Throughout the past week, Depths of Erendorn witnessed dedicated efforts from its various development teams. The 3D Modelling team made significant progress in the final stages of texturing an agile character's distinctive armour set, with only minor adjustments left. The Programming team successfully wrapped up their work on the inventory refactor, focusing on loot containers almost ready for implementation, and they also conducted crucial bug fixes in preparation for an upcoming internal milestone. Meanwhile, the Sound team demonstrated a strategic approach, focusing on Level 3 Talents for the Forest Druid. For the Animation team, it was a week of both troubleshooting local project issues and fine-tuning animations, resulting in smoother project development and improved character animations. Lastly, the VFX team concentrated on resolving issues from the recent playtest and initiated plans for a collaborative workspace, ensuring a more immersive and efficient workflow. These collective efforts reflect Depths of Erendorn's commitment to delivering a polished and immersive gaming experience, encompassing both visual and auditory aspects. Examples of the work completed by each team throughout the week can be seen below. 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
The 3D Modelling team at Depths of Erendorn focused their weekly work on the final stages of texturing the distinctive armour set for agile characters, with only minor tweaks left to be made. Additionally, they diligently worked on concepting some alternate colour variations for the armour, exploring more saturated blues and deeper browns for the leather components. Once this is in place the armour will have better contrast. Examples of the nearly completed set of armour can be seen below.
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Programming
In a dedicated push towards the pre-alpha milestone, the Programming team at Depths of Erendorn spent the week resolving an array of bugs spanning different game systems to enhance the game's accessibility and user-friendliness, benefiting new players. Their work included fixing issues like updating tutorial images, character attack sound effects, and animation glitches. They also ensured smoother transitions between dungeon floors and addressed problems in dialogue history. Furthermore, they refined the inventory system for the upcoming internal milestone, with substantial progress on loot containers. Rigorous testing and bug fixing resulted in improvements to the character creation screen and stat display. This comprehensive effort also extended to enhancing the skybox, weather effects, and audio controls. In summary, their work highlights their commitment to making Depths of Erendorn a polished and user-friendly gaming experience. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
- Updating of tutorial images.
- Fixing a number of character attack SFX triggers.
- Fixed a bug with the Knight's idle animation showing a one handed weapon.
- Fixed a bug where players needed to reselect themselves after moving between Dungeon floors in order to move.
- Ensured all Tutorial triggers are correctly firing and saving correctly.
- Fixed a bug where dialogue history wasn't jumping to the bottom when a new message appears.
- Fixed an animation bug for Zentragal where they can get caught looping a cast animation.
- Fixed ability descriptions for a number of abilities.
- Worked on clamping camera movement to areas with navigation data only.
- Turned off a number of development features not intended for players.
- Added a tooltip for the Aggressive enemy type icon to let players know how Aggressive enemies behave on their turn.
Sound Design
Throughout the week, the sound team at Depths of Erendorn dedicated time to strategic planning, determining their upcoming focus and creating comprehensive documentation to streamline their workflow. Following this, their efforts were directed towards the development of Level 3 Talents for the Forest Druid, including the creation of audio for abilities such as Life Mend, Dampening Shield, and Toxify. This meticulous approach demonstrates the team's commitment to enhancing the auditory experience within the game. Examples of the work completed throughout the week can be seen below.
Animation
For the Animation team's weekly updates at Depths of Erendorn, their efforts encompassed both troubleshooting local project issues and animation refinements. They began by relocating the project to a more efficient drive, ensuring ample space for optimised work in the engine. This move aimed to address difficulties with generating Visual Studio files, a critical step in the project updating process. With these local issues successfully resolved, they proceeded to rebuild the project for smoother development. In terms of animation updates, the team reimported Zentragal and Forest Druid animations into the game engine, simultaneously removing animation keys from the weapon joint to eliminate unnecessary weapon rotation during spell usage, enhancing animation quality. The team also made significant strides in updating the animation controller for Droval, refining death and hit reaction animations and adjusting weapon positions and rotations within character blueprints. Furthermore, they dedicated efforts to enhancing Watertarg's basic attacks, successfully importing these refined animations into the game engine. These combined endeavors underscore the Animation team's commitment to delivering a polished and immersive gaming experience. Examples of the fixes that came to some animations through the week can be seen below.
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Visual Effects
The VFX team at Depths of Erendorn continued their efforts from the previous week, focusing on addressing issues identified during the recent playtest. They dedicated time to resolving these issues, ensuring a smoother and more enjoyable gameplay experience. In addition to fixing the spotted problems, the team initiated the creation of a collaborative workspace for VFX and animation. They began sketching out a rough plan for this workspace, which will see full development in the upcoming phase. This workspace will facilitate seamless collaboration between VFX and animation teams, enhancing the quality and efficiency of their work. Examples of the rough plan created by the team can be seen below.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of September yet?!
