Greetings Pioneers!

Refinements and many many fixes have been the focus of this month with core player interactions and the melee combat experience getting some much needed development time.

Multiplayer has also been getting steadily better in the background and we’re looking forward to sharing the next update with you all to play when it’s ready.

Matt – Art Director

It certainly has been a while! Lots to update everyone on as you’ll see from the rest of this blog.. we’ve been updating and refining drop items to make the progression system feel more grounded and connected to the environment.

There’s been a focus on driving the interior quality of our base structures, we’re particularly proud of how the visuals for these environments are coming along. The end result will be something consistently repeatable and customisable. Lastly, I’m looking forward to the production team giving us permission to get a new experimental build drop scheduled so everyone can sample the delights!

Tom Whaley – Lead Designer

I’ve been busy with re-working a lot of the AI encounters. The hunters are looking pretty good and have been passed on our developer and animation team. I’ve also been working with a handful of other devs on improving the AI in the upcoming content updates, as well as improving AI movement on higher difficulties and so on.

We’ve also been working to improve the AI behavior in all of the smaller-scale encounters. I’m hoping to get some of the larger ones playable and tested before release. I also plan to make some changes to how certain encounters are handled, so that they are less frustrating for the players as well.

The biggest item on the list for the upcoming content updates is the UI. After the feedback I’ve gotten from the community, I think there will be a ton of potential for improvement. I have a few ideas for improvements, but we’ll see how it goes.

• 

So many Jumpermites were harmed in the making of this video!

Melissa – Technical Designer

The last month or so has seen a great deal of progress in the build wheel and buildables. The wheel has now been fully implemented and is now in the stage where we are just tweaking & ensuring everything is set up to use the new system. The controls are much smoother too and it works with gamepad! (Animations and art are still being improved)

I have also been working on other elements of the UI such as the block points that are used when blocking in combat. I’ve also done a revamp of the TAG Unit (previously Eden Kit) and fixed some issues with the stages of upgrades as well as some UI tweaks.
The build wheel should be completed and fully implemented fairly soon, so hopefully you guys will get to play and test it out in the near future!

Ryan – Designer

Hey! I recently joined the team and have been working on the progression through the beginning of the game, refining the crafting system so the game has a smoother build up in difficulty. I have also been reworking the landscape to be less bumpy to allow for easier base building and navigation.

Charlotte – Concept Artist

Hey there, this month I have been doing many different concepts for things! I started with some various different iterations of mineral node types, like quartz, silicon and lithium for players to mine.

In addition to this I have been creating a lot of different drop items that will be picked up from destructibles, such as scrap metal, mesh patches, fibre, smaller pieces of the mineral nodes and crafted items like refined fabric, bandages and a makeshift flare.

Lastly, I have worked on a couple concepts for different rooms in the dam like reworking a previous one of the recreational canteen and for the toilets.

Katrine – Senior Artist

Hello! Lately I have been focusing on upgrading some of our drop items like fabrics, oils, resin and guts (yes, my job sometimes consist of making monster intestines)

While not splattering around monster meat, I am fixing bugs here and there, making sure that the player experience is as awesome as possible. 

Andy H – Lead QA

Wow some big changes have been going on and I’ve been very busy testing it all! From massively improved interactions, a massive Dam makeover to a new build menu. 

I’ve also been investigating bugs and verifying fixes here, there and everywhere from the Engineers, Animators, Artists and Designers. They have been fixing problems with the new respawn system, Interaction markers, Interaction in general, melee weapon issues, A whole bunch of HUD/Menu issues. Problems with the pioneers animations/camera, Decals, Floating rocks/minables/foliage, fixing the fuel system with the in-game utilities, collision issues with new Dam rooms and more. But the biggest thing that I have been testing out has been the work on getting…

…MULTIPLAYER back to a playable state!! Woohoo! Well back to more testing I go.

Glenn – Senior Artist

I’ve been hard at work making some exciting looking rooms to explore in the dam. These rooms are currently mostly empty as this helps us re-use them where appropriate.

The lighting still needs work but it’s already feeling atmospheric and industrial. I’m really looking forward to when we get more story elements in there and have some tense encounters with lurking creatures!

Ellis – 3D Artist

Hi Pioneers! My name is Ellis and I am a new starter here at Flix. Since onboarding I have been working on various drop items and scrap metals for Eden Star as well as learning my way around Pharus 7. 

Hannah – 3D Artist

Hi everyone! I have recently joined the Flix team and have been busy making various drop items for Eden Star. Check out the Lead asset I made during my first week, which will soon be added to the game as a pickup item that can be obtained from the metal ores dotted around the landscape:

Lauren – Lead Animator

Recently the animation focus has been on the core combat experience with player and enemy attack animations getting further refinement passes. We’ve been tweaking the way AI react to the player blocking and parrying which adds a new dimension to the combat for players who are after a more skill based approach.

While you can still just bash attack and run you also have the ability to block incoming attacks and push back the enemies so long as you manage your stamina. Overall these changes will be giving more rewards for well timed interactions and creating more challenge and fun for combat in general.

Dan – Developer

The new spawning system has been finished, ensuring players will have the world loaded and ready for them before they take control of their Pioneer. This also includes some improvements to the appearance of HUD elements when spawning in. There have been some improvements to the display of hit markers too. 

Multiplayer has seen a host of improvements and fixes that are bringing it closer to being stable. This includes work on the in-game HUD, loading, respawning and local IP games. There has been some tweaks to the network code too, to improve client-side performance. 

Leon – Programmer

I’ve spent August making some big changes to how interaction works across Eden Star so that you can more reliably scavenge scrap, and harvest the organs of our Alien foes across Pharus 8.

In addition to this objects in the world now display a much more appropriate icon on their marker giving the player a better idea of what type of item they are picking up.

Outside of interaction work I’ve been extending the functionality of our latest iteration on the tent so that the player is forced to crouch when entering as-well as supporting Ricky and Melissa with input functionality and data handling for the new version of the build wheel!

Overall it’s been a very productive month and I’m excited to see these features finished over September.

John R – Developer

There are a range of melee weapons that can be used for quick attacks, or you can keep holding the attack button to charge-up your attack and give a more powerful hit.

Enemy attacks can be blocked using melee weapons.  Some weapons are more effective at blocking than others and there are shield icons shown on the HUD to indicate how effective your current weapon is.  

• If the shields get too low then it’s time to fight or run.

• If you time your block just right then you can parry the enemy’s attack and damage your opponent.  This is a useful trick that’s worth taking the time to perfect.

• When the enemy is too close then you can shove them away and, depending on their size, watch them stumble back giving you a valuable opportunity for revenge.

The final melee action is the ability to dodge an enemy attack.  You can jump away from an attack for a fast dodging action.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Greetings Pioneers!

“In a distant sector of the Milky Way… on a planet that was thought to be lifeless… A native entity and its ecosystem thrives, stopping at nothing to protect it’s domain from interlopers who wish to make it their own” 

Whilst the updates have been a little less frequent (waiting patiently for the cool stuff to land) Development has been at a steady pace! Overall improvements have been focused around our new progression curve, build system, AI engagements, and visual improvements to mining and inventory items which are all geared towards improving gameplay immersion.  

Matt – Art Director

Tech Art is the order of the month. Lots of organisation has been going on with our in house testing team to get mineral rocks, drop items, and physical materials (which control sounds and effects on surfaces) all covered off to make the experience as nice as possible with our coming updates. 

The decision to make this world more Alien to begin with has come with a large responsibility on the Art side to make the world feel a lot more dangerous. It’s nice to see that feeling come to life even with the smaller bits of cleanup that we’re doing. That said, there’s still atmospheric work to do along with finer tuning of sound that will make the experience really come together.

Lee – Tech Director

The new Planner Graph is now finished as far as version one is concerned. The design team are in full swing with it, putting new behaviours together and reporting back any bugs they find with it.

I’ve also started making some enhancements to our Octree to enable the storing of any objects, which will enable us to write some very fast EQS generators by using the information stored within it.

Joe – Lead Artist

After lots of planning and prep we are finally ready to start piecing together our interior kit work into a cohesive whole!

As well as consolation the team’s art into placeable assets, I have put together a basic system for to get them in game which should make the creation of these interior spaces much quicker!

John T – 3D Artist

Being the hero that I am I have been fixing bugs mostly this recent week. I also took the opportunity to implement the new particle effects for our new alien tree! Some fleshy goodness for sure!..

Charlotte – Concept Artist

It’s been a while since I created some work for Eden Star but I am back on it and have recently been focusing on creating some new concept art! Firstly for some pioneer hand VFX which will be visible while building various different items, selling them and while currently idle within the build wheel.

Not only this but I have also been creating some environment concepts for a new silo facility area, where I have started with the lab section which has been abandoned and taken over by all the creepy.

Lauren – Lead Animator

Player animation bug fixes has been the focus these past few weeks, also revisions to several motions to better align with revised design goals for player and enemy combat.

Alongside this we’ve been developing better enemy IK solutions (this makes the legs of enemies touch the floor, to get them to feel more grounded in their environment) and look-at solutions (because everything looks creepier if you can see it watching you…)

Matt W – 3D Artist

“Its ‘Life’, Jim, but not as we know it” Spock mused cautiously…

“It looks a bit like  some sort of tree, but with H.R Giger Peperami inside it if you ask me…what shall we do with it – eat it!?” Kirk replied, wincing slightly as he recalled those Excalbian Meatballs Spock had rustled up whilst on routine patrol in the Delta Quadrant all those years ago. The Vulcan may be many things, but a chef he was not. Needless to say the Captain’s Log that day did not bear thinking about.

“I’m not sure…”, Spock  replied icily, ignoring his captain’s light-hearted jibe; “Perhaps we should just put it on Space ArtStation with the rest of the specimen’s and see if anyone actually ‘likes’ it?”.

“Hmm…I’m not sure anybody will, Spock – but sod it, we probably should at some point”, agreed Kirk.

“Yes – and the sooner we can get back to playing Eden Star, the better – its bloody awesome”, Spock urged “and I reckon there’ll be a new update soon with some strange-looking alien tree thing filled with pulsating, glowing meat by that incredibly talented, but also extremely humble 3D artist chap – ‘Matt Wilkins’  – that’s what I heard anyway…”, he continued – ears now quivering with excitement….

Katrine L – Senior Artist

After a long, terribly sad break from Eden Star, I am back!
I am currently updating the look and feel of the drop items in the game. I have also placed new rocks and cliffs around the Dam as well as giving the terrain a fresh paint. (In other words: giving the QA team lots to do).

Tom Whittemore – Lead Designer

Recent I have been reviewing lots of designs to make sure we are making progress in the right areas and also going over plans to make sure all our ideas are documented and ready to be prototyped and put into production. Thats all I’ll say about that so we don’t give too much away about where we are taking certain areas.

In between these tasks I have been working on our Assault Turret Prototype, a turret that the player can quickly deploy in sticky situations, its all going well getting the behaviour together although as you can see from the gif it still needs some ‘tweaks’

Andy H – Level Design

Completed the updated layout for the Dam Interior, as for the exterior the Buildings above ground have now been replaced with a new destructible version that I created. Fixed a bunch of bugs to do with rocks clipping through structures and a floating Prefab building.

Melissa – Technical Designer

The build wheel first pass has been completed and passed over to the engineering team to finalise all the aspects before art implementation! (You can see the first pass though in this GIF below). Since the build wheels first pass, i’ve been working on multiple aspects of the design – looking at the current tools we have, possible upgrades and various UI elements. As well as looking over and reviewing the current control scheme, including gamepad support!

Carlos – Developer

The long road to revamping our respawn system seems to be near an end now! Our respawn logic in the back end has now been put into place. Ricky and I have now started the process of implementing the front end work for this!

I’m currently in the process of adding a few extra tweaks to our respawn blocks that will make them feel that extra bit better but I won’t say too much on this now!

Leon – Developer

I’ve been hard at work tracking down and destroying bugs in the game as-well as working with Carlos and Ricky on some new features. With Carlos I’ve been helping set up a Marker that reacts to our new Respawn Blocks being owned. With Ricky I’ve been optimizing the way we stream assets in to reduce load times.

Dan – Developer

Lots of work has been going in to make sure that the respawning process for players is free of any technical issues. This has mostly been focusing on issues that can arise during networked multiplayer games and allow us to ensure the pioneer is safe to respawn before giving control back to the player.

Ricky – Lead Developer

Getting the new respawn system hooked up and implemented has led to a slightly more embiggened task than first thought, but I’ve been tackling it anyway this week and it’s finally coming together. The groundwork needed for the respawn menu is also going to be used for future menus like the new build menu which has already been in progress.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Post Re-instated from – 14 JUN @ 5:39PM

Greetings Pioneers!

Reporting in.. the team have been in the underground bunker with their focus goggles on. We’re now in the process of working towards our next update where MANY things have changed. Our build system is getting some vast UI improvements. Our AI system is becoming more designer friendly as well, which means more variety with in world encounters, not to mention vehicles on the horizon.

Matt – Art Director

There have been some big ol’ tasks on the horizon for a while which we’ve just started to tackle. A bit of radio silence on our end due to the lack of pretty things to show recently! And let’s face it, you read these updates for the nice pictures 😉

Now that we have layouts that meet the gameplay criteria for this overhaul.. the Art team have been tasked at building a more streamlined way to theme and construct our ‘non destructible’ underground facilities. This has involved some heavy planning from an assembly point of view, to ensure we get the variety needed to produce a number of different and varied structures all using one master kit.

Lee – Tech Director

So I have finally had some time to create a new custom editor for our AI system. It’s something I have been wanting to do for a long time. 

It will allow the designers to quickly put together new prototype behaviours using blueprint tasks which can them be assembled in the editor and tested. This should enable anyone in the office with some basic blueprint knowledge to tweak AI behaviours with ease.

This version of the editor doesn’t include much in the way of debugging, so my next task will be to add a debug mode, but for now people can start using it.

Joe – Lead Artist

A big mix of different (but all equally important) tasks and meetings over the last few weeks. I have mainly been working through pipeline and process changes for our interior spaces. The hope is we’ll be able to create large, visually impressive ‘dungeon’-style areas – quickly and efficiently, once the first couple are complete. Additionally, there have been many discussions to ensure we hit the ground running with new tasks that provide a ton of value for players going forward.

Glenn – 3D Artist

David and I have been busy working on the maintenance kit for the dam. We have made some good progress and now have a new trim sheet so that we can make some interesting rooms quickly and efficiently. I have also finished work on the Transport Vehicle model. The model is complete and looking cool in engine, we still have some implementation work to do on it though.

Tom W – Lead Designer

This week I have been part of a production clean up to help focus the design team towards solving the problems that will allow us to get closer to a shippable build. This has been mainly finishing lots of designs that we had backlogged to make sure the engineers have stuff to implement. Also with this there has been lots of clean up happening with removing old prototypes and refining what we do have so hopefully everything works better and faster!

Lauren – Lead Animator

Animations and rigs for our new vehicle meshes have been the focus recently. The hoverbike aka ‘The Speeder’, and the transport vehicle have been getting some attention after a long time on the backlog.

Matt W – 3D Artist

Plenty of progress made creating an alternate ‘non-terran’ tree that is part of the same genetic family as the local creatures. Moved onto baking this monstrosity at the end of this week.

Katrine L – Senior Artist

Lately I have been helping out with some spring cleaning (yes it is still spring/winter here in England). I have also done some landscaping in Eden Star, placing some new rocks on top of pione.. I mean terrain! It is looking good!

Andy H – Level Designer

The Dam has a lot going on in and around it at the moment as I have been busy making adjustments to the layout to make it feel better from a gameplay perspective, giving some areas a purpose and I’ve been making blockouts for additional areas within the Dam Including a new way for enemies to spawn. Also I have been changing our triggered spawners over to use a more efficient system throughout the world.

Melissa – Technical Designer

Besides lots of meetings this week to discuss various elements of the game, work has been going smoothly on the new build wheel and I’m making a lot of headway ensuring that the new wheel works well with the building system itself. 

This also means that I’ve had to review the structure of the building system itself and have plans to internally improve the flow. 

I’ve also been looking into and planning how we can integrate further gamepad support and controls for the game as a whole which will include both gameplay and any UI / menus; ultimately working towards much better controller support for the future.

Carlos– Developer

I’ve been delving deep into our respawn logic. Our new tent and respawn managers are now in a good place. I’m currently looking into re-working the way we spawn the pawn to make it easier to follow and more robust. This should hopefully lead to more stable respawning logic that ensures our Pioneers don’t go missing below the new lovely terrain!

Tom – Developer

This week I’ve been mostly working with Leon on our new marker system – making it much more expandable so we can mark pretty much anything!  The new system should allow for landmarks to be easily placed on the compass, the world map, or your screen without much extra effort.

Leon – Developer

Hey guys I’m new on the team but have been taking a look at a number of bugs related to the markers placed on objects you interact with, as-well as adding multiplayer functionality to the lift in the tower!

Markers are now cleaned up from the user interface when you open your inventory and I’ve been working on making it so foliage instances behave nicely with these interaction UI elements.

In addition to this I’ve updated the Pioneer armor pieces so they now provide appropriate amounts of shield making it easier for the Pioneers out there to survive the harsh reality of a desolate planet.

Dan – Developer

With changes on the horizon to the respawn system, I’ve been preparing a system to improve the respawning process – ensuring the world has loaded smoothly for a newly respawned Pioneer. 

When finished, this should prevent a few reported multiplayer issues that occur during respawning. In addition, various bugs have been addressed regarding the inventory UI and interacting with lootable items in the world. 

Ricky – Lead Developer

Among the wave of several UI design talks I’ve been creating a weapon holstering mechanic this week. This will coincide with changes to player equipment management and player progression going forward. 

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix