April Development Update 2

Greetings Pioneers!

Off to a hot start the last few days, running daily internal playthroughs of the start area to determine any further changes to layouts before we lock it down. Currently our focus is making sure the locations and places feel real in concept and make sense within the games background lore, whilst making sure the major feedback we’ve had to date is driving changes to the pacing of the, this should make the experience a lot more even keeled from the beginning.

We’ll be sharing this in more detail soon so you can see exactly how we’re transforming the introduction to make it more player friendly.

John – Lead Designer

Making a world that appears to have history can be a headbanging task, that requires a lot of minds to merge into one thought process and see a vision of what could be convincing and realistic in terms of development.

This has been my main focus this week, to bring all the ideas together from the initial designs and verify if they are both either A. Solid believable ideas in practice with good references to their implications, and B. Realistic proposals that suit the gameplay and lore. Surprisingly more difficult to determine than you may think!

Matt – Art Director

Continuing level design work with Tom and Alex after our first layout review. The initial layout is undergoing another stage of layout tweaks over the next few weeks with some important blocked out meshes for the individual locations going into place. We’re aiming to have all the important assets in place for our next playthrough review.

We’ve begun placing in the opening events and placeholder dialog which helps us get a sense of timing and composition, also been doing some passes on certain concepts for the more focal art pieces.

Lee – Technical Director

So this week I have continued work towards getting the new spawners complete, this will give the designers a lot more functionality as we start to create more storyline in game. I have also just finished merging the latest version of the engine into our code base.

Yves – Senior Developer

Working on the designs for design driven prompts and dialog within the game. Has mostly consisted of me sitting down with the designers and nodding or shaking my head furiously to the realistic nature of their proposals.

Tom W – Designer

Work continues on the dam! I’ve been making adjustments to the layout/surface of the dam based on Monday’s playthrough session with the team. The changes primarily consist of adjustments to give the player freedom of choice when it comes to navigating their way across the area, which should hopefully let different playstyles/approaches to enemy encounters be more rewarding!

Ricky – Developer

Consulting with Yves on the structure of the the dialog/prompt system to ensure designer use and localisation is straightforward when we get to those stages. That’s right, my milkshake brings all the designers to the yard.

Marcin – Designer

I’ve taken a short break from the land of Flix, and now only one thing occupies my mind, and that’s appreciating the beauty of third person. AND the REAL reason we’re actually implementing it, that’s right you already know why.

Lauren – Animator

I have been continuing with the third person work you saw last week, working out a few bugs with the turning and movement, Improving upon locomotion animations as I go, including some new death animations.

Andy – Lead QA

I’ve spent the week working with Matt, Tom and Alex on the new introduction and start location. There have been a lot of walk throughs, iterations and reworks, but it is really starting to come together. Testing the multiplayer servers has been fun as there appears to have been a little more activity lately and it’s cool to see some of the communities base designs.