Hey! Long time no see so here's another Development Update covering most of the things we did in the past few months. But before we get to that, we hope you're all doing fine and staying safe in these weird times. We are. The only thing that changed for us is that we had to move back in our apartments, so back to how things were before Early Access. Now we got that out of the way, let's get to the new stuff!
What's Coming
Co-op Multiplayer
Many new features and devices were added to support the drillship "crew life". Co-op in Volcanoids will be about operating the drillship and managing tasks together as a team. One player will be able to drive the ship, while the others set up production stations, spy through the periscope or create new items before the ship hits the surface.
Friends that get caught off guard by the eruption or a group of COGs and lose the fight will also lose their loot. However, they can quickly re-join the crew by respawning directly in the drillship.
Bunk Beds
To support the idea of group progress, players can log off in the new bunk beds that work as a safe point. Now, even though you're offline and all your friends are still playing, you're still going to travel with them since the bed is placed in a mobile base. And once you log in again you will be back with your crew right away, even if they progressed to a completely different part of the map.
Simplified start of the game
Based on feedback from the community and content creators the crafting system got a rework. The start of the game is now focused on being more gradual in terms of introducing new devices and systems. All the different modules, levers and buttons right from the start were often overwhelming for many players.
So from now on, players will start with basic crafting stations similar to other survival games and will be gradually introduced to modules later. We hope this makes the first experience for new players way more enjoyable and removes the frustration of having no idea what all the different buttons do while also getting stressed out by the upcoming eruption.
Some of the new content is still "work in progress" when it comes to visuals, and will be until we finish all the technical parts. For now, we are going with the sailor character, that will get improved in upcoming updates.
Content for future updates
Co-op is now at a stage where we just keep polishing and bug-fixing stuff, so to make sure everyone has something to do, artists (more on that later) started working on assets that will be added to the game in future updates after the Co-op update gets released.
Improved COG unit models
Volcanoids veterans will remember the raw models of new COG units teased on the roadmap some time ago. Now they are getting complete rework by Alex.
New front drills
Extra work also went also into designing new front drills, that would better reflect installed upgrades. It's based on community feedback where a lot of players got confused about which drillship has the upgrade they are looking for. There are more models to come, each representing a specific front drill upgrade.
New Locations
Lastly, more locations to explore are also in the pipeline such as these (drill)shipwrecks.
The Team
New team members
Since the Co-op Update is a huge task, more people have joined the team. The ultimate goal is to bring you more content with each update, and since there is only so much a developer can do, growing the team is the only way to achieve that. There are so many great ideas from the community and concepts that still need to be added and this will make the process faster.
Now let me introduce our new members! Alex is in charge of 3D modeling and animation. David focuses on audio design and his first task was to get rid of all the ear destroying sounds many players pointed out. Dusan and Tomas have been testing like crazy for the last couple of weeks, trying to catch them all! (bugs not pokemons)
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We would like to thank YOU big time for all the support and patience you guys have with us. Stay tuned, more news coming soon! If you have any questions, ideas or feedback, feel free to let us know in the comments below.
~ Volcanoids Dev Squad (now even bigger)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/951440/Volcanoids/