Post Re-instated from – 18 APR @ 7:23PM

Greetings Pioneers!

There’s been some Worldly changes going on. The team have been making further improvements to UI, world atmospherics and the base/build system. Design have been improving and balancing crafting and resource collection.

Matt – Art Director

Eventful week to say the least! many new elements of development are coming together to improve and unify the visual styling across the board, from the future vehicles to new UI elements. 

There are quite a few VFX and atmospheric improvements that are being made which is pushing up the realism, making a big difference in the dangerous immersive feeling we’re trying to get across to Pioneers when they play this first area.

Joe – Lead Artist

Loads of high-level visual work has gone into ES over the past couple weeks – in particular, I’ve finished an initial pass on our lighting and day/night cycle visuals, and am now working on tying everything together with VFX and atmospherics. 

The UI boot sequence and damage effects have also been improved, and I’ve made a couple of benchmark assets and placement systems to assist with level design.

I also had time to add some more informative, segmented health bars, just so players can see what they’re getting into when they initiate combat.

Davide – Concept Artist

Moved swiftly onto colour concepts and Orthographics for our hostile world tree variant. These trees are more in keeping with the visual language of the creatures. Pictures to come soon!

Glenn – 3D Artist

I’ve been working on the transport vehicle model, getting it closer to the latest concept and making it more functional with some removable parts. We have constructed it in such a way that the back compartment could potentially be removed and other modular assets put there instead, perhaps a trailer for carrying cargo or a gun turret. 

In general it should look and feel more exciting and fit well with the rest of the Eden Star aesthetic due to Davide’s great concept work. It has also been optimised more, so it should perform well when in game. I’m really looking forward to driving it!

Andy H – Level Designer

This week I’ve been playing the early areas of the game to get an idea of how easy it is to gather materials for crafting, looking at item descriptions as I go. Been smashing all of our destructibles to see if they feel right and investigating damaging them with each type of weapon for balancing. 

Some of the interaction markers for some Items were wrong so I’ve fixed that right up too. Also John T has gone over some new shipwreck assets that I’m going to spread around places next week to make shipwrecks look and feel more believable.

Lauren – Lead Animator

We’ve had time this week to delve into fixing up some of the 1st person player gun animation issues, also 3rd person melee animations with the fists and shiv have been getting some love, and are shaping up nicely. With the fixes incoming to 3rd person aiming this should make for a much nicer experience.

Yves – Senior Developer

Spent some time on the traces for 3rd person melee aiming to make bashing AI and picking things up in 3rd person much easier.

John T – 3D Artist

This past week I have looked back at the shipwreck and assessed how we could improve the overall aesthetic. This included breaking up the silhouette with some new panels and rebar. Also the arrangement of these assets better reflects the narrative that we wish to convey. The blending with the new terrain has overall been hugely beneficial to the scene.

David M – 3D Artist

First time joining the blog post and boy do I have a treat for you guys…I’ve been creating collision meshes for our beautiful rock collection! This may or may not have involved me flinging myself at real life rocks to test how collision should work. Either way, it’s been super fun and I hope it never ends.

Tom W – Lead Designer

This week I’ve been getting stuck back into Eden Star playthroughs so we can review certain elements of the game for balancing. This has also been great for spotting little bugs we’ve had and cleaning them up as we go along. The only noticeable change for players will be some animations for the reticles on melee weapons, kinetic tools and build tools.

Melissa – Technical Designer

Jumped onto this project for the first time recently and have been prototyping a new build wheel interface and back end system to make it more user friendly and easier to navigate. This prototype is in the early stages but is coming together well.

Look back here for more updates soon!

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix