine overhaul and other changes, this game can have legs for another 10 years as far as I'm concerned. So if you like what you see and want to see the updates continue, head over to the Discord channel and join in on the discussion.

I have my own plans and this engine unlocks a lot of new potential, but sometimes the best ideas come from the community, so please let me know how you want this to go down!

Finally, it has been a great honor for me to bring this game to you guys over the last 10 years. When I first released My Colony in 2016, it was just a rover and something like six buildings, and I had no idea it would grow into what it is today. Because of this game, I have had the chance to interact with many of you on the old forums and on the Discord, I have gotten some of the nicest messages from players, I have had people send me letters and drawings of their game ideas in the mail, and so on. I sincerely hope this update is able to live up to everyones expectations. Many of you have told me over the years how much playing My Colony means to you, and I really want to give you guys something you deserve. If I have gotten it wrong or missed the mark with this release, please let me know and I will do what I can to make it right!