Greetings Pioneers,

While we are currently fixing and bug testing the next release (v0.0.9) we’re going to be delving into the depths of our work habits again this week.

Foremost, due to a lot of unforeseen changes with our Unreal Engine 4.8 update it is taking us a little longer than anticipated to get v0.0.9 out to you all.

We must stress that it is very important to us that everyone supporting the game at this stage gets a stable and enjoyable updated build to play, so we’re making every effort to ensure this is done properly.

We’re hoping our update will be with you by next week, which will include a new flying neutral creature, a new type of interactive flora, and more in depth additional graphical options among many other optimisations and fixes. Thank you all for your patience.

In the mean time you can check out our most up to date development progress on our public Trello board.

Andy will start us off this week, so let the testing machine take it away!…

Andy – Lead QA

This week I have been communing with the community on steam to try and get to the bottom of the crashes some of you have been having. I’ve also been trying to get Matt drunk but failing  🙁

Gav – Concept Artist

We’ve been wrapping up loads of creatures in the pipeline this week to prepare some really exciting additional hostile and neutral alien life to populate Pharus 7. We’ve also been looking at some designs and concepts to integrate some really useful and interesting utilities to add to the playerbase’s players’ bases. (?)

Matt – Art Director

For most of this week I’ve been developing the game mesh for the Juggernaut, along with her textures, materials and additional details. Moving on swiftly I’ll be working on some additional elements for the new UI build system, and a brand new weapon for all you fellow Pioneers to use.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been implementing a new perception component into our AI and trying to fix the last of the errors that the recent engine upgrade had broken.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been focusing on the Juggernaut animations; movement, attacks and recovery. I have also been working on a prototype for the leg smashing with Marcin.

Carlos – Developer

This week I’ve been working on bug fixing, making sure that we fix whatever 4.8 broke! I’ve also been working with UMG and trying to convert some of our HUD into it so that we can turn on more post-processing effects and make everything nice and shiny and rainbow coloured! *crosses fingers*

Joe – Environment Artist

This past week I’ve working on new visuals and workflows for our trees, along with creating test areas to get a good feel for the aesthetic we want to achieve. I have also started on re-factoring the art for all our foliage so that it will work with the new Foliage and Multiplayer systems.

Yves – Senior Developer

Working on network replication for the Mata-Tool weapon. I’ve also been barking mad over tree destruction replication if you see what I did there… notice I didn’t use the word “week”, damn! Just did it there!

Chris – Designer

Over the past week I have been setting up a new swamp area in the current map, testing the gameplay and iterating through it. I’ve also developed a new tool to allow semi procedural flora to be placed in the world in clumps.

Ricky – Developer

I’ve continued working on the new Build Menu and system, the new more advanced Power Management system and HUD ready for some additional buildables as well as various optimisations for the game.

Marcin – Game Designer

For the most part of this week I have been helping the team with system changes, improvements, but also some bugs that came with the update of the engine. I have also been working on the interactive foliage, creature behaviour designs and a prototype of a big enemy combat mechanics. Unfortunately I don’t have anything finished to show you, but I have a hilarious gif from a very early prototype here. Enjoy!

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I’ve been in Mongolia. I am one with nature, truly at peace with my surroundings. I am an expert marksman, horse rider and falconer. They now call me Tristman – Warrior of the Plains.

The assets, animations and environments shown here are not finalised and may be subject to change prior to their release.

Till next time Pioneers, Happy hunting!

– Team Flix

 

Greetings Pioneers!

This week we have been hard at work preparing the game for the next release, debugging and tweaking the shiny new graphics options, the Nahmar bird and the Exploding Sac Plant.

Just a few bugs to iron out before we can let you have at it, including the infamous tree-surfing issue. If it didn’t have the chance of flinging you out the map at 1000mph we might have been tempted to leave it in.

In addition to preparing the next release, we have been continuing work on exciting new features for the future… Take it away Matt to start this weeks development update:

Matt – Art Director

Sculpting and painting has been the order of this week. I’ve been developing the games very first large enemy as a benchmark for our future much larger enemies.

Designed for multiplayer and team take-downs, the Juggernaut has armor plates that must be destroyed before you get to his week spots and can take him down permanently. So far the high resolution version of the mesh is ready for baking down to our game ready model.

Chris – Designer

I’ve been prototyping creation of large open worlds with our environment artist and setup in the these maps large dense forest areas to see what is now possible using our new foliage system in Unreal 4.8. We have also begun adding a new biome into the current map ready for testing next week.

New foliage instancing system (experimental work in progress)

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have been continuing work on the new foliage system and getting it working over the network as well as debugging the game for our next release.

Ricky – Developer

Shiny New quick build menu system

Work in progress

Carlos – Developer

This week I’ve been working on the multiplayer lobby UI and getting it all nice and shiny, making sure it can launch us into games, and more importantly allowing us to join each other’s games!

Joe – Environment Artist

This week I’ve been creating a bunch of test levels to prototype the creation of large open worlds and creating assets to test our new foliage system. I’ve also been working on prototypes for new tree visuals to make our forests feel more dense and mysterious…

Work in progress

Yves – Senior Developer

This week, I have been working with the trees. Focusing on setting them up for destruction over the network, and it feels pretty sweet. Disclaimer – No real life trees have been harmed in the making of Eden Star.

Lauren – Animator

This week I’ve been working on refining more of the multiplayer animations as well as making a start on the movement for the Juggernaut. Encountering this large enemy will be a challenge, too large to be smashed around, Pioneers must engage it tactically. It has both melee and ranged attacks… RIP your base 😉

Animation work in progress

Of course we have a lot of work still to do, the design represents a very powerful enemy and will likely need balancing to stop it from being too punishing. We would like it to work both for single player and co-op multiplayer, allowing friends to work together to take it down.

Gav – Concept Artist

This week is largely the same as last week. I don’t know how long I will be in this forsaken cave for. How long will they make me churn out creature concepts until they are satisfied? Only time will tell… They occasionally throw bits of furled up dry meat through the hole in the door hatch they shout from, where when it opens seemingly once every few days, engulfing beams of light mark my only ray of hope.

Until next time, should I muster the will to pick the pen back up and survive another day.

Lee – Technical Director

I’ve finished off the work on the new flying fauna this week and polished up the new spawner for all the new flora and fauna. I’ve also begun work on debugging all the new bugs introduced which were introduced as a result of upgrading the engine.

Lastly, you can keep an eye on our more immediate progress with our Public Trello Board.

Happy hunting Pioneers!

– Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers,

Kyle here, bringing you the latest on developments over at Flix Towers. This week we have something super uber buff to share with you guys. The first ever screenshots from Eden Star Multiplayer. We have been playing the early multiplayer build in the office this week and been having a lot of fun with it. By fun with it I mean running round a map constructed of our shiny new Buildables screaming abuse at each other and shooting each other in the head…or in my case not shooting people in the head and firing a volley of warning shots, narrowly avoiding my enemies target before they ultimately kill me.

Any who enough from me, I’ll first hand you over to our resident Quality Assurance Lead and Cephalopod Overlord Andy to start our Development Update. Take it away brother!

Andy – Lead QA
This week I’ve been dealing with annoying work experience kids, writing unnecessary blogs and testing things. *drops mic and leaves*

Gav – Concept Artist
*Picks up Andy’s mic and puts it in his pocket to take home* This week marks us having completed an initial concept for every creature in the immediate future biomes. Lots of orthographics, lots of sketches and lots of orthographics. That’s right, there’s so many orthographics I had to roll the first load over to another ‘orthographics’ word on the list of things we’ve been up to. Cheers! *Drop’s Andy’s mic and then picks it back up again, feeling bad that he dropped it in the first place* (Sorry Andy; it’s totally broken by now)

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been continuing to work on the pathing for the the benign flying fauna, The Nahmar. I have also implemented on the rather incredibly titled flora fauna spawner; this enables us to randomly spawn interactive flora and fauna throughout the map.

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have been working on bug fixing to do with saving so people can still use their old saves for a while longer. On a more fun note I have also been looking into a bug we like to call tree surfing. It’s quite entertaining.

Yves – Senior Developer

I last week I said there was a surprise, but you are going to have to wait for it I’m afraid. This week we have a very early prototype of multiplayer which caused lots of shouting in the office (mainly because everybody here plays the game very badly and they kept blaming each other for their losing), I’d tell you what said prototype contains but then I’d have nothing to tell you next week.

Carlos – Developer

This week I’ve been working on some UI elements for the multiplayer lobby. Our new shiny graphical options have also been finished, hooray!

Matt – Art Director

I have been working on finishing the base set of assets for the new build as well as icons for the menu. I have also been working on expanding the multiplayer map that was shown last week, to include a forested area to play in. This map will be used internally for testing the multiplayer mechanics but also as a benchmark for the level of quality and density we want to achieve in the main game.

Chris – Designer

This past week I implemented the new Exploding Sac Plant and set it up into the world with a Flora-Fauna-Spawner (try saying that 5 times fast) along with setting up Epic’s new Navigation Mesh system which now supports dynamic streaming allowing us to improve performance.
Finally I have also been working with our environment artist on new processes for level creation.

Ricky – Developer

Has been languishing in the resplendent British summer time on a well earned break.

Joe – Environment Artist

Over the last few days I’ve been finalising the visuals for our new Exploding Sac Plant, as well as working on some top secret exciting new processes for level creation

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been tweaking multiplayer animations, getting the aiming to replicate across the network (so I can tell when I’m about to get shot in the head). I have also been debugging the Nahmar animation blending, fixing its recovery and adding some fun sounds for interacting with it.

That’s all for now folks, as always you can keep an eye on our more immediate progress with our Public Trello Board.

Happy hunting Pioneers!