February DevLog | Game Development Summary

Welcome back to another game development log as we walk you through the latest updates on our upcoming video game, Depths of Erendorn. We have tons of new animations to show you as well as another recently completed playable character. If you want to read about everything in more detail, we post weekly devlogs over on our game site – but in the meantime, let’s get into it.

3D Character Modelling

February wasn’t the month of love for our Character Artist – it was the month of the Forest Druid. A ton of progress was made on this playable character, from designing its various clothes and adornments to finding the most efficient way of creating her hair. Here is what we did, step-by-step, to create this awesome character:

• The female Human base mesh, which was created a few months ago, was first adjusted and used to create the Forest Druid’s base mesh.
• Clothes and accessories were sculpted individually before being added to the model.
• To show roots spiralling around the Forest Druid’s body, wrapping planes with alpha texture applied were used instead of cylinders in order to save on the overall polycount.
• Tests were then carried out to see how different vine and root thicknesses read from afar. We decided to use thick, jungle-esque vines.
• Normal mapping was then applied to the wrapping planes in order to give depth to the shape.
• The mesh was retopologised once all these details were in place. Retopologising a mesh reduces its number of polygons, allowing the model to be rendered much faster.
• Texture maps were then added to the model. These acted as a foundation for the final texturing process that would come later.
• The base mesh was then unwrapped and the texture maps were baked. Unwrapping ensures that the model is seamless while baking is a process that extracts high poly information.
• Using a method that is used to create trees, our artist could begin creating the Forest Druid’s hair, which is made up of leaves. He did this by:
  • Arranging a group of leaf planes
  • Using 3ds Max’s scatter tool to populate the head base with multiple groups of leaves
  • Modifying the vertex normals so that each leaf had a soft shadow gradient
• We then moved onto the texturing phase, where the Forest Druid’s skin was made to appear wooden. This final stage really brought the whole character together.

With all of this hard work, we now have 5 distinctive types of Forest Druids: a Juvenile Forest Druid, a Young, a Senior, an Elder and an Ancient. While it was a long and tricky process, it taught us a lot along the way and the result is an awesome new playable character that we think you’re going to love.

Animation

Throughout February, many enemies in our upcoming video game were given new animations by our hardworking Animator. The Skeleton, Snapping Turtle, Rat and King Cobra all received the following animations:

• Hit reaction
• Stun reaction
• Walk cycle
• Idle animation
• Idle variation
• Death animation

As well as this, our Animator has also been working on posing various characters that have been used throughout the month on our character profile cards. If you follow us on social media, you’ll know what we mean. If you don’t, then make sure you head over to our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter where we post awesome profile cards every Thursday!

Server

Lots of changes were made to the server in February. Bugs that were found in two ability blocks were fixed, a lot of work was carried out on the Item Generator and a few more abilities were balanced. Perhaps the most exciting part of the month was adding all of the Forest Druid’s default class abilities to the server, as well as the extra abilities that players can choose from.

The Forest Druid has many restorative abilities in their arsenal, making them well-suited towards the Healer class role:

• Heal Wounds is a default class ability that allows you to heal a target for 5 Health
• Earthbloom heals 2 Health for every 3 turns, starting from the turn after it was cast
• Replenishment gives the player a 25% chance to double Health and Mana regeneration each turn
• Nature’s Rescue heals 2 Health each turn for 4 turns and can only be used on players with under 50% Health

However, the Forest Druid doesn’t have to assume the role of a Healer. That decision is completely up to the player. As well as getting equipped with 6 default abilities, one of which includes Heal Wounds, you will also be able to choose one more special ability. This can be something restorative, like the above list, or it can be something a little more damaging:

• Hunting Spear deals a lot of Physical Damage and skewers targets against walls or objects
• Draining Seed gradually reduces an enemy’s strength over 3 turns, causing them to weaken
• Vine Lash can be used at melee range and also deals damage that ignores Resilience and armour

These are just glimpses into the enormous catalogue of abilities that accompany the Forest Druid. Every single character in Depths of Erendorn has a set of default abilities as well as a huge range of extra abilities and generic skills that the player can choose from. With such a huge variety of options, the way you play your chosen character is totally customisable.

That’s it for February, but if you just can’t wait until the next monthly devlog then make sure to keep an eye on our game site where we post devlogs every Friday. Also, if you want keep up-to-date with all the latest and greatest news about Depths of Erendorn, make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter!