Greetings Pioneers!

More systems have been coming together this week with a new fuel stat that the player will need to manage along with their oxygen, sustenance and stamina. The fuel will be less of a worry at the start of the game, and will deplete slowly when your oxygen scrubbers are in action, giving a balance between stats to manage in inside vs outside environments. Later in the game as you obtain energy weapons, that statistic will come into play more as you manage your firepower vs fuel, based on the situation you are encountering and the fuel cells in your inventory!

The objectives system has been reviewed with the first implementation of the support for the first campaign of the game being submitted. Now the global objectives manager is being developed to allow the designers to handle and trigger in-game and map events and encounters…

In the world of level design we have been making great strides to populate the world with minables and things for you can destroy, polishing more pretties and tidying up the AI and pick-up placement in the initial area.

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

John – Lead Designer

Still so much to do! But we’re getting there 🙂

So after promising that i’d update the blog with the todo list for release, I failed last week miserably and for that I apologise! In actual fact I did update it, but the excuse is effectively “my dog ate my homework” levels of lame… so here it is this week instead!

– Fuel in buildings
– Power Connections between Generators and Turrets/Utilities
– Revision of Life and Death (What saves and loads Vs what’s lost)
– Non-Navigational Zone Mechanics (How we block off the edge of the map that you can’t get to with a story based component)
– Destructible Structures new assets, setup and utilities (Weapon Display Rack)
– AI refinement with combat (continued…)
– Character Selection 1st pass

Matt – Art Director

Fully implemented new door facades with their retracting arm mechanism to the ‘Cryo Chambers’ in the drop pod. This makes the space feel more functional and a little more claustrophobic than it was previously. Numerous lighting tweaks and changes have been made to polish the space more from a gameplay and visual perspective, also including another pass on the waking up of the players Pioneer character.

Lee – Technical Director

I’ve managed to get the new AI reaction system into a state that we can start testing it now. I’ve also been fixing a few more navigation bugs where I can. Just when you think you have got them all, someone else manages to find one, it seems and endless task.

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been fixing up melee bugs and making tweaks to the system as the designers try to create different melee weapon types.

Yves – Senior Developer

I’m currently working on the allowing change of environment to be dynamically done at runtime, so things like area oxygen can be changed by things like terraforming type modules . Also I’ve been working allowing foliage to be “used”, this will for players to directly interact with things like bushes.

Ricky – Lead Developer

Sifted through and fixed several bugs with consumables and melee weapons, teething problems as to be expected with new functionality. Consumables were being consumed twice and equip anims not playing, that sort of thing.

Carlos – Developer

I’ve implemented a nice new shiny audio manager that now allows us to control audio levels through the UI, this has been broken for a few versions of the engine when we upgraded! I’ve also started of fixing bugs that have come around from updating the engine!

Joe – Lead Artist

I’ve been standing over the shoulders of the art team being nosy and reviewing all the awesome new artwork going in! I’ve also been working on unifying and implementing an in-world version of our UI, which will be used for flavour and player interaction. I also fixed a bunch of UI bugs and added the new fuel/power stat to the HUD.

Captain Tom – Designer

Had great fun modelling lights, as well as blueprinting them up so our other lovely designers can aim them at points of interest wherever we decide to use them.

On top of that, I’ve finally started to sink my teeth into our various AI characters, in the aim of giving them some tender loving before you guys get your hands on them in the update!

Marcin – Designer

There has been a lot of tying up of loose ends for me these past few days. The objective system has passed its reviews and that alone has un-blocked a lot of tasks we had on our plate and can move forward with now. I’ve added the holographic effect to represent a consumable item you have equipped and Tom S., Joe and myself have also reviewed and tweaked the interaction markers that were recently added to make sure they all work as designed.

We are in the process of fixing a few bugs with those. After all of that is done, next on the agenda for me is looking into encounters and hooking them up to objectives system, so that relevant encounter information can be displayed on the HUD as you are participating in them.

OG Tom W – Designer

This week has been a real mixed bag as I’ve been reviewing many different design systems with the team here, creating new destructibles, placing mining nodes around the world and tackling design issues as they come up. Specifically, the destructible assets are using a new implementation with allows us much more control over the materials you get for mining or interacting with a node.

An example of this interacting with a broken railing will give you a metal pole but takes a couple of seconds. Breaking the railing with the axe is quicker but will give you scrap metal and degrade your weapon slightly. We are look to implement with on many destructibles in the existing bases so we can offer the player materials but also tools depending on the situation.

Will – 3D Artist

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on a modular kit which can be used for various areas in the game. These required some work to get the damage looking varied and ensuring they would snap to each other well at the same time. Still, the kit looked too solid when put together, so some frayed innards were made to make the pieces look even more shattered.

Tom H – Designer

Polish, polish, polish. That’s been the name of the game this week. I have been focusing on getting all the main section of the game fully polished up in terms of terrain, meaning going through the environment with a fine tooth comb and ironing out any creases I find such as floating meshes, cliff problems, terrain issue, you name it! As well as this I have been putting the finishing touches on the spawners for the Dam and Transmitter sections to make sure each and every encounter is as memorable as the last!

Sam – Concept Artist

This week has been all about the makeshift axe for me. I’ve taken last week’s sketches and realised them in a more realistic way, as with the spear, to help identify which features we’d like to include in the design. I’ve been sourcing a lot of supplementary imagery from scrap heaps, as you can probably tell from the dishevelled nature of the renders, which are effectively meant to look like they are built from said scrap.

The design that you are most likely to end up seeing in-game is the one on the far right, which is combination of features from several previous trials. I rather like the way the blade appears to be made from some sort of rusted shard of iron – what do you think?

Lauren – Lead Animator

I have been polishing up the stalker, the axe and consumable animations this week, with various weapon fixes along the way. The stalker has been given more charge attacks with some delivering a single swipe before retreating, others delivering a second swipe. I set up the new Shiv weapon so that all its slashes and stabs alternate, blend their animations and do damage. I’ve also been working on more stability animations for various AI while also working on getting them to react appropriately to blocks and parries

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

More great strides have been made by the team this week to implement features, fix issues and improve vistas. To show some of the state of the current work in progress we have some footage of some of the new update. As John mentioned last week, there are a number of remaining core feature elements left to implement, but we thought we’d show you a little…

John – Lead Designer

This week Andy and I have been working through production and it looks like July would be a push with the ETU battle in the Silo station so… we’re going to forgo that and a number of other components before we get a release out to you, including vehicles and the new Fuel connections between Generators and Receivers. Instead of using Generators, we’re considering having all items individually powered by their own Fuel initially (Note: we’ll balance this initially so that they’ll practically last forever until we the reimplement Generators and the new connection system).

I’ll update this post over the weekend with core elements remaining to do;

TBC

Matt – Art Director

Worked through some basic concepts for in world airlock UI to allow players to easily see interaction points in the environment. This should help draw players to important doors and entrance areas as well as act as a more immersive visual sci fi element. Next steps are working on widgets for these with the guys so we have them animate properly when using doors/sequences in world.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I managed to get a few fixes in to do with the navigation system where sometime an AI would spawn then fail to find the navmesh or just not spawn at all. I also managed to track down a tricky bug which was throwing the orientation out as the AI traversed over terrain. I’ve also continued with the reaction work this week, which I hope to have complete in the next couple of days.

Tristan – Lead Developer

Working through reviews of the Fuel stat on the player and how this will tie into MATA-Tool power use (a little like ammo for the MATA-Tool) and the ability to power your suits O2 scrubbers etc. In addition to this I have been looking at the final steps in refining the melee weapon systems. Still 6 more tasks to hack my way through (pun intended).

Ricky – Lead Developer

Got in the fuel system on the player, and a few necessities for that such as the ability to increase the fuel stat again once it’s used, while getting weapons optionally consume fuel when they fire. This is just the start of many ideas we have for the utilisation of the fuel mechanics in Eden Star. Did someone say jet boots?

We also have implemented the changes to the consumables weapons system, so now you can equip consumables into your hotbar and equip them as a weapon. You’ll see the item in the palm of your hand and we’ve hooked up the animations to gobble it up (it’s a bit more sci-fi than that).

The spear and grenades are also in a usable state in the game though not fully fleshed out such as hold grenade to cook them, but you can either swing or throw spears and they lodge into wherever they impact then can be picked back up for another shot.

Tom W – Designer

It’s been a pretty busy past few days, mostly on the bug-hunting side of things, as well as playing/recording some nice footage for you to have a gander. Other than the video, we have fancy new floodlights for the camp, a little bit of J.J. Abrams, shiny new glass, as well as the usual landslide of small updates to our rocks and sand.

Tom H – Designer

This week I have been putting the finishing touches on the new AI spawners we have in place in the levels, making encounters with enemies much more dynamic and interesting. The Dam now feels as infested as can be with Splintermites crawling on every surface as your disturb their new hive, and atop the Dam stalkers now perch and wait for their prey to approach. These new spawners have given the levels a fresh feel and provide more interesting gameplay and encounters for all you wonderful pioneers!

Lauren – Lead Animator

Focused on transitions for Enemy attacks and cleanup surrounding our character animation system in general. Also focused on getting some footage compiled for the preview video which includes a lot of the animations I’ve been responsible for. (pretty much every animation :P)

Sam – Concept Artist

This week We’ve closed in on a more finalised UI set for the collection of items and newly available “recipes” – essentially what you’ll see on-screen when you’ve got enough materials to craft a brand new item. Getting the balance between flashy and function is key! On the other side of things, I’ve also been working on a new weapon, which shares a lot of the same traits from the junk spear – the junk axe!

Things are still in the preliminary stages, but next week we’ll surely have something much prettier to look at. Whether this item is actually going to be implemented with the next update is still up in the air, but at least we’ll have the concepts to support it whenever it chooses to emerge.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

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