Last week’s blog was written by our programmer because I unexpectedly had to spent half a week on the other side of Europe, in Lisbon. Now I’m back, slightly more tanned, to keep you up to date on Colony Survival’s progress!

We’ve spent most of our time this week on expanding mod support. We actually didn’t have any proper mod support when we released the game, but people have been trying to mod the game since before the release date. They tried to use a couple of loopholes to glitch new content into the game. We were surprised and excited by the newly emerging mods, and we’ve worked in close cooperation with modders to greatly increase their possibilities. We’re looking forward to see what they’ll create!



Speaking of player contributions: we’ve added a lot of translations made by fans. There are now Vietnamese, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch and many other translations in the game! We appreciate these contributions greatly. We’ve started a GitHub where you can participate in adding and updating translations: https://github.com/pipliz/ColonySurvival

When we find some spare time, we love looking at all of the amazing colonies, videos, suggestions and images made by you. We can’t respond to every single one of you, but please know that your comments, reviews and Tweets about Colony Survival have a great chance of being read and appreciated by us!

Next week, we’re going to start working on scientific research. In Colony Survival, you won’t need XP, lots of time or IRL money to unlock new things. You’ll need scientists, and they’ll need science packs. These science packs are crafted by other colonists. There are different science packs with different ingredients. A life science pack will need for example bread and flax, while a military science pack could require arrows and swords. We’re currently considering increased health and regeneration, crossbows and muskets as potential unlocks. The crossbows and muskets will be useful when fighting stronger monsters.

Just adding one productive researcher will add a lot of colonists to your colony. You’ll need the researcher, you’ll need a colonist to craft science packs, you’ll need multiple colonists to craft the ingredients of the science packs, you’ll need more farmers to grow food for them, and you’ll need more archers to help fend off the increased monster horde. Adding multiple researchers and everything that is required for them will greatly expand your colony. It’ll add some much needed complexity and content, and it’ll motivate more people to build big colonies.



There are some small things we could add before the science packs are done. We’re considering adding extra terrain generation options, like an “island world” that consists out of thousands of smaller and bigger islands. And we recently found some extremely old versions of the game from 2013 and 2014. They include features that have been removed in later updates, like blood spurts and tiny blocks with physics! If you’re interested in those things we might add them to the game next week.

We’re planning to release 0.2.7 with the increased mod support this evening! Changelog here. Thanks for reading!

Last week’s blog was written by our programmer because I unexpectedly had to spent half a week on the other side of Europe, in Lisbon. Now I’m back, slightly more tanned, to keep you up to date on Colony Survival’s progress!

We’ve spent most of our time this week on expanding mod support. We actually didn’t have any proper mod support when we released the game, but people have been trying to mod the game since before the release date. They tried to use a couple of loopholes to glitch new content into the game. We were surprised and excited by the newly emerging mods, and we’ve worked in close cooperation with modders to greatly increase their possibilities. We’re looking forward to see what they’ll create!



Speaking of player contributions: we’ve added a lot of translations made by fans. There are now Vietnamese, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch and many other translations in the game! We appreciate these contributions greatly. We’ve started a GitHub where you can participate in adding and updating translations: https://github.com/pipliz/ColonySurvival

When we find some spare time, we love looking at all of the amazing colonies, videos, suggestions and images made by you. We can’t respond to every single one of you, but please know that your comments, reviews and Tweets about Colony Survival have a great chance of being read and appreciated by us!

Next week, we’re going to start working on scientific research. In Colony Survival, you won’t need XP, lots of time or IRL money to unlock new things. You’ll need scientists, and they’ll need science packs. These science packs are crafted by other colonists. There are different science packs with different ingredients. A life science pack will need for example bread and flax, while a military science pack could require arrows and swords. We’re currently considering increased health and regeneration, crossbows and muskets as potential unlocks. The crossbows and muskets will be useful when fighting stronger monsters.

Just adding one productive researcher will add a lot of colonists to your colony. You’ll need the researcher, you’ll need a colonist to craft science packs, you’ll need multiple colonists to craft the ingredients of the science packs, you’ll need more farmers to grow food for them, and you’ll need more archers to help fend off the increased monster horde. Adding multiple researchers and everything that is required for them will greatly expand your colony. It’ll add some much needed complexity and content, and it’ll motivate more people to build big colonies.



There are some small things we could add before the science packs are done. We’re considering adding extra terrain generation options, like an “island world” that consists out of thousands of smaller and bigger islands. And we recently found some extremely old versions of the game from 2013 and 2014. They include features that have been removed in later updates, like blood spurts and tiny blocks with physics! If you’re interested in those things we might add them to the game next week.

We’re planning to release 0.2.7 with the increased mod support this evening! Changelog here. Thanks for reading!

Part of this week one of us is unexpectedly away (family reasons) - the PR guy behind pipliznl. So here comes a programmer blog post!

This week was almost entirely spend on optimizing various parts of the game. There were some obvious parts of the game that were woefully inefficient (monster AI, network use, some client parts), and the more obvious ones have now been fixed. All in all this improvement leads to a >80%-ish improvement in network traffic, a up to 60%-ish boost in client fps depending on the world, and (depending on the colony as always) +50% up to ~+300% (!) server performance.

These improvements won't add new content, just like the previous patches, but help build a foundation for the game which will hopefully be worth it for the long term.

Think of it like building a sky scraper. This is the first game I've programmed. Some of the first floors of the sky scrapers have glaring issues - like 1 of them blocks the elevator and only has stairs, then 1 has only an elevator. For the early access release we hastily build 10 dodgy floors on top of our sky scraper. Before adding another 10 floors with dodgy foundation, we're fixing the skyscraper to be of decent quality, so it won't be a hazard to build on top of.

TL;DR: Fixed some of the deeper issues, causing significant performance improvements all over.

Part of this week one of us is unexpectedly away (family reasons) - the PR guy behind pipliznl. So here comes a programmer blog post!

This week was almost entirely spend on optimizing various parts of the game. There were some obvious parts of the game that were woefully inefficient (monster AI, network use, some client parts), and the more obvious ones have now been fixed. All in all this improvement leads to a >80%-ish improvement in network traffic, a up to 60%-ish boost in client fps depending on the world, and (depending on the colony as always) +50% up to ~+300% (!) server performance.

These improvements won't add new content, just like the previous patches, but help build a foundation for the game which will hopefully be worth it for the long term.

Think of it like building a sky scraper. This is the first game I've programmed. Some of the first floors of the sky scrapers have glaring issues - like 1 of them blocks the elevator and only has stairs, then 1 has only an elevator. For the early access release we hastily build 10 dodgy floors on top of our sky scraper. Before adding another 10 floors with dodgy foundation, we're fixing the skyscraper to be of decent quality, so it won't be a hazard to build on top of.

TL;DR: Fixed some of the deeper issues, causing significant performance improvements all over.

Our work last week has been focused under the hood. We’ve released two new updates last week: 2.4 and 2.5. Visually, nothing has changed, but some much needed fixes and performance enhancements have been added.

Last Monday, the biggest problem in Colony Survival history occurred. Some players figured out how they could get water blocks in their inventory in multiplayer, without any special permissions. Placing these blocks high up flooded entire worlds. Earlier, one other player called ‘That Quiet Bear’ found a way to do this days after the release. He edited the crafting recipes and noticed that these changes carried over to multiplayer. Instead of using this to destroy other worlds, he told us about it immediately. We’re still grateful for that! We fixed the issue immediately.

But on Monday, players figured out that you could also edit the results of destroying blocks. They could edit grass blocks so they would put water blocks in your inventory on destruction. This edit still carried over to multiplayer. Suddenly we heard lots of reports of worlds being flooded until they crashed!

Again, we started working on a fix as soon as possible. We also ended compatibility between different versions of clients and servers. If a server is updated, all players have to update as well or they cannot join again. Updated servers will be protected from players that want to exploit problems in older versions of the game.



Besides that, we’ve focused on improving the performance of the game. Performance has been pretty good for small colonies in singleplayer since release day. But we’ve never tested the game with more than 200 colonists or more than 4 players online. Now we’re seeing colonies with over 1000 colonists, and servers with dozens of players! We’re working hard to fix the causes of lag in mega colonies and servers with lots of players. The performance has gotten better in 2.4 and 2.5, and 2.6 will contain more fixes once it’s released. One example: the server reported the position of every guards six times per second, while they’re mostly standing still. Fixing issues like this will dramatically reduce network traffic and significantly improve the online experience.

We received quite a lot of complaints about broken savegames. The new updates also contain a fix to prevent some of the old problems, and we’ll keep working until all savegame issues have been solved!

TL;DR: More frames per second. Less network traffic for better online experience. Flooding issue in multiplayer solved. Some of the savegame issues fixed. Multiple improvements for big colonies and big servers, not a lot of noticeable changes for small singleplayer colonies.

Our work last week has been focused under the hood. We’ve released two new updates last week: 2.4 and 2.5. Visually, nothing has changed, but some much needed fixes and performance enhancements have been added.

Last Monday, the biggest problem in Colony Survival history occurred. Some players figured out how they could get water blocks in their inventory in multiplayer, without any special permissions. Placing these blocks high up flooded entire worlds. Earlier, one other player called ‘That Quiet Bear’ found a way to do this days after the release. He edited the crafting recipes and noticed that these changes carried over to multiplayer. Instead of using this to destroy other worlds, he told us about it immediately. We’re still grateful for that! We fixed the issue immediately.

But on Monday, players figured out that you could also edit the results of destroying blocks. They could edit grass blocks so they would put water blocks in your inventory on destruction. This edit still carried over to multiplayer. Suddenly we heard lots of reports of worlds being flooded until they crashed!

Again, we started working on a fix as soon as possible. We also ended compatibility between different versions of clients and servers. If a server is updated, all players have to update as well or they cannot join again. Updated servers will be protected from players that want to exploit problems in older versions of the game.



Besides that, we’ve focused on improving the performance of the game. Performance has been pretty good for small colonies in singleplayer since release day. But we’ve never tested the game with more than 200 colonists or more than 4 players online. Now we’re seeing colonies with over 1000 colonists, and servers with dozens of players! We’re working hard to fix the causes of lag in mega colonies and servers with lots of players. The performance has gotten better in 2.4 and 2.5, and 2.6 will contain more fixes once it’s released. One example: the server reported the position of every guards six times per second, while they’re mostly standing still. Fixing issues like this will dramatically reduce network traffic and significantly improve the online experience.

We received quite a lot of complaints about broken savegames. The new updates also contain a fix to prevent some of the old problems, and we’ll keep working until all savegame issues have been solved!

TL;DR: More frames per second. Less network traffic for better online experience. Flooding issue in multiplayer solved. Some of the savegame issues fixed. Multiple improvements for big colonies and big servers, not a lot of noticeable changes for small singleplayer colonies.

The first translation of Colony Survival was Japanese. Currently, the most watched video of Colony Survival on YouTube is Japanese. Now we add some Japan themed content to the game: red planks (berry + planks), black planks (coal + planks) and cherry blossom trees (craft a shop and buy the saplings)!

There are also some important fixes in the update:
- Wheat lag reduced by 99% (highly necessary for large colonies)
- A penalty is applied when a monster reaches the banner
- Saving problems solved
- Jumping issues caused by low frames per second fixed

Update 0.2.3 is now live!

Video: https://youtu.be/M9-w9ld56Kw

Thanks Koutetsusteel for the Japanese translation, the mods and the videos!
https://twitter.com/Koutetsusteel

Full changelog:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/366090/discussions/0/1354868867726668485/

The first translation of Colony Survival was Japanese. Currently, the most watched video of Colony Survival on YouTube is Japanese. Now we add some Japan themed content to the game: red planks (berry + planks), black planks (coal + planks) and cherry blossom trees (craft a shop and buy the saplings)!

There are also some important fixes in the update:
- Wheat lag reduced by 99% (highly necessary for large colonies)
- A penalty is applied when a monster reaches the banner
- Saving problems solved
- Jumping issues caused by low frames per second fixed

Update 0.2.3 is now live!

Video: https://youtu.be/M9-w9ld56Kw

Thanks Koutetsusteel for the Japanese translation, the mods and the videos!
https://twitter.com/Koutetsusteel

Full changelog:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/366090/discussions/0/1354868867726668485/

We’ve had an amazing launch last Friday. Majors thanks to everybody who purchased the game! It was amazing to join random servers and see people enjoy the game, to read all the reviews and to watch all the videos you’ve put online.

We’ve released version 0.1.14 Friday. By Tuesday we had already reached version 0.1.18. We’ve tried to fix or improve the most common bugs and problems.

Version 0.2 is the first time since release that we add new jobs and significantly impact the production chain of existing colonies. We’ve added berry farmers, who are a source of quick and easy food in the first phase of your colony. No more two days of waiting, no more bakers, just instant food.

Bread production has become more complicated, but is ultimately more efficient than berry farming. You’ll need to place a grindstone now to recruit a colonist who converts wheat into flour. Bakers can only use flour to bake bread.
This update will hopefully help to make the first phase of the game better!

Last but not least, we want to thank the people who've already started translating and modding the game. We never expected that to happen so quickly! We've already received Japanese, French, Chinese, Italian and plenty of other translations. We've also seen people mod the blocks, the monsters and the terrain generations. Thanks translators and modders!

Have fun!