This past week at Depths of Erendorn has been marked by substantial progress across multiple areas of development, with each team contributing significantly to enhancing the overall player experience. The 3D modelling team has made strides in character customisation, nearing the completion of a new hairstyle that adds to the diverse array of personalisation options available to players. The client team has focused on refining the map interface, ensuring that navigation is both intuitive and responsive through improved scrolling, zooming, and input handling functions. Meanwhile, the server team has been busy with balance adjustments and infrastructure improvements, aimed at providing a more stable and dynamic gameplay environment. On the audio front, the sound team has updated key vocal and sound elements, aligning them more closely with new visual effects to create a cohesive in-game atmosphere. Finally, the animation team has expanded the game’s combat repertoire with a new set of animations for the magic sword, ensuring that the visual and functional aspects of combat are as polished and engaging as possible. 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 made significant progress on a new hairstyle, with the finishing touches now focused on completing the ponytail. To enhance the realism of the style, additional strands have been incorporated, giving the hair a slightly messier and more natural appearance. Once the ponytail is finalised, this will add yet another option to the growing roster of customisation choices available for characters in Erendorn, allowing players even more freedom in personalising their in-game avatars. An example of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Set Piece Design
This week, the Set Piece Design team at Depths of Erendorn focused on expanding the visual variety within the game’s environments. They completed a small set of leafless, gnarly-looking trees, adding a touch of eerie atmosphere to the game’s landscapes. Additionally, they began work on a new set of Viking-style tents, which will contribute to the authentic and immersive feel of the settlements within Erendorn. An example of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Programming
Client
This week, the client team at Depths of Erendorn focused on implementing the core functions of the Map Subwidget, which will be utilised by both the Fast Travel and Player Map Panels. Key developments included enabling two-dimensional scrolling, achieving accurate zoom and pan scaling, and adding selective input blocking options that can be used by all UI panels. These enhancements aim to provide a smoother and more intuitive user experience, ensuring that navigation and interaction with the in-game map are both seamless and responsive. These improvements are crucial for creating a polished and user-friendly interface that enhances overall gameplay. Examples of additional work completed by the team can be seen below.
- Party members are now shown on the Map Panel and update correctly when joining/leaving.
- Modified scrollbox widgets in order to allow two-dimensional scrolling.
- Added the ability to selectively block inputs while UI panels are open.
- Improved the zoom function and added scroll scaling to match.
- Improved the ability to focus on markers on the map.
- Added the ability to select and move the camera to party members from the map panel.
- Created functions for future implementation of pings, objectives and custom markers.
Server
This week, the server team at Depths of Erendorn undertook a significant series of balance changes and minor reworks to various player abilities, aiming to broaden the range of viable character builds and enhance gameplay diversity. Alongside these adjustments, the team finalised the re-mapping of the game’s navigation data, addressing remaining gaps before passing the task to another programming team member for final refinements. Last week’s efforts were focused on diagnosing and fixing critical issues, including a crash related to faulty navigation data, which prompted the addition of more detailed logging to assist in troubleshooting. The team also enhanced the logging for the login server to better diagnose an issue where some logins were incorrectly treated as 'website' logins instead of game client logins. Additionally, the Adaptation ability was fixed to ensure all adaptation abilities are granted upon level-up, resolving a bug that previously limited players to only one. A further bug that prevented equipped items from being correctly loaded into player inventories was also rectified, ensuring that players now start with the appropriate weapon for their character class. Finally, the server coordinators' cache service was refactored to better handle the segmentation of cache usage across different server clusters, improving session recovery for players who disconnect and re-login. These updates mark important strides towards optimising the game's server stability and functionality.
Sound Design
Last week, the sound team at Depths of Erendorn focused on implementing new audio elements and refining existing ones to enhance the game's immersive experience. The vocals for the Black Bear and Revenant were updated, along with their footsteps, though further checks will be conducted to ensure the steps align perfectly with the animation timings. Additionally, sound cues and attenuations were updated, and a thorough clean-up of old files in the engine was carried out, involving the deletion, renaming, and reorganisation of assets. The team also re-edited several recently created abilities to better match the new VFX, with the creation of the Gathering Storm effect being a particular highlight. These efforts are crucial in delivering a cohesive and immersive audio-visual experience for players. Examples of the work completed by the team throughout the last week can be seen in the video below.
Animation
Last week, the animation team at Depths of Erendorn focused on refining player mechanics and expanding the game's combat animations. Key accomplishments included the creation of a new animation set for the magic sword, covering the entire lifecycle of the weapon—from spawning and emerging to submerging, idling, and executing attacks. Additionally, two distinct sword skins were introduced, with the system designed to accommodate further customisation options. These animations were then imported into the engine, where the team created corresponding animation blends and blueprints, ensuring smooth integration and functionality within the game. These updates are vital for enhancing the visual fluidity and dynamism of combat encounters in Depths of Erendorn. An examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
That’s it for this week's devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of July yet
