May DevLog | Week #3

Another Depths of Erendorn game devlog has reared its head and with it comes the newly completed Wolvajin model, which we’re very excited to show you guys. If you like what you see, make sure to follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook where we post exclusive content about our upcoming fantasy RPG!

3D Character Modelling

In last week’s game devlog, we spoke about how we were remodelling one of the fierce enemies in Depths of Erendorn, the Wolvajin. After heavily modifying the body, resculpting the anatomy and altering the proportions, we are happy to say that the sculpt was finished this week! Our Character Artist then retopologised and unwrapped the Wolvajin before moving on to texturing.

The focus over the last couple of days has been projection painting the fur. Projection painting is a technique that involves projecting photographs directly onto the model. Through this method, our Character Artist was able to paint the base of the height, roughness and colour of the fur simultaneously. This is because projection painting allows you to paint as many texture maps at the same time as you want. When working on creating fur on the Wolvajin, shorter hairs were used for the head, hands and lower legs while longer fur was used everywhere else.

Once the base of the fur was complete, different lighting tests were carried out to make sure that the base was looking correct. All of this hard work resulted in a new Wolvajin model that we think really captures their vicious and savage nature.

This week, we retopologised and unwrapped the finished Wolvajin sculpt before moving onto painting the fur.

The fur was projection painted onto the model in Substance Painter. We then tested the Wolvajin under various light sources to ensure that the base looked right.

Now that the fur has been textured, we can start refining the details. Lighter fur will be added around the Wolvajin’s neck and tail, for example, in order to make it look a bit fluffier.

Animation

Our Animator spent this week working on an animation that will show a skirmish between a Twilight Elf Assassin and a horde of ravaging Zombies as they skulk through the dungeons. Whilst working on this, our Animator:

Made some changes to the animations in Maya

Added a new, one-handed Zombie mesh to the scene

Worked closely with our Environment Artist to create a good look for each scene

Like the dungeon scenes we created a few weeks ago, which showed a group of adventurers facing off against the nefarious Bandits, this animation will help to give us a taste of how fights will look and feel in Depths of Erendorn, as well as give us the chance of creating a really awesome scene that we think you’re going to enjoy!

Environment Art

In the environment this week, the cave walls kit was reworked in order to better suit the style and fit the dimensions of our dungeon environments. Our Environment Artist also created a Triplanar Overlay Shader for the cave walls, which:

Allows for seamless world space texture blending between wall pieces

Keeps consistent texel density, regardless of the asset’s scale

The Triplanar Overlay Shader works by blending together the baked, high poly wall model information and a Worldspace Triplanar tiling material in Unity. This is just one of many new additions that have been made to Erendorn’s dungeon environments, which are now looking more ominous and rugged than ever.

This guide was put together by our Character Artist to describe the fur painting process. When painting the fur for the Wolvajin, however, Photoshop was not used since the height, roughness and colour could be painted at the same time in Substance Painter.

Server and Game Client

Over the last couple of weeks, our game developers have been operating sub rosa, putting together top secret and classified plans for the continuing development of Depths of Erendorn. In between these mysterious meetings, however, they made sure to give the server and game client some TLC.

In the server, Sockets Manager Logic continued to be worked on when possible. While this has not been implemented yet, it paves the way for a dynamic network structure that will better manage heavy player loads. Plans were also set in motion to include an Ability Power Stat. This means changing nearly every ability in the game to include this new stat which will scale at various rates on different abilities. Ability Power is a new stat that will allow players to get more power for their abilities. This means, for example, that while the Fireball ability currently deals 3-5 Damage for 4 Mana, after the rescaling work it will deal 6-10 (+30% Ability Power) Fire Damage ignoring Resilience and Armour. We are also rescaling character stats to be higher, roughly by a factor of three, so that we can have a bit more freedom with stats. This will, in turn, add another dimension to a player’s character and enable them to play how they would like to play.

Meanwhile, in the client, an anti-aliasing/camera post-processing plugin was imported into the project. Aliasing is the name given to a problem that happens when trying to display lines and edges on a grid of squares (pixels). This can give a line a jagged and pixelated look, almost like a staircase. Anti-aliasing, however, makes the line appear smoother by spreading it over several pixels. Therefore, we have used an anti-aliasing plugin to make all the edges and lines in Depths of Erendorn appear smooth. This will dramatically improve the overall look of the game.

The cave walls kit was reworked in order to better suit the style as well as fit the dimensions of our dungeon environments.

A Unity Renderer Package was also installed into the client this week. This will allow us to capture gameplay footage in the future, a feature we’re excited to make use of!

