Greetings Pioneers!

Good news folks, the multiplayer crash is fixed. We were hoping to have something for you lovely ladies and gents today but after a rigorous testing session in multiplayer we feel there are still too many issues to release into the main branch just yet, frustrating but rest assured we are working hard on this and hope to have a multiplayer release out soon with the turret upgrades and balancing tweaks from experimental. Thank you for your patience with this!

In the meantime we’ve been hard at work with the rest of the game, this is what’s going down:

John – Lead Designer

The bank holiday is upon us, and unfortunately we’re not quite there yet with the game being in shape for a new release. Ultimately this is frustrating, but we want to give players something they can enjoy, and right now with some crashes still in there that are reproducible it does not meet the quality standard we’re striving for.

All this means is when we do our next build to the main branch is all you wonderful pioneers will be playing something more enjoyable than before.

P.s. It’s also worth noting that it’s John’s Birthday tomorrow, so please wish him a happy birthday, because if it wasn’t for him, this game would simply not be what it’s is right now <3. signed, Matt and the team.

Matt – Art Director

As well as Melee mechanic alterations (and cater for the potential removal of the RMD baton) we’re going to be adding a new melee weapon for early game which can be used for close combat and mining.

A multipurpose double handed Axe will be your companion in the early stages, but ultimately we want to allow the players to have a reliable fall back weapon if you happen to run out of energy or ammo within your arsenal. This has just gone into the modelling and animation phase.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been making some finishing touches to the new spawners so that I can begin testing and debugging from next week. We have also had some discussions around new types of attacks that AI can perform.

Tristan – Senior Developer

Running debug builds to get on the fly input from our testing team, conversed with them most of the day on our main multiplayer issues and worked to get solutions in, eager to see the new version get up onto steam soon.

Joe – Environment Artist

I’ve been finishing writing up a design doc for how we plan to put together and use different types of HUD Markers. This includes the addition of information from the hopefully-coming-soon Tactical Map and will cover things like waypoints, bases, hostile bases and the new objectives system. There’s also a much more unified system for the display of “Interaction Markers” – simple icons for interactions such as picking things up, upgrading turrets, and activating ancient technology 😉

Yup, we’ll finally be picking things up with “E”. Nice!

Ricky – Developer

Working hard on these crashes and remaining issues this week, and we also now have a lovely prompt and dialogue system for designers to use (localisable of course) which lets them have more freedom in creating various parts of the game without the need for additional developers.

Marcin – Designer

One of the more noteworthy events that occurred this week was Lee and I finally merging our AI system work together. His behaviour and planner work is finally coming together with my attack system to create a groundwork upon which we can build the new combat experience. We’ve spent so much time designing it, that it’s really exciting to see it happening.

The other exciting thing that is also finally happening is the beginning of the objective system. We are planning to use it first in the tutorial, but then massively expand it to all sorts of activities. That’s the dream. I have been wanting objectives of any kind in the game for ages, so I’ll push that as far as the means allow.

Tom W & Alex H – Designers

Well into the second pass phase for the Dam encounter location. Added sequences to the interior and started getting the big block out areas replaced with base meshes to flesh out the look and feel. Excited to see the areas tested and improved on over the coming weeks.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been discussing the implementation of the new tweaks we want to melee to make it more of an effective and satisfying weapon along with the tweaks to AI behaviour so they are not as relentless in their attacks. I have been working on some animations for the Axe for the new melee system which we hope to develop and release together with the upcoming bigger release with the AI and map changes.

Andy – Lead QA

Having implemented a potential fix for our rather frustrating multiplayer fix I have been working on testing that along with other changes that have been made. Its been exciting to get the team into a multiplayer build and have a little fun shooting at them, but frustratingly the fixes we implemented have brought about another crash. So we are stuck between a rock and a hard place currently.

It’s also the top dogs Birthday this week and from everyone here at Flix I’d like to say happy birthday Jonny aka Hot Dog, aka T-Bone, aka JCB, aka Captain Birdseye. You are a great leader and an amazing friend. Big love bro beans and have a great day, you deserve it <3

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix