An exciting week for the team working on Depths of Erendorn! Our 3D modelers started with the texturing of the Zentragal model. The animation team worked on creating new cycles for the Small Ogre model and updating the Charged Spiderling. The Environment team has experimented with different methods of ruining some castle walls and our team of programmers has focused on squashing some bugs throughout the code! As always, join us on Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit for daily updates on Depths of Erendorn - now let’s get into it!
3D Modelling
Our 3D modelling team has moved on to adding textures to the finialised Zentragal model. Taking inspiration from the colour pallet of the Black Widow spider the artists have started adding texture and shading our eight-legged friend! As this is a work in progress the textures and shading will go through some iterations before the artists finalise a design. Using this colour pallet the artists have started the process of giving this character model a sinister and mysterious vibe. Using purple colours on the skin gives the impression that this character has been consumed by the dark magic that surrounds their race's background. Exciting things to come as the team continues to finalise the textures and then send the model to the animators to get it ready for the game engine. Examples of the started textures can be seen below!
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Programming
Client
This week, the client-side team has spent their time fixing a number of Dungeon gameplay bugs as well as finishing the first implementation of movement in the DoE overworld. Here is a breakdown of some of the bugs and other bits of work completed by the client-side team.
- Updated character IKs to ignore weapon collisions.
- Fixed the end turn display only showing for the most recent player.
- Added character nameplates to overhead UI and added show on hover functionality when in a dungeon.
- Updated the team portrait UI to allow character summons to appear alongside their summoner.
- Implemented animated Charged Spiderling character.
- Added the ability to select a specific Set Piece from a dropdown to use in dungeon generation.
- Refactored the layout and how the Stat Panel displays character stats.
- Updated how the Movement Manager handles updating player coordinates during movements in World Sessions.
Server
A couple of fancy new features for the server this week. Firstly, the team has made a change to our Standard AI, which means if you deal over 1/4 of their max health in one turn they'll switch their target over to you since you're a greater threat. The second, far more time-consuming job completed this week has combined the separate types of servers into one main type. This new main type will then pick and choose the modules it wants to use, defined by what type of server it is in the config file. This will help bring down complexity when spinning up new servers automatically in the future, as well as make the project far easier to read through when it comes to bug fixing. Additionally, a fix was done to stop area of effect abilities guaranteeing critical strikes on all future targets should one of their targets crit. Here is some of the other work completed by the server-side team last week.
- Fixed a crash relating to AI Targeting changes.
- Added the ability for us to easily change how Elite NPCs stats scale as they get promoted.
- Implemented new NPC stat scaling.
- Cleaned up the logging functions around some server start and processes.
- Added the ability to 'Paint' XP onto areas of the zones in the world, this XP will determine the level of enemies groups that can spawn in this area. This can be set very precisely in specific areas and is flexible enough that we can raise or lower the XP amounts and range in any area giving us a lot of control.
Environment Art
The environment team has been experimenting and researching last week, working towards the best approach to create a destroyed effect for the castle walls that have been created over the last few weeks. The first method that was experimented with involves using physical bricks to build up the actual walls. This may be a time-consuming process but maybe more accurate overall. The second method involves creating a tileable texture using the bricks created in the first method and then splicing in physical bricks to create the destroyed areas of the wall. This may be a quicker method but could cause some complications later on with hitboxes and collisions of the walls. Examples of this experimentation can be seen below!
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Animation
It has been a busy week for the animation team as they continue with the Small Ogre enemy model. The team has worked on many of the animations that will be needed for the model once in the game. Animations that were completed last week for the Small Ogre monster model include two variations of walk cycles, a two-handed attack cycle, a death cycle, and a drink animation cycle. All of these animations have continued the theme of conveying the size and the strength that the creature will have. Once these animations were complete, the team have taken all the files and added them to the engine. Once in the engine, an animation blueprint was created that will ensure that animations can smoothly cycle between each other. Examples of all these animations can be seen below!
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The animation team has also been working with the Charged Spiderling enemy model last week. The team had been transferring animations from the existing Spider enemy and editing these to get the Spiderling walking and completing an idle cycle. These cycles have then been polished and added to the engine where a blueprint has also been created to ensure smooth transitions between animations. Examples of these animations can be seen below!
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of March yet?!
