Greetings Pioneers!

“In a distant sector of the Milky Way… on a planet that was thought to be lifeless… A native entity and its ecosystem thrives, stopping at nothing to protect it’s domain from interlopers who wish to make it their own” 

Whilst the updates have been a little less frequent (waiting patiently for the cool stuff to land) Development has been at a steady pace! Overall improvements have been focused around our new progression curve, build system, AI engagements, and visual improvements to mining and inventory items which are all geared towards improving gameplay immersion.  

Matt – Art Director

Tech Art is the order of the month. Lots of organisation has been going on with our in house testing team to get mineral rocks, drop items, and physical materials (which control sounds and effects on surfaces) all covered off to make the experience as nice as possible with our coming updates. 

The decision to make this world more Alien to begin with has come with a large responsibility on the Art side to make the world feel a lot more dangerous. It’s nice to see that feeling come to life even with the smaller bits of cleanup that we’re doing. That said, there’s still atmospheric work to do along with finer tuning of sound that will make the experience really come together.

Lee – Tech Director

The new Planner Graph is now finished as far as version one is concerned. The design team are in full swing with it, putting new behaviours together and reporting back any bugs they find with it.

I’ve also started making some enhancements to our Octree to enable the storing of any objects, which will enable us to write some very fast EQS generators by using the information stored within it.

Joe – Lead Artist

After lots of planning and prep we are finally ready to start piecing together our interior kit work into a cohesive whole!

As well as consolation the team’s art into placeable assets, I have put together a basic system for to get them in game which should make the creation of these interior spaces much quicker!

John T – 3D Artist

Being the hero that I am I have been fixing bugs mostly this recent week. I also took the opportunity to implement the new particle effects for our new alien tree! Some fleshy goodness for sure!..

Charlotte – Concept Artist

It’s been a while since I created some work for Eden Star but I am back on it and have recently been focusing on creating some new concept art! Firstly for some pioneer hand VFX which will be visible while building various different items, selling them and while currently idle within the build wheel.

Not only this but I have also been creating some environment concepts for a new silo facility area, where I have started with the lab section which has been abandoned and taken over by all the creepy.

Lauren – Lead Animator

Player animation bug fixes has been the focus these past few weeks, also revisions to several motions to better align with revised design goals for player and enemy combat.

Alongside this we’ve been developing better enemy IK solutions (this makes the legs of enemies touch the floor, to get them to feel more grounded in their environment) and look-at solutions (because everything looks creepier if you can see it watching you…)

Matt W – 3D Artist

“Its ‘Life’, Jim, but not as we know it” Spock mused cautiously…

“It looks a bit like  some sort of tree, but with H.R Giger Peperami inside it if you ask me…what shall we do with it – eat it!?” Kirk replied, wincing slightly as he recalled those Excalbian Meatballs Spock had rustled up whilst on routine patrol in the Delta Quadrant all those years ago. The Vulcan may be many things, but a chef he was not. Needless to say the Captain’s Log that day did not bear thinking about.

“I’m not sure…”, Spock  replied icily, ignoring his captain’s light-hearted jibe; “Perhaps we should just put it on Space ArtStation with the rest of the specimen’s and see if anyone actually ‘likes’ it?”.

“Hmm…I’m not sure anybody will, Spock – but sod it, we probably should at some point”, agreed Kirk.

“Yes – and the sooner we can get back to playing Eden Star, the better – its bloody awesome”, Spock urged “and I reckon there’ll be a new update soon with some strange-looking alien tree thing filled with pulsating, glowing meat by that incredibly talented, but also extremely humble 3D artist chap – ‘Matt Wilkins’  – that’s what I heard anyway…”, he continued – ears now quivering with excitement….

Katrine L – Senior Artist

After a long, terribly sad break from Eden Star, I am back!
I am currently updating the look and feel of the drop items in the game. I have also placed new rocks and cliffs around the Dam as well as giving the terrain a fresh paint. (In other words: giving the QA team lots to do).

Tom Whittemore – Lead Designer

Recent I have been reviewing lots of designs to make sure we are making progress in the right areas and also going over plans to make sure all our ideas are documented and ready to be prototyped and put into production. Thats all I’ll say about that so we don’t give too much away about where we are taking certain areas.

In between these tasks I have been working on our Assault Turret Prototype, a turret that the player can quickly deploy in sticky situations, its all going well getting the behaviour together although as you can see from the gif it still needs some ‘tweaks’

Andy H – Level Design

Completed the updated layout for the Dam Interior, as for the exterior the Buildings above ground have now been replaced with a new destructible version that I created. Fixed a bunch of bugs to do with rocks clipping through structures and a floating Prefab building.

Melissa – Technical Designer

The build wheel first pass has been completed and passed over to the engineering team to finalise all the aspects before art implementation! (You can see the first pass though in this GIF below). Since the build wheels first pass, i’ve been working on multiple aspects of the design – looking at the current tools we have, possible upgrades and various UI elements. As well as looking over and reviewing the current control scheme, including gamepad support!

Carlos – Developer

The long road to revamping our respawn system seems to be near an end now! Our respawn logic in the back end has now been put into place. Ricky and I have now started the process of implementing the front end work for this!

I’m currently in the process of adding a few extra tweaks to our respawn blocks that will make them feel that extra bit better but I won’t say too much on this now!

Leon – Developer

I’ve been hard at work tracking down and destroying bugs in the game as-well as working with Carlos and Ricky on some new features. With Carlos I’ve been helping set up a Marker that reacts to our new Respawn Blocks being owned. With Ricky I’ve been optimizing the way we stream assets in to reduce load times.

Dan – Developer

Lots of work has been going in to make sure that the respawning process for players is free of any technical issues. This has mostly been focusing on issues that can arise during networked multiplayer games and allow us to ensure the pioneer is safe to respawn before giving control back to the player.

Ricky – Lead Developer

Getting the new respawn system hooked up and implemented has led to a slightly more embiggened task than first thought, but I’ve been tackling it anyway this week and it’s finally coming together. The groundwork needed for the respawn menu is also going to be used for future menus like the new build menu which has already been in progress.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix