Welcome back to another devlog! We’re ending July on a pretty productive note - the clothes for our Tribed Lionman series have all been modelled and baked, and more and more weapons are getting pumped out of the Environment Art department! Before we get into it, remember to follow the progress of Depths of Erendorn on Twitter and Reddit!
3D Character Modelling
In last week’s devlog, we walked you through how we created the bodies and manes for three different sizes of Lionmen. In this week’s devlog, then, we’re going to show you how the clothes are coming along for these three fierce characters that make up the Tribed series of Lionmen. Each model requires a unique set of clothing to match with the character lore, so let’s get into it.
We started by making the clothes for the Proven Lionman, which uses the medium model size. Proven Lionmen are some of the most elite of the Tribe, and they wear more refined armour to reflect this status. For the Unproven Lionman, which uses the smaller model size, we simply resized and fitted the parts of clothing that both types have in common. These include:
- Ripped shorts
- An armoured belt that is reminiscent of a Roman pteruges
- Adornments made from bone, such as armour plates and necklaces
- Bandages that wrap around the wrists and ankles
This aesthetic draws inspiration from the ancient Gladiators, which we think suits the lifestyle of these ferocious desert-dwelling beasts. Once the clothes had been modelled for the Proven and Unproven Lionmen, we baked them before ensuring that this series of clothes shared the same UV set.
With the Tribed clothes done and ready to start being textured, we moved onto creating the rest of the clothes for this race of characters. The largest Lionman model we sculpted last week is reserved for the Tribe Leader, the biggest of all Lionmen and a gnarly opponent in the game. But since his clothes are going to require a bit more detail, we went straight onto creating the clothes for the Untribed Lionmen series. So far, we’ve got all the pieces blocked out and ready to start being detailed - so we’ll fill you in next week on how it’s all coming along.
Animation
Over the last few weeks, our Animator has been working tirelessly on updating the Twilight Elf Assassin’s rig and tweaking its animations for Unity. This work continues in this devlog as more of the Assassin's animations were able to be added to the game engine. These animations include:
- Dodge
- Kick, Low Kick and Dirt Kick
- Equip/unequipping weapons
- One of its several special attacks
Our Animator also created a stun animation as well as continued to rework another special attack used by the Twilight Elf Assassin. Known as Blindside, this attack allows the player to attack enemies from the side or from behind, dealing a significant amount of Damage.
We have now also planned the next set of animations for some generic skills that will be used by both the Twilight Elf Assassin and the Watertarg Excursionist. These new animations are a work-in-progress and include things like a spinning kick, palm strike and leaping strike.
Environment Art
After spending the last couple of weeks creating some awesome weapons for the game, this week our Environment Artist formed the idea for a modular weapons system. Using this system, weapons will be broken down into their components and procedurally generated in the engine. This will be a developer tool to allow us to efficiently create hundreds of variations of swords and weapons.
On top of this, an icon screen-capture scene has been set up to capture pictures for equipment and weaponry for use as icons. Meanwhile, the creation of the modular weapon kit is well under way, starting with swords. This was a nice change of pace after creating so many daggers last week, so we hope you like our little family of blades so far!
Server & Game Client
A lot has been going on inside the server and game client this week, starting with a server communication upgrade. A few months ago, work was put into upgrading the server-to-server communication in order to make a framework where servers can not only keep a connection with each other, but also register themselves with each other to increase or decrease the number of machines processing the game data.
A basic implementation of this has been enacted this week to test the code - and after some setbacks, it seems to be working well. Whilst this was going on, a few more bits were being taken care of inside the server and game client:
- Basic weapon prefabs were created
- A couple of character abilities were fixed
- UI and camera improvements were made
- Portraits now work on the turn order display
- A directional targeting system was implemented
- All references to an entity/item icon have been standardised as ‘icon_id’
- The ability for characters to socket weapons to animation bones was added
- We also made it so that characters can switch idles depending on their state
- Turn order display now updates each turn to display the turn order, including for the round after
As well as all this, the server now exposes equipped items for players connected to lobbies. This will be extended to allow us to display the character information of other players while you’re in the same lobby. Equipped item information is now also exposed inside the game scene. Wrapping up the week, we have now made a start on a portrait/item sprite generator tool that can be used with the modular weapons our Environment Artist is making.
