Greetings Pioneers!

This week our new workbench is taking shape, this will be an intermediary and rather makeshift unit that will be the stepping stone towards better tech.

While the current fabricator bench and armory will be used for crafting more high-end items, this one will be the very first crafting unit you are able to make and, in combination with our on-player crafting, will allow for smoother progression and gentler learning curve rather than having everything available at the start and quickly running out of things to do or work towards.

Here’s what we’ve all been up to:

John – Lead Designer

Along with my extensive administrative responsibilities, I have been working on designs surrounding the crafting system, Melee rework and the new HUD/UI implementation.

I am really pleased with the progression I have seen in the game over recent weeks and feel Eden Star has turned a page in terms of game play and the quality of the work that the team are producing.  

Matt – Art Director

I’ve moved onto high priority modelling work for our new crafting items. This includes some of the makeshift items such as poles, both scrap metal and metal versions, repair tape. All of which can be used to make items on your character.

The workbench is new addition to the crafting station tiers which has gone through a modelling blockout stage.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have continued moving a lot of blueprint work which was recently added, over to code. I was hoping to be done with it at the start of the week, but I’m hitting a few bugs which were introduced by some new code to do with rotations, so progress has been a bit slow. I have also been doing some planning for controlling the amount of AI that can attack at a time and also some work to do with them searching for the player.

Ricky – Senior Developer

Progressing well with the HUD/Compass/Map marker system with TomS. We’ve also come across quite an annoying bug where the HUD stops displaying which is proving very difficult to track down.

Carlos – Developer

I’ve been working on some of our melee weapons, namely how we can make them modular enough so that we can begin mix and matching them to create some cool new melee weapons. As part of this I’ve been looking into getting the axe and the spear to work with the new system!

Captain Tom W –  Lead Cliff Wrangler

I’ve gone on a bit of a binge this week, wrestling the starting area into shape, to act as a template/baseline area for the other parts of the world. Hopefully everyone likes our beautiful new rock blends and sandy bits!

Joe – Lead Artist

More icons and pickup item modelling! I’m also going through a review of future feature updates that may affect art, and looking into new workflows and processes to help keep our art consistent and beautiful <3

OG Tom – Designer

This week I have been looking at implementing mineables inside the existing bases in the world, we are still exploring the best method to implement this without hitting the performance. But we have managed to makes all railings in the world mineable sources of scrap metal.

Also after a lengthy discussion with my fellow designers and developers we are looking at getting a new melee weapon system up and running so we can tie together that initial gameplay loop of crafting cool weapons to help you survive.

TomS – Developer

This week, i’ve been working on the new HUD/Compass/Map Marker system – showing relevant info when you’re looking at a bunch of pick-up-ables like medpacks, weapons and the like.  It’s coming along nicely, working on having just enough info without cluttering up the screen with stuff you don’t need to see.

Sam – Concept Artist

The design for the workbench is now complete, as you can probably tell from Matt’s blockout model. Over the course of its development it has been through over 6 different iterations, but it’s now at the right stage to be taken one step further towards the game world. Unfortunately last week there was no image posted alongside my blog entry, so hopefully now you can finally see some of the work that’s been going towards this particular item!

Other than that, I’ve been working on a more detailed render of a transmitter device that we want to feature in the opening stages of Eden Star’s campaign, It isn’t finished at the time of writing this, but its certainly shaping up and perhaps you’ll get a peek at it next week. Until next time, don’t eat too much chocolate!

Lauren – Lead Animator

The Stalker has been the main focus again this week, I’ve been working on turning animations and improvements to the attacks and reactions. We are giving the stalker a projectile attack (he will throw things) but also a good variety of melee attacks from different ranges. I think I will still include a Tail Attack, thank you for the suggestion last week! In combination with our rework to the AI system this should really make them seem more alive and less like unintelligent clawing-machines.

Andy – Lead QA

This week I have been investigating a number of bug that have cropped up such as the HUD disappearing then starting a new game, player controls locking up when investigating certain areas of the world and a crash when the player dies. This has resulted in me working my way backwards through older builds of Eden Star to see if we are able to pinpoint where the issues first arose in the hope that finding the cause will help with finding the solution.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix