What's up, everyone! Here's another Developer Update covering improvements on combat, NPC navigation, and cave structures. We also show a couple new features such as explosives, module armor and more.


In the upcoming update, there are going be many new features improving combat and the overall need to fight more than ever before.

The biggest change is that you will actually have to destroy the cave structures. No more pressing E and running before the COGs notice you.



Together with this, you will get access to some simple explosives (veeery raw and OP prototype on GIF below), that can be thrown on drillship modules or COGs. This should make the destruction of COG drillships, annoying turrets, and the cave structures.



Next to that, the shotgun will get two new ammo types that will allow the player to upgrade firepower while moving through the areas.


A lot of people will also enjoy the new armor feature, that adds armor to all modules that are closed. This means that you can better prepare for incoming attacks by closing all production modules, increasing their chances of survival.




Another big improvement was done on COG character navigation. The new system is very well optimized which allows us to add more COG units to the map.

Also their ability to get to places, and chase you increased a lot as well. They should not get stuck around obstacles as easily as before.



Red and green shapes represent COGs and purple shapes represent enemy drillships.




Other smaller features that were added include: emergency levers (in case you get stuck in a cave or something), warning when online cargo gets full, random loot dropping from COGs and more.





Thanks for reading! For more sneak peeks and updates consider following us on these platforms:

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

If you haven't signed up for the Volcanoids Alpha yet, you can do so here: https://mailchi.mp/volcanoids.com/alpha-signup

This week was in the name of bug fixing. We basically spent all the time going through bugs you guys reported and did our best to fix them. Some were easier than others, some are still in the game.

We originally planned to give you the hotfix update as soon as possible, but it turned out into a full week of fixing as new and new issues were popping up. That is why instead of hotfix update, there is now 1.12. Update released today. We are sorry for this and will do our best to have a better management system to give you the most important fixes sooner (especially those that kill the player for no reason).

Thank you for sending us all those bug reports, it helped us tremendously!


A lot of time was focused on COG navigation on the surface and correct deployment of units to locations. This requires a lot of test runs to find all possible choke points and issues where COGs would get stuck and never reached their location.




Apart from fixing, we also made some adjustments. Such as increased shotgun damage for the player, increased production speed in worktable and added starter items to submarine and starter drillship. So make sure to check all the chests before going out from submarine.




For those that are interested in bug hunting, there is a new type of challenge for reward. Check the bug trello board and see the second column called "Bug Bounties". These are bugs we know about, but can't fix them as we don't know when and how they get into the game. Anyone that tells us the exact steps to trigger at least 3 of the bugs listed there, will receive a key to the full game.

• despawn of COG units and drillships when the player enters another area
  
• improved COG guard locations, attacks and defense groups
  
• turret has a different sound and range adjustments
  
• faster worktable production
  
• increased player shotgun damage
  
• submarine and starter drillship has items in chests

• player no longer gets killed when standing in the tunnel between segments
  
• player no longer collides with a COG drillship when underground
  
• player no longer falls through the ground after loading the game
  
• improved COG navigation on the map and inside drillships
  
• COG drillships no longer become idle after a reload
  
• turret module no longer shoots player inside drillship
  
• player can no longer deconstruct modules and interior devices from enemy drillships
  
• enemy drillship does not go underground if player inside, instead it waits until player leaves
  
• player can no longer use COG drillship control panel to set a destination
  
• "send feedback" no longer fails if log files that are too large
  
• dead bodies of COGs no longer play sound after reload

Thanks again for your help and patience! If you have any questions feel free to drop them on any of these platforms:

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

If you haven't signed up for the Volcanoids Alpha yet, feel free to do so here: https://mailchi.mp/volcanoids.com/alpha-signup

The long-awaited update for the Alpha is here! New features include turret modules, enemy drillships with crews, drillship destruction, ability to break COGs to pieces and more!

For an in-depth explanation of the bigger features check out Developer Update 4

• Added the turret module
  
• Added COG drillships that drop off COGs on specific locations
  
• Added destruction of COG and player drillships
  
• Added notifications about the landing site availability
  
• Added lever animation to the target selector
  
• Added Santa hats (only red COGs have them)
  
• Increased inaccuracy when COGs shoot
  
• Added ability to break COGs to pieces
  
• Added option to turn off HUD in settings

• COGs no longer directly spawn in locations
  
• Player can now strafe while sprinting
  
• Player's stamina lasts longer and recovers faster
  
• Help screen has been updated
  
• New font used on all the remaining text
  
• Send feedback menu improved
  
• Drillship movement kills both player and COGs

• Player no longer gets stuck on a ladder if the ladder gets removed
  
• All drillship sounds should now be 3D and should play correctly based on distance from the player
  
• Hull integrity should now reach 100% if all modules fixed
  
• Fast mining no longer possible, sorry Hab :(

As some of the features are quite big, it will take some time to eliminate all the possible mess ups. But with your help, it should be smooth as butter in no time! (make sure to save often in case you encounter a serious bug)

Hope you'll enjoy the new update as much as we do! If you have any questions feel free to drop them on any of these platforms:

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

If you haven't signed up for the Volcanoids Alpha yet, feel free to do so here: https://mailchi.mp/volcanoids.com/alpha-signup

Hello everyone! This week we'll cover new ways to dismantle COGs, cave devices with effects, drillships roadkills, localization and more!


Ondrej focuses on all sorts of ways you can dismantle COG units. So shooting them with a shotgun won't be the last thing you can do to take them out.

The pickaxe can be now used to break apart disabled robots to pieces and last hit that kills a COG will break apart the part that has been shot (leg, arm, etc.).

This feature had to be implemented to ensure you won't get stuck in corridors if COGs board your drillship and you have to fight them inside while underground.






Drillships now kill anything that steps in their way when moving. This includes the heavy side wings that will squish anything standing too close. COGs better check twice before crossing any landing sites now!








The fleet of COG drillships is finally finished and assigned to locations.

Every area and travel node will have specific COG drillships guarding the place. Each ship has different interior setup, modules, and loot.



You can see the map notes marking all locations COGs will be guarding. Each area is assigned to specific travel node, and if COG drillship surfaces there, enemy units will make their way to the location and guard it.




Ondrej also started working on localization, that will allow translation of the game to different languages. The system is still under construction, but you can already see how it's going to work.





Anyone that will wish to do a translation, will download a file that can be translated. To test the translation, anyone will be able to place this file to their Volcanoids game and see right away how the text looks. Once the file is finished, you can send it to us and we will add it to the game for future builds + giving you credits for translation.



The cave device finally got all the particles and is ready for implementation when update 1.12 takes place



All the main features are done for the 1.11 update and we have to do a lot of testing to ensure all runs well. We won't be waiting till next Thursday, but as soon as the build is stable, we'll do an announcement and the new build will be released on Steam.

Summary of what will be added

• Turret module
  
• Enemy drillships
  
• Drillship destruction
  
• Enemy drillship crew (new COG behavior

And that's it for this week!

If you'd like to participate in the Volcanoids Alpha, you can sign up on our website: https://www.volcanoids.com/

To keep up with all the latest news, contests and sneak peeks consider joining our Discord server: https://discord.gg/volcanoids

Thanks for reading and see you next Thursday!

Hey everyone! Here's another Developer Update covering enemy drillships, wrecked drillships, turret modules, screenshot contest and more.


Enemy drillship will now be surfacing all over the island so you will have to be more careful when crossing the map.

• Each drillship will have its devices and COGs that will guard it
  
• You will be able to attack the drillships for loot and even destroy them completely
  
• If enemy drillship is on a specific landing site, it blocks the point and you won't be able to surface there with your ship

COG units won't spawn directly in villages and close to lava pools anymore. Instead, they will come from the surfaced Drillships and walk to their assigned location.

• When an eruption is coming, all COGs will return to the drillship and go under (this will add more interesting situations where you might run into a group of COGs "going to work" or running from the eruption as well)
  
• If you land in the same landing site node as the enemy drillship, COGs will keep attacking your drillship

Below you can see the enemy drillship deploying COG units.







Works as expected. Defends drillship from enemy units attacking it. Be warned tho, as the same turret will be guarding COG drillships as well!

• If drillship's hull HP drops to 0, it will explode and be destroyed, killing everything inside and in close proximity
  
• This can happen when all modules are destroyed by enemies, or by a volcanic eruption
  
• Torso of the destroyed drillship stays on the landing site until it is scraped for resources or future eruption takes it away completely
  
• If your or COG drillship lands on the point, the torso will be removed as well

• Finalize implementation of all the features mentioned above
  
• Localization support - community will be able to create translation sheets for the game
  
• Testing, testing and more testing so we can hopefully release a new update next week

These past 2 weeks players could submit screenshots from the Alpha to participate in the community screenshot contest.

Big thanks to everyone that participated and here are our top 3 picks:

"Drillship" by Mustaro


"End of my life" by Piterkooo


"Caught red handed" by The Politest of Cats


We'll get in touch with the winners and hand out prizes.


If you'd like to participate in the Volcanoids Alpha, you can sign up on our website: https://www.volcanoids.com/

To keep up with all the latest news, contests and sneak peeks consider joining our Discord server: https://discord.gg/volcanoids

Thanks for reading and see you next Thursday!

Hey everyone, here's a summary of what the dev team and the community have been up to this past week!


Tomas finished modeling and texturing the turret module. So it is now ready for the programming implementation into the game.



The back side is a little different from the other modules. The 3 lights on the back will tell you if the module has ammunition, if it's open and if it's targeting something.

The turret module is going to automatically take ammunition from the cargo module similar to how powerplant modules take coal. The only difference is that the ammo will be taken in bigger batches and not consistently since when you're under attack you don't want cargo modules to be open.



And here's a small sneak peek of how the drillship looks with the turret on it. Finally not only a mobile factory but a proper fortress as well.




Ondrej took full advantage of the new terrain optimization tools in the new Unity version and used it on the island. So the island is now way more optimized but at the same time looks better. (left unoptimized, right optimized)




The cave structure (that will replace the enemy drillships inside caves) is now fully textured and ready to be implemented.



And here's the animated version inside one of the caves (missing particles).

• Implement Enemy Drillships that will roam around the island with COG units inside them
  
• For anyone interested in the behavior of the Enemy Drillships here's the Game Design Document that contains a basic description of the features

Hab and Wildbill have been working on the Volcanoids Discord bot that's making the weekly key lottery among other stuff soo much easier to manage, so big thanks goes to them!

Hab also made this in-depth guide on how to defeat the enemy COGs: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1567396819

NoobySweede released a new video covering the State Saver device that allows you to create custom module layouts. So if you don't know how to use them yet, check out this video tutorial: https://youtu.be/zUiuEHuPlkA

A lot of people suggested that once the island gets bigger it would be nice to have an additional vehicle to travel just on the surface. Schakal made this awesome sketch of how the vehicle could look like. Later on, we found out that this kind of vehicle actually exists.



Schakal also created these 2 models of crow nest modules that could work really nicely with a long ranged rifle.




And that's it for this week. Thanks for all the support, feedback and suggestions, it means the world to us!

Welcome to the first Developer Update! These will be divided into two sections, the first section is going to be dedicated to our development progress and the second one to what the community has been up to over the past week.


New system for efficient bug reporting has been implemented. Check out this video guide explaining how to use the new system.


The project was updated to the latest Unity version, which was followed by a lot of code adjustments (new Unity brings big optimizations for terrain). Also, a big clean up of all the outdated files happened.


Buildings were optimized as they were heavy on performance due to a large number of subobjects. Here's a comparison of the original and then the optimized building. As you can see from the picture below, you won't be able to tell the difference, but the right one is much more performance friendly.




And lastly, we got more concept art for the story.

• Start implementing enemy drillships
  
• Update the turret model and implement it
  
• Work on the enemy cave structures

Early prototypes of the things mentioned in the list can be found in our public roadmap


We saw a bunch of people streaming the Volcanoids Alpha, we tried our best to drop by all of them. It was awesome seeing you guys play the game live!

NoobySwede created this handy guide with tips on how to effectively take out COGs.

Our Discord server has been steadily growing and we've been getting a lot of great feedback on the Alpha. Thank you so much for all the support and for spreading the word about Volcanoids!

Thanks for reading and see you next week!

Here is another small update that includes a few suggestions from community feedback and several bug fixes.

• Shotgun has particle effect when a bullet hits the surface (you can finally see if a COG got hit)
  
• The player can now look around with periscope (good for finding out where the COGs are attacking and quickly react afterward)
  
• Different type of COG spawning (they still visit the Landings sites but should get longer to get there)
  
• Fixed stones inside caves that would collide with longer drillships
  
• Optimized lights to cause fewer performance drops
  
• Interior devices can now be destroyed
  
• All side modules now have damage indication when HP drops below 80%

Now we are going to move on in development and focus on bigger tasks such as enemy drillships and improved NPC behavior. Will keep you updated with sneak peeks on our social media and weekly announcements here on Steam :)

If you'd like to participate in the Alpha you can sign up on our website

Hey everyone! If you'd like to hop in one of the drillships early, you can sign up for the Alpha on our website. We'd love to get your feedback on what to add/improve to make the gameplay experience more enjoyable!