Greetings Pioneers!

Our experimental branch with all the new content was opened up to everyone yesterday, if you missed it, check out our previous news post here:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/EdenStar/announcements/detail/972040066614913182

Opt-in to the experimental branch at your own risk, although you can always move back into the main branch if you are experiencing issues, or would like to get back to playing in the current multiplayer build.

We have been working hard to try and resolve the inconsistent crash a few individuals have been reporting on beginning a new game although we had some issues reproducing this crash in-house.

It appears the crash we fixed for the last release was actually a different one! We have fixed a different rare crash today and put in a potential fix for the one some of you have been experiencing when starting a new game. We think this may have been related to a missing or unpackaged font so we’ve just removed text from the loading screen until further notice. This should help resolve the issue for now.

There is also a known issue with dropping items where all items in your inventory no matter what has been selected will be added to your dropbag.

Bug fixes and changes since the last experimental release:

• Crash fixes
• Added more Ceramic to Water Biomes
• New Comm Station base
• Fixed a rare crash with Hive Spawning
• Fixed Teslinium Clusters not producing any crystals

Here’s what we’ve been working on this week:

John – Lead Designer

We now have all of the values for the new materials that can be found here.

These will be added over the next week and then released in experimental as soon as possible. I am currently working on balancing for weapons and so PLEASE share your feedback in this thread here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/259570/discussions/0/350542683197286152/

List each weapon that you would like to see a difference in including, more or less recoil, spread, faster/slower time between shots, damage etc.

I have also been working on high-level behaviour changes for preparing the AI’s next development pass, looking at how we want the AI to approach, spawn and attack the player when roaming around the world.

Matt – Art Director

Expanding on the crafting items, I’ve been developing materials and concoctions for additional updates on the lead up to Christmas. Work has also been started on our brand new introduction to the game which will mark the start of pushing our story and lore of the island and give rise to the questions of why you are there in the first place.

More specifically the drop pod is now under development, not as a single intact asset, but made of many component parts that can be salvaged as scrap to assist players in the beginning of the game.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been working on trying to help pinpoint a few crashes we have been getting with the new map. I’ve also been adding new functionality to our Octree to take care of the new flying creatures we have planned for a later release.

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have been working on implementing a new power system into the game. The previous one was quite costly in terms of replication to client machines which is something we are trying to cut down. It also had a lot of functionality that never actually got used in the game so the new one is intended to be much simpler. I have also been helping out on some crashes we have had with regards to our new loading screens which seem to cause us many woes.

Ricky – Developer

I’ve been working on the HUD scanner revamp followed by light holidaying and now helping look into some of the crashes reported on steam experimental branch.

Yves – Senior Developer

About 30% done with the rework of structure replication, we now can place primitives with the new replication system. Manually handling actors replication comes with its own set of challenges and benefits. To reduce CPU hit on the client we aren’t destroying actors immediately when they leave a sector’s relevancy range, we keep them around for a small period then stagger their destruction, if the player comes back into the area then we do not need to respawn these blocks.

Marcin – Designer

The majority of the week I’ve spent working with John and Matt on a brand new pass of the tech tree, including new materials, items, and buildings. Our main goal is to enhance the crafting and building aspects of the game by shifting the time involvement from grinding for minerals into crafting.

The rest of the time, I was fixing minor bugs left over from the last release, such as the Teslinium Clusters not giving any Teslinium, Stomp attack not always finding its target, or water surface visuals disappearing on random loads of the game. The last one is still very elusive, but I’ve made steps to prevent it from happening.

Joe – Environment Artist

More tweaking and fixing to start the week off, before finishing off the road placement in the level, which you can now check out in our Experimental branch! 🙂 Speaking of, I made a few tweaks to this week, including removing Eden Kits in some bases so you can more easily capture them, as well as reworking some of the loot placement based on initial feedback.

Just before our public Experimental release I managed to sneak in a new base (Landing Pad) and today I’ve just added another new base which will be in our next release – Comm Station!

Tom – Character Artist

Preparing to start more water based creatures as well as the female Pioneer model!

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been mainly focusing on audio and animation tweaks, implementing new placeholder audio where we had none before and refining others to sound a bit better. I have been tweaking the Cerberus (Wolf) movement animations a little and helping out with debugging and AI fixes.

Simone – Concept Artist

This week I’ve been working on the first draft of storyboards with the team for a new sequence, with fire and explosions and…rainbows – okay maybe not all of that but I will get rainbows into the game somewhere! I have also been making some changes to other concepts from feedback that has been given.

Andy – Lead QA

So this week has been an interesting one. After the release of our experimental branch last Friday I have been bugging up and addressing the many suggestions and issues you guys have let us know about. From there we made many fixes and tweaks and opened up the experimental branch to the general public which lead to more suggestions and issues which needed addressing before we can roll out another update.   

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix