Greetings Pioneers!

This week we have some shiny concepts for our new vehicle designs for you to feast your eyes on, It’s looking good! The first vehicles we are working on is a single person hovering speeder and a much heavier transport with 6 large wheels. You are welcome to suggest some names for these! Bring on ‘Wheely-Mc-Wheelface’ 😛 In other news, we are making good progress on the environment work and the AI. Check it out below:

John – Lead Designer

This week we have been working through the first vehicle designs and refining the details for progression within crafting for both single and multiplayer. It’s a LONG back and forth, but I think we finally have a curve that includes “Makeshift Items” as the craftables on the player and the basic materials that you need to craft the “Replacement Build CPU”, “Makeshift Optical Laser Array”, a Makeshift Spear (I know… bear with me – it makes sense when you see it…) and a Shiv! 😛 In time this will all make sense, and yes, you can still build the Anti Grav Module (Smash!).

Matt – Art Director

With my holiday looming ever closer I spent the start of the week on a slow down, the middle of the week on a complete stop and now I’m actually on holiday. I wish I was there in gloomy old England to see all your wonderful faces, but…well….ok I’m lying! Later peeps!

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been working to resolve issues with the new version of the engine which were preventing us from building and running the game. I’ve also been helping with the discussion about new AI we would like to introduce to the game.

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been fixing up some multiplayer bugs, engine bugs and also ironing out our updated multiplayer design with Andy and John.

Yves – Senior Developer

Working with the other devs to help fix an issue we have been having with traces that enable the player to interact with items in the world. Before it was using the same trace that the weapons and the RMD Tool modules used, but as we are changing what the player starts with we’re having to alter this.

Ricky – Senior Developer

I’ve looked into various crashes and issues from the QA Team – specifically ones to do with changes to weapons and what’s come along with engine updates.

Marcin – Designer

I am continuing with the AI combat work, but more specifically on all the parameters that make each behaviour unique and yet part of the same system. Examples of that would be: whether the attack can be executed while moving or does the AI have to stop to do it. Another one would, how closely in front of the AI do you have to be for the behaviour to trigger, or does the behaviour even care about that? Or when we request a new move, how fast should the AI be going, should it slow down before it reaches the destination, if we are already moving, which one should take priority? Rules and options, all of it. At the end of it the “leaf” tasks of the “behaviour tree” should have enough variety that each creature should have its own character even if they follow the same “trunk” behaviour behind the scenes.

Tom – Designer

Landscapes have taken a back-seat this week, with most of my focus being on our brand new vehicle prototypes, working towards optimum bounciness. We’ve got some really great variants up and running now, so can’t wait to show you guys our progress in the coming weeks!

Once we’ve updated our engine version I should be able to start adding some really cool new features to our environments.

Alex – Designer

I’ve been a busy little beaver, working my fluffy tail off at getting the inside of our new interiors textured and up to scratch!

Lauren – Lead Animator

This week I have been continuing with the third person animations and the Axe. It’s coming together. There are some tweaks still to come, still blocking animations and various pared actions such as finishing moves left to do but it’s getting there.

Olly – Developer

Vehicle prototyping has been the order of the day/week! Mostly working on getting physics to feel right and sorting bugs with wheels not behaving how they should.

Carlos – Developer

I’ve been looking into co-op bugs with not being able to equip modules after our system changes to separate the modules from weapons. I also found a few issues with our use and interact systems that I’ve been beating into submission (using the ancient power of code).

Jamie – QA

This week I have been testing the new engine version and checking what works and what doesn’t work in the latest build. I’ve encountered a few bugs that I’ve been working with the team to sort out 🙂

Sam – Concept Artist

Bring on the vehicles!

Andy – Lead QA

I’ve spent the week testing the new version of the engine with Jamie to ensure that it is all working correctly and there are no huge problems before we merge it with our main branch. I’ve also been in design meetings with John and Trist working on our new plan for multiplayer which, after discussing with the rest of the team we are all really excited about.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix