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LOGistICAL

Strategy puzzle games by Sacada

Blog posts October 2018

LOGistICAL 2: Update #620

A lot of updates for LOGistICAL 2 with further plans for more integration with LOGistICAL 1.


 

Advanced Navigator

LOGistICAL has to perform many complex navigation calculations during game play.
Unlike any standard GPS unit, LOGistICAL also has to cater for broken roads, varying truck weight restrictions, quarantines and many other factors. Many of these are also changing very often as the game progresses.

The new navigation works as a multi-thread process so no longer locks up the user interface when working out complex routing over long distances.

The navigation system can be turned on and off in the game settings until it becomes the only system within the near future.

Using the navigation system is no different than before. Drag a truck or resource onto or across the map to initiate the navigator.

To indicate what is happening, the background of the truck on the truck list turns blue while the navigation is being computed.

If there are no spare threads running and empty, an initialisation process is run and the new thread is prepopulated.

Within the thread, the navigation between the source resource and the destination resource is calculated. This calculation is completed first as this is the integral trip where most restrictions are applied.
If this trip is successful the return trip is then calculated as one way roads and empty travel allowed on more road may create a different route.
Finally the trip from the truck's current location to the source resource is calculated.
If all three are successful, then the resulting routes are returned to the main game for that truck and the truck begins its journey.

The three navigation routes are now shown on the map.
- Red - The trip from the current truck's location to the source resource
- Blue - The trip from the source resource to the destination resource need.
- Green - The return trip back to the source resource.

If there are multiple trucks selected then after each process all trucks of the same size (laden or empty) are also given the same routes without any extra processing. This speeds up the whole process.
If the other trucks are at different current locations these are all process one at a time and returned to the trucks with the other routing data on each is completed.

I have quite a few enhancements lined up to make this entire process faster, more accurate and also provide a suite of tools for routing to groups of businesses much better and faster.
 

Other updates

Build #620 on LOGistICAL 2
- Ability to switch between old and new navigators in settings.
- Cancel X in new navigator on truck list and truck dash.
- A couple of road fixes in LOGistICAL 2.

Build #619 on LOGistICAL 2
- Fixed up a few minor issues with the multi-thread navigation.
- Upgraded some ferries to take 20t trucks
- Broke a few ferry routes.

Build #618 on LOGistICAL 2
- Display of region titles not changing colour when finished is now fixed.

Build #617 on LOGistICAL 2
- More smarts in new navigation for larger trucks driving empty on smaller roads
- Ability to redirect a single truck from a multi-select while cancelling out the prior load of that truck from the multi-trucks selected
- Auto cleanup of multi-threads if not being used anymore
- Cleanup of multi-threads on game exit.

Build #616 on LOGistICAL 2
- Created the multi-threaded multi-truck routines
- Mostly the same as before with a couple of slight differences
- If you select a truck that can't do the trip, then none of the others will even try
- If you select a truck that can do the trip but another can't then all those that can, will
- 3 route colours
- red - route to the source industry/storage
- blue - route from the source industry/storage to the destination industry/town/storage/road
- green - the return trip
- fixed a road that couldn't be done
- removed 8 duplicate businesses
- fixed a ferry route that couldn't be accessed.

Build #614a on LOGistICAL 2
- Fix in some multi-thread navigation processes
- Found and fixed an error that occurred sometimes when loading and not displaying all trucks.

Build #614 on LOGistICAL 2
- Fixed town needs showing in industry list
- Ability to turn off multi-thread navigation
- Fix some multi-thread navigation processes
- Fixed inaccessible Lady of the Lake ferries
- Fixed inaccessible ferries
- Removed inaccessible asphalt road near Seattle
- Fixed gravel road on pink highway east of 
- Removed Maplewood broken road

Build #613 on LOGistICAL 2
- Multi-threaded navigation system update
- Saves the current state of the navigation system so you don't have to turn it back on after a restart
- More stable for number of threads that it creates (background task)
- You can now cancel a thread by redirecting the truck to another destination
- Fixed missing resource in a town

Build #612 on LOGistICAL 2
- Multi-threaded navigation system

Build #611 on LOGistICAL 2 and LOGistICAL 2: Belgium
- Housing Interiors needs a 20t road in USWA
- Mouse over towns sometimes not bringing up resource needs. Happens if you drag a truck before selecting a town.
- A couple of roads that can't be fixed if done in the wrong order have been removed.
- A broken road at the edge of the map has been removed
- Removed a broken road in the middle of nowhere (up north)
- Created "Lady of the Lake" ferry route
- Brussels nerf

Build #610 on LOGistICAL 2
- Map key is in the mouseover HELP
- Empty truck after pressing "V" to sent truck back to start depot
- Get all the 20t and 40t resources on suitable roads
- Added another industry to USWA
- Set the default of completed contract visibility to show
- Fixed a one way traffic hazard in the mountains in USWA
- Access to broken road in middle of nowhere in USWA
- Rock pit road access upgraded to 20t
- Don't show pins in broken roads that are fixed and no longer showing
- Fixed problem with some business not being able to be clicked on due to being on the end of broken roads that have been fixed
- Only show the broken road of the start road to businesses

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LOGistICAL 2: USA - Washington

LOGistICAL 2 is now officially released.



This is now the new base game for the LOGistICAL group of games, though you don't have to start here.

There is a 30% discount (plus another 20% bundle discount for those that have the lot #) for the first week.

There are a lot of new enhancement in this module and I am still working on more that should be released over the next few weeks/months/years.

"Over 500 towns, 2,000 mailboxes and 9,000 other businesses to complete. There are 50 types of business to discover."
 

What's new

LOGistICAL 2 brings many new enhancements to the game including:

- 50 types of businesses.



New businesses start out as dark red dots on the map until you find at least one industry that can supply them.

Businesses have extremely low requirements and don't consume resources like towns.

- 3 types of broken roads



1. broken roads to the towns. Many towns can't be accessed until the broken road to the town is fixed.
2. broken roads to businesses. Like the town broken roads but orange squares on the map.
3. broken roads throughout the map (orange squares). There are many broken roads throughout the map. Many will stop you from searching parts of the map.
To assist in fixing broken roads on one-way roads, the one-way roads leading up the the broken section get turned off until the repair work has been done.
BE CAREFUL: That last truck load will fix the road and turn the one-way section back on. This can sometimes lock your truck in if there are further repairs required to fix that road.

- Town Locks
To unlock a town you now have to complete the number of businesses within the comet circling the town, that is written on the lock.
Some towns give a head start, so you only have to finish the number on the lock out of the number in the top right corner of the lock (eg 10 out of 15).
The black section of the circle on the lock represents what you don't have to do, while the increasing red shows the ones you have completed.

- Storages
In this module you can buy Storages in any of town (completed or not) right from the start of the game.
There is a limit of 1 storage per town until the town is complete.
The storages contribute to the total number of industries that you can build in a completed town.
 

Other stuff

- "?" over industry inputs if you haven't found an industry that supplies that input yet.
- Mouse over help to show key shortcuts
- Fix to stop the last large dumping to small requirement places (ie businesses) when the speed of the game is high


 

Coming soon

- Integration of LOGistICAL 1 and LOGistICAL 2 modules with a launch module and integrated save system.
- Navigation through a maze of broken roads can be complex. I am working on multi-threading for the navigation system so the game doesn't pause when doing long distance or impossible access destinations.

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