Greetings Pioneers!

We have more shiny progress to feast your eyes on, but it has been mostly a design focussed week. Attacks and AI types are getting the testing treatment and we have been having plenty of discussions about the oxygen system and its implications.

Our new game resolution male character mesh is taking form to match the quality of the new female mesh and we have been continuing with the adjustments to the world to make it more enticing to explore and traverse.

More details below!

John – Lead Designer

Crazy week of refining story points and in game designs for Oxygen and how it influences the players survival/crafting priorities.  Otherwise just keeping a stern eye on the rest of the team so they feel slightly uncomfortable while they work <3

Matt – Art Director

A lot of clean up tasks from my end at the moment. Primarily guiding the guys with our terrain  and atmospheric work outside and within the abandoned structures. This is important for us for the very essence of gameplay, allowing us to better portray larger spaces and give the sensation that our atmosphere and rooms are not safe without getting and keeping your head gear, weapons, and suit in good order.

Lee – Technical Director

The merge of the new AI behaviour system is almost completed. The next task will be to merge the latest release back in, which shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Once that is done we can start to fine tune the creature behaviours for the new areas we have.

Marcin – Designer

I’ve been busy with pretty much 1 but massive task, namely the second pass of the 3rd person player character. Lauren has created a massive pile of 3rd person animation with the basic setup, now it’s time to put it all together with all other mechanics into a cohesive whole. And there’s a lot, multiple walking and running cycles, different turns, jumps, and of course all attacks both ranged and melee.

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have been helping been helping out with some of the logic for converting modules to be weapons. I have also been helping out the designers with terrain in the level.

Ricky – Senior Developer

Onto the Objectives Manager save system which needs a bit of testing and fingers crossed will be completed. Aside from this testing, I’ve been working on some very big changes to our weapon system and ability to equip various items into slots. I’ll probably be stuck to this task for a while.

Joe – Environment Artist

Continued with re-shuffling of the inventory to accommodate changes for the hotbar. We’re trying to make things less convoluted and more obvious by making craftable items appear different to actual items that can be used within the player inventory.

Showing them in list/blueprint form should really add that extra level of clarity as well as making the other functions of a utility visible without being locked into ‘sub tabs’, i.e. item upgrade trees and weapon assembly UI.

Tom W – Designer

This week I’ve been working closely with Alex on some pre-visualisations of the Terrain for the new starting area, as well as retopologising Tom Lishmann’s sculpt for the base Male Character.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been working with Marcin on the 3rd person animations and blueprint as well as continuing work on the opening sequence and the axe animations. I can’t wait to get hold of the new character meshes!

Alex – Designer

I’ve spent most of the last week finalising the modelling and texturing of the Transmitter Tower, one of the big hero pieces visible from the starting area. As well as that, I’ve worked with Tom W on generating some early designs/art for the new starting location.

Andy – Lead QA

I’ve been working on designs for the crafting on the player along with production planning with the team. Other than that I have been playing through the new structures and giving my feedback to the team.  

Jamie – Tester

I’ve been testing out some really cool things the guys have done so far and I’ve been giving some feedback on it all! Also this week I’ve been working with Andy on finding any new bugs and crashes within the newer builds of the game.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix