After releasing our very first teaser trailer last week, the team has been able to relax a little and go back to basics. We’ve kicked off this month by completing several canine models, creating five new animations for one of our playable characters and even introducing a new ability to Depths of Erendorn.
3D Character Modelling
After sculpting all of Erendorn’s canines in last week’s game devlog, our Character Artist could begin texturing them. Using different fur patterns for different creatures, we completed four types of canine models this week. These include the:
- Wolf
- Skyhound
- Ice Husky
- Savannah Wild Dog
A collar was also made for the trained Wild Dog this week, since these creatures are often kept as pets by NPCs like Bandits and Merchants. These trained Wild Dogs can actually assist in combat - but in a world where feeding an extra mouth is no trivial matter, they can be a burden to those low in coin.
Finally, with the Skyhound model complete, we could begin making the variant types that appear in this species. There are three types of Skyhound: the Grey, Dark and Onyx Skyhound, and they all have slightly different characteristics. The Onyx Skyhound, for example, was given a crystal-like glint this week in order to make the model more reflective of its name.
Animation
While our Character Artist focussed on the canines, it was all about the Earthen Dwarves in the Animation department this week. Our Animator started by fixing the mesh that was clipping during animation for all three types of the Earthen Dwarves. Five new animations were also created for these characters, including:
- Drink
- Disarm
- Unarmed attack
- Equip/unequip weapon
- Walk with weapon equipped
With all of this done, we then imported the animations into Unity. By integrating the animations into the game engine, we could begin creating animation clips and start building the Animation Controller. This is an asset in Unity that enables us to maintain a set of animations for our characters.
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/Dwarf_newanims.mp4
Environment Art
In Depths of Erendorn, there are many types of terrain that you will travel through as you explore the lands above. But there is as much variation in our subterranean dungeons as there is in our landscapes, making the depths even more unpredictable than they already are. There are four types of dungeons in Depths of Erendorn:
- Cave Dungeons
- Jungle Dungeons
- Ice Dungeons
- Fire Dungeons
After already creating some atmospheric Cave Dungeons, and moodboarding ideas for ice cave environments in last week’s game devlog, our Environment Artist focussed on the Fire Dungeons this week, starting with the fire caves. These are progressing steadily, with the baking completed and texturing well underway. The next part of the process of creating Erendorn’s fire caves will be to bend these meshes into the desired kit pieces - so come back next week to see how it’s all shaping up.
Server and Game Client
This week in the server, further rebalancing work was done on many of the abilities in Depths of Erendorn. Abilities that dealt set damage, for example, were changed to have some variability in the damage they can deal. As well as this, abilities that healed were also given some variation in what they are able to restore.
Speaking of abilities, we are adding a new ability to Depths of Erendorn that allows players to summon entities, and a lot of work was put into this. To make this new ability possible, two new ability blocks were created - and even more work will be done next week in order to implement and test these blocks.
In last week’s game devlog, we mentioned that over 140 abilities had been reworked in order to accommodate a recent stat rebalance. Due to this enormous overhaul, there was no time to test these altered abilities. This week, however, extra testing sessions took place and revealed many bugs. While most of these were resolved, there are still more to fix and this will be the primary focus over the next few days.
Thanks for joining us for another weekly game devlog! If you haven’t had a chance to check our our teaser trailer yet, you can watch it here - and as always, for more updates on Depths of Erendorn, make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!
