Ape Apps

Anyone who has been to the site over the last week has surely noticed the significant changes that have been occurring on a near hourly basis, as well as a whole host of issues and errors. This is because I have decided to do a complete overhaul of the Ape Apps website, bringing the design and functionality closer in line with other games, apps, and products in the Ape Apps ecosystem. And while the redesign is still not 100% complete, the site is now mostly functional again, so I thought I would take the time to go over what has changed (and why), what is new, and what is coming down the pike.

Today I am announcing that I am dropping support for the Xbox console series for all current and future Ape Apps releases. Now, it's not that I particularly have anything against the Xbox console, but the time and effort it takes to support and maintain the Xbox editions of the apps and games just is not worth the return.

Current titles on the Xbox console will not be removed by myself manually, but they will no longer receive any future updates. I do not know if Microsoft will take them down eventually or not, that will be up to them.

From now until January 5th, Ape Apps is participating in the Steam winter sale promotion, which means all Ape Apps on Steam are currently 20% off. If you are interested in getting any of these titles on Steam, now is a good time before the Steam event runs out. Here are the links to all of the Ape Apps steam titles:

My Colony
https://store.steampowered.com/app/964130/My_Colony/

Antiquitas
https://store.steampowered.com/app/935750/Antiquitas/

My Empire
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1434160/My_Empire/

With the recent release of Chrome 86, websites and Progressive Web Apps (PWA's) have just unlocked a killer new feature that brings them even closer to par with native desktop applications - native file system access!

Using the new File System Access API, web apps and PWAs can now access actual real files and folders directly on a users computer (with permission, of course), instead of simply living in the sandboxed browser environment. This is great for a lot of reasons, but particularly for games like My Colony which can have large game files, the new access allows users to get past the current browser internal storage limits.

Today I have rolled out a total rewrite of Web App Core host that runs all apps and games on Ape Web Apps. If you play any games on Ape Web Apps or have any of the PWA's installed on your system, you will start to notice the changes over the coming days.

This update should boost loading times significantly, as a lot of old code has been removed or streamlined. It also offers better Ape Apps Account automatic login on supported browsers.

Until I get the individual apps updated, you may notice some strange things, such as missing or incorrect menu and toolbar icons. This is normal and will be corrected in the coming weeks.

If you find any big technical issues with any of the web app or PWA changes, please let me know in this post or elsewhere in the forum.