Greetings Pioneers!

This week more of the new assets and enemy spawners have been placed in the level and the AI are being polished across the board as we progress. New effects and icons make it easier to see and differentiate the items in the world that can be harvested for materials and the spear and grenade are being tested and are nearly ready for designers to start balancing them.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

John – Lead Designer

Back into the rigmarole of production. Been pushing the guys to get aspects of the UI working and in place, with some impressive item location hints being visually implemented with a similar look to glinting objects in the Bioshock games. The main focus herein is quality in the individual locations and gameplay engagement in those areas, which all act as a benchmark to future points of interest.

We’ll be sharing a playthrough video next week which will be incredibly exciting to share with everyone and, you’ll be glad to know that Andy and I are now in the process of working through the full timeframe needed to solidify the date of the next release, which is currently slated for the end of July, we’ll get the actual date to you next week once we’ve bottomed it all out.

FYI – Core features still remaining to do;

• Fuel system (Now have it as part of the player’s suit, just requires hooking into a stat and also implementing into structures)  
• Manual Power/Structure connection gameplay
• Character selection (Basic)
• Death gameplay loop/new saving and loading

If we find anything else to share i’ll let you know in the comments this weekend!

Thanks for all of you who have faith in us, can’t wait to get this release out to you 🙂

Matt – Art Director

With the grace of time to give some tlc to the interior of the drop pod, I’ve been embellishing the space with atmosphere and markings that have really brought it to life. Hopefully you get this sense from the footage we’ve included as well.

Moving on I’ve still got a bunch of signage to put in around the interactive panels that control the airlock doors, otherwise the rest of the game is starting to follow suit with the next level of quality we’re aiming for.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have mainly been concentrating on some debug issues which I hope to finally put to rest in the next could of days to do with spawning issues around navmesh not being generated properly. I’ve also started expanding the hit reaction system for AI so that Lauren can put in different animation thresholds depending on the damage they take.

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been helping look over some of the grenade projectile and spear work with Ricky. It is looking really good and is now ready for some stat tweaking and animation polish.

Ricky – Senior Developer

Grenades and Spears as inventory items are in the testing phase and almost in now so animations and dev can start making them work nicely in the game.

Marcin – Designer

I have finished the first pass of implementation for the objectives system, with support for creating various missions and controlling their flow via campaigns. That also includes the first version of a functional user interface. The majority of the work however was spent hooking the system to the saving and loading, because nobody likes their progress forgotten. I also had to make sure that objects that are no longer relevant, usually associated with a mission that has been completed are properly disposed of to prevent memory leaks.

Joe – Lead Artist

Tweaking and prodding of various UI bits this week, I finished off the UI for environmental effects (Low Oxygen environments!) and tidied up the HUD stats, making it more obvious when your stats are taking a hit. I’ve also been overseeing Sam’s crate designs, which will contain some rather nice loot. “Loot Crates” if you will.

Tom Whaley – Artist

It’s been an exciting week, finally seeing everything coming together from all the disciplines inside Flix! I’ve finished modelling/animating the camp’s transmitter/relay station, as well as implementing various blood and footprint decals around the camp-site, using the environment to give the players a bit of a murder mystery to solve.

On-top of that, various bug-fixing and material magic to make things all blend together nicely 🙂

Tom H – Designer

This week I have been venturing into the Dam area of the starting section. Here I have been making sure that the spawners for all our wonderful creepy crawlies are set up correctly and ensure a balanced but challenging experience. As well as this I am ensuring that they are varied in ways that will make combat more fluid and less repetitive.

I have also been in the planning stages of the new art designs for the Bridge up to the Dam, meaning lots of documentation and meetings. Fun! But this will all come down to a highly polished section of gameplay that will provide players with a nice early section filled with exploration, combat and scavenging.

Sam – Concept Artist

Ahoy! For those of you who remember the rather underdeveloped crate image from last week, the first half of this week was allocated to getting that design to a better place. Since you last saw it, it has been through a few revisions and is now looking a lot more “smashable”, which of course is a large part of its in-game function.

Whereas other versions of the crate may have looked more functional and coherent, with handles and hinges, they were all in all coming up looking too robust and solid. Keeping the crate’s structure divided into thin-looking corrugated metal palettes remedied this issue, and so we have stuck with that option.

Most recently I’ve been working on some eye-catching new features for the UI, which will be replacing some of the notifications which are currently just plain text. Until next week!

Lauren – Lead Animator

A lot of smaller tasks this week and a fair few meetings to boot including reviewing the AI in general and helping design the new cumulative stability. I have been making various refinements to animations, namely the Stalker feeding animations and Charge attack.

I have made a start on the 3rd person animations for the new Spear and Shiv/Knife weapons, while fixing up the player animation blueprints to be easier to read and debug, and fixing a few miscellaneous bugs with the weapon anims.

Other than that I have been setting up more spawners, passing that over to the level designers and overseeing the placement of those spawners in the world, making sure they are set up how they should. I have to say they are working really well so far, we hope to get some footage to show for next week!

William – 3D Artist

Thanks to some material magic, many of the terrain rocks can be scaled to a large degree without losing detail, making them very reusable in a lot of areas. So, for the past couple of weeks, I have been giving these assets more accurate collision, in order to ensure that players don’t feel like they’re floating, particularly on rocks/cliffs that are scaled up a large amount.

Andy – Lead QA

The team and myself have been looking into the lots of smaller tweaks with animations, a in-depth review of the remaining AI tasks and getting my hand of the new destructible assets inside the lost colony bases.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

The new icons to display interactive elements in the world have been getting implemented this week, these will assist players in determining the items can be picked up, the doors that can be opened and the buttons that can be pressed. The grenade and the spear have been making their way from the prototype stage to the new Weapon classes, these are set up in a more modular way will allow us to put together new weapons faster. Also this week, new spawners and animations for emerging enemies are being handed over to designers for placement in the world.

Here’s what we’ve been up to in more detail:

John – Lead Designer

This week I wanted to take the opportunity to address a few questions that have been raised in the forums, specifically surrounding when the next update will drop and if these updates are even real…

So! Firstly, I want to apologise for any confusion on this – to be clear – around 12 months ago we started collating feedback from the community and began a huge system overhaul in an attempt to nail down the actual story elements into the game world. The feedback on how we release this was to get it right prior to releasing, so we’re trying to do that. In doing this, we didn’t want to find ourselves needing to financially abandon the game at any point, because we believe in it and in you, the community that have supported it to date. But in order to fund Eden Star, Flix support development on a number of AAA titles (which is also an amazing way to collaborate with some incredible teams such as Sumo Digital). This means that we can implement YOUR ideas and feedback without pressure, like bringing back the different material types, adding more layers of build and crafting progression, adding context, story and reason to the world (which is a challenge in both single and multiplayer…), plus more content etc.

For anyone reading this now; Please only purchase the game if you believe that it’s the game that you want to buy at the time of purchase (see the blurb on the store page) – or wait until the next release is out! In the blogs we are clear that they are development updates for those who want to hear about the game and share this experience with us. They are not intended as bait-to-buy or anything else – doing so would only harm the team and the project and the community (whom we have a massive appreciation for!).

Please know that we are massively appreciative of your support. We are trying to make a game that you and we will be happy with which really does take time. Especially if you’re not always working on it full time.

Finally – we’re not currently working on Eden Star as our sole focus because we want to push the game with our vision before we ever consider taking it to a funding partner who will then potentially want to change the game to incorporate their ideas. The further along we are, the more of our (your) ideas get into the project.

Hope that helps understand it a little better 🙂

Thanks again for your support!

Matt – Art Director

Churning through the final stages of unwraps for the assets in the drop pod. Including the pioneer chambers and the airlock surround with its doors. Once these pieces are fully textured in all their glory it should help unify the interior.

Lee – Technical Director

Refinements to the AI have been the focus of this week along with fixing a couple of issues were having with the spawning of creatures. One of the problems we have is spawning creatures too early before the navmesh has been generated correctly

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been looking at more melee tweaks and bug fixes to cater for other types of melee weapons in the world. I have also been helping out with some item interaction logic to make sure its efficient but still gives the player the level of interaction they would like.

Ricky – Senior Developer

Getting some of our weapons systems modular to more easily implement new weapon types and I’ve got good progress with the Grenades and Spear weapons which can both be thrown while still allowing the spear to be used for melee combat. This also has touched upon the new Fuel system in which any item or action can use a new more universal resource type, so I’ve been laying the groundwork for that as I go.

Joe – Lead Artist

Working with James and Will to get the new Wreckage set setup and ready for level designers to use. I also added some visuals in preparation for new HUD elements such as the “Hold to interact” version of the Interaction Markers and the new Status Update notifications.

Tom W – Environment Artist

Been a bit sick this week :(, but outside of that have made lots more progress with our beautiful environment and one of the camps near the initial drop-pod.

Volumetric lighting and fog have been turned up to eleven, which really help that sandy, deserty feeling that we’re going for, as well as the more murky indoor areas like the Dam.

OG Tom W – Designer

This week I have been Implementing more destructibles in the existing world bases so we can now mine pipes, insulation, wiring and railings in the bases. I have also been revisiting our item crates and making them a little more explodey so you can easily access the items once you’ve destroyed the crate. This is currently a WIP and we’re hoping to have different types of crates the will react if different ways.

Sam – Concept Artist

I’ve been doing more work towards each of the separate items found in the shelter interior. We now have designs for the defibrillator, rebreather and basic breakable crates. Alongside these “general use” crates, we will also be adding military and ammunition versions, both of which will also be breakable with items such as the axe or spear, yielding in-game collectibles.

Lauren – Lead Animator

I have been finishing up the new spawners, getting variation animations for different AI and fixing them up for multiplayer. The stalkers have been the main focus this week with creating jump-down animations and spline following states, I have also been making animations for variant Splintermite appearances.

Along with the spawners I have also been putting a revised design together for the reactions of AI based on different force thresholds.

Andy – Lead QA

This week Jamie and myself have been looking into issues with certain AI not taking damage in multiplayer. From there I have been investigating similar issues within single player.
I have also been following up with artists on their progress with the creation of new assets such as the final model for new AI and new buildable assets.

Tom H – Designer

This week I have been finishing up the terrain changes near the Transmitter and Silo entrances, making sure that the terrain is traversable and also navigatable for our AI, navmesh checks have been the priority this week for the terrain as well as some more changes to areas such as the main entrance to the Silo and the Transmitter itself.

As well as this I have been making some more changes to the main bridge to the Dam, as this serves one of the first encounters for new players we have to make sure it is interesting and balanced in gameplay. The great new changes to the AI spawners allow us to have much more diverse battles in key areas such as this.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

More shiny new items have been making their way in this week with the debris kit, tent and fabricator being finalised. New items to match those icons we previewed a few weeks back have received the 3D treatment and there has been more work on the placement of destructible/minable assets in conjunction with the new crafting recipes.

John – Lead Designer

There’s always that conundrum of interaction and destruction vs performance, our game systems are geared to provide as much interaction as possible but the ultimate trade off is always around the corner, does she have the power captain? We think so, seeing as we’re building for the long term.

We’ve recently improved this by implemented an instanced static mesh destruction system that has full designer input for placement, meaning any mesh in the world can be batch swapped for a destructible version at the click of a button (providing it has destructible asset)

Matt – Art Director

Ahora que he regresado de mis maravillosas vacaciones en España, he decidido que a partir de ahora solo hablaré en español.

Apart from learning to speak Spanish I’ve been continuing the modelling for the airlock, this includes designing some fancy holographic signage for the airlock access points. Importantly these kind of airlock details will be used throughout the other bases in the world. Images coming soon!

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been adding some new functionality to stop the AI planners from running straight away when they spawn so the designers can perform unique or scripted events with the AI before turning them on correctly. They seem to be working quite well now, with just a couple of little issues in multiplayer left to iron out.

Thomas Wha – Environment Artist/ ‘Rock’ Wrangler/Sand Person

Following some feedback from the community, we’ve reworked the tents a little, pushing for a more fragile/temporary shelter look, so stripped back a lot of the various metal components and panels.

Ontop of that, I’ve reworked some of our sand materials and atmospherics, as well as heading up some feedback/review sessions with external artists, making sure everything fits the artistic direction of the game set up by Matt and Joe.

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been continuing on with the melee work and getting the block node and camera adjustments working 🙂

Ricky – Senior Developer

Helping out with some build module changes to split out the buildables in each and working on getting new weapons like the spear usable and throwable.

Tom H / TOMato – Designer

This week I have been putting the finishing touches on the terrain from the Transmitter to the Silo. Smoothing out areas to make things easier for gameplay and traversal. As well as designing how the environment looks to help players find their way around and orient themselves.

As well as this I have been looking into the bridge over to the Dam and redesigning this area to fit contextually with the rest of the environment. As well as the best way to introduce new players to some of the challenges that will await them throughout the rest of the game. This work will be continued into next week.

Marcin – Designer

This week I’ve been working on the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) feature, which will be the Eden Star’s version of an in-game journal. You will be able to access it from the menu and inside find useful information. To begin with the PDA will contain “the story so far” as well as some tutorial paragraphs, but later it may also include a codex of your discoveries on Pharus 7.

Joe – Lead Artist

I’ve been getting Will and James’ lovely wonderful art assets set up and tweaked in engine so the designers can start using them, as well as continuing work on the new HUD Alerts visuals and interaction markers.

William – 3D Artist

Been working with Joe to get these items modelled up for use in the game world!

Tom S – Developer

The new HUD Marker backend system is in! Luckily I had the most amazing set of designs to work from. In fact they were so good I totally forgot to fill out my blog entry 🙂

OG Tom W – Designer

This week I have been building weapons with the new system created by our excellent developers. We now have a scrap axe, fabricated axe, pole, spear and shiv that can be crafted and equipped by the player. These are still in the early stages though and so we still need to balance swing times and damage. Also this week there has been a lot of meetings about different elements of the game design so we can start solidifying some decisions and get them in the game.

Sam – Concept Artist

After enjoying a sunny bank holiday Monday, I’ve gotten back on to working on a number of things for the encampment area. Amongst these are a few of the items you saw last week – the ones that can be found inside each shelter unit. Most recently I’ve been developing the look of the rebreather/air filtration unit, which I’m currently not satisfied with. At the moment t I’ve been trying to improve the side view especially, while also bringing up the general level of interest.

Most of the other items are still in flux, but I have also produced a little mood piece for the encampment to try and visualise the aesthetic we want in-game. If all goes well, these elements should all slip into place fairly soon!

Lauren – Lead Animator

The new AI spawners have been the main focus of this week. We wanted to have the ability to control what the AI do upon initially spawning, delay some of them with animation, have them traverse in certain ways and generally have more options with what they do before fully ‘activating’ and coming after the player.

For this I put together three types of spawners, all of which are interruptible if the player engages with the AI, it will force them to fully activate. This will allow for more ceremony in AI appearances and it should also be easier to control them with cinematic events.

Andy – Lead QA

I have spent a lot of this week working through all the small details of our first area. Trying to ensure that everything is working with a purpose and driving the player along our critical path without making them feel forced in a direction.

There has been a lot of reviews and iterations of new buildable assets, we are perfectionists and I have likely been driving the 3D artists up the wall with my demands.
I am in the process of reworking and redesigning our “scanner” system in order to give it a shiny new feel.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix