Greetings Pioneers!

The bugs list is getting crunched right down this week as the devs smash problems and implement fixes. On the art side of things, the opening sequence, UI menus, HUD elements, radiation zones and minable rock nodes have been receiving further passes as we tie more elements and systems together prior to release.

Here’s what we’ve been up to in more detail:

John – Lead Designer

We’re continuing to ramp up debugging to get the game as clean as possible, this will involve a lot of playtesting and prioritisation of any remaining game breaking bugs until we get to a stage where most of the critical ones are wrapped up. The majority of new art asset content is now in the game, meaning we have worked it down to a handful of issues surrounding the visuals. communication with everyone is more paramount at this stage to push the quality up.

Matt – Art Director

We’ve whittled it down to a handful of 3D assets left to produce for our next update. Improvements aside there are a handful of pickup items that still need creating and polishing up along with a few structural elements that haven’t had much attention as of yet.

As insignificant as some structural elements may feel it still breaks immersion when you stumble across any untextured asset. I’ve been tackling quite a few lighting issues myself, and amending materials that are now requiring additional work due to some changes to their global values.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been looking at the turrets and seem to have it working well now. I’ve also been putting in some polish with the Stalkers and making some of the behaviour tasks easier for designers to implement. Finally today I have been adding some more debug information to the Gameplay Debugger which is one of those tasks I’ve been trying to get around too, but never do.

Joe – Lead Artist

I’ve been polishing and tidying up the Front-End, Pause menus and Options screens, finally implementing the new visuals from a while back. The options and game setup menus in particular will be much clearer, providing details on what each option actually does! In addition, I have been adding in the new reticles with Charlotte.

They will be much more dynamic, reacting to the player looking at mineables and hostiles, and will also make dealing damage more satisfying. Finally, added the StatusUpdate UI element for when you enter irradiated areas. Here’s a teaser, please understand this is a work in progress!

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been looking into some collision issues in the engine to do with optimisations and foliage. I have also been looking into some of the more awkward issues to do with smash with Lee and Mike where the AI can tunnel through the world.

Carlos – Developer

I’ve completed our new shiny kinetic tool and have handed it over to test to make sure it’s ready! Aside from that I’ve been doing some lovely and much appreciated reviews for the team on some of their work, as well as diving back into the respawning logic to hopefully resolve our inventory bug!

Tom S – Developer

This week i’ve been putting the final touches on the rework of the LookAt/Scanner System. Before the change, you could only interact with what you’re directly looking at; not totally a bad thing, but when the object is an odd shape, it could feel frustrating when it was no longer focused when you expected it to be. Now, instead of needing pixel perfect precision, you can be pretty sloppy with where you’re looking now, as long as you’re roughly looking at something, it’ll pick it up!

James – Environment Artist

I have been sculpting some really nice gold and silver mineable rocks that our super talented concept artist Charlotte whipped up!. I also have been adding the final touches to a really interesting traversable section of the map which includes some interesting finds for the player along with the final touches to a console of which the player can interact with.

Ricky – Lead Developer

Helping resolve some spring cleaning crashes and getting the old fortifications system back up and running on buildings.

Tom H – Designer

This week I have been designing and finalising some more areas of the landscape and terrain, ensuring the cliffs are lined up properly, the rock assets are placed correctly and everything matched up in the landscape. As well as this I have continued with my foliage placement work and mineral placements around the map, ensuring I balance the right amount of mineables for players to use and can gain mineral from.

I have also created new parts of the map to connect up existing roads around the transmitter and near the silo, these roads now connect to underground tunnels that have since been caved in, and also stretch around to the dreaded irradiated areas of the map, ready for exploration in the future.

Will H – 3D Artist

Some time has been spent polishing up the radiation effects from the previous week since they were looking a little flat. The boundary of the radiation zone now shows thick billowing clouds rising from ground. This may be pushed further soon using a mesh with animated clouds on its surface.

I have also spent time working on new minerals for players to hack at for crafting materials, mainly the silicon and quartz nodes. It took some time to achieve a natural look with these. In the end, we opted for minerals emerging from a more igneous type of rock.

John S – Developer

Continuing to implement fuel mechanics into existing Utilities throughout the game!

Charlotte – Concept Artist

This week I have started to implement the reticles I concepted into the engine, in addition to starting on the keyframe animations in Unreal for the opening boot sequence which me and Joe created pre-vis for a couple weeks ago.

Ryan – Developer

I have finished making changes to the crafting menu so it will now indicate newly craftable makeshift items and any items that are not craftable due to lack of resources will be grayed out. I have also continued clearing bugs around multiplayer, UI, gamepad inputs and a few crashes.

Mike – Developer

The melee blocking system was finally finalised and is now fully implemented in its final form. In addition I fixed a bug in the save/load system which cause all player made structures to spawn in the world invisible, and prepared the enemy health indicators for multiplayer.

Right now I’ve just started working on a silly bug: In the even one should throw oneself off a cliff, under the specific circumstances that they are bearing a melee weapon and pause the game at some point before impact, you can cancel out your vertical velocity. Meaning that running off a cliff and rapidly pausing and unpausing means you get to glide over large distances.

That was all last week, however. This week I fixed that falling bug, it was just a small issue involving the transition of player states that took a long time to definitively find. After that I did some multiplayer map management diagnosis to ensure replication was being kept to a minimum – basically optimisation testing, since some numbers were looking a bit suspicious. Then I started working on the turret system for base building.

John T – Environment Artist

Working with Ricky and Tom to implement the remaining components of the new building assets that you will find in the world. We’ll be pre-building these in place of smaller outpost structures so you can rip them apart and build in their place if you so desire.

I’ve also been working with Tom to improve the PBR shading within interior spaces, some things are far too shiny at the moment but with the introducing of texture masks to dull areas out there should be much nicer contrast between surfaces overall.

Lauren – Lead Animator

Recently I have been putting together the flare, as shown at the end of last week’s blog video, the flare is a throwable light source you can use to quickly illuminate dark areas. The Energy Blade and Baton have also been getting a revamp animation and functionality wise to bring them in line with the new melee weapons. I have also been working on a short part of the opening sequence where you put on your breather mask to protect against the harsh atmosphere in exterior areas.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

Some crucial bugs have been fixed this week. Building now works without your structures turning invisible, progress! With this level of re-working, you’d be surprised what will break in the process.. The Auto Turrets have also had a fix up as we continue to power through the remaining issues prior to release.

On the art side of things, roads and areas are being joined and tidied up, new meshes for minable nodes are being crafted and the radiation zone visuals have been coming together. Also a new throwable light source, the flare has been receiving animations and particle effects.

As a change of pace we’re leaving you with some gameplay footage that we’ve put together. This does not represent the finished release! But it should give everyone a taster of the new mechanics, UI, and gameplay itself.

https://youtu.be/jrQgEUvcXLQ

We’ll do a full breakdown of what people have been working on next Friday, to restore normal service.

See you in the Fray

– Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

The customisation screen for the start of the game has been tested and is mostly working! with just some visual refinements to make, as well as any replication setup so that it all works in multiplayer. New visuals for the Proto-Radiation zones have been in development and the very basic ‘weapon’ of your ‘own two fists’ has now been finished, so you can get to punching aliens in the face.

Here’s what we’ve been up to in more detail:

John – Lead Designer

There’s been a lot work put in this week ensuring there’s a premium placed on destructible buildings within the world. We’ve begun prepping certain levels for the destruction elements in anticipation of building in the existing structures that John and Charlotte have been putting together. This will offer back up the pre-built bases you can stumble across throughout the world.

Matt – Art Director

Making some quite extensive revisions to the Transmitter Tower after playtesting identified we were not getting the most out of the existing gameplay mechanics. There’s been a push to get the Character customisation screen visually up to scratch after the main functionality of it has now been implemented, so there’s some interesting character Combos you’ll be able to assemble when we push this update out!

Lee – Technical Director

In between fixing bugs that Lauren has found with the AI reaction work, I have managed to get a good chunk of time to look at Turrets. They were in a sorry state with all the changes we have been making to different systems, but I think I can now see light at the end of the tunnel. I have a working Turret, with just a few bits of polish left to apply.

Katrine – 3D Artist

I worked on some level design and asset placement this week, placing clusters of loot around in the world. I also worked on some of the cliffs, making sure that they look natural and varied.

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been looking at some the less noticed bugs such as collisions on foliage not being reactivated when they regrow. This is something left over from an engine update but we have tracked down the issue and are now determining how best to resolve it and not break any more recent engine updates. I have also been reviewing lots of the new code and bug fixes coming in and it’s looking good all round.

Captain Tom – Designer

Now that I’m back from my holiday, I’ve gotten straight back into the thick of it, optimising and reworking left and right, smacking bugs into orbit and generally getting things nice and polished up for when you finally get your hands on the build. Enjoy the lovely screenshots!

Carlos – Developer

I’ve implemented our new cool shiny Kinetic tool, its now been handed over to our QA team to start testing it. I’ve also been taking a deep dive into the engine to hopefully start sorting out some of our inventory problems which are unfortunately still plaguing us!

Tom S – Developer

This week i’ve been mostly working on being able to interact with things when they’re not quite on the reticule. Having it being quite forgiving makes it feel much smoother, especially when there’s a lot of things to pick up. Still a ways to go in getting it to feel just right, but we’ve made good progress so far!

Joe – Lead Artist

Lots of little extra bits from me this week, I put together some basic visuals for our new UI tutorialisation, added functionality to the new in-world door UI and tidied up much of the UI and lighting for the Front End Character Customisation screen, which is now fully functional!

John S – Developer

Finished the core work around the character customisation system, this has gone onto Art and UI to add the finishing touches.

James – Environment Artist

This week, I worked on sections of the map, adjusting terrain for nice rolling hills and heights for the player to transverse over, adding cliffs/rocks for some nice visual breaks along with some sweet l00t and mineral placement around the map for the player to go and discover.

Charlotte – Concept Artist

This week I continued with concepting individual pieces of the breakable build set ready for John to create in 3D, which I’ve seen progress of throughout the week and they’re looking really great so far! In addition to this I’ve completed the final designs for the silicon, gold and silver rock nodes you guys will be able to mine. They went through a lot of iteration and I experimented with some cool shapes that may become rarer rock types in the future!

Ryan – Developer

The past week I have been working with Jamie and Mike to remove the most critical bugs that plagues Eden Star. This meant that most of my bugs this week have been bugs with multiplayer around crafting, weapons and player stats like hydration and health.

Tom H – Designer

This week I have been working on one area in the game to ensure the landscape is as natural looking and fun as can be. Asset placements and landscape changes are the aim of the game when creating areas that are fun to explore and also allow you to have a sense of direction, ensuring no matter where you are you can see a way back. I have aimed to achieve this in this area.

As well as this I have also been placing the mineable elements in this area to ensure exploration is rewarded and players looking for progression will be able to have it by wandering through this area. This coupled with the new cliff placements will give you guys an area rich and interesting to explore.

Mike – Developer

Performed some fixes for Multiplayer, relating to account names and UI display as well as a few game mechanics which broke when run online. Also had a few strategy meetings on cleaning up some of the bigger bugs in the game right now.

John T – Environment Artist

This week I have been focused on the planning and production of the assets which will make up a new buildable set used for populating the world. These rundown structures will be entirely destructible and provide the player with resources or a ready built structure to expand off!

Will H – 3D Artist

This week has briefly been spent texturing the Lift from last week. The initial colour scheme was tweaked to match the surrounding in game assets, opting for a more military green.
For the rest of the week, I have been figuring out the visuals for a radiation zone, which will be situated at the edge of the playable area. This involved transitioning into a much harsher post process effect mixed with some particle effects to further push the feeling of the surrounding radiation.

Lauren – Lead Animator

Many bits and pieces for me this week such as weapon and AI balancing, setting up the breather meshes (to have glass, be skinweighted and work on both male and female meshes), updating the animations for first person grenade and spear locomotion, fixing up AI spawners in multiplayer, improving various attack animations and testing the AI…

Besides all that I have managed to make a start on the player ‘fists’ melee moves such as straight punches and left and right hooks so that even when you have no weapon equipped, you can still use your arms to defend yourself (though they won’t be as effective as swinging an axe around)…

Jamie – QA

This week I’ve been working with Mike and Ryan to get some major bugs fixed and signed off. I’ve been doing fps tests across the game to see where we have had the biggest fps drops and what has been causing the frames to drop. I also tested out the new pioneer customisation screen and gave feedback on that.

See you in the fray!

– Team Flix