What's gone into Voxel City lately, what broke on the way, and what's next. Written by Wayne Fellows, who makes the game on his own. Every picture is from the game.
· 3 min read
A lot of buildings promised something and then just sat there. Now robot crews roll down a ramp to the fire, helper robots walk to building sites, the home printer has its gantry, rockets launch, and the post office, the bike docks and the sawmill all get on with it where you can see.
· 3 min read
The water-bomber airship used to stay on its mast and the fire drones never left their tower. Now helicopters and drones share one way of flying, over hills and round tall towers, the airship casts off to fight fires, and the coastguard's lifeboat goes out on the water.
· 2 min read
The title screen has a little card in its top corner now, with forty true tips about the game. It shows you the things you haven't tried yet first, and you can turn it off in Settings.
· 4 min read
I watched two trains drive straight through each other, so the railway has been rebuilt. Trains now hold the track ahead before they move, freight pulls into real sidings, stations get passing loops, and there's a Double Track tool, a Lines window and Freight Tubes under the streets.
· 3 min read
Research and the graduate programmes are gone. In their place is Town Plans, one tree of 70 plans in seven branches, paid for in Ideas that your schools, landmarks and milestones earn. It opens with F2.
· 4 min read
Bin lorries used to collect the rubbish and then it vanished. Now landfills fill up, a full one can be capped and turned into a hill park, recycling earns real money and materials, and there are five new depots for what's left.
· 3 min read
Voxel City had hospitals, a university and a launch pad, but not the small stuff a real street has. Now there's a Local tab with a little library, a repair café, a night market and more, and homes at levels 4 and 5 like a mix of places within a short walk.
· 3 min read
The Region branch of Town Plans is live. Every quarter of a map now has a nickname and says what it's rich in. Surveyors map its best ground, Mining Claims let you dig a quarter nobody lives in yet, and a Regional Capital ties all your towns together.
· 3 min read
The Fire, Police, Deathcare and Logistics tabs each had one or two buildings. Now they have six or more, from a watch hut with flasks of tea to a water-bomber airship, a memorial woodland and parcels by tunnel.
· 3 min read
The Education tab goes from 3 buildings to 12, and Tech from 3 to 9. There's a village school, a forest school and a science centre, a thinking lab that makes Ideas, a weather station, and a space academy that stands by the rocket pad.
· 2 min read
The game's buttons, tabs and chips all had round ends like little pills. I'd grown to dislike them, so every one has gone, and there's now a check that counts any that sneak back.
· 4 min read
The old title screen had empty fields behind the logo. Now it's a whole town cut out of the ground like a toy, with every service building in the game standing in it. It also crashed my graphics card for a day.
· 3 min read
When a building goes up a level in Voxel City, a lorry brings the materials and scaffolding goes up round it. Here's how that works, and the bug where the scaffolding kept growing with the building.
· 4 min read
Stone, clay, sand and timber used to be dug at the same rate everywhere, and you could make more by moving the ground about. Now every map has rich patches and poor ones that stay put, and each quarter of a map is good at different things.
· 3 min read
The building inspector has been redrawn so it says what a home needs to grow in one line, shows every need as one bar, and puts the button to fix each one right next to it.
· 3 min read
Two big pieces of work are planned for the next few weeks. One is Town Plans, a single tree of upgrades in place of research. The other is a layer of small neighbourhood services, including somewhere for the rubbish to actually go. None of it is built yet.
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