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.

F1 Help Screen

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.

Blast Shelters

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

Underground Systems

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.

New COG Units Spawn

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.

Other

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.

Happy Holidays

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

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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/

[ 2019-12-24 08:42:08 CET ] [ Original post ]