Greetings Pioneers!

It’s been another busy week here at Flix. Yesterday we had our first public Alpha Multiplayer sessions, stress testing the latest build and finding bugs with the help of students on the Games Development course at Staffordshire University. It was invaluable for us, so we’d like to thank all who attended for your patience and feedback. We hope you had fun, we certainly did!

There are still a few issues to resolve before we can release to the general public, we want to make sure that it is as stable as possible and that everything that needs to replicates correctly across the network, alongside doing some network optimisation. We’re getting there!

Here’s what the team have been working on this week:
 

Andy – Lead QA

This week was mostly spent prepping a multiplayer build for our test day over at staffs uni. Turned out to be a really helpful session. We were able to meet loads of really cool people and gather loads of info that should help us nail some of the issues we’ve been having. Plus we got to go on an epic burger adventure, it was pretty much an English version of Harold and Kumar go to white castle.

Tom – Character Artist

Jellyfish is now complete! Onto the next awesome creature: the Stalker. This is gonna be a creepy and vicious one! I am now also known for my strong handshakes.

Lauren – Animator

This week, in between helping with multiplayer testing, I have been working on animations for the Viper IKA, a faster, more aggressive flying enemy with the ability to ram the player.

I have also been animating and prototyping throwing grenades, WOOOOO EXPLOSIONS! 😀

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have been working on squashing more multiplayer bugs. Most my time has been spent on multiplayer movement and client prediction to make sure lag doesn’t cause too many issues for you all.

Yves – Senior Developer

Multiplayer multiplayer multiplayer! Been working heavily on server stability so you can have hours of uninterrupted fun!

John – Lead Designer

I’m reticulating some logistics for multiplayer’s various diverse facets but to work on those intrinsically aligned initiatives we need to first incubate and exploit some of the more cutting-edge deployments available in Unreal. LUCKILY though, we’ve simplified that strategy and have maintained a steady alignment of hard work, bug-fixing and pizza to leverage innovative and next-generation processes in order to deliver a new paradigm of ‘play’.

(John’s not here to write the blog this week.)

Ricky – Developer

The world of networking is a magical place, so magical in fact that it sometimes defies all real world logic and does a thing of it’s own. So this week I’ve been gently coaxing it into not doing that as much as possible.

Marcin – Designer

With most of the multiplayer bugs I could help with finished, I shifted my focus to the gameplay systems, which, although working fine in the single player, would completely break a multiplayer game. One of those was the Drop Pod and the Eden Kit that you pick up at the beginning of the Single Player game. We couldn’t leave that in, because only the first player on the server would be able to benefit from those items. We also couldn’t allow for everyone to be able to pick them up because with persistent world, dying and restarting the game would be the most profitable way of obtaining materials. We had to come up with a fairly non-exploitable way of providing those starting resources. For the first pass, we decided on random drop-ins of eden kits (and other items later down the line) from the sky all across the map over time and with a number limit. We are looking forward to using a similar system for randomised map objectives much further down the line too.

Chris – Designer

This week mainly helping test multiplayer in preparation for our first showing of multiplayer outside of Flix. We got some very useful feedback from the session but my favourite part was watching players working together to catch fauna and not only attempt to build a farm around them but also build race tracks and watch them race!

I also worked with Marcin in designing and prototyping the first version of our Loot drop system.

Lee – Technical Director

I’ve been fixing up a few new bugs that have been introduced to single player with everyone working hard towards multiplayer. I also found a rare pathing bug with our flying AI purely by accident today, so it felt great to finally fix it.

Joe – Environment Artist

I helped an elderly lady cross the street which quickly escalated to me helping her to her house door and then next thing I know I woke up in a desert with no clothes. Thankfully I still have mobile data so I could write this post and I might stick around to research some cool desert rocks before I come back next week with clothes. PEACE.

Gav & Simone – Concept Artists

We’ve been working especially close this week with Tom and Matt on creatures that Tom will be modelling up very soon for you all to see 🙂

Matt – Art Director

I’m working remotely on arguably the most important asset of this patch, my tan. And my biceps. (I’m tanning my biceps in Spain)

See you in the Fray!
-Team Flix

 

Greetings Pioneers!

This week the team have been making good progress with multiplayer, testing replication and squashing bugs.

Some of us (mainly John) will be down in London over the weekend at MCM Comic Con, come find us and say hi.

 

 

John – Lead Designer

Earlier in the week I was at Staffordshire University, giving a talk to their students and lecturers about production methodologies. Today I’ve been at Comic Con and I’ll be there again tomorrow, so if you happen to be at Comic Con London over the weekend come say hi and have a go at one of our early access builds of the game!

Matt – Art Director

Much placement has been done. Very dense. Wow. A lot of revamped undergrowth has been put into the level, to help with population of more open areas. Almost all of which is completely interactive, and we’ve established a near seamless level of detail system for large spaces so you’ll barely notice that stuff in the distance being any different.

Massive credit to the developers here as this has been enabled through some code wizardry. I’ve also been putting together a lot of prototype assets for future features, weapons, defences and utilities.

Lee – Technical Director

I’ve managed to get most of the AI multiplayer bugs fixed this week, so much so that I’ve been looking at general bug fixing. I’ve also been looking ahead to the release after multiplayer to decide what creatures we want to introduce into the world next…

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week i have been working on bug fixes for smash physics over the network as well as multiple level streaming issues to prevent you spawning and falling into the abyss we have under the world.

Joe – Environment Artist

Finally! Planets move through the sky! Sunlight bleeds through foliage! I’ve also been working on integrating a whole host of new foliage assets to make our levels feel much less barren. I’ve refactored our Foliage shader to make it better looking and more efficient. Also created a level of detail mesh for landscape in our new map (so you can see the entire level in the distance, for very little performance cost!).

Yves – Senior Developer

I’ve been working on bringing APEX destruction to multiplayer.

Ricky – Developer

This week I’ve been soaking up the rays, my power rating has increased to over nine thousand. I will stop at nothing to find Vegeta and bring him to justice. All it will take is one punch. I am Rickoku, master of pasta!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marcin – Designer

This time around I actually have interesting things to show you, guys. Finally, not just bug fixes 🙂 For starters, I started having a look at a proper Biomes system and it looks quite promising already, despite still being on paper. The idea is to have areas of biome influence covering the land, which interested objects can read from, e.g. a Hive trying to send enemies to attack you can add some biome – specific creatures to the mix, depending where you build your outpost.

As for the pretties, I managed to squeeze in some work on the look and feel of the Auto Turrets. We weren’t happy with the way they fell behind the other, newer turrets, so we revamped their firing style to be more of a futuristics machine gun. I hope you’ll enjoy them even more now.

I also managed to prototype a couple of new features. One of them is the ability to mine Splintermite shards as a resource. We are very excited about this, because it would be the first enemy-generated material in the game.

The other feature is a Spawn Location Selection Screen for multiplayer game. This one will give you the ability to choose a location to respawn after death, instead of having to rely on randomness. This one is pretty important as it introduces a lot of systems we could use in the future in other areas of the game, e.g. minimap or fast travel.

Chris – Designer

This week my main focus has been on the new level and starting to ramp up the quality of the different biomes especially the swamp biome and the areas where the player will spawn which mainly involved increasing the number of assets to allow for a greater visual and gameplay experience when you first land on Pharus 7. We have also revamped some of our low lying foliage both visually for the non destructible elements and technically for the interactive elements.

Tom – Character Artist

Working away on the Jellyfish paint and detail sculpt, as well as new water biome assets!

Amar – Audio Designer

This week I have been working on the environment audio placement throughout the level, such as waterfall, forest, swamp, rivers/streams, and underwater sound effects. For more populated area the attenuation is more quiet compared to the populated areas within the level. I have also created audio for the hives, crumbling rocks which needs a bit more enhancing on. I shall also be working on creating sounds for the generators, alien IKA, walking through bushes sound and tree destruction which needs improving.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been testing multiplayer, implementing and tweaking 3rd person animations and working on various bits and bobs, bug fixes, and anims for future cool stuff.

Gav & Simone – Concept Artists

This week we’ve been working on some creepy and disgusting things for the levels with our character artist Tom and art overseer Matt. You should see it in the game within the next Eleven years so keep an eye out 🙂

Andy – Lead QA

I’ve spent the week testing multiplayer. Once all the serious testing was done, we actually had a bunch of the team join the server and just play about. Taking on a hive with your friends is so much fun. So is shooting them from a cliff knowing they can’t see where you are.

 
Greetings Pioneers!

This week we have been working mostly on multiplayer and the new map. We are at the point now where we can host and join each others servers at the office, exciting times! Still a lot of multiplayer specific bugs and crashes to work through, but the team are working their butts off to fix them and hope to be able to play over steam with you guys soon!

Here is a breakdown of what the team have been working on this week:

John – Lead Designer

The work we have done for multiplayer is vast! There’s a lot of work to still do but the systems are now designed and we are starting to implement a future proof plan for teams, clans, PvE and PvP. I’m currently working through survival mechanics and new item prototypes whilst making sure that the new map looks a lot nicer than the current iteration.

Matt – Art Director

So this week is finish off awesome new weapon week. I’ve been working on the model for the Sniper rifle. This should be making it’s way into your Pioneers arsenal very soon!

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been debugging the AI further in multiplayer, in particular the Turrets. I’ve also been dealing with a strange culling issue with the AI which I hopefully have a solution for. For me now it’s a case of playing the game in multiplayer to look for new bugs.

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have mostly been implementing the base frame work for the new team and clan logic into the Players, AI, Structures and Power systems as well as some player respawning logic.

 

Chris – Designer

This week I have been helping test multiplayer to help identify any remaining issues in general and also specifically to do with the world. The rest of the week has been spent with initial designs for drop events, hives and pre made bases as well as rebalancing the biomes in the new 8km map.

Joe – Environment Artist

Now that the initial gameplay components are in the new map, I’ve had some time to focus on a variety of environment visuals that have needed a tidy up for quite some time. This includes post process materials, atmosphere, lighting and day/night cycle visuals. I’ve also overhauled shaders and textures for water, sky, clouds, planets, monoliths, skybox; and today I’ve been working on a 3D planet for the sky! All of this should result in a much better level of visual fidelity in both old and new maps.

Tom – Character Artist

Working on a Jellyfish style creature for the swamp Biome, I’ve also been improving concepts with the wonderful Gav on the future plethora of creatures we have planned.

Yves – Senior Developer

Why does everybody start theirs with “This week…”? They’ve got no zazz! Anyway, “this week” I’ve been working on the infrastructure that will allow for multiplayer, a lot of the unsung hero type stuff, the stuff that you would only notice if it’s broken.

Marcin – Designer

With the multiplayer getting more and more stable every day I was able to work on syncing more stuff between machines, namely the grass and bushes regrowth, toxic bulbs, day and night cycle times, and projectiles. There is still more work to be done on anything that simulates physics, like projectiles, smashed objects or trees, but we are getting there. When I don’t work on multiplayer I am also looking into potential future systems. Speaking of which, does anyone have any insight on how Blizzard made Zerg creep in Starcraft 2?

Lauren – Animator

I have been working on a few different things this week including prototyping item drops that fly in from the sky, crash to the ground with lootable debris goodies. I have also been working on the player start for an opening cutscene or sequence that can work from any start location, in addition to helping Andy test Multiplayer.

Gav & Simone – Concept Artists

This week we’ve been focusing on delivering some new creatures to you while working on various tasks to do what we can to ensure a timely arrival of the new map and multiplayer. PEACE.

Andy – Lead QA

Testing a very broken, then fixed, then broken, then fixed multiplayer! Working with the team to see what we need replicating and see what needs working on.

See you in the fray!

– Team Flix