This week, the team at Depths of Erendorn made continued progress across multiple areas of development, enhancing both gameplay and visual elements. The set piece design team added a variety of assets, such as the fast travel stone, additional chandeliers, all while finalising a set of tankards, contributing to the game's rich environment. The client team focused on refining Level 2 Abilities, ensuring accurate functionality, triggering correct animations, VFX, and SFX, and displaying precise tooltip information. Stability and functionality were improved by the server team, who addressed server deadlocks, ability-related bugs, and crashes, ensuring a more seamless experience. The sound team developed new audio effects for various character abilities, aligning them with animations and VFX to enhance immersion. Meanwhile, the VFX team completed impactful visual effects for the Black Bear Slam ability. Each team's efforts have collectively pushed the game closer to a polished and immersive final product. Examples of the work completed by the teams can be seen below. 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!
Set Piece Design
This week, the set piece design team at Depths of Erendorn accomplished several key tasks. They completed the fast travel stone, a crucial asset for player navigation. Work also commenced on a wall decoration trophy, adding to the game's environmental details. Additionally, the team added two more chandeliers to enhance the interior aesthetics and finished a tankard set, contributing to the game's detailed and immersive environment. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Programming
Client
This week, the client team at Depths of Erendorn concentrated on refining all Level 2 Abilities. This involved meticulously reviewing all Level 2 Ability Blueprints in the Dry Test Level to ensure they function correctly, trigger the appropriate animations, VFX, and SFX, and display accurate tooltip information regarding costs, targeting types, and other requirements. Significant progress was made in polishing the levelling-up system and addressing bugs. The stat displays and persistent tooltips for the Level Up panel were finalised, tested, and optimised. Adjustments to the UI's inner workings were implemented to accommodate levels where players do not gain new abilities, previously a hindrance to levelling up. Additionally, the team resolved broken image references for several Level 2 ability icons and addressed bugs related to context menus discovered during testing. These efforts contribute to a smoother gameplay experience. Examples of additional work completed by the team can be seen below.
- Fixed an issue where target tiles were being saved incorrectly in Dry Templates.
- Fixed a number of Dry Templates with incorrect action nesting.
- Fixed a large portion of Level 2 Ability Template triggers and FX socketing.
- Added any missing Ability Templates.
- Applied cost information for Level 2 Ability tooltip data.
- Implemented a Cast Effect animation state for Knight and Dwarf.
- Fixed any incorrectly assigned Level 2 Ability animations.
Server
This week, the server team at Depths of Erendorn addressed several critical issues to enhance the stability and functionality of the game. Unique situations, such as crashing during the loading screen or abruptly quitting the game after leaving on an adventure, were identified as causes of server deadlocks, trapping characters in an endless adventure state. These niche issues were successfully resolved. Additionally, the team fixed bugs related to abilities that forcibly move entities, ensuring the code correctly determines if an entity can fit at its destination. A significant crash caused by ending an adventure and the client creating a second connection to the same server was also addressed. Last week's efforts were concentrated on fixing server crashes at the start and end of adventures and preventing players from being locked out of future sessions upon failure. The resolution of these issues, along with several small related fixes, has restored stability to the server code. The server coordinator received minor adjustments to further enhance performance, which can be seen below.
- Fixed getting locked out of future adventures if no zone servers are available on trying to adventure.
- Fixed unsubscribing from cache updates on the server coordinator.
- Refactored Cache storage functions.
- Reduced Queue cycle times.
- Debugged some suspicious GrantProgression logs.
- Refactored Cache storage of adventures related to the ending of player adventures.
- Refactored how entities are transferred between servers.
- Commands are now rejected if sent from a client that has been sent to another server.
- New connections to previous servers from players who used to be assigned to them is now handled much better.
- Fixed Duplicate logs for chest spawning in two events.
- Server population monitoring code adjusted.
Sound Design
This week, the sound team at Depths of Erendorn focused on developing new character abilities, with several requiring minor adjustments to align with new animations and VFX. The team created the main audio sources and layers for a variety of abilities, including the Rockbark's roots ability, the Venomspitter Frog's ranged venom spit, the Black Bear's slam, the Coldweave Spider's ice web blast, the Flare Beetle's chitinous flare, and the Sonic Strikers' deafening screech. These new sound effects are designed to enhance the experience by providing distinct and impactful audio cues for each ability. Examples of the teams efforts can be seen below.
Animation
This week, the animation team at Depths of Erendorn continued updating the Alpha enemies, focusing specifically on the Icacian Necromancer. To provide this character with a more unique look and feel, the team decided to create and edit new animations rather than using the existing Revenant animation set. These efforts aim to distinguish the Icacian Necromancer with bespoke animations that enhance its individuality and contribute to a richer gameplay experience. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Visual Effects
This week, the VFX team at Depths of Erendorn completed the visual effects for the Black Bear Slam ability. This included creating an effect for the charge-up phase, which loops infinitely to maintain the "charged up" state until the bear's next turn, and another effect for the slam itself. These effects enhance the visual impact of the ability, making the Black Bear's powerful attack more visually impressive. 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 June yet?!
