Greetings Pioneers!

Happy New Year! Into the depths we go! It’s starting to look eerie as we start to arrive at the visual polish levels that we as a team have always aimed for. It’s a good quality benchmark for the rest of the project as a whole, and there’s going to be plenty more improvement as we refine the atmospherics and sounds in these spaces. We’ve made some progress with another four legged creature as well.. which is just coming out of pre-production.

John – Lead Designer

Tom and I have been talking about the distribution designs for Materials throughout the level and i’ve also been working with the guys to get concepts finalised for the vehicles, as they’re now starting production to get the final models for the large transport and speeder in game. Enemy types, animations and also production have also been discussed whilst we start to push towards final requirements for a release.

I’m still a bit concerned about some of the crashes that we’re seeing at the moment and also the pacing of objectives/direction and signposting, but I hope that next week i’ll be able to focus more on what’s needed to polish these components along with some refinements to the fuel designs.

Tom – Designer

Hope everyone’s had a wonderful holiday over the last couple of weeks! Feeling recharged and refreshed, the artists and I have been giving the atmosphere some tender loving care.

We’ve done our best to create 3 distinct palettes as the day progresses, starting with a rich red sunrise, moving into the pale yellows for the day, before turning an ominous green as night comes; signalling the awakening of Pharus 7’s more deadly creatures.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have been continuing with work to do with points of interest. Part of this was tying it in with the scripting system we have so that a point of interest can trigger a script on the AI to perform a set of actions. Over Christmas I worked on some new functionality to prevent the AI planners for nearby AI from running in sync. This just ensures that even if AI want to do the same thing, they don’t all do it at the same time.

Matt – Art Director

A lot of art has been integrated into the base areas over the last few days. Trying to push the run down and dark interiors to create that full horror aspect within them. The majority of creature encounter locations have had extra work done to them, like the addition of extra rooms off the main route. Next up will be The Dam surface, which still needs some extra love and care from a combat experience and art perspective!

Carlos – Developer

The final parts of the selling module are now coming together! Time to get rich…. in Pharus materials that is….

Marcin – Designer

Happy new year everybody! During this first week of 2018 I’ve been working on the 2nd priority AI behaviours, such as turning over time, interacting with points of interest and random Idles. I call those 2nd priority, because although they are important for the overall feel of the creatures, the game would work all the same without them.

The turning over time logic is pretty self explanatory, we want the AI to animate turning to ace in a given direction instead of just snapping to it. Interacting with points of interest is a broader mechanic that will let us have AI interact with locations and objects in the world that are not combat targets. For example the first few we are working on are: finding corpses to eat, finding vantage points to climb to, and finding other friendly creatures to have fun with 🙂

Sam – Concept Artist

Greetings! This week I’ve been working on a number of things, with main focus being the next creature – the Hunter. This one is going to be a very large, feral and aggressive being that presents a much more significant challenge than the Splintermite – you certainly wouldn’t want to run into one of these in a dark alleyway.

We’ve come to general consensus on which silhouette design we think best fits these qualities, and I am well on the way to putting together a more definitive design next week. And don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about the Mite either: our critter’s currently being painted up into a final concept piece, so that’ll be something else to look forward to next week!

Lauren – Lead Animator

Finishing up the jumping mite by making some visual improvements to the animations and discussing the next steps. Despite setbacks with power cuts early in the week we’re making good progress.

We’ve been refining how we want the stagger to work across all the AI so that it feels good to hit them with any weapon. I’ve also had the time to make some improvements to the third person jumping animations. You can now skip merrily across the terrain, like the child we all are inside.

Andy – Lead QA

First week back after our christmas adventure and everyone appears rejuvenated and ready make the next few weeks really count.

I’ve been in lots of production meetings, planning the next steps for Eden Star. We have the new terrain in and playable, new creatures currently being implemented and new vehicles being models.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix