As the start of the month burns past, the team are surging towards the latest build of Depths of Erendorn! Starting with the 3D modelling team who are finalising the sculpting for the Human Knight's armour we saw over the last few weeks. Additionally, the wizards of coding have been implementing a new movement system within the open world and fixing bugs occurring when players join dungeons. During this time, the sound team have been working on the soundscape for the stony caves. Also, the environment team have been updating some aspects in the initial area and starting some new castle ruins. Finally, the animation team has been creating some more animations for looting. 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
Throughout the start of February, the team would apply new details to the Human Knight armour. As the protective gear is coming to the end of the sculpting phase, the team have been continuing the refinement and final details. With these new refinements, the team have conveyed the intricate nature of the opulent armour. The biggest changes to the armour, apart from the smoothing across the entire piece, came to the helmet and shoulders. Both of the areas have been given new details in the form of long swooshing plates that form into wings. Taking inspiration from mythology, the team have added avian details to give the impression the character is moving swiftly. Refinement will continue on the armour throughout the coming weeks, with the team looking to texture the armour once completed. Examples of the progress made on the protective gear throughout the start of the month can be seen below.
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Programming
Client
This week was focused on bugs relating to joining Dungeons, reroll ballots and implementing new methods for dealing with connection speed differences in the Client. Additionally, the team worked on sound implementation and refactoring the visual component of some core gameplay milestones. Additional work completed by the client-side team can be seen below.
- Updated how sounds are triggered on the Audio Manager to keep gameplay sounds using their intended volume settings.
- Interactable sounds now play 3D sounds at their location and adhere to the player's SFX volume setting.
- Added Turn Start and Turn Ended sound triggers for the currently focused combat.
- Added Entering Combat, Victory and Defeat sound triggers.
- Added an animated screen message for Entering Combat, Victory and Defeat.
- Cleaned up and added settings for determining when to play screen messages trigger sounds based on combat focus.
- Updated how the reroll ballot and room detail panel are dealt with during Dungeon setup. Ballots now correctly show votes and outcomes even if they occurred before the player was connected.
- Added the ability for Dungeons to step through the actions taken before a player joins, ensuring the game's state is identical for all connected.
- Players now automatically re-join their adventures if disconnected.
- Added Loot and Eat animation logic to character Animation Blueprints.
- Fixed party member's icons greying out when a user disconnects.
- Adventure summary window now correctly identifies players and displays their gains. Further testing is needed for groups and large loot pools but for solo adventures, it is now working.
- Some further fixes to the character select and creation screens to remove some visual bugs and remove renders for deleted characters.
- Added sound cues into the inventory screen for equipping items of different types and buying/selling interactions in the vendor window.
- Fixed an issue where items sold or deleted would return to the player's inventory until logging in again.
- Fixed several visual bugs in the vendor to correctly update the player's inventory when buying and selling new items.
- Fixed being unable to sell items after making a transaction.
- Corrected the transaction price display to show the correct amount when selling.
Server
The server team this week has been working on mid-combat spawning in the open world. While this works already in dungeons, the way combat works in open worlds have required a lot of combing through and smoothing out existing code. Many bugfixes were done to allow Spiderlings and the new Graveyard Zombie event to spawn in the open world, and for entities spawned to persist after the combat and become part of the regular adventure server. Additionally, event generation in some of the more cramped spaces in open worlds has been fixed to fit correctly without spawning inside each other (or even inside other events!) or crashing the server. Finally, the Rangers event had a crash fixed which was caused by the event objective failing to spawn. Additional work from the server-side team can be seen below.
- Open world combats defaulting to 0,0, off in the middle of the ocean, when a tile can't be found.
- Fixing crashes caused by combats and events attempting to spawn in very cramped areas with not enough room to allow them.
- Fixing Pathfinding failing in certain circumstances with tiles that were occupied at one point, but aren't any more.
- Abilities and ability charges are correctly reset when ending an adventure, ready for the next one.
- Curious saplings and mana drain will no longer crash the server if the afflicted enemy dies while the abilities' effects are triggering, and correctly reward the caster with health/mana as appropriate.
- Worked on implementing the new movement code.
- Improved feedback to the client on error responses to the client during character creation.
- Fixed a crash with 1 length movement path.
- Started a new movement handling code in the client.
- Adjusted the log parsing for movements to reflect the new changes.
- Fixed crashes relating to ending and starting adventures.
- Debugged mutex locking issues.
- Moved the existing dev server code to the 'stable' branch to allow the current build to still be used as we develop the next build.
- Improved logging on movement commands and ticking.
- Added some logs to the creation of adventures to improve debugging.
- Fixed an issue with paths including the first step.
- Fixed many issues in the new movement code.
- Improved client handling of the new movement.
- Fixed vector calculations in various places.
- Added a state change log when the berry bush event is activated.
- Implemented and fixed movement interrupting allowing you to change path mid-movement when in the open.
Sound Design
The sound team would spent their time working on the ambient audio used within caves. After some tweaking, the team have got the ambience to a consistent level that they are happy with. This has been done as the team encountered some issues with the dynamic system that was initially put in place. Now, as players adventure into the depths, an ominous soundscape will accompany them. Giving an eerie and empty atmosphere to the expansive cave system. The team would go on to test this audio to make sure it triggers when needed. While testing this audio, the team would also fix some bugs that occurred when other sounds were within the engine. Examples of the audio implemented into the caves can be experienced in the video below.
Environment Art
The environment team would start the month working on a couple more improvements to the initial area. Starting with some extra details to the road network we saw at the end of last month, the team has added tracks made by wagons as they pass through. Adding a small detail such as this helps bring the world to life, conveying the world as a living and moving entity. With the possible addition of moving wagons in the future this will be an important addition for added realism within the world. Additionally, the team would work on improving visibility during the night and in poor weather. Now, even the most severe snow storms within the engine won't hamper adventurers who still wanted to explore. Examples of the updated tracks and increased visibility during weather effects can be seen below.
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Finally, towards the end of the week, the team would work on an update to the castle ruins. Taking inspiration from gothic architecture, the team has set out to create more modular building blocks that can be used within the ruins. The team start the process by creating completed walls and arches and then breaking them down to give them the decrepit feel of times gone by. The team will be able to customise the level of damage the walls have taken throughout the next stage in the process. In building the walls of this mighty structure, the team has used a scale model of the player, allowing them to gain a perspective of how the ruined walls will appear to adventurers. The team will continue to work on the new set of ruins throughout the coming weeks. Examples of the initial block out can be seen below.
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Animation
The animation team has continued to work on some animations that will be used to gather and loot throughout the last couple of weeks. A range of animations has been created for different scenarios that the player may find themselves in. These animations will add a layer of depth to the gameplay as not all lootable locations are in the same region concerning the player. The team would go on to create a controller that will blend these animations depending on the location of the loot they are acquiring. Finally, the team would apply these animations to each of the playable characters and make some tweaks depending on each body type. Examples of the looting animations can be seen below.
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That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of January yet?!
