Greetings Pioneers!

This week we have some shiny concepts for our new vehicle designs for you to feast your eyes on, It’s looking good! The first vehicles we are working on is a single person hovering speeder and a much heavier transport with 6 large wheels. You are welcome to suggest some names for these! Bring on ‘Wheely-Mc-Wheelface’ 😛 In other news, we are making good progress on the environment work and the AI. Check it out below:

John – Lead Designer

This week we have been working through the first vehicle designs and refining the details for progression within crafting for both single and multiplayer. It’s a LONG back and forth, but I think we finally have a curve that includes “Makeshift Items” as the craftables on the player and the basic materials that you need to craft the “Replacement Build CPU”, “Makeshift Optical Laser Array”, a Makeshift Spear (I know… bear with me – it makes sense when you see it…) and a Shiv! 😛 In time this will all make sense, and yes, you can still build the Anti Grav Module (Smash!).

Matt – Art Director

With my holiday looming ever closer I spent the start of the week on a slow down, the middle of the week on a complete stop and now I’m actually on holiday. I wish I was there in gloomy old England to see all your wonderful faces, but…well….ok I’m lying! Later peeps!

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been working to resolve issues with the new version of the engine which were preventing us from building and running the game. I’ve also been helping with the discussion about new AI we would like to introduce to the game.

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been fixing up some multiplayer bugs, engine bugs and also ironing out our updated multiplayer design with Andy and John.

Yves – Senior Developer

Working with the other devs to help fix an issue we have been having with traces that enable the player to interact with items in the world. Before it was using the same trace that the weapons and the RMD Tool modules used, but as we are changing what the player starts with we’re having to alter this.

Ricky – Senior Developer

I’ve looked into various crashes and issues from the QA Team – specifically ones to do with changes to weapons and what’s come along with engine updates.

Marcin – Designer

I am continuing with the AI combat work, but more specifically on all the parameters that make each behaviour unique and yet part of the same system. Examples of that would be: whether the attack can be executed while moving or does the AI have to stop to do it. Another one would, how closely in front of the AI do you have to be for the behaviour to trigger, or does the behaviour even care about that? Or when we request a new move, how fast should the AI be going, should it slow down before it reaches the destination, if we are already moving, which one should take priority? Rules and options, all of it. At the end of it the “leaf” tasks of the “behaviour tree” should have enough variety that each creature should have its own character even if they follow the same “trunk” behaviour behind the scenes.

 

Tom – Designer

Landscapes have taken a back-seat this week, with most of my focus being on our brand new vehicle prototypes, working towards optimum bounciness. We’ve got some really great variants up and running now, so can’t wait to show you guys our progress in the coming weeks!

Once we’ve updated our engine version I should be able to start adding some really cool new features to our environments.

Alex – Designer

I’ve been a busy little beaver, working my fluffy tail off at getting the inside of our new interiors textured and up to scratch!

Lauren – Lead Animator

This week I have been continuing with the third person animations and the Axe. It’s coming together. There are some tweaks still to come, still blocking animations and various pared actions such as finishing moves left to do but it’s getting there.

Olly – Developer

Vehicle prototyping has been the order of the day/week! Mostly working on getting physics to feel right and sorting bugs with wheels not behaving how they should.

Carlos – Developer

I’ve been looking into co-op bugs with not being able to equip modules after our system changes to separate the modules from weapons. I also found a few issues with our use and interact systems that I’ve been beating into submission (using the ancient power of code).

Jamie – QA

This week I have been testing the new engine version and checking what works and what doesn’t work in the latest build. I’ve encountered a few bugs that I’ve been working with the team to sort out 🙂

Sam – Concept Artist

Bring on the vehicles!

Andy – Lead QA

I’ve spent the week testing the new version of the engine with Jamie to ensure that it is all working correctly and there are no huge problems before we merge it with our main branch. I’ve also been in design meetings with John and Trist working on our new plan for multiplayer which, after discussing with the rest of the team we are all really excited about.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

This week we have been making more awesome progress on various areas of the game.

The new areas of landscape make traversing via vehicle a breeze. That’s right we have been working on prototypes and designs for vehicles! We have also been continuing work on our early objectives system for single player. Exciting stuff!

Here’s what we’ve each been up to:

John – Lead Designer

This week has been full of exciting design meetings. We finally have a direction plan for multiplayer that will encompass all our current systems (along with a few new ones) in a fun and interesting way.

Matt – Art Director

Whilst myself and Alex were working through lighting benchmarks for the bases last week I’ve been helping the guys out with vehicle setup and design over the last several days. The final visuals will be dictated by the function of these different vehicle types, we’re pretty happy with the different purposes and already have some nice looking silhouette/concept work to go with it.

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been discussing and planning out the game type details for the next stages of multiplayer with John and Andy. It is all very exciting. I have also been reviewing the objective system for the game so that we can get some objectives set up in the world for some fun direction to the game.

Tom – Designer

I’ve been busy working on creating some shiny new vehicles for our intrepid pioneers to explore the world of Eden Star in. Hopefully you guys will appreciate them in all their bouncy glory!

Now that we have some sweet new vehicles, we need a nice new area to drive around in, so have spent the week generating some new landscapes to explore. 

This is a more fleshed out example of the final quality (pre-vis) of what we’re aiming for..

Ricky – Senior Developer

Looked into progressing the latest engine update, some new and rather handy features will be made available for the art team when this is done.

Marcin – Designer

I am continuing the work on the AI behaviours and attacks. I’ve implemented the first area attack and the first ranged attack that work with our new combat behaviours and perception. I also implemented the system for attacks to be able to use supporting visual actors, which will come in very handy when we need an attack to create or manipulate any objects during its execution.

Alex – Designer

Continued with asset unwraps for the base sets! They say UV unwrapping is like a jigsaw puzzle of chaos that can strike fear into the hearts of men! But not this day!

Lauren – Lead Animator

This week I have been continuing with the third person axe animations, there’s still some work to do to get them looking like they are hitting the objects you aim at (also you can’t interact with anything in 3rd person yet) but it’s getting there!

Sam Russell – Concept Artist

Hey there people! I’ve been brought on board to kit bash together some important visual design work for our vehicles. We’ve been focusing on two types, a speeder and 6 wheel transport/shuttle bus.

Andy – Lead QA

This week has been a massive push for finally getting vehicles in the game. We have had our new artist getting some cool concepts together and our new programmer getting a working prototype into the game.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

 

Greetings Pioneers!

Several serious development scrum meetings later.. More progress fleshing out artwork for the bases and the overall layout of the terrain across the environment. Previously we had discussed the potential system the vehicles would use and the designs behind those, we’re now at a stage where we’re putting concept art together for the final vehicle types we have defined.

Here is what everyone has been upto:

John – Lead Designer

Whilst the team are well into polishing off a lot of the existing playable structures I’ve been organising game mechanic reviews and milestones for missing content. This just means everyone will get a more focused experience at the end of development as we focus on the core of what makes Eden Star different and enjoyable! Big thank you to everyone who is sticking with us through this quality shift.

Matt – Art Director

There’s a distinct lack of pretty pictures for this weeks blog.. never fear however! Lots of things going on behind the scenes, so there will be plenty to come. We’ve started piecing together vehicle concepts and massive landscape improvements that we’ll cast upon your eyes when they are better developed.

My main focus for the week has been guiding the continuity for the the new vehicle artwork, terrain and the lighting re-adjustments for the new artwork passes. everything is being designed to surpass the quality we’ve already set to date.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been continuing my work on testing and tweaking the spawning code so it can handle all the eventualities we want it for. I’ve also begun work on merging the UE4.17 version of the engine into our code base.

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been working through production tasks with John and Andy in order to work out what features we want to start getting in for our next set of releases. Exciting stuff.

Yves – Senior Developer

I’ve been working on the objective system, there’s a lot to get done, we’re only 85% the way through.

Alex – Designer

Carrying on from last week, unwrapping and texturing the maintenance modular set, now i’ve almost completed the set It’s easier to see what models need tweaking and having more detail added to them. Especially running around them with the characters in the scene.

We’re doing this to make sure we are using all our poly’s to maximum effect. Once this task is finished i’ll start on doing a roughness and metalness pass so that everything looks a little less uniform.

Lauren – Lead Animator

This week we have been continuing with the 3rd person Axe melee and discussing designs and animations for the finishing moves that will be able to be performed when the AI you are attacking is at low health.

Andy – Lead QA

I’ve been working in editor on the terrain changes in order to form the quarried lake behind the dam which has been fun, but slightly problematic.

Midweek we had a really productive design meeting which covered all aspects of Eden Star and formulated the MVP for our next release.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix