A busy week of development as the 3D modelling team continued the work on the Druid armour, while the Set Piece team worked on more city props. Meanwhile, The programming team has been working behind the scenes to bring optimisation to the initial settlement. Additionally, the environment team shows some stunning visuals of the castle's ruins within the engine as the Rhino gets some attention from the animators. Finally, the VFX team have been working on some in-game visual effects to indicate events! 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
The 3D modelling team have nearly completed the sculpt for the Druid's tier 1 armour through the last week. Iterations could still be made, as the design is finalised but for the time being, the team has moved on to retopologising the model so it is more efficient for the game engine. Over the coming weeks, the team will start to texture the armour using nature-related colours such as greens and browns, fortifying the lore behind the Druid. The team will also work on some other tiers of armour for the Druid, showing a clear distinction between each one that will correlate with the power the Druid wearing it possesses. Examples of the tier 1 armour can be seen below!
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Set Piece Design
After a little hiatus, the set design team have continued their work on new props for the cities of Erendorn. Taking the time to create models for a chest and wall hanging, the team have continued the theme of brutal and sharp items for the city's underworlds. Along with this, the team has worked on cleaning up many models and UV maps currently in the engine. In taking the time to do this, the team will ensure that models in the engine are as efficient as possible. The team will go on to texture these assets in the game engine, ready for gameplay. Examples of the new assets can be seen below.
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Programming
Client
This week has been focused on continuing the branching setup and execution of Combat Managers and Core Widgets during World Combat, with consideration for situations where multiple Combats are occurring in a single Session. In addition to this, the function of several Combat Action Steps - the building blocks that comprise any action that can happen during combat, have been updated to function correctly across both World and Dungeon Combats. More work completed by the client-side team can be seen below.
- Finished the blanket updating of relevant Session or Combat referencing across all instances in all Blueprint classes.
- Refactored multiple C++ and Blueprint classes to make improve Combat Manager referencing cutting down on less reliable methods intended for Dungeon Combat.
- Fixed any issues that arose in Dungeons as a result of the Manager, Core Widget and Action Step changes.
- Continued updating existing menus to function with core widget changes.
- Settings, inventory and lobby browser all now work with less obstructive buttons.
- Set up delegate usage for UI windows to handle closing multiple windows correctly.
- Updated the visuals of the login screen.
- Started mocking up dialogue windows.
Server
This week, the server team's been busy shoring up a lot of backend stuff that, while the client will never see any of it, allows things to run far more efficiently and smoothly behind the scenes. Additionally, a new Effect Block has been created, the awfully named 'AddToCounterOnOtherActiveEffect'. This allows abilities or active effects to change the values stored on other Active Effects. Useful if you want to have two abilities interact with each other! For example, the Zeal Master ability can now correctly tell the Zeal Active Effect to pause your loss of Zeal at the beginning of turn. Additional work completed by the server-side team can be seen below.
- Joining a Dungeon or an Adventure will cause you to correctly leave the Settlement server, as you're no longer in the settlement, freeing up memory for other players.
- Fixed how stat multiplications are logged and calculated.
- Fixed Entities correctly being removed from the combat/game, rather than portions of their information lingering behind.
- Fixed temporary stat changes not being logged and sent to the client accurately, even if the logic was working correctly server side.
- Fixed a bug with the ActvityLog that was stopping adventures from starting.
- Fixed a crash if combat started in the open world when an enemy was not able to be put onto a combat tile.
- Added navigation edits to the client which will allow us to have the clients navigation data change and update based on their individual sessions.
- Updated the client Pathfinder.
- Refactored the WorldGridNode system to include the ability to react to navigation edits.
Environment Art
The environment team have been busy in the engine throughout the week, implementing the Castle Ruins to the initial area of Erendorn. Using the modular that has been created over the last month, the team started to build up the ruins. The modular kit gives the team a wide range of structures they could build. Over the coming weeks, they will iterate until the perfect building comes together. Once the ruins had been implemented into the engine, the team took the time to gather some stunning visuals to show off how the ruins will adorn the landscape. This will give players a brilliant point of interest they will be able to explore in the initial area of the Erendorn. Examples of the Castle Ruins implemented into the landscape can be seen below.
Animation
The team also took the time to update the rig and animation for the armoured Zentragal model. Other than some mild tweaks, the process to get animations onto this updated mesh should be painless. Issues may arise with the model colliding through the newly implemented armour, the team will attempt to amend this through animation. If not, the 3D modelling team will make changes to the mesh where necessary. Throughout the next week, the team will add animations to all tiers of armour and implement them into the engine.
The team have also continued working on the Rhino enemy, finalising the animations needed to complete the beast's gameplay loop. The final movement cycles completed were an attack, damage taken and death. The team have continued using these animations to convey the strength and weight the Rhino holds. These animations, along with the ones completed last week, will all be imported into the engine, ready for gameplay!
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Visual Effects
The VFX team have taken some time away to work on some visual effects for the world. The team have their work cut out for them as a variety of visual effects will be needed for world-building. Taking skills and techniques learnt through creating many different abilities, the team have started work on the VFX for events that will be seen within the world of Erendorn. Due to the random nature of events, eye-catching visual effects will be a must to ensure players are aware they are interactable. Examples of these eye-catching effects can be seen below.
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Along with the visual effects for the events, the team have started the framework for screen effects that will give players visual feedback. VFX on the screen are a fantastic way to show players what their character may be afflicted with. These effects would need to be used lightly as they can be overwhelming to the player, but they are good feedback within gameplay. These effects will be applied to the camera that will follow the player's character through the dungeons and over-world.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of July yet?! It is also in video form here!
