The last week has seen impressive developments across all areas of Depths of Erendorn, as the teams focused on enriching visual details, refining game systems, and enhancing overall player immersion. The 3D Modelling team completed detailed sculpts of the Vampire Bat and its variations, contributing further to the diversity of Erendorn’s bestiary. Set Piece Design made notable strides in settlement visualisation, finalising walls and initiating immersive set dressing. Meanwhile, the Server team delivered significant enhancements in dungeon generation, network stability, and seamless server transitions. Complementing these technical and artistic advances, the Sound team produced unique ambient layers and creature sound effects, while the Environment team developed sophisticated materials for cave environments.
Additionally, the Visual Effects team introduced substantial improvements to smoke emitters, creating more realistic and visually engaging environmental effects, while optimising their implementation across various objects and large-scale scenarios. Finally, the Animation team refined the Hyena character, delivering smoother, more realistic movements. Together, these cumulative efforts continue to bring the vibrant and captivating world of Erendorn to life. 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
Over the past week, the 3D Modelling team at Depths of Erendorn advanced the Vampire Bat project into its retopology phase, an essential step in preparing detailed sculpts for in-game use. Building upon the meticulously crafted anatomical details completed previously, the team began simplifying the model geometry to optimise performance while preserving visual fidelity. This process ensures the Vampire Bats maintain their menacing appearance and intricate features without impacting game efficiency. These ongoing refinements continue to enrich Erendorn's diverse beastiary, enhancing both realism and immersive gameplay. Examples of the team's recent progress can be seen below.
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Set Piece Design
Throughout the past week, the Set Piece Design team at Depths of Erendorn achieved notable milestones in refining the game's settlement environments. The team successfully completed the construction of the settlement wall, ensuring a cohesive visual style and providing a defined boundary that enhances the overall atmosphere. With this structural element finalised, the focus shifted to detailed set dressing within the settlement itself, carefully positioning assets and decorative elements to cultivate a more immersive, lived-in environment. These ongoing enhancements continue to strengthen the visual storytelling and sense of realism, enriching players' exploration experiences within the expansive world of Erendorn. Examples showcasing the recent improvements can be viewed below.
Programming
Client
This past week, the Client team at Depths of Erendorn achieved significant milestones by successfully resolving persistent issues impacting interactions and the ability bar functionality after character switches. The team identified and addressed the root cause, a missing event cue in the input system that disrupted mouse interactions. Initially remedied with a forced toggle, the solution was thoughtfully refined into a dedicated function triggered precisely once per character transition, ensuring stability and minimal impact on other systems. Concurrently, attention was given to improving the execution order when logging out or switching characters, ensuring the proper initialisation of Social Data, Parties, Inventories, and other account settings. Updates to the Session Manager setup now guarantee consistent initialisation of Submanagers, eliminating the risk of skipped or duplicated user data. Collectively, these refinements significantly enhance the reliability, responsiveness, and overall player experience within Erendorn.
Server
This week, the Server team at Depths of Erendorn made notable strides in expanding gameplay mechanics and enhancing dungeon functionality. Efforts were primarily directed towards establishing the framework for out-of-combat ability casting, enabling the future implementation of consumable items, potions, and other interactive elements accessible outside combat scenarios. Simultaneously, the team diligently addressed critical Line of Sight issues, ensuring accurate interactions in relation to dungeon walls and environmental obstacles. Alongside these new developments, the team continued refining dungeon generation, fine-tuning Cellular Automata parameters to achieve precise control over layouts, terrain density, and visual coherence. A rare yet significant bug causing dungeon encounters to stall at the end of the first round was also resolved, further reinforcing the stability and reliability of player experiences within Erendorn’s evolving dungeon systems. Additional fixes are included below:
- Correcting an infinite loop that happened occasionally during combat area exporting.
- Handling the state of a session when it was closing down due to a player dying in a dungeon.
- Handling progression data communication between dungeon and zone servers.
Sound Design
Over the past week, the Sound team at Depths of Erendorn expanded the game's auditory landscape with several creative additions. Using unique recordings captured from an antique spinning wheel, the team developed new bass layers that significantly enrich the cave ambience, adding depth and atmospheric intensity to these environments. Additionally, specialised movement sound effects for the snake creatures were crafted, enhancing their realism and presence within the game's dynamic ecosystems. These thoughtful audio enhancements continue to build upon Erendorn’s immersive and engaging soundscape, elevating player experience and environmental storytelling. Examples of these newly developed audio assets can be experienced below.
Environment
In the past week, the Environment team at Depths of Erendorn took significant steps towards elevating the visual quality and immersion of cave dungeons. The team developed comprehensive plans for further enhancing these subterranean environments and began structuring an organised task list that, once completed, will greatly raise their visual standard. A notable achievement was the creation of a sophisticated new crystal master material, accompanied by six diverse material instance variants. Leveraging Parallax Occlusion Mapping technology, this material cleverly simulates depth, enabling the generation of visually engaging and realistic appearances for crystals, ice, and lava. These additions promise to significantly enrich the visual variety and atmospheric depth within the caves, bringing them closer in line with the high-quality standards seen across the world of Erendorn. Examples of the team's latest developments can be viewed below.
Animation
Over the past week, the Animation team at Depths of Erendorn successfully updated the Hyena character, significantly improving its visual fidelity and in-game functionality. The team transferred the Hyena to a newly created mesh, meticulously completing rigging and skinning processes to ensure natural and responsive movements. Animations were carefully transferred and adjusted to align seamlessly with the updated model, enhancing both realism and gameplay immersion. These refinements not only elevate the Hyena's presence in the game but also set a benchmark for future character enhancements. Examples of the team's recent work can be viewed below.
Visual Effects
Throughout the past week, the Visual Effects team at Depths of Erendorn made significant advancements in developing and refining smoke emitters for in-game objects. The newly designed emitters demonstrate substantial visual improvement over previous versions, offering more realistic and aesthetically pleasing smoke effects. Additionally, considerable attention was given to exploring efficient methods for applying these enhanced effects across multiple objects and larger-scale environments. These refinements promise to enrich the visual immersion within Erendorn, creating dynamic and atmospheric environments that enhance the overall player experience. An example of the updated smoke emitters can be viewed below.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of February yet?!
