Greetings Pioneers!

We have a chunky update to the Experimental branch today with lots of shiny new gameplay options. For those of you who have been asking for a free-build or creative mode, we now have many tick boxes and sliders to cater for this. You can also change many of these options in the pause menu, allowing for more experimentation with reduced risk. You might decide to build up a huge base without AI then turn the AI back on once the base is complete and watch the carnage.

There has been a material and crafting overhaul with many changes to both the materials harvested in the world, items crafted in the fabricator and found in loot boxes. We recommend starting a new game to experience this fully (loot boxes and structures will be unchanged if loaded from a save).

We’ve also added 5 new outpost bases for you to find and explore, along with a rather lovely new scanner for all your scanning needs! It also goes without saying this update comes with a bunch of fixes and tweaks too, including a full pass over the modular weapons.

This branch will still be single player only for now, we’re making good progress on a similar options for game server setup from within the game along with network optimisations to make the launch as smooth as possible, bear with us! For now, have a good play around with these options and new materials in single player and let us know what you think! The intro/tutorial is also coming along nicely and will be with you in a future update.

Please read the full changelist below for all the juicy information:

• New game customization options! Before you launch a new game and by the use of the pause menu, you now have the ability to adjust various setting of the game to cater to how you want to play. Example options are:
  • Day cycle length – you can change how much time does it take for the sun to make its full journey around the sky.
  • Day/Night Ratio – Longer nights, shorter days, it’s now up to you.
  • Harvest Yield – This allows you to get more materials out of resources you pick up.
  • Mining speed – That should self-explanatory
  • Free Build Mode! Building, Crafting and Upgrading costs 0.
  • Sustenance/Hydration Depletion multipliers – You can decide how much focus you want to have on food and water.
  • Shielded/Unshielded Player Damage (AI) – Amount of damage you take from AI while inside/outside your Eden Kit shield.
  • Shielded/In World Structure Decay – You can adjust the amount of decay of the structures both inside and outside of the Eden Kit shields.
  • Shielded/Unshielded Structure Damage (Player)/(AI) – How much damage structures take from players and AI both inside and outside the Eden Kit shield.
  • Block Durability Factor – you can adjust the amount of Hit Points Structures have across the game.
  • Damage Taken by AI – Very straightforward difficulty setting.
  • Do Not Spawn Enemies – A checkbox for disabling enemy AI entirely.
  • Do Not Spawn Aggressive Fauna – As above, but for aggressive fauna.
• All new materials! We have reworked the entire set of materials and items you can find and craft in the game. Our focus was on making the game world a bit more believable as well as simplifying the building experience at earlier stages of the game.
  • Ironite, Tennal, Cerulium – have been removed from the game. They may still persist in saved game, but you have the ability to convert them to new materials in your fabricator.
  • Aluminium, Titanium, Copper, Silver, Gold, Sulphur and other raw elements have been added.
  • Oil, Resin, Acid and other items have been added.
  • Bridgmanite, Protonite, Illumium and Teslinium, and most of food and water items have been kept.
  • Computer Chip, Mesh, Carbon Nanotubes, Glass, Synthetic Rubber and many other craftable components have been added.
• All new abandoned bases to discover! These replace any bases that were placeholder previously:
  • Added ‘HydroPlant’ base. A sprawling complex straddling a river, featuring a collapsed crossing and plenty of hidden loot…
  • Added ‘CorporationHQ’ base. A mountaintop base with lots of vertical playspace and collapsed elevator shaft to traverse. Nice views from the top though!
  • Added ‘UndergroundLab’ base. I think you can guess what this one is. The question is, can you find it?
  • Added ‘WeaponTest’ base. In a nice, defensible position this base is a good bet for finding weapon components and ammunition. Beware the automated defenses!
  • Added ‘Pipeline’ base. Once a small outpost for resource extraction.
• New Scanner visuals for world items and structures.
• New Power System
  • Eden Kits no longer supply power themselves, they now act as a distributor of power. You will need generators under the shield to provide power to your structures.
• You can now place consumables in the consumables bar and use them by pressing the relevant number key.

• Huge weapon balancing pass for modular weapons. The damage is no longer placeholder and we have made a lot of tweaks. Let us know what you think!
• You can now smash AI into trees again! Woohoo!
• Improved art for roads.
• The crafting queue is now no longer a queue. Up to 5 things can be crafted simultaneously.
• Eden Kits drops are now more frequent and spread out across a wider portion of the map.
• Complete re-balancing of all Loot Crates in the abandoned bases.
  • No more empty crates!
  • All the new items have been placed in and distributed.
  • Added ‘Engineering’ class of Loot Crate.
• Fauna tweaks:
  • Cerberus (Wolves!) no longer spawn in Grassland Biomes.
  • Reduced maximum number of Cerberus in Forest and Swamp Biomes from 5 to 3.
• Material list in build mode now only displays 1 material if only 1 is available.
• Added key prompts for Loadout bar on the HUD.
• The HUD shield damage effect has been toned down.
• Added MiningCrate Art to Mining Base.
• Art improvements to modular weapons and muzzle flashes.

• Fixed a crash caused by old Arch Primitives being removed from the game. You still can’t build them but old saves that were previously crashing should now work.
• Fixed a crash with smashing a Nahmar while it was absorbing.
• Fixed Low Texture quality setting making the Landscape inaccurate.
• Fixed an issue causing inaccurate navigation around some trees.
• Fixed several hives spawning inside geometry.
• Fixed several road visual issues.
• Fixed debug line in water.
• Fixed Swamp Snakes crawling around on the ground in one part of the map.
• Fixed AI attacking the player during deployment screen.
• Fixed issue where thousands of rounds of Small ammo would occasionally spawn in Loot Crates.
• Fixed various visual issues on first person modular weapons.
• Fixed an issue where Nahmar could get stuck.
• Fixed an issue with Cerberus not running towards the player.

You can also read our known issues list here.

Note: Eden Kits only distribute power at the moment, you MUST build a generator to supply power to utilities.

Have fun!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

This week we have been hard at work on the game settings, server optimisation and introduction. We are looking to push an update out very soon to the experimental branch to allow all you lovely people to set up their own servers from within the main menu UI.

We will be updating the main branch with a brand spanking new build as soon as we feel it is stable and balanced enough. There is a lot that has changed so we need your help in testing all these changes, especially the server setup interface as we cannot test every router-modem configuration in house. Let us know how you get on with this when we get this next release out.

John – Lead Designer

I have been working through the final designs for the corruption mechanic, overseeing the work on the introduction/tutorial, designing how vehicles/mech’s will work and also working out the details on how we refine the survival gameplay loop. This weekend I plan on working through another balancing pass to allow us to push out an update to the experimental branch at some point next week (no intro included).

Matt – Art Director

I’ve managed to revise and create new models and materials for the different Eden Kit levels. These will hopefully give Pioneers more of a sense of progression when it comes to upgrading one the most important parts of their base!

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been looking into enemy spawning inside of bases so that we can make exploring colony bases more an experience. This may be also accompanied by placing hives into bases which could see hives removed from the outside world eventually, changing the way that hives are tackled, turning them into a far greater risk vs reward.

Ricky – Developer

    I helped with design on a new upcoming feature with the corruption mechanic and how we can involve it in the game world and get it to fit in with the game and UI.

Few bugs along the way such as incorrect gathering amounts being displayed on the HUD and some of our shiny new items not being present in the game, or infact existing in the first place so I whipped up some ideas in the lab and… well long story short I created something from nothing and they’re now in the game once more.

OK so the biggest new feature I’ve been working on is customisable game settings. We previously have had a small number of game settings available when creating your own server, but now They will be open to single player users too! And most (Currently all) will be available during gameplay to tweak the experience as you go or set yourself up for challenges!! And here I just wanted to write something worthy of 3 !!! … 4!!!!? NO RICKY BAD…too far…. Awwww

So what kind of things can you expect to tweak? (Taking extra note of my courteous use of the colon). We currently have ready:DayCycleLength, DaytimeRatio, HarvestYield, MiningSpeed. Aswell as returning options for modifying damage to Structure Blocks from AI and Deterioration.

We’re also working on others such as; altering AI spawning, Altering other types of damage such as damage vs players and vs ai and damage from ai to the player, altering Block HP, Changing Stat rates such as Hunger and Thirst.

Tom – Character Artist

Finished off this ugly water Beast! Based on a crocodile, he certainly doesn’t look friendly..

Joe – Environment Artist

I have mainly been continuing with work on the Introduction/Tutorial sequence. I’ve worked on a simple fire asset, art assets for the crash site, UI design of the inventory tutorial component, the intro sequence itself, and the logic that drives said sequence. With Ricky’s help I also created a system to turn on/off different parts of the HUD as required for the tutorial. I’ve also got some fancy sci-fi HUD animations playing when each component appears on-screen.

Looking to future features I also created a UI layout for our first iteration of the Synthesizer screens. This utility will allow you to research and create treatments for a rather unpleasant ailment that you might need to watch out for in future…

Lauren

This week I’ve been continuing with the introduction with Joe, Matt and John, making some placeholder audio for the voice of the drone and various triggers.

Marcin – Designer

I’ve gone to find the gold at the end of the rainbow, and hopefully make friends with a few leprechauns on the way. Exciting. I’m probably on my 100th pint of Guinness by now and have a developed an impulsive urge to say the phrase ‘thanks a million’ to anyone who is nice to me.

Simone – Concept Artist

Created colour concepts for the damaged variant of the Drop Pod in our introduction, and finished the ‘Humming bird’ style creature. I’ve also begun collating reference imagery for upcoming vehicles! We’re in the process of revising some of the initial designs for player controlled mechanicals.

Andy – Lead QA

Working away helping to identify all the major bugs while testing multiplayer on our large island map. The rest of the developers have been working on optimsations and internal multiplayer build fixes so we felt there was no need to include everyone of them by name this week!

See you in the Fray!

– Team Flix

 

Greetings Pioneers!

Well this is exciting! For today’s development blog we thought we would focus in on a preview of our introduction/tutorial development. Joe, Matt, Lauren and John have all been knocking heads to develop story, animation, dialog, artwork and pacing to bring it all to life.

Overview

Our goal for the opening sequence is to keep it feeling as free form and flexible as possible. Critically, our main aim is to effectively use visual and animated interactive components to guide you through different stages of game play learning. Pioneers should also be able to opt out entirely and wander away at any stage if they desired to do so, not affecting the overall story experience.

The process started with the player feedback we’ve had since the early versions of the game. From there we’ve fleshed things out a lot. We’ve always wanted Pioneers to feel isolated, yet superior against surmountable odds. The Introduction has to portray this, both showing your vulnerability, and immense power.

This links into helping Pioneers understand their stats and how to repair their Armour. One of the first stages in this introduction is a quick interactive sequence that will prompt you to repair your existing suit armour.

Good pacing is the core to a digestible tutorial, and it’s important we teach the critical gameplay systems early on. Our basic outline that helped us structure this are as follows.

• Inventory & survival systems
• Weapons and Combat
• Mining and Reclaiming
• Objectives System
• Building System and Base Essentials

Combat and salvaging

Once Pioneers are on their feet we almost immediately want to show that Eden Star at it’s heart is built around Combat. This is important to get to grips with early on as a core game pillar, so there will be a basic weapon drop on the floor as you get up after a seemingly mysterious and violent crash.

With what seems like your own drop ship downed in front of you, smoldering and battered, the Pioneers first challenge awaits. Giving you basic splintermite enemies that must be tackled to allow investigation of the pod in a hassle free environment. This is critically important as all night enemies are designed to be a constant threat to your survival as the game progresses.

The Drop Ship

The design of the drop ship becomes the perfect opportunity to bind gameplay and a unique asset. The development for the parts of the ship logically have to follow our build system to allow Pioneers to reclaim parts.

In principle we are employing a ‘you can do this if you want to approach’ so this is not going to be directly taught to Pioneers through dialog. Instead the most important elements like the pod are made to be obviously interactive, becoming a learning discovery method which is gently pushed under your nose with prompts from the on screen scanner.

Scout Drone

The Drone in the sequence initially acts as an informer for your Pioneers current and rather worrying predicament. We are toying with the idea of potentially making him/her a free starting A.I. scout companion. This all hinges on our progress implementation of the allied A.I. system.

Early Objectives

One of our best solutions to fit within the free form structure is a ‘communication relay’ which will essentially be a trigger with audio. These ‘comm relays’ will actively trigger different location markers on the islands that will lead to other drops/events within our story component.

This is all still work in progress so we hope you liked the preview! You can stay up to date with out development tasks and progress on our Public Trello Boards.

See you in the Fray

– Team Flix