Greetings Pioneers!

This week we have been continuing our hard work on the new environment locations and our third person character motion. We are working on our AI encounters, designing behaviours and reactions that are more natural and less of a relentless attack. We are looking into upgrading the engine to 4.15 as It may be the solution to our persistent multiplayer bug preventing a full release into the main branch *cross fingers!*

For a special feature we’re using this week as an opportunity to show you some video capture of the early 3rd person movement within the new starting area.

What we’ve been upto:

John – Lead Designer

Most of the developers are focused on incorporating the new version of the engine in order to get a practical fix in for our multiplayer. For now the work is very much designer and art heavy as we’re planning our sprints for the locations within the start area. Co-jointly our characters are undergoing a full 3rd person treatment which is very exciting to see.

Myself, Matt and Andy have largely been organising the new team onto the right tasks for completing interim milestones. Our target is to start putting new builds out to steam in the coming months, to start the feedback process on the new changes!

Matt – Art Director

All of our locations in the ‘starting’ area have undergone several initial passes, we’ve done our first entire walkthrough of the area which was this week’s milestone. Now we have the complete layout we’ll be starting to add in the encounters during next sprint so we can start full playtests within the next few weeks.

During this time i’ll be preparing our set components for artwork passes which will begin with a conceptual pass. The process for this will first of all be driven by a theme and references collected within that theme that the art team and myself have agreed on. Because we’re going for the ‘old, been here a long time, ancient tech’ kind of look, we’ll be introducing a lovely new technique that will utilise spline generated meshes for overgrown areas of structures.

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have been going through implementation designs for gadget type weapons and helping out with bugs.

Ricky – Developer

Looked over new level design related tasks, and begun planning work on HUD tutorial prompts for easier use by the design team.

Marcin – Designer

Over the past few days I’ve been continuing my work on the AI combat system and behaviours. At this stage I have the AI melee system working, and I am making progress on the ranged and area attacks as well as the force reactions system revamp. There is still a lot to go through, such as making sure your tools, as the player are up to scratch, and also the UI elements and bugs, but we’re getting there.

Tom W – Level Designer

This week, I’ve been hard at work shelling out both the exterior and interior of the Dam, as well as several AI encounters spread throughout it. We’re building it to showcase some of the more unique aspects of Eden Star’s movement and combat mechanics, so should be very exciting when we can finally show it all off to the community.

Alex – Level Designer

Tom W and I have been busy beavers getting the designs for the Dam finalised, as well as planning out various points of interest in the area surrounding the area for the players to explore. Part of the process has involved stress testing the modular kits we’ve been putting together, and they seem to be holding up nicely so far! Pictures and pretties coming soon <3

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been continuing with the 3rd person locomotion and grenade animations which are coming along nicely. Still some work to do to get it feeling the way we want but it’s getting there. I have also started rigging up the female character ready for the next steps.

Andy – Lead QA

I’ve mostly been working on the up and coming sprints with Matt, checking on the multiplayer servers and doing walk throughs and design feedback sessions of our new start area.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix