It's been a massive week for the Depths of Erendorn team! Our new pre-alpha trailer went live, the transition to Unreal Engine 5 began and one of our Gargoyle models was brought to life! As always, join us on Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit for daily updates on Depths of Erendorn - now let’s get into it!
3D Modelling
Our 3D Modelling team continued work on the current armour concept. They actually remade the chest piece, making it better for sculpting and having it's primary forms refined. They then moved onto the waist portion of the model, along with some initial work on the gauntlets.
Programming
The main focus last week for the Programming team has been on upgrading the Depths of Erendorn Unreal Engine project from 4.26 straight to Unreal Engine 5, to make use of some exciting new features and prepare us for future development. We have successfully and without great inconvenience upgraded the project to UE5 for the entire dev team.
- Dry Run - As Depths of Erendorn is a large project with many developers working on it at the same time, a test was carried out to ensure upgrading the engine doesn't contribute to downtime for the rest of the team. This allowed us to look into specific solutions to any plugin or code deprecation issues.
- Plugins - The process of upgrading to UE5 is designed to be as smooth as possible by Epic, but there have been a few extra considerations for Depths of Erendorn; primarily when it comes to plugins. Many of the plugins we use had updates readily available for Unreal Engine 5, some however did not. Solutions were found in these cases, some of which ended up in us implementing more efficient methods without having to rely on third party developers.
Environment Art
Our Environment Art team made the big move over to Unreal Engine 5 last week. This was a large undertaking and took some time to complete, but the functionality now available to us was worth it. The team quickly began work on some new environment assets, in the form of bushes for forest areas.
Animation
Our Animation team was as busy as always last week! They focused on our terrifying Gargoyle Flesh Ripper model, working on its basic animation set. It's tricky to animate the wings on models like this, but they've done an awesome job!
Once all level 1 creatures have been animated and imported into the game, they will begin adding additional polish. With a special focus being on playable characters.
Trailer
We hit a major milestone last week, with the completion and release of our pre-alpha trailer. This was a huge team effort and something we're so proud of! It's taken a long time to complete, but we're so happy with how it turned out and how it's being received by our potential players.
This is the first time we've shared full gameplay with our community, and given them a chance to interpret for themselves what Depths of Erendorn will be like, how it will play and what they can expect.
We've gathered massive amounts of feedback which is invaluable for the development of the game. Not to mention the lessons we've learnt along the way.
On top of this, we've seen an influx of new followers and community members, who are already providing vital support and feedback - asking questions, interacting and suggesting features for the game!
If you haven't seen the trailer yourself - take a look below and head over to one of our social channels to let us know what you think!
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of November yet?!
