Development across Depths of Erendorn has continued to progress across multiple areas this week, with the team delivering a range of improvements focused on performance, visual variety, and overall gameplay consistency. Work has spanned character, client, server, audio, and environment disciplines, including expanded civilian clothing options for human female NPCs, significant client-side optimisation targeting animation and simulation systems, and refinements to dungeon spawning behaviour and event sequencing. Alongside this, the sound team advanced UI and ambient audio implementation, while the environment team continued to enhance cave visuals through lighting, fog, material upgrades, and performance-focused rendering changes. 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
Over the past week, the 3D Modelling team focused on expanding character variety within settlements through the creation of new civilian clothing options for the human female population. Work has centred on developing additional outfit variations to help populated areas feel more diverse and believable during gameplay, while also strengthening the visual identity of everyday NPCs throughout the world.
Programming
Client
Throughout the past week, the Client team concentrated on identifying and resolving major performance bottlenecks affecting gameplay responsiveness across Depths of Erendorn. Initial investigation began with overhead health bars, though testing quickly revealed that animation blueprints, cloth simulations, and other constantly ticking systems were having a far greater impact on performance during large-scale gameplay scenarios. In response, the team introduced new occlusion-based ticking behaviour for animation blueprints, preventing offscreen characters from continuously updating and resulting in a significant increase in frame rate during adventures.
Additional work addressed edge cases where animation states could become locked while occluded, with temporary safeguards implemented while further refinements continue. The team also resolved a memory leak caused by world update steps not being correctly removed after execution, preventing performance degradation during longer play sessions. Alongside this, cloth simulation systems were updated so that only relevant entities process simulation when visible, reducing unnecessary frame updates and improving overall efficiency. Together, these optimisations represent a major step forward in gameplay performance and scalability as development continues.
Server
Over the past week, the server team has continued refining dungeon spawning behaviour with a focus on improving encounter composition and environmental layout. Adjustments were made to spawn parameters to allow for a greater number of set pieces within dungeons, while also ensuring sufficient space is reserved for their placement, resulting in more coherent and readable room designs. Alongside this, several issues were addressed relating to dungeon event sequencing, resolving cases where events were firing in the incorrect order in all rooms beyond the first. These fixes help ensure more consistent dungeon flow and reinforce the intended progression of encounters throughout each generated space.
Sound Design
Across the last week, the sound team has continued refining and expanding the audio experience across both gameplay and interface systems in Depths of Erendorn. Combat victory and defeat sounds have been updated, completing another section of the next pre-alpha test checklist and bringing additional clarity to end-of-encounter moments. New UI audio has also been implemented for the character select screen, replacing standard clicks with more varied and engaging feedback to improve the navigation feel. In addition, blacksmith hammering sounds have been reworked to align with the animation team's recent NPC additions, ensuring audio now triggers in response to specific actions rather than playing randomly, a step towards more purposeful and reactive settlement ambience. Alongside these updates, ongoing progress has been made in addressing items on the events list, further supporting the continued polish and consistency of the game’s overall soundscape.
Environment Art
Over the past week, the Environment team continued refining the atmosphere and visual quality of underground areas across Depths of Erendorn through a broad series of cave environment updates. Crystal lighting was improved to create stronger contrast and better illuminate surrounding spaces, while cave walls were resized to enhance scale and composition throughout dungeon interiors. The team also revisited cave fog, reintroducing and adjusting the effect to feel less overpowering while still maintaining environmental depth. In parallel, the cave floor material received a substantial upgrade, including height map-driven displacement to introduce more natural surface variation and detail. Performance was further improved through the transition from standard textures to virtual textures within the cave floor material setup, helping maintain visual fidelity while reducing rendering overhead.
Animation
Over the past week, the Animation team continued expanding NPC variety and behavioural updates across the world of Depths of Erendorn. Work focused on refining existing NPC animations while introducing additional character variations to help settlements and populated areas feel more diverse and believable. These ongoing improvements support greater visual variety during exploration and interaction, contributing to a more active and immersive world as development progresses.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of April yet?!
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