In this week's development log, the 3D modeling team focused on sculpting, refining protective gear for spellcasters with new shin guards and an additional cape. The set piece design team improved the caves with an extra layer and carefully placed stalactites. Sound effects for chest and cage openings were reworked and diversified with three variations. The animation team worked on the basic animation set for the Giant Ant and planned updates for current in game characters. Technical work included UI optimisation, debugging the nav system, and resolving server-related bugs. Progress and examples of the team's work can be seen below, showcasing the team's dedication to enhancing the immersive world of Erendorn. 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 3D modelling team team has continued their sculpting work, dedicating their time to refining and shaping various elements of the protective gear for the spellcasters of Erendorn. In particular, they focused on creating new shin guards to enhance the character's overall appearance and provide added protection. These shin guards were carefully crafted to align with the character's design and proportions, ensuring a seamless integration with the rest of the ensemble. Additionally, a cape was added to the armour, further enhancing their visual impact and adding a dynamic element to their silhouette. An example of the work completed throughout the week can be seen below.
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Set Piece Design
The set piece design team has been diligently working on improving the caves by adding an extra layer to enhance their visual appeal and introducing carefully placed stalactites throughout the caverns. While the current meshes and textures used for the stalactites may not accurately represent the composition of calcium formations found in real caves, the team acknowledges the need for future updates to ensure a more realistic portrayal. Their goal is to replace the existing meshes with more accurate representations and apply detailed textures that align with the scientific properties of calcium formations. However, for now, they have opted to use a single texture for all the cave elements to maintain a cohesive visual style and ensure seamless blending with the rest of the cave environment. The team understands the importance of continuity and visual harmony within the game world, and they are committed to refining these aspects in future iterations. An example of the work completed on the cave system can be seen below.
Programming
Client
This week has been about refactoring and updating how the Room Panel appears and functions as well as continuing with UI optimisation. Additionally, the team would spend time thoroughly debugging the new nav system, fixing data generation/calculation and fixing various bugs with data loss after saving/loading data. The debugging functions that handled displaying of the data also needed some improvements, the result though is the system is nearly ready to implement, the last remaining tasks before the data is usable is XP mapping tools so we can set XP values for the areas of the world and a multi-level pathfinder so we can use all the data as the existing one assumes a 2D plane when pathing. Additional work completed by the client side team can be found below.
- Created and built layout for new Room Panel.
- Updated Room Enemies and Event displays in Room Panel to show who players are going to fight and under what Room effects.
- Updated Ballot integration and new buttons for voting via the new Room Summary Panel.
- Updated newly modified equipment icon assets that remove item rarity borders from the images.
- Updated execution order for Room Panel to ensure the window is ready when a room is ready.
- Ability target tracking implemented into UI.
- Started on implementing new progression display for battle updates.
- Implemented new UI into vendor widgets.
- Added experimental initialisation to tutorial screen to allow context sensitive launches into specific pages.
- Started on altering inventory UI in line with new designs.
Server
This week, the server team has been looking at some of the subtler, more pervading bugs throughout the server that'd been left on the backburner as they haven't been quite as critical as others. To start with, it'd been noticed Weather code was causing freezes in the code for large chunks of time when a new weather was rolled. To fix this issue and add fault tolerance to future session commands like weather updates, a command timeout feature has been implemented to stop the server from being able to move onto other tasks if a command takes too long to execute.
There was one major server crashing bug that was fixed this week that was related to a portion of the code that was creating an object that replicated a copy of the entire server within it. This was causing the virtual machine to almost instantly run out of memory when a new adventure started under the right circumstances.
Some work was also put into cleaning up and improving the code that runs when an enemy tries to spawn at a location in the open world, either in or out of combat. The old code just gave up after trying the nearby convenient tiles, but we now have a more robust system that'll accurately get the best viable tile to spawn at if the original location is invalid. Finally, the caged NPC event's caged character was often getting stuck trying to leave their cage when the players opened the door, this was a result of a tiny numerical error in the pathfinding code, causing it to not always find a valid path to run.
Sound Design
During this week, the focus was primarily on refining the sound effects associated with opening chests and cages. Upon analysis, it was found that the animations for these actions were shorter in duration compared to the accompanying sound effects. To address this discrepancy, the sound effects were carefully reworked to align with the appropriate length, ensuring synchronisation between audio and visual elements. Moreover, to enhance the overall auditory experience and introduce more diversity to the soundscape, three variations of each effect were created. This allows for randomisation within the game engine, adding an element of unpredictability and richness to the overall sound design. Examples of the new audio created throughout the week can be seen below.
Animation
The animation team focused their efforts on developing the basic animation set for the formidable Giant Ant. Through meticulous work and attention to detail, they brought the creature to life, ensuring its movements and behaviors align with its intimidating nature. Additionally, the team dedicated time to planning and brainstorming animation updates and adjustments for the current in game characters. They aim to enhance the characters' poses and animations, infusing them with a sense of grandeur and power. Examples of the animations created throughout the week can be seen below!
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That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of May yet?!
