Posted by 
Find User
here you can look for a user
Updates and Announcements - Page 9
My Colony 2 v0.29.0 Released
Today I am finishing up My Colony 2 v0.29.0, and the update should be hitting all platforms over the coming days. This is a major update to the game, including many core changes to the engine and underlying code, so unfortunately there are probably bugs that I am not foreseeing. But what is new here anyway? Let's take a look!
To begin, this update marks the triumphant return of the Galactic Board of Trade, featuring an excellent voxel model provided by @SPARKY0303 ! This is the only new building in this update, which is accompanied by the new Long Range Communications tech which is required to build it. It also requires a level 3 settlement in order to be built. Once you build the GBT, it will unlock the new Trade tab in the statistics window, provided your camera is currently centered on a settlement that has a GBT.
From there, you are able to post resource contracts, or purchase contracts that have been posted by other players.
The Galactic Board of Trade is still in it's early stages in My Colony 2, and more features will be added as time goes on, but the basic framework is now there and available to use. Keep in mind, that the trade tab will only be available on un-modded games, so if you have mods activated, you will not be able to post trades to the GBT.
Along with the new GBT, this update also brings back the classic Newsfeed ticker from My Colony 1!
The news ticker is also in it's early stages, but has a huge advantage over the ticker found in the original My Colony, in that it now supports custom third party news feeds! Anybody can create their own news feed for My Colony 2, and I have posted information on how to do so in this thread. There are a lot of updates planned to the news ticker as well, so it will be evolving as time goes on. I also plan to let world/server admins create their own news headlines for the ticker, as a way to convey information to the players on their server.
There have been some engine changes that should help performance. On one of my worlds, a synthetic Crystalline deposit got away from one of the players, and ended up covering many chunks in the game, lagging down the server and exploding the file size. Luckily, this was an opportunity to do some heavy performance tuning and make some important changes to resource spreading as well.
Terrain objects like Synthetic Crystalline or Palm Trees now keep track of their "generation," so every time a terrain item spawns a child, it's generation number increases. When a terrain hits generation 6, it can no longer spread and spawn new children. Now, six generations still allows for a good amount of spreading, but it should keep something like Crystalline from destroying an entire world.
In addition, terrains can now no longer spread over roads and structures. They weren't supposed to be able to before, but it was bugged, but now it works, so you can more easily contain crystalline farms with a wall or road.
Now, all of the big changes mentioned above required the creation of a new centralized server for My Colony 2, which is now online and took way more man hours to set up then I expected, but it's capabilities are going to be way greater than those found in the MC1 server long term. Connecting to the MC2 Online server is done automatically behind the scenes, and the server only allows connections from non-modded games. You can tell if you are connected to the MC2 Online server because a My Colony 2 Online tab will show up in your Statistics window.
The tab right now only shows you the top 30 online colonies ordered by GDP, but this is going to be greatly expanded in the future, allowing players to see all sorts of stats, rankings, and even conduct interplanetary trades and diplomacy, so stay tuned for more on that.
The new MC2 Online server also ties into the new news ticker and can give you some important information. For example, if you are playing an online game in World A, but you also have a settlement in World B that is online, and the settlement in World B is suffering from starvation, you will get notices in the news ticker that your settlement in the other world is having starvation, in case you want to log in to the other server and help your people out.
I have really big plans for the centralized server going forward, and I am probably going to do a My Colony Podcast in the coming days to discuss some of them. All of these new features are in their infancy though, and all will be improving as time goes on.
So that is basically what is up in this update. It should be live right now on the Web, the Launcher, and on Windows Store, and should be hitting Android and iOS sometime this week, so check it out, let me know what you think, let me know what problems you find, and stay tuned for more!
#mycolony2
To begin, this update marks the triumphant return of the Galactic Board of Trade, featuring an excellent voxel model provided by @SPARKY0303 ! This is the only new building in this update, which is accompanied by the new Long Range Communications tech which is required to build it. It also requires a level 3 settlement in order to be built. Once you build the GBT, it will unlock the new Trade tab in the statistics window, provided your camera is currently centered on a settlement that has a GBT.
From there, you are able to post resource contracts, or purchase contracts that have been posted by other players.
The Galactic Board of Trade is still in it's early stages in My Colony 2, and more features will be added as time goes on, but the basic framework is now there and available to use. Keep in mind, that the trade tab will only be available on un-modded games, so if you have mods activated, you will not be able to post trades to the GBT.
Along with the new GBT, this update also brings back the classic Newsfeed ticker from My Colony 1!
The news ticker is also in it's early stages, but has a huge advantage over the ticker found in the original My Colony, in that it now supports custom third party news feeds! Anybody can create their own news feed for My Colony 2, and I have posted information on how to do so in this thread. There are a lot of updates planned to the news ticker as well, so it will be evolving as time goes on. I also plan to let world/server admins create their own news headlines for the ticker, as a way to convey information to the players on their server.
There have been some engine changes that should help performance. On one of my worlds, a synthetic Crystalline deposit got away from one of the players, and ended up covering many chunks in the game, lagging down the server and exploding the file size. Luckily, this was an opportunity to do some heavy performance tuning and make some important changes to resource spreading as well.
Terrain objects like Synthetic Crystalline or Palm Trees now keep track of their "generation," so every time a terrain item spawns a child, it's generation number increases. When a terrain hits generation 6, it can no longer spread and spawn new children. Now, six generations still allows for a good amount of spreading, but it should keep something like Crystalline from destroying an entire world.
In addition, terrains can now no longer spread over roads and structures. They weren't supposed to be able to before, but it was bugged, but now it works, so you can more easily contain crystalline farms with a wall or road.
Now, all of the big changes mentioned above required the creation of a new centralized server for My Colony 2, which is now online and took way more man hours to set up then I expected, but it's capabilities are going to be way greater than those found in the MC1 server long term. Connecting to the MC2 Online server is done automatically behind the scenes, and the server only allows connections from non-modded games. You can tell if you are connected to the MC2 Online server because a My Colony 2 Online tab will show up in your Statistics window.
The tab right now only shows you the top 30 online colonies ordered by GDP, but this is going to be greatly expanded in the future, allowing players to see all sorts of stats, rankings, and even conduct interplanetary trades and diplomacy, so stay tuned for more on that.
The new MC2 Online server also ties into the new news ticker and can give you some important information. For example, if you are playing an online game in World A, but you also have a settlement in World B that is online, and the settlement in World B is suffering from starvation, you will get notices in the news ticker that your settlement in the other world is having starvation, in case you want to log in to the other server and help your people out.
I have really big plans for the centralized server going forward, and I am probably going to do a My Colony Podcast in the coming days to discuss some of them. All of these new features are in their infancy though, and all will be improving as time goes on.
So that is basically what is up in this update. It should be live right now on the Web, the Launcher, and on Windows Store, and should be hitting Android and iOS sometime this week, so check it out, let me know what you think, let me know what problems you find, and stay tuned for more!
#mycolony2
My Colony v1.23.0 Released
Today I am putting the finishing touches on My Colony v1.23.0, the Dark Matter Update (Part 1), and it should be hitting all platforms throughout the weekend. This update also adds a new Challenges mode, so let's take a look at what is new!
This update adds the first components of the new Dark Matter tech tree which was designed by @Electrogamer1943 and introduces the new Dark Matter resource and the Dark Matter Infrastructure technology.
Along with the new tech and resource we have four new structures in this update, the Dark Base Alpha, Dark Base Beta, Dark Dimensional Portal and the Dark Matter Reactor Arc. Please note that Dark Matter is not currently live on the Galactic Board of Trade, for technical reasons that will have to come during the next update.
There are several more structures coming in the Dark Matter line, which I simply did not get to in time for the update, so there will be a Dark Matter Update Part 2 update coming in the not-too-distant future. Please give feedback and comments to @Electrogamer1943 and be sure to thank her for providing all of us with some fresh new content for My Colony 1!
The next big addition in this release is the new Challenges feature, available to Online games, which you can find in the Statistics window.
Challenges are a new late-game way for big colonies and federations to compete against each other for glory (and trophies), and there can (and will) be multiple challenges running simultaneously. Challenges also provide a purpose and a use for the millions and millions in resources that people have just sitting there in storage doing nothing. The idea is to give players something else to do after they have already unlocked everything and reached end-game.
The system is fairly simple. A challenge will be posted which will run for X number of days and be worth X number of trophies as a reward. Players can contribute resources to a challenge on behalf of either their Colony or their Federation (if they are in a Federation). When the time is up, trophies will be awarded to both the Colony and the Federation who contributed the most to the challenge. You will be able to see a listing in-game of both colonies and federations ranked by the number of trophies they have earned.
I will be posting new challenges on a regular basis, and they will range from only a few days to several months, so check the Challenges screen often to make sure you don't miss out. Challenges give a good opportunity to use up some of the mass amounts of resources people have, and should also help people's GDP, as resources sitting in storage do not contribute to GDP, and having full storage shuts down your GDP production. There is one challenge up right now, but I will be adding several more after the update goes live to all platforms, so keep watching the challenges screen, and try to win some trophies!
Now for some changes to gameplay. I have raised the Import and Export (non-GBT) fees to 99.9% each, and in the next update I will probably remove the Import and Export resource features entirely from online games. Importing and Exporting makes it too easy to exploit the Galactic Board of Trade, and so it will be going away. Keep in mind this is for online games only. My inbox will be open for all incoming hate mail related to this change...
Speaking of trade, I have revamped the code for the Auto Trade feature, which was basically disabled up until now. Feel free to test the Auto Trade for different resources and let me know how the changes work and if they need tweaked some more.
Finally, there were a lot of bug fixed in this update, regarding both building rendering and performance while building with a lot of drones. If you are still having issues in those areas, please let me know!
So that is all for this update. The next update will be Dark Matter Part 2 as I mentioned before. In the meantime, I will be adding more Challenges and also more Collectable Structures on a weekly basis, so be sure to check both of those screens in-game so you don't miss anything, and stay tuned for more!
https://www.apewebapps.com/my-colony/
#mycolony
This update adds the first components of the new Dark Matter tech tree which was designed by @Electrogamer1943 and introduces the new Dark Matter resource and the Dark Matter Infrastructure technology.
Along with the new tech and resource we have four new structures in this update, the Dark Base Alpha, Dark Base Beta, Dark Dimensional Portal and the Dark Matter Reactor Arc. Please note that Dark Matter is not currently live on the Galactic Board of Trade, for technical reasons that will have to come during the next update.
There are several more structures coming in the Dark Matter line, which I simply did not get to in time for the update, so there will be a Dark Matter Update Part 2 update coming in the not-too-distant future. Please give feedback and comments to @Electrogamer1943 and be sure to thank her for providing all of us with some fresh new content for My Colony 1!
The next big addition in this release is the new Challenges feature, available to Online games, which you can find in the Statistics window.
Challenges are a new late-game way for big colonies and federations to compete against each other for glory (and trophies), and there can (and will) be multiple challenges running simultaneously. Challenges also provide a purpose and a use for the millions and millions in resources that people have just sitting there in storage doing nothing. The idea is to give players something else to do after they have already unlocked everything and reached end-game.
The system is fairly simple. A challenge will be posted which will run for X number of days and be worth X number of trophies as a reward. Players can contribute resources to a challenge on behalf of either their Colony or their Federation (if they are in a Federation). When the time is up, trophies will be awarded to both the Colony and the Federation who contributed the most to the challenge. You will be able to see a listing in-game of both colonies and federations ranked by the number of trophies they have earned.
I will be posting new challenges on a regular basis, and they will range from only a few days to several months, so check the Challenges screen often to make sure you don't miss out. Challenges give a good opportunity to use up some of the mass amounts of resources people have, and should also help people's GDP, as resources sitting in storage do not contribute to GDP, and having full storage shuts down your GDP production. There is one challenge up right now, but I will be adding several more after the update goes live to all platforms, so keep watching the challenges screen, and try to win some trophies!
Now for some changes to gameplay. I have raised the Import and Export (non-GBT) fees to 99.9% each, and in the next update I will probably remove the Import and Export resource features entirely from online games. Importing and Exporting makes it too easy to exploit the Galactic Board of Trade, and so it will be going away. Keep in mind this is for online games only. My inbox will be open for all incoming hate mail related to this change...
Speaking of trade, I have revamped the code for the Auto Trade feature, which was basically disabled up until now. Feel free to test the Auto Trade for different resources and let me know how the changes work and if they need tweaked some more.
Finally, there were a lot of bug fixed in this update, regarding both building rendering and performance while building with a lot of drones. If you are still having issues in those areas, please let me know!
So that is all for this update. The next update will be Dark Matter Part 2 as I mentioned before. In the meantime, I will be adding more Challenges and also more Collectable Structures on a weekly basis, so be sure to check both of those screens in-game so you don't miss anything, and stay tuned for more!
https://www.apewebapps.com/my-colony/
#mycolony
Posted by
Cemetery Now Available for My Colony 1
Today I am releasing the first official collectable structure for My Colony, the Cemetery!
The Cemetery is the first release of the "Trick or Treat" series of Halloween related structures that will be coming out throughout the month, and is available to collect in-game for 25 Ape Coins until October 21. It is an early game structure that provides a modest amount of entertainment and tourism, and can educate 1 colonist at a time as well (for people doing ancestry research, of course).
I will be releasing several more structures to the Trick or Treat series this month, and each will probably be available for ten days before they are gone for good. This is the first "real" structure to be released as part of the Collectors system, although many users also picked up the Dev Solar Panel that was briefly available while the system was in testing.
You can find the Cemetery in the "New Content Available" window that is in the construction bar inside of My Colony 1.
#mycolony
The Cemetery is the first release of the "Trick or Treat" series of Halloween related structures that will be coming out throughout the month, and is available to collect in-game for 25 Ape Coins until October 21. It is an early game structure that provides a modest amount of entertainment and tourism, and can educate 1 colonist at a time as well (for people doing ancestry research, of course).
I will be releasing several more structures to the Trick or Treat series this month, and each will probably be available for ten days before they are gone for good. This is the first "real" structure to be released as part of the Collectors system, although many users also picked up the Dev Solar Panel that was briefly available while the system was in testing.
You can find the Cemetery in the "New Content Available" window that is in the construction bar inside of My Colony 1.
#mycolony
Posted by
My Colony 2 v0.28.0 Released
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
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
Posted by
My Colony v1.22.0 Released
Today I am finishing up and releasing the v1.22.0 update to the original My Colony, which includes a whole bunch of under-the-hood changes and a bit of new content. So what are we looking at in this release? Let's find out!
In the previous release notes for MC1, I mentioned that I was thinking about offering limited time release "collectors" edition buildings that you could get with Ape Coins for those who were interested. In this update I am testing the system out to see how it works, with the trial of a Dev Solar Panel structure (which you can see in the image above, modeled after the MC2 solar panel somewhat).
Here is how the system is (supposed) to work, which will probably need ironed out over the coming updates, but is in active testing right now. From time to time, new limited edition buildings will be made available that you can get with Ape Coins. When there is a new building available, you will see a notice on the construction sidebar like this:
Clicking on the notification will bring up a window that shows all of the current limited edition structures that are available (currently, only the testing structure is there).
This structures are purchased with Ape Coins and are tied to your Ape Apps Account, meaning that you can use them on any city on your account, and you can build as many of them as you wish. You will notice that you are able to buy multiple "copies" of them as well. The reasoning is to facilitate either trade, or to allow you to gift them to your friends who may not be able to afford them.
To trade structures with other players, you can bring up their profile card by either clicking on one of their chat messages as usual, or selecting them from your Friends list in the statistics window. Once opened, you will see two new buttons in the corner.
The Coin button allows you to just gift Ape Coins to another player. This is generally so that you can help a friend/family member buy Premium or extra content themselves using Ape Coins. You could already donate Ape Coins to another player using the Ape Apps website, but this just makes it easier, and since people have asked for the feature, they obviously did not know that the option existed on the website anyway.
The Trade looking button allows you to offer one of your purchased buildings to another player. You first select one of your owned buildings, and you then select a price. You are able to select anything between Free and 500 Ape Coins. If you want to work out a deal for more than 500 Ape Coins or for something other than Ape Coins, you will have to facilitate it outside of the app, and that is up to you. Once the offer is made, it is sent to the other player who then has one week to either accept or reject it. If they accept, the ownership of the structure is transferred over to their account.
If you look at the image above, the little golden wrench in the corner of the solar panel icon is the Set/Series icon for the structure. Collectable structures will be grouped into different sets. I am going to be working on adding a Collectables section to the Encyclopedia that will show all of the sets, all of the buildings in them, and their rarity, or how many "copies" of each building are in existence, this way in the future, people who are collecting or trading them will have an idea of their relative value.
So that is what I have so far on the collectables system. This update is for testing and refining the system, and in mid-October I plan to start releasing the first "real" buildings and sets, starting with a Halloween themed set.
I want to note that the whole collectable buildings system is meant for people who are interested in collecting things and also just want to add some extra "flare" to their colonies, and also to help support the further development of the game. There will not be any OP type structures, or structures that give a big leg up in the game. This system is going to be more for fun.
Ok so moving past the collectables stuff, this update makes a change to Poverty and Wages. Before now, it really didn't matter if you paid your colonists or not, but now it does. Colonists living under the poverty line will contribute to your disapproval rating, as will colonists earning a wage that is far below your GDP per capita. To help work your numbers out, I have added a breakdown of the monthly income and poverty levels, since the colonist salary settings are set on a monthly basis.
Right now excessive poverty will cause the crime rate in your city to rise, further damaging work efficiency and approval rating. I was planning on also making the workers go on strike, but upon testing it ended up bring pretty brutal, so I will hold off on implementing that part of it, until people can get their workers wages normalized.
This update also brings a change to Charter Codes. Since there have been a lot of charter code collisions with new colonies, all new charter codes are now 10 characters long instead of 8. @Sobeirannovaocc I hope that does not cause problems for Coloniae or any of your other tools!
Moving on. I have also basically rewritten the entire layout for Desktop, Mobile and TV of the game. I have done testing on each platform, so I hope it's not messed up, but please let me know in this thread if the layout is jacked up anywhere so I can get it fixed. For those who do not know, My Colony is written in HTML/Javascript, and I have moved the HUD UI from using absolute positioned elements to using CSS grid, like My Colony 2 does. Again, I pretty much changed everything in the stylesheets, and I think it basically looks the same as it did before, but please let me know if I borked something!
Next up, buildings in the Construction sidebar are now sorted, instead of just being thrown in there in the order that they were added to the game. The sorting uses pretty much the same scheme that My Colony 2 does, putting roads at the top, and then sorting everything else by price. Whether or not you think this is better or worse I suppose will depend on the player.
Finally, let's get to the new content in this update! I have added a new tech called the Military Industrial Complex, which in turn unlocks a new Weapons Factory which produces a new resource of Weapons of Mass Destruction! Once you have some WMD's, you can create the new Octagon structure, a military HQ that sends Starships and WMD's out into space and brings back plunder. It should be noted that the Octagon was originally going to be the Hexagon which I think sounds cooler, but I tell you that I spent a whole afternoon trying to draw a decent looking Hexagon shaped building and I just couldn't make it look right, so here we are with an Octagon instead. Deal with it!
So anyway, that about covers it for this release. The new Starship and Military content I think will fit hand-in-hand with the content coming next update, a new Dark Matter tech tree with accompanying structures that is being created by @Electrogamer1943 that you can all expect in the next update. On top of that, you can look for the new Halloween content pack coming later next month!
As always, thanks for playing the game, let me know what issues you find, and stay tuned for more!
#mycolony
In the previous release notes for MC1, I mentioned that I was thinking about offering limited time release "collectors" edition buildings that you could get with Ape Coins for those who were interested. In this update I am testing the system out to see how it works, with the trial of a Dev Solar Panel structure (which you can see in the image above, modeled after the MC2 solar panel somewhat).
Here is how the system is (supposed) to work, which will probably need ironed out over the coming updates, but is in active testing right now. From time to time, new limited edition buildings will be made available that you can get with Ape Coins. When there is a new building available, you will see a notice on the construction sidebar like this:
Clicking on the notification will bring up a window that shows all of the current limited edition structures that are available (currently, only the testing structure is there).
This structures are purchased with Ape Coins and are tied to your Ape Apps Account, meaning that you can use them on any city on your account, and you can build as many of them as you wish. You will notice that you are able to buy multiple "copies" of them as well. The reasoning is to facilitate either trade, or to allow you to gift them to your friends who may not be able to afford them.
To trade structures with other players, you can bring up their profile card by either clicking on one of their chat messages as usual, or selecting them from your Friends list in the statistics window. Once opened, you will see two new buttons in the corner.
The Coin button allows you to just gift Ape Coins to another player. This is generally so that you can help a friend/family member buy Premium or extra content themselves using Ape Coins. You could already donate Ape Coins to another player using the Ape Apps website, but this just makes it easier, and since people have asked for the feature, they obviously did not know that the option existed on the website anyway.
The Trade looking button allows you to offer one of your purchased buildings to another player. You first select one of your owned buildings, and you then select a price. You are able to select anything between Free and 500 Ape Coins. If you want to work out a deal for more than 500 Ape Coins or for something other than Ape Coins, you will have to facilitate it outside of the app, and that is up to you. Once the offer is made, it is sent to the other player who then has one week to either accept or reject it. If they accept, the ownership of the structure is transferred over to their account.
If you look at the image above, the little golden wrench in the corner of the solar panel icon is the Set/Series icon for the structure. Collectable structures will be grouped into different sets. I am going to be working on adding a Collectables section to the Encyclopedia that will show all of the sets, all of the buildings in them, and their rarity, or how many "copies" of each building are in existence, this way in the future, people who are collecting or trading them will have an idea of their relative value.
So that is what I have so far on the collectables system. This update is for testing and refining the system, and in mid-October I plan to start releasing the first "real" buildings and sets, starting with a Halloween themed set.
I want to note that the whole collectable buildings system is meant for people who are interested in collecting things and also just want to add some extra "flare" to their colonies, and also to help support the further development of the game. There will not be any OP type structures, or structures that give a big leg up in the game. This system is going to be more for fun.
Ok so moving past the collectables stuff, this update makes a change to Poverty and Wages. Before now, it really didn't matter if you paid your colonists or not, but now it does. Colonists living under the poverty line will contribute to your disapproval rating, as will colonists earning a wage that is far below your GDP per capita. To help work your numbers out, I have added a breakdown of the monthly income and poverty levels, since the colonist salary settings are set on a monthly basis.
Right now excessive poverty will cause the crime rate in your city to rise, further damaging work efficiency and approval rating. I was planning on also making the workers go on strike, but upon testing it ended up bring pretty brutal, so I will hold off on implementing that part of it, until people can get their workers wages normalized.
This update also brings a change to Charter Codes. Since there have been a lot of charter code collisions with new colonies, all new charter codes are now 10 characters long instead of 8. @Sobeirannovaocc I hope that does not cause problems for Coloniae or any of your other tools!
Moving on. I have also basically rewritten the entire layout for Desktop, Mobile and TV of the game. I have done testing on each platform, so I hope it's not messed up, but please let me know in this thread if the layout is jacked up anywhere so I can get it fixed. For those who do not know, My Colony is written in HTML/Javascript, and I have moved the HUD UI from using absolute positioned elements to using CSS grid, like My Colony 2 does. Again, I pretty much changed everything in the stylesheets, and I think it basically looks the same as it did before, but please let me know if I borked something!
Next up, buildings in the Construction sidebar are now sorted, instead of just being thrown in there in the order that they were added to the game. The sorting uses pretty much the same scheme that My Colony 2 does, putting roads at the top, and then sorting everything else by price. Whether or not you think this is better or worse I suppose will depend on the player.
Finally, let's get to the new content in this update! I have added a new tech called the Military Industrial Complex, which in turn unlocks a new Weapons Factory which produces a new resource of Weapons of Mass Destruction! Once you have some WMD's, you can create the new Octagon structure, a military HQ that sends Starships and WMD's out into space and brings back plunder. It should be noted that the Octagon was originally going to be the Hexagon which I think sounds cooler, but I tell you that I spent a whole afternoon trying to draw a decent looking Hexagon shaped building and I just couldn't make it look right, so here we are with an Octagon instead. Deal with it!
So anyway, that about covers it for this release. The new Starship and Military content I think will fit hand-in-hand with the content coming next update, a new Dark Matter tech tree with accompanying structures that is being created by @Electrogamer1943 that you can all expect in the next update. On top of that, you can look for the new Halloween content pack coming later next month!
As always, thanks for playing the game, let me know what issues you find, and stay tuned for more!
#mycolony
Posted by
