It has been a busy and technical-orientated week for our developers! The Set Design team has worked on some assets for kitchens in the cities of Erendorn. Meanwhile, the wizards of coding have been continuing their work on smoothing the open-world transition and fixing bugs within combat. Also, the Sound Design team have created sound effects for rewarding chests. The environment team tackles new modular cave walls whilst the animation team smoothes out the Zentragal's skeleton. Finally, the VFX team have been improving effects for the open world. 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!
Set Piece Design
After some time off, the Set Design team has continued to work on the assets for the city set. Throughout the week, the team have been creating props that will go into the many kitchens within buildings. An oven and cooking stove has been fabricated, continuing the theme of opulent assets that will be used to adorn the affluent dwellings of Erendorn. These models were then added to the engine ready to fabricate the cities. The new assets can be seen in the images below.
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Programming
Client
This week was spent updating how Entity selection works in World Sessions and how the Core Widgets handle switching between multiple active Combats in addition to attempting to make use of the new World Partitioned map as the Settlement and Zone 1 Level. Additional work completed by the client-side team can be seen below.
- Added 'Combat Focusing' events to core gameplay Widgets to allow them to display information differently depending on the desired active Combat.
- Updated the usage of different Combat Submanagers in Core Widgets to ensure the correct information is being called upon when switching Combat focus.
- Transferred Entity selection events from the Combat to Session Entity Manager to allow entities to be selected in the World as opposed to in combat only and updated associated functions.
- Updated the Zone Loader to function for World Partition instead of Level Streaming.
- Created Settlement and zone 1 Nav data.
- Fixed a compression/nav data loading issue.
- Added Dungeon Locations to nav data.
- Added Event Spawn Locations to nav data.
- Added spawn code for Spawned assets.
- Started the process of moving to the new World Partition map.
- Identified issues causing GPU crashes when opening the World Partition based map.
- Fixed live item removal on clientside for inventory management and item selling, no longer needs a restart to see changes.
- Vendors are now functional, allowing buying and selling with live updates. Some visual polish needed but system is otherwise good to go.
Server
This week on the Server team, we've been busy with a couple of important fixes that tie a lot of the larger features we've been working on together. Things started with multiple fixes for the Fen Elf Scout. When testing them it was noticed that the AI they use didn't handle them very well, they would often not move and use their bow to the best of their ability. Some time was spent bringing this logic up to speed, and applying it to the other ranged enemies in the game.
Next up, the Druid is the first enemy type that uses spells, and some new intentions were written to allow them to use these spells more intelligently, on the best target at the time, as well as other little bits of logic to make the Druids feel like they know what they're doing.
The end of the week was spent on some major bug fixes that allow people to join an open-world combat mid-way through, looking out for all those players who like to go lone wolf and get caught out. Additionally, some more minor fixes for general movement pathfinding and the first iteration of code that'll calculate what an item is worth based on its power, the level it is, what stats it's rolled, and what base item it is. The server-side team also completed work as follows.
- Updated settlement/zone1 nav data to match the new map.
- Vendor items now have the correct stats.
Sound Design
The audio team have been working on sound effects for the chests containing loot within Erendorn. A sound effect when a chest is opened has become synonymous in the world of gaming, with many games having audio that can be identified by sound alone. The sound played as the chest is opening can give a lot of feedback to the player, with this in mind the team have created a variety of audio that can be used for lootable chests within Erendorn. With multiple unique pieces of audio, the team can ensure that opening chests will always be an exciting experience. The team have also created audio for barrels that will be lootable throughout dungeons and the overworld. These sounds were then implemented into the engine, ready for gameplay.
Environment Art
The environment team have been working on improving the modular cave walls and pillars that are present within the current dungeons of Erendorn. The team have created 9 unique assets that will be used to build up the walls of the cavernous dungeons. Each dungeon that is generated will use these new assets every time they are entered. The team also took the time to create a new material within the Unreal Engine that will add roughness and other texture to each of the cave walls once it is generated. This is computed through the base colour of the wall meaning less stress on the computer power needed throughout the rendering process. The newly created assets can be seen in the images below.
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Animation
The animation team have been getting technical throughout the last week, smoothing some of the issues that arose when the character model got its armour. The biggest change came to the skeleton of the Zentragal, as the team needed to alter the bones within. The team simplified the structure of the skeleton by creating a new joint for all the legs to attach to. Although this may not be anatomically correct for arachnids, it will make animating the model significantly smoother. The team have also altered the arrangement of bones within the leg. Moving the final bone in the leg to be parallel with the ground so it can work as a foot, this will also mean that the last segment on the leg won't bend as it is animated. All of these changes will ensure that the animators have easier control and greater mobility when animating. An example showing the Zentragal's new skeleton can be seen below.
Visual Effects
The visual effects team have been improving some effects that will be used for in-game events. Working from the base visual effects they created a few weeks ago, the team have worked on polishing and honing the effect ready for the engine. The biggest changes come to the shrine effects, as the team has added new layers that make the VFX more eye-catching. A secondary effect has also been created for the shine, showing that it has been activated. All the improved visual effects can be seen in the video below.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of August yet?!
