Greetings Pioneers!

It’s been a week since we opened the experimental multiplayer branch and we have been working hard on a hotfix for some of the issues encountered. The main focus is to fix any major crashes, improving the AI and their willingness to attack your bases, restoring mineral rock destruction. We will also be addressing some of the server-client sync issues and being unable to connect to servers.

It has been a lot of fun to jump onto some of the early server. The early support is really encouraging, so much so that we’d like to thank you again for your feedback and for supporting the game at this early stage.

Meanwhile we’ve also been working on future features and goodies…

John – Lead Designer

I have been working with Marcin to refine a whole host of gameplay and technical/implementation design including the player inventory and how we intend to balance multiplayer to avoid certain exploits when sharing items.

We have also been looking over respawn pads, the next version of the deployment screen, how to implement the armour system to make it look correct whist using different combinations of armour types and more! At the moment the next release is a hotfix and then we’re most likely looking to focus on inventory, sharing and colony (clan) creation to allow PvP gameplay too.

Matt – Art Director

For future progression gameplay updates I’ve been building more versions of the Mata – Tool. (That funky gravity manipulation device on your right arm) As we go forward it will come in many flavours. All of which will have their own perks. Rest assured when all of these are integrated into the gameplay visuals you will always start with the most basic version.

Lee – Technical Director

Well today I’ve been dealing with our internal server after it seemed to crash late yesterday afternoon. All week I’ve been fixing small bugs with the AI which I’ve noticed for a while but never had the time to get to look at them. I’ve also been planning some work toward a new batch of AI creatures for the world.

Tom – Character Artist

Finishing off the textures and game model for the Stalker!

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have been working on single player and multiplayer bug fixes as well as trying to iron out steam issues.

Yves – Senior Developer

Auto loading of saves, and the first version of our in game local and global chat. I’ve also implemented support for in game voice communication.

 

Ricky – Developer

Clearing up some of those minor annoying bugs in the game to ensure your satisfactory quality of life index is being met. I have then been working on some contract work to keep us rolling.

Joe – Environment Artist

I’ve started on the creation of a basic set of assets we can use to populate our upcoming Underwater biome!

Marcin – Designer

Lee and I have sorted a lot of bugs with AI, especially the weird things Ikas had been doing for a while, like falling through the world when killed by smash. On the more important note, we managed to have a good hard look at the night raids attacking your walls as well as your turrets.

I am very excited about that change because not only it prevents the enemies from getting stuck, unable to find valid targets, but it’s on the whole a total gamechanger of the way you plan, build, and defend your base.

On another note I have been working with John on designs for progression system, which is also coming along nicely. Hopefully, I’ll be able to share some saucy details with you all soon.

Chris – Designer

This week I have been stepping up production on the new map. We have been concentrating on various placement tasks, landscape painting, biome improvements and beginning to optimise the world.

I have also been jumping in and out of design discussions with John and Marcin with regards to progression and the revised deployment screen system.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been animating the Stalker, a bipedal enemy that can also run and creep on all fours and attack both with claws and a swiping spike tail. Sweet dreams.

Animations shown are a work in progress

Gav & Simone – Concept Artists

This week we’ve been progressing some work on the Sieger, Wolf and Owl concepts – we hope they look sufficiently frightening 🙂

Andy – Lead QA

Now that we’ve added all of our multiplayer code, I’ve been looking through the single player with the developers to try and replicate some of the crashes we’ve been having in order to catch them in debug mode.

See you in the fray!

– Team Flix

 

 

Greetings Pioneers!

This will be the start of many community spotlights we’re going to be doing as we update our multiplayer experimental branch going forwards to December.

First of all, thank you again to everyone who are supporting the game from this early stage! It’s great for us as developers and gamers to see people ‘pioneering’ (pun intended) the first of the dedicated servers and input on future features.

Don’t be surprised if you see a developer or two join your game either, we do have a tendency to invade your public server and spy on what you are doing 😉 (purely research based spying).

So far ADN-Mad’s beaten us all to it with the first public dedicated server to go up over the weekend. And for that reason we’ve included some screenshots of the structures built on it, they are very well done indeed!

A massive thank you to ADN-Mad for being the first to the starting line in helping us lay a solid foundation for the future multiplayer community!

We look forward to updating the build further across the next few weeks. Again we must put emphasis that it is at an early stage and fixing any crashes are paramount. Stability is also key for us as a team so we have a lot of optimisations as well as features left to push into Eden Star (Including the new 8km map which we’re particularly excited about).

Also! A big welcome to anyone new who has purchased the game this weekend!

For more current information on development you can keep an eye on what we’re working on next via our public Trello board and even vote or comment on features you’d like to see.

There will be new updates coming very soon, so we hope to see you in the fray!

– Team Flix

 

Greetings Pioneers!

The first taste of experimental Multiplayer has arrived – You can now play with your friends by hosting your own servers!

If you already own Eden Star you should have access to the experimental branch as of now. This is an optional branch that you must physically opt-in to, meaning the previous stable build (v0.0.13) will remain in the main branch as default and you can choose whether to try the experimental builds. You may return to the main branch if you find the experimental branch too unstable and wish to go back. The experimental branch will contain the latest updates, but also the latest bugs, crashes and more. After hotfixes, the main branch will be updated when we feel it is stable enough.

Important information: Please read all of the below before you choose to opt-in!

If you wish to access the Experimental branch you need to do the following:

1. Open Steam and go to your games Library.
2. Right click on Eden Star in your list of games and select “Properties”.
3. Navigate to the “Betas” tab and select “Experimental” from the dropdown menu.
4. Close the properties window and your game will begin to update!
5. Done 🙂

If you wish to start a server for Eden Star, you can view our setup guide here

Please note single player saves from v0.0.13 and below will not work in the Experimental v0.1.0 branch!

If you think you may wish to return to the default branch, we recommend you backup your save files prior to switching.

(Found in: C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local\EdenGame\Saved\SaveGames)

Currently there is a cap of 8 players for the number per server but we are looking to increase this in the future as we optimise the game further. As we continue over the next few weeks we will be hosting several development servers that you can join, please note that these will be wiped and updated regularly over the next month so don’t get too attached to your structures! Once we feel we’re ready to move things over into the main branch and have tested the build thoroughly and added a few new features.

We have made a guide for those of you wishing to host your own server that you can find here (please let us know your feedback!).

 

We must emphasise that this is a very early release of multiplayer!

• There will be intermittent crashes! please help us with these by posting anything you get with a screenshot of any crash dialog (white boxes with text in them) here to our bugs forum
• When mining rocks they will visually remain intact, but will still drop minerals.
• Rejoining a game and/or walking into an area where rocks were previously mined will result in those rocks seemingly being impervious to mining. Waiting 15 minutes should allow them to be mined again.
• There are no loading screens before you spawn in. You will see buildings load in around you and in rare instances this process can take several minutes, especially if the server has a substantial amount of structures already built on it. If you experience this it is best to either A: close the game and try rejoining fresh B: Move somewhere in the open and stand still in an area until everything appears to of loaded in around you.

We’re working to fix these major issues as a priority but for the most part we feel there is enough stability for people to start enjoying the multiplayer 🙂

There are still plenty of bugs to be found. Our latest Known Issues list has been updated for this release, please let us know if you find any not listed so we can look at fixing them for the next hotfix. 

We are really excited to be pushing this release out to you today and have been plowing some serious hours into getting it ready! We all feel that over the next week there should be a full backbone to allow us to FINALLY branch out into supporting the breadth of content that we want in Eden Star.

Patch Notes – v0.1.0 Experimental Branch

• Multiplayer!
• Added periodic drops of lootable Eden Kits from the sky.
• Added a new Deployment menu and multiple new spawn points to the map. Added new Post-Process visuals.
• Added new non-destructible procedural foliage/pebbles

• Enemy spawning logic rework – They now scale their attacks with your base defences, the presence of nearby hives and the number of players on a server.
• Turrets and Generators can no longer be placed on walls or ceilings.
• Added a Charge attack to the Swamp Walker
• Options Menu converted to UMG.
• Grass is now part of the Instanced Foliage System, which makes it more efficient.
• Changes to Material distribution system. Each source of materials now offers more variety of shards, in order to provide more choices when you get around to placing your blocks.
• Full balancing pass on Structure health.
• Removed Cubes to aid balancing of the game, let us know if you miss them!
• Added friendly fire on Utility blocks.
• Improved PFX for Auto Turrets. Also doubled rate of fire and halved damage.
• Much improved Skybox visuals (sky, clouds, planets, monoliths…). This also includes a pass over lighting, atmosphere and the Day/Night cycle.
• Refactored Foliage shader, including two-sided lighting, new opacity system and optimisations.
• Removed confirm dialogue for getting upgrades when you have enough materials.
• Modules/weapons auto-equip once constructed.
• Weapons and ammo can no longer be constructed outside the Eden Kit Bubble.
• Optimised water shader and fixed fog interaction for increased view distance.
• Improved Sac Plant interaction visuals.
• You can now grab the Cirrus Spore to immobilise it.

• Fixed being able to grab enemies after they’ve died or you moved out of range.
• Fixed the bottom part of foundations becoming invisible on Load.
• Fixed enemies still heading towards your base after sunrise.
• Fixed attacking a hive from a distance won’t always aggravate the enemies.
• Fixed rocks sometimes flickering during mining.
• Fixed players being able to push around some items in the world.
• Fixed a rare issue where the player’s mouse movement would get stuck.
• Fixed not being able to mantle onto doors

If you missed it in last week’s blog, these are some of the major features we will add as soon as possible for multiplayer:

Basic Character Customisation – At present all players will look exactly the same, besides the odd Splintermite shard if you’re unlucky 😉

Clans/Teams – In the first release we have angled the game towards co-op play. You will be able to snap-build to each other’s structures as well as sell other player’s structures. Friendly fire is however enabled and so currently players can kill each other and damage each other’s bases either accidentally or on purpose! We have already implemented a huge amount of the Colony system but have not yet activated it.

The Colony system will provide the ability to set up your own Colony with different ownership rules of buildings under an Eden Kit Shield. When it comes to built structures, we also have implemented the ability to assign roles to stop both outsiders and certain team members from being able to sell your structures. Anyone not in your Colony will also be targeted by your turrets as an enemy, currently Turrets will only target AI in the first release.

Multiplayer Smash – Only one player at a time will be able to hold an enemy, we are looking to change this in the future as well as add the ability to smash other players.

Trading – We intend to split out all Eden Kit inventories as well as adding further storage containers for players to stockpile and also trade with other players. Currently the player does not spawn an inventory to access, but this will soon be amended allowing players to loot corpses and other players inventories if you want your server set-up in a PvP manner.

Frontend Server Admin – This will be added to enable simple interaction with the server to issue boot commands and fully access any aspects of the server that you wish to change with ease, currently everything goes through a “black-box” interface, external to the game client.

Communication – To begin with there will be no in-game text chat or voice communication, players can use Steam Voice Chat (see this guide) or another external application of their choice to talk to their friends.

To see what we are working on right now, be sure to check out our Public Trello Board.

Thanks for your continued support.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix