LOGistICAL

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

A minor update to fix a problem with the tutorial not working on LOGistICAL 2 modules.

Also a nice fix to simply to selection of roads to upgrade.

Detail

Build #674 on LOGistICAL 2 and LOGistICAL 2: Belgium

• Faster method for upgrading multiple roads
• Click the "Upgrade Roads" button or press "B"
• Click on all the roads that you want to upgrade
• Click road again to cancel upgrade
• Click the "Upgrade Roads" (or "B") button to exit "upgrade road" mode
• Note: There is no longer a verify popup to the process
• Yellow border around map when upgrading roads
• Fixed problem with negative speed
• Fixed problem with maps of Tutorial and Isle of Man not showing
• Update wording on Tutorial contracts
• Update wording on Isle of Man contracts

Build #673 on LOGistICAL 2 and LOGistICAL 2: Belgium

• Some road fixes were showing up in the last 2% of missing towns/businesses
• Increased last 2% of unfound towns/businesses showing to last 5%
• Fixed an incorrect road fix count in statistics
• Cancel upgrade icon changed to an boxed "X"
• Fixed problem with regions turning grey from yellow mostly due to road upgrades
• In statistics, region town total wasn't showing green when complete

Quite a few small updates to make the interface smoother.

Build #667
- Fix mouseover on new pin-striped pins
- Stop selecting the town when it gets a new business auto-industry
- Access to some inaccessible areas in SR
- Added touch control to most of the game

Build #666
- Purple industries show on industry select. Crimson for your own industries.
- Click on the Business Industry Cycle (BIC) to see where the industries are built
- New business icon for food-halls
- Stop blue icons showing up in Belgium
- Stop completed businesses of current selected type (ie blue ones) to not show when hovering, unless they have an industry

Build #665
- Ability to play L1 modules in L2 (beta only so make a copy)
- Industry popup mouse down now shows auto-industries as purple dots and own industries as crimson dots.
- Fixed lockup when industry button clicked when BIC is open.
- Fixed pins-stripes in truck list

Build #664
- Businesses sorted from top to bottom appearing on the screen to give a bit of uniformity to the chaos
- Thicker line on the business driveways when zoomed in.

Build #663
- Striped pins. Hold shift to add and cycle stripe colours for the pins
- Removed completed roadworks from mouse-over selection
- Fixed problem with selection town destination from truck list and ending up at a road works
- Fixed crash problem of selecting road fix too often

Build #653 on LOGistICAL 2
- Fixed problem with upgrading roads to industries
- Fixed problem when trying to sell a truck
- Stopped L1 modules from loading from the globe until I get them working properly.



Build #650 on LOGistICAL 2
- Added button for upgrading roads with mouseover help on truck dash for L2 modules
- Added button for sending trucks back to depot with mouseover help next to skip, cancel and sell truck
- Restructure of startup globe for L2 games
- Use of high-score table data to populate the globe (numbers may be slightly out until adjustment period is over)
- Auto industry functionality for Suriname (Xmas 2018)
- Set all roads of length 0.01 or less to be made to take 100t trucks, so no upgrading needed.



Build #644 on LOGistICAL 2
- Region titles show as yellow once industry and roads are complete...
... caveat on this fix is that most of the roads are currently residing in the one region within the backend data. This is due to the L1 having each road joining a town and the town providing the region. L2 now has many roads that don't join towns and therefore are not mapped to their region. I do have a database fix for this, but haven't yet coded it into the game.



Build #642 on LOGistICAL 2
- Businesses that unlock a town show up white
- Added 6 new contracts
- Moved the business complete speedup contracts to the global contracts
- Fix when complete town/business has an undefined as a boost
- Fix when complete town/business has NaN as score and efficiency



Build #641 on LOGistICAL 2
- Save a "cancel road upgrade" fixed
- One way roads on 8t and less roads removed when upgraded.
- Toggle "M" key to show where failed navigation tried to find a route. Red, green or blue dots (as per the route colours).
- Minimum upgrade amount set to 1



Build #636 on LOGistICAL 2
- Fix for missing nodes (ie those that were created for a road upgrade) but no longer exist but are still in the truck data
- Fix for doing multiple nodes in a row (eg, a series of road upgrades).



Buld #632 on LOGistICAL 2
- Created low res rivers in USWA
- Make padlock already done colour in dark red
- Fix problem when upgraded road has trucks going to it when its finished and game is also restarted
- Fix problem of road fix to town is same as industry input but fix isn't registered



Buld #630 on LOGistICAL 2
- Adjustment to algorithm to find the closest road when selecting for a road upgrade
- Fixed a problem where the new upgrade materials don't always show.



Buld #629 on LOGistICAL 2
- All found businesses that have a resource that has just been discovered or built (as an industry output) now show immediately on the map.
- Fix padlock position
- Fix problem with trucks being at upgrade points that no longer show after save
- Fix problem of trucks not hovering over resources properly



Build #628 on LOGistICAL 2
- Fixed missing truck error.
- Found and fixed errors associated with upgrading the road to a town.
- Ability to "undo" a road upgrade.



Build #627 on LOGistICAL 2
- Created new industry logic and code for Suriname.
- Created discount industry price logic for future modules.
- Created new cargo size limits for Suriname.
- Added a smaller road size in Suriname.
- Added an indicator in the town popup of the maximum sized joining road.
- Added a orange square with resource type for towns locked by broken road.



Build #626 on LOGistICAL 2
- Fixed road upgrades that didn't work due to attribute that wasn't being updated.
- Fixed town that has upgrade road going to it to work once reloaded. More testing during play.



Build #625 on LOGistICAL 2: Belgium
- Mailbox at same location as Berlare moved a fraction so they don't overlay and you can't complete the mailbox if you did the town first.



Build #624 on LOGistICAL 2
- Click on resources of complete towns caused hanging in USWA. Fixed.
- Road upgrade functionality (beta):
You can now upgrade roads.
Press the "B" key to turn on/off road upgrading (will be a button soon).
Hover over any road less than the highest level motorway. It will show red.
Click on the road to upgrade it.
A message will pop up showing the cost of the road upgrade. Click yes to accept
The road will become broken until you supply the resources to finish the upgrade.
You can upgrade broken roads once they are fixed
You can upgrade the same road multiple times
There is a discount if the road being upgraded joins a larger road than the current one.
The closer the road size to the current the better the discount.

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

LOGistICAL 2: Belgium is the first release of this new series, continuing on the slow mapping of the planet.

LOGistICAL 2 has had a major rewrite of the core engine. Instead of having towns across the map joined by roads, there is now a comprehensive road network with towns sprinkled throughout.

You can play on a white or black background, or anywhere in between (see the map slider in the game settings).




 

LOGistICAL 2 has its own save game. It is once again small and saves quickly.

Booting LOGistICAL 2 will jump straight into playing Belgium. You can still load any LOGistICAL 1 game from Steam and play at the same time as LOGistICAL 2.

I have written a launch module to integrate both LOGistICAL 1 and 2 which will be released once more testing is complete.
 

The LOGistICAL 2 road network is based on live data with most of the major and secondary roads throughout the country.
LOGistICAL 2 now has 100 times the amount of road segments as before. Belgium has over 50,000 road segments.

Trucks follow the curves of the roads and also obey one-way directions. You may find your truck heading in entirely the wrong direction to find its way out of a one-way road system.

Of course the engine and navigation functionality had to undergo a huge revamp. Initially it would take minutes to find the fastest route across half the country. Now it takes a fraction of a second to navigate the entire country.
 

A lot of Belgium's towns have broken roads leading up to them from the road network.
They need to be fixed for the trucks to be able to get to the town and subsequently "complete" the town.

In order to get to the town and road fix area, the entry way to each town is selected if the town can't get approached.
 

LOGistICAL 2 introduces mailboxes.

Mailboxes work the same as towns, except they have very small resource needs (usually only one or two and less than two tons each).
Unlike towns, mailboxes don't consume resources, so you can complete one resource and finish the others later.

Mailboxes also hold the keys to locked towns.
Within the mailboxes of a town's region is the " Key to the City" for that town. Complete more mailboxes to find the keys.

Note: I will be releasing a "hint" mechanism to help find those keys over the next few days.
 

The testers and I are now reasonably comfortable to release LOGistICAL 2.

The testing over the last week has been extensive with many changes and updated requests to make the game play better for you.

There may be a few more smaller updates over the next week to fix a few minor issues. Hopefully no major ones.

Thanks to the many players that support LOGistICAL and look forward to your feedback on the new new style and gameplay.

Happy playing,

Sacada.

PS. Full patch notes will be published soon.

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.