It has been a busy week for development on Depths of Erendorn! The 3D modelling team have been adding some flair to the latest armour for the Human Knight. During this time, the wizards of coding have been working on the character creation screen and adding new functionality to the dialogue system. Additionally, the sound team has been working on audio for the user interface. Finally, both the environment team and the VFX team completed work for the corrupted ground event! 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 team has continued their work sculpting the new armour set for the Human Knight. With the main body of the armour completed the team have started adding some flair to the armour. New plates have been added to the shoulders of the model to give the Knight a bigger and more dominating silhouette. Additional details have also been added to the wrist guards and boots of the model, giving a more ornate feeling to the armour. A lip of metal has also been added to a few different plates on the amour that will act as re-enforcement for the large plates of sheet metal. Along with the strength aspect, this lip will stop incoming swords from hitting vital parts of the Knight. An example of the progress of the new armour can be seen below.
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Programming
Client
This week has been focused on continuing the Character Creation menu upgrades and fixing bugs relating to last week's changes to character loading. Additional work completed by the client-side team can be seen below.
- Updated all pages of the Character Creation layout to match designs.
- Added Class description and feature fields and text.
- Added the concept of Innate Class Resources and Abilities to allow Stats such as Mana or Zeal to be previewed in the Class Description page alongside Abilities.
- Updated Creation page navigation and validation, allowing players to look through class options before committing to a loadout.
- Updated animations to make use of new assets.
- Implemented the ability to edit the navigation data to remove inaccessible areas.
- Updated zone mapping tools.
- The audio manager dungeon music is fixed.
- Audio manager combat music improved.
- Audio manager music transition improved.
- Updated functions relating to player disconnects to try to avoid referencing destroyed objects.
- Created a new widget for inserting backgrounds into various menu screens.
- Made a prospective fix to inventory visual updates so that new items are now displayed ahead of any empty slots.
Server
This week the server team has been hard at work adding some new functionality to dialogue. Beforehand, the dialogue would be a set 'tree' of options, all branching from the first thing the NPC says to you when you choose to speak to them. Now the server can choose random introduction messages from a list of valid ones to give some variation when talking to NPCs, as well as options on how it selects which message to send. This required a good chunk of refactoring of our existing dialogues, and we took the opportunity to brush up what is said by these NPCs to something a little more salient, rather than the placeholder text we had in before. Additional work completed by the server-side team can be seen below.
- Initiating combat from a location that cannot be converted to a combat tile should no longer crash the server.
- ZoneID is fixed for dungeon sessions.
- Improved debugging lines for some functions.
- Updated map data.
- Created a Lockable map struct for later implementation.
Sound Design
The sound team have been working on the user interface sounds throughout the week. When navigating any menu within a digital space, haptic feedback is used to display to the user that a button has been pressed. When it comes to the complex workings of video games, a lot more sounds will be needed due to the sheer amount of different menus that players may need to navigate. Regarding Depths of Erendorn, the team has started to work on audio that will be used within the main menus and vendor shops. All the sounds created will give this vital feedback to players as they press buttons within these menus. Along with the menu audio, the team have created some tracks that will be used within the background of character selection. Although only subtle, the audio will do a lot to break up the silence of the menu screen, keeping players engaged. All the audio created throughout the week can be heard below.
Environment Art
The environment team have continued to work on the corrupted ground event they were working on last week. Focusing on the tree of the area, the team started by creating a new material that will change the colour and appearance of the leaves. As the corruption grips the landscape, the team wants to give the impression that it isn't just the ground that will be affected but the surrounding fauna also. With this new leaf material, the team has opened up the possibility for changes to the fauna depending on the surrounding area, this will possibly be a useful feature in the future. The team moved on to applying the material to the trees of the corrupted area, creating a visible difference in the tree line. Examples of the material in development and the work-in-progress corrupted area can be seen below.
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Visual Effects
With the corrupted area event starting to take shape in the landscape, the VFX team have set to work on concepting some visual effects that will accompany it. Starting with some 2D art, the team worked with similar colours that have already been placed within the landscape. Drawing up a couple of different ideas that range from smoking tendrils to toxic ooze dripping down from above. Using these ideas, the team would also start work on the 3D visual effects that could be used. The team worked on a couple of different work-in-progress corrupted visuals which they will narrow down to a polished version throughout the coming weeks. Once this is done the team will look to implement the visuals into the engine, ready for gameplay. Examples of 2D concepts and work-in-progress visual effects can be seen below.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of November yet?!
