Greetings Pioneers!

This week we’re saying a huge hello to Gronkh and #LaFamilia for showing Eden Star some huge love last weekend!

It’s humbling to see so many people all add us to Twitter (from 600-4000+ followers in the space of a few hours!), Facebook and also who have become Pioneers by supporting development of the game – so a huge thank you!

What an awesome guy and amazing community 🙂

We tried to show our appreciation by giving away steam keys and attempted to get back to as many of the questions on twitter as possible. Please keep giving us your feedback as we’re still very interested in hearing back from you at this stage of development.

Check out Gronkh and please show some love here :: http://www.twitch.tv/gronkh

Today, as well as the usual development update we’d like to take the time to highlight some of the awesome bases created by you guys over the past few weeks:

From cliff-side fortresses

-Tails The Fox

To mountain outposts

-SafetyDance

To island strongholds

-Deus†

Special mention goes out to community member Big Bad Wolf for his experimentation with the building mechanic.

He made a whole mechanical island

Experimented with a tower defence maze

And is looking to set up a city with other players!

Check out his recruitment post here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/259570/discussions/0/458605613402197195/

This week we have been continuing work on features for future updates, here is what the team have been working on:

John – Lead Designer

MOAR DESIGNS! I’ve been working through some of the designs with the team and also trying to sort a load of the financials whilst also keeping on top of the next steps of production. I’ll update the trello boards tonight and we should also have an idea as to what’s happening for the next update including;

• New building styles to differentiate building crafted from different material types
• Internal building panels and decorators
• Lighting panels
• Inventory overhaul with larger inventory space and upgradeable capacity
• Spawn pads
• Item Drops when you die/want to share items
• Turret Fixes
• Build Optimisations (MOAR BUILDING!)
• Inventory lock-boxes

Next – onto the story and survival mechanics…

Matt – Art Director

Currently been working through Utilities. I’ve put together a weapons rack which is effectively a display cabinet for your arsenal (It’s much nicer than just viewing an icon for your weapon we think) Also put together a drop item for the player inventory, should you happen to die and want a chance to get your stuff back. This also opens up gameplay to others, allowing fellow pioneers to loot your body. Very fitting if you happen to be terrible at the game and die a lot.

Lee – Technical Director

Well this week I’ve managed to get a couple of days free to spend some time looking at issues that people have been having with turrets. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Hopefully I have managed to track down all the various bugs. They do seem to be working a lot better now. I’ve also been reviewing the new Juggernaut AI planner to make sure it works fine, but we still have a couple of non AI issues to resolve before we can release this.

Tristan – Senior Developer

As well as bug squashing to the max this week I have been working with the Chris trying to optimise the new level. I have also been improving the foliage destruction replication system.

Yves – Senior Developer

Got out of writing these for the last few weeks, but they’ve finally collared me. I’ve been optimising the game, clawing back every bit of server performance with an aim of being able to host more players on it. Multiple players simultaneously constructing buildings could cause a major performance hit, so we’ve dealt with that. These performance updates will be out next release. If you want to see what I’m currently working on during the week then follow my dev account on Twitter @FlixDevYves.

Ricky – Developer

Heavy, deep, emotional design meetings about the new Inventory system. I wept…

Looked into some issues with accessing the Eden Kits, and similarly inviting other players to your Colony using the onscreen prompt system. I also created UnDuplicator which checks for and removes duplicate assets from the map which will hopefully have minor optimising effects on performance and gameplay.

Marcin – Designer

Is it Friday already? Huh, this week kept me busy since it has had a bit of everything for me. There was a lot of design work, mostly for the future of the weapons, the inventory, the crafting system and the lighting system. There were bugs to be fixed, with the map interface and the Eden Kits. There was pfx work for the upcoming “re-spawn pad” utility structures, and of course there was prototyping for the lights, pads, scanner, and other more secret, but equally exciting things.

Chris – Designer

This past week I have continued performances test on the new map with Trist in order to ascertain where the major hits are occurring. One major change is the way we setup our destructible rocks in the world, which although the new method we will be using will considerably improve the performance of the server, it has meant that all rocks have to be repainted back in the world. I have also completed designs for ingame map which will be implemented at a later date.

Joe – Environment Artist

I started the week by finishing the conceptual work I was doing on the new Tab menus, before modeling an initial block out of the standing light. I’ve also started on the large amount of texture creation that needs doing for all the new icons and buttons required for the improved menu and inventory designs.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been working on setting up the Juggernaut attacks to deal damage and force to the player. Coming your way in future updates, a large, stomping, charging, headbutting, fire-breathing, armoured enemy xD. I have also started work on parry animations for the melee module, which should allow players to block incoming melee attacks with their own melee weapon once implemented.

Simone – Concept Artist

This week I have been creating designs for the refinery (for all your material crushing needs) , the placeable light and a few small containers for the players to drop items in (because no one wants to have all their items spilt out on the floor). Onward to the next concepts!

Andy – Lead QA

This week I’ve been trying to stay on top of the increased social media traffic after a certain someone streamed Eden Star. Other than that I’ve been focusing on turret bug fixes and testing the optimisation of the build mechanic.

See you in the fray!
-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

Today we have our first update of the year, there have been many critical issues raised over the past few weeks that we have resolved, in addition to doing a lot of optimisation work. We are also giving you the first prototype of our in-game mini-map!

Official servers are currently down for maintenance but will be updated as soon as possible.

Thanks to your feedback we were able to find and fix many things! Here is a full list of additions, changes and fixes:

• Introduction of an In Game Map prototype, which shows the locations of all players and Eden Kits within your Colony. Press the ’M’ key to access.
• Friendly players from your Colony now also show up on your compass.
• Added Enable Controller Vibration option to the Options Menu for Gamepad users.

• The Eden Kit Shield extent has been increased at lower levels. Maximum extent remains the same.
• Eden Kits now cost 1 Teslinium, down from 2.
• Day and Night lighting pass – We revisited colour balancing in order to brighten up all shadows during the day without losing the darkness of the night. We also included small performance improvements.
• Players now need to be next to the Eden kit to access it, not just within its Shield.
• Reduced patrol enemies that spawn at night and attack a player’s base.

• Fix for an issue where players were losing affiliation in multiplayer when loading a saved server game.
• Structural Integrity optimisations for Building Blocks..
• New AI spawning and deleting system. Inactive AI are destroyed, Fauna are now destroyed at night to improve the performance of the server.
• Fixes to saving and loading on the server for issues with ownership of structures and clans.
• Improvements to the network performance and the ping counter reliability.
• Fix for the issue where Eden kit markers would remain on the compass after leaving the clan.
• Fix for being able to access other people’s Eden Kits from anywhere in their Shield.
• Fix for being unable to access the tab menu after using the chat widget.
• Fix for the issue where swapping the indexes of 2 equipped primary modules or weapons would accidentally remove the build module.
• Fix for AI only spawning at one Eden Kit location at night. Each Eden Kit will now get attacked in sequence one after another. This is to ensure the performance on the server remains manageable.
• General fixes for wave spawning at night for both the player and the player bases.
• Added maximum values to the amount of AI in the world in order to prevent potential bugs from choking the servers.
• Fix for the crash caused by getting killed by your former turrets after leaving a colony.
• Fix for a server crash caused by dying whilst in a colony.
• Fix for a crash caused by chat while on the death screen.
• Fix for AI sometimes dying as as they spawn near their hives.
• Fix for an outer reticle remaining on the screen when a player switches to their weapon.
• Repositioned the Pistol’s iron sights so they now match up to the crosshair.
• Fix for the issue where the server’s save data would get reset if the server autosaved before any player joined after loading.
• Fix for the Eden Kit compass markers accuracy.
• Fix for the SMG’s Iron Sights appearing slightly off-center.
• Tweaks to Pioneer’s 3rd person mesh weighting to reduce clipping (http://imgur.com/GzuapRZ)
• Spelling and formatting fixes for the UI.
• …and many many more! Don’t forget you can always post up on our Trello board or Steam forums if you encounter any other bugs in Eden Star!

Coming soon, a new inventory system is first on the priority, cleaning out the old UI in favour of a shiney new one. See last week’s Dev Blog for more information including updates on lights and lock boxes:

Further optimisations will be ongoing in the runup to the release of the new map (starting with 16 squared km!), new enemies, weapons and more. Keep an eye on our public Trello Board for more information:

https://trello.com/b/dmyocCtO/eden-star-public-board

Our latest known issue list has been updated. As always, please let us know of any other bugs or issues you find and we will work on fixes for subsequent updates.

See you in the fray!

– Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

We hope you have all enjoyed the holidays. It’s been great fun playing with some of you guys during our brief break. We’ve been back at Flix HQ this week working on some fresh new features as well as fixes for the performance bugs that have been reported since the last update.

Thank you so much for all the feedback you’ve been sharing, you’ve been a great help in finding and debugging some of the issues. As for what’s next, we’ll be looking to push another update to the build out in the next week.

Here’s what the team have been working on for future releases:

Marcin – Designer

The new year 2016 started for me with major optimisation work for the server by shedding off all decision-making processes from animations, which allowed me to completely turn them off. This means we can use the saved frame time on improving physics or at the very least start seeing some performance boosts.

Additionally, I’ve been looking into progression system designs and buildable lights. The latter are a challenge because we need to be very careful about what we allow the players to do and how. If we are too lenient with the lighting rules we might end up with terrible framerates while in heavily lit bases and that would mean bad time for everyone.

Thankfully if we’re clever about it, the Unreal Engine allows for some pretty efficient solutions, so it’s looking pretty good. Here’s some work in progress for you to enjoy:

Lee – Technical Director

I’ve been looking at the amount of AI in the world and trying to limit the numbers this week to try and improve performance. Hopefully the waves of AI which attack your base at night will be more manageable. I’ve also been looking at any optimisation improvements I can make to try and take some of the load off the server.

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have been profiling the server and working with the team on implementing optimisations so things should be running quite a bit smoother on the server. I have also been looking into being able to play from the same PC that is hosting the dedicated server so for all who asked it has now been added to the server setup guide 🙂 You will need a high end processor and more ram to do this so please be aware of that.

Chris – Designer

This week my main task was to focus on stress and performance testing of the new map in multiplayer while also conducting a second pass of Onyx rock placement specifically for mantling around the world.

John – Lead Designer

This week I’ve been working with Joe on redesigning the  inventory so that it’s ready for all aspects of trading, crafting, looting and solid for future development. You’ll be happy to hear that we are scrapping the old crafting UI and are instead making it far more clear as to what the benefits of building out of different materials does for you as a player. In addition to this we will be renaming the resources in Eden Star to fit with more familiar real-world references, such as wood, rubber, metals, rocks and so on…

The image below shows a concept of the new system that allows player to see their inventory at all times in the center left block. The center right block is dynamic, showing contents when interacting with storage or craftable schematics when interacting with a utility etc. Items will also take time to craft (not depicted within the image), allowing item crafting to be stacked. So please let us know if you think we have missed anything here or if you have any suggested changes for us!

Yves – Senior Developer

Yves isn’t here today but if he was here I imagine he would have said something like this. This week I have been working on optimising some of the structural integrity logic on the server, implemented a patch to the physics engine so hopefully physics simulations should run a good deal better now and worked on adding some RCON commands for clan history so we can more easily debug some of the clan related issues where player were getting shot by their own turrets. Enjoy.

Joe – Environment Artist

New year, new UI! This week I’ve mainly been creating initial designs, layouts and concepts for some new menu screens, specifically the inventory/equipment/crafting menu which will need a big overhaul for our new inventory system. I’ve also created some models for a placeable stand complete with placeable lights and display. Nothing concrete to show yet but rest assured we’re going to make your bases much more homely!

Matt – Art Director

Happy new year all! So, a lot of new utilities and and weapons are my primary focus this month. I’ve been working on assets for a ‘lock box’ for storing and sharing items within your Colony. Also there will be the addition of a spawn pad which will effectively act as your set spawn location throughout the game (As long as it doesn’t get destroyed by creatures or other Pioneers :p )

Tom – Character Artist

After the break I dived straight back into the armour sets! Currently detailing and polishing the high res version of the Cybermancer set.

Ricky – Developer

Implementing a first stage of a shiny in-game map displaying the location of all you and your allied bases and comrades. In addition you can see your Colony members on the Compass now too and I fixed the bugs with the Compass markers not always updating correctly. It has been cleansed of 99.9% of known evil bugs for the time being.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been cleaning up weapon animations and set up in preparation for our future modular weapon system. I’ve also begun rigging the Splintermite Queen ready for animation and helping out with testing the latest fixes.

Simone – Concept Artist

Happy new year everyone! This week I have been working on designs for a placeable stand, light and screen, which players will be able to place in their bases. Designs for another utility – the refinery – have been started.

Andy – Lead QA

Performance testing this week. A lot of high latency issues have required my attention, and getting the game running as smoothly as possible in the interim is my priority. I’ve also been testing performance in the new map, amazing is one word for it, but it will need some serious performance TLC before it will be unleashed to everyone.

See you in the fray!
-Team Flix