Post Re-instated from – 18 APR @ 7:23PM

Greetings Pioneers!

There’s been some Worldly changes going on. The team have been making further improvements to UI, world atmospherics and the base/build system. Design have been improving and balancing crafting and resource collection.

Matt – Art Director

Eventful week to say the least! many new elements of development are coming together to improve and unify the visual styling across the board, from the future vehicles to new UI elements. 

There are quite a few VFX and atmospheric improvements that are being made which is pushing up the realism, making a big difference in the dangerous immersive feeling we’re trying to get across to Pioneers when they play this first area.

Joe – Lead Artist

Loads of high-level visual work has gone into ES over the past couple weeks – in particular, I’ve finished an initial pass on our lighting and day/night cycle visuals, and am now working on tying everything together with VFX and atmospherics. 

The UI boot sequence and damage effects have also been improved, and I’ve made a couple of benchmark assets and placement systems to assist with level design.

I also had time to add some more informative, segmented health bars, just so players can see what they’re getting into when they initiate combat.

Davide – Concept Artist

Moved swiftly onto colour concepts and Orthographics for our hostile world tree variant. These trees are more in keeping with the visual language of the creatures. Pictures to come soon!

Glenn – 3D Artist

I’ve been working on the transport vehicle model, getting it closer to the latest concept and making it more functional with some removable parts. We have constructed it in such a way that the back compartment could potentially be removed and other modular assets put there instead, perhaps a trailer for carrying cargo or a gun turret. 

In general it should look and feel more exciting and fit well with the rest of the Eden Star aesthetic due to Davide’s great concept work. It has also been optimised more, so it should perform well when in game. I’m really looking forward to driving it!

Andy H – Level Designer

This week I’ve been playing the early areas of the game to get an idea of how easy it is to gather materials for crafting, looking at item descriptions as I go. Been smashing all of our destructibles to see if they feel right and investigating damaging them with each type of weapon for balancing. 

Some of the interaction markers for some Items were wrong so I’ve fixed that right up too. Also John T has gone over some new shipwreck assets that I’m going to spread around places next week to make shipwrecks look and feel more believable.

Lauren – Lead Animator

We’ve had time this week to delve into fixing up some of the 1st person player gun animation issues, also 3rd person melee animations with the fists and shiv have been getting some love, and are shaping up nicely. With the fixes incoming to 3rd person aiming this should make for a much nicer experience.

Yves – Senior Developer

Spent some time on the traces for 3rd person melee aiming to make bashing AI and picking things up in 3rd person much easier.

John T – 3D Artist

This past week I have looked back at the shipwreck and assessed how we could improve the overall aesthetic. This included breaking up the silhouette with some new panels and rebar. Also the arrangement of these assets better reflects the narrative that we wish to convey. The blending with the new terrain has overall been hugely beneficial to the scene.

David M – 3D Artist

First time joining the blog post and boy do I have a treat for you guys…I’ve been creating collision meshes for our beautiful rock collection! This may or may not have involved me flinging myself at real life rocks to test how collision should work. Either way, it’s been super fun and I hope it never ends.

Tom W – Lead Designer

This week I’ve been getting stuck back into Eden Star playthroughs so we can review certain elements of the game for balancing. This has also been great for spotting little bugs we’ve had and cleaning them up as we go along. The only noticeable change for players will be some animations for the reticles on melee weapons, kinetic tools and build tools.

Melissa – Technical Designer

Jumped onto this project for the first time recently and have been prototyping a new build wheel interface and back end system to make it more user friendly and easier to navigate. This prototype is in the early stages but is coming together well.

Look back here for more updates soon!

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Post Re-instated from – 5 APR @ 6:44PM

Greetings Pioneers!

The Art and Design team have been hard at work making some much needed improvements to the atmosphere and surroundings. Fundamentally this all helps define important areas in the world. There’s been some much needed visual and lighting re-balancing with further placement passes to make the rock structures appear more natural.

Matt – Art Director

We’re throwing our all at visual improvements to the surrounding area in what is our ‘vertical slice’ for this experimental branch work. Been making sure everyone is focusing their attention on the right things to keep the latest art pass consistent across the game.

Joe – Lead Artist

Lots of work on unifying the visuals for our environment this week. The nature of this work has meant touching on all aspects of our world. We’ve tweaked the lighting, atmospherics and how those things interact with the day/night cycle, as well as replacing many placeholder assets and implementing a whole new terrain shader setup. We want to move away from the sandy mars look, and go for something a little more “Eden Star”…

Glenn – 3D Artist

I’ve been working on the cliffs, rocks and terrain painting. Tom Whaley gave us some great rocks and materials he had and I created 2 new cliff models to match them and got them working in game with collision. It’s looking pretty cool around the main path the player takes at the beginning of the game, we are working hard to set a high standard in this area that we can aim for in the rest of the game. I’ve also been helping with the lighting setup where I can.

Andy H – Level Design

I’ve been working on Placing more objects into the world around key locations, adding in outposts and adding in a bit more foliage around too because everyone loves more stuff to forage.

Also I’ve been adding effects around hives to add more atmosphere inside the dam.

More to come… we’ll be looking at dropping this new content to our experimental branch soon!

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

Post Re-instated from – 22 MAR @ 6:57PM

Greetings Pioneers!

All systems online, we’re bringing you a development blog today that includes some of our latest and highest priority changes that we’ll be introducing to the experimental build over the coming months. We have a couple of new and talented artists on the team as well.. so without delay, enjoy the eye candy!

Joe – Lead Artist

I’ve been looking over Davide’s awesome turret concepts and starting the process of translating them over to 3D. Rather than having a set turret with just 3 static levels, we would like to have a modular system of upgrades, where players spend a limited number of points to progress down an upgrade tree.

The current, rough outline is:

• 3 levels of “Base”. Increased range/field of view?
• 3 levels of “Struts”. Increased turn/activation speed?
• 3 levels of “Targeting System”. Increased accuracy/lock on speed?
• 3 levels of “Receiver”. Increased rate of fire?
• 3 levels of “Barrel”. Increase damage?
• Upgrade to add additional Barrel – doubles rate of fire?
• Updated to add Armour Level 1 and Level 2. Increased health?

All of this is in addition to the portable mini turret.

All of this gives you a ton of variation in visuals and playstyle, but you’ll have to think carefully about which upgrade path to take. As always, this is just the current plan and subject to change!

Davide – Concept Artist

In the process of unifying the look and feel of the technology of Eden Star, this week I’ve been looking at the aesthetics of the transport, redesigning its surfaces to fit more with the look we have in mind. 

We want the technology to look and feel grounded, functional, but at the same time to have a very distinct visual signature, alternating clean, bright armoured panels with darker, more mechanical layers. In this design process the visual motifs will then transfer to other mechanical hand-made objects, when the overall design satisfies us.

Glenn – 3D Artist

I have been working on the Transport Vehicle, created a new wheel and got it in engine. Its looking good and I’m really enjoying Davide’s new design for the back of the vehicle which fits much better with this new wheel design.

Here’s a shot of the construction of the wheel, the model with wireframe, baked low poly model and finished textured asset.

We got it working in engine with some nice decals. It fits in well with the hoverbike design!

I have also been working on the metal node which was lovingly sculpted by Basia Ulczok, one of our artist/animators. We have had a placeholder in game for a while and now we have a good high quality asset in there. Here’s a shot of the construction of the asset, low poly wireframe, baked mesh and finished textured asset. 

I got the metal node implemented in game with Joe’s help and you should all be able to mine it in the experimental branch soon!

Andy H – Level Designer

Been creating fully destructible outposts and placing them in the world and working on an exciting new turret upgrade tree with Tom W

Ricky – Lead Developer

Long overdue updates to the reticle system. I’ve been working on putting back in the fancy reticle animations when targets are in range, colouring them red when targeting enemies and all that jazz. The updated system provides us more freedom this time around so expect to see more diverse and unique reticle displays for different weapons.

That’s it for now.. check back for updates soon.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix