Volcanoids News

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.

This week was dedicated to art assets, minor testing, and quest system. A lot of time was spent on finding references and getting the correct feel for the visuals. Models, texturing and animating followed, which was basically going on until today.

On the technical side of the game, Ondrej completely redid the quest system and is now wiring up the quests one by one. Each time a larger amount of features gets implemented, we'll update the preview branch so you can test them out.



When designing the weapons, we tried to combine new designs with old feeling to it. It was a lot of fun, especially with the hand mortar. It's inspired by old hand cannons and new reload systems on today's mortars.

Something similar was done with the Gatling gun, which in this form is usually seen mounted on top of a carriage. A lot might change once hands are added, as they will most likely visually block a large part of the weapon.

We also paid a lot of attention to the ammunition and tried to come up with different visual styles that fit the purpose each ammo type has.





Another iteration of guns was done, but it's not the final one. The main goal was to have functional guns in the game to enhance the gameplay and make the destruction of enemy drillships easier.

There is still a lot of work to be done on animations and better visual of the models. Also, the hands are missing. We are very well aware of this and our plan is to hire a professional freelancer to redesign the guns based on today's industry standards. We'll keep you updated on that.





Preview branch was finally updated and anyone interested can check out the work-in-progress version of the upcoming update. There are still many unfinished things, bugs, and placeholders. So please give it a try only if you are interested in seeing what's new and if you want to report bugs/give us feedback.

We mentioned this in the previous Developer Update but will repeat it again as the branch was finally updated: to get access to preview branch and all the info about it please join our Discord and join the testers in #role-assignment channel. You will get instant access to the changelog and other info about the build.

Few of the beginning quests are already implemented and we fixed the critical issues, so players that would like to test can do so right away.





The quest system has been fully updated and we are now redoing all the quests that were in the game as well as making new ones since there is a lot of new stuff that needs to be covered. Those new weapons and ammo types will need new GUI icons so that's also planned.

And that's it for today! If you don't want to miss smaller updates and sneak peeks that we post throughout the week consider following our social media:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/volcanoids
Discord: https://discord.gg/volcanoids
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Volcanoids/

Enjoy the rest of your week!

First round of testing for the new update was done, and we got a lot of valuable feedback from the closed-testing group. The biggest input was, that we need to work more on the quest structure and help screens that would explain all the new features and content. So while a lot of balancing and minor adjustments were made, we started working on a new quest system and many support features. This is also one of the main reasons, why the build was not released on the Preview branch yet. But don’t worry, we will get there.



Based on gameplay testing, players were not motivated to travel around the map and visit different parts of the areas. To make the game more interesting, certain areas now spawn only specific COG drillship types that carry a large amount of components. This together with a random selection of drillships creates interesting scenarios, where players look for drillships and make decisions whether it’s worth to attack or find some other chance to get the needed items. All drillships carry components, but only the specialized always carry the most. So there should always be a way to move forward.





To give players a chance to discover things on their own, and make tutorial quests less directive, a new type of help screen will be added. Each time player crosses something new, an info page will be available to explain details about a feature, enemy drillship or tip on how to automate specific production tasks. The screen will be available for all difficulties and we hope it will help with uncovering all parts of the game, that were unknown until now.





A lot of work this past week was done in written text and tables, so we don’t have too many exciting pictures to show. Still, we would like to share with you the development of the quest tree and quest structure based on difficulty.

The tech tree is constantly going through iterations, as we try to find a good balance between building and combat. In the previous game, the player could stay in one spot and keep building without the need to leave the area. Current quest tree is combined from combat and production tasks that go together, uncovering the new gameplay progression.



A lot of players don't like that the tutorial quests tell them everything in such detail. On the following example, you can see how quest complexity will be affected by difficulty settings. Where on hard difficulty some quests won't be visible at all or will tell player only the general information. However, Easy difficulty still covers all steps to complete the quest.





The Volcanoids story "before" and "after" is set already, but there is still a lot of space in between. With the new quests, we are also setting up story anchors, that will work as a foundation for a storyline reflected in quests and connecting them together in a coherent way. For example, the Hard difficulty will get just and only quests connected with the story, while Normal and Easy will still have extra tutorial quests to help out with learning the game mechanics.



We will continue testing and balancing the game build together with the quest line. We're sorry that the Preview branch is not ready yet, but it didn't feel right to release it since so many things changed so rapidly. Once the quests are up to date, the game build will go to the Preview branch. The art assets did not move forward too much. Still, once the system is in place and the game is playable, it will not take long to add in the pretty stuff.

Thanks for reading! As always if you have any questions, let us know in the comments below or on our social media.

Have a great weekend everyone!