Icon: Voidfall - v0.1.10c

The Battlefield Comes Alive

The third installment of the 0.1.10 rollout is here.

This update is all about making battles feel more alive.

From smarter formation movement and battlefield awareness to dynamic weather, reactive Malignance fog, and a fully dynamic day/night cycle, this patch pushes Icon: Voidfall much closer to the living world we've been building toward.

Formation Movement Arrives

One of our biggest gameplay additions in this release is a completely new way to move armies.

Multi-unit selections can now create formations directly from the battlefield using right-click drag.

Available formation types include:

• Line formations

• Triangle formations

• Freehand terrain paths

• Multi-row formations for larger armies

Combined with our evolving pathfinding rewrite, armies now feel significantly more intentional when maneuvering across the battlefield.

Units Now Fight Together

Combat has become far more coordinated.

Nearby units now communicate threats to one another through a shared combat awareness system.

When one unit acquires a hostile target, nearby combat-ready allies can join the engagement naturally without interrupting harvesting, construction, formation movement, or other important tasks.

The result is armies that behave much more like cohesive forces instead of collections of independent units.

A Living World

This update introduces several major presentation systems that dramatically change how the battlefield feels.

Reactive Malignance Fog

The corruption itself now breathes.

Malignance generates a reactive fog layer that:

• Parts around moving units

• Wraps naturally around structures

• Responds to cursor interaction

• Slowly reforms over time

• Exists entirely as a visual effect without affecting gameplay

The battlefield now feels like it's resisting your presence instead of simply being painted with a texture.

Dynamic Day & Night

Every match now progresses through a full day/night cycle.

The world features:

• Sunrise

• Morning

• Noon

• Sunset

• Evening

• Night

Lighting, shadows, ambient color, and the in-game time indicator all evolve naturally throughout the match.

No two games begin at exactly the same time of day.

Dynamic Weather

Weather now evolves during gameplay.

Storms gradually build and fade with:

• Dynamic rainfall

• Ambient rain audio

• Lightning storms

• Weather intensity changes throughout the match

Combined with the day/night cycle, battles now take place in a world that constantly changes around you.

Gameplay Improvements

This update also includes a number of gameplay improvements:

Movement

• Priority Move commands now allow units to ignore combat while reaching their destination.

• Local avoidance has been tuned for every movement type.

• Friendly movement around structures has been improved.

• Formation movement continues receiving major improvements.

Economy

• Organic Logistics has been significantly improved.

• Resource gathering feels more responsive.

• Starting resources have been rebalanced.

• Mine claiming behavior is much smoother.

Building

• Improved construction visuals.

• Better Structure-In-Progress presentation.

• Cleaner build placement behavior.

• Improved district footprint handling.

Performance

As always, every major feature ships alongside another optimization pass.

Highlights include:

• Improved multiplayer synchronization

• Better late-game Malignance performance

• Lower AI overhead

• Faster movement systems

• Better unit animation scheduling

• Reduced networking overhead

• Continued groundwork for the pathfinding rewrite

Even with all the new presentation systems, large battles should continue getting smoother with each release.

Presentation and Immersion

This update also delivers a presentation pass, making the interface more responsive while giving players greater control over the game's retro aesthetic.

Smarter Faction Cursors

The cursor system has been completely expanded to communicate gameplay through visual feedback.

Highlights include:

• Context-sensitive cursors for attacks, harvesting, interactions, mines, slipstreams, and support actions.

• Faction-specific resource cursors for Materials, Dermis, and Ichorite interactions.

• Edge scrolling now uses directional faction cursor variants.

• Cursor click animations provide subtle visual feedback while interacting with the world.

The goal is to reduce ambiguity and make interactions easier to understand at a glance.

Retro Scale

The old Image Sharpness option has been replaced with Retro Scale.

Rather than simply adjusting image sharpness, Retro Scale now controls the overall retro presentation by dynamically adjusting:

• Internal render resolution

• Scanline intensity

• Film grain

• Posterization

It also now scales correctly for ultrawide and non-standard aspect ratios, preserving the intended presentation across a much wider range of displays.

Interface Polish

A number of usability improvements have also landed:

• More reliable world interaction when using the retro render texture.

• Improved Main Menu navigation.

• Better default menu behavior.

• More accurate cursor interaction with reactive fog and world objects.