The original My Colony was released on May 16, 2016. At that point I had no real idea in what direction I was going to take the game. In my head it was going to be some sort of strange mix between Command and Conquer, Sim City and Age of Empires. I kept working at it though, and with the help of a ton of user feedback, My Colony became what it is today.
In 2020, I started working on a 3D voxel art-based sequel to the game which never really left the beta/development phase. I had major performance issues related to the voxel style artwork. Additionally, I got a lot of user feedback about how the game was missing many of the more beloved features from the original. Throughout the past few months, I have been discussing with the Discord community options for the My Colony sequel going forward, and I eventually decided to scrap the voxel-based game altogether (if you are interested in checking it out though, I am hosting it for free now on the web as MC2 Classic).
The original MC2 attempt was not in vain though, because I learned a lot from the process on how to make a true sequel to the game that will live up to and surpass the original. So, work has begun and it is my goal to have the game, at least in an early-access type state, ready to go by the 10-year anniversary of My Colony on May 16, 2026!
Now I'm not promising it will happen exactly on that day, but that is the goal and I think it would be awesome. I will be working hard to make it happen, but if the game isn't ready then it's not ready. I think it's very possible though. So now I would like to discuss some of the plans for the upcoming game, what it will look like, and what you can expect.
The core gameplay will feel very familiar to fans of the original My Colony. Although the graphics are moving from 2D to 3D, I am attempting to keep a very similar aesthetic to the original, as I think the MS-Paint style visuals have a certain charm to them. You should be able to look at the game and immediately know that it's My Colony.
The resources and world types available will be a mixture between what is in My Colony 1 and what I introduced in the first MC2 attempt. The tech tree will be similar, but I am making some adjustments and rebalancing things. I might scale back or delay a lot of the alien tech type structures, I haven't decided exactly yet. I will see what feels right during testing.
The worlds are going to work as if a My Colony single map and a Region were combined into one. Utilizing an improved version of the world chunking system I wrote for the original MC2 attempt, the game will actively simulate the area directly around the current camera position and do a more efficient background simulation for areas which are further away. Based on my testing of this system with the voxel-based MC2, the new My Colony 2 should be able to easily handle extremely large colonies.
Map sizes are not fixed. Rather, you can "purchase" chunks of land around your colony, similar to how the Annex Land policy currently works in My Colony, except that you can purchase chunks in any direction, and you can see the chunks available (and what resources they contain) prior to purchase. In theory there is no hard-set limit on how much you can expand your colony, although testing will reveal the real practical limits. If you have played the old voxel-based MC2 though, you know that the world sizes can be potentially massive.
The game simulation is now multithreaded, which offers an extreme performance improvement over the original My Colony. Considering the multi-threaded nature of the game and the fact that graphics now utilize the GPU (instead of the CPU software renderer of the original), most players can expect massively improved performance, particularly on large colonies. The exception may be for users with no GPU, although I am doing all testing right now using a Ryzen 7 5000 series mini-pc (basically laptop hardware) and integrated Radeon graphics, and it runs fine with all settings enabled. Of course, I will include options to turn down graphics intensive things like shaders and real-time shadows, as well as a way to turn down rendering resolution so that the game should run good even on a potato.
The game features a full built-in game editor, which is in fact the exact same editor I am using to create all of the content for the game. This will allow for the creation of user generated content (at least for offline games).
The simulation in My Colony 2 will give you considerably more control over your production chains, if you want to take advantage of it. The game's day/night cycle (now pegged to exactly 10 minutes in IRL time) is now broken up into three work shifts. You will have the option to run your production buildings 24/7 or set up shift schedules. You might want to take advantage of this for several reasons. Some structures (like solar panels) now require sunlight to operate. To balance power loads, you can shut down power hungry factories at nighttime. Just as an example.
Online trading is coming back but will work a little different. To me it doesn't make any logical sense that you can just "teleport" resources from one world to another. Of course, it's a game so who cares, but I care and I wanted to try something different. So, My Colony 2 is going to utilize starships which you can use to send resources or even colonists directly to another colony. You will be able to send them on one-time missions or set up automated trade routes.
There is a lot more to talk about when it comes to My Colony 2, and I will be releasing a lot more information over the coming months. Stay tuned here on the My Colony Steam community for updates or join the Ape Apps Discord. At some point I will create a Steam product page for My Colony 2, and I will announce that here when it happens. Until then though, I will post MC2 updates here and keep you all informed as to how development is coming along!