Over the past week, the teams at Depths of Erendorn have made impactful updates across multiple areas, enhancing both gameplay and immersion. The 3D Modelling team developed a new lower-level armour set for the Minotaur, maintaining its intimidating presence even in early encounters. The Set Piece Design team improved environmental detail by set-dressing key areas and expanding the asset library with high-quality Megascans. The Client team focused on optimising message types for better performance, implementing new UI elements, refining tooltips, and fixing display bugs to ensure smoother gameplay. The Server team improved client-server communication, enhanced dungeon functionality, and progressed on key features like Void Flicker reworks and NavEdits, laying groundwork for future server management tools. Finally, the Animation team updated animations like Dirt Kicking, aligning them with new rigs for a more realistic and fluid experience. 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
Last week, the 3D Modelling team at Depths of Erendorn focused on crafting a lower-level armour set for the Minotaur. This new armour will accompany the high-levelled version of the Minotaur in the game's initial areas, ensuring that even early encounters with this creature are formidable and visually impactful. Despite its lower-level designation, the Minotaur with this new armour set will still exude a menacing presence, underscoring its role as a fierce adversary within the world of Erendorn. This addition enriches the diversity of the game's creatures and enhances the immersive experience for players as they navigate the dangerous landscapes. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
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Set Piece Design
Last week, the Set Piece Design team at Depths of Erendorn focused on enhancing the game’s environments through meticulous set dressing in several key areas. By thoughtfully arranging environmental elements, the team has added to the visual appeal and immersion of the world, creating spaces that feel both vibrant and cohesive. Additionally, they expanded the asset library by incorporating new Megascans assets (with some optimisation), bringing in a diverse range of high-quality textures and models. These additions will serve to enrich future set pieces, allowing the team to craft even more realistic and engaging environments throughout Erendorn. Examples of the teams work can be seen below.
Programming
Client
Over the past week, the Client team at Depths of Erendorn has focused on optimising message types received by the client to enhance overall gameplay performance. By reducing character counts and removing unnecessary fields from frequently used message types, gameplay has been made notably smoother. Additionally, efforts were directed at importing and implementing new UI assets into the game engine. This involved integrating new utility bar icons and dialogue elements, which required minor adjustments to UI display setups without disrupting the overall system. A significant portion of the week was also spent updating ability tooltips, a task that demanded complex adjustments due to challenges with Rich Text fields. Alongside these updates, the team resolved a display bug that caused empty inventory slots to show at the end of vendors' stock lists, ensuring a cleaner and more intuitive experience for players. Lastly, work continued to make dungeons playable once again, further enhancing the gameplay experience within Depths of Erendorn.
Optimised data types throughout the week -
- Entities.
- Abilities.
- Stats.
- Stat Changes.
- Movements.
Server
This past week, the Server team at Depths of Erendorn made significant strides in optimising both client-server and server-server communication, as well as refining core gameplay mechanics. Work continued on addressing issues with NavEdits, specifically ensuring that map alterations, such as event and dungeon entrances, correctly apply to the world grid. While mostly resolved, the final steps are on hold, awaiting collaboration with the Client team. Additionally, the team tackled issues with Dungeon Lobby notifications by implementing a new messaging system that provides the client with necessary information for a 3D dungeon experience. Further progress was made on the Void Flicker's rework, requiring substantial new code to allow traps to self-determine locations and support triggers beyond simple area entry/exit mechanics. A major focus this week was on network optimisations, where the team reduced message size and redundancy, notably improving data transfer efficiency. Large data messages are now broken down and forwarded in segmented form, cutting client wait times by approximately 50%. Further optimisations to entity, ability, stat, and movement serialisation, along with pre-loading chunks around adventure starting points, resulted in smoother gameplay experiences, especially during enemy-heavy encounters. Finally, groundwork was laid for a control panel to centralise server management, enabling remote reconfiguration, updates, and authentication token replacements, paving the way for streamlined oversight and future automation. Additional work completed by the team can be seen below.
- Updating MessageType constants
- Dungeon lobby message sending has been fixed.
- CombatStartMonitor now skips execution whilst there are no players in the zone.
- DialogueResponse command handling fixed after being broken by the communication update.
Animation
This past week, the Animation team at Depths of Erendorn continued to refine and update key animations, focusing on bringing a heightened level of realism and immersion to character actions. Efforts included adjusting the Dirt Kicking animation to align with the latest rig, ensuring it appears more natural and believable during gameplay. By comparing the old and updated assets, significant improvements were made to enhance the impact and fluidity of the animation, making it feel more grounded within the game’s world. Such ongoing updates contribute to the immersive quality of player interactions and visual feedback, helping to build a more cohesive and polished experience within Depths of Erendorn. 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?!
