Some serious transformations are happening behind the scenes.. One of the first driveable vehicles nears asset completion, both female and male characters get their armour fitted properly to match the new proportions, and proper atmospheric oxygen has been implemented.
Here’s what we’ve all been up to:
John - Lead Designer
This week we have been defining the initial makeshift items which are items that can be cobbled together on the player without the need for a Fabrication Unit. This means that we can start the player off anywhere in the world and go from no items in their inventory to a “Repaired Construction Module” and “Repaired Optical Array” which will degrade when used.
These Tool Modules can them be used to Mine better metals/materials and build an Emergency Shelter, a Fabricator, a Temporary Atmospheric Generator (TAG Unit) and certain basic Primitive Structures.
A Fabricator allows for a Colony Grade Construction Module to be crafted which will not degrade upon use, a Mining Laser Module and more… we finally have progression and reason to build bigger and better! After this, we’ll start to go to the other end of the progression tree and create the Excavation Grade Mining-Charge Module and Military Grade Build Module, etc. - which I’m sure you’ll appreciate far more than the initial progression curve :)
Matt - Art Director
As we’re replacing a lot of static items for destructibles in places of interest, we’ve started placing in pickups for our atmospheric mechanics. O2 is playing a big part in survival with our game mechanic overhaul so this system requires pickups and ‘safe havens’. I’ve been focused on placement of the pickups so we can get onto testing the initial design.
On the other hand, (my third and most trusted hand which I’ve had to grow to juggle all this work) I’ve been doing material setup for our vehicles as we begin to structure them in a way where we can support customised variation, damage, and lights.
Lee - Technical Director
So this week I have been debugging and finding any outstanding issues we have with the new AI pooling. There are still a couple of minor things, but on the whole it is now working very well. I’ve also been trying to narrow down an assertion we keep running into due to an optimisation where we turn all tick functions off and only turn them on where absolutely necessary.
Butch - 3D Artist
Texture work is complete! after the different textures sheets for colours/glass/roughness etc I'll be moving onto the destruction modelling.
Yves - Senior Developer
I’ve been working on several illusive crashes with a very low probability of reproducing, an exercise in pulling teeth doing the same thing over and over again in hopes to nail the problem.
Joe - Lead Artist
Woo Eden Star! I’ve been working on swapping out our craftable grids into easier-to-understand lists. You’ll also be able to see details of what you can craft without having to click through everything now. This is just a very early first step in my ongoing mission to make using our UI streamlined yet informative.
Ricky - Senior Developer
Planning to get some progression started in the crafting department. We’re going to change the crafting column to be a scrollable list to differentiate the visuals from other standard inventories to make it a bit easier to spot, and the makeshift weapons and creating your own basic build module will be in the player crafting menu to start this off.
Carlos - Developer
I’ve been putting some time in to get our new audio manager in and working, allowing us to start creating some nice sliders in the UI to control some of our newly designed volumes! I’m hoping to make the system flexible enough so that we can adjust the sounds and add UI elements as needed.
Marcin - Designer
Like I mentioned last week the turning logic for AI seems like a simple concept at the first glance, but it’s actually a fairly complex problem to solve. This week I dived into the guts of the engine to figure out how it was intended to be accomplished and to hopefully emerge with a good plan at the end. I’ve been mapping out the classes and functions that take part in the process to have a better image of what’s going on behind scenes before I start changing it.
I still have a way to go, but I’ve managed to establish a few fundamental rules and design decisions, such as when will the AI turn as a separate behaviour, what determines the direction and speed of the turn, whether the turn will be continuous or beespoke, and how to scale the animation with the speed of turning. Here I can show you the examples of 3 Splintermites using the same animations (for the best or worst) but turning at the rates of 360, 90, and 30.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been redesigning the main tutorial sections of the game. Ensuring the path is clear and informal for you wonderful players, old and new! Designing the best way for you to learn the basic mechanics and systems of Eden Star in a way that will feel natural and immersive. I have also been looking at which enemies you will encounter as you play through, to ensure you don’t accidentally run into a nest of juggernauts!
Sam - Concept Artist
Hi there! This week we have come to a consensus on the specifics of what the Zombie creature should look like. While original design was a step in the right direction, certain features have been altered to really push the idea of a physical transition between the human and Stalker forms.
The zombie’s skin is constantly deteriorating and peeling away whilst the victim is technically still alive, and so we wanted to make sure the face conveys the fact that while it is hostile, it is still crippled and in a state of perpetual physical torment. Here you can see some of the sketches I’ve done to bring us up to this point - keeping it varied early on, then honing in on what we like the look of!
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I have been creating and implementing appropriate sounds for the 'Hunter'mite and 'Jumper'mite so that the player can have a bit more of an indication where they are and when they have spawned. I have also been tweaking our current armor meshes to fit both the new characters, male and female starting with the Pioneer and Paladin sets.
Jamie/Andy - QA
This week Andy and I have been dealing with an annoying tick function crash and have been helping Lee with understanding what it is. We’ve been discovering a few more bugs and crashes this week too. We’ve also been testing out the new interactions with the Huntermite and the Mite creatures and making sure their new sound effects are working correctly.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix
February Development Update 2!
Greetings Pioneers!
More delicious progress has been made this week, with vehicles receiving the texturing treatment and our new Huntermite creature receiving more of its bespoke animations and attacks. There are still a fair few bugs with the AI that have emerged with the new pooling mechanic and other new features but once those are resolved we will be in a much better position for stable release.
Here’s what we’ve been up to in more detail:
John - Lead Designer
The organisation of the project and the overall design as a whole as you guys may already know, is my main concern. To keep up momentum we've got a few more designers in house to push this update forward, so it should be exciting to see their work going forward! It's important to keep a fresh perspective and enthusiasm as we implement quite extensive revisions from our past release feedback.
Matt - Art Director
On a practical basis I’ve focused my attention on getting some critical assets in place, one of these has been a destructible loot create/item. Both the asset work and adapting functionality that exists in the game to get something practical to use for the design team. Otherwise its business as normal with meetings about the different areas of the levels, but I'm especially excited seeing the new creature work, which is starting to feel and look exceptional.
Lee - Technical Director
I managed to complete the work to stop AI from being garbage collected. Now we are able to spawn what we need at the start of the game and pool them until needed. This is a good performance gain for the server now. I’ve also fixed up a few bugs with spawners now they are starting to be used more often in scripted situations in the world.
Tristan - Lead Developer
This week I have been expanding on the melee logic and making it a bit more generic so we can add more melee weapon types. I have also been going over some of the AI work with Lee for more optimisations.
Butch - 3D Artist
Let the textures flow through you. I’ve been blasting through giving the transport its first coat of beauty. Will update everyone next week as we anticipate it to be finished and in game soon!
Marcin - Designer
This week I was able to get back to our beloved AI and actually implement a few more behaviours, which we all eagerly awaited. First of all we have the investigate the sound behaviour. The AI is longer clairvoyant as to who or what made a sound and will now have to go and see if it can find that out. Enemies are able to hear gunshots, explosions and calls for aid of their fellow aliens and react accordingly. There are still a few bugs to iron out but that’s now part of their repertoire.
Additionally I’ve been working on the “turning on the spot” behaviour, for which Lauren has been making animations. Although fairly simple in concept turning behaviours are deceivingly difficult to do right. We should know, because this isn’t our first attempt either, so we are taking a slow and diligent approach this time.
Tom W - Designer
I’ve had a fun week working on the Oxygen/Atmosphere mechanics for the game. Farting around on an alien planet without a helmet will have dire consequences for our pioneers! *Cough Prometheus*
Sam - Concept Artist
Hello everyone! This week you'll be getting your very first peek at the "Zombie", a slow-moving yet intimidating creature that serves as a mutated transition between the colonist human and full-blown stalker forms. We're off to a strong start with our initial designs, but are still looking to push the boundaries even further, past the barrier of your stereotypical walkers from the big screen. behind the scenes I have also been working on a final render of the Hunter to go alongside the Mite's. See you next week!
Tom Whitt - Designer
This week I’ve been continuing to iterate on the drop pod lay to make sure the introduction to the game gives you all the information you need to get going. It’s a slow process and we have several reviews a week but we want to make this absolutely perfect when its finished!
Tom H - Designer
Hi All! I'm new (yes another Tom). Mainly paper designs and getting my head around the current design for the project. I'm aiming to refine and strengthen the gameplay formula we're using for the different areas on the island.
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I have been animating more of the Huntermite's actions and reactions to make him feel unique. With its own set of attacks and idle animations and refinements to the balancing values, he is starting to feel a lot more how we would like him. I have also been working on one-off turning animations for the new turning behaviour. This will not be our first implementation of turning mechanics but we are hoping this time to have a behaviour that will work the same across all AI while still allowing for various types of turn.
I have also added a turn to the stagger animations so that he turns automatically towards the attack direction after playing a stagger animation, this already helps him feel a lot more responsive than what we had previously as he now moves out of range of the player’s melee, forcing them to move in order to re-engage. This is the stagger will play after the stability of the Huntermite is below a certain threshold, not instantly as shown here.
Andy - Lead QA
Myself and Jamie continued with our testing of multiplayer this week focusing on server stability.
We also got to test the initial implementation of the Huntermite, fixes to the inventory and re-implementation of the “sell” functionality.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix
February Development Update!
Greetings Pioneers!
This week we have resolved a lot of the issues with the single player experience, fixed up more crashes, and have been designing more AI and loot placement in our new abandoned base areas. The Huntermite is coming together with refinements to combat and new attack animations to give it much more of a bite...
Here’s what we’ve been up to in more detail:
John - Lead Designer
SO, back to fuel and talking through AI reviews this week. We’ve been refining the attacks and feel of the Hunter this week and trying to establish some of the behaviour changes we need for corridor combat (charge relentlessly) vs open spaces where it will stalk, retreat and maintain a distance, similar to what we call “hollywood-style-combat”. The latter is now in, but the relentless attacks in corridors and refinement of combat overall has been broken down now into manageable tasks for animation and behaviour implementation.
I also worked through the critical path for any players who want to engage with the story components, which mean that designers have more input for initial AI actions for any players who engage with these featured areas. As a sneak peek overview here’s the exterior of the initial single player spawn location;
And one of the interior locations;
Lee - Technical Director
Well we finally managed to solve our shader issue from last week and the builds are running a lot smoother. The single player game is now running a lot smoother as more and more bugs get fixed. This week I have continued the work to prevent our AI from getting garbage collected, which we hope will help out considerably with multiplayer server performance.
Tom - Designer
I’ve spent this week tearing apart the landscape with lead developer Tristan and two of the other Toms, trying to hunt down the best solution for our material node spawning system. It looks like we’ve nailed down the best route forward, now all that’s left is to implement it!
OG Tom - Designer
This week I have split my time between more mining node generation and planning the layout for the new drop pod. The mining node tests we have been conducting over the past couple weeks have showed some really nice results with the density and placements of nodes. The next step is a solid implementation and I have been investigating with Tom, Tom and Trist about how we can have both the generation method we want and keep our performance up. The new drop pod design is starting to move forward now with several paper designs down it’s time to start adjusting the drop pod testing the new blockout.
Matt - Art Director
As we’ve come to a stage where we’ve managed to finalise the creature types throughout the first area of the island, placements are getting the full design treatment. I’ve included a few sample shots of our visual design/review process for these placements in just a few of the areas. These designs are iterative and will change from now till the next release and beyond that with the communities input!
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week has been all about the latest of our upcoming enemies, the Huntermite. I have been animating some attacks that make good use of those huge jaws. I have been refining locomotion, damage and speed while creating bespoke combat and idle animations for this mite-on-steroids. I wanted it to feel both aggressive and intelligent in its movements. The Huntermite will attack exclusively with melee, while the Splintermite will mostly use it's AOE splinter bombs for more variety in combat.
All the animation present in the first gif are retargeted directly from the Splintermite and will be replaced. The benefit of this approach is that the behavioural AI and animations can be developed simultaneously with a base set of animations already present for preview.
You can look forward to a new gif/video on the Huntermite, with it's own animations next week :)
Sam - Concept Artist
Ahoy there! This week we finally have a colour scheme for the Hunter creature, which I think does a good job communicating which parts are armoured and which are exposed. Notice the two pulsating sacs on the underside of the tail area - a possible weak spot, perhaps? The overall palette is meant to convey that this animal is an unnatural mish-mash of heavy shell/bone mass and more vulnerable, fleshy bits.
As well as the Hunter, work has begun on a completely new humanoid creature, simply known as the "zombie" at this stage. We're looking for something at bears some resemblance to its former human self, but also possessing some scary and feral-like qualities seen in the Stalker. So far I've done some initial concepts for this, but we'll be refining the bracket for exactly what we want some time next week.
Andy - Lead QA
This week myself and Jamie have been tackling multiplayer. Which for a while there meant running around the new world trying to kill each other.
We managed to sign off issues we had been havin with dragging and dropping items in the players inventory, collision issues within the new structures, lighting and post process issues in multiplayer and reviews of the new huntermite.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix`
P.S. Don't forget, you can check out all that we're currently working on now and our future plans on our Public Trello Boards here:
More epic work on the creatures and level has been the apple in our cybernetic eyes for the week. Initial ambient sound passes have been underway, optimisations, and we’ve started some solid revisions to the drop pod design for early game testing. Here’s what we’ve all been upto..
John - Lead Designer
Our new design boffins are now tackling our spawn/opening area after some healthy discussion during the start of this week. Hopefully by next week we’ll get our teeth into adding the pickups and minor content required for it to act as a better induction to the games basic but essential mechanics. The correct format is essential before we get full playthrough feedback.
Matt - Art Director
Bug fixing for level issues mainly, aside from creating a lot of LOD meshes and optimisations. I’ve been in the process of adding a LOD terrain to visualise the distant terrain areas that are streamed out, drastically improving performance.
Distance terrain LOD WIP
We’ve begun doing some revision work to the starting drop pod, and commenced sculpting our ‘Hunter’ creature model.
Lee - Technical Director
This week I have been taking a look at a shader issue which was causing the build machine to recompile all the engine shaders on every build. This was causing build times to skyrocket towards 20 hours on average.
I’ve also been looking at a few of the issues we have in multiplayer to make sure they are still relevant now we have upgraded the engine. The other thing I have been working on this week is preventing AI from being destroyed so we are not having to worry about the garbage collector. Instead they will now be put into a pool so we can eliminate the spawning overhead too.
Ricky - Senior Developer
Updated to the new drag drop mechanic on top of the UI menu’s fresh design which lead to some slight rearranging of functionality to accommodate.
Butch - 3D Artist
The transport vehicle is getting the full on texture treatment! More pretties from me next week when I should have the majority of the texturing done.
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I have been continuing with the development of the Huntermite, adding horrific looking appendages and tweaking its size so it still feels menacing but can still chase you down corridors. We have also been experimenting with physical animation which will enable us to have smaller capsules (these are the simple shapes used for character collision) while reducing the instances of clipping through walls with its long legs. It's still very much work in progress!
I have also been continuing with placing sounds in the new areas to add more of the creepy ambiance we're after.
Tom Whaley - Designer
I’ve continued work on the optimisation front, dropping the amount of landscape textures used from 24 to 9. This will go up again a little bit as we add more layers, but should lead to a much more balanced experience across platforms.
Carlos - Developer
This week has been mainly spent debugging some of our existing systems that were broken when we upgraded engine versions. Most of this work has been focused on the player’s inventory and ensuring that it gets loaded up correctly when returning to a server. I’ve also been helping to debug issues with building mechanic!
Marcin - Designer
Began doing a pass on the structure collision defaults so they work robustly with the new assets that have been added to the areas in the level.
Tom Whittemore - Designer
This week I have been continuing to look at the node generation system by setting up the meshes, destructibles and items for metal and the nodes. So we can start properly testing the density of metal in the world and how that affects crafting. Also we’re going to completely redesign the starting drop-pod and I’ve been looking at designing the new layout. At the minute this is still in the early stages but is already looking like a much better experience.
Sam - Concept Artist
Hello! Earlier in January you may have seen the design that we were intending to use for our latest creature in development, the Hunter. Since then we’ve seen quite a lot of people comparing it to the Warrior Bugs (or Arachnids) from the popular cult film Starship Troopers, due to certain design similarities.
These observations were, in a way, right on the money. The Arachnid has been a direct piece of reference for us throughout the creative process, as it’s more or less exactly the sort of thing we want for the Hunter. In light of this, we’ve switched up the design yet again, giving it a more arched, skeletal appearance and somewhat gaseous expulsions trailing from its body. Honestly, I think the design has really benefited from this rework, and we hope you do to!
Andy - Lead QA
This week I’ve been testing collision of the new structures in anticipation of the arrival of our new AI. Other than a few glaringly obvious issues, it was all smooth sailing.
From there I push forward with reviewing the overall level design and listed up tweaks we could make to ensure that the world feels believable and doesn’t limit immersion.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix
January Development Update 3!
Greetings Pioneers!
Creature models, vehicles, and some hot info on the state of our next release. Which is currently getting the proper playthrough treatment. Here’s what we’ve been upto..
John - Lead Designer
Now our builds are in full flow, there are some blocking issues that we still need to conquer for this latest update. As per usual everyone is hard at work attempting to clear these up! I’ve been doing some forward planning so we can add finishing moves to the melee system down the line.
Matt - Art Director
Many things, many wonderful new things. I’ve put together the final version of our mite creature, worked with the wonderfully talented Butch on our transport vehicle. All whilst overseeing additional changes to the content/polish pass in level.
Lee - Technical Director
I started the week just finishing off some loose ends with the point of interest work and animation work for the AI. The last few days though have been devoted to trying to understand an Apex crash we have and an issue with our navmesh vanishing. We are very close to getting the Apex fixed, but the navmesh is still proving very illusive.
Tristan - Lead Developer
Other than foliage fix tests this week I have been mostly been looking into an Apex crash with Lee as well as reviewing AI changes. I have also reviewed some weapons fixes as it turns out we broke selling internally so we had to fix that up :)
Tom S - Developer
“Just another bug hunt” does a fairly good job of summing up this week, which has been spent chasing any performance related issues and ironing them out. I’ve also given the Dam and water materials some love, as felt they were getting neglected compared to the terrain.
Butch - 3D Artist
Oh yes, the polygons have finally formed into the shape of a transport that we desire. Texturing updates arriving next!
Carlos - Developer
With the selling module out of the way, I’ve been getting stuck into some of the bugs we currently have floating around. I’m currently looking into some respawn and loading bugs that we have. I’ve also been working on some audio changes which should allow us, and you guys in turn, greater control over sounds in the game!
Tom Whittemore - Designer
There has been a lot of testing the past couple of weeks implementing and testing various methods of generating the minable nodes into the world. Currently we’re still playing around with a lot of settings, so its likely to change but in world density feels right. So we can easily gauge the world density I make the nodes a luminous green so we can easily see them at night, which also looks awesome with the green atmosphere settings.
Sam - Concept Artist
Finishing tweaks to the Hunter creature concept ready for modelling. I'll be moving onto a 'zombie' style creature soon which should be pretty exciting to develop!
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I have had some time to do some much needed audio placement work for our new areas. Along with this I've been looking into general audio issues and tweaking the structure of sound classes so that Carlos can hook them up to the UI and allow more control for you guys over the audio.
It's amazing how much a bit of ambient and responsive sound adds to the atmosphere, it has also been great to see it all coming together and exploring the new areas the rest of the team have been putting together. Along with audio work I have been rigging up the new game-ready mite model, it's looking suitably disgusting.
Tom W - Designer
Applying some polish to the front of the Dam face, and updating water material shaders has been the main stay for this week. Behind the scenes I've been helping one of the other Toms develop our updated foliage/mineral spawning system.
Andy - Lead QA
This week I have been focusing on reworking our trello boards to allow us to prioritise essential tasks which will in turn allow us to get a build out to your guys sooner.
Me and Jamie have also been testing the issue we have been having with the Navmesh and trying to get to the root cause of the problem.
See you in the fray!
-Team
January Development Update 2!
Greetings Pioneers!
Steady progress has been made this week in terms of updating engine versions and fixing some critical crashes. Hard at work on the arty side of things as well with the new heavy vehicle getting modeled up, a new deadly creature being concepted and our 'jumping mite' receiving the full sculpting treatment.
John - Lead Designer
So the organisation of work continues with one major difference! My office was a hospital this week, but not to fear, nothing bad has happened, quite the opposite in fact. I'm now the dad of a baby girl! (3rd addition to the family). Will be back to the normal routine relatively soon after the mayhem that is child birth.
Matt - Art Director
Been very hands on with both environment and character art for the last few days. Tidying up some texture work on sets for the bases initially and jumping onto some initial sculpt work for our Mite creature. Sometimes you just have to take the ‘art bull’ by the horns.
Lee - Technical Director
This week I have been merging in a later version of the engine to try an fix a crash we are having with our instanced foliage and also our apex destruction. In between this I have been making a few changes to how the animations are setup for our AI to make it easier for the designers to quickly change the animations and add new ones.
Tristan - Lead Developer
This week I have been tracking down some crashes to do with our interactable foliage and rocks after an engine update. The main crash seems to be solved but there is still a bit more to do to make it so I can get back to the same level of virtual deforestation :) Other than that I have been helping Lee with the merging of the new engine update.
Butch 'the polybender' - 3D Artist
Greetings! Fantastical things. Polys and fantastical things. Wheels, Polys and fantastical things. Vehicle shapes and polys with fantastical things. The shapes, oh the shapes. WIP work for our transport has begun.
Carlos - Developer
The new sell module has been completed now and part of the build tool, so I’m rich (in Eden Star resources)! I’ve now begun looking at some of gnarly changes we’ve had since upgrading the engine to resolve some of the functionality in the backend for the option menu settings that have had their functionality altered.
Tom - Designer
Working through a lot of back end tidy up for the day night cycle system so it works cleanly with the new sky visuals. I'll be moving on to the other biome styles for the more lush environments, not as much will change on this front from what we had previously. Some revamped materials and terrain surface grass cover with more variation are going to be the main things that get updated.
Sam - Concept Artist
Greetings! We’ve spent the majority of this week tweaking and refining the design for the Hunter creature, and it’s all coming together nicely. We wanted a silhouette that appeared scary, but also strong and powerful, reinforcing the idea that this foe is a much greater challenge than their smaller counterparts.
I’ve also finished a pretty 2D render of the Mite (I’m using the word “pretty” loosely, because as you can tell, the Mite is anything but!) This is how we’ll want the Mite to look in-game, though the colours may be subject to change.
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I have been finishing up the animated staggers for the ‘Jumper’mites and Splintermites to get it to feel impactful when you hit them with melee or force weapons. I have also been helping out with the concept of our new 'Huntermite' critter. Which is a taller, meaner, more melee-aggressive mite variety.
Andy - Lead QA
This week myself and Jamie have been working on testing two different versions of the build to try and assist Lee as much as possible with the merge.
We also focused on getting some long awaited multiplayer testing on. We did discover a few issues, but there were no major discrepancies between the two different build which means we are in a good position for continuing with the merge.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix
January Development Update!
Greetings Pioneers!
Happy New Year! Into the depths we go! It’s starting to look eerie as we start to arrive at the visual polish levels that we as a team have always aimed for. It’s a good quality benchmark for the rest of the project as a whole, and there’s going to be plenty more improvement as we refine the atmospherics and sounds in these spaces. We’ve made some progress with another four legged creature as well.. which is just coming out of pre-production.
John - Lead Designer
Tom and I have been talking about the distribution designs for Materials throughout the level and i’ve also been working with the guys to get concepts finalised for the vehicles, as they’re now starting production to get the final models for the large transport and speeder in game. Enemy types, animations and also production have also been discussed whilst we start to push towards final requirements for a release.
I’m still a bit concerned about some of the crashes that we’re seeing at the moment and also the pacing of objectives/direction and signposting, but I hope that next week i’ll be able to focus more on what’s needed to polish these components along with some refinements to the fuel designs.
Tom - Designer
Hope everyone’s had a wonderful holiday over the last couple of weeks! Feeling recharged and refreshed, the artists and I have been giving the atmosphere some tender loving care.
https://youtu.be/SaUX7o732Hs
We’ve done our best to create 3 distinct palettes as the day progresses, starting with a rich red sunrise, moving into the pale yellows for the day, before turning an ominous green as night comes; signalling the awakening of Pharus 7’s more deadly creatures.
Lee - Technical Director
This week I have been continuing with work to do with points of interest. Part of this was tying it in with the scripting system we have so that a point of interest can trigger a script on the AI to perform a set of actions. Over Christmas I worked on some new functionality to prevent the AI planners for nearby AI from running in sync. This just ensures that even if AI want to do the same thing, they don’t all do it at the same time.
Matt - Art Director
A lot of art has been integrated into the base areas over the last few days. Trying to push the run down and dark interiors to create that full horror aspect within them. The majority of creature encounter locations have had extra work done to them, like the addition of extra rooms off the main route. Next up will be The Dam surface, which still needs some extra love and care from a combat experience and art perspective!
Carlos - Developer
The final parts of the selling module are now coming together! Time to get rich…. in Pharus materials that is….
Marcin - Designer
Happy new year everybody! During this first week of 2018 I’ve been working on the 2nd priority AI behaviours, such as turning over time, interacting with points of interest and random Idles. I call those 2nd priority, because although they are important for the overall feel of the creatures, the game would work all the same without them.
The turning over time logic is pretty self explanatory, we want the AI to animate turning to ace in a given direction instead of just snapping to it. Interacting with points of interest is a broader mechanic that will let us have AI interact with locations and objects in the world that are not combat targets. For example the first few we are working on are: finding corpses to eat, finding vantage points to climb to, and finding other friendly creatures to have fun with :)
Sam - Concept Artist
Greetings! This week I’ve been working on a number of things, with main focus being the next creature - the Hunter. This one is going to be a very large, feral and aggressive being that presents a much more significant challenge than the Splintermite - you certainly wouldn’t want to run into one of these in a dark alleyway.
We’ve come to general consensus on which silhouette design we think best fits these qualities, and I am well on the way to putting together a more definitive design next week. And don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about the Mite either: our critter’s currently being painted up into a final concept piece, so that’ll be something else to look forward to next week!
Lauren - Lead Animator
Finishing up the jumping mite by making some visual improvements to the animations and discussing the next steps. Despite setbacks with power cuts early in the week we're making good progress.
We've been refining how we want the stagger to work across all the AI so that it feels good to hit them with any weapon. I've also had the time to make some improvements to the third person jumping animations. You can now skip merrily across the terrain, like the child we all are inside.
Andy - Lead QA
First week back after our christmas adventure and everyone appears rejuvenated and ready make the next few weeks really count.
I’ve been in lots of production meetings, planning the next steps for Eden Star. We have the new terrain in and playable, new creatures currently being implemented and new vehicles being models.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix
December Development Update 4 - Christmas Feature!
Greetings Pioneers!
And Merry Christmas to All our followers! The new critters have made it into the world this week as we work towards inserting some small posts/points of interest that Pioneers can explore. We’ve also been tarting up the A.I. behaviour and location lighting to improve the experience across the day and night.
Onto business! We’re excited to be showing you a walk through of the drop zone section of the level brought to you by our Art Director, Matt. Please note that this build is a work in progress without all of the latest individual changes yet committed, so some of what you’ll see here is not up to date.
https://youtu.be/3tld3hEEl9A
The build in this footage is work in progress and is not yet released on Steam.
Beyond this we also wanted to let you into a little more detail on production and schedule moving forwards. The team have now finished for Christmas but prior to this, a number of the guys were working hard to get new A.I. features that you have started to see emerge in the blogs over the past few weeks, there are also vehicles and the new environment/level design that we have been putting into the world.
When these and a number of other core systems are in, we should have a fresh vertical slice. To coincide with the new features we have also dig into the lore of the world more and can now reveal the following as a Story introduction synopsis for those who have asked and want to know more or offer ideas and support - PLEASE NOTE :: SPOILERS AHEAD;
“Earth is recovering from a great catastrophe that has destroyed the biosphere and devastated the population. An alien material provides hope and the means for interstellar travel, fuelling great leaps in scientific understanding. As humankind reaches for the stars, trade routes are formed between fledgling colonies. Over time essential resources are leveraged to manipulate trade, causing diplomatic relations between Earth and the outer colonies to fail.
The outer colony of Pharos 7 starts to develop in secret a terraforming technology that can rapidly change hostile worlds in moments, enabling decades of reliance on Earth to stop.
As Earth monitors from afar, the colony abruptly ceases all outside communication. Eden Star is the nearest Terran-ship tasked with investigation.
You are a Pioneer, sent as part of the initial ground force to seek out and recover the terraforming technology. You wake some time after landing planet-side, abandoned by your crew, you cannot contact Eden Star. You must discover what has happened on Pharos and find a way to survive.”
Keep your eye fixed on this space for more. Our next blog will arrive on the first Friday (5th) in January!
Happy holidays and have a fantastic new year.
-Team Flix
December Development Update 3!
Greetings Pioneers!
We’ve had a big push this week to get our newest mite-ey creature in the game with it’s new behaviours and the ability to jump! Watch out these guys will have a fondness for Pioneer flesh...
John - Lead Designer
Jingle bells, ding, ding, Whats that? The sound of the deadline bell for this current sprint. The level design and creature team have been doing a lot of deliberation upto this point over updates to designs but they have definitely delivered on our latest run at getting some incredible new stuff done.
Matt - Art Director
Tom and I have been hard at work implementing our final detail layering into the terrain. We’ve based a lot of the rock formation around the look of lava fields to create that horrible tormented ground look and give reason to the planets source of toxic atmosphere. Again this is Work in progress visual stuff but it's much closer to the final product that we’re aiming for!
Lee - Technical Director
This week I’ve managed to get our code merged into the latest version of the engine. I’ve also been giving our group movement code some attention to make it easier for the spawners and designers to put AI into groups and formations if they want. The last thing I did was add functionality to allow designers to plug in animation data to the behaviour tasks.
Carlos - Developer
Work has continued on splitting the sell functionality away from our other modules. The idea is to allow the sell functionality to be handled within its own module, rather than have our mining functionality deal with selling
Olly - Junior Programmer
Continued tinkering with the vehicle mechanics. Really trying to get to a point where they feel really fun and handle they way you’d expect. Got some good feedback from to the rest of the team and I think I can speak for everyone in saying that we’re all excited to get them into Eden Star.
Marcin - Designer
Jumps and hops and leaps all the way. I’ve been working on the jumping logic for the AI creatures, namely the Mite and the Stalker. What I am was aiming for was a leap attack logic with impeccable controllable timing for the Mite, because I really wanted to be parry-able, and our parry logic obeys a very strict timing rules.
As for the stalker, I want it to be able to climb high ground like being able to reposition onto tall rocks and cliffs and the base roofs. I want an agile enemy that can match the Pioneer’s ability to get places, so I needed logic that was extremely precise as to where the creature will land. I was able to do this thanks to the amazing Sebastian Lague. Check him out on YouTube:
Secret-Santa shenanigans aside, I’ve been busy getting our new terrain layers implemented into engine for our other designer and artists to have a play with. It’s all coming together really nicely, especially now that we’re able to implement our new ai and watch them scurrying around the desolate landscape of Pharus 7. I also have to say, it’s amazing how much better things look in the new version of the engine! :D
Merry Christmas everyone, really looking forward to what the New Year holds for Eden Star going forward!
Alex - Designer
Let’s talk about master materials, I’m sure you all remember that sweet looking tile set I was modelling and unwrapping before, looking all monochromatic and boring. *Waves arms furiously* WELL NOT ANYMORE!!! The models and unwraps are finished bois, now the fun part starts…MATHS and PAINTING!
That’s rights, we’re talking world aligned roughness and normal maps (which are anything but), Metal, colour and detail Masks influenced by vertex world positions and tweakable in instances so versatile it hurts.
Merry Christmas.
Sam - Concept Artist
The majority of this week has been dedicated to getting the Mite just right, as we want to keep the legs a certain shape at the same time as keeping the proportions and anatomy physically realistic, and true to the purpose we want it to serve in-game.
So far we’ve played around with up to 6 different styles for the larger leg (the important one that propels the creature into the player’s face) and are very nearly ready to move onto other things. Alongside all this, I’ve also produced a semi-profile view of the critter to help better our understanding of the shape ready for modelling, as well as some small quality-of-life tweaks to our heavy vehicle from a few weeks back.
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week has been all about the Mite, our latest creature (name TBC). I have been animating its attack and various creepy movements such as sniffing out players and feeding on flesh. Its behaviours are reminiscent of Half-Life’s Headcrabs or the Facehuggers from Alien. It aims for player’s weak spots with stabby face claws in a mid-air assault. Though its attack is damaging, it can easily be avoided or intercepted. You should be able to hit them mid-air with the axe and send them flying.
Andy - Lead QA
With the engine being update to 4.18 due to a foliage destruction crash there has been a lot of “retesting” by myself and Jamie. We have also been focusing our efforts on the AI due to a lot of fixes being submitted.
Myself and Matt also finally got around to putting up the Christmas tree and a few decorations just to make the office feel a little more festive.
See you in the fray!
-Team Flix
December Development Update 2
Greetings Pioneers!
Chunky progress on the lead up to Christmas! The surface and new world assets are starting to align with our 3rd person work, plus our additional AI is now being brought to life (and it's terrifying).
Here’s what we’ve all been upto:
John - Lead Designer
Choo choo, here comes the production train. Chugga chugga, clickety clack, everyone's getting on but its not stopping because we forgot to give it any breaks. Our in game vehicles do have breaks however, thankfully.
Matt - Art Director
A lot of implementation work has been going into the level, including alterations of the road system and positioning of our key locations, plus a very satisfying new dynamic sky system which gives us more versatility at different times of day.
Vistas are probably the most important part of these alterations, so a lot of the time is being taken to carefully consider views in relation to our encounter placements.
WIP sky and reworked vista - Not representative of final detail levels
Lee - Technical Director
This week I have been tweaking some of the AI bugs that have cropped up while Marcin has been fine tuning some of the various types of Splintermite. I’m also in the process of upgrading the engine to try and fix a crash we are having mainly with destructible foliage. I thought I had it fixed at the beginning of the week, but it's proving to be a resilient bug.
Olly - Junior Programmer
Made a bunch of handling changes so designers can modify things like turning circle easily, and change the way the vehicle feels going forward and in reverse!
Marcin - Designer
I’ve been doing some more work on the AI, but more specifically 2 things. Firstly I’ve grown tired of how withholding the unreal engine can be on the information about certain animation systems, especially montages, so i’ve implemented a few new tools that reveal such obscure and delicate information like: the length of the montage, or its blend times, or whether any are being played on specific slots. I don’t know why those aren’t part of the standard package, since they are so vital that whenever was working on animation without them I always felt so blind and limited.
The other thing I am working on is jumping and leaping logic. We are looking to have some AI being able to leap onto you to attack or onto higher ground for better positioning. I am currently working our the physics part of the calculation, he navigation part comes next.
Alex - Environment Artist
Texturing and revisions to our bases are well underway, this will go through a few iterations so bare in mind this is all still WIP.
Tom Whittemore - Level Designer
This week I have been starting to look at material generator nodes and the different types and sizes we want, and their rarity throughout the world. There are two objectives I want to achieve with the mining and crafting system. First, to create moments of opportunity when the player finds a rare material and suddenly can craft a significant new item, weapon or technology.
The second is to balance all ‘basic’ materials to ensure their availability in the world is in line with their uses and requirements. So hopefully it doesn't feel like you’re constantly short for basic materials but also you don’t have so many that it allows you to easily grind out enough materials for a small town.
Node Types
Not all node types will have all node sizes
Node Sizes
Sam - Concept Artist
After some lengthy discussions about behaviors I’ve managed to pull together our finished concept of the mite. Think half life Headcrab with this dude, in terms of behavior at least!
Lauren - Lead Animator
Been working through the new Mite animations based off our initial proxy model of the creature. Just a few days left to finish up on that, so we should have something to show very soon :)
Andy - Lead QA
Had an extended play session this week to try and catch any issues that arise from single player save files that are over 150 in-game days. Had some more discussion regarding new cheatures for the game and planned out future sprints so when back after the holidays we can hit the ground running.
