Multiple bug fixes and collision passes have been the focus of this week as well as optimisations for the level, lighting, materials and meshes. There has been a transformation in terms of quality when it comes to interacting with pickups and minable items which has stemmed from clearing up the UI and visual hints around these objects.
It’s also the simple things that matter, we now have a tidy display that matches the style of the HUD for items that get added to your inventory.
Here’s what everyone has been upto:
John - Lead Designer
In the words of Dr Seuss, Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. The fruits of that attitude is consistent across all creative mediums, Eden Star in particular. The quality change has been incredible this week and we can’t wait to get this next update out to you.
Matt - Art Director
Finished off the blast door asset for large entrance ways, amongst plenty of reviews that have been done to revised maintenance assets and other passes for collisions to existing models. Personally playing the work in progress build right now is starting to shape up to the experience we want to give everyone here on Steam, very exciting stuff as in my mind the visuals of the game have come a long way from the original releases.
Lee - Technical Director
Been in plenty of discussions around making the dodging of the A.I feel more lifelike and polished. The rest of their behaviour is looking tight, giving them a more sinister and threatening presence in the world.
Tristan - Lead Developer
This week I have been looking into some melee issue with Marcin to do with impacting the destructible in the game not giving us the response they needed. I have also been discussing technical designs with the AI team in order to make fighting them with melee weapons more responsive.
Ricky - Lead Developer
On holiday in my pants, hunting down the mysterious but very real Pink Unicorn.
Joe - Lead Artist
Worked on the new item pickup UI with Ricky, in preparation for some useful little tooltips that will pop-up when you first have enough items to craft something new. This is a small part of our overall goal to make the start of the game much less punishing for new players! I also worked on a bunch of other bits, including the item interaction effect for objects in the world, and blocking out the Makeshift Axe.
Captain Tom - Designer
In this episode, I courageously took on the gargantuan task of optimising our outdoor areas, and have managed to achieve around 100 fps in editor which is a huge step up!
On top of that, the dream AI/Animation team of Lauren, Lee and I have been making making great strides with the lovely creatures of Eden Star, implementing dodge and flinch reactions to being smashed in the face by an Axe.
Up next is going to be performing the same optimisations on our interior spaces, getting everything as ship-shape as possible for our upcoming big release.
Will H - 3D Artist
Lots of texturing this week as the destructible crates and fabricator are finalised into their in game forms. The crates have also been split into multiple pieces so players can destroy them for goodies. Some collision work has been done to make sure that players don't phase through one of the largest structures in the game.
OG Tom - Designer
This week I have been doing the usual fixing of problems as they arise and also looking at placing more minable elements in the world. Mainly at the minute this means more destructible rocks, more placements of organic foliage and more metals and minerals around the world.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been looking into ensuring AI is as top quality as it can be, this means playtesting and making sure everything is acting as it should be. I have been exploring sections of the Dam and transmitter to ensure the spawners all work and are as polished as can be. To that effect I have added a new encounter at the start of the Dam where players will be ambushed by hunters and splintermites and must fight their way out.
I have also been cleaning up things here in the new points of interest areas we have been designing. This means that more areas discovered will have mineral to mine and scrap metal to collect! All of this adds up to more areas to explore and more things to do!
John S - Developer
I’ve been working on the functionality for the new Character Customisation screen and getting it implemented into the Main Menu.
John T - Environment Artist
Busy week producing the last of the maintenance set for the damn. This includes pillars, catwalks, walls and pipes. I then went on to implement this all in engine for the level designers to work with. Not much left to do now and the dam will be almost complete!
Marcin - Designer
I’m afraid I don’t have much stuff to report that would be very exciting to watch. I’ve spent pretty much all of my time fixing various bugs and for that is plenty exciting, because solving logical puzzles is my drug of choice. Like I mentioned last week, I’ve been solving the new collision and navigation setup with artists and level designers, but there’s still more to do on that front next week. I’ve added saving and loading of various dynamic level visuals.
I’ve fixed a few bugs with melee weapons not detecting all targets properly, and my favourite this week: fixed melee weapon ranges changing with game window size. How did that even happen? I’ve also fixed being able to pick up items out of thin air, and last but not least a few boring objective system bugs. Next on the agenda is to review the interaction markers and start working on what is still missing for them.
Ryan - Developer
Over the past week I have been fixing bugs surrounding weapons, ammo and the inventory.
Charlotte - Concept Artist
This week I finished the med-pack concept art with all three small, medium and large variants coloured and ready to be modelled. I have also been working on creating some pre-visualisation for the HUD which will display your armour and when it close to breaking/broken.
Lauren - Lead Animator
Many bug fixes have been the focus for this week in addition to polishing more of the AI animations, reactions and interactions. The new dodge animations have been implemented and we've been working on getting the physics for small hits looking better with a new version of the flinch mechanic.
Andy - Lead QA
Picture this; a treeless garden, an ivy-covered building. A car pulls up, and out steps a disheveled man in his mid 30’s. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes and making his way up the front steps, he fumbles in his pocket, the sound of keys and loose change jingling. Wearily he slides the key in the lock and makes his way inside. Turning the lights on he heads to the kitchen.
Coffee first. Black, two sugars, splash of cold water. Drink in hand he reaches up to the top lock and opens the last remaining door. He slumps in his chair and for the briefest of moments contemplates what the day holds in store. Reaching down he presses the two power buttons on his two workstations and the monitors flicker on. Within a few clicks he is staring blankly at this sprints Trello board and, like some sort of warped dystopian skyline from a movie, the cards simply stare back.
From there our protagonist attended a lot of meetings, discussed future tasks, tweaked existing item tooltip work being and was an all round good guy.
Jamie - QA
The focus of this week for me has been looking at the AI in detail and sorting out the tasks to do with them. I’ve been working with Lee, Lauren and Tom on these tasks to refine the AI and squash any bugs to do with them. Then also I’ve just been doing normal bug hunting and getting reproduction steps into the bug tasks to help the developers find them.
All new artwork for the bridge has been implemented this week with new points of interest and minables placed around the world. We wanted to ensure that there is a suitable placement of these nodes that makes them both easy to see while also fitting in with the aesthetic of what and where they are, harder than you think!
Also this week the stalker AI getting some love, A new dodge mechanic and backing away as the player approaches is in the works to make certain AI harder to hit. Initial balancing passes have been started with the minables, weapons and AI in preparation for uploading a test branch and having more people playing and giving feedback.
John - Lead Designer
This week I’ve been organising a test build for the team at the Epic Games Lab at Staffordshire University. This gave us some great feedback to get our heads around.
The day went down a storm and allowed us to focus on some objective gameplay points for improvements for the next steam build. Very exciting to see people getting excited about the big changes we’re making!
Matt - Art Director
After creating a good benchmark for crashed wreckage areas, I’ve moved onto reviewing a lot of the new artwork being pushed into the game. This includes new assets for the bridge areas and Dam surface which create the ruined and ravaged look we’re after.
There are a lot of doors in the game as well, so unification of their look and how you interact with them is on my radar, as well as practical work for the larger blast doors we have as entrance ways to a lot of the larger structures.
Lee - Technical Director
This week I have been ironing out bugs with the Stability/Reaction system with Tom and Laurens help. There are a few more tweaks I need to make this weekend, but the combat with AI is looking really good.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been creating the points of interest that will inhabit the world around the Transmitter and Silo areas, this includes creating camps long abandoned by men, large rocky outcrops that will provide perilous drops, and sections of ship wreckage that will hold valuable mining materials.
As well as this I have been implementing the assets onto the bridge leading up to the Dam from the Drop Pod, this area now has fully textured assets and makes the area as a whole seem much more broken and worn down. I have been creating large piles of debris that will hold some scrap metal on the ice if you dare to venture down and large holes in the bridge for you to traverse if you have the feet for it!
Yves - Senior Developer
I’ve worked on part of the interaction logic this week, this will allow the UI guys to finish off what they needed to do. I’ve also focused on fixing some of the elements regarding environment oxygen depletion.
Ricky - Lead Developer
Getting the weapons to play unequipping animations when they deteriorate or are consumed in the case of grenades spears of food. Fixed crash with edge case consumables and crash with interacting with foliage now we’ve added the ability to “Use” foliage to gather from them.
Ryan - Developer
Hi, I’m new to the team but this week I have been getting myself up to speed with the project and have been focusing on fixing client-side bugs surrounding the UI and items.
John T - Environment Artist
This past week I have been focused on producing the final few assets for within the dam. This has included floors, wall and door ways. I have also been on the task to apply these within the engine with the necessary material setups experimenting with procedural materials and masking techniques.
Captain Tom - Designer
Further AI developments have been taking place over at Flix HQ, I’ve been working with the lovely Lee and Lauren on implementing a dodge and counter attack for our Stalkers and Huntermites.
Ontop of that, I’ve been optimising our lighting and instanced static meshes, ready for our public release of the build, so everything runs nice and smoothly on supercomputers as well as potatoes (Fingers crossed).
OG Tom - Designer
This week there we’ve been running lots of tests and reviews that have been super helpful to drive the design forward. For me this means I’ve been thinking about rocks more than a normal person should. Based on the review and feedback we decided that we weren’t happy with the current destructible rocks, they were either too hard to find or not obviously minable.
So I have been testing out different styles of destructible rocks in the environment to see what works for both gameplay and visuals. Other than that there has been the usual barrage of getting things fixed like doors, weapons, destruction and crafting.
Will H - 3D Artist
This week has been focused on creating breakable crates for spawning common items. In the end, these two will need to have broken versions in order for them to have a satisfying smash when the player cracks them open. I have also been making various tweaks and properly setting up the bridge assets to be used wherever they're needed.
Marcin - Designer
On the systems front, I have implemented a new method of saving the state of existence of many new objects that new to the game, such as oxygen canisters, crates, and various new weapons. We needed that so the lose items that you pick up as you play can stay gone when you load the game.
We are also undergoing more testing or the objective system and we are starting to look into doing another pass on the collision setup across the world. In comparison to the live version of the game we have new environments and surfaces that need to properly interact with each other and the rest of the game. That is something I will be focusing on next week.
Charlotte - Concept Artist
This week I have been tweaking areas of the medical pack from last week in addition to finishing the design of the water container, tightly sealed in a metallic casing.
Lauren - Lead Animator
Hit reaction and dodge animations have been the focus this week. Starting with the Stalker and moving on to the Huntermite, I have been making sure each AI has a suitable amount of reactions to fit our new stability system that ramp up with each hit.
As well as hit and stagger reactions there will also be a chance for the AI to make a 'Dodge' movement, to take them out of the players range and ready to attack again if you managed to hit them a few times in succession. Along with the AI work I have been fixing up various animation bugs and implementing the hit while blocking animation for the axe.
Jamie - QA
This week I’ve been testing out the different enemies thoroughly and posting bugs to do with their attack behaviour. I’ve also been running through the level and reporting on any collision issues in the critical path in the level along with reviewing and signing off fixed bugs and new features.
Oh we are indeed perfectionists, there’s a certain level of polish that we’re aiming for here before we unleash these changes upon the world. The quality of the experience and atmosphere is important to us, purely because it needs to be as immersive as possible to be the most enjoyable, even in its incomplete state. Once again everyone's doing a top job of pulling this together for everyone, and a lot has been done this week, including a fully finished model for our Huntermite creature!.
Here’s what the team have been up to:
John - Lead Designer
This week I have been reviewing the game for priority and prepping to take the latest build (with a number of bug fixes) to the Epic Games Center on Monday for 45 people to blast through it and give it a good playtest!
Matt - Art Director
So I’ve gotten to the stage where I’m adding embellishments to certain sections of the drop Pod, Venting atmosphere when you open the airlock, certain ambient sounds etc. Really helping this come to life. There are still a number of things like the players cutscene exit from the chamber when they spawn that need more love, but essentially it's working as designed at this stage.
Breakable glass has also been added to the storage areas around the airlock to add another element of interaction. On another note me and Tom H are starting to add our wreckage areas to the world which make exploring significantly more interesting.
Lee - Technical Director
This week I have completed the stagger/reaction work for the AI. I’ve been trying to work through the bugs with the help of Lauren too. I think we nearly have it bug free. My next steps are to start reviewing the combat with the AI so we can start to put some polish to it
Jon S - Developer
I have been working on a Join via IP interface to allow players to enter an IP to find and connect to specific servers a little easier!
Tom L - Character Artist
Sculpting the Huntermite has come to a glorious end. I'll be moving onto a zombie style character next!
Yves - Senior Developer
I’ve been helping the designers out by working on the interaction functions so that they can carry out actions on the foliage and rocks, we have a system for swapping out static mesh actors with normal ones and the interaction function needed to trigger it.
Ricky - Lead Developer
Started work on Deterioration for designers to start setting those up. Fixed some additional bugs with consumables when picking up a matching item that would unequip the old one, and a bug where modules refused to be equipped at all, preposterous.
Captain Tom - Designer
I’ve had a pretty busy last few days, but have finished off my implementation of the destruction system, so players will be able to hack apart my wonderful creations, as seen below:
Ontop of that, I’ve been breaking down our AI behavior by behavior, was well as continuing to review our current animations :)
Marcin - Designer
My job for the past few days consisted mostly of reviewing and improving our existing game systems. I’ve looked into oxygen balancing, marker positioning and visibility, and the airlock mechanics for our doors, which we’re going to be tweaking next week.
The current implementation of the airlocks feels a bit clunky and unresponsive so we want to improve that flow. Additionally we have started testing on the first implementation of the personal campaign, which is also going to keep us pretty busy.
Charlotte - Concept Artist
This week I joined the team at Flix and have been working on some different pieces of concept art featuring small, medium and large med-pack designs including iterations for a water container.
JT - Environment Artist
First time shower! Taking on a lot of the interior design for the sets and bringing them up to scratch for the game update. Mainly been working on a maintenance set that can do us proud to in comparison to Doom and rest of Eden Stars quality.
OG Tom - Designer
This week I have been taking a look at our melee weapon damage and balancing the amount of damage certain weapons do to both minables and enemies. Also I have been adding the buildables back into the game so you can construct bases but it's now part our narrative progression.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been fleshing out Points of Interest around the base of the Transmitter down to the silo. This means filling the world with interesting rock structures, small camps, ship wreckage and some enemies and loot, to make sure there is enough for you Pioneers to experience in this world and make sure there is no way you can be bored! As well as this I have been making small design changes to areas such as the Dam, Transmitter and the terrain, all to make these sections the best they can be!
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I have been working with Lee on the new AI stability system which will improve the feel of how you hit and interact with the AI. For this I have been working on creating new stagger animations along with improvements to what we already have and balancing the stability and attack force values together.
It still needs a bit of work but its getting there! The new system allows for thresholds of stability, so that when you wail on AI they will play proportionally bigger staggers. Next steps will be adding counter attacks so that there is a risk for staying too close for very long...
Along with the stability, I have skin weighted and added in the new Huntermite mesh which is looking awesome.
Andy - Lead QA
Jamie and I were tasked with getting all the issues, both small and large, listed and prioritised this week which has involved lots of Trello work, assigning tasks and bugging the developers in order to ensure that these are addressed.
Will H - 3D Artist
This week has been a continuation of the bridge assets. I have been designing and creating bridge barriers as well as debris and sand piles to help break up the modular look further. Metal railings on the barriers have been kept separate in order for the players to break them and gather resources. As for the debris and sand piles, we can add random items and resources on top for players to grab if they spot them.
More systems have been coming together this week with a new fuel stat that the player will need to manage along with their oxygen, sustenance and stamina. The fuel will be less of a worry at the start of the game, and will deplete slowly when your oxygen scrubbers are in action, giving a balance between stats to manage in inside vs outside environments. Later in the game as you obtain energy weapons, that statistic will come into play more as you manage your firepower vs fuel, based on the situation you are encountering and the fuel cells in your inventory!
The objectives system has been reviewed with the first implementation of the support for the first campaign of the game being submitted. Now the global objectives manager is being developed to allow the designers to handle and trigger in-game and map events and encounters...
In the world of level design we have been making great strides to populate the world with minables and things for you can destroy, polishing more pretties and tidying up the AI and pick-up placement in the initial area.
Here's what we've been up to in more detail:
John - Lead Designer
Still so much to do! But we’re getting there :)
So after promising that i’d update the blog with the todo list for release, I failed last week miserably and for that I apologise! In actual fact I did update it, but the excuse is effectively “my dog ate my homework” levels of lame… so here it is this week instead!
- Fuel in buildings - Power Connections between Generators and Turrets/Utilities - Revision of Life and Death (What saves and loads Vs what’s lost) - Non-Navigational Zone Mechanics (How we block off the edge of the map that you can’t get to with a story based component) - Destructible Structures new assets, setup and utilities (Weapon Display Rack) - AI refinement with combat (continued…) - Character Selection 1st pass
Matt - Art Director
Fully implemented new door facades with their retracting arm mechanism to the ‘Cryo Chambers’ in the drop pod. This makes the space feel more functional and a little more claustrophobic than it was previously. Numerous lighting tweaks and changes have been made to polish the space more from a gameplay and visual perspective, also including another pass on the waking up of the players Pioneer character.
Lee - Technical Director
I’ve managed to get the new AI reaction system into a state that we can start testing it now. I’ve also been fixing a few more navigation bugs where I can. Just when you think you have got them all, someone else manages to find one, it seems and endless task.
Tristan - Lead Developer
This week I have been fixing up melee bugs and making tweaks to the system as the designers try to create different melee weapon types.
Yves - Senior Developer
I’m currently working on the allowing change of environment to be dynamically done at runtime, so things like area oxygen can be changed by things like terraforming type modules . Also I’ve been working allowing foliage to be “used”, this will for players to directly interact with things like bushes.
Ricky - Lead Developer
Sifted through and fixed several bugs with consumables and melee weapons, teething problems as to be expected with new functionality. Consumables were being consumed twice and equip anims not playing, that sort of thing.
Carlos - Developer
I’ve implemented a nice new shiny audio manager that now allows us to control audio levels through the UI, this has been broken for a few versions of the engine when we upgraded! I’ve also started of fixing bugs that have come around from updating the engine!
Joe - Lead Artist
I’ve been standing over the shoulders of the art team being nosy and reviewing all the awesome new artwork going in! I’ve also been working on unifying and implementing an in-world version of our UI, which will be used for flavour and player interaction. I also fixed a bunch of UI bugs and added the new fuel/power stat to the HUD.
Captain Tom - Designer
Had great fun modelling lights, as well as blueprinting them up so our other lovely designers can aim them at points of interest wherever we decide to use them.
On top of that, I’ve finally started to sink my teeth into our various AI characters, in the aim of giving them some tender loving before you guys get your hands on them in the update!
Marcin - Designer
There has been a lot of tying up of loose ends for me these past few days. The objective system has passed its reviews and that alone has un-blocked a lot of tasks we had on our plate and can move forward with now. I’ve added the holographic effect to represent a consumable item you have equipped and Tom S., Joe and myself have also reviewed and tweaked the interaction markers that were recently added to make sure they all work as designed.
We are in the process of fixing a few bugs with those. After all of that is done, next on the agenda for me is looking into encounters and hooking them up to objectives system, so that relevant encounter information can be displayed on the HUD as you are participating in them.
OG Tom W - Designer
This week has been a real mixed bag as I’ve been reviewing many different design systems with the team here, creating new destructibles, placing mining nodes around the world and tackling design issues as they come up. Specifically, the destructible assets are using a new implementation with allows us much more control over the materials you get for mining or interacting with a node.
An example of this interacting with a broken railing will give you a metal pole but takes a couple of seconds. Breaking the railing with the axe is quicker but will give you scrap metal and degrade your weapon slightly. We are look to implement with on many destructibles in the existing bases so we can offer the player materials but also tools depending on the situation.
Will - 3D Artist
For the past couple of weeks, I've been working on a modular kit which can be used for various areas in the game. These required some work to get the damage looking varied and ensuring they would snap to each other well at the same time. Still, the kit looked too solid when put together, so some frayed innards were made to make the pieces look even more shattered.
Tom H - Designer
Polish, polish, polish. That’s been the name of the game this week. I have been focusing on getting all the main section of the game fully polished up in terms of terrain, meaning going through the environment with a fine tooth comb and ironing out any creases I find such as floating meshes, cliff problems, terrain issue, you name it! As well as this I have been putting the finishing touches on the spawners for the Dam and Transmitter sections to make sure each and every encounter is as memorable as the last!
Sam - Concept Artist
This week has been all about the makeshift axe for me. I’ve taken last week’s sketches and realised them in a more realistic way, as with the spear, to help identify which features we’d like to include in the design. I’ve been sourcing a lot of supplementary imagery from scrap heaps, as you can probably tell from the dishevelled nature of the renders, which are effectively meant to look like they are built from said scrap.
The design that you are most likely to end up seeing in-game is the one on the far right, which is combination of features from several previous trials. I rather like the way the blade appears to be made from some sort of rusted shard of iron - what do you think?
Lauren - Lead Animator
I have been polishing up the stalker, the axe and consumable animations this week, with various weapon fixes along the way. The stalker has been given more charge attacks with some delivering a single swipe before retreating, others delivering a second swipe. I set up the new Shiv weapon so that all its slashes and stabs alternate, blend their animations and do damage. I've also been working on more stability animations for various AI while also working on getting them to react appropriately to blocks and parries
More great strides have been made by the team this week to implement features, fix issues and improve vistas. To show some of the state of the current work in progress we have some footage of some of the new update. As John mentioned last week, there are a number of remaining core feature elements left to implement, but we thought we’d show you a little…
This week Andy and I have been working through production and it looks like July would be a push with the ETU battle in the Silo station so… we’re going to forgo that and a number of other components before we get a release out to you, including vehicles and the new Fuel connections between Generators and Receivers. Instead of using Generators, we’re considering having all items individually powered by their own Fuel initially (Note: we’ll balance this initially so that they’ll practically last forever until we the reimplement Generators and the new connection system).
I’ll update this post over the weekend with core elements remaining to do;
TBC
Matt - Art Director
Worked through some basic concepts for in world airlock UI to allow players to easily see interaction points in the environment. This should help draw players to important doors and entrance areas as well as act as a more immersive visual sci fi element. Next steps are working on widgets for these with the guys so we have them animate properly when using doors/sequences in world.
Lee - Technical Director
This week I managed to get a few fixes in to do with the navigation system where sometime an AI would spawn then fail to find the navmesh or just not spawn at all. I also managed to track down a tricky bug which was throwing the orientation out as the AI traversed over terrain. I’ve also continued with the reaction work this week, which I hope to have complete in the next couple of days.
Tristan - Lead Developer
Working through reviews of the Fuel stat on the player and how this will tie into MATA-Tool power use (a little like ammo for the MATA-Tool) and the ability to power your suits O2 scrubbers etc. In addition to this I have been looking at the final steps in refining the melee weapon systems. Still 6 more tasks to hack my way through (pun intended).
Ricky - Lead Developer
Got in the fuel system on the player, and a few necessities for that such as the ability to increase the fuel stat again once it’s used, while getting weapons optionally consume fuel when they fire. This is just the start of many ideas we have for the utilisation of the fuel mechanics in Eden Star. Did someone say jet boots?
We also have implemented the changes to the consumables weapons system, so now you can equip consumables into your hotbar and equip them as a weapon. You’ll see the item in the palm of your hand and we’ve hooked up the animations to gobble it up (it’s a bit more sci-fi than that).
The spear and grenades are also in a usable state in the game though not fully fleshed out such as hold grenade to cook them, but you can either swing or throw spears and they lodge into wherever they impact then can be picked back up for another shot.
Tom W - Designer
It’s been a pretty busy past few days, mostly on the bug-hunting side of things, as well as playing/recording some nice footage for you to have a gander. Other than the video, we have fancy new floodlights for the camp, a little bit of J.J. Abrams, shiny new glass, as well as the usual landslide of small updates to our rocks and sand.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been putting the finishing touches on the new AI spawners we have in place in the levels, making encounters with enemies much more dynamic and interesting. The Dam now feels as infested as can be with Splintermites crawling on every surface as your disturb their new hive, and atop the Dam stalkers now perch and wait for their prey to approach. These new spawners have given the levels a fresh feel and provide more interesting gameplay and encounters for all you wonderful pioneers!
Lauren - Lead Animator
Focused on transitions for Enemy attacks and cleanup surrounding our character animation system in general. Also focused on getting some footage compiled for the preview video which includes a lot of the animations I’ve been responsible for. (pretty much every animation :P)
Sam - Concept Artist
This week We’ve closed in on a more finalised UI set for the collection of items and newly available “recipes” - essentially what you’ll see on-screen when you’ve got enough materials to craft a brand new item. Getting the balance between flashy and function is key! On the other side of things, I’ve also been working on a new weapon, which shares a lot of the same traits from the junk spear - the junk axe!
Things are still in the preliminary stages, but next week we’ll surely have something much prettier to look at. Whether this item is actually going to be implemented with the next update is still up in the air, but at least we’ll have the concepts to support it whenever it chooses to emerge.
This week more of the new assets and enemy spawners have been placed in the level and the AI are being polished across the board as we progress. New effects and icons make it easier to see and differentiate the items in the world that can be harvested for materials and the spear and grenade are being tested and are nearly ready for designers to start balancing them.
Here’s what we’ve been up to:
John - Lead Designer
Back into the rigmarole of production. Been pushing the guys to get aspects of the UI working and in place, with some impressive item location hints being visually implemented with a similar look to glinting objects in the Bioshock games. The main focus herein is quality in the individual locations and gameplay engagement in those areas, which all act as a benchmark to future points of interest.
We’ll be sharing a playthrough video next week which will be incredibly exciting to share with everyone and, you’ll be glad to know that Andy and I are now in the process of working through the full timeframe needed to solidify the date of the next release, which is currently slated for the end of July, we’ll get the actual date to you next week once we’ve bottomed it all out.
FYI - Core features still remaining to do;
- Fuel system (Now have it as part of the player’s suit, just requires hooking into a stat and also implementing into structures) - Manual Power/Structure connection gameplay - Character selection (Basic) - Death gameplay loop/new saving and loading
If we find anything else to share i’ll let you know in the comments this weekend!
Thanks for all of you who have faith in us, can’t wait to get this release out to you :)
Matt - Art Director
With the grace of time to give some tlc to the interior of the drop pod, I’ve been embellishing the space with atmosphere and markings that have really brought it to life. Hopefully you get this sense from the footage we’ve included as well.
Moving on I’ve still got a bunch of signage to put in around the interactive panels that control the airlock doors, otherwise the rest of the game is starting to follow suit with the next level of quality we’re aiming for.
Lee - Technical Director
This week I have mainly been concentrating on some debug issues which I hope to finally put to rest in the next could of days to do with spawning issues around navmesh not being generated properly. I’ve also started expanding the hit reaction system for AI so that Lauren can put in different animation thresholds depending on the damage they take.
Tristan - Lead Developer
This week I have been helping look over some of the grenade projectile and spear work with Ricky. It is looking really good and is now ready for some stat tweaking and animation polish.
Ricky - Senior Developer
Grenades and Spears as inventory items are in the testing phase and almost in now so animations and dev can start making them work nicely in the game.
Marcin - Designer
I have finished the first pass of implementation for the objectives system, with support for creating various missions and controlling their flow via campaigns. That also includes the first version of a functional user interface. The majority of the work however was spent hooking the system to the saving and loading, because nobody likes their progress forgotten. I also had to make sure that objects that are no longer relevant, usually associated with a mission that has been completed are properly disposed of to prevent memory leaks.
Joe - Lead Artist
Tweaking and prodding of various UI bits this week, I finished off the UI for environmental effects (Low Oxygen environments!) and tidied up the HUD stats, making it more obvious when your stats are taking a hit. I’ve also been overseeing Sam’s crate designs, which will contain some rather nice loot. “Loot Crates” if you will.
Tom Whaley - Artist
It’s been an exciting week, finally seeing everything coming together from all the disciplines inside Flix! I’ve finished modelling/animating the camp’s transmitter/relay station, as well as implementing various blood and footprint decals around the camp-site, using the environment to give the players a bit of a murder mystery to solve.
On-top of that, various bug-fixing and material magic to make things all blend together nicely :)
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been venturing into the Dam area of the starting section. Here I have been making sure that the spawners for all our wonderful creepy crawlies are set up correctly and ensure a balanced but challenging experience. As well as this I am ensuring that they are varied in ways that will make combat more fluid and less repetitive.
I have also been in the planning stages of the new art designs for the Bridge up to the Dam, meaning lots of documentation and meetings. Fun! But this will all come down to a highly polished section of gameplay that will provide players with a nice early section filled with exploration, combat and scavenging.
Sam - Concept Artist
Ahoy! For those of you who remember the rather underdeveloped crate image from last week, the first half of this week was allocated to getting that design to a better place. Since you last saw it, it has been through a few revisions and is now looking a lot more “smashable”, which of course is a large part of its in-game function.
Whereas other versions of the crate may have looked more functional and coherent, with handles and hinges, they were all in all coming up looking too robust and solid. Keeping the crate’s structure divided into thin-looking corrugated metal palettes remedied this issue, and so we have stuck with that option.
Most recently I’ve been working on some eye-catching new features for the UI, which will be replacing some of the notifications which are currently just plain text. Until next week!
Lauren - Lead Animator
A lot of smaller tasks this week and a fair few meetings to boot including reviewing the AI in general and helping design the new cumulative stability. I have been making various refinements to animations, namely the Stalker feeding animations and Charge attack.
I have made a start on the 3rd person animations for the new Spear and Shiv/Knife weapons, while fixing up the player animation blueprints to be easier to read and debug, and fixing a few miscellaneous bugs with the weapon anims.
Other than that I have been setting up more spawners, passing that over to the level designers and overseeing the placement of those spawners in the world, making sure they are set up how they should. I have to say they are working really well so far, we hope to get some footage to show for next week!
William – 3D Artist
Thanks to some material magic, many of the terrain rocks can be scaled to a large degree without losing detail, making them very reusable in a lot of areas. So, for the past couple of weeks, I have been giving these assets more accurate collision, in order to ensure that players don’t feel like they’re floating, particularly on rocks/cliffs that are scaled up a large amount.
Andy - Lead QA
The team and myself have been looking into the lots of smaller tweaks with animations, a in-depth review of the remaining AI tasks and getting my hand of the new destructible assets inside the lost colony bases.
The new icons to display interactive elements in the world have been getting implemented this week, these will assist players in determining the items can be picked up, the doors that can be opened and the buttons that can be pressed. The grenade and the spear have been making their way from the prototype stage to the new Weapon classes, these are set up in a more modular way will allow us to put together new weapons faster. Also this week, new spawners and animations for emerging enemies are being handed over to designers for placement in the world.
Here’s what we’ve been up to in more detail:
John - Lead Designer
This week I wanted to take the opportunity to address a few questions that have been raised in the forums, specifically surrounding when the next update will drop and if these updates are even real…
So! Firstly, I want to apologise for any confusion on this - to be clear - around 12 months ago we started collating feedback from the community and began a huge system overhaul in an attempt to nail down the actual story elements into the game world. The feedback on how we release this was to get it right prior to releasing, so we're trying to do that. In doing this, we didn't want to find ourselves needing to financially abandon the game at any point, because we believe in it and in you, the community that have supported it to date. But in order to fund Eden Star, Flix support development on a number of AAA titles (which is also an amazing way to collaborate with some incredible teams such as Sumo Digital). This means that we can implement YOUR ideas and feedback without pressure, like bringing back the different material types, adding more layers of build and crafting progression, adding context, story and reason to the world (which is a challenge in both single and multiplayer...), plus more content etc.
For anyone reading this now; Please only purchase the game if you believe that it's the game that you want to buy at the time of purchase (see the blurb on the store page) - or wait until the next release is out! In the blogs we are clear that they are development updates for those who want to hear about the game and share this experience with us. They are not intended as bait-to-buy or anything else - doing so would only harm the team and the project and the community (whom we have a massive appreciation for!).
Please know that we are massively appreciative of your support. We are trying to make a game that you and we will be happy with which really does take time. Especially if you're not always working on it full time.
Finally - we're not currently working on Eden Star as our sole focus because we want to push the game with our vision before we ever consider taking it to a funding partner who will then potentially want to change the game to incorporate their ideas. The further along we are, the more of our (your) ideas get into the project.
Hope that helps understand it a little better :)
Thanks again for your support!
Matt - Art Director
Churning through the final stages of unwraps for the assets in the drop pod. Including the pioneer chambers and the airlock surround with its doors. Once these pieces are fully textured in all their glory it should help unify the interior.
Lee - Technical Director
Refinements to the AI have been the focus of this week along with fixing a couple of issues were having with the spawning of creatures. One of the problems we have is spawning creatures too early before the navmesh has been generated correctly
Tristan - Lead Developer
This week I have been looking at more melee tweaks and bug fixes to cater for other types of melee weapons in the world. I have also been helping out with some item interaction logic to make sure its efficient but still gives the player the level of interaction they would like.
Ricky - Senior Developer
Getting some of our weapons systems modular to more easily implement new weapon types and I’ve got good progress with the Grenades and Spear weapons which can both be thrown while still allowing the spear to be used for melee combat. This also has touched upon the new Fuel system in which any item or action can use a new more universal resource type, so I’ve been laying the groundwork for that as I go.
Joe - Lead Artist
Working with James and Will to get the new Wreckage set setup and ready for level designers to use. I also added some visuals in preparation for new HUD elements such as the “Hold to interact” version of the Interaction Markers and the new Status Update notifications.
Tom W - Environment Artist
Been a bit sick this week :(, but outside of that have made lots more progress with our beautiful environment and one of the camps near the initial drop-pod.
Volumetric lighting and fog have been turned up to eleven, which really help that sandy, deserty feeling that we’re going for, as well as the more murky indoor areas like the Dam.
OG Tom W - Designer
This week I have been Implementing more destructibles in the existing world bases so we can now mine pipes, insulation, wiring and railings in the bases. I have also been revisiting our item crates and making them a little more explodey so you can easily access the items once you’ve destroyed the crate. This is currently a WIP and we’re hoping to have different types of crates the will react if different ways.
Sam - Concept Artist
I’ve been doing more work towards each of the separate items found in the shelter interior. We now have designs for the defibrillator, rebreather and basic breakable crates. Alongside these “general use” crates, we will also be adding military and ammunition versions, both of which will also be breakable with items such as the axe or spear, yielding in-game collectibles.
Lauren - Lead Animator
I have been finishing up the new spawners, getting variation animations for different AI and fixing them up for multiplayer. The stalkers have been the main focus this week with creating jump-down animations and spline following states, I have also been making animations for variant Splintermite appearances.
Along with the spawners I have also been putting a revised design together for the reactions of AI based on different force thresholds.
Andy - Lead QA
This week Jamie and myself have been looking into issues with certain AI not taking damage in multiplayer. From there I have been investigating similar issues within single player. I have also been following up with artists on their progress with the creation of new assets such as the final model for new AI and new buildable assets.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been finishing up the terrain changes near the Transmitter and Silo entrances, making sure that the terrain is traversable and also navigatable for our AI, navmesh checks have been the priority this week for the terrain as well as some more changes to areas such as the main entrance to the Silo and the Transmitter itself.
As well as this I have been making some more changes to the main bridge to the Dam, as this serves one of the first encounters for new players we have to make sure it is interesting and balanced in gameplay. The great new changes to the AI spawners allow us to have much more diverse battles in key areas such as this.
More shiny new items have been making their way in this week with the debris kit, tent and fabricator being finalised. New items to match those icons we previewed a few weeks back have received the 3D treatment and there has been more work on the placement of destructible/minable assets in conjunction with the new crafting recipes.
John - Lead Designer
There’s always that conundrum of interaction and destruction vs performance, our game systems are geared to provide as much interaction as possible but the ultimate trade off is always around the corner, does she have the power captain? We think so, seeing as we’re building for the long term.
We’ve recently improved this by implemented an instanced static mesh destruction system that has full designer input for placement, meaning any mesh in the world can be batch swapped for a destructible version at the click of a button (providing it has destructible asset)
Matt - Art Director
Ahora que he regresado de mis maravillosas vacaciones en España, he decidido que a partir de ahora solo hablaré en español.
Apart from learning to speak Spanish I’ve been continuing the modelling for the airlock, this includes designing some fancy holographic signage for the airlock access points. Importantly these kind of airlock details will be used throughout the other bases in the world. Images coming soon!
Lee - Technical Director
This week I have been adding some new functionality to stop the AI planners from running straight away when they spawn so the designers can perform unique or scripted events with the AI before turning them on correctly. They seem to be working quite well now, with just a couple of little issues in multiplayer left to iron out.
Thomas Wha - Environment Artist/ ‘Rock’ Wrangler/Sand Person
Following some feedback from the community, we’ve reworked the tents a little, pushing for a more fragile/temporary shelter look, so stripped back a lot of the various metal components and panels.
Ontop of that, I’ve reworked some of our sand materials and atmospherics, as well as heading up some feedback/review sessions with external artists, making sure everything fits the artistic direction of the game set up by Matt and Joe.
Tristan - Lead Developer
This week I have been continuing on with the melee work and getting the block node and camera adjustments working :)
Ricky - Senior Developer
Helping out with some build module changes to split out the buildables in each and working on getting new weapons like the spear usable and throwable.
Tom H / TOMato - Designer
This week I have been putting the finishing touches on the terrain from the Transmitter to the Silo. Smoothing out areas to make things easier for gameplay and traversal. As well as designing how the environment looks to help players find their way around and orient themselves.
As well as this I have been looking into the bridge over to the Dam and redesigning this area to fit contextually with the rest of the environment. As well as the best way to introduce new players to some of the challenges that will await them throughout the rest of the game. This work will be continued into next week.
Marcin - Designer
This week I’ve been working on the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) feature, which will be the Eden Star’s version of an in-game journal. You will be able to access it from the menu and inside find useful information. To begin with the PDA will contain “the story so far” as well as some tutorial paragraphs, but later it may also include a codex of your discoveries on Pharus 7.
Joe - Lead Artist
I’ve been getting Will and James’ lovely wonderful art assets set up and tweaked in engine so the designers can start using them, as well as continuing work on the new HUD Alerts visuals and interaction markers.
William - 3D Artist
Been working with Joe to get these items modelled up for use in the game world!
Tom S - Developer
The new HUD Marker backend system is in! Luckily I had the most amazing set of designs to work from. In fact they were so good I totally forgot to fill out my blog entry :)
OG Tom W - Designer
This week I have been building weapons with the new system created by our excellent developers. We now have a scrap axe, fabricated axe, pole, spear and shiv that can be crafted and equipped by the player. These are still in the early stages though and so we still need to balance swing times and damage. Also this week there has been a lot of meetings about different elements of the game design so we can start solidifying some decisions and get them in the game.
Sam - Concept Artist
After enjoying a sunny bank holiday Monday, I’ve gotten back on to working on a number of things for the encampment area. Amongst these are a few of the items you saw last week - the ones that can be found inside each shelter unit. Most recently I’ve been developing the look of the rebreather/air filtration unit, which I’m currently not satisfied with. At the moment t I’ve been trying to improve the side view especially, while also bringing up the general level of interest.
Most of the other items are still in flux, but I have also produced a little mood piece for the encampment to try and visualise the aesthetic we want in-game. If all goes well, these elements should all slip into place fairly soon!
Lauren - Lead Animator
The new AI spawners have been the main focus of this week. We wanted to have the ability to control what the AI do upon initially spawning, delay some of them with animation, have them traverse in certain ways and generally have more options with what they do before fully 'activating' and coming after the player.
For this I put together three types of spawners, all of which are interruptible if the player engages with the AI, it will force them to fully activate. This will allow for more ceremony in AI appearances and it should also be easier to control them with cinematic events.
Andy - Lead QA
I have spent a lot of this week working through all the small details of our first area. Trying to ensure that everything is working with a purpose and driving the player along our critical path without making them feel forced in a direction.
There has been a lot of reviews and iterations of new buildable assets, we are perfectionists and I have likely been driving the 3D artists up the wall with my demands. I am in the process of reworking and redesigning our “scanner” system in order to give it a shiny new feel.
More shiny progress to show this week with objectives taking form, further passes on art assets for the initial area, and animations for our weakest but perhaps fastest melee weapon, the Shiv. This is the first knife you can craft and will be a shard of metal scavenged from the surrounding debris...
Here’s what we’ve been up to:
John - Lead Designer
Busy business as usual, I have been running around making sure everyone has up to date feedback as we progress - Tom Whittemore and I discussed the aesthetics this week for buildings as we’re still trying to refine the Emergency Build Set aesthetic vs Indestructible Bases at the other end of the spectrum, especially after Azirahael brought it up last week. I have also been organising a new office space now there are more of us working here at Flix so we’ll soon be moving out of the “Indie House” and into something far more “Officy”, so that’s a fair bit of change. I’m really grateful for the community members this week that have really been helping challenge designs, support and encourage the team - Az, Shawn and others - you know who you are ;)
Either way, things are really coming together!
Marcin - Designer
Another week of work on the objective system and I’ve managed to implement almost all of the core structure, except for the missions unassociated with campaigns and a few global manager delegates, that is to say, some additional communications. I also have the outline of the first campaign, which currently consists of 6 simple missions, optional objectives, waypoint markers and a simple User Interface that helps you track your progress. There is more work to do, especially with implementing additional objective types, such as “kill X enemies” or “collect X resources” and the UI flair, but we’ve made big steps.
Here are some early UI previews:
Matt - Art Director
I’ve been working on my tan this week as I sport the most awesome “Jeans, no socks, just trainers, no shirt” combo.
Tristan - Lead Developer
This week I have been looking into making some tweaks to the melee system to match it up with our new melee design. Hopefully this will get the melee feeling really engaging and fun to play with. I have also been looking into more tools for terraforming the world regarding foliage.
Tom - Designer
May the Fourth be with you, always.
I’ve spent the last few days working on a new tent for our brave, fearless pioneers. The amount of work that’s gone into making these work as lived in, believable structures is insane, so really hope it all pays off and you guys like them :)
Had big debates in-studio about force-fields vs airlock doors etc, so should hopefully have the final decision ready for next week’s post!
I have also been tweaking the atmosphere in the map for both day and night.
Lee - Technical Director
Had a couple of days off at the beginning of the week, but since my return I have been looking into adding a few tweaks to the spawning of the AI so that designers can create more scripted events before the AI planners kick in and take over the AI. I’ve also been continuing the work to try and polish the combat functionality, and see what new functionality is needed.
OG Tom W - Designer
This week has been a mixed bag as I've been jump between various jobs. I've been cleaning up some of the levels from a technical perspective, which isn't that exciting but needs doing so we can keep moving forward smoothly. A more exciting job has been looking at rewriting some of the world lore to it ties in a lot with the gameplay. I won't go into details so don't worry about spoilers, but mainly we've been looking at the backstory of the player and the colony and the differences between them. This will help differentiate between destructible and non destructible elements but in a way that ties together nicely and allows us to explore some interesting ideas.
Finally we've been looking at adding some organic corrupt foliage back into the world to allow access to some key rare materials in the rocky wastes.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been focusing on redesigning the first bridge encounter. This includes changing the meshes on the bridge to make more room for players to explore, along with changing the layout of the encounters on the bridge to give a much more fun experience. Including moving creature spawners around and placing new spawners to give a balanced but rewarding experience for players with their first big encounter with enemies.
As well as this I have been making some more landscape changes to ensure that the new landscapes can be utlised properly by players, making sure there aren't any hills that are too steep or any potions that are not as interesting to look at and run through.
William - 3D Artist
This week had me taking a look at some of the crafting items pictured in icons, and making them suitable for gameplay. Thankfully Joe had higher resolution versions of each model ready for me to work with. Knowing that hundreds of these items would be in the world at the same time, we had to figure out a reasonable resolution to cut them down to, in order to keep the performance impact at a minimum.
Sam - Concept Artist
Hi! After finishing the design for our UI prompts, I’ve moved on to visualising the range of items that you’ll come across inside the temporary shelters. We’ve gone through a few different iterations over the course of the week, but we wanted to make sure all that of the key “default” items are there; these being a bed, medkit, wall pocket and some sort of rebreather console. Other optional items include a supply satchel, audio log, alternate wall pouch and an additional oxygen tank. These tents are very small (much like a real life 1-person tent) and therefore these items will be unlikely to all appear together - important part is that the stuff that IS there serves its purpose.
Lauren - Lead Animator
This week I have been focusing on attacks and setup for our first knife weapon which we are calling The Shiv.
I have also been in many AI discussions and have outlined some starting behaviours for what we want AI to be doing pre-engagement (after they have spawned but before the player gets within their aggro-ranges). This will allow for more cinematic-like AI entrances. I have started creating some tools for the level designers to plug in any animation they wish to play before the AI will be fully activated.
Andy - Lead QA
I have been helping with the design and development of the bridge section near the drop pod, organising the work needed for the new 3D in-world assets for our inventory items and the new 3D asset for our level two fabricator.
I have also been working with Carlos and Tristan on the new Melee system.
The development continues with haste. A lot of cool new art assets have been introduced to improve the look and feel of the drop pod area, as well as an entirely new set of ship debris which has been put together to represent the parts of the Eden Star. Or more accurately what’s left over.
Here’s what we’ve been upto:
John - Lead Designer
Been pressing the team to complete their current tasks and move onto some missing elements like our revised scanner. As we enter the summer our update is edging closer, and so the guys here at Flix are starting to really tighten up the quality. You’ll be seeing that quality improvement and more in our coming blog updates.
Matt - Art Director
Focusing my artistic efforts on bringing the airlock area of the drop pod upto scratch. I’ve been pushing the art team to get some quite hefty chunks of work into the game for use as well, such as our kit for crashed ship debris which will house a bunch of interesting things for you to find and pick up.
Lee - Technical Director
I’ve been in a few meetings this week as we work out which parts of the AI combat are fun and which parts need improvement. We have also been discussing the reactions of AI not only to being hit, but reacting to what the player does during combat, which I’ve now made a start on implementing.
Tristan - Lead Developer
I have been creating some tools for the rest of the guys for adding new destructibles to the bases in the world. It should keep things optimal performance wise and allow us to make bases a bit more fun.
Tom W - Environment Wrangler
Following a well earned holiday, I’ve been focusing on modelling a new set of tents for our initial encampment, as well as really starting to push the hostile martian planet feeling with our atmospherics!
Carlos - Developer
I’ve been getting stuck in with setting up our melee functionality in code, fine tuning it and making sure that it feels good! This should hopefully allow us to make new melee weapons with similar functionality but with different feels to them!
Joe - Lead Artist
This week I’ve been overseeing some of the new and rather lovely sci-fi warning prompts we’ll shortly be adding to our heads up display. There’s a lot I want to change and improve with what’s in the current Steam build but this bit takes priority as it’ll introduce our players to the world and all the interesting changes the team have been making. Also, icons!
Marcin - Designer
This week I’ve working mostly on the objective system again. We’ve outlined a small campaign for the beginning of the game and I am slowly implementing all the elements and interactions to make it a reality. My biggest focus for the system is the modularity. I want to create simple tools that will allow us to put together missions in minutes, as opposed to bespokely implementing every mission individually.
OG Tom W - Designer
This week I've been busy with a lot of different things as many different elements come together. The new tool built by Trist makes placing destructibles in the world much easier for us designers, so we have been reviewing some existing bases and drawing up designers for new wreckage pieces that take advantage of this. Also I have been implementing and fixing the first stages of crafting and building, making sure all the schematics are correct. All this is driving forward the gameplay elements so we can get to a fully playable state as soon as possible.
James Brady - Environment Artist
For Eden Star, I was tasked with creating a modular set based on a ship that crash landed, which could be placed around a wreckage site/point of interest. This wreckage site would contain resources for the player to gather. I created this set in way that allowed for it to be placed manually by the art team or procedurally placed by the engine in random variations. I created a texture set inspired by sci-fi games such as DOOM.
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been working hard getting the landscapes in the first areas up to scratch. This includes creating new areas that were previously flat into wonderful steep cliffs with several ways around. This new cliff tool we developed allows me to easily place cliffs and create the edges of the landscape very quickly. All of this coupled with some very artistic rock placements leads to an environment overhaul that is as efficient as it is good looking.
Sam - Concept Artist
This week I’ve been working on a small redesign for the shelters that you’ll find scattered around the game, as well as other items such as the transmitter unit and the in-game interface graphics. All three of these elements tie into the first few minutes of the game along the golden path, an area which we as a team have been focusing on quite intently, as the opening moments of a game can easily make or break the initial experience. I’ll likely be doing some similar stuff next week once some decisions have been made!
Andy - Lead QA
I’ll be back on Monday, and oh boy am I looking forward to getting back and cracking my liquorice whip of quality control. The team are going to be in for a treat.