Category Archives: Progress

Eden Star Update #1

Hello everyone! It’s update time!

It’s that time of year again, IndieDB’s game of the year! Please support us and vote for Eden Star to be Indie DB’s game of the year!

The Vote banner is hidden half way down the page, so scroll down until you find it, and hit the big red button!

indie db of the year 2013

A quick reminder to everyone, and news to those of you who may be new to Eden Star: the Alpha is now available for pre-order via our site!

We’ve done a lot of work on Eden Star in the last week, and having a lot of fun doing it! This is the first of our weekly progress updates, which I hope to keep you up to date with progress (and prove we’re not just sitting playing games all day, every day…).

At the moment, we are finalising the Pre-alpha demo while working towards the UE4 Alpha.

First up: The Development team.

  • We’ve been experimenting with cross-communication of visual scripting (blueprint) and experimenting with new multiplayer components
  • The final tutorial prompts have been worked into the UI for the UE3 Tech Demo (Soon to be released for free to all those who pre-order Eden Star!)
  • A less entertaining bug has been fixed within the Tech Demo to do with the deployable gun turrets, as well as doing a huge amount of top secret other work…

Designers

  • The finishing touches have gone in for the Pre-alpha Tech Demo. Refining basic tutorial elements & optimising performance in-game
  • Experimenting with an all new streaming tech for new, larger open worlds
  • Stress-testing destructables to destruction!
  • Initial designs for multiplayer menus
  • Ideas have been designed for what we are currently calling “the amazing CMD UI” – whether it goes anywhere or not yet, we’ll see over the coming weeks, exciting stuff though!

Artists

  • We’re working on introducing plant-life to Pharus 7, more on this in the near future…
  • Finished modeling and rigging the second of our alien enemies, and continuing modeling of 3rd alien enemy type

Animators

  • Most of the 3rd-person player animations have been set up within the UE4 anim blueprint system, and we are now animating 3rd person directional movement and aim blends (so the player characters can walk, run, etc while attacking in the right direction)

 

PFX Artists

  • We’ve prototyped the effects of some of our extreme weather effects such as rain, hail, and tornadoes!
  • We’ve also been experimenting with world creation, from the basics of landscape spreading, through unified wind systems to light and sky-domes

We’ll be back later this week with more! Oh, and here’s a nice concept for you!

eden star cave concept
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November News Update!

Hello again! We have returned!

I must apologise for the radio-silence lately. All of us at Flix have been hard at work taking Eden Star to shows, polishing the Pre-alpha demo for December release, and developing the game proper in UE4! I must say, it’s exciting to see everyone get stuck into development, and discovering all the cool new things we can do with the engine!

totally legit flix launch image

I’m happy to announce that we’re going to be putting out more updates for you, starting from today! We’ll try to give you something extra-tasty every Friday – A large, succulent meal of juicy Eden Star filling, sandwiched in-between pretty images, with a nice video sauce. Sorry, I’m hungry.

To keep you all updated on what we’re working on, Tuesdays updates will include a kind of weekly roundup of what we’ve been doing, from programming to art and animation.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

If we have the time, the will, and the dragonballs to do it, we want to put out a mid-week post that’s… less serious. These may be unplanned, rough, and dirty, and include some of the things the public would not normally see! Some of us may be putting out live-streams of sculpting, painting, and perhaps just us playing other games and trying to be funny and educational!

See you next time!

Chris W

– Animator, Artist, Guardian of Unholy Knowledge

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Talking Testing Twirling Turrets

Hello Everybody,

In the past couple of weeks we have been busy with the creation of the first buildable robotic structure in Eden Star – the turret. This is neither a reveal nor news. What I want to tell you about is the journey of its implementation. It might seem that, since we already have the building system in place, all that’s left is to equip them with ammo and send them on their merry murderous way, right? Well, wrong. I SAID WRONG, SIR!

eden star ue3 turrets

It just so happens that the prototyping of the turret’s functionality in UE4 alongside the tech demo implementation was up to me and so other developers and I have stumbled upon some challenges along the way.

The biggest challenge with AI, as expected, is preventing it from turning against its creator. Turrets tend to be simple-minded and the concept of friends and enemies can be quite daunting for them at times. Yes, we experienced surprise gunfire, not only against the player, Eden Kit, and other turrets, but we also had some turrets targeting their own bullets… yeah…stoooopid turret.

eden star ue4 turrets

Another conundrum that needed solving was the construction on less-than-optimal terrain. Turrets built on destructible rocks would hover in mid-air if the rock got destroyed and for a time the MATA-Tool had no problem materialising them high up above the ground as long as they touched a wall with at least 1 pixel.

Nothing, however, beats fun with vector maths when your rotators go wrong. The turret is a naturally spinny creature, which is required for all-around protection of the Eden Kit. That is bound to cause problems and we have indeed encountered turrets spinning uncontrollably in place for no reason, firing out their… back panels, and some even being capable of rotating to lock on their target faster than light. You can imagine it was essential for us to make sure turrets give you a fighting chance, if they, despite our best efforts, rebel against you. To keep this from happening ensure plenty of power supply and fresh minerals, but just in case, the emergency button is placed conveniently by the gun barrel. Good luck!

Yours truly,
Marcin

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