Post Re-instated from – 5 APR @ 6:44PM

Greetings Pioneers!

The Art and Design team have been hard at work making some much needed improvements to the atmosphere and surroundings. Fundamentally this all helps define important areas in the world. There’s been some much needed visual and lighting re-balancing with further placement passes to make the rock structures appear more natural.

Matt – Art Director

We’re throwing our all at visual improvements to the surrounding area in what is our ‘vertical slice’ for this experimental branch work. Been making sure everyone is focusing their attention on the right things to keep the latest art pass consistent across the game.

Joe – Lead Artist

Lots of work on unifying the visuals for our environment this week. The nature of this work has meant touching on all aspects of our world. We’ve tweaked the lighting, atmospherics and how those things interact with the day/night cycle, as well as replacing many placeholder assets and implementing a whole new terrain shader setup. We want to move away from the sandy mars look, and go for something a little more “Eden Star”…

Glenn – 3D Artist

I’ve been working on the cliffs, rocks and terrain painting. Tom Whaley gave us some great rocks and materials he had and I created 2 new cliff models to match them and got them working in game with collision. It’s looking pretty cool around the main path the player takes at the beginning of the game, we are working hard to set a high standard in this area that we can aim for in the rest of the game. I’ve also been helping with the lighting setup where I can.

Andy H – Level Design

I’ve been working on Placing more objects into the world around key locations, adding in outposts and adding in a bit more foliage around too because everyone loves more stuff to forage.

Also I’ve been adding effects around hives to add more atmosphere inside the dam.

More to come… we’ll be looking at dropping this new content to our experimental branch soon!

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Post Re-instated from – 22 MAR @ 6:57PM

Greetings Pioneers!

All systems online, we’re bringing you a development blog today that includes some of our latest and highest priority changes that we’ll be introducing to the experimental build over the coming months. We have a couple of new and talented artists on the team as well.. so without delay, enjoy the eye candy!

Joe – Lead Artist

I’ve been looking over Davide’s awesome turret concepts and starting the process of translating them over to 3D. Rather than having a set turret with just 3 static levels, we would like to have a modular system of upgrades, where players spend a limited number of points to progress down an upgrade tree.

The current, rough outline is:

• 3 levels of “Base”. Increased range/field of view?
• 3 levels of “Struts”. Increased turn/activation speed?
• 3 levels of “Targeting System”. Increased accuracy/lock on speed?
• 3 levels of “Receiver”. Increased rate of fire?
• 3 levels of “Barrel”. Increase damage?
• Upgrade to add additional Barrel – doubles rate of fire?
• Updated to add Armour Level 1 and Level 2. Increased health?

All of this is in addition to the portable mini turret.

All of this gives you a ton of variation in visuals and playstyle, but you’ll have to think carefully about which upgrade path to take. As always, this is just the current plan and subject to change!

Davide – Concept Artist

In the process of unifying the look and feel of the technology of Eden Star, this week I’ve been looking at the aesthetics of the transport, redesigning its surfaces to fit more with the look we have in mind. 

We want the technology to look and feel grounded, functional, but at the same time to have a very distinct visual signature, alternating clean, bright armoured panels with darker, more mechanical layers. In this design process the visual motifs will then transfer to other mechanical hand-made objects, when the overall design satisfies us.

Glenn – 3D Artist

I have been working on the Transport Vehicle, created a new wheel and got it in engine. Its looking good and I’m really enjoying Davide’s new design for the back of the vehicle which fits much better with this new wheel design.

Here’s a shot of the construction of the wheel, the model with wireframe, baked low poly model and finished textured asset.

We got it working in engine with some nice decals. It fits in well with the hoverbike design!

I have also been working on the metal node which was lovingly sculpted by Basia Ulczok, one of our artist/animators. We have had a placeholder in game for a while and now we have a good high quality asset in there. Here’s a shot of the construction of the asset, low poly wireframe, baked mesh and finished textured asset. 

I got the metal node implemented in game with Joe’s help and you should all be able to mine it in the experimental branch soon!

Andy H – Level Designer

Been creating fully destructible outposts and placing them in the world and working on an exciting new turret upgrade tree with Tom W

Ricky – Lead Developer

Long overdue updates to the reticle system. I’ve been working on putting back in the fancy reticle animations when targets are in range, colouring them red when targeting enemies and all that jazz. The updated system provides us more freedom this time around so expect to see more diverse and unique reticle displays for different weapons.

That’s it for now.. check back for updates soon.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix