This week, the team at Depths of Erendorn made significant strides across multiple development areas, refining gameplay mechanics, expanding environmental detail, and enhancing technical systems. The 3D Modelling team completed the intricate work on the Earthen Dwarf Guards, finalising their sculpt, optimising topology, and applying detailed textures to ensure they are fully prepared for integration into the game. The Set Piece Design team continued enriching the settlements with refined set dressing, introducing additional props, architectural details, and rocky features to add depth, realism, and opportunities for exploration. Meanwhile, the Client team focused on refining gameplay clarity by implementing a dynamic XP difficulty display system, allowing players to assess challenge levels across the map, alongside rigorous debugging efforts to resolve persistent camera issues affecting playtests. The Visual Effects team made valuable improvements to asset usability, fixing UVs and refining meshes to streamline future VFX implementation. 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
This week, the 3D Modelling team at Depths of Erendorn completed work on the Earthen Dwarf Guards, finalising the intricate details and ensuring they are fully prepared for integration into the game. This process involved refining the sculpt, optimising the topology for in-game performance, and applying detailed textures that emphasise the rugged, battle-hardened aesthetic of these formidable warriors. The team ensured that the armour reflects the Earthen Dwarves' resilient nature, incorporating reinforced plating and intricate engravings to enhance their visual identity. With a combination of rich materials and a carefully crafted silhouette, the Earthen Dwarf Guards now stand as a powerful addition to the world of Erendorn, bringing depth and authenticity to the game’s character roster. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Set Piece Design
This week, the Set Piece Design team at Depths of Erendorn focused on enhancing the settlements through refined set dressing, further enriching the depth and atmosphere of these key locations. Additional props and architectural details were introduced to bring a greater sense of authenticity and lived-in realism to the environment. Various structures received touch-ups to improve their integration with the surrounding terrain, ensuring a seamless blend between man-made and natural elements. Rocky features were strategically placed throughout the settlements, adding verticality and points of interest to encourage player exploration. These refinements continue to evolve the world of Erendorn, making its settlements feel dynamic, immersive, and rich with storytelling potential. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Programming
Client
This week, the Client team at Depths of Erendorn focused on resolving key issues affecting playtests while implementing new features to improve gameplay clarity. A major development was the introduction of a system to display XP difficulty across the player's map. By sampling XP values tied to Navigation Data, a heatmap overlay was implemented to visually indicate the relative difficulty of different areas, allowing players to gauge the challenge level of regions before venturing into them. Additionally, work was done on refining dynamic difficulty scaling across the map, enabling certain sections to fluctuate in intensity over time. This ensures that exploration remains unpredictable while still providing players with a general sense of what to expect. Alongside these advancements, extensive debugging efforts were undertaken to track down a persistent issue causing the camera to spawn underground upon loading. Through rigorous logging and investigation, the issue was traced back to a misplaced reference within the movement component, which was overwriting the camera’s intended position every frame. With this problem resolved, not only has the bug been eliminated, but improvements to frame performance are also expected due to the removal of unnecessary per-frame overwrites. Additional work and updates completed by the client side team can be seen below.
- Packaging issues
- Implemented a fix for missing portraits.
- Troubleshot camera input issues.
- Updated a few project settings to fix and prevent rendering warnings.
- XP Zones
- Explored methods for generating and updating pixels for textures at runtime.
- Created Zone Visualiser for handling texture overlays.
- Created material function for heatmap overlay.
- Added the ability to generate textures from pixel data at runtime.
- Implemented Zone and Chunk XP sampling to create pixel data.
Visual Effects
This week, the Visual Effects team at Depths of Erendorn focused on refining asset usability by fixing UVs and tweaking meshes to ensure seamless integration into the game’s pipeline. These adjustments have improved the efficiency and flexibility of VFX assets, allowing for smoother implementation and greater consistency across different effects. With the UVs now functioning correctly and importing properly, these assets will be highly valuable for future visual effects, providing a solid foundation for creating dynamic and immersive effects throughout the game. These refinements continue to push the quality and reliability of the VFX system, ensuring that every effect aligns seamlessly with the evolving world of Erendorn. Examples of the new created materials can be seen below.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of December yet?!
