It has been a productive week for development on Depths of Erendorn. The 3D modelling team worked on smoothing out the new armour and adding some intricate details. Meanwhile, the wizards of coding have been fixing a variety of bugs and the animation team has worked on some combat animations. Finally, the audio department has worked on sounds for the open-world portals and the corrupted area event. 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!
3D Modelling
The 3D modelling team has continued sculpting the brand-new armour for the Human Knight. As most of the plates have been added to the model, the team has started implementing some extra details to the protective gear. Smaller plates have been added to the bicep area along with straps to hold them down. A similar effect is in place for the knee guards, with buckles also incorporated for additional realism. Now the vast majority of the protection has been added the team will also work on smoothing out the model to give it an overall polished effect. The team will continue to work on the additional details, along with polishing the armour throughout the coming week. An example of the work-in-progress armour can be seen below.
Programming
Client
This week has been about fixing some longstanding bugs, updating some old menu functionality and improving how the player interacts with the landscape in the World. Additional work from the client-side team can be seen below.
- Fixed Directional Ability targeting by ignoring Entities and using terrain cursor location exclusively.
- Updated Collision Presets for landscape actors to work with pings, camera and ability targeting.
- Refactored how the Account Characters Controller transitions between Character Selection and Character Creation.
- Helped teammates switch machines while maintaining the work environment.
- Updated Zone1 Nav Data to reflect recent map changes.
- Re-enabled NPC movement.
- Updated Mapping tool to have another method for overwriting movement information.
- Re-created a corrupted Interactable for the Berries event.
- Audio Manager improved.
- Fixed a bug which stopped Nav Data from being successfully imported.
- Replaced old Dungeon walls.
- Replaced old Dungeon pillars.
- Rebalanced lighting in the dungeons.
- Fixed from World Events incorrectly firing sound effects on spawn.
- Updated the Ceiling in the dungeon.
- Interactable should now toggle their intractability when entering combat.
- Re-Mapped the Zone 1.
- Updated menus to use the new background system so that it persists.
- Updated transitions between character creation and character selection menus to work as intended now.
- Updated initialisation of the character creation menu so that it starts with the correct fields and icons shown if certain buttons are pressed before selecting a new class.
Server
This week, the server team were busy back to fixing bugs. First on the plate was combat leashing which was causing crashes and sometimes failing. This is when some enemies bump into an already existing combat, and all the code that handles them joins mid-way. Beyond that, the other large series of bugs fixed this week was reconnection code handling which ultimately ended up permanently locking a player out of adventures. This was most common when they disconnected or were forced to quit while their party continued.
A couple of other things were fixed this week including, loot being awarded correctly after the end of combat in the open world, some AI logic for when the NPC Druid tries to cast her healing spell, and an odd multiplier issue with combat shrines causing what's meant to be a buff to your attack's damage becoming a 140% debuff! Additional work from the server-side team can be seen below.
- Updated Zone1 Nav Data to reflect recent map changes.
- Added work around for a bug where parties had invalid connection objects.
- Re-enabled NPC movement.
Sound Design
The sound team started the week working on test audio that will be utilised on the portal that will send players from the over world into the dungeons. These portals appear within the world hidden in a variety of areas that the player will be able to find. As recent work has been completed by the environment team on the portal setup, the audio needed an update to match. With the older sound being a little bit abrasive, the team have aimed to make audio that has a more rhythmic growl to represent the portal's ominous presence, this audio also now blends with the more mystical sounds that emanate from the portal.
Throughout the latter part of the week, the team worked on audio to accompany the corrupted ground event that we have seen over the last couple of weeks. The team would start with some ambient sounds that can be used across the entire area. As the team are still in the process of creating this event, the audio that has been created is a work in progress. While discussing possible features of the corrupted event with the environment team, a consensus was met that audio should sound gelatinous in certain areas giving the team a basis to start the effects. The sound of bubbling has also been added to get the impression that corruption is alive and spreading. All the audio created throughout the week can be heard in the example below.
Animation
The animation team has continued to work on some of the combat animations for the characters of Erendorn. The team would focus on the attack movement cycles for the male Bandit throughout the week. When it comes to the average Bandit, they may not be as adept with the blade as the Knights of Erendorn. The team has aimed to portray this through these cycles, with the movement being a lot more basic. A stabbing and a double swipe motion have been created for the Bandit which appears to be in direct contrast to the Human Knight's precise swings we have seen in the past. These animations were also added to the engine ready to be implemented into gameplay. Examples of the new Bandit movement cycles can be seen below.
.gif)
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of November yet?!
