Greetings pioneers!

This week we have been continuing work on both multiplayer and the new map, things are starting to take shape! It’s been a matter of pulling everything together this week and making sure each individual system works with multiplayer and replicates over the network. Still a way to go though and plenty of bugs, we all can’t wait till we’re able to build epic bases and take down Juggernauts together at the office.

Here’s a breakdown of what the team have been working on:

John – Lead Designer

This week I’ve been with the guys at Epic and a load of amazing UE4 based studios heads to talk through the direction and future of the engine and about the projects that we are working on. There is a huge buzz about the work done by all of the dev studios and it’s great to get the feedback from the people that we admire and have worked with in the past.

In addition to this I helped organise support for the UKie Student Conference in conjunction with Epic and Staffordshire University which is due to take place at the end of this month.

Beyond this I have been working through all of the base items that I want the player to be able to build and craft, whilst also working this into the progression system designs.

Matt – Art Director

The huge undertaking of rock placement has been on the cards for the art team this week. Our destructible resources require a lot of manual love. Infact you can watch the timelapse video below to get an idea of what the placement process is like in one small section of the new level.

p.s I’ve also snuck some in editor game footage into the video..

p.p.s I’ve probably used way too epic a soundtrack for this type of preview.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have finished adding audio to our AI perception component. I’ve also been hard at work testing out every aspect of the AI in multiplayer and trying to fix the bugs as I come across them. As of this afternoon the AI seem to be performing very well now.

Tristan – Senior Developer

The week I have been working on the fixing up bugs and crashes to do with multiplayer. I have been working across the HUD making sure it gets set up correctly and unset correctly over the network. I have also been fixing up any issues with the foliage destruction and regrowth system as well as level streaming for clients. Hope you enjoy it when its out.

Joe – Environment Artist

So as Chris said this week we’ve finally finished up placement of destructible rocks in our new map section! Woo! We’ve used a more defined ruleset with our placement this time which should make it easier to understand where you can go to look for specific materials. I’ve also re-done the Post-Process and today I’ve been working on fixing up the atmospherics and day/night visuals in the new map.

Yves – Senior Developer

Multiplayer building, that is what I have been working on this week. Ridding bugs so it can be tested properly without a high frequency of crashes.

Ricky – Developer

Working on making sure the HUD is properly updated of the comings and goings of multiplayer server activity, as at the start of the week clients weren’t being told anything.

Marcin – Designer

On my part, this week has been about system design and of course, the multiplayer. Since the grass is my personal responsibility, it was up to me to make sure it replicates over the network. Yes, can you name any other games that syncs their grass with the server? I thought not 🙂 As for the system design I was able to pick back up a little system Chris and I have worked on before, all to do with making sure the waves of enemies attacking your base are consistent, dynamic, and with just the right amount of challenge. Without giving away too many details, I’ll just say that we are looking into balancing it against the development of your base rather than the time and place it’s in.

Chris – Designer

This week we managed to finish all the placement of our shiny new destructible rocks! This means that the new map is now gameplay complete in that it’s fully playable with all systems and interactions in place. We will now move on to playtesting and iterating through everything from visuals to what the player will experience in the world.

I have also made some tweaks and fixes in the current playable map in preparation for multiplayer as well helping Marcin in designing a new enemy wave system which I’ am personally excited about!

Tom – Character Artist

Starting work on the Jellyfish style alien creatures, native to the swamp!

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been working on 1st person animations for our new Sniper Rifle, prototyping the scope camera/lens and making the arm lift up when you are close to objects to reduce clipping, the Sniper is over a meter and a half long so it is easy to do!

Gav & Simone – Concept Artists

Our 2D arm have been developing designs for additional creatures and underwater assets to compliment what the rest of the team have been working on with the new map.

Andy – Lead QA

This week I have learnt 2 valuable life lessons. Firstly, never agree to help place individual Apex assets. It takes forever and makes you want to pull your hair out. Secondly, and in my opinion more importantly, never let Matt build your house in Rust. He will insist on adding a window no matter how much you tell him not to and someone will climb in through the for lack of a better word “horizontal door” and loot your hard earned resources. I jest about the asset placement, it was actually really fun getting in engine. I’m not jesting about Matt, seriously don’t ever let him build you a house.

 

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See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

Ever since Eden Star launched into Early Access in January this year, we’ve been amazed at the community’s response – from reporting bugs (and feeding us a constant supply of awesome suggestions!) to creating quality video content and some pretty dang impressive in-game bases! Our mantra with development of Eden Star has always been to work with our community, building solid foundations for new features whilst molding them using community feedback and our own passion to see Eden Star succeed – so for all your input so far, we thank you!

Today we’d like to give just a little something back – this will be the first of hopefully many Community Update blog posts, where we highlight some of the amazing stuff our community come out with on a regular basis. We hope this will encourage more people to get involved (links to our various community sites at the bottom of this post!).

Firstly, I’d like to do a quick shout-out to YouTuber Enigmius! Over the past few months he’s put out almost 30 videos of his adventures on Pharus 7 and we hope to see many more 🙂 Go ahead and show him some love here!

So, without further ado… our updates last week introduced a whole load of new features, but one of our biggest changes came in the form of an entirely new and shiny Build system and you guys have been going all-out with it, using the new buildables to create your own (relatively) safe haven on Pharus 7. Below are just some of the cool things we’ve seen over the last week:

My personal favorite though is this monster fortress by Quadraxis77. Fully kitted out with an arsenal of turrets and a huge gatehouse it’d be a long hard slog for any would-be invaders to get to that Eden Kit – at least until the Juggernaut comes along 😉

Well, that about wraps it up for our first Community Update! If you’d like to get involved, there’s a bunch of links below. We’ve also got a sub-reddit which can be found here!

– Joe

Greetings pioneers!

After all the action last week, you might be thinking we’ve been putting our feet up…
Think again! We’re still hard at work on multiplayer, getting rid of all the blocker crashes so that we can actually start to play and test it has been a big challenge. Thank you all for your patience, I know how much you want to play with your friends, we want to too!

Matt, Joe and Chris have been working hard on environmental asset placement for our new 8k map – we have waterfalls now! We are hoping these will provide natural landmarks and really cool backdrops for some of your amazing bases.

Speaking of amazing bases, we’re always looking through the screenshots and videos you awesome folk have been putting together. We’re planning on doing a community spotlight on Wednesday so get creative and keep them coming!

Your feedback is hugely important to us, thank you for all those who have been reporting any bugs and crashes, making suggestions and getting involved. We are working on resolving these issues alongside the development of new features. Working together we hope we can make Eden Star the best it can be, keep it up, you guys are awesome!

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

John – Lead Designer

This past week I have been fleshing out our progression system, utility designs and finalising the team designs for multiplayer.

Matt – Art Director

After a great few days at Eurogamer over the weekend I’ve been back in the studio working on the river areas within our 8km Island level, as well as setting up materials for new creatures and blocking out future mechanical assets for prototyping.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I’ve been doing some preliminary testing of AI within a multiplayer world and making a note of what needs more work. I’ve also been working on adding audio to our perception component because it only deals with sight at the moment.

Tristan – Senior Developer

Earlier this week I got the power system working with teams across a network so the enemy can’t power their turrets from your generators as that is apparently a bug and not a feature. Who knew. Well I did – we just didn’t really have teams back then. For the remainder of the week I have been modifying the smash logic for multiplayer so you can smash with others.

Yves – Senior Developer
Looking at a previous blog post I now apparently use the exclamation: ‘BOOOSH’, but then that’s what happens when you let someone else write your post. Anyway after our big release last week with the new build system, I’ve been finally unleashed on bringing multiplayer to a point where (Cue hipster advert music) you guys can hurt exterrestrial life, Together.

Joe – Environment Artist

I’ve been working hard on the new map. It’s a huge a new player space so there’s lots to do but we’re initially focusing on one quadrant and we’re making some great progress. I’ve placed in our first pass of foliage, as well as enemy Hives, neutral Flora/Fauna and of course Player Start points so we can actually run around the level! At the moment I’m on the exciting task of helping Chris and Matt place Apex rocks, keeping in mind our goals for exploration and resource gathering.

Ricky – Developer

This week I’ve been working on trying to resolve a few of the crashes that you guys have been having, as well as keeping up with all of you guys on the Steam forums!

I’ve also been working on getting the HUD and UI working for Multiplayer, trying to sort out any issues we are having.

Carlos – Developer

For most of this week I’ve been going through our multiplayer UI and getting it to look amazing and adding the functionality of course! The most important part is that I’ve been able to get our UI to host and join servers hosted here at Flix Interactive Towers!

Marcin – Designer

Good news everyone! The navigation system changes I mentioned last week are a go. Everything worked out better than expected so, since our multiplayer is still in quite an early stage, I was able to have a look at other gameplay systems we have and explore the room for improvement. To mention a few John, Andy, and I have been designing the team system for multiplayer, the re-spawn mechanics, new building blocks, new material properties, and many others, On top of that we are currently experimenting with a new approach to material distribution in the world. In summary, as the work on multiplayer continues, we are busy looking for ways to improve the core gameplay at the same time.

Chris – Designer

This past week I have been overseeing the development of the new map and making sure everyone is pulling in the same direction with the initial designs. This also includes helping out with placement of gameplay assets. I have also refactored all of our existing destructible rocks and set up new ones which are currently being placing in the world.

Tom – Character Artist
This week I have been working on the Splintermite Queen!

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been making a start on the Sniper Rifle first person animations, trying to get the on-screen position looking and feeling good. I have also been working on the Swamp Walker to make it even creepier, we’re reworking its attack to make him seem like more of a threat.

Gav & Simone – Concept Artists

Plant plants plants… and a fish! And a turret. –In the shape of a fish. Hidden under the disguise of plants

Andy – Lead QA

My week has been mostly spent in design meetings with John and Marcin discussing all the new and exciting things we plan to bring you guys in the future. Other than that I have been pestering Yves to get the multiplayer server up, mostly so I can test, partly because I am like a big kid when it comes to playing Eden Star! Ive also been spending all week singing Craig David after John showed me the Craig David/Killswitch Engage Remix.ha!!!

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Sadly we are saying goodbye to the wonderful Carlos today and eating lots of farewell cake (the chocolate kind om nom nom). He is heading back to university to complete his final year in Computer Games Programming. Good luck! It’s been a pleasure working with you. Hope to C you again, may all your code babies work out beautifully efficient and object orientated 🙂

See you in the fray!
-Team Flix