Hello and welcome to the seventh devlog for Ardenfall, the open-ended fantasy RPG! If you want to first see what we’re about, check out our about page, as well as our gallery. For the past few weeks we’ve been focused on getting some content into the game, and figuring out the kinks in the pipeline. The goal was to get 2 of the 4 swamp architecture styles started, and I’m super happy with the results! Read on!
Simple Clothing
Now that the new rig has been fully implemented, this finally allows us to start modeling clothing. For now, we’re focusing on basic clothing and armor to make sure we don’t have naked elves running around Ardenfall.
Nakiban Set
The Nakiban Set is a arch + decor set used for the poorer elves living in the wetlands. The buildings are built from the wood found in the region – from the Nakiban Tree, and are very simple shapes. The decor is also simple, often on stilts or very blocky in shape.
Sheranu Set
The Sheranu set is another poorer elf swamp architecture style, but originates from when elves would build huts around the roots of the Sheru tree. This dome like structure is found in the Sheranu Huts dotted around the world. Note the colored lighting: you’ll be seeing a lot of that in this RPG. I’m sorry, I can’t help myself!
Lots of Decoration + Clutter
Clutter and other decorations is an important part of set dressing a world. I’m pretty happy with the current sets of decoration, and excited to see what we’ll have later on!
Implementing Animations
Since the new rig was implemented, new animations are slowly being added to replace the placeholder ones. These are still temporary, and not very good (I’m not an animator), but they’re better than they were. Coupled with new head movement systems, and it’s slowly coming along!
Lightning!
Finally added a “thunderstorm” weather, complete with lightning and thunder :) This will usually be found in the Highlands, and usually not in the Wetlands. But I’m still glad to get it in!
Pipeline Changes
One big question I’ve had to deal with is:
How does one organize thousands of meshes in a huge RPG and make it easy for level designers to find what they are looking for?
-Me for the past 2 years
For the second time, I’ve gone through all of my meshes and renamed / moved everything. This was a rather grueling task, but I’m relatively confident it is the last time I need to do this. My major mistake was thinking it would be a good idea to keep all of my meshes sorted via which region they come from – IE a swamp tree would be found in “Imported/Models/Swamp/SwampTree/”. This simply did not work – so often I would forget which region a certain mesh would be in, and so often they wouldn’t fall under any category!
And thus: I redesigned how meshes are sorted. First off, the concept of a “Set” is now enforced – I want to limit the number of loose .blend files and their relative export directories. Also, no more region directories!
I’ve also implemented more features to our Collection Tool, which allows us to easily build house / decor presets, then swap through them during edit time.
More Changes and Additions
And of course, lots of small additions and fixes were worked on this RPG the past few weeks as well. I’ve transferred to a new record table format, to make it more source-control friendly, changed how spell scrolls work, plus a whole bunch of other minor things.
Well, that’s that! I hope you enjoyed reading this update for Ardenfall! As usual, if you’re interested in keeping up with the project, or want to reach out to help, please follow our Twitter, or join our Discord! Have a wonderful day, friends. :)
