Greetings Pioneers!

Good news everyone! Carlos is back on the scene and helping out with some critical bug fixes this week along with the rest of the team. Testing, optimising and polishing have been on the agenda this week, the roads have had a good tidy up and the introduction is looking sweet. We’ve beefed up the wolves to make them 150% more terrifying and have been planning tweaks to mineral distribution in the grasslands to create more variants in types of rock and clusters of rocks.

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

John – Lead Designer

We’ve been encountering difficulties with our designer based spawn system for bases which has created a headache for progress on this front. So while the developers chip away at debugging that aspect I’ve been reviewing the way that the player will interact with creatures, as well as reviewing the material balancing and distribution. Next week we’ll also be looking at food and sustenance mechanics based on peoples feedback. We don’t want players to feel like cows 🙂 Moooo.

Matt – Art Director

Managed to finish quite a large cleanup pass on the level, which involved removal of ground and interactive foliage from the roads. Cleaning up collision issues with said roads and working on visual polish for the single player introduction.

Both myself and Joe have moved onto a second pass of the mineral assets in the world, reworking the visual ruleset for rocks to better communicate the types of minerals you’ll discover in lesser or more dangerous areas/biomes.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been reworking some of the network functionality to do with Turrets because we have been in the process of optimising the way networking happens for built structure to ease the load on the server. I’ve also been trying to address a few more AI bugs when they have been flagged up.

Yves – Senior Developer

Fixed up a bunch of major blockers for designers such as the loot crate system not spawning crates. Mainly tackling major bugs that those dastardly testers keep finding.

Ricky – Developer

Fine tuning the in game server setup menu and fine tuning some optimisations which needed reeling back a tad. Fin…ally (not tuning) got chance to look into some issues we were having getting the HUD Armour Avatar to work and look right when it wasn’t in some situations.

So the World Setup menu in general has been the focus. I’ve made some tweaks to the Build Menu and worked on the intro too and aside from all that, hardcore fugbixing.

Carlos – Developer

I’m back! It’s amazing to be back working on this amazing game!

This week I’ve jumped in to help debug the Multiplayer side of things (essentially playing online on my own :P), resolving some regeneration issues with some of our buildables as well as looking at ways of ensuring that we detect any server crashes and how to best handle them!

Marcin – Designer

Corruption and Treatments designs. Flaying Zombies right in the cervical, all in a days work… I’m totally working…

Joe – Environment Artist

A lovely mixed bag of bits this week – I started with polishing and tweaking the build menu output window and and scanner windows before getting back up to speed with the Intro progress. It’s looking great! We need to look at some final-quality audio before we get it out to you all. I fixed a bunch of bugs with the intro including AI attacking during the cutscene, fixing missing on-screen prompts, and the time of day progressing before the player gains control.

In terms of new stuff, we’ve made some changes to the Cerberus! (Wolves!). They’re bigger, have more health and have been visually tweaked to fit into their environment a little better. I have also tweaked spawn locations with Multiplayer in mind – Verdant Pass now has more spawn variety and we’ve removed Onyx Shelf spawns that were unbalanced. Me and Matt are looking to do a pretty important pass over Material distribution and placement – specifically in rocks. We’ll have more to share soon 🙂

Lauren – Animator

This week I’ve been continuing working on adding some knockback and stagger animations along with sounds for some of the ground enemies to make hitting them that much more satisfying.

Andy – Lead QA

It’s incredible the amount of bugs we’ve managed to log in the last week alone. There’s a lot of reproduction steps that I’ve been attempting to detail. So much so that I’ve had to take a break from it, I’ve gone back to my roots in the old mines, fighting Goblins in the depths to unwind. But never fear! I will be back to sqaush those pesky bugs next week.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

We’ve been making huge strides this week testing and debugging multiplayer in the new map, and it’s starting to look sharp and shape up.

There are still some replication issues that we need to iron out due to some massive build system optimisations, but it’s certainly getting there. We really can’t wait to play it with you guys!

In the meantime we have been fixing up the annoying bugs we notice you’ve have been experiencing in the experimental branch. We’ve done a pass tweaking the balancing the weapons and modifying default turret durability settings which may have been a little off target with the options we introduced in v0.2.2.

So today we have a little hotfix for you guys to address some of these issues. Depending on stability and the severity of issues going forward past the point of our multiplayer update, we’ll then be looking at moving from experimental into the main branch!

• Stocks for weapons now impact the recoil and stability of fire.
• All weapons have had a balancing pass, including updates to the shotgun firing and reload animations. Additionally weapons now recoil and cock properly after firing.
• Doubled the footprint allowed for building a structure! All your base are belong to us.
• Increased default utility durability
• Player Inventory slot limit decreased from 200->78  (don’t judge me, it’s the perfect amount for 1080p resolution). This was due to performance and some gameplay connotations but with recent balancing the general weight of items has increased so you could never hit the slot limit of 200 from before.
• Regeneration Module on all blocks now only costs Primary Materials.
• You can now only consume consumables, attach attachments, upgrade modules etc from your own inventory or equipped inventory sections in the UI
• Basic mineral balancing pass. Increased perecent drop chance for gold to 2% added more variety of minerals across rock types.

• Fix for laser pillar defence utility randomly requiring more power every time you load from a save. Note that save games (some which crashed on load due to memory overload caused by this duplication bug), will now have this problem corrected and will be usable again.
• Fix for occasional blank (white box) icons appearing in the inventory when loading the game
• Optimisations to the UI addressing frame rate issues when using inventories.
• Fixed not being able to create fortifications of the basic variety
• Modular weapon scopes now follow the rules of attachments, so scopes can only go with allowed barrel types and stocks can only go with allowed receiver types
• Fortifications were sometimes displaying the incorrect visual
• Sprinting and jumping off a cliff into water no longer continues to drain stamina while in the water
• Attempted bugfix for water visibility, please let us know if this still occurs for you
• Removed timestamp from empty slots in the save load menus
• Player avatar in the uimenu animates again

Enjoy! The current known issues for the experimental branch can be found here.

See you in the fray,

–  Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

This week we have been continuing work on the introduction sequence and multiplayer update while reviewing the balancing feedback we’ve been getting from all you lovely people and making tweaks accordingly.

We’ve noticed quite a few people have been asking us about how to get their hands on the experimental build. Look no further! Everything you need to know to gain access to the new map in these builds can be found here! – http://steamcommunity.com/games/EdenStar/announcements/detail/972040066614913182

We’ll be looking to update the experimental branch again soon, so keep your eyes peeled o_o

You can read more about what we’re working on right now below!

John – Lead Designer

I’ve been working on balancing the materials from the feedback that the community has given regarding the experimental branch. I have also started looking into a number of designs that still need to be fleshed out such as the Eden Kit’s Fuel system, the Player Fuel System, the active Scanner (so that you can turn it on and off and also “Pulse” for info on materials around you), Infection and Corruption and Revised Enemy Attacks (so that there are enemies in bases you find and a few more threats when you walk around at night whilst also being able to avoid them with a little stealth!).

Matt – Art Director

Finished off the interior and exterior artwork for our drop pod in the opening sequence. I’ve moved onto artwork for treatments and new utility types. Namely Hydroponic units for growing better yields from plants you find, and a communications relay which will enable pioneers to go on basic missions by placing (what will eventually be story driven) points of interest on your map.

Lee – Technical Director

So this week I have been tweaking the new AI spawners and working with the art team to be able to allow them to place the spawners in colony bases. I’ve also been working to allow them to place them in one off locations, like during the tutorial sequence.

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week i have been looking into fuel designs with John and Marcin so when your fuel runs out all the powered items will stop operating. I have also helping out with some visual bugs for the modular weapons system.

Lauren – Animator

This week I’ve had a bit of time to look into hit animations for the wolves as well as improving the look of the shotgun cocking animation and rigging up this beastie…

Animations and materials are a work in progress.

Yves – Senior Developer

There’s been massive slow downs on clients when blocks become relevant to a player, this is down to actor spawning being a hefty operation. I’ve been combating this by limiting the spawning of blocks by 1 a frame, and then drip feeding a pool of blocks, when one is needed we can take from this pool.

Joe – Environment Artist

Mouse deep in visually tidying up and scripting for the introduction sequence, specifically been looking at adding particles effects and assets which work with the beginnings of our objective system.

Ricky – Developer

Been helping out with backend development for the intro sequence by adding new wave super secret top notch hats off to ya abilities like; the ability to pick up weapons off of the floor and auto equip them, tutorialized UI Menu sequencing, beginning the game with pre equipped armour and consumables, (Joe is away, so I’ll steal his thunder on this one…shhhh) individual HUD element boot up sequences, Shiny new amazing ott og hype… prompts… meh, but at least they’re helpful!

Marcin – Designer

I’m afraid nothing too exciting from me this week. Since we are developing a new system of handling a large amount of structures, I’ve been working with Yves on debugging them. For example a certain order of operations changed and suddenly fortifications would get created with all 3 visual styles stacked on top of each other. As for other stuff, it’s been mostly AI system designs and discussions, such as populating the bases with threats and tweaking the creatures so they don’t run up behind you and bite you in the a… well… behind too often.

Tom – Character Artist

About to start planning for creating our female player model! alongside amendments to the male base model.

Simone – Concept Artist

I’ve been working on designs for upcoming vehicles with Matt making sure that the underlying structure is working correctly before we start work on the outer structure.

Andy – Lead QA

I have unfortunately been off for most of the week, but I did manage to get to take a look at the new multiplayer system Yves has been working on and the intro sequence that Matt, Joe and Ricky have been working on. The new drop ship is looking amazing and the intro sequence really sets the tone for the single player game. Excited to get this out to you guys so we can see what you think.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix