Volcanoids News

We released a new update fixing a lot of critical bugs that snuck their way into the game in the Gear Up Update such as "enemy drillships kidnapping player" and so on.

With the fixes, we also added a new feature! If you couldn't tell from the thumbnail, from now on you can destroy just the drill of an enemy drillship to take its ability to go underground.

But remember that COGs can do the same to your drillship as well. The drill can be repaired with the repair tool just like any other module or device.

Player no longer gets kidnapped by COG drillships
COG Research drillships have turret ammo and turrets shoot at the player
The ghost stone in Area 1
Drillships bring new COGs with bigger delay
Several typos and errors in texts
Bug where stolen drillships from COGs can't reach the Volcano cave




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

Big thanks to anyone that helped us track down these bugs!

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

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!