Highlights in this week’s game development update include new animations for the enormous Stone Golems, eerie sound effects for the graveyard, and four new set pieces for in-game events. In between all that, we’ve got new armour sculpts, some epic screenshots from our environments, tons of new ability VFX, and an update on the new Golang server!
As always, join us on Twitter, Instagram, or Reddit for daily updates on Depths of Erendorn - now let’s get into it!
3D Modelling
The sculpts for the heavy armour set our Character Artist has been working on recently were finished last week, including a lower and higher level version! The next step is retopology (pray for our Artist), so here’s a look at the finished sculpts in ZBrush:
Animation
Our Animator created a new idle and attack animation for the Stone Golem last week. If you’ve been with us for a while, you may remember this epic character, which appears as both an enemy and friendly NPC in the game.
In a nutshell, Erendorn’s Stone Golems are anthropomorphic beings made from rocks and the soul of a dead person. Only powerful magic can be used to bring these creatures to life, and they have a pretty dark story behind how this magic was first used, so make sure you check out their character lore if you want to know more about them!
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/golem.m4v
Stone Golem animations
So, after the Stone Golem and its animations were imported into the engine, our Animator began adding some NPCs around the fire pit in the settlement! During this, they adjusted some animation poses, and began preparing female characters to bring in as well. For now, though, here’s how it’s looking:
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/firepit.m4v
Environment Design
Creating Set Pieces for Events
Last week, our Environment Artist continued their work on creating new set pieces and accompanying assets for events in the game. As a reminder, different events will occur randomly throughout Depths of Erendorn, challenging players with a difficult choice they must make.
Here are the events that were brought to life last week:
A Sword in a Stone
As you can probably imagine, this event will reveal a powerful sword that’s stuck in a block of stone. Players will be given the choice to attempt to pull it out - but it takes a lot of Strength, and you may not even be successful:
A Demonic Crystal
As you make your way through the dungeons, you may come across a large, ominous crystal. Humming with energy, this crystal has a dark aura about it - but held within it is a rotating sword.
You’ll be presented with the choice of shattering the crystal to retrieve this rare weapon, but at the risk of facing untold consequences, or leaving the crystal behind, empty handed, but safe and sound:
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/DemonicCrystal.mp4
Book of Knowledge
This will be a particularly fortuitous event, granting a Stat boost in Experience to all players. But you never know what repercussions will occur from reading the ancient Book of Knowledge, so always be prepared:
Sacred Gong
Who can resist banging a giant, golden gong? It’s definitely on par with the desire to hit a big red button, or a scolding hot plate, when everybody tells you not to.
Well, just as pressing a red button can set off an alarm, or touching a hot plate can burn you, so will ringing this gong set off a dangerous chain of events for your team. One of you will be rewarded with a rare item if you manage to survive these consequences, so it’s up to you all to decide if it’s worth the risk:
World Environment
While those awesome set pieces were being created, our second Environment Artist was busy making the world of Erendorn look more natural and epic! This work involved some large scale set dressing, such as adding huge cliff rocks around the world, as well as large fog volumes to mountain peaks and hills.
A couple of improvements were also made, namely the rendering of rock materials and terrain materials from a distance. Check out some of our latest environmental screenshots below:
Visual FX
For our VFX Artist, last week was dedicated to reworking some level 1 abilities, including:
Sound Design
Last week, our Sound Artist worked on new ambient sounds for caverns, as well as the graveyard that was created a few devlogs ago! Here’s a sample of it:
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/Cemetery-Example.wav
Graveyard sound effects
They also updated the sound effects for some old level 1 generic spells, including all of the following:
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/SFX_Frostbolt_Impact_Updated.wav
Frostbolt: Deals Frost Damage while reducing an enemy’s Movement Speed
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/SFX_Inferno_Updated.wav
Inferno: Deals Fire Damage to all enemies within a targeted 3x3 tile space
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/SFX_KineticCrush_Upgraded.wav
Kinetic Crush: Moves an enemy to an empty space before hitting them with a significant amount of Arcane Damage
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/SFX_Push_Updated.wav
Push: Allows you to push a 1-tile enemy one space in any direction. If they hit a wall, it also deal some Physical Damage
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/SFX_SubZero_Updated.wav
Sub Zero: Deals Frost Damage to three enemies of your choice
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/SFX_UniqueBlessing_Update.wav
Unique Blessing: Grants a team member a little extra Strength and Resilience for one turn
Programming
Golang Server
Last week, our Golang team continued to polish up the new Golang server. With this work, they took some time to improve and rewrite how inventories and loot are managed. To cut a long story short, ⅓ of the RAM usage was removed, and the 3 second request time was shaved down to 0.5 seconds max.
For items, the only thing left to be done is changing how they’re stored. If you can believe it, the amount of loot you can collect from levels 1-3 alone numbers over 2 million - so we’re obviously looking to optimise that a little!
With item storage refactored, the Golang team have also begun putting in a loot-rolling and XP-rewarding functionality at the end of combat.
That’s it for this week’s devlog - see you next Tuesday!
