Greetings Pioneers!

We have begun the extensive process of bring the new landscape to life, this involves re-integrating all the world systems into the newly defined areas.

We’ll be putting a series of development updates out that give everyone a better sense of the scale we’re aiming for. To say a lot has gone into the planning before committing to this layout is an understatement.

Having a world that truly compliments the game features new and old is exciting, and we believe the time we’re taking to do this will improve the game for the community vastly. So again we very much appreciate your support and feedback that allows us to continue working through these changes!

John – Lead Designer

I’ve been talking to Olly about how we improve the initial vehicle setup and polish gameplay. In addition to this i’ve been reworking the fuel designs to meet with what Tom has been working through on the material/resource setup.

Matt – Art Director

Copious amounts of detail have been going into the design of the terrain generation for the new design. We’re toying with expanding the world, and making resources more sparse to encourage more travelling for those feeling adventurous. It also very much justifies the use of vehicles when they are introduced. So you can expect for exploration with faster journey times.

Lee – Technical Director

This week I have continued to add more functionality to our new ‘Point of Interest’ component. They can both attract AI to interact with them or different types of AI can be repelled so they will avoid them. The component can also hold multiple scripts which are passed out to the AI with instructions for the AI to follow and complete tasks.

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been helping out with a few engine bugs as well as getting the new interaction working and tested. I have also been overseeing some of changes to the tool modules so that they behave more like weapons which should make for a more customisable loadouts.

Yves – Senior Developer

Thanks to our huge new landscape, I’ve reworked the objective system to help guide players in the initial stages of the game, as well as hint at nearby points of interest to investigate with your friends.

Tom – Designer

“Pharus 7 isn’t a place, it’s a people.”

Cheesy references aside, I’m happy to present our shiny new landscape!

There’s still plenty of work for us to do, like adding roads and likes for you all to explore, but this should serve as a solid foundation for the new terrain. As usual, any suggestions for any particular biomes you’d like to see in the world are always welcome!

Going forwards, you should be seeing much more in the way of pretty new screenshots, now that it’s properly in engine and all our wonderful artists can sink their teeth into it.

Olly – Junior Programmer

Hey everyone! I’ve secretly working behind the scenes on some fancy new vehicle controllers for the game, which should hopefully lead to some fun vehicular shenanigans when they get released down the line. Most of my time has been spent doing R&D as to the best way approach them, such as whether to write them completely from scratch, or build upon Epic’s vehicle templates.

Sam – Concept Artist

Following further feedback from John and Matt I have been tweaking the look of the heavy chassis vehicle to give the player a greater field of view while in the cockpit. We also decided that a door on the side of the vehicle would be beneficial to game play.

Lauren – Lead Animator

This week I have been continuing with axe finishing move animations and the kill move system. This will be a pared action between AI and the player with animations based on the height of the AI along with variations so that there are slight differences each time.

Andy – Lead QA

I’ve been testing the game as a whole this week to make sure that we have caught all those pesky bugs that came running in with the engine upgrade. I also got to play around with the new voice chat in multiplayer. It see needs a little work but I can at least now talk to other players instead of trying to type all the time.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix