Greetings Pioneers!

Multiple bug fixes and collision passes have been the focus of this week as well as optimisations for the level, lighting, materials and meshes. There has been a transformation in terms of quality when it comes to interacting with pickups and minable items which has stemmed from clearing up the UI and visual hints around these objects.

It’s also the simple things that matter, we now have a tidy display that matches the style of the HUD for items that get added to your inventory.

Here’s what everyone has been upto:

John – Lead Designer

In the words of Dr Seuss, Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not. The fruits of that attitude is consistent across all creative mediums, Eden Star in particular. The quality change has been incredible this week and we can’t wait to get this next update out to you.

Matt – Art Director

Finished off the blast door asset for large entrance ways, amongst plenty of reviews that have been done to revised maintenance assets and other passes for collisions to existing models. Personally playing the work in progress build right now is starting to shape up to the experience we want to give everyone here on Steam, very exciting stuff as in my mind the visuals of the game have come a long way from the original releases.

Lee – Technical Director

Been in plenty of discussions around making the dodging of the A.I feel more lifelike and polished. The rest of their behaviour is looking tight, giving them a more sinister and threatening presence in the world.

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been looking into some melee issue with Marcin to do with impacting the destructible in the game not giving us the response they needed. I have also been discussing technical designs with the AI team in order to make fighting them with melee weapons more responsive.

Ricky – Lead Developer

On holiday in my pants, hunting down the mysterious but very real Pink Unicorn.

Joe – Lead Artist

Worked on the new item pickup UI with Ricky, in preparation for some useful little tooltips that will pop-up when you first have enough items to craft something new. This is a small part of our overall goal to make the start of the game much less punishing for new players! I also worked on a bunch of other bits, including the item interaction effect for objects in the world, and blocking out the Makeshift Axe.

Captain Tom – Designer

In this episode, I courageously took on the gargantuan task of optimising our outdoor areas, and have managed to achieve around 100 fps in editor which is a huge step up!

On top of that, the dream AI/Animation team of Lauren, Lee and I have been making making great strides with the lovely creatures of Eden Star, implementing dodge and flinch reactions to being smashed in the face by an Axe.

Up next is going to be performing the same optimisations on our interior spaces, getting everything as ship-shape as possible for our upcoming big release.

Will H – 3D Artist

Lots of texturing this week as the destructible crates and fabricator are finalised into their in game forms. The crates have also been split into multiple pieces so players can destroy them for goodies. Some collision work has been done to make sure that players don’t phase through one of the largest structures in the game.

OG Tom – Designer

This week I have been doing the usual fixing of problems as they arise and also looking at placing more minable elements in the world. Mainly at the minute this means more destructible rocks, more placements of organic foliage and more metals and minerals around the world.

Tom H – Designer

This week I have been looking into ensuring AI is as top quality as it can be, this means playtesting and making sure everything is acting as it should be. I have been exploring sections of the Dam and transmitter to ensure the spawners all work and are as polished as can be. To that effect I have added a new encounter at the start of the Dam where players will be ambushed by hunters and splintermites and must fight their way out.

I have also been cleaning up things here in the new points of interest areas we have been designing. This means that more areas discovered will have mineral to mine and scrap metal to collect! All of this adds up to more areas to explore and more things to do!

John S – Developer

I’ve been working on the functionality for the new Character Customisation screen and getting it implemented into the Main Menu.

John T – Environment Artist

Busy week producing the last of the maintenance set for the damn. This includes pillars, catwalks, walls and pipes. I then went on to implement this all in engine for the level designers to work with. Not much left to do now and the dam will be almost complete!

Marcin – Designer

I’m afraid I don’t have much stuff to report that would be very exciting to watch. I’ve spent pretty much all of my time fixing various bugs and for that is plenty exciting, because solving logical puzzles is my drug of choice. Like I mentioned last week, I’ve been solving the new collision and navigation setup with artists and level designers, but there’s still more to do on that front next week. I’ve added saving and loading of various dynamic level visuals.

I’ve fixed a few bugs with melee weapons not detecting all targets properly, and my favourite this week: fixed melee weapon ranges changing with game window size. How did that even happen? I’ve also fixed being able to pick up items out of thin air, and last but not least a few boring objective system bugs. Next on the agenda is to review the interaction markers and start working on what is still missing for them.

Ryan – Developer

Over the past week I have been fixing bugs surrounding weapons, ammo and the inventory.

Charlotte – Concept Artist

This week I finished the med-pack concept art with all three small, medium and large variants coloured and ready to be modelled. I have also been working on creating some pre-visualisation for the HUD which will display your armour and when it close to breaking/broken.

Lauren – Lead Animator

Many bug fixes have been the focus for this week in addition to polishing more of the AI animations, reactions and interactions. The new dodge animations have been implemented and we’ve been working on getting the physics for small hits looking better with a new version of the flinch mechanic.

Andy – Lead QA

Picture this; a treeless garden, an ivy-covered building. A car pulls up, and out steps a disheveled man in his mid 30’s. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes and making his way up the front steps, he fumbles in his pocket, the sound of keys and loose change jingling. Wearily he slides the key in the lock and makes his way inside. Turning the lights on he heads to the kitchen.

Coffee first. Black, two sugars, splash of cold water. Drink in hand he reaches up to the top lock and opens the last remaining door. He slumps in his chair and for the briefest of moments contemplates what the day holds in store. Reaching down he presses the two power buttons on his two workstations and the monitors flicker on.
Within a few clicks he is staring blankly at this sprints Trello board and, like some sort of warped dystopian skyline from a movie, the cards simply stare back.

From there our protagonist attended a lot of meetings, discussed future tasks, tweaked existing item tooltip work being and was an all round good guy.

Jamie – QA

The focus of this week for me has been looking at the AI in detail and sorting out the tasks to do with them. I’ve been working with Lee, Lauren and Tom on these tasks to refine the AI and squash any bugs to do with them. Then also I’ve just been doing normal bug hunting and getting reproduction steps into the bug tasks to help the developers find them.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

All new artwork for the bridge has been implemented this week with new points of interest and minables placed around the world. We wanted to ensure that there is a suitable placement of these nodes that makes them both easy to see while also fitting in with the aesthetic of what and where they are, harder than you think!

Also this week the stalker AI getting some love, A new dodge mechanic and backing away as the player approaches is in the works to make certain AI harder to hit. Initial balancing passes have been started with the minables, weapons and AI in preparation for uploading a test branch and having more people playing and giving feedback.

John – Lead Designer

This week I’ve been organising a test build for the team at the Epic Games Lab at Staffordshire University. This gave us some great feedback to get our heads around.

The day went down a storm and allowed us to focus on some objective gameplay points for improvements for the next steam build. Very exciting to see people getting excited about the big changes we’re making!

Matt – Art Director

After creating a good benchmark for crashed wreckage areas, I’ve moved onto reviewing a lot of the new artwork being pushed into the game. This includes new assets for the bridge areas and Dam surface which create the ruined and ravaged look we’re after.

There are a lot of doors in the game as well, so unification of their look and how you interact with them is on my radar, as well as practical work for the larger blast doors we have as entrance ways to a lot of the larger structures.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been ironing out bugs with the Stability/Reaction system with Tom and Laurens help. There are a few more tweaks I need to make this weekend, but the combat with AI is looking really good.

Tom H – Designer

This week I have been creating the points of interest that will inhabit the world around the Transmitter and Silo areas, this includes creating camps long abandoned by men, large rocky outcrops that will provide perilous drops, and sections of ship wreckage that will hold valuable mining materials.

As well as this I have been implementing the assets onto the bridge leading up to the Dam from the Drop Pod, this area now has fully textured assets and makes the area as a whole seem much more broken and worn down. I have been creating large piles of debris that will hold some scrap metal on the ice if you dare to venture down and large holes in the bridge for you to traverse if you have the feet for it!

Yves – Senior Developer

I’ve worked on part of the interaction logic this week, this will allow the UI guys to finish off what they needed to do. I’ve also focused on fixing some of the elements regarding environment oxygen depletion.

Ricky – Lead Developer

Getting the weapons to play unequipping animations when they deteriorate or are consumed in the case of grenades spears of food. Fixed crash with edge case consumables and crash with interacting with foliage now we’ve added the ability to “Use” foliage to gather from them.

Ryan – Developer

Hi, I’m new to the team but this week I have been getting myself up to speed with the project and have been focusing on fixing client-side bugs surrounding the UI and items.

John T – Environment Artist

This past week I have been focused on producing the final few assets for within the dam. This has included floors, wall and door ways. I have also been on the task to apply these within the engine with the necessary material setups experimenting with procedural materials and masking techniques.

Captain Tom– Designer

 

Further AI developments have been taking place over at Flix HQ, I’ve been working with the lovely Lee and Lauren on implementing a dodge and counter attack for our Stalkers and Huntermites.

Ontop of that, I’ve been optimising our lighting and instanced static meshes, ready for our public release of the build, so everything runs nice and smoothly on supercomputers as well as potatoes (Fingers crossed).

OG Tom – Designer

This week there we’ve been running lots of tests and reviews that have been super helpful to drive the design forward. For me this means I’ve been thinking about rocks more than a normal person should. Based on the review and feedback we decided that we weren’t happy with the current destructible rocks, they were either too hard to find or not obviously minable.

So I have been testing out different styles of destructible rocks in the environment to see what works for both gameplay and visuals. Other than that there has been the usual barrage of getting things fixed like doors, weapons, destruction and crafting.

Will H – 3D Artist

This week has been focused on creating breakable crates for spawning common items. In the end, these two will need to have broken versions in order for them to have a satisfying smash when the player cracks them open. I have also been making various tweaks and properly setting up the bridge assets to be used wherever they’re needed.

Marcin – Designer

On the systems front, I have implemented a new method of saving the state of existence of many new objects that new to the game, such as oxygen canisters, crates, and various new weapons. We needed that so the lose items that you pick up as you play can stay gone when you load the game.

We are also undergoing more testing or the objective system and we are starting to look into doing another pass on the collision setup across the world. In comparison to the live version of the game we have new environments and surfaces that need to properly interact with each other and the rest of the game. That is something I will be focusing on next week.

Charlotte – Concept Artist

This week I have been tweaking areas of the medical pack from last week in addition to finishing the design of the water container, tightly sealed in a metallic casing.

Lauren – Lead Animator

Hit reaction and dodge animations have been the focus this week. Starting with the Stalker and moving on to the Huntermite, I have been making sure each AI has a suitable amount of reactions to fit our new stability system that ramp up with each hit.

As well as hit and stagger reactions there will also be a chance for the AI to make a ‘Dodge’ movement, to take them out of the players range and ready to attack again if you managed to hit them a few times in succession. Along with the AI work I have been fixing up various animation bugs and implementing the hit while blocking animation for the axe.

Jamie – QA

This week I’ve been testing out the different enemies thoroughly and posting bugs to do with their attack behaviour. I’ve also been running through the level and reporting on any collision issues in the critical path in the level along with reviewing and signing off fixed bugs and new features.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

Oh we are indeed perfectionists, there’s a certain level of polish that we’re aiming for here before we unleash these changes upon the world. The quality of the experience and atmosphere is important to us, purely because it needs to be as immersive as possible to be the most enjoyable, even in its incomplete state. Once again everyone’s doing a top job of pulling this together for everyone, and a lot has been done this week, including a fully finished model for our Huntermite creature!.

Here’s what the team have been up to:

John – Lead Designer

This week I have been reviewing the game for priority and prepping to take the latest build (with a number of bug fixes) to the Epic Games Center on Monday for 45 people to blast through it and give it a good playtest!

Matt – Art Director

So I’ve gotten to the stage where I’m adding embellishments to certain sections of the drop Pod, Venting atmosphere when you open the airlock, certain ambient sounds etc. Really helping this come to life. There are still a number of things like the players cutscene exit from the chamber when they spawn that need more love, but essentially it’s working as designed at this stage.

Breakable glass has also been added to the storage areas around the airlock to add another element of interaction. On another note me and Tom H are starting to add our wreckage areas to the world which make exploring significantly more interesting.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have completed the stagger/reaction work for the AI. I’ve been trying to work through the bugs with the help of Lauren too. I think we nearly have it bug free. My next steps are to start reviewing the combat with the AI so we can start to put some polish to it

Jon S – Developer

I have been working on a Join via IP interface to allow players to enter an IP to find and connect to specific servers a little easier!

Tom L – Character Artist

Sculpting the Huntermite has come to a glorious end. I’ll be moving onto a zombie style character next!

Yves – Senior Developer

I’ve been helping the designers out by working on the interaction functions so that they can carry out actions on the foliage and rocks, we have a system for swapping out static mesh actors with normal ones and the interaction function needed to trigger it.

Ricky – Lead Developer

Started work on Deterioration for designers to start setting those up. Fixed some additional bugs with consumables when picking up a matching item that would unequip the old one, and a bug where modules refused to be equipped at all, preposterous.

Captain Tom – Designer

I’ve had a pretty busy last few days, but have finished off my implementation of the destruction system, so players will be able to hack apart my wonderful creations, as seen below:

Ontop of that, I’ve been breaking down our AI behavior by behavior, was well as continuing to review our current animations 🙂

Marcin – Designer

My job for the past few days consisted mostly of reviewing and improving our existing game systems. I’ve looked into oxygen balancing, marker positioning and visibility, and the airlock mechanics for our doors, which we’re going to be tweaking next week.

The current implementation of the airlocks feels a bit clunky and unresponsive so we want to improve that flow. Additionally we have started testing on the first implementation of the personal campaign, which is also going to keep us pretty busy.

Charlotte – Concept Artist

This week I joined the team at Flix and have been working on some different pieces of concept art featuring small, medium and large med-pack designs including iterations for a water container.

JT – Environment Artist

First time shower! Taking on a lot of the interior design for the sets and bringing them up to scratch for the game update. Mainly been working on a maintenance set that can do us proud to in comparison to Doom and rest of Eden Stars quality.

OG Tom – Designer

This week I have been taking a look at our melee weapon damage and balancing the amount of damage certain weapons do to both minables and enemies. Also I have been adding the buildables back into the game so you can construct bases but it’s now part our narrative progression.

Tom H – Designer

This week I have been fleshing out Points of Interest around the base of the Transmitter down to the silo. This means filling the world with interesting rock structures, small camps, ship wreckage and some enemies and loot, to make sure there is enough for you Pioneers to experience in this world and make sure there is no way you can be bored! As well as this I have been making small design changes to areas such as the Dam, Transmitter and the terrain, all to make these sections the best they can be!

Lauren – Lead Animator

This week I have been working with Lee on the new AI stability system which will improve the feel of how you hit and interact with the AI. For this I have been working on creating new stagger animations along with improvements to what we already have and balancing the stability and attack force values together.

It still needs a bit of work but its getting there! The new system allows for thresholds of stability, so that when you wail on AI they will play proportionally bigger staggers. Next steps will be adding counter attacks so that there is a risk for staying too close for very long…

Along with the stability, I have skin weighted and added in the new Huntermite mesh which is looking awesome.

Andy – Lead QA

Jamie and I were tasked with getting all the issues, both small and large, listed and prioritised this week which has involved lots of Trello work, assigning tasks and bugging the developers in order to ensure that these are addressed.

Will H – 3D Artist

This week has been a continuation of the bridge assets. I have been designing and creating bridge barriers as well as debris and sand piles to help break up the modular look further. Metal railings on the barriers have been kept separate in order for the players to break them and gather resources. As for the debris and sand piles, we can add random items and resources on top for players to grab if they spot them.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix