This week, the Depths of Erendorn development team made significant progress across various areas of the game. The 3D modelling team worked on transferring hairstyles between different character races and genders, while also planning and beginning the creation of new hairstyles to enhance character customisation. The set piece design team completed the magic cauldron and began working on chandeliers, adding to the game's immersive environments. The client team focused on ensuring the new settlement could be correctly packaged, resolving issues with missing elements and packaging problems, and implementing notifications for dodges, blocks, and misses in the UI. The server team finalised new enemies with complex abilities and addressed issues with the queue process and nav data, improving server stability. Lastly, the sound team developed water loops and new environmental sounds, and reworked the Droval character with new abilities and audio enhancements. 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 focused on testing the process of transferring hairstyles between different character races and genders using the female base mesh. They also planned the next hairstyle and began its creation, although several initial ideas were scrapped. Despite this, previous saves can be loaded to demonstrate the progress and iterations. This work aims to enhance the versatility and customisation options for characters in Depths of Erendorn. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
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Set Piece Design
This week, the set piece design team completed the magic cauldron, featuring a cast iron texture to achieve a rustic aesthetic, complemented by a golden insignia to add detail and break up the surface texture. Additionally, the team began working on a set of chandeliers, contributing to the rich detail and immersive environments of Depths of Erendorn. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Programming
Client
This week, the client team focused on ensuring the new settlement could be correctly packaged, testing data layers, world partition, and dynamic water generation to verify they load properly in builds. This involved troubleshooting issues with missing foliage, landscape chunks, and rivers, alongside addressing packaging problems caused by prematurely switching to the experimental Substrate plugin. Despite setbacks, these issues were resolved, allowing the implementation of new features to resume next week. Additionally, the team finished implementing notifications for dodges, blocks, and misses in the overhead UI, resolving issues with extra symbols and engine crashes. They also tackled animation system bugs causing crashes in the latest build, fixing these by adjusting code and correcting animation category errors. Finally, the team addressed entity rotation issues during combat, ensuring smooth updates in the game.
Server
This week, the server team finalised the implementation of new enemies for the game, including complex abilities like chain lightning and delayed area of effect explosions. The team also spent time fixing issues with the queue process for server entry, addressing several cache-related problems. Although the queue functions properly now, the task of allowing players to skip the queue when recently assigned a session remains. Additionally, the team diverted attention to resolving nav data issues that led to multiple server crashes, which emerged following the remapping of the initial zone.
Sound Design
Last week, the sound team focused on creating water loops for the Rock Pool area, accompanied by various environment ambiances for testing. This effort led to the development of a wide range of new environmental sounds, including those for meadows, swamps, night and day cycles, and forests, which will be scattered throughout the game. Additionally, the team created the new Droval Javelin Toss ability and decided to rework the entire Droval character, adding new vocals for attacks, hit reactions, and death, as well as new footstep sounds. This comprehensive sound design aims to enhance the immersive audio experience in Depths of Erendorn. 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 May yet?!
