An exciting week as the 3D modelling team finalises the tier 3 armour for the Zentragal. Additionally, the wizards of coding have been working on streamlining the transition from dungeon to open-world and implementing the initial system for world events. Finally, the animation team continued to work on the Fen Elf and created animations for stunned enemies. 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 has continued to work on the Zentragal's armour models, finalising the textures for the tier 3 protective gear. The team has been adding small details to all the tiers of the arachnid's bodice. The most extravagant of them only to be worn by the most powerful amongst their race. This armour differs from the others as it uses more red accents. The team have also used two layers of texture to add a fainter webbing to the breastplate to convey the arachnid background that the Zentragal has. The introduction of a red gradient towards the bottom of the armour also shows the power of the illusionist. This crimson highlight could also reference those unfortunate enough to come across the powerful spellcaster. Examples of the textured tier 3 Zentragal armour are below.
Programming
Client
This week has been about further improvements and bug fixing for the World Combat gameplay loop, streamlining Session switching between Zones and implementing new character assets. Additional work completed by the cient-side team can be seen below.
- Concluded Combats now clear themselves properly and update Session Submanagers. This allows victorious parties to leave the combat and continue adventuring, in addition defeated players will return cleanly to the Settlement to fight another day.
- Session switching has been improved to fully remove all Submanagers associated with a Session the player is leaving. This means players can now freely switch Sessions without taking up unnecessary memory in the process.
- Explored and began testing methods to integrate the latest World Partition level as our main gameplay map.
- Interactables now spawn and are Interactable.
- Refactored context menus.
- Added a vendor asset to the client to add the first vendor to the game.
- Added Parsing functions for Vendor Objects.
- Added Parsing function for Spawned Object data.
- Vendor window now opens and correctly displays player and vendor inventories, and lists names of both.
- Created a new item slot class for vendors so that parts only necessary for inventory management are excluded from the vendor and vice versa.
- Some classes now show their relevant artwork in the inventory and inspector windows.
Server
This week the server team has been busy on World Events. The groundwork code and the very first implementation of a giant system to the game are ready for testing. This includes Berries that provide a light snack to the party, a Caged NPC who needs saving from Bandits, and a barrel containing an unreasonably high number of loot combinations. Most of these were picked out to specifically test the code they call.
Additionally, some fixes for open-world combat have been worked on. Including what happens when open-world combat ends, whether that's through loss or victory, what happens when multiple groups of enemies try to spawn/fight the players at the same time and making sure the client gets all the correct logs from these updates. More work completed by the server-side team can be seen below.
- Added server logs to spawn Interactable objects in mid-session.
- Added server logs to remove Interactable objects mid-session.
- Added server logs to spawn Non-interactable objects mid-session.
- Added server logs to remove Non-interactable objects mid-session.
- Added server logs to change the walkable area of the zone mid-session.
- Added an example dialogue to the settlement to provide an example for the client team to work on dialogue.
- Added the ability for a dialogue to trigger a vendor message.
- Improved dialogue creation functions/process.
- Ending an adventure multiple times should no longer run the code more than once.
- Fixed some broken scaling infrastructure code that went under the radar, this should make the process of scaling up the server cap less buggy.
- Refactored world combat ending code so that clients get the correct log structure.
- Fixed subzone storage.
- Fixed subzone spawned groups information, this should make more enemy groups generate after some have been defeated.
- Refactored world combat loot distribution.
- Refactored world combat start.
- Adjusted vendors to have there data filled correctly when sent to the client.
- Adjusted vendors to have settings for what power level items they sell.
Animation
The animation team have continued their work on updating movement cycles for a few different enemies. Starting with the Fen Elf from last week, the team have also updated the run animation and created an idle for when the Elf is holding their bow. These movement cycles, along with the animations from last week were added to the engine, ready for gameplay. The team also worked on a basic attack for the Droval, using similar techniques used in the Wounding Strike cycle from last week. The animators have utilised exaggeration, conveying the amount of strength the enemy is channelling within its swing. Finally, the team worked on some stunned animations for a few characters and enemies, all these animations will need to be identifiable to the player when applied. Once in the game, the user interface will also be used to feedback to the player when a character or enemy is stunned. Examples of all the new movement cycles are below.
That’s it for this week’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of August yet?!
