Greetings Pioneers!

Cometh into the inner sanctum, where mysterious and unearthly happenings are taking place. Some fantastic progress is being made on the interior spaces across the encounter locations, mood lighting is going in, and creatures are beginning to roam the corridors. We’re looking to bring you some gameplay footage of our current progress in the coming weeks.

Here’s what we’ve been upto:

John – Lead Designer

I’ve been swinging an actual Axe around the offices to inspire Lauren.. but this has backfired terribly, with everyone cowering under their desks. Of course I would love to do this in reality, but safety regulations state that if you would like to swing an Axe in doors you must at least wear goggles and protective clothing. Production and design is never THIS exciting, but what is exciting is seeing a new weapon with sharp and pointy edges that you’ve designed come to life.

Matt – Art Director

Been ripping the floor of the silo up to start getting some foliage into the space. This is for certain gameplay reason that will become apparent when you’re able to explore the area. I’ve also been cleaning up the models for the blast doors in this area and going through several reviews with the guys on their respective work for the other areas.

Lee – Technical Director

Continued working with a few issues we are seeing with the multiplayer server. I’ve also nearly got to the end of swapping the AI over to the new behaviour component.

Tristan – Senior Developer

Been working on some steam issues we were having. Looks like those are all fixed. I had lots of help from Andy. Some might in fact say he did it. I think he is more popular than me. On another note I have also been looking splitting out the tool weapon so players can customise their loadouts more.

Yves – Senior Developer

I’ve been dragging the new melee system out of the prototype phase into production, we now have a pretty meaty axe.

Ricky – Senior Developer

Mission Objectives system backend with Marcin, see below for details on this particular foray. I’d then been looking at how we go about picking stuff up off the floor, foraging through bushes or different types of interaction and futureproofing of this so we can have a solid plan and not require any changes in future.

Marcin – Designer

Working on the mission objective system and how that ties into rewarding the player for their discovery and exploration efforts. The system includes functionality for designers to directly add items to the player’s inventory if required, and the ability to toggle sequences of objectives based on outcomes, whether that is destroying an object or picking it up into your inventory.

Joe – Environment Artist

This week I’ve been poking away at the Silo area – specifically the Laboratory. There’s lots still to do but I’m trying to nail down the feel for the area before we move too far forward on detailing.

Alex – Designer

This week whilst working on the transmitter tower, I’ve been making sure that you guys, i.e. the player are all safe. By modelling and adding railings, airlock systems and also lifts for lazier player. On top of that adding in new cool volumetric lights thanks to Joe, to add that all important atmosphere, in the areas that have… atmosphere. I’ve also spent some time creating some dusty particle effects to the same… effect.

Tom W – Designer

This week, I’ve begun modelling the various props and hero-pieces for the interior of the Dam, starting with the backup power generators, which will be a central component to one of the main encounters found within the Dam. Next up will be the control panels found throughout the game!

Following lots of lovely feedback from Marcin, we’ve also tweaked the layout and gameplay loop of one of our encounters a bit, which should require more participation from the player than we had previously.

Lauren – Animator

This week has been all about the axe again, I’ve been getting animations looking smoother and refining the idle position of the grip, while Yves makes sweet code to get it to choose the correct swings, stick into sticky things and ricochet off of harder objects. It’s really coming together for a satisfying mining tool and melee weapon.

Andy – Lead QA

This week I’ve been working on multiplayer fixes with the team. We’ve also implemented the new axe, reworked the entrance for the Ancient Eden Kit, made tweaks to the Dam and the Transmitter Tower and looked into the pacing of the game throughout these new feature areas.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix