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=XV98G2W2_iE;full][/previewyoutube]

New Features and Changes

F1 Help Screen

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.

Blast Shelters

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.

COG Spawn Tube

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.

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 Fixed

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 Compatibiltiy

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 tomas.rampas@volcanoids.com 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.

Development and Team News

First Birthday

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.

New Team Member

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!

Nolt for Community Suggestions

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/

What's Next

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.

Links

• 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
• Watch new trailers and tutorials on YouTube

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/

[ 2020-01-29 22:37:43 CET ] [ Original post ]