Hi everyone,

Multiplayer is here! This is a bit of a soft launch so there are a selection of co-op and PvP maps to play while I iron out any issues, made any further refinements made from player feedback and do a further AI pass. I'll add more maps based on the favourite modes and map types.

There are currently two peaceful missions and two military co-op missions where you'll need to work together with a friend towards the shared goals co-ordinating your exploration and tactics while sharing resources using the new shared storage yard.

This is a new building available in multiplayer mode. Once both players construct the matching parts of the building over the territory border you'll be able to share resources by simply setting rules as normal and then the other player's buildings will be able to source resources from your storage as if it was any other building in their colony.

If you'd like more co-op campaign maps let me know!

There are three initial PvP maps of differing lengths to play:

1. Duel - Compete against another player on a single island to see who can make the most money in 9 months. Sell early, rush for territory or sneak about the back of the island?
   
2. The Eye - Battle for ownership of runestones - a small one will earn you 1 point per day, while a large one will earn you 2 points each day. Make sure your supply lines to the frontline are good as you fight to see who collect the most points by the end of the 12 month timer.
   
3. Five Islands - Starting on each side of the map, get your boats up and running and decide where to land your expeditions or harass the enemies' colonies while selling what resources you can spare. It's a race to $2000!

If you'd like more PvP maps let me know!


A new feature for multiplayer games is the live score widget on the left hand side of the screen. This allows you to keep track of how each player is progressing on the victory conditions without having to open the mission info panel. You can toggle it on and off using the arrow.

You can view player's network info on a new panel in the top left of the screen. A slow ping should not make much difference to the gameplay but if a player is consistently below 60fps other players' games will have to pause sometimes to allow the player to catch up.

A multiplayer game will default to 2x speed but the speed can be changed if all players agree using the game speed request system in the top right of the screen.

If a game does desync it should automatically recover after 20-30 seconds. If anything else goes wrong try saving and reloading the game. Please report any issues to me at dev@codebyfire.com or on Discord (https://discord.gg/thecolonists).

So find a friend and work together in the co-op campaign or battle it out for supremacy - good luck!

• New road/path placement functionality - hold [Alt] to continue a new road/path from completed road/path
  
• [Multiplayer] Private games now use the host's region for improved ping
  
• [Multiplayer] Fixed AI going storage yard crazy
  
• [Multiplayer] Fixed client getting stuck on 'waiting for host to submit' at end of co-op military game
  
• [Multiplayer] Fixed potential region-based issue with joining games
  
• [Multiplayer] Fixed co-op military games getting stuck on waiting screen for clients after victory screen
  
• [DLC] Fixed bug where game complete would not trigger if only one tile of crashed colony ship was inside territory
  
• Fixed territory overlay being offset by one tile when placing a harbour
  
• Fixed graphical issue in military/multiplayer game where you'd sometimes get black corners in tiles when expanding territory
  
• Fixed errant line on transport section of technology overview screen

• [Multiplayer] Fixed issue with some players joining a game by temporarily hard-coding region selection

• [Multiplayer] Smoothed out some game complete issues for clients in co-op campaign maps
  
• [Multiplayer] Added client-save message when host is saving game

• [Multiplayer] Fixed Duel PvP map's time limit being 1 month instead of 9 months
  
• [Multiplayer] Fixed repeatedly trying to join a game with the wrong password sometimes getting stuck

• [Multiplayer] Fixed first co-op campaign loading the wrong map
  
• [Multiplayer] Fixed instance of hosting a game, leaving, then trying to load a multiplayer game generating an error
  
• [Multiplayer] Fixed close button not working on multiplayer scenario selection
  
• [Multiplayer] Fixed text and icon on runestone capture notification
  
• [Multiplayer] Fixed text on shared storage yard notification

• [Multiplayer] Multiplayer soft launch! 4 co-op campaign maps, 3 PvP maps available
  
• Fixed incorrect fishing station production rate display

Firstly, huge apologies, I've had to push back the release of multiplayer for a week to May 16, sorry to everyone looking forward to it. The good news though is that one of the reasons is the new multiplayer features being added which I think make both Co-op and PvP modes a bunch more fun and they just need a little bit more testing and refinement. Here's a quick overview:

Grab a friend and play a short new campaign which includes both economic and military maps. Use the new Shared Storage Yard building to share resources and work together to achieve the mission goals. Compete on the leaderboards for the best shared colony strategies.

If you want to play a definitively shorter game or a longer game then set a in-game time limit and see who comes out on top by the end, with the winner having made either the most money or the points from...

A new mode where points are gained for capturing runestones within your territory. Capture large runestones to double your points!

You can now playtest all these features on the new multiplayer beta on the development branch on Steam. All feedback is appreciated!

• Fixed instance where bridge connection could be broken by placing a building between first tile of bridge and entrance of another building
  
• Fixed floating watchtowers sometimes not unloading all construction resources when a boat docks
  
• Fixed floating watchtower territory overlay graphics being a tile off sometimes

• Fixed display issue on DLC panel if all scenarios have been completed
  
• Fixed colour unlock showing in game complete panel for main campaign missions

• Fixed potential display issue on DLC panel if all economic scenarios had been completed
  
• Fixed it not showing your rank on the game complete screen after completing a campaign or DLC mission
  
• Tweaked wheat farm numbers so that three fields are significantly more productive than two fields
  
• DLC Mission 4 changes - tweaked end section with more rocks

• Fixed no audio on Linux
  
• Fixed well animation
  
• Fixed medals not showing on mission panel inside DLC games
  
• Fixed issue of frontiers possibly not loading due to SSL certificate issue

• May Frontier
  
• Fixed fish not appearing on random maps
  
• Fixed challenge win screen showing bandaged bot
  
• Fixed road and paths being able to placed underneath elevated track when there isn't room
  
• Fixed bridge connection potentially breaking when removing adjacent building
  
• Fixed rail bridges being allowed to be placed too low over roads, potentially causing printed bot routing issues
  
• Fixed money graphs and income rates not working for random map games
  
• Fixed bug with fishing spot if a queueing fishing boat was redirected by a change in priority locations
  
• Fixed edge case where a resource would incorrectly by assigned to an expedition collection at Harbour B via a direct boat route from Harbour A and Harbour A had a storage only export rule for that resource
  
• Fixed issue with very steep roads causing an issue with carrybots
  
• Fixed walls being visible outside fog of war
  
• Fixed numbers on input section of production graph for bridge construction yards
  
• Fixed being able to select construction yard which is already assigned
  
• Fixed clicking on assigned construction yard in bridge UI not jumping to location
  
• Fixed clicking on assigned bridge in construction yard UI not jumping to location
  
• Fixed tooltip incorrectly showing on elevated track sections
  
• Performance improvement with large colonies with lots of full storage yards
  
• DLC Mission 1 changes - moved crashed colony ship location so it's not so far away
  
• DLC Mission 2 changes - added a little extra stone to starting island
  
• DLC Mission 3 changes - tweaked small island shape and access
  
• DLC Mission 4 changes - added more coastal rocks to end area, changed gold medal time

Hi everyone,

If you're new to The Colonists or haven't been back for a while, every month there's a new customised map to challenge yourself against. Try and complete the goal as quickly as you can and see where your colony ranks on the leaderboard. (Or just chill and enjoy a new map!)

This month your bots have combined two of their favourite things - monuments and chocolate! Get harvesting those cocoa beans and see how fast you can construct a chocolate monument - good luck!

A new addition in V1.8.0.9 is a fishing section to the in-game map. Seek out off-shore fishing spots for lobster or fish in the DLC or use to keep track of shoreline fish in the base game.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback on the New Lands DLC, especially all the suggestions and bug reports to help improve the game and to round off the rough edges. There's a list of the changes and fixes in the patch notes below:

• Added sea fishing locations to DLC random maps
  
• Enabled desert wells in DLC random maps
  
• Fixed Desert Well range checking
  
• Full sculpting enabled in random maps
  
• Fixed instance where, when placing track after a curve, selecting a down slope would give you an up slope and vice versa
  
• Improved terrain adjustments when placing track and should no longer break roads and paths
  
• Fixed boats not going under bridges when there's enough room
  
• Added tooltip to indicate whether boats can pass under a bridge that's over water
  
• Fixed steel bridges visuals looking odd during placement
  
• Fixed bridge placement niggle when mouse was colliding with bridge segments
  
• If a boat has three or more stops and a stop is destroyed/lost, the routes are recalculated without that stop, rather than cleared entirely
  
• Fixed UX issue where placing expedition harbour did not auto exit out of expedition harbour placement mode
  
• Fixed priestbot not cycling between target buildings if two buildings targeted
  
• Added bot printer section to relevant buildings' construction panels
  
• Sandbox option Everything Researched now fully researches repeatable techs
  
• Stopped Floating Watchtower showing in expedition panel in non-DLC games
  
• Increased max allowable slope for roads and paths slightly
  
• [Mods] Updated ui.json to better handle multiple mods
  
• [Mods] In-game Reload Codex reload construction UI properties
  
• [Mods] Default port expedition now correctly set for custom harbours

Full list of changes for previous patches can be found here: https://codebyfire.com/colonists/wiki/index.php/Patch_Notes


Back with more multiplayer and other news soon!

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I'm super happy to announce that the first expansion pack for The Colonists is now live!

New Lands brings new ways for your robots to move around the map and expand their colonies. Bridges can span gaps short and large, train tunnels let you access cut off areas and there are various new buildings as well as a priestbot to give your colonists a productivity boost!

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2784480/The_Colonists__New_Lands/

There's a new challenging campaign where your goal is to find and rescue the crashed colony ships of your anthrobotic cousins and unlock some snazzy new custom colours for your colonies along the way too.

All these new features can also be played with random maps, in sandbox mode as well as enabled in the custom maps you make in the map editor and that can be published to Steam Workshop. I'm looking to forward to seeing all the new maps and mods!

Multiplayer will be coming to The Colonists on May 9th! There'll be PvP and co-op modes as well as different game types for long or short games so stay tuned for more updates on that.

V1.8 brings a few updates to the base game, some QoL tweaks, UI improvements and gameplay tweaks. Also the details are listed in the Release note below.

Once again thank you to all the community members providing invaluable feedback and to everyone doing amazing work on the translations. If you're like to make a suggestion, or have spotted an issue, head over to the Discord server[discord.gg] or email me at dev[at]codebyfire.com.

I hope you enjoy it and I'll be back with April's Frontier and more multiplayer news soon!

Thanks!

New Lands DLC
• Bridges - Allow your bots to traverse over small and large distances using wooden, iron and steel bridges
  
• Train Tunnels - Reach previously inaccessible locations or create shortcuts by tunnelling through hills and mountains
  
• Floating Watchtower - Claim territory on usually inaccessible shorelines and use to attack enemies from the sea
  
• Church & Missionary Outpost - Generate Holy Energy which can be used by the priestbot to give blessings to buildings, increasing the worker bots' productivity
  
• Fishing Station - Send a fishing boat out to fishing spots to harvest fish and lobster, a new luxury food for L3 residences
  
• Mint - Produce gold coins to use at the workshop to research repeatable technologies
  
• Repeatable Techs - Research the same tech multiple time for cumulative boosts
  
• New 6 Map Campaign - Four peaceful and two military maps in new campaign
  
• Unlockable Colony Colour Schemes - Unlock colourful new schemes for your colonies through the campaign
  
  Base Game Updates
  
• Gameplay - Significantly boosted output of L2 & L3 lumberjacks huts and L2 & L3 surface mines
  
• Gameplay - Added fadeout to trees when placing roads, paths or building nearby so you can now more easily see what you're doing
  
• Gameplay - New terrain type: mud - allows road and path placement but not buildings
  
• Gameplay - New terrain type: prairie - allows animal grazing but not crop placement
  
• Gameplay - New victory condition type - locate crashed colony ship(s) that are placed somewhere on the map
  
• Gameplay - Rewrote cost calculation system for roads to allow better spreading of resources over alternative routes
  
• Gameplay - When calculating transport route for a resource to a building, it now searches all possibilities from solution road post, avoiding a potentially slightly longer route
  
• Gameplay - Fixed particular instance where, when placing a road over a kink in the terrain, it would break an adjacent road tile connection
  
• Trains - Rail track can now be placed outside your territory
  
• Trains - Train stations can now be placed onto existing track
  
• Trains - Train stations now show potential track when placing
  
• Trains - [Ctrl] and click a track section to starting building from it
  
• Trains - Improved track height overlay graphics when placing track
  
• Trains - Fixed floor graphic of 'Slope In Out' section
  
• Game UI - Split food buildings into two separate sections
  
• Game UI - Added sub graphic for arrived resources to bar progress to boatyard panel
  
• Map Editor - New market panel allowing custom settings for any resource
  
• Map Editor - New map panel showing top down overview and list of all resources on the map, similar to the in-game version
  
• Map Editor - Added sandbox options when testing a map
  
• Map Editor - Significantly improved edges when terrain painting (still not 100% perfect but a lot better!)
  
• Map Editor - Added a contour mode back in
  
• Map Editor - Improvement visuals for player colony ship placement with option to show initial territory
  
• Map Editor - Much improved victory condition panel
  
• Map Editor - Much improved players panel
  
• UI - New main menu layout
  
• UI - New save/load game panel with thumbnails, metadata and improved performance
  
• UI - Improved performance when loading local scenarios
  
• UI - Improved placement of individual tech info panel on research panel
  
• General - improved loading time when opening the game
  
• General - improved loading time when loading a savegame

Hi everyone!

It's that time of your again and this year the pumpkin harvest is plentiful! For this month's Frontier map your bots have landed on a planet without Iron Ore, but luckily there's a high demand for pumpkins at the Space Port. With some new larger farms at your disposal, grow pumpkins as far as the eye can see and trade your way to the goal of a Medium monument in this month's frontier - good luck!

As well as the upcoming multiplayer feature, there's also some new content coming your way...
Here's a tiny sneak peek:

Stay tuned for more news soon!

There's an extra special custom map this month from 7up, who has created a map to celebrate the fifth anniversary of The Colonists. It contains all sorts of cool custom buildings and resources, go and check it out!
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3044110070

• October Frontier
  
• Pumpkin season has arrived 🎃
  
• Fixed bug where if a resource was destroyed from using "Destroy All Resources" at a storage yard and it had a destination building, it wouldn't trigger the building to redemand it
  
• Fixed a potential miscalculation on the space port resource demand count when adjusting a selling rule
  
• Fixed dark blurriness effect when trying to scroll beyond the bounds of the game world
  
• Fixed "hole" in sawmill footprint
  
• Small visual tweak where bots will now turn faster at higher game speeds
  
• [Mods] Fixed localisation not resetting after being modified from a mod
  
• [Mods] Custom building icons (and other UI icons) no longer create mipmaps (which was making them blurry)
  
• [Mods] Fixed a bug with loading a save game which was started with a mod which included a custom PlantableFieldInfo (edit: new games only)
  
• [V1.6.9.1] Fixed bug when loading an October Frontier game
  
• [V1.6.9.1] Fixed bug when opening the boats panel if a boat was on an active expedition and hadn't built a harbour yet
  
• [V1.6.9.1] Fixed bug when trying to play Anniversary Workshop map

Big thanks for everyone's continued feedback and input! If you'd like to give some feedback on the game, discuss frontier strategies or experiment with mods then head over to our Discord Server[discord.com]! 🚀

Hi everyone!

If you've always wanted to play The Colonists against your friends then good news, multiplayer is coming! There's a beta now available for anyone to try, just switch to the 'multiplayer' beta on Steam. The beta is still in development and is currently PvP only. Co-op modes along with further gameplay tweaks to be added soon. Please let me know any comments, feedback or bug reports in our Discord server or to http://mailto:dev@codebyfire.com - thanks!

This month the brewery bots have gotten creative and brewed up a special concoction - chocolate stout! This beer is so powerful it can power L3 miners and lumberjacks instead of L3 Energy. It's a race to mine and sell salt, quartz and gold - good luck!

Here are this month's five specially selected player-created maps - go check them out and let the creators know if you enjoyed them!

Impact Site by Stenny127
7Ups - 7 Golden Tickets by 7up
Season 3 by Omodox
Stranger Danger by giffen
Geolocus by SeniorSpooky

• Fixed a savegame not loading properly if a wheat field had previously burned due to territory loss and had not been removed
  
• Keycodes Mouse2-Mouse6 (extra mouse buttons) now supported in custom hotkey window
  
• Added custom upload image option added for custom maps as alternative to screenshotting the map
  
• Fixed two field vegetables not matching farmbot visuals when returning to vegetable farm
  
• [Modding] Now supports a higher number of custom textures (internal atlas sheet can now go beyond 4196x4196)
  
• [Modding] Now supports custom expeditions
  
• August Frontier
  
• [V1.6.7.1] Fixed No Icon showing up on Storage Yard resource selection panel
  
• [V1.6.7.1] Changed August frontier description to include Space Port limit change
  
• [V1.6.7.2] Fixed frontier bug when a chocolate stout resource was produced and a L2/L3 residence had a demand waiting
  
• [V1.6.7.2] Chocolate Stout now shows up as separate resource in bottom left resource list
  
• [V1.6.7.3] Fixed fish icons in map editor

If you'd like to give some feedback on the game, discuss frontier strategies or experiment with mods then head over to our Discord Server[discord.com]. Thanks to everyone there for their continued testing and feedback! 🚀

Hi everyone!

This month's frontier is all about mega powerful monuments! Each monument has a 4x increase to their boosts to super-charge nearby bots. Your colony ship also comes with the resources for a small monument so use that early boost wisely!

Amongst this month's five new featured custom maps a special shoutout goes to 7up who's modded in some excellent new buildings and resources in their Willy Wonka themed map - check it out!
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2991719135
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985915106
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2961896941
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2967220443
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2945365266

• July Frontier
  
• Fixed a few recent Workshop maps not playing correctly
  
• Fixed custom plot growth tooltips
  
• Added filter for available mod selection
  
• [Modding] Custom space port ships now supported

Thanks again to everyone on the Discord Server[discord.com] for all their continued suggestions and feedback! 🚀

If you do find a bug or have an issue please use Bug Reporting[discord.com] information page.

Back with more news soon!

Hi everyone!

A new month means a new frontier! This month's frontier shakes your early strategies up as L1 residences produce Energy twice as fast and lumberjack huts use twice as much. Upgraded roads work twice as well though so good luck!

Good news if you've always wanted to play The Colonists with or against your friends, we'll be announcing a multiplayer open beta soon, keep your eyes out!

Here are five more excellent Steam Workshop maps from players - a mix of old and new, peaceful and military.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2977297621
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2965727984
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2151517242
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2900486435
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2708748079

• June Frontier
  
• Fixed fog of war not applying to fixed scenario games where it should (custom maps)
  
• Fixed proximity boost UI panel bug
  
• Fixed [Tab]bing through building levels
  
• Fixed selected map panel disappearing when subscribing to a Featured map
  
• [Modding] Special storage component now supports startingItems going beyond outgoing storage limit

Huge appreciation to everyone on Discord Server[discord.com] for all their ongoing testing and feedback! 🚀

If you do find a bug or have an issue please use Bug Reporting[discord.com] information page.

Thanks!