Greetings Pioneers!

Some serious transformations are happening behind the scenes.. One of the first driveable vehicles nears asset completion, both female and male characters get their armour fitted properly to match the new proportions, and proper atmospheric oxygen has been implemented.

Here’s what we’ve all been up to:

John – Lead Designer

This week we have been defining the initial makeshift items which are items that can be cobbled together on the player without the need for a Fabrication Unit. This means that we can start the player off anywhere in the world and go from no items in their inventory to a “Repaired Construction Module” and “Repaired Optical Array” which will degrade when used.

These Tool Modules can them be used to Mine better metals/materials and build an Emergency Shelter, a Fabricator, a Temporary Atmospheric Generator (TAG Unit) and certain basic Primitive Structures.

A Fabricator allows for a Colony Grade Construction Module to be crafted which will not degrade upon use, a Mining Laser Module and more… we finally have progression and reason to build bigger and better! After this, we’ll start to go to the other end of the progression tree and create the Excavation Grade Mining-Charge Module and Military Grade Build Module, etc. – which I’m sure you’ll appreciate far more than the initial progression curve 🙂

Matt – Art Director

As we’re replacing a lot of static items for destructibles in places of interest, we’ve started placing in pickups for our atmospheric mechanics. O2 is playing a big part in survival with our game mechanic overhaul so this system requires pickups and ‘safe havens’. I’ve been focused on placement of the pickups so we can get onto testing the initial design.

On the other hand, (my third and most trusted hand which I’ve had to grow to juggle all this work) I’ve been doing material setup for our vehicles as we begin to structure them in a way where we can support customised variation, damage, and lights.

Lee – Technical Director

So this week I have been debugging and finding any outstanding issues we have with the new AI pooling. There are still a couple of minor things, but on the whole it is now working very well. I’ve also been trying to narrow down an assertion we keep running into due to an optimisation where we turn all tick functions off and only turn them on where absolutely necessary.

Butch – 3D Artist

Texture work is complete! after the different textures sheets for colours/glass/roughness etc I’ll be moving onto the destruction modelling.

Yves – Senior Developer

I’ve been working on several illusive crashes with a very low probability of reproducing, an exercise in pulling teeth doing the same thing over and over again in hopes to nail the problem.

Joe – Lead Artist

Woo Eden Star! I’ve been working on swapping out our craftable grids into easier-to-understand lists. You’ll also be able to see details of what you can craft without having to click through everything now. This is just a very early first step in my ongoing mission to make using our UI streamlined yet informative.

Ricky – Senior Developer

Planning to get some progression started in the crafting department. We’re going to change the crafting column to be a scrollable list to differentiate the visuals from other standard inventories to make it a bit easier to spot, and the makeshift weapons and creating your own basic build module will be in the player crafting menu to start this off.

Carlos – Developer

I’ve been putting some time in to get our new audio manager in and working, allowing us to start creating some nice sliders in the UI to control some of our newly designed volumes! I’m hoping to make the system flexible enough so that we can adjust the sounds and add UI elements as needed.

Marcin – Designer

Like I mentioned last week the turning logic for AI seems like a simple concept at the first glance, but it’s actually a fairly complex problem to solve. This week I dived into the guts of the engine to figure out how it was intended to be accomplished and to hopefully emerge with a good plan at the end. I’ve been mapping out the classes and functions that take part in the process to have a better image of what’s going on behind scenes before I start changing it.

I still have a way to go, but I’ve managed to establish a few fundamental rules and design decisions, such as when will the AI turn as a separate behaviour, what determines the direction and speed of the turn, whether the turn will be continuous or beespoke, and how to scale the animation with the speed of turning. Here I can show you the examples of 3 Splintermites using the same animations (for the best or worst) but turning at the rates of 360, 90, and 30.

Tom H – Designer

This week I have been redesigning the main tutorial sections of the game. Ensuring the path is clear and informal for you wonderful players, old and new! Designing the best way for you to learn the basic mechanics and systems of Eden Star in a way that will feel natural and immersive. I have also been looking at which enemies you will encounter as you play through, to ensure you don’t accidentally run into a nest of juggernauts!

Sam – Concept Artist

Hi there! This week we have come to a consensus on the specifics of what the Zombie creature should look like. While original design was a step in the right direction, certain features have been altered to really push the idea of a physical transition between the human and Stalker forms.

The zombie’s skin is constantly deteriorating and peeling away whilst the victim is technically still alive, and so we wanted to make sure the face conveys the fact that while it is hostile, it is still crippled and in a state of perpetual physical torment. Here you can see some of the sketches I’ve done to bring us up to this point – keeping it varied early on, then honing in on what we like the look of!

Lauren – Lead Animator

This week I have been creating and implementing appropriate sounds for the ‘Hunter’mite and ‘Jumper’mite so that the player can have a bit more of an indication where they are and when they have spawned. I have also been tweaking our current armor meshes to fit both the new characters, male and female starting with the Pioneer and Paladin sets.

Jamie/Andy – QA

This week Andy and I have been dealing with an annoying tick function crash and have been helping Lee with understanding what it is. We’ve been discovering a few more bugs and crashes this week too. We’ve also been testing out the new interactions with the Huntermite and the Mite creatures and making sure their new sound effects are working correctly.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix