Greetings Pioneers!

The elusive multiplayer respawn crash is still preventing a full release into the main branch but we have been working hard on possible solutions and hope to have fixes for both the lockbox inventory and the respawn bugs (we think they may be related!). Today we have some small but significant fixes for the experimental branch, most importantly so the introduction is skippable without breaking the day-night cycle.

Experimental Branch Update Release Notes:

• Fixed issue where skipping the introduction would cause the day/night cycle to pause
• Implemented fix for some items vanishing from lock boxes after saving
• Fixed issue with missile turret rockets not affecting navigation

As for future features, we have been working on new buildables, Titan Walls and Titan Gates. These are ideal for perimeter base defence, three blocks high and can’t be climbed from the outside. In addition to this we have also been experimenting with explosives and grenades (you will need something a bit more destructive to break through those walls! Hint hint).

We’ve been continuing with the character rework, future environment improvements, refinements to beginning of the game and tutorial along with the initial game objectives which we’re excited to start sharing with everyone.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

John – Lead Designer

They call me the juggler, been full on organising designs and production for the rest of the game on the current and upcoming development sprints. More recently Andy has been helping steer the organisation and features to be included in our sprints.. which has been handy. That’s right, Handy Andy – what a legend! I’m also working on organising some additional people to help out with the work on level design, AI and testing.

Matt – Art Director

Been working with Tom developing our final character base model assets which is now coming a long very nicely. There has been a massive design pass going on for the colony base encounters, these will be getting a lot of new environment art to help support the unique and ancient locations we’re looking to implement for these encounters.

More personally I’ve finished up LOD models for the Grenade and started looking into fleshing out additional buildables.

Lee – Technical Director

I’ve been trying to help with bugs where I can, but working very hard to get my new work done towards AI behaviours, which will make it easier for the designers to make new behaviours a lot easier.

Marcin – Designer

I’ve been working for a while now on long-term and behind the scenes components of the game such as the animation systems, AI attack system, and a few other bits of design, with nothing to show for it to you, I’m afraid. So far we have a few of the enemy attacks work under the new management, it’s just converting converting the rest that I need to finish. What the new attack system will allow us to do is re-use the implementation of any given attack between enemies.

Previously each attack was implemented separately on each creature, the horror, I know! On top of that glorious maintainability we will be able to control the timings of each component of each attack more reliably. I can’t wait for the relentless melee slashes to go away, I’m excited. 🙂

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been helping out with designs for the future of the game. Also I have been helping lauren out with the grenades where I can and trying to track some of the more persistent bugs down in the meantime.

Ricky – Developer

Designs for Consumable Weapons with the grenade gang.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been discussing objectives and feature areas for the game, continuing with the 3rd person character animations and working on grenades, because everybody loves explosions…

Carlos – Developer

Working with Rick to get the server information integrated with steam.

 

Joe – Environment Artist

Mainly design work the past couple of weeks, working on a high-level overview for an exciting rework of our current level. Not much we want to reveal just yet but we want to improve the level in a variety of ways – expanding the player-space, making sweeping changes to terrain to encourage exploration and gameplay variation (no more impassable cliffs!) and adding a raft of ‘Feature Areas’ for objectives, story progression, encounters and to tie into the new Tactical Map system.

Tom – Character Artist

Finished up our final male character model! Onto the female next.

 

Andy – Lead QA

I’ve been working on a lot of production with a few contractors we are planning on bringing on board. Working through our backlog boards, organising the tasks into sprints and assigning the team to them. I’ve also been working on the new Titan Walls and Titan Gate with Matt, which will offer up a new level of protection for your bases.

I was also part of the design meeting regarding our new intro sequence that I’m really excited about. It will not only help new player with the early game, but will offer up Objectives and include a rework of sections of the map.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

 

Greetings Pioneers!

With our best efforts in tow, our updated singleplayer is now in the experimental branch for everyone to try. One dastardly and illusive crash in our multiplayer build is preventing us from a full release into main. But we’re not letting that stop us get something out for everyone to play, as we realise our endeavours are nothing without your interaction with the ongoing development of the games revised mechanics and features.

So with haste, the latest change list for our experimental branch is down below. If you’re unfamiliar with accessing experimental builds you can simply:

• Right click on the game in your steam Library and go to properties
• Click the betas tab and select Experimental Branch from the drop down menu to opt in.

This will begin to download the current experimental build. If nothing happens straight away, we recommend you restart steam.

Experimental branch changelist:

• Upgradable Turrets! – The Laser Turret, Auto Turret and Missile Turret can now be levelled up similarly to the Eden Kit, improving their stats and visuals!
• Upgrading the Eden Kit now changes the Eden Kit model.
• New explosions and sound effects for structure destruction. Different utilities explode in different ways depending on their purpose.
• New surface impact effects for every combination of surface type and weapon!
• New fracture/destruction effects for each type of mineable rock.
• Added ability to skip the Intro sequence.

• Tweaks to Intro sequence wave difficulty. Removed C21 waves if you arrive after dawn. Please note the intro sequence is heavily work-in-progress and will change considerably!
• Updated all mineable rocks – larger rocks should perform better in Multiplayer.
• Improved PFX for all turrets. Turrets should also look more epic as they’re levelled up!
• Removed Candy Cane from loot drops!
• Reduced IKA viper rate of fire.
• Balanced base turret level stats to do more damage.
• Temporarily disabled several Colony bases to improve load times whilst we work on speeding up the loading of buildings.

• Fixed several places in the level the player could get stuck (thanks for reporting them guys, keep ‘em coming!).
• Fixed an area of the map where you could build outside of the playable space, potentially causing a crash.
• Fixed a variety of level visual inconsistencies and collision problems.
• Fixed Eden Kit levels not resetting their health when upgraded
• Fixed an issue where the kinetic laser didn’t consume energy when fired.

You can view the current known issues here. Any feedback on this release is highly appreciated <3

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

We’re very close to nailing down the last issues in preparation for the next release. Whilst the coders work their wizardry the art chaps have been revamping some of the current PFX, adjusting animations and adding damage materials and effects to utilities and defences.

So, we hope you like explosions with more of a punch! because this is all in preparation for the addition of more things that go bang..

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

John – Lead Designer

Mainly been focusing on production tasks for our next sprint with Andy. Grenades and new buildables are high up on the list! Just a few pesky issues with the change over to the new engine version are holding us off this current release, but it’s looking very positive at the moment. Particularly excited about the features we’re adding during Spring time.

Matt – Art Director

With our imminent update just around the corner, I’ve been focusing on polish for visual damage on utilities. Where as before you could hardly tell what utility or defence structure was damaged just by glancing over at it, now you should notice when something is in a bad way.

Heavier smoke effects, sparks and a singed appearance all lend towards making the health state of utilities easier to identify at a distance.

Lee – Technical Director

I have continued working on the changes to do with the behaviour planners, in readiness for the new creatures we have planned.

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have been helping out with some debugging after our new engine update. Hopefully we will have all those ironed out soon.

Tom – Character Artist

Re-working the character suits so they are more visually appealing as well as suitable for 3rd person views.

Carlos – Developer

Since the last blog, I’ve been working on Steam integration for the game, the work on this is almost complete, however, we’ve encountered a few bugs within the engine when it comes to ending sessions, this means we now have to think of a way to successfully de-authenticate users from Steam.

But this work has been put to the side for now as I have been getting stuck into some debugging! Currently we are trying to chase down some of the really horrible bugs which you guys have sent to us!

Ricky – Developer

Debugging Turrets and their levels, EdenKit and levelling then onto collisions of Eden Kits set wrong.

Joe – Environment Artist

Most of what I’ve being doing this week has involved hitting things. I’ve also been working on Eden Star har har har. Impact effects, decals and sounds have been totally revamped and reworked – it’s a small change on the surface but I think it’s the attention to detail that will help bring our world to life. I’ve improved and implemented effects for various combinations of surface types and weapon/tool types (bullets, blast, mine, melee, energy blade, kinetic laser…)

Also we’ve also got some fancy new fracture effects for mineral mining and I did a few more Laser Turret fire PFX tweaks. To top it all off there’s new explosion effects for structure destruction, dependant on what kind of structure it was. Volatile structures such as the Eden Kit/Power Generators definitely go out with a bang.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been working more on the 3rd person animations and camera, refining movement and blending from ragdoll to a recovery animation for when you are blown off your feet. Next up will be addressing the 3rd person weapon poses and aiming and creating some more variants for death animations.

Marcin – Designer

Hello everyone. I have had a look at the water again, this time around at how it interacts with building. As cool as underwater bases sound, we are just not there technologically yet to make it a thing at this stage, but we knew the current implementation did not make a whole lot of sense, so I decided to streamline it.

From the next update forward, primitives can be built in water safely, but utilities and defenses cannot. In other words you cannot have underwater turrets but you can have bridges. I am also currently looking at improvements to the attack system that should give us more control over what the AI does between swipes, so we’re able to make the melee less relentless and more fun.

Andy – Lead QA

I’ve been working closely with John on production planning, tirelessly organising our backlog board and grouping tasks together which we are hoping will help with the implementation speed. Which basically means we are trying to get all the new goodies to you faster.

Also, I have been testing and re-testing the potential fixes for the issues that arose from updating the engine, some good, some not so good, but the team have been working hard to find solutions.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix