Voxel Tycoon is coming to Steam Early Access on April 15. For real.

And it includes the 0.85 update, which brings passengers, logistic improvements, and more. Yay!

Check the new trailer:

This is the third installment of the series of posts where we cover the new features and changes the upcoming 0.85 (aka Steam Early Access) update delivers to Voxel Tycoon:

• Logistics network
• A new way to set up a schedule
• Passengers!

In every house in the city, there are people living! And they don’t just sit tight in their flats but have a desire to commute to other places and eventually get back.

Now, it’s your responsibility to enable them to reach their destinations. And there’s a whole new fleet of vehicles specific to transferring passengers ready to help, from buses to passenger rail cars to hi-end multiple-unit shuttle trains!

After you build a station in a city, hop into its window to see passengers that would like to take a ride from that station and where they want to go.


A usual passenger route often goes through many stops in one city where a bus collects all the available passengers, and then they are transferred to many stops in the other city. Then the same has to be repeated backward.

This results in massive schedules with many stops repeated which is a bit cumbersome to set up and maintain. To address this, we’ve introduced alternative schedule traverse order, called Back and Forth.

When it’s enabled, a vehicle will traverse from the top of the schedule to the bottom and then back, resulting in a much more compact list of orders with the same functionality.
Same schedule with default traverse order vs Back and forth:


Shuttle trains are trains that have driving cabs on both sides, and that allows them to move on both sides at full speed without changing their direction on stations.

This feature was already introduced in one of the previous updates, but it didn’t have many applications before. Now, with passenger trains added, and especially in conjunction with back and forth schedules, shuttle trains allow to build more clean and effective designs.




We’ve completely reworked the city window for 0.85. You can now see the state of all aspects of the city’s well-being, including the new passenger card.

Not to mention, it has a new look which is in line with other game windows now.


Another thing that you can notice from the City Window is the city type. From 0.85, each city will have one of these types: industrial, tourist, or mixed.

Industrial cities depend more on supplying stores and industries for rapid growth, with passenger transportation still contributing but to a lesser extent.

Tourist cities, in contradiction, more dependent on the coverage by passenger transport and passenger satisfaction.

Mixed cities depend on both of these aspects equally.


To make placing stations easier in the dense city environment, we’ve enabled auto-demolish when you’re building them. Keep in mind that demolishing city buildings still costs money (a lot), so plan carefully!

Another feature is auto-level - it will help you to place a building in a bumpy environment - but again, for your




An amazing design of a non-blocking intersection by refreshfr:


Mountain branch line by Fredrik Leftin:



That’s just our first attempt at how we see passengers. We plan to iterate on them during the Early Access: for example, in the short-term, we want to teach passengers to switch vehicles and even modes so you could build more sophisticated and interesting routes.

We can’t wait to get your hands on the 0.85 update and hear your thoughts. Oh, and we have something to announce soon, so stick around!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/732050/Voxel_Tycoon/

With 0.85, the Vehicle Window receives a huge facelift.



Some changes are already obvious, but let’s switch to Edit mode and see what it reveals.


From 0.85, you can set multiple orders per one stop. It helps to group related orders and manipulate them as one piece.



After a stop has been added to the schedule, you can add as many orders as you want. A vehicle will execute all of them after arriving at this stop.

There are also a few useful presets, allowing you quickly add common orders to the schedule.



Additionally, you can now change the order of stops or orders just by dragging them around.



There’re some other improvements too:

• Hold Shift to add many stops to the schedule at once
  
• Added Wait for N seconds order
  
• Option to force a vehicle to turn around at the stop
  
• When you pick exact cars to apply an order to, you can see what kind of cargo they are moving

Sometimes the automatic pathfinding doesn’t suit your needs, and you might want to direct your vehicles through the exact locations of your network. Previously, this involved building expensive and space-consuming intermediate stations.

Now, there’s a new kind of station at your disposal, the only purpose of which is to serve as a waypoint. It’s cheap and takes no extra space!



Also, previously, a vehicle arriving at a station always performed a complete stop even it’s intended to just pass through it. A lot of precious time and power were wasted as a result.

But no more! When adding a stop to your schedule, just choose a preset called Waypoint. This way, a vehicle will pass the destination without any delay. You can also force this behavior manually in the new picker at the interface of the stop.



Both special waypoint stations and regular stations could be set up as waypoints.


While we don’t have a full-featured route management window yet, we’ve made some improvements to the current route picker.



The first thing you’ll notice is that the color of the route is now more readable, but there’s more.

From the new three-dots menu, you can now see a list of all the vehicles attached to the exact route.

Also, removing the last vehicle from a route no longer automatically removes a route, so you can be sure your precisely set orders won’t be lost. To remove the routes no longer needed, use the three-dots menu in the route picker.

And the last related improvement allows you to remove a vehicle from a route, but keep its schedule. Cloning routes now will be a bit easier.


The Details tab of the Vehicle Window received a facelift too, and now has a more modern look that is in line with the other windows in the game.





Wagon sorting yard by Fredrik Leftin


Stay tuned for the next post to discover what to expect from the next major milestone for Voxel Tycoon and the whole community!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/732050/Voxel_Tycoon/

With the 0.85 update (aka Steam Early Access release) coming real soon, we want to introduce to you what it brings to the table.

This devlog entry will be the first in a series where we cover the new features and changes this update delivers to Voxel Tycoon.




In this update, we completely revamp how buildings and vehicles interact with each other.

Mines, stations, labs, and warehouses are now part of the brand new logistics network that enables an interchange of items between these buildings in a similar manner. The new system provides a fair and controllable distribution of cargo between these buildings. In addition, it also introduces new ways of interaction between them.

For example, any of said buildings now can be connected to conveyors, so, for example, a mine can output resources directly to a conveyor belt. The same applies to any station, a lab, etc. Or, they can even exchange cargo directly (in some range) without any intermediate warehouses. This enables cases that were not possible previously, like moving cargo between a train and a truck without any intermediate storage.



Another building that greatly benefits from this is the lab: it can now accept goods directly from stations or conveyors without the need to build warehouses around them.




A new Logistics tab was added to all buildings that are part of the logistics network. On this tab, you can see at a glance what cargo is available or requested by the network of connected buildings. Also, it enables an overlay where all the connections are shown visually.



No more wondering if a new customer that just opened falls into the range of your station or not!


All the buildings that historically were missing windows finally got them!

Mine window:



Device window:



Warehouse window:




Stay tuned for the next post to discover what to expect from the next major milestone for Voxel Tycoon and the whole community!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/732050/Voxel_Tycoon/

Hello fellow tycoons! The time for a new state-of-things report has come.

Do you remember that pretty unreadable changelog we shared a month ago in the previous post? It summarizes all the changes from 0.84 (Itch version) to the point when closed beta started:



Since then, we’ve added a few more changes to it:



As you can see, it’s still unreadable (on purpose, as usual). However, there’s one thing we can’t hide from you:



Yep, we’ve reached a new milestone: Steam Workshop integration is fully completed! We can’t wait to get you all on board so you can explore the community-made content in a convenient way, and even share your own creations with ease.

This also means that we have only one major task left before going to Steam EA - the tutorial. Of course, there’s a bunch of fixes, tweaks, and balance tuning still required here and there, but we finally started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And that’s good.

That’s it for today. We’ll keep you informed about how’s progress is going, and see you next time!

Courtesy of meinroman, featuring custom modded rails and cars

Not only for the whole world experiencing a global pandemic but also for us - an indie team of two guys doing our best to ship our precious game to the broader audience.

Since we made Pre-Alpha available for everyone interested we have released 14 free major updates, improving the game in every aspect. Then, we took a pause to work on the biggest update we’ve ever made - an update that will bring the game into Steam Early Access.

You know how this major milestone is important for Voxel Tycoon’s future development. We just can’t afford to rush it - but at the same time, we still can’t work in a relaxed manner since we know how bad you want to play it. Believe us, there’s no such day when we go to sleep without thinking of what we’ll do tomorrow to bring Voxel Tycoon closer to the EA release.

Even those of you who bought the Pre-Alpha access (thank you!) still patiently waiting for the new update, which - by the way - will bring:

• Passengers!
  
• Tutorial
  
• Steam Workshop
  
• Logistics improvements

…and many other changes!

Closed beta testing of the update is already undergoing, we mostly finished new game mechanics at this point and most of UI (fun fact: making good UI takes a lot of time on its own). While we definitely not going to make it before the new year (sorry), we are confident to say that the waiting is coming to the end.

Intentionally unreadable sneak peek of the changelog for the version currently in testing compared to Pre-Alpha:
[expand type=details]

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We can’t thank you enough for believing in us and being with us in such important moments, and in return, we work really hard to not disappoint you.

That being said, we wish you happy holidays with your family and friends, and we hope to see you soon™! Cheers! 🎄


Our regular in-game photograph Fredrik Leftin can’t help but surprise us and the community every time he prepares stunning shots from the carefully crafted sceneries.

This time, he prepared something special - an entire scenery of a railway terminal from different points of view and even… from different epochs! Enjoy.









List of mods used:

• ScailMan -> [SCM oil industry, station deco pack, american pack, adobe buildings, building pack, decorative pack]
  
• Golden Arrow -> [base mods pack, Netherlands mods, UK mods, Germany mods]
  
• Refresh -> [decorative ballast, modular decorative stations]
  
• DrKirk & SpaceCossaX -> [1520 railwork system]
  
• LuckyCrab -> [extended industry]
  
• Mezign -> [Mezcorp industrial B]
  
• Arc18 -> [era of industries, technologies ext.]
  
• inf1nite_v0id -> [fences mod]
  
• Jace Twice -> [retaining walls]
  
• SuhEugene -> [industrial pack]
  
• meinroman -> [custom rails and depot]

Before getting you straight to beautiful shots of the heavily modded game made by our community members playing Pre-Alpha, there's a quick state of development report:

No ETA on the Steam EA yet, but we are working hard to deliver as soon as possible. A lot of things should be done right, such as a tutorial, Steam Workshop integration, and passenger transportation. We can't fail with the Steam EA launch, so we take our time.

Now, enjoy the awesome community work!

Bullet train from Japan by Fredrik Leftin


Po Valley by Fredrik Leftin


Alpine viaducts by Fredrik Leftin


Shot by fevtin


L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de la Ciotat by fevtin


Sulfur mine by Fredrik Leftin


Shot by lui


Shot by lui


The Nevada desert by Fredrik Leftin


Canyon Valley by Fredrik Leftin


Scottish line by Fredrik Leftin


Egyptian settlement by Fredrik Leftin


Transalpine line by Fredrik Leftin


Meanwhile in Alaska... by Fredrik Leftin


Country freight yard by Fredrik Leftin


Coal mine yard by Fredrik Leftin


That's it for today!

Join our Discord Server, follow us on your favorite social media to keep up to date, and don't forget to add the game to wishlist on Steam!

Also, you can donate to Voxel Tycoon and get into the game credits!

As you may already know, Voxel Tycoon is just one update away from hitting Steam Early Access. And this time, we mean it!

This will differ quite a bit from our usual updates, though. A successful Steam launch is crucial for VT’s future development, so we can’t afford to rush it.

Besides many quality of life improvements in preparation for Steam, VT will now feature a brand new game mechanic - passenger transportation! This involves many changes and lots of new content, like the new vehicles and stations that will be unlocked with research.

There’re some other things up our sleeves as well, such as Steam Workshop integration, and some other unannounced changes and improvements. All of this is bringing the update far past its original scale.


With all of that said, and as you can probably imagine, a large amount of work is required to make such an important update. A lot of it is already done, but a lot is still in the works, too. And given the amount of things changing all at once, we can’t realistically predict how much more time we need (it should at least be this year!). Like any complex mechanism, we can’t say it works as intended - i.e. playing the game is fun enough - until all of the parts are done and connected together.

And that’s why you don’t hear from us very often these days. We’re busy! This is probably one of the most important times in Voxel Tycoon’s life, and our own lives, too.


We really can’t thank you enough for taking this journey with us through VT’s development. But this is just the start - we are committed to bringing even more content to Voxel Tycoon after the game reaches Early Access!

Also, big thanks to our beloved modders, bringing new content to the game almost every day. They are so cool and talented, and some of their creations so creative and clever that we can’t help but be amazed. Keep up the great work!

If you haven’t yet, join our Discord Server, and follow us on your favorite social media to keep up to date!

Don't forget to wishlist Voxel Tycoon on Steam! Also, you can support the development by donating and get into the credits!

It’s hard to believe that - after four years of development - we are finally standing at the gate of Steam Early Access. But it’s true!

Our focus is now shifted from updating the current version that is available on Itch (called Pre-Alpha) to finishing features that separate us from bringing the game to Steam Early Access (we call that stage the Alpha).

We already briefly announced our plans with the release of 0.80 version of the game, stating that was the last update before the game is available on Steam.

However, we don’t want to completely exclude you - our beloved players and modders - from getting your hands on the new features for the whole period while we’ll be busy working on bringing the Alpha to Steam.

The Alpha will feature Steam Workshop integration, so sharing your work with the community never been more streamlined. We encourage you to start making your mods today so they’ll be ready for the Alpha release.

For those who don’t know where to start, the new guide just has been published (thanks scailman!): Creating your first content mod.

Also, check out our new home for modding documentation: Voxel Tycoon modding documentation.

You can always get an idea of what features are still needed to be done before Steam Early Access on our roadmap. Check the column Before Steam EA and look for [DONE] tags on cards.

We are so glad to see you guys taking this journey together with us. Don’t forget, that the Alpha is just a beginning for our little project, and we have so much to bring to Voxel Tycoon after the game reaches Steam Early Access.

If you didn’t yet, join our Discord server, and follow us on your favorite social media to keep up to date!

See ya!

Hey!

You may have noticed that the pace of updates has declined recently. Just after the release of pre-alpha, we worked on eliminating the most critical shortcomings that significantly interfered with playing. But now we are ready to deal with bigger updates and adding more and more new content.

For example, we are currently working on passenger transportation and mass vehicle management. Of course, the larger the update, the more time it takes to prepare it.

Initially, we planned to release a new update with mass vehicle management at the end of this month. But, unfortunately, the plan did not work - one of the developers seriously injured his hand and therefore underwent surgery. He is already recovering, but the update release had to be postponed.


It hurts ☠️

But don’t worry! This is a temporary hitch that will not interfere with our long-term development plans for Voxel Tycoon.

Sadly, we had no time to prepare something special for this Halloween. Anyways, please take a look at how we celebrated it in previous years — especially 2018, where we’ve introduced the official spinoff to Voxel Tycoon, which is available to play now! 🎃