For a while now, I have been sort of pondering aloud the future of My Colony 2. The game was never as popular as the original My Colony, and several technical issues stemming from early design decisions, including the choice of utilizing voxel artwork, have made it difficult to continue moving this project forward.

I had considered axing the game outright and refocusing energy on the original My Colony, but after revisiting the original game's code recently, it became clear that MC1 also has its share of deep-rooted design flaws (which was why I started MC2 to begin with).

Another factor in the consideration, the fact that there are still players who love the current rendition of MC2, have paid for it, contributed to it, and would not want to see it go away. So after deliberation and soliciting input from the community over Discord, I have finally come to my decision on the future of My Colony 2.

The current iteration of My Colony 2 that you all know right now is being rebranded as MC2 Classic.

MC2 classic is now hosted at it's own domain and will be kept up to date with critical bug and maintenance fixes (similar to how MC1 has been), but I will not personally be adding new content and features to the game. Your old save games from MC2 can be brought back into MC2 Classic, and existing mods will work just fine. I do not plan on bringing MC2 classic to the app stores, so you will need to use it either through the Ape Apps Launcher or using the web app.

https://classic.mycolony2.com

For the time being, the original My Colony 2 will be online in order to give players the chance to move their data from the old My Colony 2 into MC2 Classic. If your worlds were saved to external files on your device, you will not have to do anything. However, if you were using Cloud Sync or saving into internal device storage, you will need to export your game and import it into MC2 Classic.

In addition, as a thank you to all who have played and enjoyed My Colony 2 over the last 5 years, MC2 Classic is 100% free for all players, including all premium content and structures. Enjoy the full game on any device without charge.

The Future of My Colony 2

If there is now an MC2 Classic, that implies that there will also be a non-classic. I have decided to start over on My Colony 2 with a clean slate. There will be more details on this soon. The new version of My Colony 2 will be a lot closer in gameplay to the original My Colony though. Here is what I can tell you so far.

I am not going with an infinite world model anymore, although there will be ways to expand your colony. I am working out something of a mashup between MC1 Regions and the chunked loading system of MC2 Classic. Sort of like how in MC1 non-region games, you could expand your map using civics. You will be able to do that in MC2, although you will be able to expand in every direction, and each expansion will be the size of an entire map, and each "map" will be treated as an individual subdivision with separate processing. So basically, it is sort of like Regions except they are connected to your main city and you don't have to zoom out, you can seamlessly scroll between them. It will make sense when you see it.

The graphics are going to be 3D again, but not voxels. The worlds are going to be flat like in MC1. The perspective is going to be a little more locked in compared to MC2 Classic though, it will look and feel a lot more like MC1. I will be posting screenshots soon, so stay tuned.

I do not plan to have all of the modding stuff like MC2 Classic had, as it was a lot of extra hassle to work around all of that.

The balancing, resources and tech tree are going to be a lot more similar to MC1, although I might bring over some of the newer things that were introduced in MC2 Classic.

I don't plan on brining over the health and homelessness bugs that are currently in MC1.

Building structures will no longer be instant like in MC2 Classic, but will be just like MC1 was. You will be able to build mines again like you could in the original.

There is 1 map size, which is 80x80 tiles in size (5x5 chunks of 16x16 tiles). As mentioned before, cities can be expanded by adding adjacent 80x80 maps.

Game logic processing will be multithreaded like in MC2 Classic.

You can almost think of the game as if I would have continued the development of MC1 and made it 3D. I think fans of the original will like this new version a lot better, and for fans who preferred MC2 Classic, that will always be around to play.

Users who previously purchased My Colony 2 will still have their premium on the new version. It will carry over.

So that is what is happening with My Colony 2. I plan to have screenshots and more information soon, and my hope is to have at least something released by next spring, which is the 10-year anniversary of the original My Colony!

So I hope this doesn't upset too many people. If you have questions or comments (or complaints) please air them out in the Discord, and stay tuned for more!