Mining on Pharus 7

8th December 2014

Evening all,

In today’s blog we will be introducing you to mining in Eden Star.

We begin with the flora (grass and plants) of Pharus 07, which is a rich source of energy for the MATA-Tool–a remote manipulation device–designed to harness the planet’s natural resources and establish a base on this hostile world. Flora based energy is used to directly power the MATA-Tool’s kinetic abilities; blast, grab and smash – essential tools against the alien hostiles when you run out of pistol ammo.

Additionally, larger elements within the world, such as trees and certain rocks, contain rare materials essential in the creation of defensive and offensive structures, weapons and MATA-Tool upgrades. Your aim is simple, develop your base, expanding your territory and when the long night comes, defend it.

‘Mining’ and ‘resource gathering’ is a vital aspect of Eden Star. Using the Construction and Upgrade Menus to find the requirements of your desired item, you must then explore the world in search the minerals needed to create your shiny new toy. Mining often can be a laborious task and in Eden Star we wanted it to be more than that, we wanted to make it as fun as possible. For us that meant pushing the boundaries of Unreal Engine 4, PhysX and Apex to new limits so that we could create bespoke destruction systems, empowering you to feel in control whilst destroying the world around you.

We have worked hard on the development of procedural physics tree destruction, allowing the player to mine from top to bottom, bottom to top, take just the energy-rich leaves and branches or leave nothing but a stump. A tree will rarely fall the same way twice. Of course you may feel the fun will diminish once you completely strip the land of everything useful. This is why we also developed a regrowth system, a byproduct of Pharus’ ability to heal itself, allowing the environment to regenerate after a time and players to destroy to their heart’s content.

The balancing of material shard spawning, placement and structure cost is an ongoing process but we are making good headway. Though we can’t wait until we hand our baby over to the all of you and hear your thoughts and feelings. It’s an exciting time for all of us at the Flix office; we are working hard to make Eden Star as fun as possible, squishing bugs, optimising, refining and we simply can’t wait until all of you can explore the world we have lovingly created.

As always guys, stay tuned for more updates coming soon. Including a sneaky wee first look at our Smash mechanic in UE4. Also what happened when we handed an early build of Eden Star over to a room full of 120 students at Staffordshire University’s Epic Games Centre…It was Epic…See what we did there…Epic like the company…and epic like aweso…..anywho… back to work ^_^

More updates to follow!

Dev Update – The Dark Night

14th November 2014

Greetings Traveller,

Today we thought we would give you a sneaky wee glimpse at the world of Pharus 7. Until now you may have seen snapshots, this video however shows the hostile planet at its most benign. Our verdant paradise provides ample opportunity for players to harness the organic environment, gathering minerals in order to bolster your defences in preparation of the belligerent dusk. At sunset the tranquil day gives way to the terror stricken darkness, the indigenous and injurious creatures of Pharus, drawn to the powerful energy of your Eden Kit will attempt to swarm your defences, laying siege to your base and ridding the planet of your alien threat.

For later releases of the game we are working on making the air itself corrosive on the planets surface. During the day sunlight will alleviate the deadly effects of the atmosphere, meaning resource rich caves becoming a tempting but potentially fatal foray into darkness. The deep shade of the forests will be an intimidating prospect, forcing players to improvise, blasting and shooting out the canopy to feel the reassuring warmth a distant unearthly sun and providing respite from the toxic atmosphere.

In Eden Star surviving the night requires a conglomeration of ingenuity, preparedness and skill. Hunkering down and waiting for the dawn is simply not an option here, on Pharus 7 the night is most deadly before the dawn. Each day on Pharus is a reward, not a given.

More updates to follow!

Weapon Crafting : FL Mk9 Pistol

11th November 2014

Greetings Pioneers!

As we move ever closer to launch we can start giving you more information about one of the coolest parts of Eden Star, I am of course talking about the weapons!

Although the MATA-Tool (The super awesome power glove you’ve seen previously) is undoubtedly the ‘piece de resistance’, I’m here to talk to you about the slightly more traditional weapons. In this particular case the FL Mk9 Pistol blueprint.

From concept to implementation the way we construct firearms, and more specifically; sidearms, has been through a lot of progressive iterations to get to the final designs. The team has done a lot of research into both real and fictional firearms which has helped to not only forge a vision of the type of sidearms we want to be able to make, but also the feel of them too. This research helped us realise that what worked in real life might not necessarily work in the game world. This resulted in a lot of time and effort tweaking designs, animations, PFX and audio. At this stage, we have now implemented a single sidearm for the first release, constructed as a whole unit, this allowed us to shift focus onto the balancing of this pistol… As the ability for any sidearm to devastate an entire cliff face with a single shot seemed a tad overzealous…

How we envisage weapon crafting and creation working in Eden Star at some stage AFTER the first release (To clarify – the following feature will not be in the first release, but you will be able to craft this pistol as a whole weapon), is that certain parts of the weapon will be able to be crafted from different blueprints. In the case of this pistol the player would have found, salvaged and crafted the;

– Grip
– Barrel
– Power source

All from a FL Mk9 blueprint, you can see this in the aesthetic of the pistol, defined by the differently shaded parts.

Other blueprint parts will be inter-compatible (similar to the latest Dead Space crafting system) but each part will be still be specific to the weapon type, ie. Pistol, Rifle, Pulse, etc.)

Below is a brief work-in-progress preview of one of the FL MK9 Pistol blueprint; firing self propelled micro concussion missiles. As this is a military, and not a Spire grade firearm, it works off old-world, projectile-based technology and is therefore not powered via a Teslinium core. The advantage to compiling primitive firearm blueprints such as the FL Mk9, is that the base model is extremely reliable and fairly easy to restock when searching for materials to convert to ammunition.