There’s a little bit of everything in this week’s devlog, including new models, updated animations, chilly ice dungeons and updated abilities. Before we get into it, remember to support us over on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook where we post all of our exclusive content!
3D Character Modelling
Lately, our Character Artist has been creating lots of Erendorn’s beasts, from the magnificent Skyhound to the enormous Mammoth. It was a nice change of pace this week, then, as we moved onto sculpting the Storm Elf Civilian and Merchant.
Storm Elves are powerful characters in Erendorn and while they are able to hone powerful lightning magic, they are mostly recognised by the branching scars that pattern their bodies. We actually made the base meshes for the male and female Storm Elves a few months ago in a previous devlog, and this is when we added the scars. With this work already done, all we had to do this week was worry about the clothes for the Civilian and Merchant class:
- We modelled the clothes’ base meshes before sculpting
- This meant that the retopology was faster to do
- Accessories like bags, pouches and belts were also sculpted
- With all of this done, we could retopologise and unwrap the models
Animation
Our Animator was working on a few different characters this week, namely the Human Knight who was being imported into the game. We first had to work on transferring, fixing and updating its animations from the old rig to the new rig that was created a while ago. The Human Knight’s walk cycle was also updated; now, he can walk with two different weapon types. We also updated his punch animation and even created a new animation that shows him disarming an opponent.
Once the work was finished on the Human Knight model, it was time to focus on the Zentragal. This character received an additional spell animation this week and following that, all of its spell animations were imported into Unity so that they could be tested. The Parakaw also had to be prepared before being imported into the game. This character also had its animations updated from the old rig.
Environment Art
Work continued on creating the Ice Dungeons this week. To add an extra level of realism and interest to this type of environment, we decided to make a Top Snow blending material that is able to place snow on top of props and objects. Using this material, we were able to make the assets more suited to these icy scapes. This week, we ended up creating:
- 6 new ice wall pieces
- 8 snow wall pieces
- 2 stone pillars with snow
- 2 ice pillars
- 8 ice rocks
- 5 stone rocks with snow
Now, all of our ice cave assets are united by their snowy covering which further integrates them into the Ice Dungeon environment. We want to make Depths of Erendorn as immersive as possible and ensuring that our assets really reflect the environment they’re in is one way to do this.
Server and Game Client
This week was dedicated to fixing all of the abilities that had bugs found in them. Since reworking all of the abilities so that they accommodated the recent stat rebalance, this has been an ongoing job as there are hundreds of abilities to get through. Some of the ones we fixed this week include:
- Rage: This should now give more than 1 Strength
- Thorns Aura: This was not applying consistently before we fixed it
- Earthen Rage: This should now increase strength like it was meant to do
- Solo Killer: This was not restoring energy like it should have been doing
- Nature Bolt: This was dealing damage that was way higher than intended
- Stone Blood: This should now correctly heal back 50% of damage, which should also be correctly varied now
In addition to these, many more abilities had their bugs resolved this week, including all of the Forest Druid’s. One ability called 'Reserved Power' gives the Forest Druid player four ability choices. There was previously a bug which meant you could use all four ability options, but that has now been fixed and they all share cooldown with each other (fingers crossed).
The last piece of work carried out in the Server this week was adding 40K chest pieces to the games’ items, showing just how much opportunity there will be to collect goods in Depths of Erendorn!
