Greetings Pioneers!

Testing, testing, one, two, three, our creatures shall not be allowed to path into any tree.

Our latest content update is approaching fast! The testing phase has had to be lengthened over this week to help eliminate some quite major navigation bugs that we’re not happy with currently (The kind that break the fun times). These will be ironed out as soon as possible so thank you for your patience <3.

Here’s a quick recap showing some of the major features you can expect in the next update:



Replication units (Spawn pads) - No longer will the Eden Kit alone be enough for you to ensure you spawn in a safe location when death strikes you down with his Scythe. At least one unit will need to be built for you to rejoin your game in a desired place.



Pillaging of offline Pioneers - Soon when you log out in Multiplayer, your body will be vulnerable to others unless you happen to log out in a safe place. And even still, there’s no guarantee you will be perfectly safe behind your armored walls..



The Juggernaut - This beast and future large creature classes, are purposefully designed to be tough to tackle as an individual, and challenging to take out as a group. Manic chaos will erupt during the battle to take one down.

Lastly our individual rundown of what we’ve been working on this week:

John - Lead Designer

Been looking at the A.I. pathing with the developers this week, getting a solid grasp of how we move the system forward to work properly with the design and convincing behaviours and movements that we want from our creatures. Probably one of if not the most important aspect of our creatures is having them able to move as desired, and more importantly as expected by players encountering them.

Matt - Art Director

So I’ve been catching up with everybody today after a short break from Flixland. I’ve been on the feedback train to keep the environment development on track (pun intended). We’ve re-jigged a few Biome visuals and started transforming some areas into ‘Marshlands’ to make more sense within the environment. Otherwise I’ve been helping out with visual bug fixes and begun developing much large (than previously featured) pre-built structures for several feature areas within our 8km world.

Lee - Technical Director

Navigation issues abound, but needless to say most of the issues we’ve been facing with pathing are now under control. The fixes I’ve been working on need to accommodate large creature types such as the Juggernaut, so there has been a fair amount of extra work just taking the creatures scale into mind. targeting refinement in general is something I’ve had a chance to look at this week too.

Simone - Concept Artist

This week I have been finishing up a cave environment concept and started work on a Marshland environment concept. For the cave concept we wanted it to feel more 'hellish', as if the player is descending down toward the center of Pharus. The sinkholes in the ceilings connect the over-world of Pharus 7 with the inner caves and tunnels allowing natural light to flood the upper sections for the player to see the environment easier. The Marshland concept is still being worked on and so far it’s gloomy and moody...with pools of water! You will need high boots to walk around that area!



Tristan - Senior Developer

This week I have been finishing off the sleeping pioneers logic, tweaks to the mantling and muchos bug fixing. I have also been working on production for xp, progression and survival systems which are the next set of goals we want to power through.

Yves - Senior Developer

Fixed freeform foundation height mechanics that will be added soon, amongst several other bugs that had persisted with the build placement system. Will be gearing up to work on the base survival mechanics next week.

Ricky - Developer

Looking into certain keyboard key binding issues which might be dependant on language settings on the pc. A few minor issues have been looked into too and some extra technical designing with the exp and levelling systems ready to be put through it’s paces hastily next week.

Marcin - Designer

Implemented a revised Ram for the Juggernaut and added a death effect. I’ve also been helping Matt out with visual fixes for the ‘spawn pad’ aka replication unit.

Joe - Environment Artist

I’ve had some time to improve the edges of our new map’s island this week, introducing a new work in progress Grassland biome variant. This has required quick a bit of work to refactor our landscape/rock shaders to get the visuals we’re after. I’ve also been working with Simone on the initial visual direction of the Cave and Marshland biomes.

Tom - Character Artist

Starting the work on the Seiger and other Biome creatures soon!

Lauren - Lead Animator

Apart from deciding on which lovely dress to wear to a wedding this weekend, I’ve been working on cleaning up skin weighting and poses for our Pioneer character models. When I return on Monday I shall share all the gold I’ve found in a pot that was strangely located at the base of a magical rainbow.

p.s. I love weddings and dresses, it's almost as fun as making games.Almost.

Andy - Lead QA

This week we have been dealing with a rather big overhaul over the AI pathing so most of my week has been geared towards debugging that. I have also been testing the new additions to foundations, players having persistent bodies on multiplayer servers and keybinding fixes. All in all it’s been a busy week and with Matt being on holiday until today I was able to get a peanut butter KitKat Chunky drama free.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

 

Greetings Pioneers!

Testing, testing, one, two, three, our creatures shall not be allowed to path into any tree.

Our latest content update is approaching fast! The testing phase has had to be lengthened over this week to help eliminate some quite major navigation bugs that we’re not happy with currently (The kind that break the fun times). These will be ironed out as soon as possible so thank you for your patience <3.

Here’s a quick recap showing some of the major features you can expect in the next update:



Replication units (Spawn pads) - No longer will the Eden Kit alone be enough for you to ensure you spawn in a safe location when death strikes you down with his Scythe. At least one unit will need to be built for you to rejoin your game in a desired place.



Pillaging of offline Pioneers - Soon when you log out in Multiplayer, your body will be vulnerable to others unless you happen to log out in a safe place. And even still, there’s no guarantee you will be perfectly safe behind your armored walls..



The Juggernaut - This beast and future large creature classes, are purposefully designed to be tough to tackle as an individual, and challenging to take out as a group. Manic chaos will erupt during the battle to take one down.

Lastly our individual rundown of what we’ve been working on this week:

John - Lead Designer

Been looking at the A.I. pathing with the developers this week, getting a solid grasp of how we move the system forward to work properly with the design and convincing behaviours and movements that we want from our creatures. Probably one of if not the most important aspect of our creatures is having them able to move as desired, and more importantly as expected by players encountering them.

Matt - Art Director

So I’ve been catching up with everybody today after a short break from Flixland. I’ve been on the feedback train to keep the environment development on track (pun intended). We’ve re-jigged a few Biome visuals and started transforming some areas into ‘Marshlands’ to make more sense within the environment. Otherwise I’ve been helping out with visual bug fixes and begun developing much large (than previously featured) pre-built structures for several feature areas within our 8km world.

Lee - Technical Director

Navigation issues abound, but needless to say most of the issues we’ve been facing with pathing are now under control. The fixes I’ve been working on need to accommodate large creature types such as the Juggernaut, so there has been a fair amount of extra work just taking the creatures scale into mind. targeting refinement in general is something I’ve had a chance to look at this week too.

Simone - Concept Artist

This week I have been finishing up a cave environment concept and started work on a Marshland environment concept. For the cave concept we wanted it to feel more 'hellish', as if the player is descending down toward the center of Pharus. The sinkholes in the ceilings connect the over-world of Pharus 7 with the inner caves and tunnels allowing natural light to flood the upper sections for the player to see the environment easier. The Marshland concept is still being worked on and so far it’s gloomy and moody...with pools of water! You will need high boots to walk around that area!



Tristan - Senior Developer

This week I have been finishing off the sleeping pioneers logic, tweaks to the mantling and muchos bug fixing. I have also been working on production for xp, progression and survival systems which are the next set of goals we want to power through.

Yves - Senior Developer

Fixed freeform foundation height mechanics that will be added soon, amongst several other bugs that had persisted with the build placement system. Will be gearing up to work on the base survival mechanics next week.

Ricky - Developer

Looking into certain keyboard key binding issues which might be dependant on language settings on the pc. A few minor issues have been looked into too and some extra technical designing with the exp and levelling systems ready to be put through it’s paces hastily next week.

Marcin - Designer

Implemented a revised Ram for the Juggernaut and added a death effect. I’ve also been helping Matt out with visual fixes for the ‘spawn pad’ aka replication unit.

Joe - Environment Artist

I’ve had some time to improve the edges of our new map’s island this week, introducing a new work in progress Grassland biome variant. This has required quick a bit of work to refactor our landscape/rock shaders to get the visuals we’re after. I’ve also been working with Simone on the initial visual direction of the Cave and Marshland biomes.

Tom - Character Artist

Starting the work on the Seiger and other Biome creatures soon!

Lauren - Lead Animator

Apart from deciding on which lovely dress to wear to a wedding this weekend, I’ve been working on cleaning up skin weighting and poses for our Pioneer character models. When I return on Monday I shall share all the gold I’ve found in a pot that was strangely located at the base of a magical rainbow.

p.s. I love weddings and dresses, it's almost as fun as making games.Almost.

Andy - Lead QA

This week we have been dealing with a rather big overhaul over the AI pathing so most of my week has been geared towards debugging that. I have also been testing the new additions to foundations, players having persistent bodies on multiplayer servers and keybinding fixes. All in all it’s been a busy week and with Matt being on holiday until today I was able to get a peanut butter KitKat Chunky drama free.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

 

Greetings Pioneers

The Juggernaut release is imminent!

This week we have been testing the interactions and balancing of the first of our big enemy creature types. We have also been fixing a number of bugs as well as continuing work on other exciting future features. We hope to have a new release out to you very soon, there are just a few remaining issues to sort out before we can confidently let it out the door.

As well as the Juggernaut we are hoping to release the new Spawn Pad Utility which will be selectable in the deployment menu and will replace the functionality of spawning at your Eden Kit. You can build multiple of these and place them anywhere within your base. Each one will have a cooldown timer before they can be used again.

Here’s what we’ve been working on this week:

John - Lead Designer

Working with the team on designs for the power and fuel system, we have had several ideas for the implementation of this, after lengthy discussions we think we have a solution that will work and not feel too tedious as a survival mechanic. When we have refined them a bit more It would be good to share them with you all and get some feedback!

Towards the end of the week I’ve been testing the Juggernaut with the team and defining tweaks and refinements to the interactions that will make him more of a challenge and more rewarding to take it down!

Matt - Art Director



I’m in a volcano or something, I dunno...

Earlier in the week though I was working on finishing the new ‘locations’ I was teasing last week - I then moved on to creating a bunch of prefab buildings which, pending testing, will randomly spawn across the level and add a whole new dimension to exploration and colonisation...



Lee - Technical Director

Most of my time this week has been spent on fixing bugs and trying to locate some rare crashes we have been having with the AI. The Juggernaut still needs a little more polish before it is ready to be released.

Tristan - Senior Developer

This week I have been working with Big Boss on designs for power and fuel systems for the game. Development wise I have been implementing more logic around the player logging out and logging back system. Also AI and Player body ragdolls because who knew falling over was that hard.

Marcin - Designer

Just like the rest of the team, I spent most of time testing, debugging and tweaking, most of all the Juggernaut and its Ram attack, which had a problem of being bipolar, it would either hit like wet noodles or knock the player out of the map, with very little wiggle room in between. Among other things, I put some extra work into the Modular Weapon System as well, because who knew that procedurally driven animations would be tricky to implement :) The biggest problem with it was the Recoil animation, whose length and magnitude have to be variable driven and still look right, but at the moment I think we’ve found our solution.

Joe - Environment Artist

I’ve been polishing rocks this week - reviewing the current state of the new level and focusing on improving key areas such as the Underwater biomes by improving the terrain and mesh placement and making underwater caves for nasty critters to live in. I’m currently working on initial portions of new biome areas, a variant of ‘Grassland’ to populate the windswept outer reaches of the island, and ‘Marsh’ (formerly Savannah). In amongst all this I’ve had some extra time to fix up a bunch of small but annoying issues with the new level, including dodgy hive placement, optimising clouds/foliage for slower GPUs, PFX tweaks, fog fixes, collision problems, ceramic rock visuals, and underwater Post Process.

Also grieving the loss of 3 fine British eggs, stolen by Matt. I can only assume he plans on casting them into the fires of Mount Doom on his holiday. Well, that or making scrambled eggs.



Lauren - Animator

In between testing the Juggernaut and working with marcin on our modular weapons system I have been polishing up the skin weighting for the player armour sets and exporting the individual pieces. I've started on a blueprint visual prototype for combining elements of different sets together to start to define the rules as to what we want from it. Balancing flexibility with what actually looks good together and what combinations don't work.

Ideally we would like additional slots for vanity items that won't affect gameplay but in terms of armour pieces so far we have helmets, chest armour, leg armour, arm armour (not including the RMD) and boots. The RMD weapon could be another slot eventually but so far we just have the one variety ;)

Simone - Concept Artist

This week I have been tidying up the environment concepts from the last few weeks and making sure all the creatures are sitting pretty. We have also started work on two new environments that need to be conceptualised for the team to start work on some environment systems.



Yves - Senior Developer

I’ve been working on building block improvements and mining improvements as well as adding the ability to raise and lower foundation heights on placement.

Ricky - Developer

Spent some quality time this week debugging the keybinding issues among others. I also implemented the Replication Unit first pass into the game ready for some testing and debugging.

Andy - Lead QA

I don’t know what to write in these anymore. I do the same thing every week. It’s a lot less exciting than the other guys, which is why I’m always at the bottom. So if you have waded through all the awesomeness that the others have entertained you with and ended up here, at the door to relentless repetition, don’t be alarmed I shall leave you with a quote I’ve just stolen from the internet…

“They don't make bugs like Bunny anymore." - Olav Mjelde.

QUALITY ASSURED!


See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers

The Juggernaut release is imminent!

This week we have been testing the interactions and balancing of the first of our big enemy creature types. We have also been fixing a number of bugs as well as continuing work on other exciting future features. We hope to have a new release out to you very soon, there are just a few remaining issues to sort out before we can confidently let it out the door.

As well as the Juggernaut we are hoping to release the new Spawn Pad Utility which will be selectable in the deployment menu and will replace the functionality of spawning at your Eden Kit. You can build multiple of these and place them anywhere within your base. Each one will have a cooldown timer before they can be used again.

Here’s what we’ve been working on this week:

John - Lead Designer

Working with the team on designs for the power and fuel system, we have had several ideas for the implementation of this, after lengthy discussions we think we have a solution that will work and not feel too tedious as a survival mechanic. When we have refined them a bit more It would be good to share them with you all and get some feedback!

Towards the end of the week I’ve been testing the Juggernaut with the team and defining tweaks and refinements to the interactions that will make him more of a challenge and more rewarding to take it down!

Matt - Art Director



I’m in a volcano or something, I dunno...

Earlier in the week though I was working on finishing the new ‘locations’ I was teasing last week - I then moved on to creating a bunch of prefab buildings which, pending testing, will randomly spawn across the level and add a whole new dimension to exploration and colonisation...



Lee - Technical Director

Most of my time this week has been spent on fixing bugs and trying to locate some rare crashes we have been having with the AI. The Juggernaut still needs a little more polish before it is ready to be released.

Tristan - Senior Developer

This week I have been working with Big Boss on designs for power and fuel systems for the game. Development wise I have been implementing more logic around the player logging out and logging back system. Also AI and Player body ragdolls because who knew falling over was that hard.

Marcin - Designer

Just like the rest of the team, I spent most of time testing, debugging and tweaking, most of all the Juggernaut and its Ram attack, which had a problem of being bipolar, it would either hit like wet noodles or knock the player out of the map, with very little wiggle room in between. Among other things, I put some extra work into the Modular Weapon System as well, because who knew that procedurally driven animations would be tricky to implement :) The biggest problem with it was the Recoil animation, whose length and magnitude have to be variable driven and still look right, but at the moment I think we’ve found our solution.

Joe - Environment Artist

I’ve been polishing rocks this week - reviewing the current state of the new level and focusing on improving key areas such as the Underwater biomes by improving the terrain and mesh placement and making underwater caves for nasty critters to live in. I’m currently working on initial portions of new biome areas, a variant of ‘Grassland’ to populate the windswept outer reaches of the island, and ‘Marsh’ (formerly Savannah). In amongst all this I’ve had some extra time to fix up a bunch of small but annoying issues with the new level, including dodgy hive placement, optimising clouds/foliage for slower GPUs, PFX tweaks, fog fixes, collision problems, ceramic rock visuals, and underwater Post Process.

Also grieving the loss of 3 fine British eggs, stolen by Matt. I can only assume he plans on casting them into the fires of Mount Doom on his holiday. Well, that or making scrambled eggs.



Lauren - Animator

In between testing the Juggernaut and working with marcin on our modular weapons system I have been polishing up the skin weighting for the player armour sets and exporting the individual pieces. I've started on a blueprint visual prototype for combining elements of different sets together to start to define the rules as to what we want from it. Balancing flexibility with what actually looks good together and what combinations don't work.

Ideally we would like additional slots for vanity items that won't affect gameplay but in terms of armour pieces so far we have helmets, chest armour, leg armour, arm armour (not including the RMD) and boots. The RMD weapon could be another slot eventually but so far we just have the one variety ;)

Simone - Concept Artist

This week I have been tidying up the environment concepts from the last few weeks and making sure all the creatures are sitting pretty. We have also started work on two new environments that need to be conceptualised for the team to start work on some environment systems.



Yves - Senior Developer

I’ve been working on building block improvements and mining improvements as well as adding the ability to raise and lower foundation heights on placement.

Ricky - Developer

Spent some quality time this week debugging the keybinding issues among others. I also implemented the Replication Unit first pass into the game ready for some testing and debugging.

Andy - Lead QA

I don’t know what to write in these anymore. I do the same thing every week. It’s a lot less exciting than the other guys, which is why I’m always at the bottom. So if you have waded through all the awesomeness that the others have entertained you with and ended up here, at the door to relentless repetition, don’t be alarmed I shall leave you with a quote I’ve just stolen from the internet…

“They don't make bugs like Bunny anymore." - Olav Mjelde.

QUALITY ASSURED!


See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

This week we have been continuing development on exciting new environments, features and creatures. The new level is getting populated with climbable rocks, secret caves and feature areas, the Juggernaut is stomping around, charging and breathing fire and the modular weapons artwork is coming along nicely and may yield more combinations than originally thought. Progress!

Here’s what we’ve been working on:

John - Lead Designer

This week I’ve been going over designs for the objectives system and the modular weapon system among many other design and production meetings and discussions. We’re making some exciting progress!

Lee - Technical Director

This week I have been finalising the Juggernaut behaviours ready for an imminent release. There has been a lot more work involved with this creature than most other AI we have, just because of the way we want it to work. Now the work is done it should also make it a lot easier to add other large creatures to the game which we have planned.

Matt - Art Director

So, magical things have been happening in the new map. I’ve been creating a dynamic level loading system with the help of the developers, which allows us to perform a wizard like spell that replaces sections of the world with entirely different looking areas and features every time a new game is started. One example being sinkholes, which will tie into some of our story driven components to do with the origin of the enemy creatures. I will say no more and allow speculation to run rampant with just one image.. Enjoy.



 

Tristan - Senior Developer

This week I have been helping out with system and implementation designs for our new procedural designer built structures (we might change the name) to give the impression of a lost world. I have also been implementing the logout system where the player characters and their inventories will remain after they have logged out. This will mean you can go and loot people when they are sleeping so make sure to wrap up warm and surrounded by turrets when you log out :)

Yves - Senior Developer

This we… no I refuse to start any post like that. In this sprint I have been working further on deterioration of buildings, making the decay faster from the outside in, meaning a well supported structure should take longer to decay. Also I’ve been working towards procedurally placed structures, that’s all I’m saying on that… I don’t want to ruin the fun things we have planned.

Marcin - Designer

Graphs, flowcharts, documents, spreadsheets, and prototypes - namely designer’s favourite things, it’s what I’ve been buried under the entire week. Among other things, I’ve done another pass on the Juggernaut’s behaviour tree, planned out 3 alternative Progression flows, designed the experience distribution and finished up missing bits from the survival mechanic system. And to top it all up. I’ve started prototyping the more interesting attacks of the upcoming Splintermite Queen.

Joe - Environment Artist

Pushing to finish off my pass over terrain and mesh placement in the initial portion of our new map. Don’t tell the Directors, but I’ve hidden a few secrets in the map... We can’t wait to unleash this mammoth new world to the community.



Lauren - Animator

These past few weeks has been all about modular weapons, I've been working on weapon recoil, lining up the aim down sights so that it works with each scope/barrel/receiver combination and getting the new Heavy Receiver and Grenade and Bolt Launcher Barrels feeling good from an animation perspective. Dynamically blending how much recoil animation to play with any given combination is proving to be the tricky bit but once we figure this out we can begin moving the prototype into code. I'm looking forward to sharing how it's all working and looking once we get it a bit more polished!

Ricky - Developer

I started this week by looking into some of the main issues users have been having to do with key rebinding and losing items/weapons and inventory. Most of the keybindings are now sorted pending testing, and temporary measures are in place to allow players to continue games where they’ve lost items until we can fully capture the issue.

After that debacle, I started getting my hands dirty with some of the progression system.

Simone - Concept Artist

Over the past few weeks I've been working on making sure the environment concepts are correct and showing all the details that the team needs from them, as well as creating concepts for a deer-like creature that will be found in a few environments within the game. We want them to show how the different creatures interact with each other and it has taken some time to get the right feel from each concept. We are almost there!



Andy - Lead QA

Since our last release I have been working on replicating issues that have been reported on the steam forums and getting the relevant information to the guys to get them fixed. More recently I’ve been dealing with the distressing realisation that Matt got me a normal KitKat chunky instead of a peanut butter KitKat chunky.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

This week we have been continuing development on exciting new environments, features and creatures. The new level is getting populated with climbable rocks, secret caves and feature areas, the Juggernaut is stomping around, charging and breathing fire and the modular weapons artwork is coming along nicely and may yield more combinations than originally thought. Progress!

Here’s what we’ve been working on:

John - Lead Designer

This week I’ve been going over designs for the objectives system and the modular weapon system among many other design and production meetings and discussions. We’re making some exciting progress!

Lee - Technical Director

This week I have been finalising the Juggernaut behaviours ready for an imminent release. There has been a lot more work involved with this creature than most other AI we have, just because of the way we want it to work. Now the work is done it should also make it a lot easier to add other large creatures to the game which we have planned.

Matt - Art Director

So, magical things have been happening in the new map. I’ve been creating a dynamic level loading system with the help of the developers, which allows us to perform a wizard like spell that replaces sections of the world with entirely different looking areas and features every time a new game is started. One example being sinkholes, which will tie into some of our story driven components to do with the origin of the enemy creatures. I will say no more and allow speculation to run rampant with just one image.. Enjoy.



 

Tristan - Senior Developer

This week I have been helping out with system and implementation designs for our new procedural designer built structures (we might change the name) to give the impression of a lost world. I have also been implementing the logout system where the player characters and their inventories will remain after they have logged out. This will mean you can go and loot people when they are sleeping so make sure to wrap up warm and surrounded by turrets when you log out :)

Yves - Senior Developer

This we… no I refuse to start any post like that. In this sprint I have been working further on deterioration of buildings, making the decay faster from the outside in, meaning a well supported structure should take longer to decay. Also I’ve been working towards procedurally placed structures, that’s all I’m saying on that… I don’t want to ruin the fun things we have planned.

Marcin - Designer

Graphs, flowcharts, documents, spreadsheets, and prototypes - namely designer’s favourite things, it’s what I’ve been buried under the entire week. Among other things, I’ve done another pass on the Juggernaut’s behaviour tree, planned out 3 alternative Progression flows, designed the experience distribution and finished up missing bits from the survival mechanic system. And to top it all up. I’ve started prototyping the more interesting attacks of the upcoming Splintermite Queen.

Joe - Environment Artist

Pushing to finish off my pass over terrain and mesh placement in the initial portion of our new map. Don’t tell the Directors, but I’ve hidden a few secrets in the map... We can’t wait to unleash this mammoth new world to the community.



Lauren - Animator

These past few weeks has been all about modular weapons, I've been working on weapon recoil, lining up the aim down sights so that it works with each scope/barrel/receiver combination and getting the new Heavy Receiver and Grenade and Bolt Launcher Barrels feeling good from an animation perspective. Dynamically blending how much recoil animation to play with any given combination is proving to be the tricky bit but once we figure this out we can begin moving the prototype into code. I'm looking forward to sharing how it's all working and looking once we get it a bit more polished!

Ricky - Developer

I started this week by looking into some of the main issues users have been having to do with key rebinding and losing items/weapons and inventory. Most of the keybindings are now sorted pending testing, and temporary measures are in place to allow players to continue games where they’ve lost items until we can fully capture the issue.

After that debacle, I started getting my hands dirty with some of the progression system.

Simone - Concept Artist

Over the past few weeks I've been working on making sure the environment concepts are correct and showing all the details that the team needs from them, as well as creating concepts for a deer-like creature that will be found in a few environments within the game. We want them to show how the different creatures interact with each other and it has taken some time to get the right feel from each concept. We are almost there!



Andy - Lead QA

Since our last release I have been working on replicating issues that have been reported on the steam forums and getting the relevant information to the guys to get them fixed. More recently I’ve been dealing with the distressing realisation that Matt got me a normal KitKat chunky instead of a peanut butter KitKat chunky.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

This week we have been continuing development on exciting new environments, features and creatures. The new level is getting populated with climbable rocks, secret caves and feature areas, the Juggernaut is stomping around, charging and breathing fire and the modular weapons artwork is coming along nicely and may yield more combinations than originally thought. Progress!

Here’s what we’ve been working on:

John - Lead Designer

This week I’ve been going over designs for the objectives system and the modular weapon system among many other design and production meetings and discussions. We’re making some exciting progress!

Lee - Technical Director

This week I have been finalising the Juggernaut behaviours ready for an imminent release. There has been a lot more work involved with this creature than most other AI we have, just because of the way we want it to work. Now the work is done it should also make it a lot easier to add other large creatures to the game which we have planned.

Matt - Art Director

So, magical things have been happening in the new map. I’ve been creating a dynamic level loading system with the help of the developers, which allows us to perform a wizard like spell that replaces sections of the world with entirely different looking areas and features every time a new game is started. One example being sinkholes, which will tie into some of our story driven components to do with the origin of the enemy creatures. I will say no more and allow speculation to run rampant with just one image.. Enjoy.



 

Tristan - Senior Developer

This week I have been helping out with system and implementation designs for our new procedural designer built structures (we might change the name) to give the impression of a lost world. I have also been implementing the logout system where the player characters and their inventories will remain after they have logged out. This will mean you can go and loot people when they are sleeping so make sure to wrap up warm and surrounded by turrets when you log out :)

Yves - Senior Developer

This we… no I refuse to start any post like that. In this sprint I have been working further on deterioration of buildings, making the decay faster from the outside in, meaning a well supported structure should take longer to decay. Also I’ve been working towards procedurally placed structures, that’s all I’m saying on that… I don’t want to ruin the fun things we have planned.

Marcin - Designer

Graphs, flowcharts, documents, spreadsheets, and prototypes - namely designer’s favourite things, it’s what I’ve been buried under the entire week. Among other things, I’ve done another pass on the Juggernaut’s behaviour tree, planned out 3 alternative Progression flows, designed the experience distribution and finished up missing bits from the survival mechanic system. And to top it all up. I’ve started prototyping the more interesting attacks of the upcoming Splintermite Queen.

Joe - Environment Artist

Pushing to finish off my pass over terrain and mesh placement in the initial portion of our new map. Don’t tell the Directors, but I’ve hidden a few secrets in the map... We can’t wait to unleash this mammoth new world to the community.



Lauren - Animator

These past few weeks has been all about modular weapons, I've been working on weapon recoil, lining up the aim down sights so that it works with each scope/barrel/receiver combination and getting the new Heavy Receiver and Grenade and Bolt Launcher Barrels feeling good from an animation perspective. Dynamically blending how much recoil animation to play with any given combination is proving to be the tricky bit but once we figure this out we can begin moving the prototype into code. I'm looking forward to sharing how it's all working and looking once we get it a bit more polished!

Ricky - Developer

I started this week by looking into some of the main issues users have been having to do with key rebinding and losing items/weapons and inventory. Most of the keybindings are now sorted pending testing, and temporary measures are in place to allow players to continue games where they’ve lost items until we can fully capture the issue.

After that debacle, I started getting my hands dirty with some of the progression system.

Simone - Concept Artist

Over the past few weeks I've been working on making sure the environment concepts are correct and showing all the details that the team needs from them, as well as creating concepts for a deer-like creature that will be found in a few environments within the game. We want them to show how the different creatures interact with each other and it has taken some time to get the right feel from each concept. We are almost there!



Andy - Lead QA

Since our last release I have been working on replicating issues that have been reported on the steam forums and getting the relevant information to the guys to get them fixed. More recently I’ve been dealing with the distressing realisation that Matt got me a normal KitKat chunky instead of a peanut butter KitKat chunky.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

Thank you for all the feedback you’ve been sharing over the weekend. We're coming right at your beautiful faces with the fix to a critical crash to do with killing the Cirrus Spores (Triffids, aka Dekubaba's), not to mention some other minor fixes thrown in for extra joy and happiness!

Important: Anyone running a server must update their version to work with this release.

• Fix for crash caused by killing Cirrus Spores/ triffids/ plant-like hive spawn.
• Fixed levels prompts remaining onscreen for eden kit.
• Tweaks to controls and re-mapping (The revert button now does what it's meant to)
• Removed extra eden kit upgrade node indicator.
• P button opens and closes clan menu properly again, as sometimes it would fail to close properly and leave the UI onscreen.
• Fix for FOV aim down sights playing at incorrect blend speed in single player.

As always, please keep us informed of your experiences and feedback from the ever evolving and treacherous world of Pharus 7. You can also keep track of upcoming features on our public Trello board.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

Thank you for all the feedback you’ve been sharing over the weekend. We're coming right at your beautiful faces with the fix to a critical crash to do with killing the Cirrus Spores (Triffids, aka Dekubaba's), not to mention some other minor fixes thrown in for extra joy and happiness!

Important: Anyone running a server must update their version to work with this release.

• Fix for crash caused by killing Cirrus Spores/ triffids/ plant-like hive spawn.
• Fixed levels prompts remaining onscreen for eden kit.
• Tweaks to controls and re-mapping (The revert button now does what it's meant to)
• Removed extra eden kit upgrade node indicator.
• P button opens and closes clan menu properly again, as sometimes it would fail to close properly and leave the UI onscreen.
• Fix for FOV aim down sights playing at incorrect blend speed in single player.

As always, please keep us informed of your experiences and feedback from the ever evolving and treacherous world of Pharus 7. You can also keep track of upcoming features on our public Trello board.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

Before we start introducing more creatures and our much larger world we've been working hard at tackling memory leak issues along side today's changes, so we should be getting closer to the more desirable stability we want from multiplayer.

In terms of new additions we have two major goodies for you. Firstly, we've introduced basic controller support! You can now use the controller in all of the game menus, hurrah!

Secondly we have added Degradation and Claiming of structures that are not within an Eden Kit shield. Structures outside of shielded areas will degrade over time and will eventually get destroyed. If you place an Eden Kit over structures not already inside one, it will claim them and make them yours (or your colony's). This should reduce the number of empty bases and help extinguish some of the stress on the servers as a side effect.

So on the PvP side of things, you can now properly steal structures from other Pioneers, by destroying a hostile Eden Kit and placing your own it its place! However do not fear PvE players, we've introduced new variables so servers can be configured to different play styles!

We are testing PvP this month, please let us know what you think of the new gameplay and if you run into any issues.

Important: If you are running a server of the previous version, you will need to update it to run with this release.

Change-list:



    Gamepad Support

• Added first pass of Gamepad support, so all menus and gameplay is usable from the comfort of your sofa/bed/hammock (what you don’t have a gaming hammock yet?).

Note - The changes and additions to allow for gamepad required any saved custom keybindings to be reset to defaults.

• Added Gamepad Layout to the Options Menu > Gamepad section, look here for controls!

    Deterioration and Bases

• Added deterioration to Structures outside of Eden Kit Shielded areas.
• Added ability to claim primitives, foundations and turrets that are not protected by an Eden Kit Shield by placing down an Eden Kit.
• Eden Kits now only require 1 foundation and will properly snap to existing structures
• Put in functionality to allow anyone to build on anyone else's blocks if they are not protected by an Eden Kit Shield

    Server configuration

• Added server configurable functionality for fortifying structures within an Eden Kit Shield
  
  • BlockDamageReductionFromPlayer for reducing damage from Players
  • BlockDamageReductionFromAI for reducing damage from AI

• Added server configurable functionality for structural deterioration
  
  • EdenKitShieldDeteriorationModifier for modifying block deterioration under an Eden Kit Shield
  • WorldDeteriorationModifier for modifying block deterioration outside of an Eden Kit Shield

The server command line property BlockDamageReductionFromPlayer will determine how much damage can be dealt by players to structures within Eden Kit shields.

Set this variable the same way as you would set an auto-save interval, in properties of the shortcut to the server. This is a value between 0 and 1, the default being 0.3 (or 30% of player damage to structures blocked). As a result of the setting, it will change the display in the server list to PVE or PVP. Any value above 0.7 will result in a labeling of PVE (70% of damage from players to structures will be blocked within Eden Kit shields).

Please Note: This currently only affects structures within Eden Kit shields and will not reduce damage dealt to player characters by other player characters.

Example PVE setup:

<install_dir>\EdenGameServer.exe -ServerName"MyServer" -ServerAutoSaveInterval 300 -BlockDamageReductionFromPlayer 1 -ServerLoadFromLastSave

• Optimisations to structure logic to allow for deterioration and mass destruction of bases.
• High level Stalker and Splintermite hives now use a different visual. Stalker and Splintermite hives are now differentiated by their colouring.
• Sniper Rifle Aim Down Sights sensitivity lowered
• Added the Deployment screen UI to Single Player for all times after you’ve viewed the opening cutscene.
• Gamepad Sensitivity, inversion and looking using the right analog stick options corrected so they will work for the gamepad too (In future we will likely separate these).
• Added Melee Target points so that melee will select these locations rather than the centre of the actor (for Juggernaut functionality).
• Put extra functionality to smash so for certain enemies the camera does not interpolate to the target point and instead freezes at the point the smash is instigated (for Juggernaut functionality)
• Put in ability to limit allowed smash directions per object (for Juggernaut functionality)
• Put in the ability to have enemies cause a grab to be released (for Juggernaut functionality)
• The ‘Use’ key (R or X on gamepad by default) now opens UI Menus such as lockboxes and Eden Kits
• Removed popup for save game override if the slot is empty
• Minor visual tweaks and fixes to Swamp biome grass and glow plants.

• Fixed memory leak to do with server and single player saving causing save files to double in size each time they were loaded and saved again.
• Fixed memory leak to do with PFX spawning on server.
• Refactored collision on Onyx rocks. This should fix material shards/pioneers falling through the floor as well issues with mantling and walking on them.
• Added a fix for spawning issues with Eden Kits in the Deployment screen UI - sometimes you would be unable to spawn as the button would not work.
• Fixed a bug with Beams (Kinetic Laser, Laser Turret, Energy Harness/Mine etc) where there were differences between single player and multiplayer in the damage outputs
• Fixed a bug where after upgrading the Kinetic Laser Range Node, it would end up doing less damage
• Fixed bug in multiplayer where inventory weight wasn't updated correctly, and could differ on client vs server showing incorrect error messages.
• Fixed a bug where absorbing anything in multiplayer made the display for the amount you've gathered show double.
• Fixed (fun) issue where Splintermite shards hitting a tree caused it to go flying wildly out of control.
• Fixed issue with energy blade becoming unequipped when player loads a save.
• Fixed issue with baton and energy blade meshes disappearing when loading from a save.
• Fix for an issue where the Stalkers would stand around and not move.
• Fixed visual disparancies on upgrade trees, some nodes were the wrong size/position
• Fixed the strange button sizes occurring in the keybinding menu
• Fixed incorrect highlighting on the Build Menu

New Known Issues

• On rare occasion the Eden Kit hologram will lose the Eden Kit model and look like a single foundation. Moving the camera around restores it back to normal. This will be addressed in a future update.
• When using a gamepad in the menus, if the cursor leaves the screen it can appear to stick to the edges if you continue moving it further outside the screen. Closing and reopening the menu will restore it back to normal.

For more known issues and what we are working on right now, check out our Public Trello boards here

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix