Greetings Pioneers!

The elusive multiplayer respawn crash is still preventing a full release into the main branch but we have been working hard on possible solutions and hope to have fixes for both the lockbox inventory and the respawn bugs (we think they may be related!). Today we have some small but significant fixes for the experimental branch, most importantly so the introduction is skippable without breaking the day-night cycle.

Experimental Branch Update Release Notes:

Fixed issue where skipping the introduction would cause the day/night cycle to pause

Implemented fix for some items vanishing from lock boxes after saving

Fixed issue with missile turret rockets not affecting navigation

As for future features, we have been working on new buildables, Titan Walls and Titan Gates. These are ideal for perimeter base defence, three blocks high and can’t be climbed from the outside. In addition to this we have also been experimenting with explosives and grenades (you will need something a bit more destructive to break through those walls! Hint hint).

We’ve been continuing with the character rework, future environment improvements, refinements to beginning of the game and tutorial along with the initial game objectives which we’re excited to start sharing with everyone.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

John – Lead Designer

They call me the juggler, been full on organising designs and production for the rest of the game on the current and upcoming development sprints. More recently Andy has been helping steer the organisation and features to be included in our sprints.. which has been handy. That’s right, Handy Andy – what a legend! I’m also working on organising some additional people to help out with the work on level design, AI and testing.

Matt – Art Director

Been working with Tom developing our final character base model assets which is now coming a long very nicely. There has been a massive design pass going on for the colony base encounters, these will be getting a lot of new environment art to help support the unique and ancient locations we’re looking to implement for these encounters.

More personally I’ve finished up LOD models for the Grenade and started looking into fleshing out additional buildables.

Lee – Technical Director

I’ve been trying to help with bugs where I can, but working very hard to get my new work done towards AI behaviours, which will make it easier for the designers to make new behaviours a lot easier.

Marcin – Designer

I’ve been working for a while now on long-term and behind the scenes components of the game such as the animation systems, AI attack system, and a few other bits of design, with nothing to show for it to you, I’m afraid. So far we have a few of the enemy attacks work under the new management, it’s just converting converting the rest that I need to finish. What the new attack system will allow us to do is re-use the implementation of any given attack between enemies.

Previously each attack was implemented separately on each creature, the horror, I know! On top of that glorious maintainability we will be able to control the timings of each component of each attack more reliably. I can’t wait for the relentless melee slashes to go away, I’m excited. 🙂

Tristan – Lead Developer

This week I have been helping out with designs for the future of the game. Also I have been helping lauren out with the grenades where I can and trying to track some of the more persistent bugs down in the meantime.

Ricky – Developer

Designs for Consumable Weapons with the grenade gang.

Lauren – Animator

This week I have been discussing objectives and feature areas for the game, continuing with the 3rd person character animations and working on grenades, because everybody loves explosions…

Carlos – Developer

Working with Rick to get the server information integrated with steam.

Joe – Environment Artist

Mainly design work the past couple of weeks, working on a high-level overview for an exciting rework of our current level. Not much we want to reveal just yet but we want to improve the level in a variety of ways – expanding the player-space, making sweeping changes to terrain to encourage exploration and gameplay variation (no more impassable cliffs!) and adding a raft of ‘Feature Areas’ for objectives, story progression, encounters and to tie into the new Tactical Map system.

Tom – Character Artist

Finished up our final male character model! Onto the female next.

Andy – Lead QA

I’ve been working on a lot of production with a few contractors we are planning on bringing on board. Working through our backlog boards, organising the tasks into sprints and assigning the team to them. I’ve also been working on the new Titan Walls and Titan Gate with Matt, which will offer up a new level of protection for your bases.

I was also part of the design meeting regarding our new intro sequence that I’m really excited about. It will not only help new player with the early game, but will offer up Objectives and include a rework of sections of the map.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix