Ape Apps

Today I am putting the finishing touches on My Colony 2 v0.28.0 which should be hitting all platforms over the coming days. This update includes something new that @Architecture1134 has been pushing hard for weeks now, so let's take a look at what's included!


A couple of years ago now, Spice was added as a resource to My Starship, another title in the My Colony Universe, and now it makes it's way to My Colony 2 on the brand new Spice World map!

Spice World plays a little different from the other maps, as there are no surface resources whatsoever except for Spice. Spice is generated by Spice Veins which are scattered about the world and will continually produce more Spice deposits, so it is probably a good idea to found your first settlement near a Spice Vein.


From there, starting a settlement on a Spice World will be a long and slow process. You must fashion your initial structures out of Spare Parts which are slowly generated by your lander, and until you are able to build the Construction Yard, you will be spending some time waiting for Parts generation. The first structures you are able to build will be the new Spare Parts Bin (needed because the Lander only holds 4 Spare Parts) and the Basic Drill, a small simple drilling platform that will very slowly provide you with Ore.

While you are waiting for resources to generate, you can harvest some nearby spice with the new Spicebot. The Lander can hold 50, but you will eventually want to build a Spice Silo so you can store more Spice. Both Power and Water on Spice World are generated from the Dune inspired Wind Trap (since we are already on the Spice theme anyway), and you will need a lot of them as your settlement grows, until you are able to research and afford Nuclear Power.

Once you progress far enough in the game you will be able to harvest resources the old fashioned way using the Excavator, but until then, the new Supplies Field will provide you with a slow steady stream of Money, Ore, Gold, Aluminum and Uranium, in exchange for valuable Spice.


In the next update or two, I plan to implement a global unified server for My Colony 2, along with a new Galactic Board of Trade. At that point, you will be able to trade Spices off to other planets for profit. Until that time, Spice World is the only way to play with Spice. I will not be adding any sort of Spice Factory or other automatic Spice generation to the game, on this world or any other, so harvesting and GBT trade will be the only way to acquire Spice in the game.

Of course, Spice isn't the only new thing in this release. User @itsLiseczeq (aka cakedon) has created a new Regolith Extraction Plant which is now available on all Regolith using worlds, which was sorely needed after the changes introduced to resource consumption in the last MC2 update.


And finally for new content, if you were tired of building hundreds of greenhouse parks in order to slowly generate wood on non-atmosphere worlds, you are in luck, because the new Synthetic Wood Lab will generate wood a heck of a lot faster, as long as you can keep the factory fed with Oil and a bit of Charcoal.


Beyond the new content, and as always, a handful of bug fixes and performance improvements are along for the ride in this release as well.

As I hinted to before, next on the agenda is going to be to create a new global My Colony 2 server, similar to what MC1 has (but expanded), and implement a new Galactic Board of Trade for the game. Of course the system is made a bit more complicated by the fact that the game allows for extensive modding, but it's nothing that cannot be overcome. And of course, content updates and fixes will always be included as well!

So that is it for this update to MC2. Let me know what you think! If you find issues with the new Spice content, let me know, since I'm sure it will need expanded/changed/rebalanced as well (as new content usually does). Until then, enjoy the game, and stay tuned for more!

#mycolony2

If anybody was looking for a massive My Colony 2 update this month, I've got you covered! v0.34.0 is dropping now on the Web and the Ape Apps Launcher and is packed with goodies that you will not want to miss, so let's take a look at what is new!


The first change you might notice is that the title screen has been reworked, matching the layout from the title screen of Terra Nova 4X. This is a fairly minor change at the moment, but as MC2 had been using the generic Web App Core title screen, I was limited on what I could potentially add to it in the future, so now I will be able to make some changes and improvements going forward.

I also did quite a bit of work on Player Mode in this update, which had been completely borked until now. There is now a new HUD/UI for the mode, complete with health bar, radar, current location stats and more!


There remains a ton of work to be done on Player Mode. Right now there are still glitches and the controls are a bit wonky, but it is functional if you want to give it a test. My Colony 2 is eventually going to contain an entire sub-game based on Player Mode, but for now it's still fun to just walk around your colony and check things out.

There are new options on the Statistics screen for server operators in this release, and the first one is actually quite important.


You can now toggle your server's Private/Public status on the World statistics, which was a long requested feature. You can also toggle on/off the My Colony Online feature (which gives access to online trading through the GBT, among other things). However, and this is important, worlds created before MC2 v0.29.0 will all be in offline mode until activated on the World screen! This is because the MC Online flag in the save file was ignored until this update, and it defaulted to Offline before v0.29.0. Now that the flag is no longer ignored, worlds with the old default will be set to offline.

So the first time you load up your world in v0.34.0 (or higher), you must go into the Statistics screen and turn My Colony Online back on, if you want to use the GBT. You do not have to worry about losing resources or anything like switching between online/offline in the original My Colony. MC2 takes care of this by blocking all connections from modded games.

In addition to the above, server managers can now set the maximum number of online connections allowed in their game. You could previously set this using a chat text command, but now it's just a lot easier to do it from the UI.


Moving on, I have tried to make some interface changes to make My Colony 2 easier to play on mobile devices. The 3D nature of the game makes placing structures more difficult than it was on the original version of My Colony, but I think some changes in this update will help.


Firstly (as seen above), the ground grid lines are now turned on by default on touchscreen devices, allowing you to more easily see where you are placing structures. If you do not like this setting, it can be turned on/off in the Engine Settings menu under the Interface section, but on touch I think it makes a significant different in making the game more playable.

Next, I have tried to make it so that, no matter what orientation you have the camera rotated, placing a new structure will always originate from the top-left tile corner of the tiles to be occupied. On a touch screen there is no "hover" like with mouse input, so it's hard to tell where the building is going to be placed, and a lot of times with the camera rotated, you would have no idea where the building was going to show up once you tapped the screen, so now it should be fairly consistent no matter how you are rotated or zoomed. This was actually more difficult to implement then it might seem, since what tile constitutes the top-left corner is sort of subjective, especially depending on how far the camera is rotated in one way or another. At what angle is the cutoff where top-left becomes top-right, etc? Anyway, after hours of fiddling with the angle cutoffs, I think I have it to where it "feels" good, but you can play with it on mobile and let me know.

Moving right along, I have expanded the building stats that appear when you click on a structure's stats icon. You can now view the production/consumption ratings of Money, Civics and Research. There is still more expansion to be done on building stats, but this change alone makes a pretty big difference, IMO.


Now let's move on to new content, as there is a lot in this update. This release includes 22 new structures, two new techs to unlock, and one new unit. Among the new content in this release are 3D model contributions from @rahtdrgn @therealchromedino @GeneralWadaling and @spamdude so please be sure to show them appreciation for their great works!

Since there are so many new structures, I am just going to list them all out, and then comment on a few of them afterwards. A lot of the structures in this release are of the "Advanced" variety, needed upgrades to existing buildings.

• Advanced Robotics Factory
• Ether Reactor (art by rahtdrgn)
• Ancient Alien Gold Synthesis Lab (art by therealchromedino)
• Star Gate
• Advanced Microchip Factory (art by GeneralWadaling)
• Advanced Plastic Factory
• Underground Drop Room (art by spamdude)
• Spice Drilling Operation (art by therealchromedino)
• Advanced Spice Silo (art by therealchromedino)
• Quantum Spice Silo (art by therealchromedino)
• Quantum Oil Tank (art by therealchromedino)
• Advanced Regolith Synthesis Lab (art by spamdude)
• Quantum Offshore Drill
• Advanced Vocational Training Center
• Spice Den
• Galactic Trade Authority Office
• Ether Crystal Reactor
• Plaza Mosaic Tile
• Investment Bank
• Advanced Helium 3 Extractor
• Black and White Checkered Pavement
• Street Sign

First I want to discuss the new Interdimensional Transportation tech which unlocks the new Star Gate, because this is going to tie in big with a Player Mode feature in the future.


Basically, the Star Gates are going to allow characters in Player Mode to seamlessly travel between worlds/servers. Ultimately, the area around your Star Gate will be the first thing a player sees when they enter your world from that perspective, so you may want to include things like informational signs about your world, and you may want to leave some space to build specific Player Mode related structures that will be available in the future. You may also wish to have at least one security turret nearby, as you never know what is going to be coming through the Star Gate. The Star Gates will also allow fast travel of players/colonists/units between distant settlements both on and off world.

The Star Gates are going to be a critical component of the Player Mode. I wanted to get them in the game sooner rather than later, because the My Colony Online database is keeping track of every star gate in the "universe," and I need to get that database built up before I can enable the fast travel and other features.

Moving along, an old favorite from the original My Colony has returned, as the Bank can now be upgraded to the Investment Bank!


You can start bringing in some pretty good money for your settlement with the Investment Bank, but it's not actually the best money maker in this release. That honor goes to the new Spice Den!


The Spice Den is a brick structure repurposed from an old food production model that GeneralWadaling had made a couple of years ago, and as long as you are able to keep it running with Spice, you will make some nice profits, as the rich and famous in your settlement will pay top dollar to get their Spice fix in a safe and discrete way. Obviously if you are not on the Spice World you will need to procure your Spice from the GBT, so you might want to stock up whenever it becomes available, as I suspect this is not the only Spice related structure we will be seeing added to non-Spice worlds.

Note that the Spice Den is the first structure in the game that actually has a negative Security rating, so you may need to offset that with an extra security headquarters.

Now, you have heard of the noble Extraterrestrial Builder, but what about his equally noble cousin, the Extraterrestrial Sea Rover?


The old offshore drill got a Quantum Offshore Drill upgrade in this release, so it needed a new boat to build it. Not only is this new version of the offshore drill faster, but it also brings up Alien Artifacts! This was badly needed I think, since artifacts are fairly rare on the desert world, and you just can't dig much at all on the water world, so these new Quantum Offshore Drills will come in handy.

Speaking of badly needed, you can now easily generate Helium 3 on any world with the new Advanced Helium 3 Extractor. You will need Regolith to operate it, but that shouldn't be a problem once you construct the new Advanced Regolith Synthesis Lab.

So what happens when you want to conduct big trades on the GBT but you don't want to build hundreds of Trading Depots? That's where the new Galactic Trade Authority Office comes into play!


This is another decent money making structure, but it also greatly increases your gift/trade capacity (I forgot the number, but it's big).

A lot of the buildings that needed upgrades got them in this release. We now have the Advanced Robotics Factory, the Advanced Microchip Factory, the Advanced Plastic Factory, Advanced Vocational Training Center, and the Underground Drop Room (upgrade to the Storage Yard), just to name a few.


In addition, the Spice World now has the new Spice Drilling Operation, which is basically an Ore Fracking Operation for Spice. There are also the new Advanced and Quantum Spice Silos for superior Spice storage.

There is also the Quantum Oil Tank upgrade, for storing larger amounts of Oil.

Finally, all of these new structures will require a great deal of power. That is where the brand new Ether Crystal Reactor comes into play!


You will need a continuous source of both Ether and Crystalline to run this thing, so you may need to watch the GBT for deals. If you can afford it though, the Ether Crystal Reactor will provide you with a 55,000 power rating, far eclipsing the current Integrated Nuclear Reactor.

At the end of the day, there was a ton of work put into this update, so I hope you all enjoy it! There is a lot more excitement for My Colony 2 on the horizon. My goal is to have, by the end of this year, full gamepad/tv support, full VR support, music, sounds, a Steam release, and to have enough content and features to overtake the playability of the original My Colony. So stay tuned for more large updates like this one, because this size of release is going to be the norm, not the exception!

Thank you again for playing My Colony 2 and remember, build up your parameter defenses, because @poumm is out there, lol!


Just kidding, poumm. You're ok!

#mycolony2

Hello! In case you are not aware, My Colony's sequel has Spice World. I was thinking: Why not have Spice World here as well?


New Techs:

Spice World Base


New Unit:
Spicebot

New Structures:
Tire Drill
Wind Trap
Small Spice Silo
Advanced Spice Silo
Quantum Spice Silo
Spice Drilling Operation
Quantum Spice Drilling Operation
Spice Den
Spice Spa
Spice Store
Spice Clinic?
Supplies Field

Can be settled by UE and LIS.

@bastecklein if you like this idea, I would be more than happy to inkscape this.

GeneralWadaling said:

Architecture1134 said:I will expand more what spamdude is saying. Specifically, Spice was an (mostly) successful suggestion that the developer (bastecklein) added to the game. I created that suggestion, and Bast stated Spice originated from My Starship. As of today in the GBT (referenced from the GNN), Spice is an very expensive, exotic resource found only and exported from the Spice World. And those are your details.

Thanks for the info, lol 👍

Though instead of how spice got into the game, I'm more interested in the properties of spice in My Colony Universe - the thing about how we define what it is and its purpose.

For now I'm assuming the spice in MC2 is either a reference to Dune's Spice Melange, or the narcotics mentioned in Star Wars. Though I believe we should make spice different from those spice from the two mentioned sci-fi pieces, to make our "spice" more unique.

I think that spice may not be inspired and bast may have just created it up himself.

Architecture1134 said:I will expand more what spamdude is saying. Specifically, Spice was an (mostly) successful suggestion that the developer (bastecklein) added to the game. I created that suggestion, and Bast stated Spice originated from My Starship. As of today in the GBT (referenced from the GNN), Spice is an very expensive, exotic resource found only and exported from the Spice World. And those are your details.

Thanks for the info, lol 👍

Though instead of how spice got into the game, I'm more interested in the properties of spice in My Colony Universe - the thing about how we define what it is and its purpose.

For now I'm assuming the spice in MC2 is either a reference to Dune's Spice Melange, or the narcotics mentioned in Star Wars. Though I believe we should make spice different from those spice from the two mentioned sci-fi pieces, to make our "spice" more unique.

On spice worlds, spice veins don't seem to work properly anymore. Rather than growing an increasingly large ring of spice around itself, every spice vein I've seen so far will only create spice in a maximum of three adjacent tiles, with spice simply failing to appear in any other spot. After poking around some unloaded segments, I realized that spice still spawns at normal rates, but because much of the time the three available spaces are already filled, the newly-spawned spice and existing spice deposits will cancel each other out. In the game editor, none of the data values seem to be off, so I'm guessing the issue has to do with how the game internally calculates spread.

This is the first version of my document for what I would like to see three months from now. I know that more can possibly be done, but I thought that this could be a good start to show.

Let me know if any of you have other ideas that you would like to see in the next three months.

Also, when new stuff comes up, I will edit or make a new post based on the changes necessary.

Document Text in case it doesn't download:


My Colony 2: Three Months From Now


Alien Decorations:

I believe we could have a pyramid monument dedicated to the Ancient Aliens

I would like to see some Alien Light Posts for my settlements

Personally, I would like to see Alien roads in this installment of My Colony, I was thinking an Alien Aluminum and Alien Brick variants can work for this

Alien Brick can also be used for a Wall as well, and the Artifacts could add a strength buff as well

The Alien Obelisk would be another Alien Decoration that could add some character


Player Mode:

A Regional Bussing Authority would make moving around in Player Mode a lot better

A Player House would be a good spawn location to base future mechanics of respawning on, but it can work for a home point to teleport to for the near future

A Player Bank Account will lay down the foundation for the uses of Money in Player Mode


Spice Themed Buildings:

A Spice Bar should be a way to convert Spice and Rum into Money to allow Spice Worlds to have a form of Entertainment and Money generation to match the theme

A Spice Clinic would be a good theme to keep in canon about what Spice is

Spice Dessert Shop would use Spice and Sugar to generate Money and provides a bit of Entertainment as well.

An Integrated Spice Drilling Operation could also be a new addition in order to keep up with increased demand for Spice


Resources:

Pottery would be a good start to future industries in My Colony 2, especially whenever it could get expanded into potential Commonware uses, but a single Pottery Works can be good for now

A better passive Crystalline maker should be on Ice Worlds because there isn't enough of a Just Be First advantage for Ice Worlds in my opinion

Spam's Fabrication Lodge to make Alien Relics would be something good for the future uses of Relics that will benefit our settlements as well

Hello, ladies and gentlemen! Today, I am presenting to the community the most efficient way to play on the Spice World, which I came up almost a year ago. I will now be presenting this strategy. This will give you important tips and tricks on how to play the spice world! I hope you like the strategy and you find it useful for later plays!
==The Strategy==

1. Generate 4 Spare Parts from your lander. You have nothing else to construct (for now) but the Spare Parts Bin. Get that built and you may build other buildings! Do not sell your lander, as it is the only way to store your ore provided by Basic Drills.
2. Build a Spicebot or 2. This will allow you to harvest spice and make use of it.
3. Build a Wind Trap. Basic Drills require power (of course), so build one after you have already build the Wind Trap. Save your ore for later and do not overspend it, especially on Small Light Posts.
4. Food is important for an colony to survive, you know that! Once you have got at least 1 Wind Trap and the needed resources, you will need to construct a Greenhouse in order to maintain colonial survival.
5. Your Spicebots, if not careful, will overharvest Spice, Of course, you want to maintain an larger storage space. Once you have enough resources, you may commence construction on the Spice Silo. That way, you can harvest more spice.
6. If you have gotten enough ore to construct the Construction Yard, it is imperative that you construct it, it will speed up your spare parts production significantly. If you do not have enough power, construct a Wind Trap.
7. Build an Supplies Field. This will get you enough resources to start making your colony huge! It will provide you a variety of resources (especially ore)! It is thus very beneficial for later use.
8. Since there are no ore deposits on this type of world, ore can only be produced artificially. Once you obtain an Builder Bot, construct an Ore Refinery, but save some of your ore. Fortunately, the Ore Refinery does not consume too much ore from 2+ drills.
   
   That is it for now! If you have any suggestions, questions or feedback, leave a comment, please answer the poll above, and have fun playing MC2!

Alright, so now there's the spice world which contains spice deposits, but we have to figure out the costs and uses of the spice factory I proposed. It's an building used for making spices outside of spice worlds. Here are the costs I proposed:

• Ore: +2,000
• Steel: +1,500
• Gold: +750
• Microchip: +20
• Food: +1,000

Has 50 workers. Smelts 1 food into 1 spice in 3000 ticks (60 tick w/ all workers), and consumes 1 sugar per 950 ticks.

Architecture1134 said:
A spice factory with a lot of workers. Creates spice on worlds that doesn't have natural spice.

Does anyone object? Speak now or hold your suggestions.

Today I am releasing v0.37.0 of My Colony 2, and from a technical perspective, this is the largest release since the game first came out in late 2020. My Colony 2 has now been moved off of the antiquated Web App Core framework that I first developed back in 2012, and is now being hosted at it's own domain at https://mycolony2.com/. There are some important implications associated with this change, so let's get into it!


The most obvious change is that the game is now hosted at a new URL. Since the majority of My Colony 2 players access the game through the web client, everyone is going to need to update their bookmarks to the new location. If you have the game installed to your device as a Progressive Web App, you need to know that the PWA will not automatically change to the new URL, so you need to first uninstall the old PWA and then install the new one. I realize that it is a bit of a pain, but the change will be worth it in the long run.

The biggest impact this will have is related to save data. Users who sync their save file to the Cloud or who have exported their save data to the filesystem (which I highly recommend) will not be impacted at all, but if your save game is stored in the internal app cache (the riskiest solution with a browser-based game), data will not carry over to the new domain. I hope that most players took heed of this change when I announced it about a month ago! If it ends up being an issue, I might be able to cook up some sort of migration solution, but I think most players will be fine. I think (hope) that the mobile versions of the game are not impacted by this.

Beyond what was stated above, the migration off of the Web App Core framework resulted in considerable changes to the game engine "under the hood." The Web App Core functions touched almost everything, so in many ways this update constitutes a serious rewrite of major portions of the game. Because of this, I would sort of expect there to be some issues here and there. Surprisingly, I have not run into many of them during testing, so maybe things went more smoothly then I had planned, but please be on the lookout for things I may have missed, and please post about what issues you find here in the forums.

Since so much of the code was being changed in this release, I did take the time to work on a few issues that had been plaguing the engine for a while now. First of all, the issue with faded/muted colors I think is pretty well fixed. There may be a few models left that still have color balancing issues, and if you notice any of them please post a list in the forum here so I can get them re-color balanced for the next update.

There had been an issue where Spice deposits were not spreading properly on the Spice World, and this has now been corrected.

Additionally, there was an issue where players who were connected to a remote dedicated server were unable to access the Galactic Board of Trade or other MC2 Online features. This should now be fixed as well.

Game loading and startup should be a lot faster now than it used to be, especially after the first load. I decided to stop compressing the main game data bundle, and even though this added 4mb to the initial game data download, I figured it was not a big deal, since after the first load, the browser stores the bundle data anyway. This means that the data no longer needs to be decompressed when the game is starting up, which on some devices (especially mobile) this could take quite a long time. The start up time improvement can actually be pretty significant, especially if the app is installed to the system as a PWA. I have noticed start up times on the new release of just a few seconds.

Big improvements have been made to flying units. They were sort of borked before - drones randomly disappearing or flying up into the stratosphere, landers not moving, etc. They should just work now.

Don't you hate it when you join a world, then you scroll around the map trying to find a good landing spot, only to never be able to find your lander again? Fear not, if you have not yet deployed your lander, it will not be automatically placed in the Bookmarks tab, so you can always go and find where your lander is sitting.


A major rebalancing has been done in this release, thanks in large part to a document put together by @SPARKY0303 (which you can find here). There were a ton of changes implemented from this, so here is just a rough readout of everything I did:

• Increased firing range and reduced money cost of the Brick Wall Turret
• Increased the gift capacity of the Galactic Board of Trade to 25k
• Fixed the borked stats on the Museum
• Increased the ore cost and output of the Medium Software Studio
• Increased the uranium cost and the artifact storage of the Giorgio Institute
• Increase the build cost and money/civics output of the Investment Bank
• Increased the output and worker requirement of the Bank
• Increased the cost and research output for the Center for Artificial Learning
• Increased the build and input cost of the Robotics Factory while also increasing the robot output
• Increased the cost and doubled the production rate of the Plastic Factory
• Increased the cost and production output of the Advanced Microchip Factory
• Increased the cost and production rate of the Advanced Plastic Factory
• Increased the build cost and production output of the Synthetic Wood Lab
• Increased the worker requirement of the Synthetic Oil Lab while doubling production input and tripling output
• Increased the rum cost and consumption for the Galactic Stock Exchange while also increasing the money output
• Increased the food cost and money output of the Canteen
• Increased the cost and attack power of the Pillbox while decreasing the attack range
• Added worker requirement and increased salt water consumption for Fish R Us
• Increased the worker requirement and food output of the Hydroponic Farm
• Increased cost and production output of the Vertical Warehouse Farm
• Increased cost and software cosumption of the Research Facility while increasing research output
• Decreased Rum consumption and increased Money output for The Rum
• Increased money output for the Trading Depot
• Decreased build cost and aluminum output of the Advanced Drilling Platform
• Increased the cost and artifact output of the Ultra Deep Drilling Facility while decreasing the aluminum production
• Increased the cost, money output and rum consumption of the Galactic Trade Authority Office while decreasing the worker requirement
• The Spice Den can no longer be built on Spice Worlds
• Increased the worker requirement and production rates of the Aluminum Generator

There may be more rebalancing work to do in the future, so let me know what your thoughts are on the changes.

Some other things have been changed as well. The Blue Dorms have been renamed to the Painted Dorms, which you can now specify your own color for. The Ancient Alien Ore Refinery has been re-skinned with a new model provided by @SPARKY0303 .

Also fulfilling a big request from MC1 players, there are now Building Counts available on the construction sidebar.


I have also added a new option to the Performance Tweaks section of the Engine Settings menu, allowing users to customize the number of chunks that the game renders around the camera.


We also have two new models in this update from @spamdude , including the new Fish Bin Complex (for storing lots of fish), and the giant new Large Brickworks, for bumping out lots of bricks!


Next up, as hinted to in the previous update's release notes, Diamonds have been added to this update, along with the Diamond Miner and the Diamond Solar Tower.


Diamonds are a Lunar World exclusive, and can only be discovered through digging. Once you uncover a diamond deposit, the Diamond Mining tech is automatically unlocked, allowing you to construct the Diamond Miner. Diamond utility will be expanded in the coming updates. At some point once every world has it's own unique resource, there will be some late game super structure that requires a ton of the unique resources from all of the different worlds.

Ok so last but not least, probably the biggest and most common request I get for the game via the in-game feedback is to bring back the Ore Mine from MC1. I never considered the Ore Mine to be necessary, since the world sizes are infinite and you can always just go and find more Ore, and later on you can just generate Ore on all worlds. That said, people have always wanted it, so today I am introducing MC2's version of the Ore Mine, which is the new Ore Drill.


The Ore Drill works sort of like the Spice Vane that occurs naturally on the Spice World. You build it, and then every once and a while it will plop out a small Ore Deposit. Once you build your settlement up to the point where you can make your own ore, you can simply bulldoze the drill. I think this is a reasonable solution for early game Ore, and I might make a Gold version of it in the next update as well. The Ore Drill is only available on maps that have surface ore.

So that is v0.37.0 in a nutshell. The update is available right now on the Web at it's new location (https://mycolony2.com/) and will probably hit the various mobile platforms throughout the weekend or early next week. Please let me know your thoughts on the changes (good or bad), spread the word that the URL for MC2 has changed, and stay tuned for more MC2 goodness to come in the months ahead!

#mycolony2

With that change back in 0.37, you shoulda seen this coming. This time, I found that I am not the only angry spice world. Pretty much every spice world but @SPARKY0303 hates that change. If ya need proof, I will set up a poll. I can name a few users that want them back. Some are @therealchromedino , @OilChan, @solisruben296 , @Marcarious , and @RekEm1999 . I am pretty sure that there are other Spice Worlds that are angry and are just more quiet about it. I will set up a poll, let the people decide. @bastecklein please hear our cries.


EDIT: Doesn't have to be the old spice den, could be a nerfed variant of it so that we have a use for this spice.

Spice drilling is one of those things that excites us Spice World owners, but it is clear that we need to update our technology to enable us to locate and extract more Spice, so I made an Integrated Spice Drilling Operation. Since I borrowed this model from @therealchromedino , I want him to be able to get some credit as well. I hope this will help your Terra Divitiae development out, and I hope this can help other Spice drillers make use of some extra Microchips and Software as well.

This post is a collection of a lot of ideas and features I think need to be added. Some of these have been requested by other people but I am putting it all in a big collection and explaining how it would work together. I will be working on this post for a few days so expect to see edits adding new ideas. I will make the textures, with help from a friend, if this post becomes popular enough. Considering the amount of ideas here, this will take a while. I understand all this could be an unrealistic amount of additions but I am doing my best to make it reuse all of the existing code to the fullest. Thank you for still reading, a lot of people would have left by now!.

Please tell me what you think of all my ideas!

The first part of my ideas is a new planet type: Geyser World. I already made a post on it but I will go more in depth here:
Planet Details:
Buildable Rovers at Start(UE):
-Lunar Rover
-Rover
Starting Rovers(UE)
-Lunar Rover
-Rover
Non-Buildable Buildings:
Small Water Pump
Small Solar Panel
Starting Atmosphere: 10 million
Resources Contained(numbers are for medium world):
Ore deposits(around 7)
Regolith deposits(around 5)
Steam Vents(around 10)
Rock Fissures(around 20)


New Resources (items):
-Boiling Water: Looks a lot like water
-Mineral Water: Looks like water but with little spots in it.

New Vehicles:
-Heat Resistant Waterbot: Collects boiling water from boiling water deposits.
Cost: ore: 100 steel: 2 wheel: 6
Tech Required: Geyser World Base, Human Base.

-Treated Waterbot:
-Heat Resistant Waterbot: Collects mineral water from mineral water deposits.
Cost: ore: 1000 steel: 20 wheel: 6
Tech Required:Basic Mineral Resistance.

New Tech:
-Basic Mineral Resistance:
Cost: 20 steel
Prerequisites: Geyser World Base, Human Base
Unlocks: Tiny Mineral Extractor

-Mineral Resistance:
Cost: 25 research
Prerequisites: Basic Mineral Resistance
Unlocks: Small Mineral Extractor

-Thermodynamics:
Cost: 500 research
Prerequisites: Geyser World Base, Human Base, Mineral Resistance
Unlocks: Thermoelectric Generator, Advanced Water Condenser

New Resource tiles:
-Steam Vent(1x1): Just a tile that exists. Looks like a crack in the ground, has a puff of steam coming out. Counts as another kind of terrain, kind of like salt water or lava. Damages rovers and buildings nearby, similar to lava. Will not spread. Contains no resources.
-Rock Fissure(1x1): Just a tile that exists. Looks like a crack in the ground with obsidian inside Counts as another kind of terrain, kind of like salt water or lava. Damages rovers and buildings nearby, similar to lava. Will not spread. Contains no resources.

New Buildings:
-Water Condenser(1x1): Built on steam vents.
Power Used:2
Resource Production: Twice as much water as small water pump.
Tech Required: Geyser World Base, Human Base
Build Cost:500 ore, 20 steel, 1 gold
Built By: Builder Bot
Upgrades to: Advanced Water Condenser

-Tiny Thermoelectric Generator(1x1): Built on steam vents.
Power Generated: 2
Tech Required: Geyser World Base, Human Base
Build Cost: 200 ore, 200 regolith
Upgrades to: thermoelectric generator

-Thermoelectric Generator(1x1): Built on steam vents.
Power Generated: 5
Tech Required: Thermodynamics
Build Cost: 2000 ore, 250 steel, 5 gold

-Advanced Water Condenser(1x1): Built on steam vents.
Power Used:5
Resource Production: Six times as much water as small water pump.
Tech Required: Thermodynamics, Advanced Construction
Build Cost:5000 ore, 200 steel, 100 gold, 50 aluminum
Built By: Advanced Builder Bot

-Tiny Water Conditioner(1x1): Built on normal terrain.
Power Used:2
Resource Production: Turns boiling water into water, same amount as the water produced by a small water pump
Tech Required: Geyser World Base, Human Base
Build Cost:500 ore, 20 steel
Built By: Builder Bot

-Small Water Conditioner(1x1): Built on normal terrain.
Power Used:5
Resource Production: Turns boiling water into water, same amount as six small water pumps
Tech Required: Thermodynamics, Advanced Construction
Build Cost:2500 ore, 50 steel, 10 gold, 2 aluminum
Built By: Advanced Builder Bot

-Tiny Mineral Extractor:
Power Used:5
Workers:1
Resource Production:Turns mineral water into a very small amount of gold.

-Small Mineral Extractor:
Power Used:5
Workers:1
Resource Production:Turns mineral water into a very small amount of gold.

The second part of my ideas is another new planet type: Soaring Cliffs. It is a similar idea to the water world but will play differently. It goes great with the avian race idea below.
Planet Details:
Buildable Rovers at Start(UE):
-Rover
-forest rover
Starting Rovers(UE)
-Rover
-forest rover
Buildable Workers at Start(Zolarg):all
Non-Buildable Buildings: none
Starting Atmosphere:5 million
Resources Contained(numbers are for medium world):
Ore deposits(around 5)
Fir Trees(a lot, similar to forest world)
Cliff Face(replaces large drops that are adjacent to land)
Large Drop(generated similar to water on the water world)

New Resources (items):
-Krypton Gas: Think Helium-3 but its Krypton

New Tech:
-Rare Animal Zoology:
Cost: 20000 research
Prerequisites: low atmospheric zoology, 5 mil atmosphere

New Buildings:
-Mountain Goat Pen(2x2):
Build Cost:200 wood, 20 ore
Built By: Forest Rover, Greenbot.
Resource Production: Wool 10/Minute
Required Tech: Human Base OR Avian Base, Soaring Cliffs Base OR Rare Animal Zoology, 5 mil atmosphere


-Weaver's House(1x1):
Build Cost:200 wood, 20 ore, 10 wool
Built By: Forest Rover, Greenbot, lumberbot.
Resource Production: Wool 10/Minute
Required Tech: Human Base OR Avian Base 5 mil atmosphere

-Rope Bridge(1x1):Built over water, salt water, ether, gas deposits(see next suggestion) or air.
Build Cost:20 wood, 10 ore, 2 cloth
Built By: Rover, Avian Rover, Forest Rover, Avian Forest Rover, Builder Bot
Required Tech: Human Base OR Avian Base, 5 mil atmosphere


-Rope Bridge NS(1x1):Built over water, salt water, ether, gas deposits(see next suggestion) or air.
Build Cost:20 wood, 10 ore, 2 cloth
Built By: Rover, Avian Rover, Forest Rover, Avian Forest Rover, Builder Bot
Required Tech: Human Base OR Avian Base, 5 mil atmosphere


-Rope Bridge Anchor(1x1):Built on land and cliff faces. Just a decorative road to go along with the rope bridge.
Build Cost:20 wood, 10 ore, 2 cloth
Built By: Rover, Avian Rover, Forest Rover, Avian Forest Rover, Builder Bot
Required Tech: Human Base OR Avian Base, 5 mil atmosphere


The third part of my ideas is yet another new planet type: Gas Giant. The Progression would be based around floating helium balloons due to how easy it is to float in a planet with a very dense atmosphere.
Planet Details:
Buildable Rovers at Start(UE,LIS):
-Balloon Rover
Starting Rovers(UE,LIS):
-Balloon Rover
Custom Lander(UE,LIS):
-Balloon Lander
Non-Buildable Buildings: none
Starting Atmosphere:500 billion
Resources Contained(numbers are for medium world):
Regolith deposits(around 5)
Gas Deposit(contains infinite xenon, covers most of the world. Generates like water in water world but even more frequent.)

New Vehicles:
-Ballon Rover: Works similar to a lunar rover but can fly over buildings.
Cost: ore: 100 helium:20 wheel: 6
Tech Required: Geyser World Base, Human Base.
Can Build:Tiny helium-3 condenser, helium-3 condenser, helium compactor, regolith compactor, storage tank, suspended storage tank, regolith crusher.


-Ballon Builder Bot: Works like a normal builder bot but can fly over buildings
Cost: ore:100 wheel:6 helium:50
Tech Required: Geyser World Base, Human Base

-Small Builder Zeppelin: Works like a normal advanced builder bot but can fly on gas deposits.
Cost: ore:1000 wheel:6
Tech Required: Geyser World Base, Human Base, advanced small scale construction

-Balloon Lander Airborne: Airborne version of balloon lander. Can land on gas deposits or normal land.


New Resources (items):
-Xenon Gas: Think Helium-3 but its Xenon

New Buildings:
-Balloon Lander(1x1): Can be built on Gas Deposits or on normal land.
Power Produced:2
Housing: 2 colonists
Can Build: Balloon Rover.


-Tiny Helium-3 Condenser:(1x1):
Power Used:1
Build cost: Regolith 20
Resource Production: Turns atmosphere to helium-3 at a quarter of the rate of a helium-3 extractor.


-Helium-3 Condenser:(1x1):
Power Used:1
Build cost: ore 20
Resource Production: Turns atmosphere to helium-3 at the rate of a helium-3 extractor.


-Helium Compactor:(1x1):
Power Used:1
Build cost: regolith 20 helium-3 20
Resource Production: Turns helium-3 into a small amount of regolith

-Storage Tank(1x1):
Storage: Ore 1000 Regolith 2000 Helium-3 500 food 100 water 100
Build Cost: Ore 100 Helium-3 25

-Suspended Storage Tank(1x1): Built on Gas Deposits
Storage: Ore 1000 Regolith 2000 Helium-3 750 food 100 water 100
Build Cost: Ore 150 Helium-3 100

-Floating Helium-3 Condenser(1x1): Built on Gas Deposits. Looks like a water condenser but white and with a balloon on top.
Power Used:1
Resource Production: Turns atmosphere to helium-3 at the rate of a helium-3 extractor.


The fourth part of my ideas is a new race: Avians. These part people part birds have close ties with united earth, and use many similar technologies. Some of the items here are from the soaring cliffs idea listed above gas giants.

Avian Tech:
Low atmospheric zoology and rare animal zoology they can unlock the same way as humans.

New Resources (items):
-Feather: Used to make some flying vehicles.
-Bird Steel: A lightweight yet strong metal used in more advanced flying vehicles.

New Vehicles:
-Avian Rover: Works like a normal rover but can fly over buildings and terrain features, similar to the airborne lander.
Cost: ore: 5 wheel: 6 Feather: 6
Tech Required: Avian Base
Can Build: Small solar panel, small vehicle factory, small water pump, greenhouse.


-Avian Forest Rover: Works like a normal forest rover but can fly over buildings and terrain features, similar to the airborne lander.
Cost: wood: 40 wheel: 6 Feather: 6
Tech Required: Avian Base
Can Build: Fir Trees, Charcoal Hut, Wood Hut, Goat Pen, Chicken Coop, Water Well


-Avian Builder Bot: Works like a normal builder bot but can fly over buildings and terrain features, similar to the airborne lander.
Cost: ore: 15 wheel: 6 Feather: 6
Tech Required: Avian Base
Can Build: everything the builder bot can

-Avian Constructor: Builds some unique avian builds/
Cost: ore: 150 wheel: 8 gold:20 Feather: 6
Tech Required: Avian Base
Can Build: everything the builder bot can

Avian Lander Airborne: Airborne version of Avian Lander.


New Buildings:
-Avian Lander(1x1): Similar to the normal UE lander, the lander the Avians start with.
Power Produced:2
Housing: 2 colonists
Can Build: rover, forest rover, Avian rover, avian forest rover.

-Chicken Coop(2x2):
Description: "Avians like Chickens a lot, so they keep them as pets. Many think that avians evolved from chickens, although the more plausible theory is that they actually evolved from a white variant ravens."
Resource Production:Feather 10/minute
Cost: Wood:200 Ore:20
Built By: Forest Rover, Avian Forest rover
Requirements:Avian Base, 5 mil atmosphere


-Enclosed Chicken Coop(2x2): An enclosed version of the chicken coop
Resource Production:Feather 10/minute
Cost: Ore:2000, steel 250, gold 100
Built By: Builder Bot, Avian Builder Bot
Requirements:Avian Base or rare animal zoology, low atmospheric zoology


-Avian Solar Panel(1x1): A version of the normal solar panel that can be placed in the air or on land.
Power Production: 8
Cost: Ore:250, steel 10, feather 10
Built By: Buildr Bot, Avian Builder Bot
Requirements:Avian Base

-Wind Generator(1x1): A passive generator that must be built in the air.
Power Production: 12
Cost: Ore:250, steel 20,gold 10, feather 20
Built By: Avian Builder Bot
Requirements:Avian Base


Some WIP textures are below, along with a few pictures of what this would look like in-game:
Soaring Cliffs as Avian Race:

Gas Giant with United Earth:



Textures(WIP):
I'm making a texture pack with the textures if anyone's interested.
Cliff Terrain:

Cliff Face:

Air:


Gas Deposit:

OilChan said:what does the spice den do?
however, I do still agree that the spice worlds need the spice den to remain competitive in these trying times.

It was our old moneymaker, something that gave us use for spice when people just offsource it. Practically our only way to make money off of it.

I like this idea. Maybe edicts that allow for the construction of new buildings, but bars other things. Like Spice being legal would allow for stuff such as Spice Stores, Spice Spas, and potentially Spice Clinics to be built off of Spice Worlds, but at the cost of Spice Den output.

Since I made a Diamond Drill earlier, I thought Spice could use a 1x1 drill that would be smaller than the Spice Drilling Operation. I believe that this drill should produce less Spice than a Spice Drilling Operation, but not require any workers.

In order to add a bit of extra game-play experience, I believe that each world type should have Faith buildings that tie to the World Type. For example, I believe that Spice Worlds should have buildings dedicated to the Sandworms/Spice Deity. When a world has enough Faith, it should help with increasing colonist happiness and contribute to keeping a settlement socially stable. If Faith gets low, it should increase the amount of instability in a settlement accordingly. An example of this could be a Spice Shrine for a Spice World, and this could evolve into larger buildings or even increasing decorative varieties that contribute to Faith. If anyone else would like to discuss this more, feel free to reply to this.

Greetings!

Back to one or two years ago, the "spice" first appeared in My Starship as one of the commodities you can trade, with no detailed info about this resource.
And more recently, we have "spice world" map and "spice" resource as additions in My Colony 2.

As "spice" is taking more appearance in My Colony associated games, here I would like to know the terminologies or at least the concept of what these "spices" are.

I will expand more what spamdude is saying. Specifically, Spice was an (mostly) successful suggestion that the developer (bastecklein) added to the game. I created that suggestion, and Bast stated Spice originated from My Starship. As of today in the GBT (referenced from the GNN), Spice is an very expensive, exotic resource found only and exported from the Spice World. And those are your details.

This topic isn't meant to be a complaint, it's just my ideas of what could be done to improve on the existing planets' designs. I realize that bast isn't working very much on new content and I support that, since what he is doing now is better for the game than making new content. I just figured that I would cover all of the planets for my planet-hub topic. That way people can get my opinion of all the planets.


earthlike Planet specific ideas:

earthlike planet summary: I think that this planet is fine as it is. It's supposed to be a training planet that gives the user the perfect conditions to build a colony, so I think it should be left alone. There are some ideas that I have regarding all planets that also apply to this planet, but I don't have any ideas regarding this specific planet. I do believe that every race should have this planet type so the player can learn to play this race under the best conditions, with the exception of zolarg because they already have a world with the best conditions to grow, their just a harder species to manage overall. reptilians and LIS get the abandoned world, which is earthlike but doesn't have any ore.

Waterworld specific ideas:

Waterworld summary: This planet is really fun to play because you have to be carful how you design your colony layout. I wouldn't chancge anything about this planet and I'm not going to suggest anything because all of the ideas that I have bast is already going to implement soon. There are other ideas that pertain to all planets that apply here, but no specific ideas come to mind when thinking about this planet.

red planet specific ideas:

Red Planet Summary: I really like the simplicity of the map, and I like the laid-back feel that you get when playing it. I also like how quickly it allows you to grow your colony. There is not much more that I would like to see added to this planet aside from the general ideas that I have below that don't apply to any planet. This planet is very well-designed.

red badlands decorations: I think that the red planet map should generate decorations that resemble badlands structures, or weird rock structures that form because wind wears it down into awkward shapes. This should make the map aesthetically pleasing.

generated lake-bed rivers: per the dry lakebed tile idea below, i think that rivers of those tiles should be generated on red planet maps. This allows the red planet to become just like an earthlike planet once terraformed, with rivers that produce infinite amounts of water. It gives the map a more dynamic feel.

Dust storms: These planetwide storms can last for months and would make it more difficult to see your colony. Solar panels would stop working, but you could implement a windmil to take advantage of the storms and it would produce more during these storms than normally. You already have added the ability to block out light by subtracting alpha from an overlaying object to simulate night time. You could create another overlay object for storms and give it a reddish-tan hue. Then just add moving particle affects and wind sounds and your done. These should disappear once the planet is terraformed. There shouldn't be a damage factor to these storms as the dust is too fine to really wear anything down.

Dynamic Terraformation: I think that this planet type specifically could benefit from dynamic terraforming and should be the first to receive such a feature if added since it's one of the most played maps.


Lunar specific ideas:

Lunar Summary: Lunar world is my favorite map because you can jumpstart your colony before you even get your first immigrant. I like the fact that it's terraformable and the regolith challenge is fun as well. There are a few features that could be added to make this world more immersive though.

Jagged rock decos: Since a lunar planet has no atmosphere, it has no wind on it's surface to smooth and erode rocks, so you should see some really jagged rock formations. I think this would add some aesthetics.

craters: I think that large circular patches of darker terrain tiles should exist on the map. These terrain tiles would act the same as lakebed tiles in that they will become water tiles as atmosphere increases. Craters should be random sizes and distances between. I would even have them generate partially off of the map and across region maps to give a very appealing region view. This may might that craters could envelop most or all of some maps, and some maps might get no crater tiles at all, but that's the beauty of it. the player should also have the option to fill in a crater tile or water tile using regolith where they would otherwise use ore on other planets. The player should be able to turn regular tiles into crater tiles as well with the cost of money.

meteor showers: these showers would pummel structures below periodically. Any that land on empty tiles could generate regolith nodes and could have the chance to generate mini-craters that would fill with water upon terraforming, this is why I think we should have the ability to turn crater tiles to regular tiles, and vise versa. The damage from these meteors shouldn't be catastrophic, but it should cause some damage depending on the structure. These meteors should stop once atmosphere is above 1 mil.

Atmosphere leach: Since most planets like the moon aren't big enough to keep an atmosphere forever(there are exceptions), there should be a significant drain on atmosphere that must be compensated for. It could also be a benefit if a colony's atmosphere is too high though. A drain of 5k per minute would be a challenge at first, and you would have to beat that mark in order for condensors to operate.


Forest Planet ideas:

Forest Summary: I don't have much to say about this world, it's pretty straightforward albiet annoying at the start. Not really a big benefit to this world aside from the fact that you don't have to mess with the atmosphere at first until you get bigger. I'd honestly play abandoned before forest any day. Here are some ideas I have in mind though:

Rivers: this should be an addition. Any forest world requires lots of water in order for trees to grow.

mega trees: i think that mega-trees should generate on the map at first and begin to spread. Players could try to preserve these so that they'll have a huge supply later on. Once they they're gone, they're gone.

Asteroid planet ideas:

Asteroid summary:
I like the asteroid world. It's just like lunar, but harder since you don't have alu nodes. I used to play this world back before we had ways to get infinite diamonds. Might take a crack at it again to see how far I get. I have a few ideas regarding this world.

craters: the same concept as the lunar planet.

meteor showers: the same concept as lunar planet

Extreme atmosphere leech: asteroids are definately not large enough to keep an atmosphere for long. Because of this, they are drained by 50k per minute. 100 minutes is all it takes for an earthlike atmosphere level to drop to 0. Major benefit later in the game though when atmosphere is increased rapidly by pollution.

Awkward rotation: An asteroid has a very randomized shape in real life. it can be elongated, flat, and even spherical. Because of this, days and nights on this planet last for random times. Short nights lower colonist energy. Short days reduce happiness. long nights can increase colonist energy and long days can raise happiness. This amount increased or decreased would only apply if the length of a night or day goes past the minimum or maximum limits. if a limit is exceeded, the same amount of energy or hapiness is taken away or given, no matter how far past the limit a day or night is.

Abandoned World Ideas:

Abandoned Summary: I really like the abandoned world map, but my idea for a twilight themed abandoned world would add a mystic and ancient feel to the map. I'd like to see a much darker themed map than the light and cheery theme that it has now.

Rivers: aside form the twilight idea I would love to see rivers on this map.

Ice planet ideas:

Ice summary: I like the ice planet because it's a challenge to get through the crystalline bottleneck. I do have some ideas though:

glacial/ crystal decos: a slew of icy/crystalline decorations would look good for this planet.

unstable melting: When you heat up an ice planet, there's no telling where the oceans and rivers will form and where the actual land will be. Ice melts very unpredictably, so there should be no indication as to whether each tile is a lakebed or regular tile, but they should both still be there and have the same texture. It should be set up to where rivers will form as if randomly and instantly. This would be part of the real-life challenges of terraforming an ice planet, so would make sense here. Sometimes your colony gets destroyed just like in lava world, sometimes you get lucky.

Underwater crystal farm: This new building would need to straddle water and land and would be four-way rotatable so it can be placed in any orientation as long as the front 4 tiles are on water and the back 2 squares are on land. It is a 3x2 structure, and it consumes moderate amounts of water, crystalline, and alcohol to constantly produce large amounts of crystalline. The concept behind it is that some crystals grow faster in a water solution with the nutrients it needs to grow. Water also allows the crystals to grow much larger because gravity is much weaker in water as we all know. The fact that the structure would have to straddle land and water means that the planet will need to terraformed before a player can place on of these and get rid of their green crystals.

desert world:

desert summary: I don't have much to say about this map, haven't played reptilians that much. I do think that it could use some aesthetics though, just one flat plane of land is nothing to get all excited about. But here are some of the ideas that I have:

Yellow badlands decos: weird yellow rock forms, crackly ground, rough patches, and some shrubbery and cacti. These should randomly dot the landscape and would really up the aesthetics on this map.

Tar(oil) pits: instead of water flowing through the map, tar pits would give it a more desert feel, as you find these pits naturally in deserts. just like rivers on the earthlike planet yield infinite water, these pits should yield infinite oil. The major downfall with this benefit is that you need workers to collect the oil, and that can be pretty tedious and may slow down performance.

raise the atmosphere: Since deserts are supposed to be hot, we should raise the atmosphere to above earthlike. This also corrosponds to my thermal idea below. In addition to this, I would recommend adding a fully terraformed stage where atmosphere is reduce to between 5 mil and 15 mil. I'm not saying that deserts don't exist when atmosphere is at perfect levels because the saharrah wouldn't exist if that were true. It's just that since bast still hasn't added any thermal or moisture level factors to terraforming, I thought that lowering the atmosphere was good enough to simulate raising the moisture level and lowering thermal levels to make the planet cooler and wetter.

dry-lakebed tiles: I think that the dry lakebed tile idea would particularly help this planet as once it is terraformed from dessert to earthlike, you'll have rivers flowing through the landscape.
Sandstorms: Not to be confused with dust storms, the storms are much shorter, yet can be devastating to colonists and buildings. These storms should cause colonist sickness, slow down movement, and accelerate the decay of structures by a certain amount for the duration of the storm. Depending on the direction of the storm, walls placed on the map will block the storm from getting into your cities. It's best to surround your cities with walls so that you get as little exposure to the storms as possible, just an extra challenge. These storms should cease once atmosphere is reduced to earthlike and life is brought back to the planet.

Lava planet ideas:

lava summary: I liked this planet at one point, but I think it's rather pointless to play being that it doesn't have an end-goal and you're colony is never safe no matter how far down the atmosphere goes. My list of lava ideas on my planet hub topic should cover all of the ideas that I have for this planet, and they all still stand.

Fissure vents: These gigantic cracks in the planet spew forth ash and toxic gas into the atmosphere. Because of this, atmosphere is increased by 2 thousand atmosphere a minute, even if the atmosphere is reduced to between 5 and 15 mil, atmosphere will still pile up, requiring you to build more buildings that use up atmosphere to balance it out. The only thing that would need to be added is a passive loop that continuously counts down 60 seconds and then adds 2k to the atmosphere number value. Good luck terraforming this planet.

ideas for all existing planets:

Dry Lakebed Tiles: I've suggested this a few times, but basically dry lakebed tiles should replace water tiles in low and high atmosphere planets. These tiles can be built on, but watch out, because when atmosphere goes over 250k or falls under 30 million, these tiles will turn to water and any buildings on them will be destroyed. There should be an apparent difference in color shade or texture between regular tiles and the dry lakebed tiles. remaning Ice deposits should also turn into water deposits at the same atmosphere level.

Dynamic terraforming: I've mentioned this a couple of times too. It's simple, if atmosphere goes too low, the terraformed planet becomes barren, just as if it were a red or lunar planet; if atmosphere goes too high, then the planet becomes hotter, becoming first a dessert and then eventually a lava planet, with all the eruptions and lava spreading we know and love. . I also think that atmosphere requirements for all atmosphere stages for region games should be multiplied by the number of tiles on a region. This gives the player a longer playthrough and also encourages them to develop cities on every tile. I think that downside is worth it and it would be a fun challenge to work towards. I think that aside from the tiles changing texture, trees should generate across the map on empty space once atmosphere either rises past 5 mil or falls past 15 mil. I also think they should disappear while outside of those ranges.

Thermal factor: I feel like there should be some sort of challenge regarding keeping your colonists at a good temperature. Perhaps you could add a meter in statistics that indicates thermal level of the entire colony. Too hot or cold and your colonists will become sick and loose energy and hapiness. An earthlike planet, or any planet that's been terraformed to between 5 mil and 15 mil, will not affect the meter at least, but too much atmosphere and the meter will start to go up and too little atmosphere will start to subtract heat from the meter. You should be able to build coolers or heaters to supplement the loss or gain of temperature. Currently most planets start out at no atmosphere, which means that they will start out cold. Lava is the only planet that would add the the thermal meter at this time but I think that the desert type planet should have high atmosphere so it can add to the meter.

Regions acting as mc campaigns: Now, some people would disagree with me on this, but I think it's totally fair to call region mode and sort of "campaign mode." This is because with regions, you get a longer playthrough and it takes longer for you to develop the space given to you. I also think it's fair that region mode requires premium, as most well-developed apps offer a free trial(single map mode) and full version with campaign mode(region mode). Some of yall might disagree. but here are the main ideas that I have in mind:
- design random mandatory goals to have a chance to pop up for each tile a map occupies that grant the player money, research. civics, happiness, or other resources, kind of like quests. But these would be more like story-line quests. a medium map would contain four of these quests. These should take a decent amount of time to complete and should make the game progress slower.
- design smaller optional side-quests that pop up randomly occasionally and grant smaller bonuses.
- each tech should require a certain number of complete story-line quests before being unlocked, even if you have enough research. There would be only one quest per tile so this would encourage players to develop all the tiles to complete all of the available story quests.
-Make individual map progression depend on the completion of story quests. For instance, you can add a population cap that unlocks after the quest is complete, and for medium maps with four quests, you could increase the cap in increments to allow the player to develop further after each quest, but not indefinitely until all quests are complete.

Overall I think that these ideas for campaign mode should add a very interesting element to regions mode and would make it more worthwhile and entertaining to play and a player might be entertained for a very long time before becoming bored.




But anyway, those are my ideas. I wanted to go over each planet so that everything was covered in my planethub topic. I'll paste this link so yall can access it easily. Let me know what you think and which ideas you like/dislike.

Beginning with My Colony 2 v0.21.0, the game has a built-in stat reporting service that developers are free to take advantage of if they wish. This thread will stay updated as features are added and changes made to how stat reporting works.

MC2 players can easily opt in to a third party stat reporting service by opening the Statistics window of their game. The World section will provide an input box where players can enter a URL (or comma separated series of URL) endpoint for game stat collection.


Once set, the endpoints selected by the user will periodically receive JSON encoded game statistics via HTTP post. It is up to the endpoint maintainer to ensure that their URL can receive cross origin HTTP requests. Endpoints can be built with whatever technology the maintainer wishes.

To help get you started with developing a stat reporting endpoint, here are some code samples in both PHP and Python:

PHP: /viewpage.php?p=43258#p43308
Python: /viewpage.php?p=43258#p43308

The base JSON data that will be sent to the endpoint via HTTP post looks like this:

{

event: "eventCode",

sid: "server-uuid",

ses: "session-uuid",

cli: "client-uuid",

gid: "game-uuid",

aun: "ape apps username",

data: {}

}

Every post will be formatted as above and contain those seven fields, event, sid, ses, cli, gid, aun and data, data generally being an object containing further data. The data object will differ depending on the event code. The rest of the fields are as follows:

field	info
event	current possible event codes: serverConnected, serverDisconnected, statReport
sid	server id: a unique id for the current world (aka, save game). The server ID is also visible to the player as seen in the screenshot above, meaning an endpoint operator could theoretically use it as an authentication key if they wanted to.
ses	session id: every time the user opens MC2, they are assigned a new session id. can be used to track how many unique times the player has opened the game
cli	client id: assigned the first time a player opens MC2 on a device and is retained. can be used to help identify multiple worlds from the same player
gid	game identifier: For stock My Colony 2, the game identifier will always be a999fe76-ff1c-5935-e365-755089ba8982 If a total conversion mod author knows what he/she is doing, their mod should have a different identifier from the base game (this can be set in the Metadata section of the game editor). This can be used to organize data based on mod (or to easily support future games based on the MC2 engine), but it does require that the mod author properly changed the game identifier on their mod.
aun	ape apps username: if the player is signed in and authenticated with their Ape Apps Account, this field will be set with their username.

Every post sent to the logging endpoint will contain the above fields, so you should be able to count on them when designing endpoint logic.

The data field will be different (or even blank) depending on the event code associated with the request. Below is a reference for the data currently sent with each endpoint. You may bookmark this page for reference, as it will be updated when new data points are added.

Event: serverConnected

field	info
gameData	This is a hashed checksum of all of the game data objects loaded for the current world. This will be the exact same hash for all players playing the same version of stock My Colony 2, and will be different when mods/addons are activated. This is useful if you are developing rankings/leaderboards and want to verify that all users are playing on an even field.
worldTypeId	This is the uuid for the game data object associated with the current world (eg Red Planet, Water World, etc).
worldTypeName	The readable name for the current world type above, as set in the game data object (not translated).
worldName	The name of this world (the save game, not the planet type). ex Strange New World, or whatever the player chose.
gameVersion	The host version of My Colony 2 that this session is on (ex v0.21.0)
created	Timestamp of server first creation
hostOS	What operating system this session is running under (ex windows, android, ios, etc)
gameSession	Differing from the top level ses session id, the gameSession id is unique every time the game file is loaded. Can be used to link stats from connection to disconnection.
universe	the universe code this world is connected to

Event: serverDisconnected

field	info
gameSession	Differing from the top level ses session id, the gameSession id is unique every time the game file is loaded. Can be used to link stats from connection to disconnection.

Event: statReport

field	info
bannedPlayers	Total number of players currently banned from this game.
exploredChunks	How many chunks have been generated (aka "explored") on this world.
players	Objects containing extended information for each player in the game (detailed in below table)
settledChunks	Number of chunks that contain player built structures
settlements	Objects containing extended information for each settlement in the game (detailed in below table)
totalGDP	quick reference containing the sum of all settlement GDPs in world
totalMoney	quick reference containing the sum of all player money balances in world
totalPlayers	quick reference containing the sum of all players in world
totalPlaytime	total time in minutes that this server has had at least 1 player connected and playing
totalPopulation	quick reference containing the sum of all settlement populations in world
utilities	Objects containing total utility output and consumption in world

Object: statReport.players

field	info
admin	boolean, is this player an admin
civ	data object id for the civilization this player is playing as
color	player color hex code
id	server assigned unique player id
joined	timestamp for when player first joined server
level	player's level
mod	boolean, is this player a moderator
money	players current balance of money
playTime	how many minutes this player has been connected and active
research	how much research the player currently has
username	if signed in to Ape Apps Account, this is their username. Otherwise, null

This post will continue to be updated and maintained as changes are features are added to the reporting function. Please use this thread for questions/comments/suggestions/requests, etc.

what does the spice den do?
however, I do still agree that the spice worlds need the spice den to remain competitive in these trying times.

spamdude said:I don't think you should necessarily bring back the spice den with its current stats. When you can make over a billion money a day with a mere 400 of a relatively cheap building, something's gone wrong.

it was our only real selling point. If those stats are bad, then nerf the spice den, not take it away from spice worlds lol

yeah, that's my intention
though not actually nerfing the spice den itself, but introducing a nerfed variant for spice worlds
that way other worlds will still be incentivized to buy spice

spamdude said:yeah, that's my intention
though not actually nerfing the spice den itself, but introducing a nerfed variant for spice worlds
that way other worlds will still be incentivized to buy spice

I am willing to settle on that.

This Spice Den combines Spice with the elusive Duskshroom, generating 3x the profit of a regular Spice Den! It even out-produces the Investment Bank in money output, but you do need to get your hands on both Spice and Duskshrooms to use it.

So just want to say that I'm enjoying the new lava world and it's a real challenge to keep a colony going long enough to reduce the atmosphere to below 15 mil in this planet type. I appreciate bast using some of my suggestions and incorporating them into his scheme of things, and I think that with a few tweaks, this planet could be even more awesome and attract more people to it. So here are a bunch of my ideas for how this world could be amped up.

1.) Since it would make sense that a flying object would not be affected by anything that happens on the ground, I would love to see that same rule be put in place by my colony. This way, you can have queens in the air at all times in case an eruption goes off and kills all of your mounds. Then you have a guarantee to start over and not lose the game. then, if someone loses their mounds with no queens in the air, it's on them for not taking precautions.

2.) eruptions stop when the atmosphere is under 50 million, but lava still spreads until the atmosphere gets under 1 million atmosphere. Once the atmosphere is at optimum range, the player should attempt to put the lava out of it's misery since they would have idea number 3.

3.) Obsidian extractors. The lava planet is just awash in lava, and has been like that since it was formed. Therefore, layers of obsidian deposited by lava flows over time are buried beneath the planets surface and can be harvested via an obsidian extractor once the atmosphere is under 15 mil. This is optional, because yes, the obsidian is supposed to be a hard-to-get resource. However, if a player survives long enough to reduce the atmosphere all the way down from 500 to below 15 million, I would think that they deserve a safe supply of obsidian.

4.) sugar furnaces. These would be made from obsidian and would burn sugar hotter and produces as much power as a power spire. Small amounts of obsidian are constantly consumed, since some obsidian is mixed with the sugar to maintain a high temperature burn. Use this idea if wood is not going to be a viable resource on the lava world, which I doubt it is.

5. Dark versions of all of the buildings that require wood if wood isn't going to be an acquirable resource on this world. obsidian can take the place of the wood requirement in many advanced buildings if you make dark versions that resemble obsidian.

6. Dynamic planetary response to atmosphere level. It would be nice to make the lava world turn into an earth-like world when it reaches optimum atmosphere level, and crystal deposits could turn purple or green or some other color that's not being implemented right now. And then it would be nice to see the planet change from an earth-like world to an ice world once the atmosphere is below 1 mil atmosphere, at which no more lava flows and the crystals turn blue. What do yall think, wouldn't that make it more interesting? In fact, you could make all planets turn into a lava world and cause lava to spread once the planet gains too much atmosphere in my opinion. And then you can make them turn to ice worlds or red planet-like worlds when the atmosphere gets too low. Those would be the ultimate penalties for not managing your atmosphere correctly. I would still only allow obsidian extractors on worlds that began as lava worlds though.

7.) obsidian made structures are resistant to lava, but not lava proof. Obsidian structures that are contacted by lava will sustain constant and mild to moderate damage. More advanced buildings will be more resistant to lava, and some may even be impervious depending on their function. This could be another function of obsidian, since, if bast were to follow my idea of replacing the wood requirement with obsidian, then lots of buildings would have dark versions that have obsidian in place of wood, and wouldn't ya think that obsidian would have a natural resistance to lava. Anything that is made even of a little bit of obsidian should have at least a small resistance to lava.

8.) Lava world for humans. Since one of my ideas was to make all planets turn into lava worlds when they become shrouded in dense atmosphere, it would be fitting to give humans a crack at the lava world as well. I mean, they have more advanced technology than zolarg, so if zolarg can do it, why can't humans do it?

Well, those are my ideas, hope yall like them. Again, I'm very grateful for how the lava world turned out and these are not complaints, I just want to give some ideas that would do the lava world some justice.

.

Hello, friends. Today, I want let you know that I am doing an public testing world on the Spice World, my suggestion, released months ago, and I just started the world months ago and then took a break from MC2. Right now, school has not started yet, but I will make more progress on the spice world testing later today. Thank you.

Also remember to build a greenhouse park ASAP to start collecting wood, as tree farms can be used on Spice Worlds but they're made of wood. If your world's spice deposit generation is broken (as mine is), the wood from the tree farms can be used to run charcoal factories which then feed into gold extractors. Also a very inefficient process, but it's the alternative to constantly having to jump around fifty different spice veins.

Today I have finished Epic Adventure v0.14.0 which should be hitting all platforms over the coming days. This update adds Charcoal which can be created by smelting a Log in the furnace. Also, pretty much all wooden items can now be used as furnace fuel. This update also vastly increases the speed at which logging/mining/attacking occurs.

Beyond that though, I wanted to discuss the future of Epic Adventure a bit. The truth is, there are a lot of really good ideas and things I want to do with this game, but they are all sort of hampered by some stupid design decisions that I made from the very beginning of development, making it exceedingly difficult and time consuming to add new features and content to the game.

Even the graphics are a hassle, as simple as they look. For instance, I have been wanting to add more walls to the game beyond the simple wooden wall that exists. However, each wall object in the game requires 48 different images which all need to line up together so that all possible configurations of creating a wall will properly connect. The same goes for rocks in caves and other terrain elements. This is a very annoying and time consuming process in and of itself.

The game world is split into chunks, which is fine, but I originally implemented this is having each chunk be a totally separate map, whose processing and entities are completely disconnected from the rest of the game world. What is happening in one chunk has no relation or impact on what is happening on the chunk next door, and changing this requires a complete reworking of the server side code.

For rendering, Epic Adventure uses the Scroll2d engine that I originally created for My Land. This engine does not lend itself particularly well to the chunk layout of the game, as it works on an x:y coordinate system that cannot go below 0:0, meaning negative numbers are not possible. This is why in My Colony 1, the map could only be expanded East and South when using the annex land option, and not to the North and West. This is an issue in Epic Adventure because I would like to make game "look like" it is not broken up into chunks, even though it technically is, similar to My Colony 2.

Because of this, I have determined to consider Epic Adventure a proof-of-concept or a tech-demo for a brand new game engine that I will be switching to, and to end development of the game at this point. I will be taking the best parts of Epic Adventure and reusing a lot of it's code, but pushing it into a brand new open-world RPG engine that I can use across several games, including Gone Rogue 2, as well as whatever will be the spiritual successor to Epic Adventure, which I am thinking about calling My World or something to that effect, in tradition of keeping with the "My" series of games.

So for the purpose of the rest of this post, I will be referring to the continued development of what is now Epic Adventure as My World, however there is no guarantee that My World will be the final name. But I need to use something to talk about what will be changing in the new engine, and what will be carried over from Epic Adventure.

To start with, the My World engine will probably straight-copy the game HUD/UI from Epic Adventure, including the crafting/smelting menu, as well as the "belt" inventory and so on. Not that these things don't need improvement, but copying what is already there will give a big boost to the development.

For rendering, I will be replacing the Scroll2d engine with the Scroll3d engine that is currently being used in My Colony 2. Scroll3d is vastly more advanced than Scroll2d and renders faster on more devices thanks to using WebGL instead of software rendering. My World .png artwork will be replaced with Voxel Paint graphics like in My Colony 2, and player characters will still use My Tokens characters thanks to the new Mini Voxel Tokens introduced in the latest My Tokens release.

The reason for this change is that it simply makes it way faster and easier to create graphics and assets for the game. For instance, I said that a wall in Epic Adventure requires 48 different images. In My World, it could be made with either 1 or 2 images, one for the sides, and optionally a different one for the top. Scroll3d was also build with chunk-type worlds in mind right from the beginning, again look at My Colony 2 for reference.

My Colony 2 has a complete game-editor and modding platform built in, and I want My World to have the same thing. Not only does this allow other users to create content for the game, but it allows me to work on the game from a web browser from anywhere. For instance, if we spend two weeks with family, I can take my laptop and still work on My Colony 2, because I have the game and Voxel Paint in my web browser wherever I'm at. It would be nice to be able to do that here as well.

I mentioned that I want this engine to also support Gone Rogue 2, which I've been wanting to make for a while now. This means support for other RPG style elements. It will need a full dungeon generator, as well as support for NPC's, shops, dialogs, etc. A lot of these things I was planning to add to Epic Adventure anyway, because I was originally going to use the Epic Adventure engine to make the Gone Rogue sequel. But to have this in the new engine, along with the game editor built right into the game, will actually give players the ability to create their own RPG adventure games as My World mods. There are a lot of possibilities here.

Anyway, this is a long term project. What I want to do is take what I've learned about crafting games from Epic Adventure, what I've learned about modding/endless worlds from My Colony 2, and what I've learned about multiplayer from a whole host of games, and merge them into a new Open World/Adventure Game engine. It might be called My World, and the first version will be pretty similar to the current release of Epic Adventure, except in 3d. It will be a lot like when I originally converted My Empire from Scroll2d to Scroll3d, except this requires more substantial changes than that one did. But for the first release, I plan to have everything that the current Epic Adventure has, and then move forward from there.

So there it is, I hope that this doesn't disappoint anyone, but I think that the new game has potential to really shine in ways that it would be hard to make Epic Adventure do so. But let me know what you think, and stay tuned for more!

I will now be introducing the World Resources and PvE now. Stay tuned till the end!

==World Resources==
World Resources are an kind of resource that is each special to every world. They are produced by their respective production buildings, and are stored in the Warehouse. You earn them by gaining some when the Lander or Warehouse is destroyed, purchasing from the trader, requesting from commonwealthmates or by production. You can use them to hire mercenaries to fight alongside, trade the standard resources with other players, donate mercenaries to commonwealthmates or to craft Bottles. Bottles are simply items that can have beneficial effects. You can use them in your base, or in battle. However, some do carry along disadvantages. Be aware of this. Bottles only last for a few days. You need 1, 2 or 3 (Hero HP/ATK/Shield) world resources to craft tham. There will be the following exclusive world resources to each world:
Red Planet: Ice
Lunar World: Regolith
Water World: Fish/Salt Water
Forest World: Wood
Abandoned World: Ether/Regolith
Asteroid: Regolith
Ice World: Crystalline
Lava World: Obsidian/Cobalt

==PvE==
PvE missions are in against 3 seperate factions. You will unlock LIS first (50 stages), after LIS stage 25 Zolarg (75), and after Zolarg stage 50 Draconians (100). You will have to withstand some hard maps at the later levels. LIS campaign are the easy missions (-50% building health and defense damage), Zolarg campaign is normal (no buffs or nerfs), and Draconian campaign is hard (opposite of LIS). If you have unlocked the Zolarg Empire or the Alpha Draconians, PvE bases will attack each other, especially your base. You are responsible for attacking and defending your base in PvE. You can watch your base being attacked, but you cannot watch PvE factions attack another base (no resources on the other PvE map are stolen). However, you will lose your resources after one of these enemy attacks your base. This therefore happens in a cross-quadrilateral pattern.

Alright, that is the end of this part of the concept! I hope you like it!

In time for the weekend, My Colony 2 has just been updated to v0.27.0 and should be hitting all platforms shortly! This update has a critical fix that might actually end up killing some existing colonies, so you are going to want to read on to find out what's new!


First for the big change. As I was implementing one of the new buildings for this update (the Ancient Alien Microchip Factory), I noticed that during it's production cycle, it was not consuming any Alien Artifacts. I tweaked with the building in the game editor a bit, and still no consumption. Upon further investigation, I noticed that no building was consuming any resources, and it's been like this all along!

How I missed such an obvious flaw is beyond me, although I don't know if anybody else really noticed it either. It's easy to overlook a bug that actually benefits you, I suppose. Looking back though, stockpiling resources did always seem a bit easier in MC2 as compared to MC1.

Anyway, I went ahead and fixed the issue, loaded up my main colony, and it immediately died. Stockpiles of Ore, Gold, Wood, Charcoal, Crystalline, Rum, Uranium, you name it, all quickly evaporated. My settlements had been running so long on a balance based on zero resource consumption, I never built up the necessary production and gathering capabilities to handle the industrial output. Needless to say, it pretty much brought my entire colony to a standstill. Not only that, but since I had several settlements connected to the same resource pool using trade depots, every single one was brought down to a grinding halt!

It actually took me several hours to recover my game from this calamity. In fact, the fix required me to alter the stats of several buildings, because it became plain once resource consumption was factored in that many buildings were either under producing or over consuming resources. Because of this, production and consumption stats have been altered in this update for the Sugar Extraction Lab, Tree Farm, Charcoal Factory, Uranium Enrichment Facility, Canteen, Gold Synthesis Lab, Ore Fracking Operation, and Rum Distillery. I think I have a reasonable balance going right now, but of course there are likely things that I have overlooked. If you find structures that need rebalanced because of this changed, either buffed or nerfed in some way, let me know in the comments to this post.

Now, while I was trying to figure out this new balance, it was actually quite difficult to do at the beginning, as My Colony 2 lacks detailed resource consumption/production stats like you would find in My Colony 1. At least it did lack those stats, as this update now adds a new Resources tab to the Statistics window!


As in My Colony 1, you can select each resource to see the breakdown on which buildings are providing/using a specific resource, which is a huge help when trying to work out and balance your settlement production levels.


Of course, the resource stats are not exactly, and cannot be exactly as they are in MC1, due to the nature of resource pools in MC2. Resources in this game are not kept per-player or even per settlement, but are rather stored in dynamic "pools" that can change as time goes on based on the existence of logistics stations, outposts and other such structures. This made putting together the stats collection and reporting a bit more difficult than it was in MC1, but it's mostly working here now. To view the stats of a resource pool, you have to move your camera/viewport to a settlement first, and you will be shown the stats for the resource pool that you are currently active in. At some point I will probably make it possible to view a list of all resource pools and which settlements they are connected to, I just have not gotten to it yet.

Moving along, this update brought a few big changes to roads, changes that I started working on a few updates ago and neglected to finish until now.

Firstly, roads with either production or consumption properties (such as the Solar Road) are now finally functional. Prior to this update, you could build a huge Solar Road network with 200 tiles, and it would only produce power based on the first tile placed. Now, they work as you would expect.

Next, Roads are now actually factored in to the path finder, and their "drive speed modification" stats now actually work! You may or may not have noticed, but before this update roads had basically no impact on what your Rovers did, other than providing an aesthetic look. Roads are now fully functional, and will work in basically the same manner as they do in MC1.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, you can no build roads (and some other structures) anywhere you want, no settlement required!


Wouldn't it be nice to build a big beautiful highway connecting all of your settlements together? You couldn't do it before, but you can now! Roads can now be built anywhere, as long as you have an appropriate Rover in range. The resources used to pay for the roads will come from your closest settlement to the road in question (the closes settlement owned by the player building the road). The only restriction is that you can not build a road in a chunk/settlement that is "owned" by another player.

The Game Editor now also allows you to specify other buildings, besides roads, that can be built out-of-settlement. The only one right now is the Commemorative Plaque, since I figured it would nice to be able to place signs along the side of your highways.

Moving along, I did a lot of focus and work on performance optimizations in this release. When a map had larger settlements, the game was starting to get so laggy (at least on my M1 Mac) that it was barely playable anymore, so something had to be done. Obviously there is always more performance work to be done, but here are some of the changes so far.

Firstly, I reduced the radius of chunks that are generated around the camera, and I lowered the time that it takes before the engine clears out chunks that are no longer active around the camera. This provides a pretty large reduction in memory usage when you are in a big settlement, as it can reduce the number of .vpp models loaded in memory significantly. At some point I will probably make this a setting in the Engine Settings window, so people with epic desktop computers and RTX video cards can turn their chunk render distance way up if they want to, but since most players right now are using a smart phone, I decided to lower the default setting.

Speaking of default settings, most of the "pretty" engine settings, such as Anti Aliasing, Depth of Field, Dynamic Shadows, Fancy Water, etc, are now turned off by default. These you can always just turn back on in the settings menu if your machine can handle them, but I wanted the default settings to be low so that a new player wont get in the game and immediately experience lag if they are using a lower end machine.

A lot of improvements have also been made to the server code, which runs on a separate thread from the renderer. There was a pretty big issue where the game server would lag down hard if you had a ton of rovers in your game, since every "tick" a rover checks to see if it should be building something or not. To address this, the server now keeps track of whether or not there are actually buildings under construction, and so Rovers will only check if they should be building when there is actually something to build. Makes sense, right?

Moving along, since the last update introduced the Excavator and digging, it basically became possible to turn the Desert World map into a little water world by digging out your own lakes and rivers. Because of this, it only made sense to allow all of the water based structures and units to be constructed on the desert map.


You are now free to terraform your Desert World map into the holiday paradise that your colonists have been yearning for.

Next up, this update adds the classic Crystalbot from MC1, and with it comes the ability to create and grow Synthetic Crystalline Deposits. Be careful though, because the Synthetic Crystalline is a cancer that is as aggressive as ever, so I would suggest not building it too close to your settlement...


My original inspiration for Crystalline (back in MC1) was the Tiberium from Command and Conquer, a substance that provides power but that also spreads and can become an environmental catastrophe. For this reason, you need to take extra precautions when dealing with the synthetic stuff, as it can easily get out of hand if you let it.

I think I mentioned earlier in this post that the Ancient Alien Microchip Factory has been added to the game. This along with the Crystalline stuff requires two new techs, Ancient Alien Manufacturing and Crystalline Synthesis. I also added the new Luxury Townhome, a decorative housing unit for Premium players.

Since I was on the topic of new Research, I will mention the final engine change to this update. Players who are either in a hurry or want to speed through a new game can now instant-unlock new research using Ape Coins. Like I mentioned in the last My Colony 1 release notes, I am going to be looking for better ways to monetize the My Colony games without resorting to heavy advertising, and this seemed like a reasonable way that is totally optional and does not fundamentally change the game for existing players.

So all in all, this was a pretty big update for My Colony 2. I would suggest that all players be careful when they first open their games after the update, and to comb over your settlements and their research stats, because there will probably be things you need to change, particularly if you have an older established colony.

Moving forward, my near-term plans are to continue expanding the Alien/Quantum tech trees. I am also going to be bringing a Galactic Board of Trade to My Colony 2 in some form (gotta work out the details on that one), and I will also probably be adding a Spice World (not related to the Spice Girls) to implement some of the Spice suggestions from @Architecture1134 and others. There is also a lot coming soon to the original My Colony and to Colony Wars, but more on those another day. All in all, a lot of excitement coming to the My Colony Universe of games, and I should probably put together another episode of the My Colony Podcast to discuss it all. But until then, check out the new update, enjoy, have a good weekend, let me know what issues you find or suggestions you have, and stay tuned for more!

https://www.apewebapps.com/my-colony-2/

#mycolony2

My Colony 2 is in the middle of a major overhaul to both it's logic and rendering engines. This update brings many changes that have been suggested by the community, so let's take a look at what is here and what is soon to come.


From a technical standpoint, My Colony 2 v0.40.0 (the previous release) and v0.41.0 (this release) are not even the same game. What started as a suggestion from @spamdude to process foreground settlement logic the same way background settlements are processed basically transformed into a complete rewrite of the game's server code. There is now almost no similarity in the way the game is processed compared to previous releases.

Everything in My Colony 2 is now simulated based on structure statistics, the only exception being unit/resource harvesting. This was actually going to be the original design for My Colony 2, but when I was soliciting community feedback at the beginning, there was a strong preference to have 100% accurate production stats with visible structure output bars, so the idea was scrapped (I was also going to simulate resource harvesting but that was also not a popular idea). With settlements and worlds now getting larger and larger though, I think it became apparent to many that the simulated model was best, and the game engine has now been rewritten accordingly.

This update is all about game performance, and the logic thread of the game should now be able to handle games that are several orders of magnitude larger than the largest colonies currently in existence. It is possible that some things might currently be broken or might not be working the way they were. Honestly I changed so many things this update that it would be quite easy for something to have slipped through the cracks, so please let me know in this thread or elsewhere in the forum what I may have missed. In general though, expect game performance to be much improved in this update.

Since I was already working on performance, I have been wanting to make a change to the Scroll3D engine for some time related to 3d model instancing. Basically, instead of creating a new 3d model for each structure in the game, you create one "instance" of the model which is reused/redrawn by the GPU multiple times. If you would like to see an example on how this can impact performance, please see the following WebGL example that the new code was inspired by: https://threejs.org/examples/?q=instan#webgl_instancing_performance

The reason I could not easily do this, is because 3d models using regular materials could not have both the regular face colors and the glowing "emissive" face colors without using two separate 3d models. Ultimately what I had to do was write my own custom 3d model shader material for Voxel Paint files, which now allows for regular, emissive, and metallic faces in one single model.

Lightmaps and Metallic maps are now baked right into the 3d model geometries when they are compiled in Voxel Paint. If models do not have this infomation baked in, they will need to be recompiled by the engine at run time. I already went through and recompiled most of the models in the game (especially the larger ones) so I don't think it will be much of a problem for MC2, and Voxel Paint will now automatically do this for all .vpp files going forward. This data actually makes precompiled .vpp files slightly larger, but it's not by much and I think it is worth it.

Using the new model light and metallic maps does incur a slight performance cost, as there is more shader processing that needs to be done on the models. For this reason, I have introduced two new engine settings for turning on/off voxel emissive and metallic properties. If you are on a mobile or do not have much of a GPU on your system, you can try turning them both off and seeing if it helps.


This update also removes the Depth of Field effect (Bokeh effect) from the game, the effect that would blur out the background. I might bring this back in the future, but it just wasn't focusing correctly and I did not have time to properly debug it.

So those are the main engine changes in this update. It might not seem like a ton, but it's basically all I have been working on for the past several weeks. TBH there is probably more that needs done too (please let me know), but I can't keep grinding on this update for MC2 while all of my other projects slip behind schedule, so further changes will need to wait.

There are some minor content related changes as well. Firstly, the Tree Farm and the Palm Sapling are now buildable on the Forest World, which was an accidental oversight on my part. In addition, the Spice Den can now be built on the Spice World again.

3D model art has been updated for the following structures: Barracks, Construction Yard, City Hall, Golden Shelter and Spice Drilling Operation.

Finally, two new structures from @spamdude have been added to the game, the Crystalline Trap and the Crystallizer Array, both Ice World exclusives.

I know there are now quite a few Voxel Art submissions waiting to be added to the game in the backlog. I hope to be able to get to all of these in the next update, and if I don't have to end up rewriting the whole game again then my plan is to work on those for 0.42.0. There are also changes that need to be made to the GBT to address spamming and other issues, and those are also on the list.

Hopefully the next update will not be so technically intensive and I can go back to adding fun stuff, but that will depend on how many bugs these changes introduced, so please let me know what issues you find in this release, thanks for playing mc2 and stay tuned for more!

#mycolony2

there should definitely be a localized money maker for spice worlds though, or else better uses for spice

Hello! Did you know that Spice Dens are made out of bricks? Did you also know that the current Spice Den model has no bricks? Want to change that? Well look no further! Here is an updated Spice Den!