Another week of steady progress across Depths of Erendorn, with every department pushing development forward on multiple fronts. The 3D Modelling Team has completed the Innkeeper’s sculpt and moved into retopology, bringing another settlement character closer to game-ready status, while the Set Piece Design Team has made significant strides on Outpost C, establishing its ruined stone structure and beginning the detail work that will make it feel like a location with genuine history. On the systems side, the Client Team has been strengthening core interface reliability, adding visual ability charges to the hotbar and continuing the inventory refactor, and the Server Team has expanded the quest roster with a reworked Cursed Brazier quest and a brand new assignment following a Dwarven researcher’s investigation into ancient runes in the quarry. Rounding out the week, the VFX Team has moved into active effect development for the next set of abilities, laying the visual groundwork for their eventual implementation alongside audio and gameplay systems. 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
Character production continued this week, with the 3D Modelling Team completing the Innkeeper's sculpt and moving into the retopology stage. With the character's overall form and finer details now established, the team is beginning to develop a more optimised mesh suitable for the next stages of production. This process will prepare the Innkeeper for subsequent texturing and implementation, bringing another of Depths of Erendorn's settlement characters closer to completion.
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Set Piece Design
Construction of Outpost C has progressed significantly over the past week, with the Set Piece Design Team establishing the main structure and beginning work on its finer details. The ruined stone complex now features its core walls, arched openings and elevated walkways, creating the foundation for a substantial new location within Depths of Erendorn. With the main structure in place, the team has begun adding environmental details and scattered props to bring the outpost to life, enhancing its weathered appearance and reinforcing the sense of a once-functional stronghold left in ruin.
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Programming
Client
Refinements to the Client Team's core interface systems have continued over the past week, with attention focused on party management, ability presentation and inventory stability in Depths of Erendorn. The team has addressed issues within the party panel updates while introducing visual ability charges to the hotbar, improving the clarity of ability use during combat. Work has also progressed on integrating the next set of abilities into the client, preparing them to receive their associated sound and visual effects, alongside the addition of several new NPCs. Meanwhile, the inventory refactor has involved resolving major errors that caused crashes when certain variables were not correctly assigned during UI construction in C++. These improvements are helping prepare upcoming content for implementation while strengthening the reliability of the game's client systems.
Server
Quest development has advanced this week, with the Server Team introducing a reworked Cursed Brazier quest alongside a new assignment centred on a Dwarven researcher's investigation into ancient runes within the quarry. The updated Cursed Brazier quest builds upon existing content, while the new quarry quest introduces further opportunities for players to explore the world's lore and uncover its mysteries. Together, these additions continue to expand the quest roster of Depths of Erendorn, providing new objectives that encourage exploration and deepen the connection between the game's locations and inhabitants.
Sound Design
Audio development has continued this week, with the Sound Team maintaining focus on ability sound work alongside dedicated progress on the Watertarg. Bringing a creature of this kind to life through sound requires careful consideration of how each audio layer contributes to its overall identity, and the team has been working to build a palette that feels distinctive and fitting for the Watertarg’s place within the world of Depths of Erendorn. This ongoing work continues to strengthen the audio foundations of the game’s expanding creature roster, ensuring each addition is supported by sound design that complements its visual and gameplay identity.
Environment
Some of the most substantial technical work in the project’s recent history has taken place over the past several weeks, with the Environment Team completing a comprehensive overhaul of Map_01’s terrain foundation. The team has replaced the existing Landscape system with a Unreal Engine 5.8 Mesh Terrain spanning approximately 6 by 6 kilometres, with terrain level of detail now handled entirely through Nanite. The transition involved rebuilding the terrain material from the ground up to support weight channels, automatic slope-to-cliff transitions, altitude-based snow, shoreline sand, and four-corner texture bombing to eliminate visible tiling. A baked direction map was also developed to orient sand ripples correctly around the island’s coastline, ensuring wave patterns follow the natural incoming swell across every cove.
Vegetation has seen an equally significant overhaul, with GPU-driven grass now reading directly from the terrain’s runtime virtual texture to avoid roads, mud, sand, and snow automatically, and a new Houdini pipeline producing fully opaque modelled grass tufts with baked root ambient occlusion and wind data. Across the wider map, approximately 73,000 instanced Nanite trees bring the forests to life with real bone wind animation, arranged in natural-looking stands with mother trees seeding younger tiers around them. Cliff clusters and rubble piles are managed through Biome Core and each stamp eroded mounds into the terrain for a grounded appearance, while a dedicated Houdini HDA generated 774 cliff mesh tiles for the east half of the map overnight. All eight water bodies have been integrated into the new terrain through river and lake modifiers, and a significant engine bug discovered during this process has been successfully worked around. Rounding out the update, a thorough performance pass brought GPU frame time down from 29.1 to 13.95 milliseconds, with further game thread optimisations improving frame rates from approximately 35 to 50 frames per second.
Visual Effects
Visual development has moved into the next stage for Depths of Erendorn's expanding ability roster, with the VFX Team beginning work on effects for selected abilities. Building upon the established concepts, the team is now developing the visual elements needed to bring these abilities to life in-game, considering how each effect will communicate its purpose and complement the corresponding combat actions. This work marks an important step towards integrating the new abilities, laying the groundwork for further refinement and implementation alongside their associated audio and gameplay systems.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of September yet?!
