Greetings Pioneers!

It’s been a week since we opened the experimental multiplayer branch and we have been working hard on a hotfix for some of the issues encountered. The main focus is to fix any major crashes, improving the AI and their willingness to attack your bases, restoring mineral rock destruction. We will also be addressing some of the server-client sync issues and being unable to connect to servers.

It has been a lot of fun to jump onto some of the early server. The early support is really encouraging, so much so that we’d like to thank you again for your feedback and for supporting the game at this early stage.

Meanwhile we’ve also been working on future features and goodies…

John – Lead Designer

I have been working with Marcin to refine a whole host of gameplay and technical/implementation design including the player inventory and how we intend to balance multiplayer to avoid certain exploits when sharing items.

We have also been looking over respawn pads, the next version of the deployment screen, how to implement the armour system to make it look correct whist using different combinations of armour types and more! At the moment the next release is a hotfix and then we’re most likely looking to focus on inventory, sharing and colony (clan) creation to allow PvP gameplay too.

Matt – Art Director

For future progression gameplay updates I’ve been building more versions of the Mata – Tool. (That funky gravity manipulation device on your right arm) As we go forward it will come in many flavours. All of which will have their own perks. Rest assured when all of these are integrated into the gameplay visuals you will always start with the most basic version.

Lee – Technical Director

Well today I’ve been dealing with our internal server after it seemed to crash late yesterday afternoon. All week I’ve been fixing small bugs with the AI which I’ve noticed for a while but never had the time to get to look at them. I’ve also been planning some work toward a new batch of AI creatures for the world.

Tom – Character Artist

Finishing off the textures and game model for the Stalker!

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have been working on single player and multiplayer bug fixes as well as trying to iron out steam issues.

Yves – Senior Developer

Auto loading of saves, and the first version of our in game local and global chat. I’ve also implemented support for in game voice communication.

Ricky – Developer

Clearing up some of those minor annoying bugs in the game to ensure your satisfactory quality of life index is being met. I have then been working on some contract work to keep us rolling.

Joe – Environment Artist

I’ve started on the creation of a basic set of assets we can use to populate our upcoming Underwater biome!

Marcin – Designer

Lee and I have sorted a lot of bugs with AI, especially the weird things Ikas had been doing for a while, like falling through the world when killed by smash. On the more important note, we managed to have a good hard look at the night raids attacking your walls as well as your turrets.

I am very excited about that change because not only it prevents the enemies from getting stuck, unable to find valid targets, but it’s on the whole a total gamechanger of the way you plan, build, and defend your base.

On another note I have been working with John on designs for progression system, which is also coming along nicely. Hopefully, I’ll be able to share some saucy details with you all soon.

Chris – Designer

This week I have been stepping up production on the new map. We have been concentrating on various placement tasks, landscape painting, biome improvements and beginning to optimise the world.

I have also been jumping in and out of design discussions with John and Marcin with regards to progression and the revised deployment screen system.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been animating the Stalker, a bipedal enemy that can also run and creep on all fours and attack both with claws and a swiping spike tail. Sweet dreams.

Animations shown are a work in progress

Gav & Simone – Concept Artists

This week we’ve been progressing some work on the Sieger, Wolf and Owl concepts – we hope they look sufficiently frightening 🙂

Andy – Lead QA

Now that we’ve added all of our multiplayer code, I’ve been looking through the single player with the developers to try and replicate some of the crashes we’ve been having in order to catch them in debug mode.

See you in the fray!

– Team Flix