Greetings Pioneers!

This week at Flix HQ our testers have been on our newly installed giant hamster wheel blasting through a bunch of single player bugs, and retesting ones that have come back from being fixed. Wonder boy Carlos has been implementing our default defence mechanism of punching, and a digger working on the grounds fell over.

But wait, more exciting things have happened.. here’s what we’ve all been upto:

John – Lead Designer

Organisation of the testing team is in full motion. There have been some changes for the better introducing a more dedicated testing team, as we’ve brought them up to speed we’ve been pulling out changes and tweaks through playing builds so we can properly see what is still missing from the player experience. As mentioned previously we’ll be pushing for something we can get onto steam as soon as we’ve properly implemented the changes needed to pull the full experience together.

Matt – Art Director

So there are some aspects of the game that have been in constant review over the last few days, tutorialisation being one aspect. It is a premium with our current setup where the pioneer is given a malfunctioning Tool Arm to repair. This is going to require UI elements to communicate across what is required to fix it, as well as audio that makes this very apparent to as a problem to a player. establishing what will/won’t visually work will by my focus with Joe going into next week.

Lee – Technical Director

Surprisingly AI issues have been quite sparse until this week, we’ve had a bunch of new bug reports come in on some creatures not behaving as we expect. Fixes are in hand once we can figure out what broke those aspects of their behaviours..

Carlos – Developer

This week I’ve been working on adding a default melee weapon to the character for when they have nothing else equipped. Lauren made the weapon, anims and AI reactions which all look amazing! I then worked on the logic to make this weapon become the default if nothing else is available to you guys, so you can punch your way through Pharus 8!

Best watched whilst listening to this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I33u_EHLI3w

I’ve also been working with our designers to make the current weapons a little more flexible for them to make!

Joe – Lead Artist

I’ve spruced up the death screen so at least you’ll have something nice to look at if you trip and fall off the edge of the world. It’s a stopgap until we can do the full rework which will include more detailed statistics and make it much clearer how you died. I’ve also improved the placeholder Objectives window visuals, and I’m now finalising the boot sequence.

OG Tom W – Designer

This week I have been looking at getting more crafting and buildable up and running and fixes bugs across the board.

Tom H – Designer

This week I have been bug fixing all across the map, you can call me an exterminator I’ve gotten rid of so many bugs (sorry). Collision issues, floating assets, terrain and landscape deformations and AI spawning issues. I have looked at it all this week, and fixed as much as I can along the way!

I have also been implementing more corrupted tree locations into the map, these small oasis sections provide refuge in an otherwise dead environment, and can also provide you with valuable protonite and fibers, keep an eye out for these areas in the game and often hidden around rocks or in large open areas of the map.

James – Environment Artist

I’ve been working on some tasty (probably poisonous) mineral rocks for the player to mine. I’ve also started working on a radar dish.

Charlotte – Concept Artist

I have been continuing with some implementation of the boot sequence this week, in addition to some more keyframe animation creation with lots of tweaking!

Ryan – Developer

This week I worked on how modules handle/store energy and I have been working more with Jamie and Andy to clear out more bugs and crashes involving UI, dropbags and weapon attachments.

John T – Environment Artist

Previously I finished up one of our ventilation units for the Dam surface.. This week I’ve been producing extra drop assets for the fabricator. These small assets represent the produced items in game when they are dropped on the floor and in Icons.

Will H – 3D Artist

This week has been spent finalising the Quartz and Silicone nodes. Heavy focus on them looking more natural, so a rougher type of stone detailing was needed to help push this.

Lauren – Lead Animator

AI bugs have been the focus of this week, I’ve been working with Lee to find fixes for the remaining issues. Also I have been tweaking the animations for the flare while working on 3rd person animations for our new ‘fists’ melee….

Andrew H – QA

This week I have been ploughing through fixed bugs and tweaks, testing to make sure they are definitely fixed. Also I’ve been doing run throughs and exploring the map for anything that doesn’t look quite right. In doing so found a few pesky bugs that the guys will have no trouble ironing out.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix