Category Archives: Progress

April Development Update!

Greetings Pioneers!

Happy Friday! This week the new workbench has transformed out of the 2D concept into glorious 3D. Also our player arms have been updated to match with the new suit models, plus the always sneaky Stalker has been coming together with the new AI code.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

John – Lead Designer

Mainly been doing the rounds, engaging with the work the guys have been showing off this week. Giving them quite extensive bits of feedback so that we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet as we begin to bind this beast together!

Matt – Art Director

For the majority of the time I’ve been focused on bringing our new work bench to life. This is our first step towards tier items that allow you craft the ‘next level’ or valuable compounds and building parts. The bench is meant to be something relatively basic in comparison to the top tear engineering visuals you see with upgraded turrets.

Lee – Technical Director

I’ve finally got the majority of functionality out of blueprint into code for the AI. This should give us a nice performance gain. I’m now looking at the AI rotations because we seem to have a few bugs with some of the code base that already exists. I also want to try and polish up some of the perception functionality now we have AI inside buildings and corridors.

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been helping out with the direction for the melee implementation with Carlos, Yves and Marcin. It’s looking pretty good and we are going with something more modular so that we can easily adjust functionality and make sure we get it feeling fun and rewarding to play.

Tom H – Designer

These past couple of weeks I have been redesigning sections of the Silo and Eden Kit Facility areas. The design of these areas will allow players to explore and underground facility that has been overrun with mites and hunters.

 By designing these areas to have multiple entrances and various routes to take to the silo players will be able to explore these areas at their own pace and in their own manner and discover the secrets this abandoned Silo has to offer.

Captain Thomas – 3D Wizz Kid

I’ve had fun showing the guys the beauty of Substance Painter, which is going to lead to lots of beautiful new models for you all to enjoy!

As well as that, I’ve been slowly but surely reworking the opening terrain area, ready to hand off to some of the other devs so I can get to work doing the final polish on our cuddly, loving, generally adorable Hunters and Splintermites.

Carlos – Developer

I’ve been busy re-working the new melee system after discussions with Tristan, Yves and Marcin, this modular approach should allow us to build new melee weapons with mix and match functionality!

Lauren – Lead Animator

This week many discussions have taken place regarding AI and our priorities going forward with how we want them to behave. Now that we have Lee’s newly optimised AI code to hand we can start to refine the behaviours and get them feeling right. The stalker animations are still in progress but we now have a nice throw attack to add to the mix. I tried to include a gif but he has a new bug and no longer spawns projectiles, alas hopefully next week we can show you a video of him in the level 🙂

I’ve also had a chance to revamp the 1st person arms to update them with the new character meshes, a few weighting and material tweaks still to do but it’s getting there! (screenshot WIP)

Jamie – QA  

This week I’ve been testing out the new makeshift crafting system and I’ve been playing through the updated locations in the game. I’ve also been testing the latest build of the game to find bugs and crashes in both singleplayer and multiplayer.  

Andy – Lead QA

I have been looking into the necessity of a few of the pending features, clearing off boards and putting together estimates for John.

From there I have been investigating the crashes we have been having when AI kill the player, looking into the melee rework and evaluating the alterations to the HUD.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

 

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March Development Update 5!

Greetings Pioneers!

This week our new workbench is taking shape, this will be an intermediary and rather makeshift unit that will be the stepping stone towards better tech.

While the current fabricator bench and armory will be used for crafting more high-end items, this one will be the very first crafting unit you are able to make and, in combination with our on-player crafting, will allow for smoother progression and gentler learning curve rather than having everything available at the start and quickly running out of things to do or work towards.

Here’s what we’ve all been up to:

John – Lead Designer

Along with my extensive administrative responsibilities, I have been working on designs surrounding the crafting system, Melee rework and the new HUD/UI implementation.

I am really pleased with the progression I have seen in the game over recent weeks and feel Eden Star has turned a page in terms of game play and the quality of the work that the team are producing.  

Matt – Art Director

I’ve moved onto high priority modelling work for our new crafting items. This includes some of the makeshift items such as poles, both scrap metal and metal versions, repair tape. All of which can be used to make items on your character.

The workbench is new addition to the crafting station tiers which has gone through a modelling blockout stage.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have continued moving a lot of blueprint work which was recently added, over to code. I was hoping to be done with it at the start of the week, but I’m hitting a few bugs which were introduced by some new code to do with rotations, so progress has been a bit slow. I have also been doing some planning for controlling the amount of AI that can attack at a time and also some work to do with them searching for the player.

Ricky – Senior Developer

Progressing well with the HUD/Compass/Map marker system with TomS. We’ve also come across quite an annoying bug where the HUD stops displaying which is proving very difficult to track down.

Carlos – Developer

I’ve been working on some of our melee weapons, namely how we can make them modular enough so that we can begin mix and matching them to create some cool new melee weapons. As part of this I’ve been looking into getting the axe and the spear to work with the new system!

Captain Tom W –  Lead Cliff Wrangler

I’ve gone on a bit of a binge this week, wrestling the starting area into shape, to act as a template/baseline area for the other parts of the world. Hopefully everyone likes our beautiful new rock blends and sandy bits!

Joe – Lead Artist

More icons and pickup item modelling! I’m also going through a review of future feature updates that may affect art, and looking into new workflows and processes to help keep our art consistent and beautiful <3

OG Tom – Designer

This week I have been looking at implementing mineables inside the existing bases in the world, we are still exploring the best method to implement this without hitting the performance. But we have managed to makes all railings in the world mineable sources of scrap metal.

Also after a lengthy discussion with my fellow designers and developers we are looking at getting a new melee weapon system up and running so we can tie together that initial gameplay loop of crafting cool weapons to help you survive.

TomS – Developer

This week, i’ve been working on the new HUD/Compass/Map Marker system – showing relevant info when you’re looking at a bunch of pick-up-ables like medpacks, weapons and the like.  It’s coming along nicely, working on having just enough info without cluttering up the screen with stuff you don’t need to see.

Sam – Concept Artist

The design for the workbench is now complete, as you can probably tell from Matt’s blockout model. Over the course of its development it has been through over 6 different iterations, but it’s now at the right stage to be taken one step further towards the game world. Unfortunately last week there was no image posted alongside my blog entry, so hopefully now you can finally see some of the work that’s been going towards this particular item!

Other than that, I’ve been working on a more detailed render of a transmitter device that we want to feature in the opening stages of Eden Star’s campaign, It isn’t finished at the time of writing this, but its certainly shaping up and perhaps you’ll get a peek at it next week. Until next time, don’t eat too much chocolate!

Lauren – Lead Animator

The Stalker has been the main focus again this week, I’ve been working on turning animations and improvements to the attacks and reactions. We are giving the stalker a projectile attack (he will throw things) but also a good variety of melee attacks from different ranges. I think I will still include a Tail Attack, thank you for the suggestion last week! In combination with our rework to the AI system this should really make them seem more alive and less like unintelligent clawing-machines.

Andy – Lead QA

This week I have been investigating a number of bug that have cropped up such as the HUD disappearing then starting a new game, player controls locking up when investigating certain areas of the world and a crash when the player dies. This has resulted in me working my way backwards through older builds of Eden Star to see if we are able to pinpoint where the issues first arose in the hope that finding the cause will help with finding the solution.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

 

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March Development Update 4!

Greetings Pioneers!

The pole, shiv, spear and our makeshift crafting system have been taking shape this week, we wanted players to be able to pick up metal shards and poles from looting bases and be able to use them right away as the shiv and pole to bat away or stab at enemies. Combine them together on your person and you get the throwing object, the spear with a bit more range.

John – Lead Designer

Working through design shops with the guys, pumping their brains full of ideas! Really proud of the design progress made by the team this week, finalising ideas and completing documentation in order for us to push forward with implementation.

Matt – Art Director

Throws spear into completed assets list* Finished our first makeshift item that you can hurl through the air. The spear is made up of a series of items you can craft, which can also be used to make more simple tools and defensive weapons such as a Shiv and Pole!


I’ll be moving onto other weapon types soon, but for now there are quite a few art issues that have been raised through testing that need tidying up.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been moving a lot of functionality that was created in blueprint over into code which was to do with the AI attacks. The main reason for this is so we can squeeze every last bit of performance out of the AI. I’ve also been working with Lauren the last couple of days trying to organise all the AI animation data into a format in a datatable which she is happy with but also works easily with the way the code expects it to be formatted.

Joe – Lead Artist

More UI work this week, figuring out how we want to communicate degradation of items to the player. I’ve also been setting up inventory icons for our new makeshift items!

Marcin – Designer

I’ve been mostly finishing off leftover tasks this week, little bits of design and/or implementation that got omitted for one reason or another. I’ve submitted all my work on the AI’s turning, so we’ll be keeping an eye on how that’s performing over the coming days.

Also we’ve had a discussion about how exactly are we going to handle stacking of damaged items, which was an interesting problem to solve. Additionally I’ve fixed a bug that was causing the jumping mites to launch themselves into space if your face happened to be too close for comfort, and lastly the team and I have had a few more discussions about the flow of animations for our melee weapons, now that we are looking to expand the armoury.

Captain Tom W – Cinematographer/Designer/Artist

This week I’ve been working on some terrain tools for our lovely designers to work on. Chief of which being a spline tool that tiles cliff meshes along it’s length. If all goes well, this should massively speed up our environment production!

Tom H – Designer

This week I have been showing some much needed love to the Transmitter area. This has been completely revamped with a new shiny interior, complete with staircases, airlocks and elevators, as well a new maintenance area outside the transmitter tower for you to traverse any way you see fit.

The transmitter is such an important area for the game and as such extra care has been taken to make sure the gameplay pacing, tempo and tone is correct for this section. As well as Splintermite hive battles and facing some flying IKA’s around the top of the tower, you guys will be platforming your way up to the top of this tower to activate the signal. Happy travels!

Sam – Concept Artist

Ahoy everyone! Lately I’ve been doing some work towards the design of the “low-end” fabricator bench that the player will use to craft items. Below you should be able to see a few of the sketches I’ve done for this, lined up in order that they were produced. The design itself has gone through many changes over the course of the week, as the sketch derived from the original silhouette was generally too substantial and large for the rudimentary and bare-bones style we were looking for.

In this way, it’s quite similar to when I was designing the junk spear, as I had to sacrifice prettiness in favour of basic functionality. In a way, it’s “trying to make a good concept for something that’s meant to look bad”. The earlier designs won’t go to waste, however, as they possess many good traits which can be repurposed for the “second level” fabricator bench – a much more high tech and purpose-built version that I may soon begin work with.

Lauren – Lead Animator

This week I have been continuing with the stalker, focussing on the attacks and the animations involved in those attacks. We want to make it obvious when creatures are about to cause you damage with exaggerated movements to give players the ability to dodge, block and parry incoming attacks.

I have been working on a few varieties of charging towards the player into an attack.

Andy – Lead QA

I have been testing the build as usual. Focusing on the AI movement, axe iteration and spear implementation. There are a few issues that testing has been able to bring to the developers attention and amend before they become bigger issues.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

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