Greetings Pioneers!

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.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix