Last week we saw the team developing new assets and set pieces for our settlements, we crushed a few more bugs with our server migration and brought a few 'creepy-crawlies' to life. As always, join us on Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit for daily updates on Depths of Erendorn - now let’s get into it!
Environment
Our Environment team continued work on the planned move to Unreal Engine 5 this week. This transition requires a large amount of testing, to ensure that the software (and our hardware) are capable of the changes we want to implement. This means building worlds, testing different technologies and understanding how it can all be applied to our game. Stay tuned for more updates on this in the coming weeks!
Set Piece Design
Our Junior Environment Artist continued to research and work on more rustic assets to spice up the current set pieces/set dressing we already have. She added two new beds, a brazier, a chair, a bench and a bucket. with loads more planned for the coming weeks. Variety is key when it comes to this, as repetitive use of props can lead to things feeling too uniform and regimented.
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Programming
The programming team have been focused on converting the testclient to it's new modular form this week. This has come with its own array of obstacles, such as bugs that need fixing, and the docker containers (small, local virtual machines that'll run code for you) refusing incoming connections from the testclient, thanks to overly strict security. This week has also been about updating the lobbies and the settings that are available to them, as well as some big changes to how Depths of Erendorn loads and prepares for gameplay. Some key updates have been applied to the new GoLang Server to facilitate combat in and out of dungeons. Finally, the Client has seen an overhaul in how different aspects of gameplay are constructed and utilised by making use of 'Sessions'.
- Lobby Updates - Continuing on from last week's reintegration of lobbies, this week has seen an update as to how lobby settings are changed and communicated. This opens up many of the new options provided when deciding which dungeon to explore; the number of rooms, enemy dungeon subsets, event types, item reward types and set pieces used in room generation. These can now all be selected prior to entering. This will provide a great boost to our ability to test and refine dungeon generation in many different ways that were previously not possible.
- Sessions - In order to handle the different aspects of gameplay we want to provide in Depths of Erendorn, both in dungeon and out in the open world, some major changes have needed to be made to the way we structure loading. As gameplay in the world and dungeons have different requirements but make use of a lot of the same code and information, we have made two different 'Session' types. A session that a player connects to will either be a 'World Session' or a 'Dungeon Session'. Each Session shares the same base code, but allows us to tailor each Session to our needs while having the same base functionality. This gives us a lot of scope for different session types whilst keeping it maintainable. The 'World Session' is very minimal while we reintegrate the Dungeon gameplay in the client with our new Dungeon Session.
Animation
This week our Animation team rigged and skinned the Beetle and Scarab models we have. They created the animation set and exported the SK mesh to the engine. These low level enemies will be some of the first you encounter, when setting out on your journey through Erendorn.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of September yet?!
