Greetings Pioneers!

This week our new workbench is taking shape, this will be an intermediary and rather makeshift unit that will be the stepping stone towards better tech.

While the current fabricator bench and armory will be used for crafting more high-end items, this one will be the very first crafting unit you are able to make and, in combination with our on-player crafting, will allow for smoother progression and gentler learning curve rather than having everything available at the start and quickly running out of things to do or work towards.

Here’s what we’ve all been up to:

John – Lead Designer

Along with my extensive administrative responsibilities, I have been working on designs surrounding the crafting system, Melee rework and the new HUD/UI implementation.

I am really pleased with the progression I have seen in the game over recent weeks and feel Eden Star has turned a page in terms of game play and the quality of the work that the team are producing.  

Matt – Art Director

I’ve moved onto high priority modelling work for our new crafting items. This includes some of the makeshift items such as poles, both scrap metal and metal versions, repair tape. All of which can be used to make items on your character.

The workbench is new addition to the crafting station tiers which has gone through a modelling blockout stage.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have continued moving a lot of blueprint work which was recently added, over to code. I was hoping to be done with it at the start of the week, but I’m hitting a few bugs which were introduced by some new code to do with rotations, so progress has been a bit slow. I have also been doing some planning for controlling the amount of AI that can attack at a time and also some work to do with them searching for the player.

Ricky – Senior Developer

Progressing well with the HUD/Compass/Map marker system with TomS. We’ve also come across quite an annoying bug where the HUD stops displaying which is proving very difficult to track down.

Carlos – Developer

I’ve been working on some of our melee weapons, namely how we can make them modular enough so that we can begin mix and matching them to create some cool new melee weapons. As part of this I’ve been looking into getting the axe and the spear to work with the new system!

Captain Tom W –  Lead Cliff Wrangler

I’ve gone on a bit of a binge this week, wrestling the starting area into shape, to act as a template/baseline area for the other parts of the world. Hopefully everyone likes our beautiful new rock blends and sandy bits!

Joe – Lead Artist

More icons and pickup item modelling! I’m also going through a review of future feature updates that may affect art, and looking into new workflows and processes to help keep our art consistent and beautiful <3

OG Tom – Designer

This week I have been looking at implementing mineables inside the existing bases in the world, we are still exploring the best method to implement this without hitting the performance. But we have managed to makes all railings in the world mineable sources of scrap metal.

Also after a lengthy discussion with my fellow designers and developers we are looking at getting a new melee weapon system up and running so we can tie together that initial gameplay loop of crafting cool weapons to help you survive.

TomS – Developer

This week, i’ve been working on the new HUD/Compass/Map Marker system – showing relevant info when you’re looking at a bunch of pick-up-ables like medpacks, weapons and the like.  It’s coming along nicely, working on having just enough info without cluttering up the screen with stuff you don’t need to see.

Sam – Concept Artist

The design for the workbench is now complete, as you can probably tell from Matt’s blockout model. Over the course of its development it has been through over 6 different iterations, but it’s now at the right stage to be taken one step further towards the game world. Unfortunately last week there was no image posted alongside my blog entry, so hopefully now you can finally see some of the work that’s been going towards this particular item!

Other than that, I’ve been working on a more detailed render of a transmitter device that we want to feature in the opening stages of Eden Star’s campaign, It isn’t finished at the time of writing this, but its certainly shaping up and perhaps you’ll get a peek at it next week. Until next time, don’t eat too much chocolate!

Lauren – Lead Animator

The Stalker has been the main focus again this week, I’ve been working on turning animations and improvements to the attacks and reactions. We are giving the stalker a projectile attack (he will throw things) but also a good variety of melee attacks from different ranges. I think I will still include a Tail Attack, thank you for the suggestion last week! In combination with our rework to the AI system this should really make them seem more alive and less like unintelligent clawing-machines.

Andy – Lead QA

This week I have been investigating a number of bug that have cropped up such as the HUD disappearing then starting a new game, player controls locking up when investigating certain areas of the world and a crash when the player dies. This has resulted in me working my way backwards through older builds of Eden Star to see if we are able to pinpoint where the issues first arose in the hope that finding the cause will help with finding the solution.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

More goodies to show this week with new stalker animations and attacks being tested, this creature will be a more formidable foe. The speeder bike has also undergone its material pass and now has two pairs of stirrups for seating two Pioneers comfortably…

John – Lead Designer

It’s been another kick ass week at Flix HQ. I’ve been going over Crystal consumables with our crack-team of technical designers.  We’ve also taken a crack at the Oxygen system, balancing the rate of depletion so it becomes a fun challenge, but never overbearing. You’ve also seen our hero and heroine on the new speeder bike which is looking dope!

Matt – Art Director

Voila, finished what will be one of the quicker ways to travel around the island. The speeder got the paint treatment along with damage models. We’ve worked it so the bike can seat two people as well, which better suits our multiplayer mode! I’ll be moving onto creating some of the new ‘makeshift’ weapons, and helping to organise the rest of the level design and artwork passes.

Lee – Technical Director

Investigating the dreaded tick rate assertion! After some serious investigation we’ve found out that objects with tick rate optimisation applied to them were causing problems with stability. This is in the progress of being fixed should largely help with overall stability as the game runs for longer periods of time.

Joe – Lead Artist

Lots of meetings and organisation this week – I’ve been looking over the progress the artists are making (spoiler: everything looks amazing) and giving feedback on various bits and pieces with level design and visuals. I also went over the systematic side of the new HUD markers with someone named Tom.

Captain Tom W – Designer/Artist/Cinematographer

I’ve had a wonderful time working on door panels, wall panels and floor panels. On-top of that, there’s been the usual terrain work, smacking rocks together, and coming up with clever new ways to blend things together. Not having access to texture-arrays makes me a sad panda.

Marcin – Designer

I’ve been reviewing the state of a bunch of Eden Star systems. The artists have been hard at work putting together new assets in the world over the past few weeks and they looks really good, but now it was time for me to step in and review whether they work as well.

The environment has to interact properly with the building holograms, no matter what you project them on. It also has to provide suitable ground for AI and the player to move. We don’t want either getting stuck anywhere. Additionally I’ve been looking at animation data for AI, which I wanted to organise and make easily accessible from various systems that need to use it.

OG Tom W – Designer

This week I have been continuing to implement the first stages of our new crafting and building system. We hit a few snags in the code but those were quickly fixed by our developers allowing us to start adding new items and schematics.

Tom H – Designer

This week I have been constructing a new shiny security outpost for the Dam. This outpost will be where checks are made for deliveries in and out of the Dam, now abandoned and overrun, it will provide a short respite for you guys on your journey up to the Transmitter. You will be discovering secrets that lie in the outpost along with weapons left behind by the guards. All in aid on your journey though Eden Star!

The new crafting has several stages for the player to progress through, starting with what we’re call ‘ Makeshift Crafting’ and ‘ Emergency Building’. These will be first steps into the crafting and building aspect of the game so we are getting those schematics in so we have a better idea how to balance our mining nodes and loot drops.

Sam – Concept Artist

Hi! Been working on a few things this week, including developing the design for the makeshift spear further. We now have a set of colour and shape variants – we just need to decide which combination we like best! I’ve also been doing some behind-the-scenes design work and visualisation for an important part of the game’s opening minutes.

Next up for me is the fabricator bench, (another makeshift item) which will act as a means of crafting on the go. It shares this purpose with a second item of a similar name, which may be a more expensive and high-tech version that you likely won’t see until later in the game. So far we have some silhouettes for the former, and line and detail work will commence next week!

Lauren – Lead Animator

This week I have been working on more animations for the stalker including several attack varieties to keep Pioneers on their toes. They will have both melee and ranged attacks, throwing projectiles towards players as well as getting in close and slashing at you with their claws. The movement we wanted to keep fairly quick and agile, and intend to have them be able to jump between points as an alternative traversal type.

Andy – Lead QA

I have been helping Sam with the progression of the concepts for the spear, working through the opening section of the game and giving feedback to help refine it.

I have also been investigating the stability of our multiplayer build and testing the crafting features that have been added recently with multiple players.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix