Greetings pioneers!

This week has seen the release of the big v0.0.11 and even a couple of hotfixes. We would like to thank everyone who has been letting us know about any of the critical issues so we could resolve them quickly – You guys are awesome 🙂

If you’ve missed the previous mentions, some of the team are at the NEC in Birmingham this week for EGX, showcasing Eden Star. If you’re around, come down and give us a high five, we’re in the Rezzed Zone!

So in the Hotfix today, we have (hopefully) fixed the issue with the Splintermites damaging the Eden Kit from a distance and the issue with not being able to rebind the Middle Mouse Button functionality to other buttons. We also realised the graphics settings were all being set to Ultra by default – which is why some of you might have been experiencing lower than expected frame rates. We had optimised a lot in v0.0.11 but might have been hard to tell with everything set to maximum! The full change list is below:

Bug fixes

Fixed Eden Kit being damaged by Splintermites from a distance.

Fixed Volume starting at 0 occasionally.

Fixed not being able to rebind Middle mouse button.

Fixed not being able to build in some parts of the world.

Fixed Graphics Settings being set to Ultra by default

Changes and Balancing

Increased the length of whole day to 25 minutes which now results in the day being 20 minutes long and the night 5 minutes long.

Lowered the base material cost of Foundations and Cubes from 8 to 5.

So as it’s Friday let’s have an update on what the team have been working on this week, exciting things to come!

John – Lead Designer

This week I have been helping the guys out with testing the latest builds, talking business, and towards the end of the week I have been at Eurogamer Expo at the NEC, showcasing Eden Star THE SWAMP, getting harassed by a Swamp Walker.

Matt – Art Director

This week I have been testing releases, continuing work on the grenades and working with Joe and Chris, painting terrain on the mountains and setting up foliage volumes to get the right look and feel for the different Biomes across our huge new map. Today I am at EGX with John (that’s me in the green).

Lee – Technical Director

So this week I have been trying to get bugs fixed with the AI which don’t seem to want to play nice with the new build system. I’ve now also started work on getting all the AI to work in multiplayer, which seems to be going quite well so far…

Tristan – Senior Developer

This week I have been working on squashing bugs for the release we just put out. Hope you’ve enjoyed it so far. I wasn’t really focused on any one thing much like the rest of the team just a routine of find bug, fix bug, repeat. Since then we are all full steam ahead on getting everything ready for multiplayer. Getting the power system working across the network seems to just fill me with energy right to my core. DOUBLE POWER PUN.

Yves – Senior Developer

So you are enjoying the new construction system huh? You’re welcome 🙂

Marcin – Designer

With the patch 0.0.11 + hotfixes released I was able look towards some of the features that did not make the cut, such as the ability to grab, damage, and eventually rip the Cirrus Spore out of the ground with your Smash skill.

Another interesting thing I was looking into was the enemy navigation and its interaction with the new building system. Previously, or should I say currently, anything you build marks the ground it stands on as non-navigable, which in a few gameplay cases causes us (and you) problems. Did you ever see a Splintermite get stuck on seemingly clear ground? Yeah that’s most likely the culprit, no navigable route. I’ve been experimenting with marking the area as difficult terrain instead, and it seems to be going in the right direction so far.

Ricky – Developer

Cleaning up bugs and then got the multiplayer system back in working order ready for a thorough workout.

Carlos – Developer

This week I’ve been sorting out a few of the bugs left over, some of these fixes should be out with the next hotfix update. Aside from this I’ve been making a start on multiplayer, helping set up our multiplayer lobby UI.

Chris – Designer

This past week I have been playtesting and refining the current map including balancing tweaks and bug fixing. In the latter part of the week I have returned to working on the new 8km map, mainly focusing on adding foliage to the world before moving onto working on our new destructible rock assets.

Joe – Environment Artist

Over the past week I’ve jumped onto testing our latest builds to help ensure our massive update went out as smoothly as possible. I’ve also fixed the bug where you were unable to build in certain areas of the map so I want to see all of your awesome cave-bases! With the releases out I’ve had time to refactor the visuals on some of our Apex Rocks:

Lauren – Animator

This week, in between testing releases, I have been working on multiplayer and re-working the cutscene, animations and drop pod setup to work with multiple spawn points and players.

Gav & Simone – Concept Artists

We’ve been jumping around on various tasks this week but collectively we’ve mainly been working on the hive bases, the portable turret and some nice tweaks to the HUD interactions that hopefully the UI heads out there will appreciate 🙂

Andy – Lead QA

WE RELEASED AN UPDATE! Then I got to check out EGX on Thursday. We’ll be there all weekend so come say hi if you’re going down.

As always if you encounter any bugs, continue to let us know. Don’t forget to check out our Trello board for all the latest developments and progress.

Happy hunting!

-Team Flix