Volcanoids News

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!


[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.


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.




[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)

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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/

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!




[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]

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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/

Hey everyone! It's our first birthday today and what better way to celebrate than with a new update! The Blast Shelter Update is now available and offers new locations, new ways to survive and a new tool filled with vital information. We also have many other things we want to talk about so please bare with us as this announcement is a little longer.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


[h3]F1 Help Screen[/h3]
This feature should greatly help with the learning curve of the game. To access the main wiki, press F1. This will take you to the main screen where you'll see a list of pages. As you progress through the game, you will be able to unlock more pages by picking up items, accepting quests or just looking at objects and pressing F1. This brings sort of an exploration feel to the game since you don't see everything right away. In the future, we plan to adjust quests as well so they support the story more. Every time there is a new page, you will get an on-screen notification and the new page will be marked in the archive. Give the archive a try and let us know what information is missing. Lastly, the archive is only in English right now but will get localized eventually.



[h3]Blast Shelters[/h3]
To solve the "anti-exploration" issue with you having to run back to the ship each time eruption is about to happen, blast shelters were added to the game. When you're inside a shelter, the eruption won't kill you. This greatly affects the gameplay, as you no longer have to go back and forth to your drillship all the time. Instead, you can progress on the surface and call your drillship to a landing site (by holding "G") you discover on the go. To find a blast shelter, look inside villages. Every village has at least one blast shelter. The map now also includes mines, that next to protection from the eruption also hold a large number of ore deposits. There are three types of mines - coal, normal and rare. Each of the basement shelters also has at least one chest, that contains some items. The inventory is saved so you can also use it to store items in case you are about to attack a ship and don't have enough room, or plan to fall back from a fight.



[h3]COG Spawn Tube[/h3]
From now on, COG units will spawn from spawning tubes and drillship will no longer bring new units to surface every single time you kill some. This greatly simplifies tons of stuff and also changes the way COG drillships are raided. No longer will drillship run away from you when you're about to enter. All you need to know is that now your main priority while raiding an enemy drillship should be searching for the tubes and destroying them before new units are spawned. Tubes with color mean a specific type of COG will spawn, while no color tube is a universal spawn point. So, for example, the black tube will spawn just and only military COG units.



[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Drillship Spawn System - Due to multiplayer implementation, we had to change the way COG drillships spawn. From now on, if you destroy a lava source it means COG activity for that area is over and no drillships will spawn. You have to travel to the next area in order to find new COG units. There is a plan to have so-called "Hunter Drillships" that will attack the player directly in areas with destroyed lava sources, but that's still in progress.
  
• Long Loading Times - Ondrej did some crazy magic and finally solved the long loading times so the loading times should be much faster. If not please report it asap.
  
• Changed Map Progress - From now on, you're not able to get to other areas unless lava source is destroyed. There is a hot lava stream that blocks the way and cools down only once lava source is destroyed. This means you can't really ignore the first lava source and go straight into area 2 anymore.
  
• Save Compatibility - Since this update brings some major changes in map progression, we tried to cover possible issues with older saves. Few safety features have been added to solve potential problems. Such as if you destroyed a laser device too early, and your ship is stuck due to a low drill upgrade, a higher tier should install automatically. Or, if you happen to stand on a terrain that was changed, you will fall through the surface but eventually get teleported back to your drillship. In general, saves should work fine. If you still run into an issue please send me an email to [email protected] and I'll see what can be done to save your progress.
  
• Difficulty and Balance - Based on feedback from testing, it seems some difficult scenarios and custom map settings can end up being extremely hard. We are aware of this and will focus on the problem during the rebalancing period.
  

[h3]First Birthday[/h3]
The time flies by like crazy and all of a sudden it's one year since Volcanoids was officially released on Steam! First of all, we would like to say huge thanks to the community that supports the game and helps in every way possible. From feedback and suggestions that help to set priorities to testing and reporting issues found in the game. Without you, the game would not be where it is today. We would like to send out a batch of small 3D printed drillships as a token of gratitude for the support given by members of the community. Thank you so much!


If you own a 3D printer and want to print your own drillship here's the model download link.

[h3]New Team Member[/h3]
We are also slowly growing as a team. Lukas has joined our ranks as a game designer and implementation specialist. This will greatly help with the development process and the amount of new content for each update. So stay tuned for more development updates!


[h3]Nolt for Community Suggestions[/h3]
We recently discovered a new platform for community suggestions that makes everything so so much easier for everyone. You can easily post suggestions without being forced to sign up (not like it's hard, you just sign up with your email) and upvote/downvote/comment on other suggestions. Where Nolt really excels is its ability to filter, search and tag suggestions you guys make. This means we will be able to keep track of what features you guys really want much easier than ever before and set priorities according to it. So go make your first suggestion here: https://volcanoids.nolt.io/




There are still so many things on the roadmap. So 2020 should be as eventful as the previous year. Starting with the multiplayer implementation that will now require our full attention. Ondrej has some of the technical core aspects done, and now it's time to start adjusting the game from a game design point of view. A few examples would be a complete rebalance of resources, recipes, and production systems. This is where all the feedback from the community comes very handy and we will do our best to address it. The overall idea is to develop an alpha version of a 4 player max. co-op multiplayer. Anyone will have chance to join the testing and try it out. Once enough feedback is gathered from the community, we will iterate and improve the game based on that.

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If you have any questions, ideas or feedback, feel free to let us know in the comments below. Have fun with the new update!

~ Volcanoids Dev Squad

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

Hey, everyone! While the major multiplayer update is still in development, we are working on smaller minor updates as well. The upcoming update in progress focuses on improving the learning curve and giving you important information as the world is explored. Next to that, we are also working on a concept and early version of an underground system that will greatly affect the gameplay and progression on the surface. Some adjustments to the existing system are done as well, to prepare it for multiplayer implementation. The biggest change is the respawning of COG units and ships, that will not require ships to go underground anymore in order to bring more units.


[h3]F1 Help Screen[/h3]
The screen works as an in-game wiki that reveals pages as you progress through the game. We plan to improve it more based on your feedback so the first version that gets added won't be a finished deal. Right now we are focused mainly on the functionality and we added only the info that we feel is most crucial for your progress.



We're trying to make it as easy to use as possible. To find out more about an object you will simply have to look at it and press F1 - this will open a page with all the info about that object. Just like that, you can unlock new pages for the "Archive" throughout the gameplay. This should also help is with making quests more like real "quests" and not just a long tutorial, since we will be able to give you all the important info through this feature.



[h3]Blast Shelters[/h3]
We noticed in your comments that since you are forced by the eruptions to always stay in close distance to your drillship you can never go exploring too much. To solve this, we added something we call "blast shelters". The premise is quite simple, these places such as basements or caves will give you the ability to survive eruptions even without your drillship.

"But what about my super awesome base?? I can't just leave it behind!" You're absolutely right - just send it underground remotely by holding G while you hide somewhere else.

This will let you go on longer adventures without the need to always rush back to the ship, just make sure you send the drillship underground as well. After the eruption is over you can call it to a landing site close to you by holding G again.

Shelters will be also very useful when multiplayer comes and one of your friends is late and you have to leave him behind. The first version of these blasts shelters will come in the form of mines and house basements.



Mines also hold ore deposits, so you can get some extra ore during your wait.



House basements are in every town, but always only one usually attached to the biggest building, they usually store some loot in chests

[h3]Underground Systems[/h3]
The shelters sparked a lot of new ideas and we kept experimenting with how far we could take this. The main idea is to give you more places to explore while keeping the concept of the eruptions and destruction that follows when the wave hits the surface. This lead to the so-called "Iceberg" concept, that would be applied to all towns and larger COG structures.



If you look at the concepts, you can see buildings on the surface that are damaged and give you just some basic cover or place to look around. Yet beneath the ground, there can be a huge tunnel structure with rooms, loot and even hidden technology centers that would allow you to craft items.





There are tons of ideas now, and we need to do more testing of what all can be done but in general, this will allow you to explore even during the eruption times, as you will be able to move in the underground system and search for interesting items and technology.

The same concept can be used to large COG structures you find in lava sources, with this we can make some interesting underground bases that don't need to fold down every single time eruption is coming (like it currently happens in lava sources), the structures would still have foldable systems on the surface but the main "stuff" would be happening underground.

[h3]New COG Units Spawn[/h3]
COG units will now spawn from COG spawn tubes, that are placed inside the drillship.



This will greatly impact how you attack the COG ships, since killing the crew and going inside to block the ship from moving won't stop new units from coming anymore. The new tactics will require quick action in locating the spawn tubes and taking them out quickly, otherwise, new units will be created and keep defending the ship.



These will solve the issue where enemy drillships had to go underground each time they needed reinforcements - this didn't leave you with much time to loot an unprotected drillship after you defeated the crew.

[h3]Other[/h3]
There are many other important things that were worked on such as solving the long loading times by implementing several new systems, lots of bug fixes and some quality of life improvements. All that will be covered in the changelog when the update goes live.

This is all for the development update. We still need to do a bunch of art assets and polishing, but other than that it's mostly ready implementation wise. There still need to be several rounds of testing tho. The update should go live in January 2020.



[h3]Happy Holidays[/h3]
Our team would like to THANK YOU for all the amazing support you showed us in 2019 - we're beyond grateful and very excited for next year. Happy holidays everyone!

PS: hope you like our office Christmas tree made from development boosters

• Get development news and sneak peeks on Twitter or Facebook
• Participate in contests and chat with us/other players on Discord
• Receive development updates through Email
• See highlights from the development, office and events on Instagram
• See upcoming features on Trello
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If you have any questions, ideas or feedback, feel free to let us know in the comments below!

~ Volcanoids Dev Squad

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

Hey everyone, hope you're doing great! This update is focused on fixing most of the critical bugs that you guys reported (you're the best) and also on updating some of the current languages along with adding the highly requested Polish and Italian.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]New[/h3]

• Polish language added
  
• Italian language added
  

[h3]Update Languages[/h3]

• Russian
  
• French localization
  
• Chinese
  
• Portuguese (Brazil)
  
• Spanish
  
• Czech
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Player stuck first drillship
  
• COGs inside rocks
  
• Player stuck in terrain
  
• Laser having no sound
  
• Hubs inside walls on COG ships
  
• Player can fix enemy modules
  
• Missing recipe for scraping revolver ammo
  
• Player being able to hack enemy modules with the wrench
  
• Holes in geometry (landing sites)
  
• Mounted panel placement issue
  
• Player getting stuck in terrain
  
• Lights not saving
  
• Leaves in interior
  
• Added bottom to the soil hills
  
• Upgrades T4 movement not reflected in Q
  
• Shutdown valve accessible on the back
  
• Enemy custom controllers are usable
  
• Broken extra protection achievement
  
• Banners not having a logo
  
• Core panel stats having bad number location
  
• Sparks on the hacking tool having no alpha
  
• Redone all texts on automation devices to respect the settings
  
• Player drillship getting rammed (Shallow Dock)
  
• Player getting stuck
  
• Issue with Soil blob
  

[h2]Stay Updated[/h2]

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• See highlights from the office and story specific content on Instagram

Hope everything works as it should now, but if something turns up please let us know through the Send Feedback system in menu.

~ Rich, Volcanoids Dev Squad

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