August brought another month of focused development across all teams on Depths of Erendorn, with progress spanning character creation, environmental polish, and core system refinement. New assets, technical updates, and gameplay improvements were delivered on multiple fronts as the project continues building toward its upcoming testing milestones. From the creation of the Arcane Giant and expanded quest marker functionality to backend optimisations for database performance and dialogue interactions, each team contributed to expanding the game's depth and reliability. These efforts are steadily shaping a more responsive, immersive, and visually coherent experience as the world of Erendorn continues to evolve. 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
Throughout August, the 3D Modelling team focused on bringing one of Erendorn’s most imposing summons to life with the full creation of the Arcane Giant. Beginning with early sculpting work, the team established the key proportions, silhouette, and ornate armour that define these arcane-infused titans. Once the high-resolution sculpts were finalised, attention shifted to retopology, converting the detailed forms into game-ready meshes suitable for animation and performance. The latter half of the month was spent refining textures and materials, layering visual elements that emphasise the Giants’ mystical heritage and ceremonial stature. With final textures completed, the Arcane Giant is now ready for integration, marking a major milestone in the game’s expanding cast of magical entities. As this chapter concludes, the team has already begun developing new gear sets for the Forest Druid, setting the stage for further visual diversity in Erendorn’s equipment range.
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Set Piece Design
Throughout August, the Set Piece Design team turned their attention to enhancing the visual richness and production efficiency of Erendorn’s tented regions. A key focus was the introduction of new assets for set dressing, including a variety of cloth and rug meshes aimed at elevating the look and feel of encampments and temporary dwellings. To streamline this growing library, new Megascans assets were imported, cleaned up with optimised topology, and packed into shared texture atlases for better performance. Alongside these efforts, tileable fur textures were added to bring greater authenticity to interior details such as rugs and bedding. The team also began leveraging Procedural Content Generation tools to assist with set dressing, accelerating placement workflows and allowing for quicker iteration as these areas continue to develop. Together, these improvements support a more grounded and detailed world while maintaining efficiency in the design pipeline.
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Programming
Client
During August, the Client team focused on improving the functionality and user experience of key systems related to quest tracking and vendor interaction. A major push was made on refining the quest marker system, expanding its capabilities to include not only area-based Points of Interest but also more precise markers for NPCs and interactable objects. These updates aim to give players clearer direction when navigating both settlements and adventure zones. The team also implemented improvements such as automatic marker focus when opening the quest book, added support for markers on the main map, and introduced visual tweaks to help differentiate map elements like fast travel points and regional names. On the vendor side, placeholder stats were removed and parsing was corrected for consumable items, ensuring complete and accurate item displays. Background work also addressed how quest data is validated and updated, reducing the risk of redundant or conflicting information appearing on the client. These combined efforts contribute to a more intuitive and stable user interface across multiple gameplay systems.
Server
Throughout August, the Server team made considerable progress across a wide range of systems in preparation for the upcoming Friends & Family Alpha milestone. A major focus was placed on optimising event and dialogue functionality, including improvements to the Events and Dialogue Editors that enhance usability and enable more dynamic content creation. These included new location selection tools, entity-anchored event spawning, conditional text responses, and response handlers capable of triggering in-game effects. Core systems also saw refinement, with dungeon loading routines and AI logic receiving updates to improve stability and combat behaviour, particularly for ranged enemies. Performance was further improved by replacing mutex locks with atomic operations in key backend processes, helping reduce contention and enhance scalability. Additional changes introduced weather overrides, event toggling, and improved XP balancing based on time of day. On the data side, the introduction of a stat inheritance system significantly reduced database load, cutting stat entries from 25,000 to just 900 and improving future scalability. Rounding out the month, fixes were delivered for dungeon-specific bugs, NPC cooldown handling, and adventuring soft-locks, while foundational work began on a new Entity Editor to support future tooling expansion.
Other work completed throughout the month by the team:
- Pings now work again in dungeons.
- Dev cheats were added to dungeons however this task needs more work.
- Character levelling up was fixed (broken during stats refactor).
- XP and Gold gain from combat was fixed (broken during stats refactor).
- Fixed consumable item scaling.
Sound Design
Over the course of August, the Sound team made meaningful progress in both creative development and long-term organisation. A key focus was placed on building out the audio identity of the Earthen Dwarves through the design of new ability sounds, helping to reinforce the faction’s unique character and combat style. To support this, the team introduced a new “character tone” methodology, adjusting transients and audio signatures across abilities to ensure each class sounds distinct and contextually appropriate. Early implementations, such as those applied to the Zentragal, are already delivering greater clarity and individuality across the roster. Alongside these updates, the team continued streamlining the audio pipeline by organising legacy files and updating tracking systems, ensuring future additions remain scalable and easy to integrate as the soundscape of Erendorn continues to grow.
Environment Art
Throughout August, the Environment team focused on strengthening the visual foundation of Erendorn’s world in preparation for upcoming world events. A significant part of this effort involved re-importing the “world tree” asset with corrected textures, establishing a strong focal point within the landscape. While this version may act as a placeholder, it provides an immediate visual anchor while the new tree creation workflow is being finalised. Parallel to this, work was carried out to resolve a terrain material issue that had caused sections of the world to appear blurry or fail to load due to texture streaming and mapping inconsistencies. By exploring new material strategies and workflows, the team has begun improving landscape reliability and overall visual cohesion across key regions of the game.
Animation
Throughout August, the Animation team focused on expanding and refining Erendorn’s animation systems, advancing both technical capabilities and creature readiness. Early in the month, a new hair implementation method was trialled, allowing physics-based movement while keeping the asset anchored to the character’s head, achieved without relying on blueprint nodes that had previously caused errors. This solution improves stability and opens the door for more dynamic character visuals in future updates. The team also completed a full rework of the Minotaur’s animation set, adjusting locomotion and combat sequences to match recent model updates from the 3D team. With this set now complete, the Minotaur is fully prepared for gameplay integration. Additional efforts focused on streamlining the animation library by removing outdated clips and replacing them with improved versions, helping maintain consistency across the project. Work also began on initial setups for animal AI behaviour, laying important groundwork for more reactive and believable wildlife across the game world.
Visual Effects
Throughout August, the VFX team concentrated on refining one of Erendorn’s core environmental effects with the development and gradual implementation of a new fire emitter. This updated visual effect was designed with performance in mind, with much of its detail and motion handled directly through texture work to reduce system load. After achieving promising results in material previews, the team shifted focus to refining the effect's in-game appearance, adjusting the animation and exploring the use of custom mesh shapes to add more depth and movement. By month’s end, the new fire had begun replacing legacy versions across various blueprints, delivering smoother performance while maintaining visual impact. The work continues to balance artistic style with gameplay readability, enhancing both the atmosphere and efficiency of Erendorn’s VFX library.
That’s it for this month’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of July yet?!
