Throughout the last week, the team has been working on a lot of behind the scenes aspects that make Depths of Erendorn tick! Key updates were delivered by the Client team, with a strong focus on refining social interactions, making it easier for players to engage with friends, party members, and blocked accounts through the new context menu in the Social Panel. The Server team has been hard at work optimising the new player-facing server architecture, which is now ready for rigorous testing, while also making significant strides in refining dungeon generation systems. Meanwhile, the Animation team concentrated on improving character realism by addressing mesh and rigging issues, applying physics to clothing, and advancing the quality of human character skinning and animations. 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!
Programming
Client
This past week, the Client team at Depths of Erendorn has focused on further enhancing social functionality within the game. Significant progress was made in implementing features that allow seamless interactions between party members, friends, and blocked accounts. Building on tasks outlined in the previous week's development log, the team has introduced a context menu to the Social Panel, enabling players to easily access and perform relevant social and party-related actions. These additions are aimed at improving the overall player experience, fostering smoother social interactions and ensuring that managing in-game relationships is intuitive and efficient.
- Added a number of events ready for the new Social message type to ensure any linked UI will be synced as changes happen.
- Added the ability for the SocialEntry subwidget to display information about party members as well as player's public social profiles.
- Added a Social Context Menu type to work with all SocialEntries with the ability to report a user in addition to the actions mentioned last week, contextually available:
- Adding/removing friends.
- Adding/removing blocked accounts.
- Sending messages to friends or party members.
- Inviting friends to your party.
- Kicking party members.
- Reporting users.
- Prevented players from being able to close a loot container without looting. This is a temporary fix as we want players to be able to leave containers unlooted.
Server
Last week, the Server team at Depths of Erendorn has been focused on preparing and optimising the new player-facing server architecture. This monumental task involved adjusting game server code to ensure compatibility, and it is now ready for thorough testing and integration, which is set to begin soon. Alongside these efforts, the team has been diligently working on fixing dungeon generation, with particular attention paid to refining the Cellular Automata component. The majority of this work has been completed, and the team is now approaching the final stages, making significant progress towards smoother and more reliable dungeon creation within the game.
Animation
Over the past week, the Animation team at Depths of Erendorn concentrated on enhancing character realism and refining technical aspects of the game’s models. The team worked extensively on creating skeletal meshes for new hairstyles, testing these meshes and collaborating with the 3D modelling team to provide feedback and adjustments. They also tackled various mesh issues caused by rigging differences, ensuring consistent quality across character models. In addition, physics were applied to character clothing, greatly improving the realism of character movement. A major focus was placed on fixing skinning issues, particularly for human characters, to ensure smooth and natural animations throughout the game. An example of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of September yet?!
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