LOGistICAL

The Steam Autumn sale is on and LOGistICAL is in it. Lots of Discounts including:
50% off LOGistICAL
40% off LOGistICAL 1 other modules (DLC and Standalone)
30% off LOGistICAL 2 modules and additions (DLC and Standalone)*

*Does not include newer modules that are too soon to discount.
 

Unlike LOGistICAL 2: Vampires, LOGistICAL 2: Mall Rats is not about sprawling rats.

Mall Rat: "a young person who frequents shopping malls, usually for social purposes"



Mall Rats is more along your traditional type of LOGistICAL game with an emphasis on puzzles. There is both the tough consumption towns as well as non-consumption "idle" malls to complete.
Mall Rats' roads is in the style of LOGistICAL 1 with straight lines between towns.
Mall Rats cover all the states of the USA and also approximately another 1000 additional towns.
Travel is between the state capitals and then down to each of the towns and businesses.
The businesses are the malls of the USA. There are a lot of them and some are huge.

Mall Rats uses big, fast trucks with lots of puzzling town locks to figure out.

Mall Rats should go live on the 2nd Dec 2019.
 

There are a bunch of standard updates with some fixes to some of the newer modules like Texas, Indonesia and Vampires.
There is also a couple of new features.
 

For those that have missed the towns on the map, they are back.
They are looking just the same but now you can turn them completely off in the settings.
The choice is now yours to view them or not.
 

I love this one. It is very simple and once you get used to it, it may also become your favourite new tool.

While dragging a truck with a cargo, you will often hover over the providing industry and find that it is in need of a resource input. To cancel creating a route, you have to drop the "drag" somewhere and then have to find that town somewhere on the map.
Once found you then drag the input resource to find its source industry. This can happen a few times.

NOW... you can "ctrl drop" the "drag".
When you drag your truck over the source industry, hold down the control key on the keyboard and then drop the truck. A route is not created and instead that town is selected. You can then drag the input resource (or whatever you needed to do) without having to re-find that town.

I am finding that I am using this in a variety of ways.
If I need to find an industry of some sort (for example a wool mill), I find an industry that has fertilizer in it (there are lots of them).
I start dragging any truck (even one that is doing something totally different as you don't end up assigning that truck a job so it doesn't matter).
I drag the truck to a shearing shed industry.
I then "ctrl-drop" onto that town.
The town with the shearing shed is now selected.
I can then drag the wool from the industry output, over the map, to find the wool mill and "ctrl-drop" onto that town.
Done. I have the wool mill industry's town selected.
I can then select an available truck and use it to do whatever I needed to do.
 

There are a few modules that use superboosts. They are the ones that keep multiplying your truck's speed by 2x, 4x, etc.
The problem is that only the final truck delivering the cargo gets the superboost.

Not anymore. Now if your last delivery truck is already maxed out with superboosts, that superboost will go to your oldest truck on your list that isn't superboost maxed out.

If all trucks are maxed out, then the superboost is wasted.

This will work for all older modules that use superboosts.
 

If your map is looking like an acupuncture scene, you can now remove many pins at once.

Press "shift-O" to remove all the pins of the same colour and stripe colour (shift-P).
There is a warning message, just in case you change your mind.
 

Just a few updates in the truck dragging routines, like turning off all the business icons so you can see your map better.
 

I would just like to publicly thank all the testers that have worked on this upcoming module and on all the LOGistICAL modules over the years.
It is a love job and they do a tremendous job trying to complete each module before the release dates. Trying to keep ahead of some of the power players (you know who you are :D ) is quite a difficult task.

I would also like to thank all those that contribute issues they find in the game and are often there to help me through the process of reproducing errors until it gets fixed and is then great for everyone that follows.

Thank you all that give me all the great encouragement messages to continue to produce more product. I hope to continue and our team of dedicated players grows over time. It is a special game and once you get it, it is great fun.

And for all those that just quietly play in the background. Thank you too, for your support.

Sacada.

As of the 28th August 2019 LOGistICAL 2 will be changing the way future modules are put together.



The LOGistICAL 2 game will become the hub of future LOGistICAL maps rather than creating new games for each module.
 

• Each new module will be broken down into multiple smaller sub-modules.
• LOGistICAL 2 will be "FREE to PLAY".
• Most new maps will contain a free sub-module as a DLC to start.
• Other sub-modules will be available with in-app purchasing.
• Bundles will be available to purchase entire modules at once.
• Sub-modules can have resources dependent on other sub-modules.
• Sub-module dependencies auto select when clicked.
• Currencies are automatically converted.
• Sub-modules will be released weekly (or more frequently).

Example purchase screen.


Steam section of the in-app purchase


The current USA - Washington map of LOGistICAL 2 will become a DLC of LOGistICAL 2 and all current owners will continue to have access to this module.

There will be no change to any LOGistICAL 1 module.
There will be no change to the other existing LOGistICAL 2 modules.

This update gives some major overhauls since the L1 to L2 upgrade to make map navigation much faster independent of the map size, map detail, and screen size.
The new method also allows zooming at any value rather than at specific increments.


 

• Reduced the pre-rendered screens to 1
• Ghosted a larger bitmap image behind the screen when dragging
• Updated the town popup graphics
• Updated numbers on the town popup to give decimal places
• Show the town roads when zoomed out at all resolutions
• Removal of animations on the town popup
• Added a link to go back to the globe from the play screen
• Show town popup on left side of the screen when dragging trucks on the right
• Fixed some one-way road issues in France
• Resorted the module list on the globe showing all of the current game's playable modules at the top
• Updated the L1 to L2 import where some trucks caused problems
• Fixed some mailbox numbers in statistics
• Added ticks to contracts so completed ones could be seen when detail is showing

• LOGistICAL: USA - Florida
• LOGistICAL: USA - New York
• LOGistICAL: USA - Oregon
• LOGistICAL: USA - Wisconsin
• LOGistICAL: South Africa

I have been too busy with these updates to get the planned modules released, so Indonesia and Vampires have been delayed.

I did create a small new module "Tuvalu", which is available FREE.
It can be loaded through LOGistICAL 2, Washington, Nevada, Belgium or France.

Thanks for your support and patience.
Sacada.

A small build with a few important fixes and a nice tool.

• Added keyboard "F" to toggle better highlight of the end of roads
• Fixed problem with padlock over input industries showing up at the wrong time
• Found and fixed problem with top-left buttons disappearing and not reappearing
• Fixed road contract in USWA that was stopping some games loading
• Broke the roads in Belgium as they should be

Just a couple of annoyances being worked on. Neither are perfect yet but will be shortly.

• Ignore zero length roads for upgrades and loading bays.
  
  There are many zero length roads throughout Nevada. They are recognizable as purple dots that are on the road, usually at a business or town junction. Due to their size it made these points near impossible to select.
  To remove some issues with these in the past, they have been set as the highest level road (hence their colour and size) so they don't need to be upgraded and all trucks can pass on them.
  
  Now it is time to "ignore" those roads. The first section of code has been implemented that will find all nodes and then move all adjoining roads from one end to the other end.
  
  Note: This works in most cases, though I have found one spot with multiple zero length roads (purple dots) together with 4 businesses. In this case each business is selectable and loading bays work, but one business gives 2 businesses on the loading bay, another gives 3 and the third and forth gives all 4.
   
• Stop regions continuously showing end sequence for each complete business after all towns done.
  
  Note: This is a first implementation which when found and popping will mark that region as complete to not pop the next time. So for the time being, there will still be a pop for each region each time the game restarts.

A few small issues that made it to live have now been patched.

- Removed incomplete module.
- Stop small trucks from moving large items.
- Fixed 7-Eleven that had empty resource requirement
- Stopped all the businesses showing up before you have found their resources
- Fixed problem with town that had had a road fixed but wasn't complete and thus unable to click on.

LOGistICAL 2 (L2) has had a major overhaul to update the rendering engine to cater for the huge amounts of data.
The navigation engine has been rebuilt from the ground up making it very fast, especially for large complex maps like Washington, USA.


 

There are quite a lot of updates with many of them superseding previous updates, so I will give the summary of it all.
There are tens of thousands of objects in the game. Updating them on the screen when zooming in and out, clicking different things and scrolling the screen around requires quite a bit of finesse to keep things from locking up.

Most updates are best noticed after you have moved around a little and the images and objects get cached. 

My priority for this update is to give the interface control back to you. If you do a lot of things quickly, then the interface should respond much better and not try to finish old updates. When you do stop, then the rest of the maps and roads should then finish processing.
 

To make the game run much faster there have been quite a few enhancements.

• Rewrite of the navigator from the ground up.
  L2 changed the road system from straight lines to complex real mapping including one-way roads, major highway junctions, a huge amount of streets and all those broken roads. This made the old navigation software unsuitable. This software was updated many times but just could not overcome the problems of the larger maps.
  After lots of experiments a good model was formulated but the code was getting too messy so it was time for a complete overhaul. This is now done and it is now much quicker... like, way quicker.
   
• Maps, background rendering and icons.
  L1 was originally built with three main map layers, which eventually became just two. The background with roads and icons, and the truck animation layer. The two layers didn't work as well with L2 as the map rendering time was much larger.
  
  L2 now has four map layers all working independently, enabling even more optimisation into the future.
  
  Layer 1. The background. This layer is now rendered in sections to enable more complex background polygon structures with things like background graphics, rivers, lakes, town zones, regions, national parks, golf courses and many other interesting mapping objects.
  You can also dull or turn off the background making a black "night" mode.
  
  
  Layer 2. The roads. Maps in L2 generally have around 50,000 road segments making lots of rendering difficult. As the map changes over time as it becomes discovered, roads get fixed and/or upgraded, a dynamic rendering approach was still needed.
  The road system now gets rendered only during zooming, scrolling or change. Also to cater for very large maps, rendering can be done in sections enabling visibility while scrolling and more interactions back to the player to zoom or scroll faster.
  The look of the roads has been updated to make them more interesting when zoomed in, especially on large intersections.
  
  
  Layer 3. Town and business icons. This layer is updated when you click on town/business icons which will change their colour or drag the truck to find all the towns, businesses, roads or industries that need your cargo. Removing this from the road and background layers makes this interaction instantaneous.
  
  
  Layer 4. The animation layer. This layer still contains all the trucks and mouse interaction animations but also includes a few additional things, like the mouse over the truck list showing the truck routes.

L2 has businesses. Businesses are like mini-towns that don't consume resources when you deliver them, making them a more "casual" part of game play. Businesses started out as mailboxes in Belgium, grew to be businesses in Washington USA and now have more purpose in Suriname and Nevada USA.

• Updated Business Industry Cycle (BIC):
  The BIC is a new method of creating industries in L2. Complete enough of the same group of business types and an industry is built by one of the businesses.
  Nevada has taken this further by adding more businesses and a mini-game to one of the businesses. Nevada also has a combination of finding industries, creating via the BIC, purchasing the initial ones cheaply, just buying them or buying them via the original upgrade method.
  
• BIC Sort: Alpha sorted the BIC Help
   
• BIC visibility: The BIC originally hid all the industries that businesses built until you had completed enough to show what they were.
  Now all the industries are displayed from the start, so now you know what to aim for.
   
• BIC click: Click on the column of the BIC that you are interested in to highlight all the businesses belonging to that group.
   
• BIC items: A few items have changed. These changes are global (ie Suriname and Nevada USA).
  - Moved laundry business into clothing
  - Moved kiosk business into shop
  - Added some more industries to Pharmacy
  - Changed the industry order of Fast Food
   
• Cycle through Businesses: Click on the left/right (keyboard "," & ".") of the business type icon in the business popup to move to the next/previous found incomplete business of that type on the map.
  

Clicking on businesses will now highlight all other businesses of the same business type.

• Light Blue: Businesses of the current selected business type (eg. alcohol also highlights pubs, bars, etc)
• Dark Blue: Same as light blue but you have started to complete the business.
• Green: Business is complete and has built an industry at that location.
• Yellow: Currently highlighted business.
• Orange: Not a business, its a broken road.
• White and light coloured: These highlight the businesses that need to be complete to unlock a town.
• Pink: Special purpose business. When you click on the business type icon in the business popup you get a mini-game.
  

L2 now has the L1 language translations. Additional language updates are still happening now with many thanks to our great LOGistICAL community and all those that have given their time to make this a multi-lingual game.

• Languages: L2 has lots of updated translations. Not all are complete but we are working hard on it.
  - German (Metthew, Allalinor; ~ SgtFopper ~), 
  - Dutch (Fransiscus), 
  - French (HunterBill), 
  - Russian (Shylight, Mostcus, airOn)
  - Italian (Desangre)
  - Spanish (Matje)
  - Finnish (Zathor).
• Selection: Language is selected by clicking the flag in the top right corner of the first globe screen.
• Config File: L2 has a config file that now saves your language selection choice, so you don't have to select it each time you play.

I have finally gotten around to updating the LOGistICAL web site. There is still a lot of backdating to be done.

This web site is now available from the game splash screen and also the game help.
There are links on the site to point you to the Steam community pages, the Steam store and also the community Discord.
 

There are lots of updates to make this an even better game. There are still many in the pipeline. Jump on the LOGistICAL Discord to see the full list of everything that has happened, and everything that could happen.

• High scores now open with a click instead of a hover over.
• High scores pages can be navigated with the "," & "." keys.
• Change truck dash to green if speedup is > 8x.
• Don't allow betting in the casinos if you have no money.
• Trigger save game when you have played a casino game.
• Fixed problem where industries that are already built and then upgraded couldn't be bought.
• Code to remove one-ways from around roads when another close road has reset those one-ways.
• Added ability to stop upgrade of a top second level road that is being upgraded.
• Fixed problem when clicking a business type on the BICH screen it was also clicking on the town behind it and changing the selection upon closing.
• Changed the front page LOGistICAL News to point to an external site.
• Changed the click on HELP to open the above external site.
• Modified the display of town/business selection process to do by priority and then latitude.
• Businesses that are locked behind broken roads don't allow dropping of road resources.
• Businesses that have broken road on lower tonnage road don't allow dropping of road resources.
• Dim town when dragging a large truck to a small town.
• Stop achievements popping for a different module being opened.
• Updated the roads to be thinner when zoomed out.
• More visibility of roads, etc when dragging the map.
• Mouse over truck list now show truck routes.
• Fixed a bug that locked Nevada on load as it was trying pop a contract from a town not found yet.
• Turned off ability to drag a truck to the end of a road until I fix some issues with it.
• Shift "WASD" for faster keyboard scrolling.

Thanks to everyone that helped make these updates possible. The testers, the beta players, the translators and all you LOGistICAL supporters.

Happy playing,
Sacada.

PS. LOGistICAL is on sale at the moment.
50% off LOGistICAL (original)
40% off all LOGistICAL 1 games
30% off all LOGistICAL 2 games (except Nevada just released)
15% off Nevada.
Next sale won't be until at least May 2019

There are various fixes in these past few patches.

Summary
Most significantly in this release build is a reduction in the size of the large businesses within LOGistICAL: Suriname (Xmas 2018).

The final reduction is as follows...
French Guiana
Guyane = 20% or what it originally was
Suriname
Wanica = No change
Sipaliwini = 30%
Saramacca = 50%
Paramaribo = No change
Para = No change
Nickerie = 40%
Marowijne = 50%
Coronie = 50%
Commewijne = 50%
Brokopondo = No change

Current high scores achieved will be retained.

There is also a few past fixes that helped finalise modules that disappeared are back (eg. highlight of the last 2% of businesses per region).

The Business Industry Cycle Help (BICH) has undergone updates.

Build details
Build #668
- Fixed problem with some of the L1 modules not loading properly but they now load in L2
- Fixed saving of 10 minute backup files for L2 modules

Build #669
- Fixed problem with towns no longer being found in Belgium
- When mousing over roads for potential upgrade, show the resource required to fix it
- Drag truck to the end of a found road to allow truck to drive there (issue... dragging truck from the end of the road makes the truck jump back to its last town - fix coming)
- Fixed problem with the last 2% of businesses/towns not showing pink glow
- Fix the road to business Akodo near Apatou town
- Fixed 4 areas in Suriname that were inaccessible.(edited)

Build #669(2)
- Reduction of amount of resources in businesses in Suriname

Build #670
- Fix a load error when there is no destination town for a truck (ie at end of a road).

Build #671
- Fix some areas in Suriname which didn't join the central road matrix (there are still a couple to fix).
- Fix to stop 0 length roads being upgraded
- Patch to undo 0 length roads that managed to be upgraded(edited)

Build #672
- Fix error clicking the Business Industry Cycle Help (BICH)
- Updates to BICH
- Added industry titles
- Show industries that can't be obtained. Highlight them red