Welcome to the second part of our largest update yet.
This release focuses on making Icon: Voidfall feel significantly better to play while continuing the rollout of our new CogSys AI system and beginning the immense engineering project of a complete rewrite of unit pathfinding and movement.
A huge amount of work this update went into simply making the game feel better under your mouse.
Highlights include:
Minimap interaction completely overhauled
Click-and-drag camera movement
Better contextual command targeting
Improved idle unit management
Better control group behavior
Group abilities now execute across every eligible unit
More accurate command previews
Better tooltip support
Improved command visualization
Every one of these changes is aimed at reducing friction and letting you focus on strategy instead of fighting the interface.
This marks the public beginning of our complete movement rewrite.
Rather than continuing to iterate on the existing navigation system, we've begun building a new deterministic pathfinding architecture specifically designed around the needs of large-scale RTS gameplay.
This isn't just "finding a path."
The new system is being built to improve:
Group movement
Formation behavior
Unit steering
Local avoidance
Tight terrain navigation
Multiplayer determinism
Long-term scalability
The work in this update represents the first migration milestones toward that goal while keeping the existing movement system fully playable during development.
Movement will continue improving over the coming updates as more of the new system comes online.
CogSys continues receiving major improvements.
This update expands the AI's understanding of:
Research progression
Strategic prerequisites
Army production
Economic planning
Performance
Decision caching
The result is an AI that continues becoming more capable while also requiring fewer CPU resources to make those decisions.
We're still very early in CogSys' life, but each update brings it closer to becoming the adaptive RTS opponent we've envisioned.
Some of the biggest gameplay changes include:
Organic Logistics now feels significantly more natural.
Better resource gathering responsiveness.
Improved drop-off behavior.
More consistent starting resources.
Friendly units can now move through friendly structures.
Better group ability behavior.
Improved transport handling.
Better mine claiming behavior.
Rubble interactions expanded.
Quillboar spawning completely reworked to keep early games fairer and more predictable.
Better wildlife roaming behavior.
Structure placement now properly clears terrain beneath buildings.
Another major optimization pass has landed.
Highlights include:
Reduced late-game CPU spikes
Better animation scheduling
Faster AI planning
Improved Deep Malignance performance
Better UI responsiveness
Lower pathfinding overhead
Reduced GameObject spawning spikes
Better multiplayer synchronization
Large battles should continue to perform noticeably better as we chip away at bottlenecks each release.
With CogSys now established and the pathfinding rewrite officially underway, the next several updates will continue focusing on the core RTS experience.
Expect continued improvements to:
Unit movement
Formations
Economy
AI strategy
Multiplayer
Overall game feel
As always, thank you to everyone testing the game and sharing feedback. Many of the quality-of-life improvements in these updates are direct results of community playtesting.