1. Volcanoids
  2. News

Volcanoids News

Co-op Update is NOW LIVE

What a ride it has been towards the release of this update, wow! First of all, we would like to thank you all for the amazing support during the build-up to this update, you know it means the world to us!

Now, let's move on to the main reason we're here, the Co-op Update. From now on you will be able to crew up with up to 3 other friends to commandeer drillships, scavenge, build, fight and survive together! Apart from the new co-op mode, there are also new worktables, bunk beds, items, and other improvements we made based on your feedback. We are also celebrating this update release with a 25% discount!

Check out the brand new trailer for this update below:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

What's New

[h3]Co-op Multiplayer[/h3]
To play the new co-op mode all you need to do is choose one person that will be hosting the game and take on the role of the crew captain - ideally, the one that has the strongest PC, since it has to manage everything. Once the game starts, others can join through the "join game" screen and start playing. Quests are completely synchronized within the crew, so everyone can take part in managing the drillship systems, fighting COGs, or gathering resources.



For now, the crew can own only own one drillship but that will change in future updates. Crew captain is the only person that can save/load the game. If the captain decides to end the game, it will also disconnect all the other players. Any new player that joins the game will spawn directly to the drillship, or into the submarine in case the crew has not claimed one yet (or lost one).

[h3]New Worktables[/h3]
New devices were added to the beginning of the game to make the learning curve smoother for new players. Submarine and the starter drillship have been updated with research and refinery worktables working as standalone devices, meaning they don't need any other modules, storage, or energy to work. This means that players have more time to learn about all the advanced module systems.



[h3]The Boiler[/h3]
Drillships were also equipped with a main panel placed at the front wall called "the boiler". The boiler gives access to all essential controls and information that is needed to successfully operate the drillship.



[h3]Player Respawn[/h3]
Death is no longer an issue in both single and multiplayer games. You will simply respawn back in the submarine or a drillship if your crew owns one. When you get killed, a backpack with inventory will be dropped on the ground. You must act fast because it can get easily destroyed by the eruption or the COG drillships can carry it away in case you died in one.

In cases you unexpectedly leave a multiplayer game, your character will stay in the game for approximately five minutes (we may or may not added a silly emote when this happens). In this time, you can still log back in and continue where you stopped, unless your character gets killed by COGs or the eruption. After the time runs out your character will die and all the loot will be dropped on the ground in a backpack.

[h3]Bunk Beds[/h3]
The new bunk beds play an important role in multiplayer. You can log off through them, and safely store all your inventory while your character is sleeping. So next time you log in, you will have all your stuff, and since the bed moves with the drillship, you won't have to catch up to your crew.



[h3]Full Changelog[/h3]
Main Features
  • Co-op multiplayer
  • Quests are synchronized within all crew members
  • Player respawn (Single and Multiplayer games)
  • Refinery and research worktables
  • Schematics (different way of upgrading production in drillship)
  • Front drillship boiler (new default device)
  • Bunk bed (log out location in multiplayer)


Other Features
  • Players drop backpack with inventory upon death
  • Recipe items (dials, gun powder, alloy, bullet casings)
  • New scrap recipes
  • Multiplayer screen for managing players in-game (kick/ban)
  • Custom logo accessible from the main menu


Major Changes
  • Players no longer have one life, they respawn either in drillship or submarine after death
  • All production stations now allow queue for crafting
  • Changed submarine interior to contain only starter technology (no modules)
  • Changed starter drillship interior to contain only starter technology (no modules)
  • Changed tech tree
  • Updated questline
  • Engine upgrades no longer require Core upgrade of the same level to be installed
  • Changed loot spawned in COG drillships


Other Changes
  • Adjusted audio throughout the whole game
  • Player now takes one stack of item from online storage by default (no longer taking whole coal storage - Shift = 1 item, CTRL 5 items, CTRL+Shift All items )
  • Updated research icons to better show what is crafted and from what - Suggested by TheFireDragon on Nolt
  • Updated scrap recipes to better reflect what happens with the item
  • Scrap metal and destroyed modules can be picked up without the need to use the pickaxe to mine them (press E)
  • Increased chest storage size
  • Increased front drillship storage capacity
  • Increased storage capacity in T2 and T3 Storage modules
  • Pickaxe is mining slower
  • COG respawn tube has higher HP


Bug Fixes
  • Optimizations at all levels
  • Fixed navigation issues in quests
  • Chests and devices are now properly saved on the submarine
  • Players can't accidentally downgrade their drillship anymore


Stay Updated
  • Get development news and sneak peeks on Twitter or Facebook
  • Chat with thousands of other players and the devs on Discord
  • Receive development updates through Email
  • See highlights from the development, office and events on Instagram
  • Make a suggestion for the game and upvote/downvote others on Nolt
  • See the roadmap for upcoming features on Trello
  • Watch new trailers, teasers and tutorials on YouTube


Thank you so much again for your support and patience! Hope you have a blast with the new update and if you have any questions/feedback you know where to find us.

~ Volcanoids Dev Squad

https://store.steampowered.com/app/951440/Volcanoids/

Co-op Mode Date Reveal

We're excited to announce that Co-op mode, the most requested feature of all, is coming to Volcanoids on May 20th, 2020!



Soon you will be able to crew up with your friends to commandeer drillships, scavenge, raid, build, fight and ultimately defeat the volcano together.

Along with the Co-op mode, the upcoming update is also bringing new items, devices, and improvements covered in this Development Update.

In case you (or your friends) haven't secured a key for Volcanoids yet, keep an eye out on our social media.

Stay Updated
  • Get development news and sneak peeks on Twitter or Facebook
  • Chat with thousands of other players and the devs on Discord
  • Receive development updates through Email
  • See highlights from the development, office and events on Instagram
  • See the roadmap for upcoming features on Trello
  • Watch new trailers, teasers and tutorials on YouTube


Mark your calendars, stay tuned and if you have any questions, you know where to find us.

~ Volcanoids Dev Squad

https://store.steampowered.com/app/951440/Volcanoids/

Co-op Testing Event

Hey! Would you like to play Co-op with your buddies before it gets released?

We're looking for 10-15 crews of 4 players that would stress test the Co-op mode.

We also got some special rewards prepared for the most helpful crew.

If you think your crew has what it takes (prepare to face unexpected bugs and glitches) head to our Discord server for more info and registration.

And if you're missing some crewmates, you will surely find them in our Discord as well.

Crews will be picked on Sunday, April 26th so hurry up!

~ Volcanoids Dev Squad

Development Update: Co-op is upon us!

Hey! Long time no see so here's another Development Update covering most of the things we did in the past few months. But before we get to that, we hope you're all doing fine and staying safe in these weird times. We are. The only thing that changed for us is that we had to move back in our apartments, so back to how things were before Early Access. Now we got that out of the way, let's get to the new stuff!

What's Coming

[h3]Co-op Multiplayer[/h3]
Many new features and devices were added to support the drillship "crew life". Co-op in Volcanoids will be about operating the drillship and managing tasks together as a team. One player will be able to drive the ship, while the others set up production stations, spy through the periscope or create new items before the ship hits the surface.



Friends that get caught off guard by the eruption or a group of COGs and lose the fight will also lose their loot. However, they can quickly re-join the crew by respawning directly in the drillship.

[h3]Bunk Beds[/h3]
To support the idea of group progress, players can log off in the new bunk beds that work as a safe point. Now, even though you're offline and all your friends are still playing, you're still going to travel with them since the bed is placed in a mobile base. And once you log in again you will be back with your crew right away, even if they progressed to a completely different part of the map.



[h3]Simplified start of the game[/h3]
Based on feedback from the community and content creators the crafting system got a rework. The start of the game is now focused on being more gradual in terms of introducing new devices and systems. All the different modules, levers and buttons right from the start were often overwhelming for many players.

So from now on, players will start with basic crafting stations similar to other survival games and will be gradually introduced to modules later. We hope this makes the first experience for new players way more enjoyable and removes the frustration of having no idea what all the different buttons do while also getting stressed out by the upcoming eruption.



Some of the new content is still "work in progress" when it comes to visuals, and will be until we finish all the technical parts. For now, we are going with the sailor character, that will get improved in upcoming updates.

Content for future updates

Co-op is now at a stage where we just keep polishing and bug-fixing stuff, so to make sure everyone has something to do, artists (more on that later) started working on assets that will be added to the game in future updates after the Co-op update gets released.

[h3]Improved COG unit models[/h3]
Volcanoids veterans will remember the raw models of new COG units teased on the roadmap some time ago. Now they are getting complete rework by Alex.



[h3]New front drills[/h3]
Extra work also went also into designing new front drills, that would better reflect installed upgrades. It's based on community feedback where a lot of players got confused about which drillship has the upgrade they are looking for. There are more models to come, each representing a specific front drill upgrade.



[h3]New Locations[/h3]
Lastly, more locations to explore are also in the pipeline such as these (drill)shipwrecks.



The Team

[h3]New team members[/h3]
Since the Co-op Update is a huge task, more people have joined the team. The ultimate goal is to bring you more content with each update, and since there is only so much a developer can do, growing the team is the only way to achieve that. There are so many great ideas from the community and concepts that still need to be added and this will make the process faster.

Now let me introduce our new members! Alex is in charge of 3D modeling and animation. David focuses on audio design and his first task was to get rid of all the ear destroying sounds many players pointed out. Dusan and Tomas have been testing like crazy for the last couple of weeks, trying to catch them all! (bugs not pokemons)



Stay Updated
  • Get development news and sneak peeks on Twitter or Facebook
  • Chat with thousands of other players and the devs on Discord
  • Receive development updates through Email
  • See highlights from the development, office and events on Instagram
  • See the roadmap for upcoming features on Trello
  • Watch new trailers, teasers and tutorials on YouTube


We would like to thank YOU big time for all the support and patience you guys have with us. Stay tuned, more news coming soon! If you have any questions, ideas or feedback, feel free to let us know in the comments below.

~ Volcanoids Dev Squad (now even bigger)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/951440/Volcanoids/

Optimization Update

Ondrej and Lukas worked hard on optimizing the game after we got tons of reports of poor performance. The game should run much better now, as they profiled many aspects of the game and focused on things that seemed to cause the biggest hits on FPS. Hope this update will make your game run much smoother. Please report anything that looks strange, or does not work... you know the usual. Lastly, we would like to thank you so much for bearing with us and for all the reports you guys sent us, it helped us a ton!



What's New

[h3]Changes & Fixes[/h3]
  • Animations optimization & thorough animation culling
  • Fixed physics performance peaks, caused by slight collision movement
  • GUI and HUD performance optimization
  • Wagon corridor optimization
  • Added lower-tier loot to higher Tier 2 and Tier 3 cog drillships
  • Increased time of cog respawn from 5s to 15s
  • Mine names on the map are correct now
  • Fixed an error where crystals in a mine-cart could not be mined
  • Fixed crash that occurred when user run out of GPU memory


[h3]The Very First Steam Build[/h3]
If you'd like to see what the game looked like approximately year and a half ago, we uploaded the build on Steam. All you have to do to play it is to switch branches from Main to the Snapshot V1.07. In case you don't know how to switch branches, check out the tutorial below. Last thing I should mention is that if you encounter any bugs (which you likely will), please don't report them.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Stay Updated
  • Get development news and sneak peeks on Twitter or Facebook
  • Participate in contests and chat with us/other players on Discord
  • Make a suggestion for the game and upvote/downvote others on Nolt
  • Receive development updates through Email
  • See highlights from the development, office and events on Instagram
  • See upcoming features on Trello
  • Watch new trailers and tutorials on YouTube


If you have any questions, ideas or feedback, feel free to let us know in the comments below. Take care!

~ Volcanoids Dev Squad

https://store.steampowered.com/app/951440/Volcanoids/