February DevLog | Week #4 | No. 16

Development
March 1, 2019
January 13, 2022

We’re excited to show you all our progress from this week, especially because it means we finally get to show you our completed Forest Druid character! Before we get started, if you feel like you’ve been left out of the loop, our monthly devlog summary is over on our company site, so make sure you check it out!

3D Modelling

The time has arrived. After 7 weeks of hard work, our Forest Druid character is now complete! The process of creating this playable character was fraught with difficulties and learning curves as our Character Artist discovered many solutions to the problems he was having with the model.

The most notable challenge was creating the Forest Druid’s hair which is made up of leaves, given their affiliation with nature. Trying to find a process of creating this hair in a realistic and aesthetic way proved to be quite difficult. A method used for creating trees and bushes in games was discovered and utilised by our Character Artist so that we could get our desired result. All the details about it are in last week’s devlog if you’re curious to know more.

With all the details in place, our Character Artist could dedicate this week to texturing the Forest Druid model. This is when it all came together and really started to look like a finished character. When texturing the Forest Druid, our Character Artist made it so that her skin had a wooden appearance. We decided on this design element because we wanted there to be a clear distinction between the Humans and Forest Druids in Erendorn. The wooden skin means the Forest Druid is further away from looking Human and it also further enhances their attunement with nature.

Texturing process of a female Forest Druid
Texturing the Forest Druid model really brought the whole character together.
A line of 5 female Forest Druid 3D models against a grey background
We gave the Forest Druids wooden looking skin to further distance them from Humans and to also enhance their attunement with nature.

Animation

Our Animator is ending February the way it began: working on awesome new animations for one of Erendorn’s enemies. The King Cobra had its idle animation and variation created last week, so this week was spent creating even more animations for this NPC. Before they could be created, changes were first made to the King Cobra’s rig so that it moved better when our Animator worked with it. A new idle of the King Cobra was then made using the new rig before four new animations were created:

  • Movement animation
  • Hit reaction animation
  • New bite animation (using the new rig)
  • Death animation

A couple of characters were also adjusted and posed this week by our Animator so that they could be used in our character profile cards. These characters include the Blue Melmee and the Parakaw Astromancer. Sleeve joints were added to the Parakaw rig and the number of joints in the body were also reduced. Skinning adjustments were then made for the Parakaw’s new joints before our Animator began posing it. If you’d like to see how our characters look in these profile cards, head over to either our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter where we post one every Thursday!

Server

This week was largely focussed on working on the Item Generator in the game server. This tool now functions properly, though more changes are due to be made next week. As a result of the Item Generator working:

  • Items with base stats now generate correctly
  • Items and item slots can have stats excluded. This means the item or slot won’t have any items with these excluded stats
  • All stat combinations are now possible, resolving a bug that was stopping every combination from being calculated
  • Stat and item power weightings can be altered, giving us a lot of control over the items being generated

When the Item Generator wasn’t getting worked on, changes to some abilities were being implemented. We do this in order to make sure that everything in the game is balanced and functioning correctly. Four abilities were balanced this week by either increasing or decreasing the amount of damage they inflict:

  • Subzero now deals 3-4 Frost Damage instead of 3
  • Tempest now deals 1-2 Lightning Damage instead of 0-2
  • Giant Lightning Bolt now deals 9-11 Lightning Damage instead of 9-12
  • Inferno now deals 2-4 Fire Damage instead of 2-3

Finally, there were also some ability bugs in the server that needed resolving. Reserved Power Health was giving Health one too many turns and Bolster was lasting two turns instead of one. Both of these issues have now been fixed so that their respective ability functions correctly.

https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/KingCobra_animset_wip.mp4

Remember to head over to our company site if you want to have a closer look at what our game development team got up to in February. Until next week's devlog, remember to stay tuned for more updates on Depths of Erendorn!

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