It has been a productive week for our developers! More progress has been made on the new armour for the Human Knight. During this time, the wizards of coding have been adding audio triggers to the world and creating new code for adventures. Additionally, the audio has been implemented along the coastlines of Erendorn. Away from the shore, a new corrupted area has sprung up as the environment team does some testing for a world event. Finally, the animation team has continued making updates for some combat movement cycles. 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 Human Knight's new armour is the focus of the 3D modelling team again. Throughout the week, additional plates have been added to the protective gear, giving the armour a much more bulky look. The biggest plates have been applied to the shoulders and the hips of the model, granting the Knight extra protection to the moving joints. The plates have been designed so the character still has a decent range of movement whilst being protected from attackers. The team will continue to work on the armour throughout the coming weeks, adding extra detail and finalising the design. An example of the work-in-progress armour can be seen below.
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Programming
Client
This week has seen updates to character loading, environment audio triggers and combat focus switching as well as a long overdue upgrade to the Character Creation menu. Additional work from the client side team can be seen below.
- The Entity Pool now has settings for when to destroy and when to pool unused character models so they can be reused or reloaded fresh when needed.
- Updated collision settings for Audio Triggers to ensure the Camera's location is what determines audio trigger interaction in the world of Erendorn.
- Combat focus changes (selecting different characters in, out or in differing Combats) are now listenable for any class that requires it.
- Updated the AudioManager's Combat Focus Change function to switch between Adventure and Combat music.
- Began updating the Character Creation widget and function according to the new design.
- Set up means of visually showing when a player has disconnected whilst in a party. Working in principal but as yet has been blocked by crashes when testing in the correct context.
- Fixed the erroneous message telling a player their invitation has expired after joining a new party.
- The fix for party widget falsely displaying a group of placeholder images on joining the game has been finalised.
- Implemented spawned asset clean up after a session ends.
- Regenerated Nav data to stop enemies spawning in the water.
- Started the function to remove inaccessible Nodes from the world data to stop enemies from spawning in places they cannot be reached.
Server
This week the server team has continued working on Adventuring with many event, combat location, and joining mid-combat bugs fixed. In the latter half of the week, the team has now turned its attention to the connection to adventures themselves, writing the code for multiple different kinds of disconnect scenarios, including logging back on and choosing to join your friends again, or logging back on but choosing a different character, including different kinds of disconnection based on a dropped connection vs manually quitting the game. Additional work from the server side team can be seen below.
- Fixed a crash related to a player being removed from a party.
- Added adventure reconnection code.
- Starting combat now strips unreachable tiles from the map.
- Starting combat now moved enemies if players are unable to reach them.
Sound Design
The sound team has continued their work on the sound zones used within Erendorn. Throughout the last week, the team has focused on the expansive coastline of the initial area. Spacial audio will be vital in these areas as many of the coastlines in our world have very distinct sounds to them. The team has added audio for the waves and the distant ocean to the world using splines. With these added players will now hear these sounds as they explore the coastline, grounding our world with reality. Along with these new audio zones, the team has worked on adding a fade to the transition from one to the next. Giving a much more fluid audio space for the player to move through. Examples of the audio zones within the engine, along with a video of the new ocean audio can be seen below.
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Environment Art
The environment team have been working on a new world event that will change the very ground the adventures walk on. To start, a new material was created that will be used on the landscape, changing its colour and texture. Giving the ground a purple colour with tendrils that are expanding outward conveys that the corrupted ground is growing from its source. The team would lay this new material into the world using the same projection process we saw last week. Additionally, the team would go on to add trees that have been stripped of their leaves and branches to further illustrate the effects corruption has on the world around it. Finally, once all these components had been added to the landscape a fog was also added to surround the area in a type of mystery any adventurer would find difficult to ignore. Examples of the material being created and the finalised effect can be seen below.
Animation
The animation team has continued their work updating and improving some of the animations for the Human Knight. Like some of the other animations we have seen updated throughout the last few weeks, the team has taken the time to add more realism and gravity to the movement cycles. Throughout the week, the team has focused on the Giant Strike ability; which will depict the Knight jumping into the air and bringing their sword down with all their might. The big changes from the old animation can be seen in the landing of the character. Before, the team made the sword swing past the Knight leaving it in a precarious position for the next movement cycles to transition into. Now, the swing comes down with more force and can be seen making an impact on the ground. This goes a long way to show that the energy of the swing is not lost by the sword moving past the character but channelled through them. The team will continue to improve and update animations throughout the coming week, with examples of the latest Human Knight movement cycle that can be seen below.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of November yet?!
