There have been a few updates over the past few days. Here is why.
Most of these latest builds are focused on optimising code, L2 and also the upcoming LOGistICAL 3: Earth release. All releases get the benefits of these updates.
Truck speed vs Game speed
One of the main optimisation updates includes a new process for moving the trucks at high game speed multipliers.
Explanation: The old method multiplies the truck's moving distance with the game multiplier and moves forward in one step. If it reaches a node (where 3 or more roads meet) it stops and truncates that move. In L1 this hasn't been a problem. You may lose a tiny fraction of distance traveled as there are many node junctions. With L2 there are many node junctions, so these missed travel distance add up over an entire trip.
This new method now only moves the truck its truck speed distance, but it loops it as many times as the game multiplier indicates. Each time it may stop if it hits a node, but then continues on the next loop.
TLDR: Running the game at high game speeds is now more accurate.
Progress on LOGistICAL 3: Earth
L3: Earth is looking huge at the moment. It is not intended to be played from start to finish in a single sitting, but I am sure there are plenty of you out there that will give it a shot.
The game will start with a small starting area that will have a bunch of contracts to give access to depots all over the globe.
There will be shipping between the continents and islands.
I have added clustering to LOGistICAL. Clustering displays a summary of all the towns and businesses within that area. It will display different colours and sizes depending on completeness, town/business quantities, populations (difficulty), industries and other factors.
This will be available for L:Earth and possible available for all L2 modules (see image above). This makes the game work smoothly while still processing tens of thousands of towns.
Some approximate statistics on L3:Earth (so far):
- 250 regions
- 50,000 towns
- 25,000 businesses
- 250,000 road segments
- 200,000 road junctions
- 3,500,000 nodes
L3:Earth alpha is available for test playing. At this point it is only moving the different trucks around the map without have the ability to play any towns or businesses. There is no cost to try it out.
Available on "LOGistICAL: ABC Islands (beta passcode: iwillfinishalltownsonearth).
To load, right click ABC Islands in your Steam library and select properties, BETA and copy the passcode into the box. I had to restart steam before it showed in the beta dropdown list.
Comments and chat on L3:Earth is available in a LOGistICAL Discord Channel.
Discord: LOGistICAL: https://discord.gg/WFtFRvK
Other Fixes
- Truck limits for each truck type shown on the truck depots (shops).
- Popup on the truck depots to show summary information of each truck.
- Ability to enable different road speeds for each (future) module.
- Added more speedup contracts for Brazil
- Added more speedup contracts for Wisconson
- Variable town needs for each resource within a town needs (Sweden)
- Town and business clusters
- Map no longer locked at the edges
- Faster updating of the map and objects