Greetings Pioneers!

The sun is shining outside, and we’re teaming it up in the Flix den, continuing to make great progress to the level and large melee system changes that are, as of this last week, going in.

Unfortunately server crash issues are persisting and whilst this is making things difficult for everyone, the whole team appreciates your patience, we’ll be doing a build update as soon as possible, and we won’t be going anywhere until this gets done <3

We hope you’ve thoroughly enjoyed the election (all you UK people out there) and while we continue to wait, here’s another update on what we have all been up to this glorious last 5 days:

John – Lead Designer

This week I have been knee deep in production, we’ve been testing fixes from Epic for the multiplayer branch crashes, but it’s been unfortunately slow progress. Multiplayer may change drastically with the one gametype that we want to implement so I have also been working through these designs with Tom, Alex, Matt and Andy. More info to come soon!

Matt – Art Director

Oh boy, this is my favorite part, been cleaning up the start area interior to our pod. The space has been re-purposed to make more sense as a lifeboat, this includes cryo-chambers and makeshift pilot seats. Initially this space is all about getting you into the game with what you need quickly, also acting as a brief ‘safe haven’ to get your bearings before plunging into the unknown.

Lee – Technical Director

I have managed to finish the transition of all the AI over to the new behaviour component, which should make life easier for the design/art team. I’ve also been working again trying to solve a new crash we have with the multiplayer server, very frustrating.

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have been going over system designs with Marcin as well as continuing on with logic for turning the modules into weapons of their own. I have also been doing some server debugging.

Marcin – Designer

My main focus this week was on the presence of items in the world. We want all the items (not just mineral shards) to be able to be picked up from the floor and dropped back down and have them look like the items they are. The gun you pick up in the starting section of game is a prototype of what we are trying to achieve. I’ve looked at the system design with Tristan and began implementing the objects for weapons and armour, since materials and foods are already working pretty well.

Joe – Environment Artist

Jumping around onto a lot of different things this week – I’ve been continuing with the Lab tileset and also got some time to add a new vehicle bay entrance to the Dam!

Tom W – Designer

Interesting week down at Flix HQ! Came down for a surprise visit, and ended up staying for two days, we’ve all had super productive discussions with regards multiplayer, and the general direction of the game. So productive in fact, that Alex and I ended up staying the night down there just so we could continue the discussions the following morning. Other than that, I’ve been doing a lighting pass for the inside of the dam, and more high poly models!

Yves – Senior Developer

I’ve been polishing off the new axe weapon, it’s getting very close to feeling meaty.

Ricky – Senior Developer

Peeping my peepers into the functionality for our new interactions, I’ve started debugging this and cleaning things up for the customisability that those bossy designers seem to want… just kidding we love the designers <3

Alex – Designer

This week I’ve been working on the top of the transmitter tower, redoing the shape and layout as well as decorating. Additionally, I’ve also added in gameplay objectives and lots of enemies for you guys to kill. You’re welcome.

Lauren – Animator

Working through directional hit animations for the Axe attacks and interactions, these include confirmed hit animations for left right and overhead swings, and air swing anims for misses plus idle and animation behaviour when the player is moving. This will be our standard going forward! Looking forward to seeing these working with Yves’s new work on the melee.

Andy – Lead QA

It’s been another week of smashing bugs and catching crashes. We have a pretty regular Garbage Collection crash which we have had to report to Epic and and a server crash caused by the NavMesh which we have fix.

Also had the new kids on the block (Alex and Tom)  come into the office on monday and we had an amazing design meeting where we can up with some really exciting plans for multiplayer, but for now we are going to keep that under wraps. So stay tuned for more 😉

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix