Last week our sound designer overhauled our audio asset structure folder, texturing began on our current armour set and our Harpy model took its first steps! Not to mention the continued bug fixing from our Programming team. Join us on Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit for daily updates on Depths of Erendorn - now let’s get into it!
3D Modelling
Texturing began on our most recent cosmetic armour set - this is one of the final stages of its development before completion and it can be added into the game. During this phase a lot of research needs to take place, more specifically on the types of materials being used. Our 3D Modelling team have been testing our various ores that can be used on the gauntlets, pauldrons and parts of the models helmet. Once complete, the model can be handed over to other teams to work on things like animation and visual effects.
Set Piece Design
Our Junior Environment Artist was working with Nanite last week - focusing on adding detail in an attempt to lessen the amount of texturing work that needs doing later down the line. With Nanite (A new technology within Unreal Engine 5) they can add levels of detail far easier than before. For example, the ridges on the pot below would normally be created using a texture map to save time. They also worked on more set pieces that will be found in Erendorn's town. and city buildings.
Programming
Last week has been spent overseeing and troubleshooting the team's switch to Unreal Engine 5 built from source and getting back to fixing some core gameplay features. This work included:
Database
- Added storage for Zone Summary Information.
Client
- Updated Dungeon Event parsing and Room Detail Panel to display along with the reroll ballot.
- Prevented Room Detail Panel from being removed immediately after a ballot is complete and added the ability to close the panel manually.
- Added player vote status to the Ballot Panel so players can tell who has cast a vote.
- Added Saving/Loading Navigation data to a specified file that can be named.
Golang
More fixes came this week, the most notable being character classes with unique resources (like the WaterTarg, Knight and Dwarf) not being created with their correct resources in the character creator thanks to how they're stored on the server.
With that fixed, additional work carried out included:
- Rewriting how our area of effect spells are handled in the code (more accurately, which tile is given to the server for it to draw the AoE square around).
- Now we can have active effects that interact with abilities while they are casting, for example: we can use the cost of an ability being cast, and refund some of the mana.
- Added Server side implementation for a Zone.
- Added a Zone Navigation object to hold zone navigation data.
- Added a Pathfinder to find paths between points in the navigation data.
- Added the ability to modify navigation data.
- Added loading navigation data from file.
- Added Pre-load function to preload zone information from the database.
Sound Design
Last week has been dedicated to a mass overhaul and re-organisation of the entire audio asset folder structure. The Sound Design team have been working through upgrading previously made SFX, though an issue is that half of the content was designed within Adobe Audition, and the latest sounds have been designed within Reaper. This meant that they had to either keep working in Audition for older files, or convert them to Reaper and continue working from there.
Previously, they had been transferring and transforming Audition Session Folders into Reaper Session Folders as and when they updated/re-worked a sound. However, as we are switching to UE5 we thought it would be a good moment for a mass overhaul.
This will make future updates much faster, it will also reduce search time when finding and implementing sound files into the engine.
Animation
Last week the animation team began work on our Harpy model. Their work included:
- Reviewed the mesh and rig.
- Updated the mesh after fixes.
- Created a new rig that better matches the main rig.
- Painted mesh skin weights.
- Worked on the animation set (a more complete video will come later as some animations still need polishing up)
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of December yet?!
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