Greetings Pioneers!

We hope you’re enjoying the new buildables and lights, many thanks for all the feedback we’ve received so far!

We are looking to get a hotfix out soon for a few bits and pieces, including an issue where trees and swamp trees are sometimes leaving behind indestructible duplicates after they are mined.

This week, in between work on yesterday’s update we have been busy with upcoming features and designing and planning for the next stages of development.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

John – Lead Designer

Hey guys,

It’s been a long week of testing designs, sorting flights to SXSW, talking to press and setting targets for major milestones! We’ve also had an amazing amount of great feedback from the community regarding the changes to the Build System and have tried to convey that the initial implementation of Fortifications are most definitely a halfway-house…

So, last week I said that we would share some of the full design ideas for the final phase of the Build System with you, and true to our word, here it is.

The current Build System has been said to be convoluted for new users, whilst current players (including some of the team) find it a little clumsy. So we decided to revamp the interface to use the Radial Menu designs that we concepted when we first started to rework it a while back. This also means that Build Mode will be separated from the standard Tool Primary Modules and will instead become a standard fixture of all Tool models (1, 2 and 3). The new default “Build Mode” button will be accessed by “Q” and should work as depicted below.

Categories show first, with the last item selected in the centre;

…then the Category Items;

…finally, the Materials, which you can also scroll the mouse to select as before (not depicted here).

We also have an advanced controller option that allows for a slightly tweaked version of the current build mode, with a quick way to open and select the specific Item and/or Material that you want directly.

To see more, including an initial idea of Category group buildings and how Modification system works, check out this link to the designs here :: https://trello.com/c/gokOJPBd

PLEASE GIVE US YOUR FEEDBACK ON THE TRELLO CARD! 🙂

Lee – Technical Director

This week I’ve been looking at ways to try and optimise the way the AI planners work and also the way new creatures are spawned into the world. I’ve also been dealing with bugs as and when I can. Some of the bug fixes made it into the latest release.

Tristan – Senior Developer

Today I’m in the Norwegian Fjords. As a viking I have undertaken my new mission of skiing whilst eating waffles and drinking coffee, simultaneously. My evening will of course consist of staring at wild Elk whilst enjoying Whale meat, for dessert I will ponder the vast expanses that my new Troll like brethren present to me.

Yves – Senior Developer

A massive bug slay, memory leaks, crashes and unoptimised code.

Ricky – Developer

The new Inventory UI is now coming along nicely and I’ve been working towards bringing the several elements of it together so the functionality will be useable.

Matt – Art Director

Finishing up the high resolution model for the Paladin armour set. Been adding new build assets already for our next update, these include and L and U shaped Stairway. Finally I’ve started to implement and revamp textures and materials for our player controlled Robots! (previously featured in our tech demo)

Marcin – Designer

This has been a very stressful week for everybody with getting the release finished and ready. I have been involved in only some of the bug fixes, but I was mainly busy with behind the scenes stuff, such as designs for the Inventory, Power and Fuel system, Replication Units (aka Spawn Pads) and Deterioration. The development of the inventory is in full swing, and just this week I created almost 140 different classes including new Items, Recipes, and Categories. Anybody else would go crazy, but I’m already there and only happy with a spreadsheet. 🙂

Joe – Environment Artist

The first part of this week consisted of helping test our shiny awesome new features for 0.1.7, along with fixing some bugs to do with level collisions, decals and a puddle of death people have been getting stuck in \o/

I then created icons and textures for the new Build menus, updated the new structure icons for clarity, and then finalised the layout concepts for the Build wheel.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been rigging up and animating the IKA Drone, an allied robot specially designed to take out the three-legged flying Alien IKA and Vipers. At the same time I’m reducing the number of bones in the Alien IKA legs, which should improve performance when there are a lot around. I have also been rigging up a smaller, legless flying Bot for use as a scout.

Simone – Concept Artist

This week I have been working on revisions for various designs and have started work on two new Utility equipment – Engineering Station and Repair Bench.

Tom – Character Artist

Just about to start a new ground creature lovingly known in house as ‘the bear’ images coming soon!

Andy – Lead QA

This has been a very long week, full of back and forth adventure. We managed to get a few fixes tested and in which was a big win for us. Then we had an issue with floating bases that just wouldn’t go away, which meant we had a few late night. It all seems worth it though as we had a lot of love through our social media yesterday and this morning regarding our latest update.

See you in the fray!
-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

Today we’re giving your Materialise Module a very shiny update indeed! Now allowing for the construction of Fortifications and Lights! We’ve introduced a the new ‘High-Tech’ build set which will serve as the template for more build sets to come, with the aim to create visually distinctive sets depending on the material you build them out of.

Note: This is the FIRST iteration of the Fortification system. We will be aiming to simplify it further as the game progresses. For now you will need to select the right fortification for the piece you want to attach it to, then snap! Fortified.

Of course there is just the one set for now- you can currently build these new primitives and fortifications out of any non-energy material, this will change when more sets are added later.

More critically we have taken our time in tracking down and fixing several serious bugs that were introduced in the last few updates, including memory leaks and server saving and loading issues, check the changelist below for details 🙂

Important! Please read:

– If you are running your own server, don’t forget to update it to the latest version!

– Saves have been updated now the new build assets and fortifications have arrived so this means you will be starting from scratch with your bases, sorry about this- we hope the shiny new structures you can build make up for it!

Changelist:

• New build set visuals – the ‘High-Tech’ set! This currently replaces our default visual for buildings while we work on other build sets.
• Added Fortifications – A new exterior structure type you can build on the outside of walls in order to further protect them. Currently there are Wall, Window, Corner, Corner Window, Arch, Corner Arch and Door Frame Fortification pieces.
• New Utility: Ceiling Light.
• New Utility: Wall Light.
• New Primitive: Door Frame.
• Added Eden Kit Bubble merge visuals for overlapping friendly bubbles.
• Added basic Controller Invert Y, this uses the same option as the mouse invert y in the Options Menu settings
• Added Ctrl+Alt+P to hide HUD for a screenshot mode (this may be changed in future depending on how users would like the use the functionality. Please let us know!)

• Multiple primitives, which performed the same role (e.g. 3 different corners) have been consolidated into a single block.
• Added new icon styles for Primitives, Fortifications and some Utilities in preparation for future build sets.
• Door health modifier has been increased from 1 to 1.1
• Added optimisations for the enemy targeting arrows, which should help performance when there are lots of enemies in view.
• Rearranged Categories for the Build Menu (Middle Mouse in Build Mode), and added the new Fortifications category.
• Minor improvements to Material Shard visuals.
• Tweaked the distance in which Stalkers get to the player before standing up

• Fixed a memory leak on the dedicated server caused by unwanted particle effects.
• Fixed a memory leak on the dedicated server caused by memory allocation code in the navigation system.
• Fixed a very rare crash to do with decals.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the laser turrets from working while making them look like they were.
• Fixed replication, line of sight, rotation, and positioning issues with the Missile Turrets, which should make them more reliable.
• Fix for VSync not always getting set correctly on some systems.
• Fixed another bug with our Octree pathing system.
• Fixed an issue where Fauna could get deleted at night while you were being attacked.
• Partial fix for toxicity bar when outside the Eden Kit shield, the bar would show incorrect values
• Fixed no collision on some Onyx rocks.
• Fixed an issue where too many Cirrus Spores were being created around Hives in the world.
• Fixed an issue with the Ram attack of Ikas and Vipers that was causing them to go out of sync if anything was hit.
• Fixed an issue where the Ikas/Vipers would not use their spit attack.
• Fixed replication issues with destroying large amounts of foliage.
• Fixed issue with connection becoming saturated when destroyed to much foliage.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes the Vogels would stop moving.
• Fixed being able to place some primitives upside down.

For our latest known issues please follow this link to the public trello boards.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

Our next release is coming as soon as possible and should include shiny new build assets, interior lights and the new fortification system. There are just a few remaining issues to fix before we can confidently push it out to you all.

We have done a lot of debugging this week in order to try and solve some of the potential issues with runaway memory use on the servers. We think we have resolved them for the next release! This should mean more stable servers reducing the frequency in which they need to be re-set.

In between getting this release ready we have been continuing work on upcoming features including the new inventory system, new AI and new structures.

Here is what we’ve been working on this week:

John – Lead Designer

I have been planning production for the next few months, working on further designs for the fortifications, the introduction sequence and story beats for gameplay while helping the guys out with implementation like a boss!

Matt – Art Director

Focused on mesh cleanup for the new build interior and fortification set. Made some critical post process tweaks to compliment our new interior lights as well. Also did a talk for students at Burton college yesterday which I thoroughly enjoyed 🙂

Will be moving swiftly onto character armour meshes in preparation for setting up our new inventory items for crafting of armour pieces.

Lee – Technical Director

So this week I continued work towards finishing off the new SwampSnake, which will be a water based creature. I’ve also made a few changes to how creatures get spawned so we can try to confine certain types to certain types of Biomes. I’m also trying to get some time to focus on bugs which have cropped up of the last few weeks.

Marcin – Designer

What have I been working on this week? What have I not? 🙂 As it turns out variety is not only the spice of life, but also of game development. I have been working on another pass of the survival mechanics designs, character stats, progression, but also the Eden Kit Shield designs. On top of that I have been fixing the turrets, which suffered a massive bug-blow after the server optimisations a few updates back.

My apologies for not noticing that straight away. I also fixed a few issues with Ikas’ and Vipers’ ram attack, which was coming out of sync in multiplayer. Finally, with Matt and Joe. I have been putting my finishing touches on the new primitives and fortifications.

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have mostly been at the top of a mountain but I thought I best get back to it so here I am. I have been profiling and looking into server and client issue regarding large structures and working with Yves to come up with some solutions for it. I have also been working on production as well as a fix for replication large power networks.

Yves – Senior Developer

Yves has been fixing some major bugs this week including several issues with build caused by some of the optimisation work. He has also found and fixed an illusive server memory leak, what a hero! Understandably too busy to write his blog this week as he still has things to fix, a hero’s job is never done…

Ricky – Developer

Continuing work on the new Inventory system implementation and UI. This week specifically I have Implemented systems for Item Categories for filtering the new menus, Finished Technical design for the new tab menu interactions including drag drop, and

Joe – Environment Artist

Firstly I finished my work on the visuals on the second Build Set’s fortifications and set them up in-engine – we just need functionality to swap between these sets. I created new simple icons for Primitives, Foundations, Fortifications and some Utilities to make the build menu easier to understand for when we add these new visuals.

Closer to the end of the week I helped with setting up the new Structure assets to fix bugs we found in testing. Finally, I mocked up a new style build wheel based on designs and feedback from Marcin and John!

Tom – Character Artist

Baked out the textures and did a quick paint over for another one of our creatures. I’ll be sharing images of the new fauna and enemies as soon as they are in game!

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been working on Splintermite Queen animations, this giant will emerge from the hives of Splintermites as an additional defence to bypass. I have also been working with Lee to refine the Swamp Snake attacks now that we have them swimming around in our test level pond.

Andy – Lead QA

This week I’ve been working with Yves to try and solve the issue with our server saves and testing all the lovely new build assets and lights.

See you in the Fray

-Team Flix