Icon: Voidfall - Alpha v0.1.11c
Glyphs, Tempests & A Living Battlefield
Alpha v0.1.11c is here!
This update introduces our new Glyph system, brings violent Tempests to Atrum, gives Slag a very unusual relationship with Twisters, completely rebuilds the grass covering The Strand, expands Steam Achievements, and continues tightening the systems introduced throughout 0.1.11.
Introducing Glyphs
Glyphs are Icon: Voidfall's Match Mutators.
Before a match begins, players can now enable Glyphs that alter the rules of that match. Once the battle begins, the selected Glyphs are locked for its duration.
Single Player and Multiplayer now both support Glyph selection, with Multiplayer Glyphs synchronized as part of the host's match rules. Changing them also clears player readiness so everyone has a chance to see that the rules changed before starting.
Active Glyphs are displayed during the match through the new Glyph indicator panel.
Glyphs also have dedicated Lexicon entries containing both their place in Atrum's lore and an explanation of exactly how they affect gameplay.
Glyph - Famine
Famine becomes our first economic Glyph.
With Famine active:
- All players receive half normal harvested Ichorite income.
- Resource-bearing trees are removed from the map.
- Wildlife does not populate the battlefield.
The result is a much leaner match where access to Ichorite becomes considerably more important and several normal economic opportunities simply don't exist.
Glyph - Tempest
And then there's Tempest.
Tempest introduces roaming Twisters as neutral environmental hazards across the battlefield.
The first storm begins around 60 seconds into the match, with additional Twisters arriving throughout the game. The system attempts to keep the world dangerous without overwhelming it, with no more than six active funnels at once.
Twisters spawn across valid navigable terrain while avoiding active structures.
Then they start wandering.
Twisters Come to Atrum
Twisters are fully simulated neutral environmental actors.
They travel across the grounded battlefield, live for a randomized period, interact with the world around them, and eventually dissipate.
And they are considerably more than moving damage zones.
Twisters can:
- Damage units and structures caught in their path.
- Pull Small and Medium units into the vortex before throwing them back out.
- Knock larger units around.
- Cause Wildlife and Kobolds to flee from an approaching storm.
- Cut temporary furrows through Malignance.
- Flatten and disturb grass along their path.
- Whip nearby vegetation through a larger heavy-wind envelope.
- Interact with harvestable trees.
- Rip Tree Logs into the vortex.
When a Twister reaches the end of its life, the funnel disappears and its orbiting debris falls back toward the battlefield before dissipating.
All of this is host-authoritative and supported across Multiplayer, Theatre, and Replays.
Meet the Slagwhorl
Of course, Arafel looked at a tornado and decided it was a resource.
If a Twister collides with a Slag, something very different happens.
The Slag consumes the storm.
It becomes a Slagwhorl.
The transformed Slag grows dramatically in size, takes on the Twister itself as part of its presentation, and begins moving through the battlefield as a living vortex.
While transformed, the Slagwhorl cannot receive its normal commands. Its owner can instead issue ground movement guidance, influencing the direction the vortex gradually works toward.
The transformation preserves the original Slag underneath, including its faction ownership and gameplay identity, while presenting the mutated form throughout the UI.
Slagwhorl also receives its own spatial storm audio and transformation stinger.
And yes, this works in Multiplayer, Theatre, and Replays.
A New Living Grass System
The Strand has received one of its largest visual upgrades yet.
We've replaced the old terrain presentation with a new procedural NavMesh grass system.
Grass is generated entirely at runtime across valid grounded terrain using GPU-instanced presentation rather than thousands upon thousands of individual objects.
It responds to the world around it.
- Units bend and disturb grass as they move.
- Structures clear the ground beneath their footprint.
- Malignance consumes the field and curls nearby vegetation toward its spreading edge.
- Twisters flatten and tear paths through it.
- Fire can burn it.
- Day/night lighting changes its appearance with the rest of the world.
The field uses deterministic world-space distribution and streaming so grass remains continuous while travelling across the map instead of exposing obvious chunk boundaries or repeating terrain patterns.
Grass Density Setting
A new Grass Density setting is available from the Escape Menu.
It can be adjusted from 0% to 100%, scaling the density and rendering budgets of the grass system together.
At 0%, procedural grass is completely disabled, allowing players to reclaim its rendering and streaming cost on systems where performance is more important than vegetation density.
Fire!
We've also built the beginnings of a new grass-fire simulation.
For now, this is available offline through the new /brisingr cheat while we continue developing the host-authoritative world-event infrastructure needed to safely bring systems like this into Multiplayer.
Placed fires spread across the grass with an irregular front rather than a perfect circle.
Grass:
- Burns from root to tip.
- Leaves behind a charred remnant.
- Slowly regrows after the fire.
Fire and smoke use tightly bounded presentation pools, while nearby units can actually catch fire and take temporary neutral damage.
Trees and structures caught by the front can visually burn as well without changing their normal gameplay behavior.
It's experimental, deliberately bounded, and currently mostly exists because setting the battlefield on fire is cool.
More Steam Achievements
Seven additional Steam Achievement hooks have been added.
New achievement conditions include:
- Winning a match.
- Winning with a Glyph enabled.
- Winning with both factions.
- Completing research in the final tier.
- Successfully using a Slipstream.
- Creating a Slagwhorl.
- Destroying the final Bannerless Fort on the map.
Achievement progress is tied to actual gameplay completion rather than simply pressing the corresponding button.
Cheating now also disqualifies the active match from ordinary achievement and faction-win progression, while preserving the achievement specifically associated with... well... cheating.
Nice try.
Match Rules & Multiplayer
Multiplayer match setup now has additional host-authoritative rule controls.
Hosts can configure:
- Glyphs
- Enable Cheats
- Allow Timescaling
Changes synchronize through Steam lobby metadata and clear player readiness whenever the rules change.
Multiplayer cheats have also been hardened so supported cheat effects remain scoped to the player who actually entered them rather than accidentally affecting shared simulation state.
Neutral world-state cheats such as manually spawning Twisters remain unavailable in Multiplayer until they can use the same authoritative world-event infrastructure as Tempest.
Squads Get Thrown Around Properly
Forced movement now looks considerably better for squads.
Knockback, environmental displacement, and Twister capture no longer move the entire squad presentation as one rigid block.
Individual squad members now receive their own deterministic visual movement, orbit, lift, and facing while the squad remains a single authoritative gameplay entity underneath.
Once released, displaced members visibly regroup through the normal formation system rather than snapping instantly back into place.
World & Environment Improvements
A number of additional environmental systems received attention:
- Decorative terrain vegetation now correctly dies beneath spreading Malignance without awarding resources.
- Harvestable trees remain distinct and retain their Laborer and Tree Log interactions.
- Twisters can temporarily animate harvestable trees caught in their wind.
- Twisters have a small chance to tear a harvestable tree down and release its normal Tree Logs.
- Twister audio uses the existing bounded spatial SFX system.
- Glyph activation can now have its own audio feedback.
- Selection rings and structure indicators remain readable through the new grass presentation.
Malign Mine Improvements
Malign Mines now provide clearer feedback after researching Harvest Hooks.
The Mine's selection queue displays every available harvester slot and fills those slots with the currently assigned workers.
After Harvest Hooks increases the Mine from one to two available harvesters, the UI now clearly reflects that additional capacity.
First-Time Player & Interface Polish
New players now explicitly begin with Arafel as their persisted faction preference.
We've also tightened Main Menu faction switching so transparent portions of the large faction banner can no longer accidentally trigger a faction change.
Glyph selections receive animated presentation through the new gradient timeline system, while active Glyphs appear in-match with their icons and tooltip information.
What's Next
0.1.11c continues something that has become increasingly important to us as Icon: Voidfall grows:
The battlefield itself should be part of the strategy.
Malignance already changes the world.
Day and night change what each faction can see.
Weather changes the atmosphere.
Now Glyphs can change the rules of the match entirely, Tempests can physically disrupt armies and terrain, and the vegetation beneath everything actually responds to what's happening above it.
These systems give us a foundation for much stranger match conditions and environmental interactions in the future.
And somewhere in all of that, Arafel figured out how to eat a tornado.
Seems about right.
As always, thank you for playing, testing, breaking things, sending us replays, and helping us figure out just how weird this RTS can become.
We'll see you in Atrum.