This week in Depths of Erendorn, development continued at a steady pace as teams advanced critical upgrades, refined environmental content, and finalised key assets. The 3D Modelling and Animation teams concluded work on the Vampire Bat creatures, delivering fully textured models and exported animations ready for implementation. Set Piece Design focused on improving the visual cohesion of settlements through the use of procedural tools and landscape detailing, while the Environment team progressed a procedural crystal generator to enrich cave interiors. On the technical side, the Client team pushed forward with the migration to Unreal Engine 5.5.4, successfully compiling a prebuilt version of the engine. Meanwhile, the Server team tackled performance-related issues by resolving topology bugs, reducing log volume, and addressing concurrency errors. Finally, the Sound team expanded the game’s audio assets with a new round of ambient and creature recordings captured during a recent field session. Together, these updates contribute to a more immersive and polished experience across the world of Erendorn. As always, join us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit for daily updates on Depths of Erendorn. Alternatively, join our Discord for all the latest! - now let’s get into it!
3D Modelling
This week, the 3D Modelling team at Depths of Erendorn completed work on the Vampire Bat creatures, bringing the finalised models to a ready state for animation and in-game integration. With texturing and detailing finished across all three variants, the final versions now reflect a cohesive and threatening addition to the game's expanding creature roster. From sculpting to topology and through to the final textured output, each stage of development focused on maintaining strong visual consistency and performance readiness. These completed assets mark another step forward in expanding the visual diversity and creature encounters across Erendorn’s dungeons and wilderness. Examples of the variations of Vampire Bat completed by the team can be seen below.
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Set Piece Design
This week, the Set Piece Design team at Depths of Erendorn made continued progress on enhancing the settlement environments, focusing on improving visual cohesion and natural detailing. Procedural Content Generation (PCG) tools were used to elevate the overall set dressing of the settlement, enabling more efficient placement of decorative elements. Improvements were also made to the placement and variation of rocks along the river shorelines, adding to the realism of these transitional zones. Grass shading issues were addressed and corrected, contributing to more accurate and visually consistent terrain blending. Additionally, research began into new fence models to expand the range of modular props used throughout settlements, while plans were put in place to introduce scattered small- to medium-sized rocks to further enrich the landscape’s texture and form. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Programming
Client
This week, the Client team at Depths of Erendorn continued efforts to migrate the project to Unreal Engine 5.5.4, focusing on building a precompiled version of the engine from source. With the project now aligned to C++20 standards and unused plugins removed, the team shifted attention to testing the migrated build within the newly generated engine. After several rounds of trial and adjustment—particularly around module inclusion and feature selection to optimise engine size and performance—a successful run was achieved. With proof of concept complete, the next step will involve migrating any outstanding project changes, distributing the updated engine build to the wider team, and addressing any installation or compatibility issues as they arise. This transition paves the way for future improvements in both performance and development flexibility.
Server
This week, the Server team at Depths of Erendorn focused on refining backend functionality by addressing several key issues affecting stability and performance. Efforts were directed at debugging the new topology system to ensure line of sight lines could be correctly calculated and displayed, an important feature for projectiles to be able to verify if an entity can be hit by the ranged attack. Alongside this, a concurrency issue related to the entities map within adventures was resolved, improving data consistency during runtime. The team also streamlined the communication of entity despawn events by significantly reducing the volume of logs sent to the client—cutting down on unnecessary messaging by around 500%. These backend improvements contribute to a smoother and more efficient experience across both gameplay and development environments.
Sound Design
This week, the Sound team at Depths of Erendorn continued expanding the game’s audio library with fresh and versatile recordings. Field work was carried out at a partially thawed lake, where a wide range of sounds were captured—including environmental ambiences, water impacts, and the vocalisations of nearby wildlife such as geese. These raw recordings will be developed into layered effects suitable for combat, spellcasting, and general atmospheric use. Alongside this, additional creature vocalisations were also recorded, with plans to integrate and process them in the coming weeks. These efforts contribute to a richer and more varied soundscape that enhances the auditory depth of Erendorn’s world. Examples of the sound created by the team throughout the last week can be seen below.
Environment Art
This week, the Environment team at Depths of Erendorn began work on a new procedural crystal generator using Houdini, aimed at enriching the visual variety of the game’s cave dungeons. Early progress has already produced promising crystal forms, which will eventually be integrated with rock bases to give the appearance of natural crystal outcrops embedded within the terrain. Procedural UV mapping has also been successfully implemented, streamlining the texturing process and enabling more efficient asset generation. This ongoing development will support the creation of diverse geological formations and strengthen the visual identity of Erendorn’s subterranean environments. An example of the efforts made by the team can be seen below.
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Animation
Last week, the Animation team at Depths of Erendorn continued work on finalising the Vampire Bat character updates. With animations cleaned up and polished, the team proceeded to export them as FBX files in preparation for integration. Temporary meshes previously used during development were replaced with the finalised versions across all three Vampire Bat variations, and the corresponding skeletal meshes were also exported. Due to technical issues currently affecting engine launch, in-editor asset validation has been postponed until the following week. Once resolved, this will allow the team to move forward with final implementation and ensure the bat animations perform as expected in-game. Examples of the work on the Vampire Bat rigs can be seen below.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of March yet?!
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