Greetings Pioneers!

Today we have another hotfix out for you with many bug fixes and optimisations. The calculations carried out on the server have been reduced significantly, which should result in less lag overall. There have also been a lot of fixes to the Turret AI, they should behave as they should more consistently now. If you’re waiting for something new, you won’t be waiting long. We are testing the new buildable lights internally today and tomorrow, so you should see them in an update soon!

PLEASE NOTE: If you are running your own server you must update the current server build in order to avoid any conflicts with running the latest Steam Frontend.

Changelist v0.1.5

• Moved structure testing into a pooled thread, now it only happens when needed.
• Fixed an issue where a Turret would focus on a target that it couldn’t attack without selecting a new target.
• Moved unnecessary tick calculations of hologram placement off of the server, it is now only carried out when the player confirms the placement.
• Fixed an issue with the Turrets where they would sometimes jitter in Singleplayer.
• Fixed it so that Turrets on opposing sides will attack each other correctly.
• Fixed an issue where occasionally new Hives being spawned into the world would appear within the confines of a player’s base.
• Fixed an issue with the Missile Turret where the top would sometimes flip over.
• Fixed issue where the pistol began to function like an auto pistol!
• Fixed an issue where while equipping/unequipping Modules or Weapons… to say the least, would go very very wrong. In some cases you could lose your Build Module and/or be unable to re-equip it. If you still encounter this issue please let us know, as well as what you did to get it to occur if possible.
• Fixed UI issue where you could open the Tab menus while the map was open, and they would overlap.
• Fixed UI issue where activity popups would appear over other menus, but when closing it you’d lose mouse input and couldn’t close them.
• Fixed the Deployment Screen UI not refreshing in realtime to show you if you had Eden Kits to spawn at and how many.
• Fixed Eden Kit markers never disappearing on the Map/Deployment screen or Compass HUD.
• Fixed Map screen remaining open while on Death Screen.
• Fixed a bug where the SMG would be at the players feet in 3rd person

• Tweaked Fade distance for Compass Markers on the HUD.
• Changed some popups to be personal Chat message instead, as they seemed too intrusive to gameplay.
• Tweaked colours of Chat, and added a separate PlayerName colour for your own prompts such as those which display when you get a message about clan activity.
• Tweaked Map Markers player icon.

Many thanks to Salaluiz for the screenshot used in this weeks header image!

See you in the fray!
-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

We will hopefully have an update out soon with a bunch of fixes and optimisations which should help further with server performance and the reduction of lag. We have also been working behind the scenes on upcoming new features, making sure we have all the groundwork in place for the next steps, hopefully you won’t be waiting too long!

Here is what we’ve been up to this week:

John – Lead Designer

I’ve mostly been in design discussions with Marcin, Trist and Joe this week in order to make sure that next week’s development is organised and ready to go! I’m excited to be at the end of these design decisions which include how modular weapons work and degrade (or not degrade!), Tool Modules and upgrades will fit with the economy, and how all of this fits with the inventory and progression system… It’s a lot to do, but i’ve also been working with Matt and Marcin to hopefully be able to push out some updates over the next few weeks as we work towards the big inventory overhaul.

Matt – Art Director

Putting the plan for interiors into action this week. This is one ‘type’ of interior build set that we have designed. Now that our mechanics are in place the interiors and exteriors will vary more as we start to bring the visuals up to scratch.

Lee – Technical Director

Having fixed a number of bugs with the Turrets, I’ve been looking at possibly upgrading the Unreal Engine to version 4.10. It’s been a slow process because of the number of changes we have made to the base engine. Today I’ve also started planning some changes to the way Fauna are controlled in the world which should help with our server optimisations.

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week i have been working implementing foliage system and destructibles improvements. I have also been working with the designers on inventory and progression systems so we can get start getting them implemented. Hope you enjoy them when they are out.

Yves – Senior Developer

Adding optimisations on the construction by taking tick calculations off of the server, we’ve clawed back a whopping 2 milliseconds per frame on the server which pushes the FPS up by a few frames. Optimised structure testing so it is no longer carried out in the main thread, avoiding potential slow down when destroying a building. Structure testing only now happens when it is needed rather than being run constantly.

Ricky – Developer

Fixed some lovely bugs sent in by some of you lovely people, I solved them lovelily. I fixed the bug where equipping/unequipping could leave you without a Build Module, and how the map and Deployment Screen wouldn’t show up-to-date info on your friendly Eden Kits for respawning.

Marcin – Designer

I got to work on quite a few exciting feature this weeks. First of all, we are nearing the finished designs for the progression system and we made a lot of decisions that are finally bringing the whole thing together. Another piece of design I was working on was the finishing touches on the inventory system and all the crafting recipes that will come with it. The initial ideas are down, the next stage will be the initial numbers pass. That’s a lot of paperwork, but I managed to get hands on the two of the upcoming features: the lights, which should be available for testing anytime now, and the procedural weapon system prototype, which looks very promising.

Tom – Character Artist

Finished the High resolution sculpt of the Cybermancer armour and apparel set!

Chris – Designer

This week I have together with Trist finished the various performance tests we have been conducting in order to ascertain what is required to reduce the amounts of physics being run on the new 64 square km map to put us in a position for its release.

I have also tweaked various other designs I have been planning including what we want to do with the in-game map and how it affects gameplay.

The rest of the week has been spent painting destructible rocks which due to optimisations has allowed us to include a hell of alot more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Joe – Environment Artist

I’ve been working on UI textures for the new icons, buttons and inventory graphics, finishing them up this week. I’m planning to revamp the foreground icons for everything you can put into your inventory too! I also got the layouts and concepts for the Inventory, Colony, Crafting, Upgrading and Eden Kit screens finished off for the devs to work from.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been working with Marcin on a prototype modular weapon system, focusing on getting the animations to work in a modular and procedural way based on the selection of receiver and barrel types.

Simone – Concept Artist

This week I have been finishing up the design for the Multiple Item drop box and working on a Canteen and new weapon for everyone; it will be explosive!

Andy – Lead QA

This week I mostly ate too much, tested loads of the build optimisation implemented by the wonderful Yves and ate more. I also worked on bug fixes and quizzed the team on their movie knowledge.

See you in the fray!
-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

This week we’re saying a huge hello to Gronkh and #LaFamilia for showing Eden Star some huge love last weekend!

It’s humbling to see so many people all add us to Twitter (from 600-4000+ followers in the space of a few hours!), Facebook and also who have become Pioneers by supporting development of the game – so a huge thank you!

What an awesome guy and amazing community 🙂

We tried to show our appreciation by giving away steam keys and attempted to get back to as many of the questions on twitter as possible. Please keep giving us your feedback as we’re still very interested in hearing back from you at this stage of development.

Check out Gronkh and please show some love here :: http://www.twitch.tv/gronkh

Today, as well as the usual development update we’d like to take the time to highlight some of the awesome bases created by you guys over the past few weeks:

From cliff-side fortresses

-Tails The Fox

To mountain outposts

-SafetyDance

To island strongholds

-Deus†

Special mention goes out to community member Big Bad Wolf for his experimentation with the building mechanic.

He made a whole mechanical island

Experimented with a tower defence maze

And is looking to set up a city with other players!

Check out his recruitment post here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/259570/discussions/0/458605613402197195/

This week we have been continuing work on features for future updates, here is what the team have been working on:

John – Lead Designer

MOAR DESIGNS! I’ve been working through some of the designs with the team and also trying to sort a load of the financials whilst also keeping on top of the next steps of production. I’ll update the trello boards tonight and we should also have an idea as to what’s happening for the next update including;

• New building styles to differentiate building crafted from different material types
• Internal building panels and decorators
• Lighting panels
• Inventory overhaul with larger inventory space and upgradeable capacity
• Spawn pads
• Item Drops when you die/want to share items
• Turret Fixes
• Build Optimisations (MOAR BUILDING!)
• Inventory lock-boxes

Next – onto the story and survival mechanics…

Matt – Art Director

Currently been working through Utilities. I’ve put together a weapons rack which is effectively a display cabinet for your arsenal (It’s much nicer than just viewing an icon for your weapon we think) Also put together a drop item for the player inventory, should you happen to die and want a chance to get your stuff back. This also opens up gameplay to others, allowing fellow pioneers to loot your body. Very fitting if you happen to be terrible at the game and die a lot.

Lee – Technical Director

Well this week I’ve managed to get a couple of days free to spend some time looking at issues that people have been having with turrets. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Hopefully I have managed to track down all the various bugs. They do seem to be working a lot better now. I’ve also been reviewing the new Juggernaut AI planner to make sure it works fine, but we still have a couple of non AI issues to resolve before we can release this.

Tristan – Senior Developer

As well as bug squashing to the max this week I have been working with the Chris trying to optimise the new level. I have also been improving the foliage destruction replication system.

Yves – Senior Developer

Got out of writing these for the last few weeks, but they’ve finally collared me. I’ve been optimising the game, clawing back every bit of server performance with an aim of being able to host more players on it. Multiple players simultaneously constructing buildings could cause a major performance hit, so we’ve dealt with that. These performance updates will be out next release. If you want to see what I’m currently working on during the week then follow my dev account on Twitter @FlixDevYves.

Ricky – Developer

Heavy, deep, emotional design meetings about the new Inventory system. I wept…

Looked into some issues with accessing the Eden Kits, and similarly inviting other players to your Colony using the onscreen prompt system. I also created UnDuplicator which checks for and removes duplicate assets from the map which will hopefully have minor optimising effects on performance and gameplay.

Marcin – Designer

Is it Friday already? Huh, this week kept me busy since it has had a bit of everything for me. There was a lot of design work, mostly for the future of the weapons, the inventory, the crafting system and the lighting system. There were bugs to be fixed, with the map interface and the Eden Kits. There was pfx work for the upcoming “re-spawn pad” utility structures, and of course there was prototyping for the lights, pads, scanner, and other more secret, but equally exciting things.

Chris – Designer

This past week I have continued performances test on the new map with Trist in order to ascertain where the major hits are occurring. One major change is the way we setup our destructible rocks in the world, which although the new method we will be using will considerably improve the performance of the server, it has meant that all rocks have to be repainted back in the world. I have also completed designs for ingame map which will be implemented at a later date.

Joe – Environment Artist

I started the week by finishing the conceptual work I was doing on the new Tab menus, before modeling an initial block out of the standing light. I’ve also started on the large amount of texture creation that needs doing for all the new icons and buttons required for the improved menu and inventory designs.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been working on setting up the Juggernaut attacks to deal damage and force to the player. Coming your way in future updates, a large, stomping, charging, headbutting, fire-breathing, armoured enemy xD. I have also started work on parry animations for the melee module, which should allow players to block incoming melee attacks with their own melee weapon once implemented.

Simone – Concept Artist

This week I have been creating designs for the refinery (for all your material crushing needs) , the placeable light and a few small containers for the players to drop items in (because no one wants to have all their items spilt out on the floor). Onward to the next concepts!

Andy – Lead QA

This week I’ve been trying to stay on top of the increased social media traffic after a certain someone streamed Eden Star. Other than that I’ve been focusing on turret bug fixes and testing the optimisation of the build mechanic.

See you in the fray!
-Team Flix