January was a highly productive month for the development of Depths of Erendorn, with significant progress made across multiple aspects of the game. The 3D Modelling team finalised the Earthen Dwarf Guard armour, refining its sculpt, topology, and textures for optimal in-game performance. The Set Piece Design team enriched settlements with detailed set dressing, completing key structures like the underground temple and introducing new architectural elements. The Client team enhanced gameplay functionality with a dynamic XP difficulty heatmap, camera improvements, and bug fixes, while the Server team refined dungeon generation, resolving critical bugs and optimising procedural placement. The Sound team introduced new layers of audio, including magic footsteps and corpse-looting effects, while the Environment team expanded Erendorn’s landscapes with a major PCG overhaul, new regions, and improved foliage placement. The Animation team refined character physics, integrated hairstyles, and optimised cloth behaviour, ensuring more polished interactions. Lastly, the Visual Effects team developed magic path materials and refined asset usability, laying the foundation for future 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
Throughout January, the 3D Modelling team at Depths of Erendorn has made continued progress in developing and refining the Earthen Dwarf Guard armour, ensuring it meets the standards of both visual fidelity and in-game performance. The process began with retopology, optimising the high-resolution sculpt by simplifying its geometry while retaining intricate details, allowing for a balance between efficiency and aesthetic richness. Once the topology was finalised, the team moved into the texturing phase, applying carefully crafted materials and colour palettes to enhance the rugged and battle-hardened nature of the Earthen Dwarf Guards. The armour design was further refined with reinforced plating and detailed engravings, capturing the resilience and strength of this formidable race. With the sculpt completed, topology optimised, and textures applied, the Earthen Dwarf Guards are now fully prepared for integration into the game, adding depth and authenticity to the world of Erendorn. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Set Piece Design
Over the past month, the Set Piece Design team at Depths of Erendorn has made significant strides in enriching the game’s settlements and landscapes through detailed set dressing and the creation of immersive environmental elements. A major highlight was the completion of the underground temple, featuring a striking frosted glass roof that enhances its atmospheric presence. Additionally, a versatile stone trim sheet material was finalised, providing a polished architectural detail that integrates seamlessly into various structures. The team also introduced new 3D assets to diversify settlement environments, ensuring a richer and more dynamic player experience. Various housing structures received refinements, including the completion of a turf house variant, further expanding the architectural variety of Erendorn’s settlements. To enhance exploration, rocky features were strategically placed, introducing natural elevation changes and new traversal opportunities. These updates ensure that each settlement feels lived-in and engaging, blending natural and man-made elements to create a more immersive world. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen in the images below.
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Programming
Client
The Client team at Depths of Erendorn has made significant strides in refining core gameplay systems, resolving technical issues, and implementing new features to improve player experience. A major focus was finalising the camera upgrade, introducing persistent settings for speed, tether range, and deceleration, alongside saving and loading functionality for seamless customisation. Additional refinements ensured smooth and dynamic camera movement, enhancing navigation and responsiveness. Work also addressed lingering issues from the level switchover, including fixing unexpected physics interactions affecting the camera system and improving overall game stability. Another key development was the implementation of XP difficulty indicators on the player’s map, utilising Navigation Data to generate a heatmap that provides insight into regional difficulty levels. To keep exploration engaging, dynamic difficulty scaling was introduced, allowing sections of the map to shift in challenge intensity over time. Debugging efforts led to the resolution of a long-standing issue causing the camera to spawn underground, which was traced to a misplaced reference within the movement component—fixing this not only eliminated the bug but also contributed to improved frame performance. In addition, the team implemented functionality to ensure Sessions initialise with dead and lootable entities, allowing all players, even those joining after combat, to access the relevant interactables. Additional examples of work and bugs completed by the client team can be seen below.
- Refactored the post-combat execution order to allow loot containers to be assigned to Entities in a Session after death.
- Set up the framework for making living Entities Interactable.
- Implemented context menus for Interactable Entities.
- Worked through packaging issues with foliage and landscapes.
- Changed a number of project and packaging settings in an attempt to improve performance, locked resolution to 1080p, capped frames at 60, allowed the game to run in background and more.
- Implemented the ability for character animations to start as dead.
- Implemented the ability for character animations to start as dormant and become active.
- Added dead character spawning to Session setup.
- Added interactable Entity application on Session setup
- Added Status to friend list entries so players can see when their friends are online/in the settlement/on an adventure.
- Began work on XP zone heatmaps for the Map Panel.
- Created Zone Visualiser for handling texture overlays.
- Created material function for heatmap overlay.
- Added the ability to generate textures from pixel data at runtime.
- Implemented Zone and Chunk XP sampling to create pixel data.
- Packaging issues -
- Implemented a fix for missing portraits.
- Troubleshot camera input issues.
- Updated a few project settings to fix and prevent rendering warnings.
- XP Zones -
- Explored methods for generating and updating pixels for textures at runtime.
The bugs found (and solved) can be seen below.
- Camera spawning underneath terrain.
- Unusually slow speeds regardless of setting overrides.
- Inability to move the camera on spawn with WASD.
- Tethered state persisting in free cam mode.
- Sliding camera after releasing inputs.
Server
Throughout January, the Server team at Depths of Erendorn has been dedicated to refining dungeon generation, improving server stability, and addressing critical bugs to enhance gameplay functionality. A major focus was resolving issues with set piece placement, ensuring that dungeon environments are generated correctly with precise positioning and orientation of assets. Fixes were implemented to prevent errors that previously caused set pieces to spawn incorrectly or fail to link together, improving the structural integrity of dungeon layouts. Once these issues were resolved, attention shifted towards refining generation rules, introducing wider corridors and better spacing around set pieces to enhance both gameplay balance and navigation. Collaboration with the Client team ensured that dungeon walls, floors, and ceilings aligned seamlessly with server logic, further optimising the overall dungeon experience. These improvements, along with ongoing refinements to procedural generation and server-side stability, continue to ensure that dungeon exploration remains engaging, immersive, and technically robust within Depths of Erendorn.
Sound Design
The Sound team at Depths of Erendorn has worked on expanding and refining the game’s auditory landscape, focusing on creating immersive and responsive audio layers for various in-game interactions, throughout January. Magic footsteps were developed as a subtle but impactful addition to movement sounds, designed to seamlessly integrate with different magical effects. Utilising a specialised plug-in originally designed for gunshot variations, the team crafted dynamic layers that allow for real-time adjustments to sound variations, such as water, magic, and dark energy effects. Additionally, work was carried out on corpse-looting sounds to ensure a versatile and immersive experience. Different variations were created, including a purely visceral gore-based sound and another incorporating the rustle of leather armour, allowing for differentiation between armoured and non-armoured enemies. These sounds were carefully designed to strike a balance between realism and player comfort, avoiding excessive graphic detail while still enhancing the overall atmosphere. These developments contribute to the depth and richness of Depths of Erendorn’s soundscape, reinforcing the game’s immersive and atmospheric experience. Examples of the work completed throughout the month can be seen below.
Environment Art
January saw the Environment team at Depths of Erendorn focus on refining and expanding the game’s landscapes, implementing key improvements to enhance both visual cohesion and performance. The World PCG graph underwent a significant refactor, optimising procedural generation processes and improving interlinking to prevent issues such as trees protruding through boulder stacks. Wind settings for ferns and small shrubs were also adjusted to better align with grass movements, creating a more natural and immersive environmental experience. Additionally, new areas were introduced, including a quarry and rocky beach regions, adding greater diversity to Erendorn’s terrain. Pennyroyal was re-integrated into the landscape grass material, ensuring a more cohesive ground cover, while PCG adjustments were made to improve foliage placement, preventing ferns from appearing in inappropriate locations such as tree and boulder exclusion zones. Work also began on upgrading world grass to improve its appearance while maintaining performance, with continued refinements aimed at striking the perfect balance between visual fidelity and optimisation. Examples of the work completed by the team over the last month can be seen below.
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Animation
The Animation team at Depths of Erendorn has made significant strides in refining character functionality, improving physics interactions, and expanding animation diversity. A "dead" pose was implemented within the animation blueprints as part of the spawning system, providing greater versatility in character states. Multiple broken skeletal meshes for human characters were fixed, ensuring more consistent and polished character models. Hairstyles were temporarily integrated by skinning them directly to character meshes, allowing for the immediate availability of hair customisation while resolving technical challenges associated with implementing hairstyles through blueprints. Further work focused on refining cloth physics, addressing issues with overlapping garments that caused unwanted clipping. In some cases, temporary adjustments were made to reduce the mesh size of certain clothing elements—such as the Beastmaster character’s back cloth, which was shortened due to being hidden beneath the cape, while an alternative version without the cape retained the full-length design. Additionally, efforts were directed toward creating ready-to-use NPCs with potential new idle animation variations to increase immersion and bring more life to non-playable characters. Examples of the work can be seen below.
Visual Effects
Over the past month, the Visual Effects team at Depths of Erendorn has made significant progress in expanding the game’s magical and environmental effects, refining asset usability, and laying the groundwork for future visual enhancements. A key focus has been the development of magic footsteps and magic path materials, a long-term initiative aimed at creating dynamic and interactive effects that respond to player movement in real time. Work began on crafting a material that utilises dynamic parameters, allowing greater flexibility for future implementations. Alongside this, foundational assets were created, including curve meshes and other general-purpose VFX meshes in Blender, ensuring essential resources are readily available for future effects development. Further refinements were made to improve asset usability, with UVs fixed and meshes tweaked to ensure smooth integration into the game’s pipeline. These improvements enhance the efficiency and consistency of VFX assets, ensuring that every effect is optimised for seamless implementation. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
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That’s it for this month’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of December yet?!
