Volcanoids News

Volcanoids is setting a course towards a new update. This time we would like to try something new and release Developer Updates when we have something to tell or show you not just because the calendar said so. When we were working on the "Gear up Update", there were a few Developer Updates that basically said “we are testing” and that's something we'd like to change.

There's a clue for the next update's big feature hidden in the title and picture. Can you guess what is?

Let us know what you think about the changes and what the big feature is going to be in the comments below!



To all bug hunters! There is a new bounty for BUG 002: COG Drillships Kidnapping Players



REWARD

20$ Gift card sent to a Steam account owned by the bug hunter

RULES & INFO

We know this bug is in the game and that it is happening quite a lot. What we do not know is what exactly needs to happen before this bug happens. The bug hunter needs to find out the exact steps that lead to triggering the bug and be the first one to share this info with a developer that successfully reproduces the bug based on the description. Be warned, saves do not help as the bug fixes itself on reload!

If you catch this bug or have any valuable info, please contact fregy_cz on Steam by adding him to friends and send a message, or through Discord in direct messages to Tomas #9155

Thank you and happy hunting!

https://youtu.be/npaotIhlhao

It’s time to gear up and take out everything standing in your quest of reclaiming your lost home! The armory has been upgraded with a lot of new gear on both sides. The submarine crew has granted access to new weapons, while COGs got many new technology items. You will discover all of it on your path of freeing the island from the evil mechanical race.

Before starting the journey, decide how difficult your path will be. If this is your first quest for silencing the volcano, choose easy or normal. Both contain guidance from the Captain, informing you in the beginning and then always being there if needed. For all the Drillship veterans, the challenge of hard difficulty lays ahead of you. If accepted, prepare for tough fights for resources and territory control. No longer is the first drillship served to you. Instead, attack directly from submarine and hunt down a drillship of your choice.

Drillships systems became more demanding on precise engineering, and one sample of COG technology is not enough anymore. Instead, you need to hunt, steel or scavenge technology anywhere you can. Without that, it’s not possible to upgrade the ship and advance to further areas. Take abandoned tech in villages or directly attack COG surface missions to raid their drillships or hunt down the crew.

Those are all the latest news from the Adranos island. Now report to the Captain for debriefing and good luck on your journey!

Full changelog can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/951440/discussions/0/1770385542769004727/



Be the first one to know when Volcanoids receives an update by joining the Volcanoids Discord server and following @Volcanoids on Twitter.


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

COGs became even smarter and more difficult lately, which is good on one side, but it would be nice to stand a chance against them. A lot of improvements were done on player detection. Even to a point where attacking a drillship will attract attention and COGs will chase the intruder that tries to sabotage their surface mission. On top of that, missed shots that went past a COG or too much noise also reveal your position. Medkits will become your number one friend.



As the release is getting closer, we are going to frequently update the preview branch. If you would like to help us with polishing the final build, please feel free to join. Post any feedback or bug reports in this public thread. New builds will be announced in this thread with the following changelog of what is new in the current build. Please feel free to subscribe to the channel to get a notification each time a new message is added. Just a reminder, preview branch is a testing version of the new update available for anyone that already owns the game.





Each playtesting round, we come up with many new things that need to be tweaked or balanced. Since this update is heavily focused on combat, we need to ensure players have access to all needed equipment and that the difficulty raises gradually with progression on the map. This includes balancing the loot drops and costs of items. Player should always have a chance to fall back, recover and advance again until reaching the goal.





This update turned out to be a long development marathon. We really got to set a better plan for the next update to ensure it won't overflow so much. What was supposed to be a simple improvement of the research system and weapons turned into a complete upgrade of almost all parts in the game. With 1.17 you will get new weapons, specialized drillships, many new items, difficulty settings, new quest system, countless drillship improvements and much more. The changelog is already a few pages long.







We are going to continue polishing the final 1.17 build, together with the Volcanoids community. The quest line will need to be changed a bit, as we adjusted some of the upgrade recipes based on the community feedback. Still, the game can be played from start to finish already, so if you are already familiar with the features and would like to try the new version, jump right into the preview branch.

Testing, bug fixing and game polishing is running on 100%. The same applies for all sorts of balancing and value adjustments based on gameplay experience. Community testers and us are constantly going through the game writing down notes about bugs or things that could be improved. In this phase we should have the final build for 1.17 ready within a week or so. If nothing major shows up you will soon have the new update. Now let's talk about the development from this past week.



Even though it might sound boring, tons of balancing charts were created to make sure gameplay progression moves forward and every item has its place. All is being implemented and tested immediately in new builds.

The main focus was at COG drillships, their equipment, interior devices and loot randomly generated in storage. This is one of the new features, where drillships will have something new every single time you visit one. The loot is still based on the drillship specialization, but the variety of possible items is much wider.





A lot of thought went into drillship crew and their distribution around the island. In general, COGs got a lot smarter and specialized. So next time you storm a drillship, make sure you know what type it is and who might be hanging around. Refinery COGs are deadly up close, but easy to take out in open field. Also, it is beneficial to wait until all crew members leave the drillship and walk towards their locations before trying to attack. Chances of survival will rise greatly.

Fun fact: you can use COG drillships to produce items, your drillship isn't capable of producing yet. So feel free to produce some of the extra ammunition in case you're running low.





Quests are completed for Area 1 now, and we keep testing them in every aspect possible. Ondrej did a very good job on this since many extra actions that players had to do in the old system were removed.

New quest log and system allowing you to repeat certain quests is a new addition from this week. And since it is up to player now, whether to do quests or not, you can help yourself with a little hint from the Captain whenever you get lost. Also, the difficulty selection screen finally got new art.





Simply test, report, fix, rinse and repeat until the game is in good shape. All the new features will be available on the Preview Branch within a few days. We'll post an announcement in the Steam Discussions as well as in our Discord so keep an eye on that if you'd like to give it an early try.

Alright we gotta get back to testing now, so hope you like the progress that was made this week and thanks for reading!

Hey everyone!

Art assets are finally done, and we are slowly going towards a more specific update release date. All major features are implemented and we can finally move into proper testing and bug fixing period. We would like to thank to everyone trying out the preview branch and sending us feedback with bug reports, suggestions and ideas. It gave us a nice list of things that we can focus on.





All the placeholder icons got their proper look. All the COG heads, new components, ammunition and intel components finally look like objects from the game. It took a lot longer than planned, as real models had to be done in order to keep the visuals and light effects consistent. Almost everything you see are the new items that come with the new research system. Once the preview branch gets updated, you'll get a chance to check it out yourself.





Ondrej continues the work on quests and has almost all the tasks done. They are way more dynamic and much better at adjusting to your actions. An example would be a production task, that allows you to use both production and refinery stations as soon as you can produce needed items. We are really looking forward to seeing what you think about the new system, and how it influences the learning curve for new players.





Since it’s more than a month since the release and we would like to give you the new update as soon as possible, we decided to postpone some of the art assets for later updates. Specifically the new COG character models, that would require at least two extra weeks just for art. And another week would have to be dedicated to implementation and optimizations. The work already done on the models did not go to waste tho, as we could use them to make the dead COG icons. For now, the 1.17 will use different emissive color to distinguish the COG tier types. Please keep in mind that it’s just placeholder solution for now. It was a difficult decision to make, but we don’t want to prolong the 1.17 production any longer and want to move into the testing phase.





As mentioned at the beginning of the announcement, testing and bug fixing phase has started. Once the bug list we got from you guys is dealt with, we will keep playing the game over and over to polish the gameplay. Each time the preview branch is updated, we will let you know in Steam Forums or on our Discord.

Thank you for being patient with us throughout the following weeks. We really appreciate it, and we hope you will find the new update worth the wait.