This week in Depths of Erendorn, development continued across a range of systems and disciplines, with teams focusing on both technical improvements and content preparation. The Server team introduced a number of backend upgrades to support ability functionality, dialogue integration, and event system expansion, while also improving server performance. The Environment team worked to resolve visual inconsistencies caused by the engine upgrade, particularly addressing terrain issues and virtual texture conflicts. On the animation front, updated assets were prepared for integration and customisation features were expanded with new character options, though engine access issues temporarily delayed implementation. Meanwhile, the Sound team refined settlement ambience to better reflect updated layouts, laying the groundwork for future NPC-driven scenes. 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!
Programming
Server
This week, the Server team delivered a range of improvements aimed at enhancing performance, stability, and support for new gameplay systems. A fix was implemented to ensure item abilities function correctly across sessions, addressing an issue that previously caused inconsistencies when items were used outside the session they were loaded in. Dialogue content is now properly loaded into memory during server startup, enabling newly created dialogue entries to be accessed without manual intervention. Server start times were also improved through optimisations to ability preloading. Additional fixes were made to ensure consumable items are reliably consumed when used, and several functions related to entity and tile retrieval were updated to support a broader range of ability blocks outside of combat. Work on the Dialogue Editor continued as well, with saving functionality restored and multiple event block definitions updated to support ongoing expansion of the event system.
Sound Design
This week, the Sound team focused on updating and re-integrating market ambience and environmental audio cues to align with recent changes to settlement layouts. New one-shots and looping ambience have been balanced to create a believable and immersive soundscape, with a reduced number of cues used to optimise performance without sacrificing variety. Adjustments were made to the volume of background market voices to better reflect the current absence of NPC foot traffic, allowing the ambience to feel grounded and appropriately scaled. These updates are designed to adapt easily as more dynamic elements are introduced to the environment in future development stages.
Environment Art
This week, the Environment team focused on resolving visual issues related to materials and landscape textures following the engine upgrade to Unreal Engine 5.5. Several bugs were addressed where conflicting virtual texture (VT) streaming settings were causing inconsistencies across different assets. A particular issue involving unusual blotches appearing on terrain was investigated, with the team tracing the problem back to texture blending errors introduced during the transition. To correct this, work began on recalculating 8K texture splatmaps using Gaea, with re-imports underway to restore proper visual quality across affected areas. These fixes are aimed at restoring terrain fidelity and ensuring consistent environmental presentation across the game world.
Animation
This week, the Animation team focused on finalising and preparing updated assets for integration, including cleaned animations and rigged models. Work also began on setting up new beard variations for the Dwarf character, aligning them with existing rigs and facial structures to support upcoming customisation features. However, ongoing issues with accessing the project file have delayed the ability to push these updates into the engine. Despite this, asset preparation continues in the background, ensuring content is ready for implementation as soon as access is restored.
Visual Effects
This week, the VFX team focused on material experimentation, exploring the capabilities of newer emitter nodes and pushing the visual language of Erendorn’s effects. The updated tools encouraged a more experimental approach, particularly in how texture channels are used to simulate depth and complexity without a high performance cost. By leveraging these improved nodes, the team has been able to produce more convincing effects with greater efficiency—an important step as the visual effects library continues to grow. These material explorations will inform upcoming atmospheric, spell, and interaction-based effects across the game.
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That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of May yet?!
