It's been an exciting start to November for the team! The first hairstyle has been finalised ready for the characters of Erendorn. During this time, the wizards of coding have finished integrating world dungeon lobbies and debugging the new world events. The sound team has been out in the wilderness collecting some primary audio while the animation team has been updating movement cycles for the Zentragal. Finally, the VFX team continued their work on the level three abilities of the Human Knight. 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
Off the back of the work completed last week, the 3D modelling team have finalised the first of many hairstyles that will go into the world of Erendorn. The team took the time to focus on the fringe for this hairstyle, using the same layering technique that was used for the back. The team will take the techniques used while creating this hairstyle and implement them into others, which will be coming through the next few weeks. Examples of the hairstyle completed by the team can be seen below.
Programming
Client
This week has been about finishing integrating World Dungeon Lobbies, allowing players to enter Dungeons from Dungeon Entrances while exploring the World and ensuring the Activity Controller and Widget are both functional during Adventures. Additional work from the client-side team can be seen below.
- Implemented the new Session Change method for loading and unloading Sessions and their Submanagers between World and Dungeon Sessions.
- Updated the old Lobby Browser to use the same Session Change method. Players won't be joining lobbies via the Lobby Browser, instead encountering Dungeons out in the World, but maintaining its function means we'll still be able to jump right in and iterate on Dungeon gameplay and function.
- Updated Session Change functions to work contextually with the cause of the change, we can now handle; Adventure starting/ending, Dungeon entering/exiting and Player Death as different reasons for switching Session.
- Finished implementing Activity Book Widgets to show Activity Entries and their Objectives and update according to the state of the Activity.
- Updated Camera Blueprint to follow terrain height in World Sessions and added the option to toggle between that and the old method.
- Attempted to improve engine performance by limiting the looping of Construction Scripts for several assets.
- Fixed some buttons displaying the wrong graphics on the login screen
- Fixed the layout of Inventory, Inspector, Dialogue and Vendor windows to better scale and align
- Adjusted player inventory display to more dynamically adapt to inventory size and remove overflow and premature truncations in the vendor window
- Fixed NavEdit creation issues.
- Exported NavEdits for all current interactables.
- Implemented Time of day and Weather.
- Fixed a longstanding bug causing various issues where two directions were swapped.
Server
This week the server team has been hard at work debugging all the new events and various other code related to the Open World Adventuring the players can do. Some fixes include:
-Fixing the Zone Monitor to allow zones to despawn when there aren't enough players nearby, preserving memory.
-Fixing Activity logs for Events, so the players will now automatically have quest logs added to their activity log by brushing close to the appropriate Event.
-Fixing an interesting interaction between Zombies being summoned by other Zombies that caused the player to never be able to get a turn, and infinite zombies spawning forever, taking infinite turns.
The server team has also created the capability of limiting the number of specific events by their sizes, so that a certain area can only have no more than 3 large events, 5 medium, etc, allowing for a smoother distribution of random Events over the Zone. Additional work completed by the server-side team can be seen below.
- Refactored dungeon lobbies so that they work better with the open-world gameplay.
- Added Time and weather code.
- Fixed missing texts on current testing dialogues.
- Refactored some dialogue-created logs.
- Implemented and debugged zone NavEdit loading.
- Refactored player GameSession tracking.
- Fixed dungeon entrance lobbies to no longer be shared between all sessions on a specific server.
- Improved and standardised SessionChange messages.
Sound Design
The sound team has been out in the world again this week. While wandering the wilderness, the team has taken some rough audio of interesting sounds they have come around. Using some of their less professional equipment, the team has collected some primary resources from a water wheel and a fountain. Although these may not be as clear as some of the other audio collected by the team in previous months, this audio will indeed be useful. Editing this audio will allow the team to utilise the sounds in a variety of ways, making all primary resources important. When slowed down they can be used for ambient cave sounds. When layered they will become useful for waterfalls and finally, when heavily altered they can be used for magical spells and abilities. The team will work with this audio, along with the many other primary resources they have, over the coming weeks. Examples of the water audio collected throughout last week can be heard below.
Animation
The animation team has been working on updating some animations throughout the week. Focusing on the attack cycles for the Zentragal the team has worked to smooth and emphasise some of the arachnid's movement. From the examples below, the two movement cycles that can be seen below show the difference the team has made throughout the week. Although only slight tweaks, the animation cycle now has a much better wind-up as the attack is in progress. The best way to reference this is in the front legs of the arachnid. As the attack is pulled back the legs now have slower movement which then accelerates through the punch. The front legs then also take a step back, in the updated version, instead of seeming sliding across the floor. All these tweaks help ground the animation and make it more realistic. Examples of the comparison between the two versions of the animations can be seen below.
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Visual Effects
The VFX team have been continuing their work on the Human Knight level three abilities throughout the week. Using some new meshes, the team have created some brand-new shapes to bring fresh visuals to these abilities. This can be seen being utilised within the Aura of Fortitude and Crashing Dive ability. The team have also added impressive visuals to the Crashing Dive ability in the form of stones breaking away from the floor after the powerful strike. These abilities would go on to be implemented into the game, ready for gameplay. Examples of the visual effects created throughout the week can be seen in the video below.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of October yet?!
