Highlights in this week’s devlog include epic mountain ranges, some tasty textures on our recently sculpted armour set, and new animations for our Ogres and Centaurs. We’ve also got a few stormy and rainy sound effects to show you, which may help transport some of you away from this intense heat wave we’ve been having. As always, join us on Twitter, Instagram or Reddit for daily updates on Depths of Erendorn - now let’s get into it!
3D Modelling
Last week, more work was put into our recently sculpted armour sets. First of all, our Character Artist created various mesh planes for unique armour decals.
These planes are made from the existing geometry of certain armour plates, allowing them to sit seamlessly on top and allow for an easier skinning process. The decal planes will also enable us to have different details on different level variations of this armour set.
Our Artist is currently texturing the armour, with particular focus on getting the metal to look nice and realistic - here are some progress shots:
Animation
Speaking of armour decals, our Animator also spent some time last week testing these out on some characters. They did this by skinning the armour and decals to the Human rig to see how the decals acted during movement - and so far, so good!
Several animations were worked on following this. For example, the Knight had its ‘Revenge Thrust’ animation updated, and the Stone Golem received some new and improved idles. Additionally, the walk animations for both the Ogres and Centaurs were rigged and skinned last week, before getting imported into the engine. Here’s how they’re looking:
Environment Design
Set Pieces
Two new set pieces were begun last week, one for a Boneyard, and one for a Lava Pool. Both of these have required some extensive work, such as the creation of a brand new lava material, so they’re just acting as placeholders for now - but we’ll show you some updates soon once they’re up and running!
World Environment
Last week in the world environment, cloud updates were made in order to increase altitude and improve the overall realism of our skyscapes. A lot of tweaks and small changes were also made in areas of the map to ensure that everything is on-par in terms of quality. A new mountain range was also created and implemented - check out how it look in both day and night cycles:
Sound Design
Despite the summertime weather, our Sound Artist has been revelling in howling winds, pelting rain, and furious thunderstorms as they worked on the ambient sounds for our dynamic weather system.
These sound effects were created using UE4’s Dynamic Weather plug-in, and are so good that we decided to replace the original weather SFX with them. Our Sound Artist then layered them all interestingly together inside Blueprints to create more variation and dynamism for Erendorn’s weather - take a listen:
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/SFX_ThunderDistant_05.wav
Distant thunder
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/SFX_ThunderClose_03.wav
Nearby thunder
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/SFX_Amb_Rain01.wav
Ambient rain sounds
https://depthsoferendorn.blob.core.windows.net/assets/SFX_Amb_HeavyRain02.wav
Heavy rain sounds
Programming
Golang Server
Last week, the Golang Team dedicated themselves to reworking how items are stored. They’re about 90% of the way through this colossal undertaking, with items now being stored as one of the 32 base item types.
Additionally, a power level number is now passed into them, and this dictates how strong an item will be in terms of what Stats it gains, as well as which Stats get scaled up. For example, with this system now in place, a player can pick up a rare sword with +5 Maximum Damage, or a common sword with +1 Maximum Damage, or any mixture in between, without them being stored as individual items.
What's left to be done is ensuring that the new loot is given out appropriately and stored in a character's inventory properly, especially now that what is needed to define an item is very different.
That’s it for this week’s devlog - see you next Tuesday!
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