The development continues with haste. A lot of cool new art assets have been introduced to improve the look and feel of the drop pod area, as well as an entirely new set of ship debris which has been put together to represent the parts of the Eden Star. Or more accurately what’s left over.
Here’s what we’ve been upto:
John - Lead Designer
Been pressing the team to complete their current tasks and move onto some missing elements like our revised scanner. As we enter the summer our update is edging closer, and so the guys here at Flix are starting to really tighten up the quality. You’ll be seeing that quality improvement and more in our coming blog updates.
Matt - Art Director
Focusing my artistic efforts on bringing the airlock area of the drop pod upto scratch. I’ve been pushing the art team to get some quite hefty chunks of work into the game for use as well, such as our kit for crashed ship debris which will house a bunch of interesting things for you to find and pick up.
Lee - Technical Director
I’ve been in a few meetings this week as we work out which parts of the AI combat are fun and which parts need improvement. We have also been discussing the reactions of AI not only to being hit, but reacting to what the player does during combat, which I’ve now made a start on implementing.
Tristan - Lead Developer
I have been creating some tools for the rest of the guys for adding new destructibles to the bases in the world. It should keep things optimal performance wise and allow us to make bases a bit more fun.
Tom W - Environment Wrangler
Following a well earned holiday, I’ve been focusing on modelling a new set of tents for our initial encampment, as well as really starting to push the hostile martian planet feeling with our atmospherics!
Carlos - Developer
I’ve been getting stuck in with setting up our melee functionality in code, fine tuning it and making sure that it feels good! This should hopefully allow us to make new melee weapons with similar functionality but with different feels to them!
Joe - Lead Artist
This week I’ve been overseeing some of the new and rather lovely sci-fi warning prompts we’ll shortly be adding to our heads up display. There’s a lot I want to change and improve with what’s in the current Steam build but this bit takes priority as it’ll introduce our players to the world and all the interesting changes the team have been making. Also, icons!
Marcin - Designer
This week I’ve working mostly on the objective system again. We’ve outlined a small campaign for the beginning of the game and I am slowly implementing all the elements and interactions to make it a reality. My biggest focus for the system is the modularity. I want to create simple tools that will allow us to put together missions in minutes, as opposed to bespokely implementing every mission individually.
OG Tom W - Designer
This week I've been busy with a lot of different things as many different elements come together. The new tool built by Trist makes placing destructibles in the world much easier for us designers, so we have been reviewing some existing bases and drawing up designers for new wreckage pieces that take advantage of this. Also I have been implementing and fixing the first stages of crafting and building, making sure all the schematics are correct. All this is driving forward the gameplay elements so we can get to a fully playable state as soon as possible.
James Brady - Environment Artist
For Eden Star, I was tasked with creating a modular set based on a ship that crash landed, which could be placed around a wreckage site/point of interest. This wreckage site would contain resources for the player to gather. I created this set in way that allowed for it to be placed manually by the art team or procedurally placed by the engine in random variations. I created a texture set inspired by sci-fi games such as DOOM.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been working hard getting the landscapes in the first areas up to scratch. This includes creating new areas that were previously flat into wonderful steep cliffs with several ways around. This new cliff tool we developed allows me to easily place cliffs and create the edges of the landscape very quickly. All of this coupled with some very artistic rock placements leads to an environment overhaul that is as efficient as it is good looking.
Sam - Concept Artist
This week I’ve been working on a small redesign for the shelters that you’ll find scattered around the game, as well as other items such as the transmitter unit and the in-game interface graphics. All three of these elements tie into the first few minutes of the game along the golden path, an area which we as a team have been focusing on quite intently, as the opening moments of a game can easily make or break the initial experience. I’ll likely be doing some similar stuff next week once some decisions have been made!
Andy - Lead QA
I’ll be back on Monday, and oh boy am I looking forward to getting back and cracking my liquorice whip of quality control. The team are going to be in for a treat.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix
April Development Update 3!
Greetings Pioneers!
We are continuing to refine the starting area this week with fields of crashed debris, plus our arena style battle zones are being designed, which can only be described as mini horde survival events. Meanwhile more AI bugs have been fixed and a new tactical map design is taking shape.
Here’s what we’ve been up to in more detail:
John - Lead Designer
The sun has come out over the studio, it is the beginning of British summer time. Instilling new life and vigor in people, which is a perfect explanation for why the team are glowing balls of sunshine. Achooo, and oh yeah tree pollen.. but no fear, the work to get our update completed continues.
Matt - Art Director
Started modelling some of the block out props we’ve designed into the Drop Pod, hoping to have something to show next week for these pieces.
On another note I’ve been discussing and gathering some ideas/art & design materials for our lootable wreckage components with Tom Whittemore. Most notably our new RMD glove models are now in the game and have vastly improved the feeling of being sealed into a suit to protect you from the toxic air of the surrounding environment.
Lee - Technical Director
I’ve continued with debugging some of the recent changes we have made to both the way AI attacks are performed and the way they turn. I’ve also been working with Lauren to try and find a better solution to our ragdoll issues which will also work well for multiplayer.
Marcin - Designer
From next week I will be implementing a new map and player info system. The improvements to look forward to are zooming in and out, panning, various level of detail at various zoom levels, additional information in the form of new icons, waypoints, objective markers, and more.
There will be a lot of work involved with this, but I am really looking forward to revamping that mechanic. The first step will be to create a tool that will let us produce accurate textures representing the world. It would be impossible to manually edit the textures with every world tweak so we’re going to need a clever solution that can do it for us.
Ricky - Senior Developer
Bixing fugs and sorting out some more of the design for the tactical map system and it’s accompaniment to the compass and hud marker systems to boot.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been continuing to design the Silo Horde battle, ensuring that each detail of this fight makes for an intense and rewarding experience. Balancing the key parts of the fight such as enemy spawners and wave timings, I am aiming to create a horde fight that will be memorable and also replayable as you guys explore through the world!
Be sure to check every rafter, corner and hive for creatures as they endlessly spawn and attack you from every angle whilst you protect the Eden Kit! I'll leave you with some updated lighting work in the upper section of the Silo..
OG Tom - Designer
This week I have been continuing to plan designs for large sections of the wilderness so there are lots of nooks and crannies to explore. In particular I have been planning out how wreckage can be used within the world.
The current wreckage and debris are effectively mining nodes to give the player scrap metal and other components and are generated around the world. The results of this weren't the best so we decided to add more context to wreckages within the world. I have been planning a wreckage kit so all the designers can start building wreckages as mini levels for the player to explore.
Sam - Concept Artist
I’m back! This week I’ve been working on our level 2 (higher end) workbench, described as “a much more high tech and purpose built version”, which you can see above. Since I had already done plenty of preliminary work for the level 1 version, this design process for this turned out a relatively speedy one, and though this current image is not necessarily the final design, I expect to be designing more new gameplay items like this next week.
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I have been focusing on ragdoll, recovery and death for the stalker with some hurdles to overcome. Our AI have the ability to recover from ragdoll if they are not dead, so we have to use some clever trickery so that an AI ragdolling from being hit by one player, ends up in the same location from other players perspective without creating too much of an overhead for the server.
While our initial system of making the character limbs go floppy and making the (replicated) capsule roll around works fine for AI that have rounded shaped bodies, the elongated torso of the stalker didn't look quite right. So it's still going to take some tweaking, along with fixing a combination of bugs, but it's getting there!
I’ve also been making a start on a new ‘makeshift’ weapon which I hope to show you more of next week...
Andy - Lead QA
Believe it or not I’m on a break ladies and gents, its been a long time since I’ve had any longish period of time off. So as you do.. When you get this very rare opportunity.. You sit in your pants playing games.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix
April Development Update 2!
Greetings Pioneers!
This week there has been more progress in our new areas with cliffs, roads and rocks being placed along with general tidy-ups and further placement of minable assets. The RMD (Remote Manipulation Device) Tool has been getting an upgrade, or rather a downgrade with a visual difference between basic and upgraded meshes on your right arm. Also the AI are being debugged and refined as the new optimised systems get implemented.
Here’s what we’ve been up to in more detail:
John - Lead Designer
Been making some really exciting arrangements for the guys here at the studio. We’re looking at bringing more people into the fold which should help improve drastically improve the quality of our upcoming content.
Matt - Art Director
Main focus has been getting the different upgraded mesh version of Mata-Tool (RMD) weapon properly fitted to the male and female first person arms, which is now looking the business. In the level itself I’ve been assisting the guys with adjustments and planning design passes of lackluster areas where there isn’t enough to do within a certain distance.
Lee - Technical Director
Debugging and optimisation has been my main focus for this week. After finally moving a lot of blueprint functionality into code, I have been testing it all and putting it through its paces to make sure it all works as expected. I’ve also been able to make a few more optimisation improvements as I have gone along. One extra bonus this week was adding a little workaround to the garbage collector to prevent it from using up lots of memory on dedicated servers.
Joe - Lead Artist Meshes and icons for some of the new craftable components! These are some early game items, see if you can guess what they are ;)
Marcin - Designer
Implementing the bar for the deterioration bars that will encompass the majority of things you craft. I’m sorry yes, this means things will break in your hands, but that’s ok.. Just make a new one! The good thing with the bar is you’ll at least be able to see when its about to break..
Tom ‘Wahey’ Whaley
Making additions to our rock sculpting tool sets with spline rocks! I’ve been reworking and prettifying our terrain with a tier style system that helps us players better understand where they can and can't walk, it also makes for a much clearer understanding of where mineral types can be found.
Also I've just about finished a tastey ice material for frozen surfaces!
OG Tom Whittemore - Designer
This week I have been world building! With our great new tiered terrain layout we can finally start designing and building large parts of the world. I have been drawing up designs for some of the areas out in the wilds to so those of you that are explorers will have plenty of hidden secret to find. Sculpting the terrain and placing in the larger geometry pieces, like rock formations, will allow us to find out how exploration feels and fine tune it.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been making further changes to the Silo area, filling out these sections with more architecture and creatures. The main changes made have been to the large Silo area in which most of the changes have been to do with lighting the area effectively so that players can make their way to this section and explore all the Silo has to offer. I have also started designing the horde mode battle that will take place in the Silo and will be fleshing out this battle more next week!
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week has been a bit of a mix of tasks, while continuing to improve the stalker animations I have also been setting up the new Tool meshes. Now we start player's off with a broken version of the tool that you will need to repair before you can use.
Andy - Lead QA
This week I have been working with Tom on the terrain tweaks and cliff rock placement. I have also been reviewing the changes made to the placement of assets with in the starting drop pod.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix
April Development Update!
Greetings Pioneers!
Happy Friday! This week the new workbench has transformed out of the 2D concept into glorious 3D. Also our player arms have been updated to match with the new suit models, plus the always sneaky Stalker has been coming together with the new AI code.
Here’s what we’ve been up to:
John - Lead Designer
Mainly been doing the rounds, engaging with the work the guys have been showing off this week. Giving them quite extensive bits of feedback so that we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet as we begin to bind this beast together!
Matt - Art Director
For the majority of the time I’ve been focused on bringing our new work bench to life. This is our first step towards tier items that allow you craft the ‘next level’ or valuable compounds and building parts. The bench is meant to be something relatively basic in comparison to the top tear engineering visuals you see with upgraded turrets.
Lee - Technical Director
I’ve finally got the majority of functionality out of blueprint into code for the AI. This should give us a nice performance gain. I’m now looking at the AI rotations because we seem to have a few bugs with some of the code base that already exists. I also want to try and polish up some of the perception functionality now we have AI inside buildings and corridors.
Tristan - Lead Developer
This week I have been helping out with the direction for the melee implementation with Carlos, Yves and Marcin. It’s looking pretty good and we are going with something more modular so that we can easily adjust functionality and make sure we get it feeling fun and rewarding to play.
Tom H - Designer
These past couple of weeks I have been redesigning sections of the Silo and Eden Kit Facility areas. The design of these areas will allow players to explore and underground facility that has been overrun with mites and hunters.
By designing these areas to have multiple entrances and various routes to take to the silo players will be able to explore these areas at their own pace and in their own manner and discover the secrets this abandoned Silo has to offer.
Captain Thomas - 3D Wizz Kid
I’ve had fun showing the guys the beauty of Substance Painter, which is going to lead to lots of beautiful new models for you all to enjoy!
As well as that, I’ve been slowly but surely reworking the opening terrain area, ready to hand off to some of the other devs so I can get to work doing the final polish on our cuddly, loving, generally adorable Hunters and Splintermites.
Carlos - Developer
I’ve been busy re-working the new melee system after discussions with Tristan, Yves and Marcin, this modular approach should allow us to build new melee weapons with mix and match functionality!
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week many discussions have taken place regarding AI and our priorities going forward with how we want them to behave. Now that we have Lee's newly optimised AI code to hand we can start to refine the behaviours and get them feeling right. The stalker animations are still in progress but we now have a nice throw attack to add to the mix. I tried to include a gif but he has a new bug and no longer spawns projectiles, alas hopefully next week we can show you a video of him in the level :)
I've also had a chance to revamp the 1st person arms to update them with the new character meshes, a few weighting and material tweaks still to do but it’s getting there! (screenshot WIP)
Jamie - QA
This week I’ve been testing out the new makeshift crafting system and I’ve been playing through the updated locations in the game. I’ve also been testing the latest build of the game to find bugs and crashes in both singleplayer and multiplayer.
Andy - Lead QA
I have been looking into the necessity of a few of the pending features, clearing off boards and putting together estimates for John.
From there I have been investigating the crashes we have been having when AI kill the player, looking into the melee rework and evaluating the alterations to the HUD.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix
March Development Update 5!
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 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
March Development Update 4!
Greetings Pioneers!
The pole, shiv, spear and our makeshift crafting system have been taking shape this week, we wanted players to be able to pick up metal shards and poles from looting bases and be able to use them right away as the shiv and pole to bat away or stab at enemies. Combine them together on your person and you get the throwing object, the spear with a bit more range.
John - Lead Designer
Working through design shops with the guys, pumping their brains full of ideas! Really proud of the design progress made by the team this week, finalising ideas and completing documentation in order for us to push forward with implementation.
Matt - Art Director
Throws spear into completed assets list* Finished our first makeshift item that you can hurl through the air. The spear is made up of a series of items you can craft, which can also be used to make more simple tools and defensive weapons such as a Shiv and Pole!
I’ll be moving onto other weapon types soon, but for now there are quite a few art issues that have been raised through testing that need tidying up.
Lee - Technical Director
This week I have been moving a lot of functionality that was created in blueprint over into code which was to do with the AI attacks. The main reason for this is so we can squeeze every last bit of performance out of the AI. I’ve also been working with Lauren the last couple of days trying to organise all the AI animation data into a format in a datatable which she is happy with but also works easily with the way the code expects it to be formatted.
Joe - Lead Artist
More UI work this week, figuring out how we want to communicate degradation of items to the player. I’ve also been setting up inventory icons for our new makeshift items!
Marcin - Designer
I’ve been mostly finishing off leftover tasks this week, little bits of design and/or implementation that got omitted for one reason or another. I’ve submitted all my work on the AI’s turning, so we’ll be keeping an eye on how that’s performing over the coming days.
Also we’ve had a discussion about how exactly are we going to handle stacking of damaged items, which was an interesting problem to solve. Additionally I’ve fixed a bug that was causing the jumping mites to launch themselves into space if your face happened to be too close for comfort, and lastly the team and I have had a few more discussions about the flow of animations for our melee weapons, now that we are looking to expand the armoury.
Captain Tom W - Cinematographer/Designer/Artist
This week I've been working on some terrain tools for our lovely designers to work on. Chief of which being a spline tool that tiles cliff meshes along it's length. If all goes well, this should massively speed up our environment production!
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been showing some much needed love to the Transmitter area. This has been completely revamped with a new shiny interior, complete with staircases, airlocks and elevators, as well a new maintenance area outside the transmitter tower for you to traverse any way you see fit.
The transmitter is such an important area for the game and as such extra care has been taken to make sure the gameplay pacing, tempo and tone is correct for this section. As well as Splintermite hive battles and facing some flying IKA’s around the top of the tower, you guys will be platforming your way up to the top of this tower to activate the signal. Happy travels!
Sam - Concept Artist
Ahoy everyone! Lately I’ve been doing some work towards the design of the “low-end” fabricator bench that the player will use to craft items. Below you should be able to see a few of the sketches I’ve done for this, lined up in order that they were produced. The design itself has gone through many changes over the course of the week, as the sketch derived from the original silhouette was generally too substantial and large for the rudimentary and bare-bones style we were looking for.
In this way, it’s quite similar to when I was designing the junk spear, as I had to sacrifice prettiness in favour of basic functionality. In a way, it’s “trying to make a good concept for something that’s meant to look bad”. The earlier designs won’t go to waste, however, as they possess many good traits which can be repurposed for the “second level” fabricator bench - a much more high tech and purpose-built version that I may soon begin work with.
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I have been continuing with the stalker, focussing on the attacks and the animations involved in those attacks. We want to make it obvious when creatures are about to cause you damage with exaggerated movements to give players the ability to dodge, block and parry incoming attacks.
I have been working on a few varieties of charging towards the player into an attack.
Andy - Lead QA
I have been testing the build as usual. Focusing on the AI movement, axe iteration and spear implementation. There are a few issues that testing has been able to bring to the developers attention and amend before they become bigger issues.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix
March Development Update 3!
Greetings Pioneers!
More goodies to show this week with new stalker animations and attacks being tested, this creature will be a more formidable foe. The speeder bike has also undergone its material pass and now has two pairs of stirrups for seating two Pioneers comfortably...
John - Lead Designer
It's been another kick ass week at Flix HQ. I've been going over Crystal consumables with our crack-team of technical designers. We've also taken a crack at the Oxygen system, balancing the rate of depletion so it becomes a fun challenge, but never overbearing. You've also seen our hero and heroine on the new speeder bike which is looking dope!
Matt - Art Director
Voila, finished what will be one of the quicker ways to travel around the island. The speeder got the paint treatment along with damage models. We’ve worked it so the bike can seat two people as well, which better suits our multiplayer mode! I’ll be moving onto creating some of the new ‘makeshift’ weapons, and helping to organise the rest of the level design and artwork passes.
Lee - Technical Director
Investigating the dreaded tick rate assertion! After some serious investigation we’ve found out that objects with tick rate optimisation applied to them were causing problems with stability. This is in the progress of being fixed should largely help with overall stability as the game runs for longer periods of time.
Joe - Lead Artist
Lots of meetings and organisation this week - I’ve been looking over the progress the artists are making (spoiler: everything looks amazing) and giving feedback on various bits and pieces with level design and visuals. I also went over the systematic side of the new HUD markers with someone named Tom.
Captain Tom W - Designer/Artist/Cinematographer
I’ve had a wonderful time working on door panels, wall panels and floor panels. On-top of that, there’s been the usual terrain work, smacking rocks together, and coming up with clever new ways to blend things together. Not having access to texture-arrays makes me a sad panda.
Marcin - Designer
I’ve been reviewing the state of a bunch of Eden Star systems. The artists have been hard at work putting together new assets in the world over the past few weeks and they looks really good, but now it was time for me to step in and review whether they work as well.
The environment has to interact properly with the building holograms, no matter what you project them on. It also has to provide suitable ground for AI and the player to move. We don’t want either getting stuck anywhere. Additionally I’ve been looking at animation data for AI, which I wanted to organise and make easily accessible from various systems that need to use it.
OG Tom W - Designer
This week I have been continuing to implement the first stages of our new crafting and building system. We hit a few snags in the code but those were quickly fixed by our developers allowing us to start adding new items and schematics.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been constructing a new shiny security outpost for the Dam. This outpost will be where checks are made for deliveries in and out of the Dam, now abandoned and overrun, it will provide a short respite for you guys on your journey up to the Transmitter. You will be discovering secrets that lie in the outpost along with weapons left behind by the guards. All in aid on your journey though Eden Star!
The new crafting has several stages for the player to progress through, starting with what we’re call ‘ Makeshift Crafting’ and ‘ Emergency Building’. These will be first steps into the crafting and building aspect of the game so we are getting those schematics in so we have a better idea how to balance our mining nodes and loot drops.
Sam - Concept Artist
Hi! Been working on a few things this week, including developing the design for the makeshift spear further. We now have a set of colour and shape variants - we just need to decide which combination we like best! I’ve also been doing some behind-the-scenes design work and visualisation for an important part of the game’s opening minutes.
Next up for me is the fabricator bench, (another makeshift item) which will act as a means of crafting on the go. It shares this purpose with a second item of a similar name, which may be a more expensive and high-tech version that you likely won’t see until later in the game. So far we have some silhouettes for the former, and line and detail work will commence next week!
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I have been working on more animations for the stalker including several attack varieties to keep Pioneers on their toes. They will have both melee and ranged attacks, throwing projectiles towards players as well as getting in close and slashing at you with their claws. The movement we wanted to keep fairly quick and agile, and intend to have them be able to jump between points as an alternative traversal type.
Andy - Lead QA
I have been helping Sam with the progression of the concepts for the spear, working through the opening section of the game and giving feedback to help refine it.
I have also been investigating the stability of our multiplayer build and testing the crafting features that have been added recently with multiple players.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix
March Development Update 2!
Greetings Pioneers!
This week there are many different elements being worked on for the next release. We have been continuing with asset and enemy placement in the new world and starting areas, refining the crafting elements to improve progression and the Stalker has been getting some personality adjustments...
Here's what we've each been up to in more detail:
John - Lead Designer
It’s the simple things that count, like making the guys here more comfortable with some new chairs... quite a bit of admin has been tackled, as well as developing progression flow graphs for the game systems. Also been working through those progression designs AGAIN with Tom in order to get them into the build once we have some of Ricky’s time or another one of the dev team, possibly this weekend. The markers on the pickups and interactions are a priority for me so getting this functional is something that I’m currently looking into.
Matt - Art Director
Completed the model and unwrapping for our hover Bike.. just about to start on an awesome base paint job! Soon you'll be traversing around the larger areas of the island in these speeders.
Otherwise been working with the rest of the design team to make some extensive modifications to the encounter areas with Tom H. We've also added a fork in the river which will better direct the level flow in the starting area.
Lee - Technical Director
At the beginning of the week I was implementing our six wheeled movement component for our new huge transport vehicle. It’s in a very basic state at the moment, but very much ready to be experimented with. The latter part of the week I have been adding some more checks for the AI inside of enclosed spaces so they can better select a different kind of behaviour which may be different to a behaviour they might do in an open area.
Yves - Senior Developer
I’ve been trying to hash out an idea to bring a generic Finite State Machine to things that have a fairly intricate behaviour when being interacted with, such as weapons. A lot of behaviour is coded in C++ and we want to give the designers an easier way to quickly modify whilst keeping things in a good order. I also implemented weapon deterioration, weapons will now slowly degrade through use.
Captain Tom W - Designer
I’ve been busy working away with the other Tom W implementing our material spawning system. Most of it has been nailing down a rough set of rules, such as that metals can be found in rocky areas, minerals and more organic grasslands/sand dunes etc.
To facilitate that, I’ve been making some shiny new mineable nodes, both figuratively and literally. Lots of time is being spent creating recognisable silhouettes and material definitions for the player to keep an eye out for! Watch this space in the next couple of weeks for more previews of our finalised mining nodes.
Ricky - Senior Developer
Both new HUD markers defleshing out and some player progression in the crafting system this week. After this bit of work you’ll begin the game with the ability to craft a very limited amount of “makeshift” items on your person, without a crafting station. Among these items will be the first stage repaired build module which will allow you to craft some basic but again limited structures. We may go down a path to allowing upgrades of these basic types or just require building bigger and better instead of upgrading what you have, but either way this will be a great way to give you a sense of climbing the ranks.
Joe - Lead Artist
HUD’s up! New stuff incoming:
Marcin - Designer
It’s been a pretty satisfying week for me, as I got to complete and close a few ongoing tasks. I’ve finished my work on the editor tools I mentioned the other week, which is great, because I managed to complete something that felt impossible for me to do a few weeks ago. Power overwhelming!
Having done that, I also jumped onto the axe designs and implementation to figure out a few missing bits about how different available actions interact with each other when the player’s input would have them happen at the same time. Some actions have interrupt each other but not others, and some have to wait for the current action to finish and the start automatically. The new elements should greatly improve the responsiveness of the axe controls.
And last but not least, with those out of the way, I moved back to the AI turning logic, which I had to pause working on, but now should also be done soon. Taking care of business.
Sam - Concept Artist
Spears, spears, spears! This week’s been all about the aforementioned weapon I spoke about in the last blog post. We want this thing to look, for lack of a better word, rubbish, as it is more or less a bit of a throwaway (excuse the pun) item that you’ve cobbled together as a means of defending yourself. From what I understand, the spear will basically be the weapon that sits at the bottom end of the scale - easy to craft but hardly the ideal damage dealer.
OG Tom W - Designer
The past few weeks we've been discussing the progression of crafting and building throughout the game, especially the core progression pieces and the starting path.
This week we are starting to turn that discussion into gameplay by getting core pieces into the engine. This includes:
- Making new items for the new makeshift crafting system
- Adding scrap metal and salvage
- Making different levels of build modules
- Making different levels of crafting benches
Also as we have now fixed our landscape issues we can start regenerating our mining nodes with the procedural spawning system and have quicker turn around from testing.
This should mean we can start to get our testers playing the new mining and crafting system and respond with fixes and balancing changes quicker.
OOG Tom H - Designer
This week I have been finalising the surface of the dam in both structure and gameplay, adding more places for you guys to explore and more creatures for you to encounter. Will you take the perilous path of the hunters and risk your life or sneak around underneath to find more survival gear to face them later? I have also been looking into a new outpost before the Dam to keep the area more secure and allow more interesting gameplay and mechanic introduction.
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I've been giving the Stalker some tender loving care in the animation department and increasing its creep factor. We wanted something that looked more like a tormented being, so starting with the locomotion this week, I've been revisiting its movements and idle animations, heres some work in progress:
I have also been creating a unified humanoid AI animation blueprint for all our bipedal AI going forward.
Andy - Lead QA
I’ve been looking into the deterioration mechanic, using the axe as our yard stick. This involved getting into the editor and recording the deterioration rate of the axe when being used on the various assets in our world. Discovered a few bugs with the rate at which the axe deteriorated, however it was exciting when my weapon broke mid fight.
As always you can keep up to date with what we are working on at the moment by having a browse of our public Trello Boards here:
Despite Storm Emma and the bitterly cold ‘beast from the east’ hitting the UK and making ‘irl’ driving practically impossible, progress has rapidly continued on our new vehicles this week with the six- wheeled ‘Heavy Transport’ receiving the rigging treatment and the ‘Speeder’ hoverbike taking shape in the modelling phase.
Here’s what we’ve been up to:
John - Lead Designer
Design meetings! Many of them. Crafting and progress flow graphs are being loving built and updated, plus we’ve had some quite in depth reviews of the Dam surface area which will become our initial ‘battle’ arena style play area.
Matt - Art Director
Revs bike handles* Vroom, Vroom. Whilst going over some pretty cool level changes with the guys I’ve been focusing most of my core time on our hover bike. Looking to complete the modelling early to middle part of next week so I’ll be able to show you the finished product very soon. The fun bit was working out the mechanism for the thruster wings which is now looking pretty sharp!
Lee - Technical Director
So at the beginning part of the week I was dealing with a temporary fix for the tick assertion we were running into. I then had to track down a rare bug where AI once killed would still continue attacking, which I think I finally fixed. The last couple of days I have been working with Lauren to try and get a first implementation of our vehicles into game. It has meant a bit of digging into the engine because we need vehicles which are not just four wheels, but six and possibly eight.
Ricky - Senior Developer
HUD Marker system revisions to update how it looks and behaves. I’m looking into what backend requirements need to get sorted for the changes planned.
Joe - Lead Artist
Remember that exciting new HUD Marker system we teased a while back? No...? Oh :(
Well we’re working on it anyway, I’ve been working on getting an early version of it ready so we can at least make interacting with our world that much nicer.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been completely overhauling the surface of the Dam! New asset placements, new enemy placements, new areas to explore! All of this redefining of this area comes with more options for you to take when approaching the infested dam. Will you take on the hunters first hand and run and gun?
Or will you take the lower path around the side of the dam but risk being swarmed by Splintermites? This new design means a much more immersive and strategic area for you guys to enjoy. Have fun!
Sam - Concept Artist
Hi there, been all over the place this week! As you can see, our “hover bike” has begun its transition into the 3D realm, and with that I have been putting together some designs for specific areas that the orthographic views don’t cover, such as the dashboard console, steering mechanisms and seating. Now that the Zombie is finished, we also have two other variants with different deformities - one with a cocoon-style growth hanging from its left arm, and another with a lower jaw more similar to the original design.
Now for the new stuff. I’ve been given the task of visualising the appearance of the junk spear, which you may have seen in-game in a blog post a few weeks back. As it is quite a basic and futile weapon compared with the many others in Eden Star, we wanted to show this through the way it looks and give it a very cobbled-together kind of feel. So far I’ve produced some basic silhouettes to start off with, and this is what I’ll be continuing with next week.
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I've been putting together the heavy vehicle blueprint and skeleton with all its moving parts articulating. This is very much still work in progress, the handling needs a lot of work but the wheels are moving up and down mostly as expected.
I have also been working on refinements to the block and parry animations with the axe.
Andy - Lead QA
This week I’ve been helping with the critical path work that Tom has been looking into. We are really trying to refine this area and ensure that it is both believable and fun.
From there I have looked into animation tweaks with the Axe, oxygen volume placement in the level and audio implementation.
Lastly here's a quick shot of the situation from the front of the offices! Have fun and we'll see you in the fray!
-Team Flix
February Development Update 4!
Greetings Pioneers!
Reporting in. we’ve begun technical setup of the transport vehicle this week, and modelling work on our bike variant has also started. Designs are getting prodded and probed by test in a practical way, and A.I. has had some minor adjustments after the pooling optimisation.
Here’s what we’ve all been upto:
John - Lead Designer
Been involved in some interesting design discussions with Tom and Matt that involved minor changes to the layout to allow the world to make more sense now that we have Oxygen as an atmospheric hazard (or lack of Oxygen to be more accurate). Also been hashing out further details for the on player crafting changes we’re making. Now that we’re able to play with these changes we really can see how it's benefiting the challenge and complexity of the gameplay cycle.
Matt - Art Director
Phew, lots on the cards over the last few days. Been working on the mechanics for the Vehicle suspension with Lauren so that it looks and works convincingly as the wheels go up and down over the terrain surface. Been working through level changes and tidy up after some further design iteration we’ve been doing through play test and analysis. On top of this we’ve been designing a zombie like pioneer, that is half human half stalker. But it’s all chugging a long fantastically!
Lee - Technical Director
My time this week has been mainly spent fixing up a few bugs with AI and spawners and trying to get to the bottom of an engine assertion we keep running into. I’ve also spent some time placing nearly a hundred AI in one vicinity in the map to test performance. I already had a good idea of functions I needed to optimise, but this did throw up a couple I was unaware of too, so I’ve been working to fix them up ready to test again next week.
Marcin - Designer
I’ve had to take a break from working on the AI this week to instead try to create some editor tools for artists to help them create icons automatically. It’s a first time for me dabbling in non-gameplay logic so it’s a bit scary but extremely exciting.
Also been looking into functions that load up, save, populate and auto-start levels, all from outside of the game, as well as find, read, edit and create files. Getting a hold of some of those function libraries feels a lot like finding a spellbook in a way that, although it’s going to require a lot of study, it promises that I will be able to do things I not so long ago considered impossible to do. I am buzzing.
Sam - Concept Artist
It’s alive, it’s alive! The Zombie design is nearing the final stages of completion, and with a few tweaks here and there, will be ready for the 3D stages some point in the near future. Here you can see the front/side orthographics I’ve put together - you may notice that the creature’s jaw has changed completely. What was once much a more similar mouth to the Stalker is now more human in appearance, and this is because we believe it better conveys the sense that the hideous monstrosity you’re looking at was once a person.
This new jawline shape also creates a more tormented expression, further reinforcing this fact. That said, the Zombie still needs to end up a Stalker, and so you may notice the subtle implication of a split-chin on the bottom lip. I won’t get into all the gory details, but when its body starts to change again, it’s going to get a lot less subtle. You get the idea.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been diving into the design of the Transmitter tower and surface of the Dam. Balancing enemy placements and planning out structural changes to both of these areas. The surface of the Dam has proved the most interesting to work on, being able to effectively give you guys enough cover for the firefight and making sure th section is challenging yet rewarding. In terms of the tower I have been planning changes to allow for more fluid exploration of this area.
Butch - 3D Artist
Started very early blockout work on our ‘speeder’ bike, just to determine correct working scale. Unlike the bike itself, this is a steady and slow process. (because Matt demands perfection)
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I finished up the refitting of the Paladin armour, we’ve removed those curiously positioned back pockets but otherwise it’s just been slight tweaks to get it fitting both the new male and female characters.
I’ve also started rigging up the new heavy transport vehicle. There will need to be a few adjustments to the model to get all the suspension both looking and behaving as we want it to in game. It's been a bit tricky to get all the moving parts rigged up to move in the right way but its getting there. While other vehicles might have had the suspension hidden behind the wheels, our vehicle is so big that the 1m long springs are still very much in view at most front angles and need to move in a sensible way.
Andy - Lead QA
This week I put together the timeline for the Hoverbike tasks for James and Matt to review and begin work on. I also investigate the problems we were having with the tick assertion further which Lee has been looking into.
I also reviewed the Audio changes that Lauren had made to the Dam structures, and went over design notes with Matt about the critical path level design work that Tom. H. has been looking into.
