Monthly Devlog | October 2024 | No. 69
October saw the team at Depths of Erendorn make significant advancements across all areas of development, refining and expanding the game’s features to elevate the player experience. The 3D Modelling team made notable progress in the creation of high-level and lower-level Minotaur character variants, ensuring both visual impact and technical optimisation. The Set Piece Design team enhanced the game’s environments with new assets, enriching the settlement areas and adding more detail to residential zones. On the technical side, the Client and Server teams made crucial improvements, optimising social functionality, refining gameplay systems, and enhancing server performance for smoother player interactions. Meanwhile, the Sound team continued to expand the game’s audio landscape, recording new source material and developing impactful sound effects to complement the game’s magical and combat elements. The Animation team focused on improving character realism and motion fluidity, ensuring smoother, more natural animations. Finally, the VFX team refined key visual effects, balancing their presentation and ensuring visual fidelity, while also exploring new concepts for magical creatures and abilities. Collectively, these efforts have pushed Depths of Erendorn forward, improving both the technical and creative aspects of the game and contributing to a more immersive and polished experience for players. 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 the past month, the 3D Modelling team at Depths of Erendorn made substantial strides in the creation and refinement of the high-level and lower-level Minotaur character variants. Beginning with the initial block-out of the high-level Minotaur, the team established strong foundational proportions that capture the creature’s intimidating presence. From there, the focus shifted to detailed sculpting, especially on the heavily armoured version, where each piece was meticulously crafted to achieve a powerful, bulky aesthetic. Concurrently, work progressed on a distinct lower-level armour set for the Minotaur, designed to add a menacing visual impact even in early encounters. With the sculpting of these variants completed, the team transitioned into retopologising and optimisation, ensuring these models maintain high visual fidelity while performing efficiently in-game. Examples of the work completed by the 3D modelling team can be seen below.
Set Piece Design
Over October, the Set Piece Design team at Depths of Erendorn has made significant strides in enhancing the game’s environments, with a particular focus on refining the settlement areas. The team successfully added a variety of new assets to the residential zones, including the completion of a spiky wooden fence that provides both an aesthetic and defensive element, reinforcing the atmosphere of the area. The continued finalisation of PLA assets further deepened the authenticity and character of these spaces, ensuring they feel lived-in and immersive. In addition, the team expanded the asset library by incorporating new Megascans assets, carefully optimised to suit the game’s aesthetic and performance needs. This expansion enables the creation of even more detailed and realistic set pieces, enriching the overall experience and providing players with dynamic, engaging environments to explore. examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Programming
Client
Throughout October, the Client team at Depths of Erendorn has made significant strides in enhancing both the technical performance and player experience of the game. A major focus has been on refining social functionality, with the introduction of a context menu in the Social Panel to streamline player interactions, making it easier to manage in-game relationships and perform relevant actions. In addition to improving social features, the team resolved critical issues, such as desynchronisation of character movement and optimised message types for better gameplay performance, which collectively resulted in smoother and more reliable interactions. A significant overhaul of session switching was also implemented, enabling seamless transitions between different game environments while retaining social connections, ensuring players could easily interact with friends regardless of their in-game location. Further improvements were made to the UI, with new utility bar icons, updated ability tooltips, and fixes to display issues, providing a more intuitive and visually appealing interface. Additionally, the team worked on enhancing the functionality for entering dungeons directly from the open world, paving the way for a more immersive and expansive exploration experience. These updates have not only improved the technical aspects of the game but also contributed to a more polished and engaging experience for players in the world of Erendorn.
Server
October saw the Server team at Depths of Erendorn make significant strides in optimising core gameplay systems and enhancing the overall performance and functionality of the game. The team successfully implemented the new player-facing server architecture, ensuring compatibility across game servers and client clusters while addressing several bugs and issues. Efforts to optimise server-server communication and reduce message size have led to notable improvements in data transfer efficiency, reducing client wait times by approximately 50%. The team also focused on refining core gameplay mechanics, including the rework of the Void Flicker ability, improvements to enemy pathfinding, and the development of new generic abilities, broadening strategic options for players. In addition, work continued on optimising dungeon generation, resolving critical bugs, and enhancing the dungeon experience. On the social front, the team completed backend support for friend commands, enabling more interactive player connections. Other notable progress includes improvements to inter-server communication, NPC movement, and combat updates, all of which have resulted in smoother gameplay, particularly in combat-heavy scenarios. The team also laid the groundwork for a control panel to centralise server management, paving the way for more streamlined oversight and future automation. These advancements have collectively contributed to a more fluid, reliable, and immersive experience for players within the world of Erendorn. Additional work completed by the team can be seen below.
- Added AuthorName to all chat messages so that the sender doesn’t need to be in the session for the client to be able to display the name.
- Client records are now correctly removed on player disconnect.
- Reconnections made between servers now correctly updates the ‘Closed’ status on the wrapper class.
- Updating MessageType constants
- Dungeon lobby message sending has been fixed.
- CombatStartMonitor now skips execution whilst there are no players in the zone.
- DialogueResponse command handling fixed after being broken by the communication update.
Sound Design
Over the past month, the Sound team at Depths of Erendorn has made significant progress in refining and expanding the game’s audio landscape to enhance player immersion. The team focused on creating and testing several key sound effects, including drafts for the Max XP and Levelling Up sounds, which were designed to align with in-game events, such as combat and achievement moments at camp. A celebratory fanfare was created for Levelling Up to emphasise the sense of accomplishment, while the Max XP sound was tailored to blend seamlessly with other combat-related UI sounds. Additionally, the team embarked on developing a range of new audio assets, including bass-heavy magic effects, which serve as foundational layers for spell sounds and provide impact to abilities. While still in the early stages, these elements are being refined to move away from a sci-fi tone and into something more fitting for the game’s fantasy setting. The team also dedicated time to recording fresh source material for various abilities, building a robust library of raw audio for future designs. This included the creation of new combat sounds with a focus on intensity and physicality, exemplified by the reworked Elbow Smash ability, which now carries a heavier, more brutal punch. These additions aim to bring more dynamic, immersive audio to Erendorn, enhancing the overall player experience. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Animation
Throughout October, the Animation team at Depths of Erendorn has made significant strides in enhancing character realism and improving the fluidity of animations across the game. The team dedicated substantial time to refining skeletal meshes for new hairstyles and resolving rigging issues, collaborating closely with the 3D modelling team to ensure seamless integration. A key focus was placed on improving the realism of character movements, particularly by applying physics to clothing and hair, resulting in more natural and dynamic animations. Additionally, the team worked extensively to resolve skinning issues, particularly for human characters, ensuring smoother, more lifelike motions. Efforts to improve animation synchronisation were also a priority, with particular attention given to hair meshes, which were successfully aligned with character models to create more cohesive and responsive movements. To further optimise workflow and visual clarity, the team developed an animation set scene, allowing for more efficient reviews of animation quality. Significant updates were made to several key animations, including the Dirt Kicking animation, which was adjusted to appear more grounded and natural in the context of gameplay. Additionally, the team began transferring animations to other character classes, focusing on generic animations to streamline consistency across different character types. Examples of the work completed by the team can be seen below.
Visual Effects
Over the past month, the VFX team at Depths of Erendorn has made notable progress in enhancing the visual impact and clarity of in-game effects. The team focused on refining visual effects for key abilities, including Quick Strike and Incision, ensuring that these abilities are both impactful and balanced in their presentation. Significant attention was given to the levelling-up effect, which was redesigned to include an upward motion that remains visible from varying distances, catering to players who frequently zoom in and out. This update enhances the sense of progression and makes the effect feel more dynamic and rewarding. The team also addressed material issues caused by recent updates that affected greyscale textures. To resolve this, the team undertook a time-consuming process of converting modes to virtual greyscale, ensuring the visual fidelity of in-game effects was maintained. Alongside these fixes, the team explored new visual effects concepts, particularly for magical creatures or constructs with prominent shoulder designs, such as the Arcane Giant. This exploration not only pushed creative boundaries but also laid the foundation for future visual updates. Throughout these efforts, the team remained focused on delivering visually striking, efficient, and immersive effects that enhance the overall player experience in Depths of Erendorn.
That’s it for this month’s devlog, but have you seen our monthly roundup of September yet?!
