LOGistICAL

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


 

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.
 

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

A few updates to stabilize the new architecture build, plus some other stuff.

- Fix problem with New Zealand not opening
- Fix problem with NZ zooming into left hand side of main map instead of right hand side
- Update for planes in Caribbean that were not detecting the airport.
- A new contract in Brazil (Amazon Oil).
- There was an increase to the cost to fuel. This has been rectified.
- Game wasn't always exiting gracefully which could make it difficult to reload. Added a fix for this.

A couple of updates over the last week.

First one that went out this week was an update to the redistributables, so there was no change to the game.

This new update has one major new change and a few smaller issues addressed. It will go out slowly across all servers over the next 24 hours.
 

- Change of backend architecture to LOGistICAL for preparation of LOGistICAL V2. This is the main change of this build.

In summary, LOGistICAL: Version #2 will be based on more detailed mapping data. Roads will be intricate and "towns" will be more closely constructed out of actual shops, malls, industries and land use, etc.
The gameplay will continue to be similar and evolving, creating many new and interesting modules to play.



So far each LOGistICAL module has been designed with towns and then connecting the towns with roads.
This new architectural model now has an infrastructure of roads with towns sprinkled between them.

My first example test build includes 1,400 "towns" and has over 26,000 road segments with around 150,000 nodes. Each node is either a town, a road junction or a bend in the road.

Due to this large change, the routing algorithm had to undergo a massive change and optimisation. Using the old algorithm would take minutes to compute routes, but the new one is instant or just seconds across the whole map.
This new algorithm is backward compatible so you will be able to enjoy the routing benefits in all current modules, especially the larger ones like LOGistICAL: Russia.



As you can see from the images, I have also changed the graphics. I am still working on that.

There will be many changes in the near future, but what I want to continue to do is to make the system work for all the current modules. So far, so good.
 

- New routing algorithm to speed up route planning
- Fixed a town in Brazil that had a blank resource
- Text written on the dash for superfast trucks changed to white
- When dragging mouse show uncompleted town with a completed resource for town need to show as dark green
- Once a truck is sold highlight the first truck of the current module on the truck list 
- keypress "U" = sell truck
- keypress "Y" = "Yes" on message box

Thanks everyone who continues to support and purchase the LOGistICAL games and give me the opportunity to continue to build more.

A few updates to all LOGistICAL servers covering some new changes both front and back end.
 

- Updated the High Score/Leaderboard table titles to reflect the different types of tables.
- Modified the drag truck that highlights other towns that also require the resource to include all towns
- Adjusted the map sensitivity when clicking on towns
- "?" on industry building tool to show current industries and towns that can take industry on map. Mouse over to read and mouse down to activate.
- Only show single region on town popup when both region and sub-region have same title
- Fix for wrong towns showing up when dragging inputs, outputs or road resources
- When showing other towns that require a dragged resource (in grey) they interfered with highlighting industries. Fixed.
- Sold industries that required and upgrade continued to show the upgrade when it was dragged. Fixed
 

- Set the module name instead of country title for modules that have different module title.
 

- Created a Caribbean flag.
- Fixed truck and plane purchasing contracts that weren't triggering.
- Nerfed towns in Antigua and Barbuda (already on Caribbean Live).
- Removed duplicate town, Road Town in British Virgin Islands.
- Added Discovery contracts.
- Removed some building restrictions from Guadeloupe.
- Removed double road in St Kitts
- Fixed Jamaican Airline spelling
- Nerfed a town that no-one had done yet
- Fixed achievement "Fix road between Basseterre and Cayon"
- Added wood to a town in Jamaica so it can be upgraded to level 3 if other options have run out.

As the current highest requested feature, you can now sort your trucks.


Trucks are sorted by clicking on the "palette" icon at the top of the truck list. 
The "palette" icon can be earned by upgrading the paint factory in Sydney, AU. This reward will be extended to other module shortly.

This "palette" icon can also modify the colour of your trucks. Click the truck when in "paint" mode.
 

Trucks delivering to towns that have multiple industries with the same input would stop the truck once one of the industries was full.

If the truck's "unload all" (little green button) is on, then the truck will continue to deliver to the town until all the industries with that input are full.
Once all industries are full the extra within the truck will be evenly distributed across all the industries and then the truck will stop.
 

I have fixed a few issues that existed when having multiple modules open.
 

Each module has its own maximum game speed but the whole game only had a single speed, so would have to adjust when moving between modules.

Now every module has its own speed and all other modules running in the background won't be affected by any change of speed of the currently selected module.
This includes trucks speed, town consumption and industry production.
 

When having a module open and you complete a town and then upgrade or build an industry within that town, those industries would reset back to their last status within the save file, if you opened up a subsequent module.

This bug has been a problem for some time, but with the help of some great testing, I have been able to reproduce the problem, locate the problem area and fix for a solution.
 

When having multiple modules open, all the discovered industries of the first module would be visible in the second module.

Now when changing between modules the list of known industries is recalculated.
 

For the extra loaded modules that aren't currently being played, the town images on the map are no longer shown.
 

Now all towns that contain industries default as "shown" on the map to help find them easier.
 

The currently selected town is now default as shown on the map.
 

The continuous murmur of the trucks in the background which was on for each truck and also went louder and quieter depending on how close you were to the truck, are now switched off.

I found that the amount of truck loaded sounds was cutting other sounds short, including the music.
There is more work to do in this area.

 

This build is currently available on LOGistICAL: main, Russia and Wisconsin betas.

I will slowly release across all the modules over the next few days as it has been hard to fully test every aspect of all these functions.

No new module this month with so many players still working their way through Russia. Lot of new stuff and build fixes...

LOGistICAL is built over many different games but all plays back to a single huge game, so should the high scores... and now they do.
I have built a LOGistICAL High Score server that will aggregate all your games to a single series of high scores. At this point all high scores are based on town completion. This can expand with player interest.

There are three types of High Scores over the Grand Total, each Module, each Region, each Semi-region and each Town. That is over 70,000 of them, all dynamically created, with includes your Rank in each.

There are three types of High Score tables...

This sorts by the number of towns completed and duration of play between the first and last towns.
This table is similar to the current ones on Steam but also include the duration of game play with the shortest first.
For Town high scores, it is by the date completed.

These tables sort descending on you aggregated score. To see how a score is calculated click on resource needs of a completed town.
Soon you will be able to replay maps or parts of maps (including specific towns), so you can improve your score.

Efficiency tables are sorted descending on your play efficiency.
Efficiency is the amount of resources at town requires divided by the amount of resources that you delivered.
Efficiency is only calculated at the Town level.

To get to the high scores, click on the left hand "Towns Completed Trophy" on the money window (F2) and hover over any of the blue, red or green columns. It may take a second to first download a result.
Click on any row to drill into the Module, Region and Sub-Region.
 

High score tables are now visible if you:
- mouse over the left trophy on the money window (total towns complete)
- mouse over the right trophy on the money window (module towns complete)
- mouse over the town title on the town window (current town)
- mouse over the sub-region title on the town window (sub-region towns complete)
- mouse over the regions title on the town window (regions towns complete)

At this point only towns of currently loaded modules are loaded into the statistics screen. I will soon include the towns when clicked on a sub-region.

Game data is uploaded to the server when the game is saved (every 2 minutes and upon X exit of the game).
Back dated game data is uploaded by the module at every save (2 minutes) until all modules have been uploaded. This is a once only process and once complete shouldn't happen again.
There is only 1 copy per SteamID per town, so any players that have multiple games running will only get the first uploaded. Subsequent uploads will fail with a data conflict.

There are many future things that can come out of these tables.
For example getting notified if you have moved up a place when completing towns. Being notified of interesting high score facts of other players. Tagging friends so you can see how they are doing.
 

Once you reach 50% towns completed within a Region, the icons of those not finished change from grey to red. If the town has an industry it will show purple.
 

A few new fixes for the Air Transport including:
- If you deliver to a town and achieve something (ie town finish, industry input full, road fixed), then the conveyor belt will auto retract to the airport, instantly.
 

The maps' overlay has been dimmed to show the underlying map better. Brighter in the day and darker at night.
 

Already, if you click on an incomplete region in the achievements window, it will show town circles indicating completion status for each town of that region.
This can now also be done by clicking the region title in the town popup window.

To turn the circles off, click a town on the map.
 

If you play multiple modules at once, the current non-played one will dim.
Towns with resources in other modules won't show up when hovered over.
 

The 1,2,3,4 hotspots for the multi-truck save were slightly out. Fixed.
 

The Xmas scores for completing towns often sit in the billions and even trillions, which throw out the overall grand total.
These scores are now divided by 1,000,000 so they sit better with the overall scores, especially the totals.
These will be evident from the start on the High Score tables. If they don't update on your statistics page, open the Xmas module and then save.
 

When upgrading industries at high game speeds, an 8t truck can't effectively complete 2 x 4t town upgrades.
This would most likely be due to the huge speeds blowing the cargo out of the top of the truck. Tarpaulins for the trucks should stop this (or a code tweak).
 

The menus where looking a bit worse for wear, so have been given a redo.
Money at the start was showing various incorrect values. Fixed
Money and Buttons window now showing up on startup. Fixed
 

There are many other smaller fixes as well.

This version is now available on LOGistICAL [beta] and LOGistICAL:Russia [beta]. Feel free to test it now.
The final version should be released over the next week.

The first release version of Multi Truck Select (MTS) is now live on all LOGistICAL servers.
 

https://i.imgur.com/HAC60Ll.png
 

Hold control key down and click on truck icon, truck name or truck cargo image in the truck list.
Background of truck will highlight yellow.
Originally selected truck will also be highlighted and be added to group.
Click again to deselect a truck.
 

Continue to hold control and drag the last truck from the truck list onto a town on the map.
Drag any truck on the map to drag the group on the map.
Drag any item from the town popup onto a town on the map to move the group.
All trucks will try to set up the new route if possible.
Any trucks that can't change route (ie already on delivery) should ignore new route and display error.

Click or drag a truck not in the group and you will deselect the group
 

Start/stop, dump all and repeat route buttons are now clickable in the truck list so you don't have to open the truck dash for each truck and click on the required button. It is nice to quickly click down the list changing each truck.
I encourage using this method and very quickly it will become second nature.

For multi-select...
Hold control and click a button to toggle all the selected trucks.

Don't hold control and click a button to toggle just the selected truck.
 

Selecting with shift key.
Ordering trucks.
 

Thanks to all those that beta tested this functionality and those that gave great input for future enhancements.

There is now a new view in Statistical LOGistICAL (F2).


New "List" view for statistics. Though not "Search", it comes pretty close.
- All columns are "click" sortable.
- Default sort is alpha-numeric on "Town Name"
- Click to swap between "List" view and the original "Tree" view.
- Click on town title to show town popup and center map on town
- Ctrl-Click on town to show town popup (no map move)
- F2 to open (as per original)
- Ctrl-F2 to open without refresh (sorts and open sections stay)
- Selected mode (List or Tree) saves with game save
- Towns not found are not clickable.

Small build with a few post fixes to last big build.

Fix achievements tab not selecting.
Fix achievements having blank line in some modules.
Mouse over shrunken notifications to expand. (nb. Close all coming soon).
Optimised night/day code and graphics.