Highlights in this week’s game development update include new waterfalls that have been added to the environment, as well as new animation idles for some nightmarish Gargoyles. As always, join us on Twitter, Instagram, or Reddit for daily updates on Depths of Erendorn - now let’s get into it!
3D Modelling
After finishing off the sculpts for two new armour sets, our Character Artist spent last week retopologising and unwrapping everything. They’re currently finalising UV layouts by doing some test bakes and checking how well the high poly information bakes.
Environment Design
World Environment
A ton of improvements were made to the environment last week. For example, sky, lights, and atmospherics were upgraded all around the world, and a new day/night cycle system was added! Waterfalls were also implemented, thanks to the help of our VFX Artist, who spent some time creating a new water shader. Check out all the updates below!
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/waterfall9.mp4
Visual FX
In addition to working on waterfalls, our VFX Artist created smoke effects for the settlement. More specifically, they worked on the smoke getting pumped out of the Merchant Tent, a side effect of all the weapon-making going on in the blacksmith stall. This acts as a nice signaller of activity in the settlement - we particularly enjoyed the particle effects that were added!
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/VillageBlacksmithSmoke.mp4
Game Trailer
We have more updates on the development of our game trailer! Last week was all about:
- Polishing up some of our opening shots, like adding animated background characters to the settlement, including Bonelair Gargoyles, Drovals, Golems and Merchants
- Integrating finalised camera actions with characters and animations to bring life to the updated environments we're using
- Adding extras to the marketplace, such as traders, guards, and even some chickens!
Part of this work required our Animator to create new idles for the Gargoyles and Drovals, which you can check out below - we particularly love how hellish the Bonelair Gargoyles look with their new squatting idles!
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/Drovalgargidles-1.m4v
Programming
Golang Server
Last week, our Golang team got to the point where they could begin fine-tuning things to be exactly how they liked, rather than focussing on implementing entirely new features. This work involved a few optimisations and bug fixes:
- Items now take up half as much memory on the server once it’s spun up, and no longer need to pester the SQL item database once they're spun up
- After spin up, servers will now manually initiate a clean up, resulting in the memory saving ability we just mentioned
- Handlers for responses to the server are now created before the message to the server is sent, guaranteeing that no amount of lag will cause a response to be sent before the client is ready to accept them
- A couple of performance enhancements and bug fixes were made to the code that runs when a dungeon is complete
That’s it for this week’s devlog - see you next Tuesday!
