It has been a busy week for the team! The 3D modelling team has been finalising the UV maps for the Human Knight's armour. During this time, the set piece design team continued their work on the materials within the initial area of Erendorn. Additionally, the wizards of coding have been tackling some tricky bugs within both the server and the client! Furthermore, the sound team have been revisiting and creating new audio for the Corrupted Ground event and Wisps. Finally, the animation team has been improving movement for cloth physics and the Watertarg. 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 UV mapping for the brand new Human Knight's armour has been finalised. Throughout this process, the team has projected the 3D mesh onto a 2D plane giving the engine a reference point that will be used to project the textures back onto the low-poly model. This utilises a similar process that will translate the high details from the sculpted armour to the low-poly model. The team is well-versed in this process so the new armour will have a polished feel in no time! Examples of the protective gear's low poly model with baked height maps and the UV maps ready for texturing are below.
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Set Piece Design
The set piece design team has been continuing their work with the textures within the initial area. The big focus throughout the week saw the team fixing some decals that weren't showing up within the game. The team would work on a few different decal issues within the intial settlement of Erendorn, with marketplace signs being updated to show the shop's icon and the bolts which were previously missing. The team would also fix some decals that have been affected by the wind effect. Mainly the bunting, which can be found in the decoration of the marketplace, was being affected so much that the fabric would move away from the line it was attached to. Finally, the team would alter some light sources that were too bright. Bringing a more polished feel to the initial settlement of Erendorn. Examples of the updated decals and items affected by the updated light sources can be seen below.
Programming
Client
This week has been about fixing some display bugs in adventures as well as adding some tools to help us tackle some harder-to-catch bugs. Additional work from the client-side team can be seen below.
- Updated how Overhead UI is applied to Entities in the World to ensure duplicates aren't appearing in adventures.
- Improved rotation debugging and added a Dev tool and console command for displaying the 'Actual' rotation of a character in the world to better track when the Client might desync from the Server.
- Fixed missing cases where UI relevancy would not update when the camera had moved.
- Fixed server time offset calculation.
- Implemented server time offset into movement code.
- Improved movement handling.
- Fixed parse failure of interrupted movement logs.
- Added missing log event classes.
- Added graveyard event assets.
- Adjusted entity rotation updates from the movement.
- Swapped out some more default UI assets for our bespoke pieces, mostly missing instances of scroll bars.
- Fixed an issue in the progression window that wouldn't load the correct character icon for each player.
- Fixed XP/gold/loot displays mid-adventure to show the total of the player's gains rather than just the most recent drop. Notably, this currently causes the display to falsely show doubled gains after an adventure ends.
- Started addressing a bug in which context menus in the inventory do not appear in the correct place.
Server
The server team have once again been busy ironing out some of the harder-to-fix bugs persisting in the game currently. First up to be fixed was abilities failing on the first turn of a dungeon. Next up was a bug making standardAI choose a specific player to really, really hate, rather than spreading their aggro out evenly across the party. The problem was caused by two separate issues. Firstly, the list of players they were using to add up how much XP's worth of enemies had been divided between them was being overwritten every time a new enemy went to choose a target. Secondly, the wrong list of current targets was being obtained meaning the XP calculation would have been off even if the first issue didn't exist. Additional work completed by the server-side team can be seen below.
- Fixed incorrect tile types in open-world combat.
- Adjusted entity rotation handling.
- Fixed loot generation bug related to 0 stat entries.
Sound Design
The sound team would start the week working on some extra sounds for the corrupted ground event we saw over the last couple of months. Following the gelatinous themes that were included in the main atmosphere of the corrupted ground, the team has created some audio that will be used by the tentacles within this area. A combination of sloshing and lapping water has been used to give the appendages some semblance of life. Throughout the week, the team would also revisit the Wisps of Erendorn. Creating a brand new set of vocals and movement sounds that will be used for the mysterious entities. Three different effects have been created for each type of Wisp; Fire, Water, and Air. Each of these pieces of audio differs depending on the corresponding element that they have obtained, for example, the Air wisps audio has been given effects that give the impression that they are one with the wind and atmosphere around them. Whereas the Fire Wisps have a burning aura to their core, and Water Wisps can be heard combined with sounds of rushing waves and trickling streams. Each of these pieces of audio has been created as a base layer first, then audio has been added to define the different elements. Giving an overall impression that although the Wisps are different they have some stark similarities. Examples of all the new audio created throughout the week can be heard below.
Animation
The animation team has spent the week updating some animations and cloth physics. The team would have to make several adjustments to some models to achieve better movement including; moving bone, adjusting materials and editing skin weights. The team are using a physics bases tool to get the motion for the cloth and with these new adaptations, the team have ensured the fabric won't clip through the model as much as it used to. While continuing to learn about this tool, some more adjustments may be made to models to polish their movement. The team would also work on the Watertarg's Run cycle. Starting with some added physics to move the fabric that hangs from the model more accurately. The team would also work to improve the animation itself throughout the week. The character now leans into their movement, giving the impression that they are running with more intent that the previous movement cycles. Both updates to these movement cycles can be seen in the examples below.
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That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of February yet?!
