Thanks for joining us for another devlog as we continue developing our multiplayer game, Depths of Erendorn. This week has been a little quieter than usual as the team cracks on with smoothing out some of the finer creases in the game development process.
3D Modelling
With the retopology of the female base mesh now complete, our 3D Character Artist then adjusted that mesh to use as a base for the retopology of the female elf mesh in order to save time. With both meshes complete and unwrapped, high poly information could now be represented through texture maps that provide a foundation for the rest of the texturing process.
As well as baking the maps for both female base meshes and beginning the texturing of the human female model, our 3D Character Artist also finished creating an environment scene from our multiplayer game which will be used as a backdrop for some of our characters.
Animation
Our Animator teamed up with our Character Artist this week to create a unique mesh for the head and arms of the dwarven models. This mesh was created so that it can be used on all Frost Dwarves and Earthen Dwarves in Depths of Erendorn.
This way, all dwarves that share the same base mesh will be using the same head and arms, resulting in a much faster skinning process as our Animator will only have to skin the clothing when she starts a new dwarven character. Using this process, our Animator skinned the bodies of the Civilian Earthen Dwarf type, the Standard Miner and the Elite Miner. She also:
- Created a ‘Damage Reaction’ animation for one of our Zombie characters
- Created an animation idea for being pushed back and thrown back
- Starting rigging the Watertarg character
Server
This week, one of our game developers spent most of their time working on a system that will allow an enemy AI to use their specific abilities. While the work for this is not finished yet, a lot of the work required to make it possible is. Next week, this system should be finished off and implemented for the enemies in the prototype.
There were some issues this week with the way the server was calculating if one entity was behind or beside another. This has been worked on and now the server should correctly decide if 1 entity is behind or beside another. We also altered the minimum strength level for entities after debuffs, increasing it from 0 to 1.
The final bits of work carried out in the server this week involved several ability changes:
- Water Drops: This now heals 5 instead of 3. It has also had its cost reduced from 16 to 14 Ancient Power.
- Mind Net: This has had its cost reduced from 18 to 14 Ancient Power.
- Flood Lungs: This has had its damage changed so that it does the following damage: 8 on the first turn, 5-6 on the second and 4-5 on the third.
- Arcanic Reverberation: This now gives 5 Ancient Power per turn instead of 3 - but the cooldown has also been increased to 4 turns instead of 3 to balance this change.
- Poison Damage: This was previously triggering 4 times instead of 3. This issue was fixed so that it should only trigger 3 times now.
Game Client
A lot of refinements went into the game client this week, starting with abilities. There is now the option to input an entity direction for all abilities that require one. As well as this, the direction arrow turns yellow when the entity direction has been confirmed by the player, providing much better visual feedback.
The final tweak made to abilities this week was that ability targeting now gets cancelled when the player’s turn ends. All of these changes significantly improve the functionality of our multiplayer game as well as the overall user experience.
User Interface
Abilities aren’t the only thing that got tweaked in the game client this week. The UI also had a few changes made:
- The character name input field now has the ‘overflow’ option enabled. Now, the name won’t continue on a new line if the amount of letters is exceeded.
- There is now a tooltip that shows the amount of energy that is needed to melee a certain entity.
- If applicable, the tooltip that shows status effect information, like the name and description, now also shows the amount of turns the effect is active for.
- If the duration changes, the tooltip updates even when the player is already hovering over the status effect.
Fixes
The first fix made to the game client this week was making it so that the green spawning area now correctly disappears after choosing a starting position. This fix was carried out so that the green spawning area will disappear even when, for example, some players are dead. Other fixes include:
- Tooltip for swing cost is now only visible when the melee cursor is active.
- States with ‘Infinite’ duration (duration = 0 but state is active) are shown in the UI again. This even applies to the ability Voidshadow, which gives the ‘Invisible’ state.
- The turn timer was remaining visible sometimes after an entity’s turn. We added extra constraints to prevent this from happening.
Remember to check back next week to see what else our game development team have been up to. We have a lot of exciting things to share with you in 2019, so make sure you don’t miss anything!
