This week, the team at Depths of Erendorn made significant advancements across multiple areas of development, refining key gameplay systems, enhancing visual fidelity, and resolving critical technical challenges. The 3D Modelling team focused on completing and refining the snake creatures, introducing intricate scale details and high-quality textures to bring them to life. The Set Piece Design team expanded landscape painting materials, improved fast travel site stones, and optimised assets to create a more diverse and immersive world. The Client and Server teams tackled core gameplay issues, with major breakthroughs in dungeon generation stability, UI improvements, and bug fixes to ensure a seamless player experience. The Sound team expanded the game’s audio landscape with a collection of ambient and foley recordings captured from a snowstorm, providing versatile assets for magic and environmental effects.
Meanwhile, the Animation team completed updates to the Skeleton and Zombie characters, integrating refined animations, materials, and new details for greater visual authenticity. Lastly, the VFX team continued experimenting with FluidNinja, developing simulation fields and materials to push the boundaries of environmental and spell effects. These combined efforts further enhance the depth, realism, and fluidity of Depths of Erendorn, as the game continues to evolve into a fully immersive RPG experience. 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 the snake creatures, focusing on refining their textures and intricate scale details. The team developed a detailed and realistic scale pattern to enhance the visual authenticity of these creatures, ensuring they blend seamlessly into the game's immersive world. Three of the snakes were fully textured, bringing them to life with carefully crafted materials that highlight their unique characteristics and natural aesthetic. These updates contribute to the growing bestiary of Erendorn, adding another layer of depth and variety to the game's diverse wildlife.
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Set Piece Design
This week, the Set Piece Design team at Depths of Erendorn focused on enhancing landscape variety and asset optimisation to create a richer, more immersive world. Additional materials were introduced to expand the range of options available for landscape painting, allowing for greater artistic flexibility. To break up visual uniformity and create a more natural terrain, random landscape material variations were implemented, ensuring a more organic and dynamic appearance. Further improvements were made by incorporating optimised Megascans assets, providing a wider selection of high-quality, efficient environmental elements for world-building. Additionally, work continued on refining the fast travel site stones, enhancing their level of detail to better align with the high-quality photogrammetry of Megascans assets. These refinements contribute to a more visually diverse and polished environment, further enriching the world of Erendorn. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Programming
Client
This week, the Client team at Depths of Erendorn focused on bug hunting and refining core systems in preparation for the next stages of development. A primary focus was identifying and resolving issues related to duplicate audio cues, ensuring that sound effects play accurately without unintended overlaps. Additionally, significant attention was given to fixing problems with the team panel, which had been intermittently disappearing and failing to update correctly. These fixes contribute to a smoother and more polished gameplay experience, reinforcing the stability and responsiveness of the game’s interface and core functionality. As development progresses, these refinements will help create a more immersive and seamless player experience.
Server
This week, the Server team at Depths of Erendorn achieved a major breakthrough in resolving an issue that had been causing rogue dungeon tiles to disappear from the combat area. This complex fix involved intricate adjustments to the underlying code, ensuring greater stability and reliability in dungeon generation. With this issue resolved, attention shifted towards refining the procedural generation process by fine-tuning the variables of the Cellular Automata system, enhancing the layout of rooms to create more engaging and dynamic combat environments. Additionally, improvements were made to the client-side dungeon creation code, requiring significant rewrites to wall placement, asset integration, and spline generation to align with the new coordinate system. A new tile type was introduced to differentiate between internal and external walls, improving structural integrity and visual clarity. Further enhancements were implemented through additional validation checks and debug features in the combat viewer, streamlining the process of identifying and addressing any remaining inconsistencies. These refinements contribute to a more immersive and seamless dungeon experience for players, ensuring that each combat encounter feels natural and strategically engaging.
Sound Design
This week, the Sound team at Depths of Erendorn expanded the game's audio library with a series of ambient and foley recordings captured during a snowstorm. Additional sessions focused on recording the sounds of ice and snow being broken, crushed, and stepped on, providing versatile assets for various in-game effects. These recordings will be invaluable for general foley work, including footsteps and environmental ambience, as well as enhancing combat and magic effects. The distinct textures of ice and rock lend themselves well to reinforcing powerful hits, ground impacts, and spell effects, particularly for earth and ice-based abilities. Two quick samples have also been created to showcase how ice sounds can be transformed into unique and dynamic audio elements. These additions will contribute to a richer and more immersive soundscape within the world of Erendorn.
Animation
This week, the Animation team at Depths of Erendorn finalised updates to the Skeleton and Zombie characters, ensuring their animations, skeletal meshes, materials, and character blueprints were fully integrated and optimised. Additional details were introduced to enhance their visual identity, including a quiver and arrows for the ranger variant and an aged sword for melee combatants. Weapon positions were also adjusted to improve alignment and immersion during animations. These refinements contribute to a more polished and authentic feel for these undead creatures, ensuring they seamlessly fit into the evolving world of Erendorn.
Visual Effects
This week, the VFX team at Depths of Erendorn focused on experimenting with FluidNinja to develop a deeper understanding of its complex systems for future visual effects implementation. The team created several simulation fields and accompanying materials, laying the groundwork for dynamic and visually engaging effects. While working through the intricacies of the tool, progress was made in crafting fluid simulations that will enhance the overall atmosphere and spell effects within the game. These initial tests mark an important step towards leveraging FluidNinja for more advanced and optimised visual effects in Depths of Erendorn.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of January yet?!
