Hi!
Due to a sneaky issue we just found in the upcoming build that will be uploaded today, we have decided to postpone the release 2 hours to fix the issue before making it available for download. The build will be available 2 hours from now. Sorry for the inconvenience!
2025-03-14 14:57:47 +0000 UTC View PostAround two and a half months ago I wrote a post on the plans for the dragon creator, and this week that plan was set in motion. It has progressed much faster than I anticipated, things just kind of worked out really well. Probably close to 80% of the technical challenges were resolved this week despite it being harder than in the original plan because of the new physics-based model that complicates ...
2025-03-09 23:50:47 +0000 UTC View PostCurrently there are two dragons in the game, the placeholder that you fly around with in the early access and the new one that is being worked on for all upcoming dragon features like customization, physics and ground movement. Since the physics-based model works quite differently, a lot of things need to be remade with this in mind and any additional work done on the old dragon would likely need to be remade for the new dragon later. Because of this, the old dragon won't be getting any major...
2025-03-02 22:39:23 +0000 UTC View PostHi!
The first early access build version 3 is now available to tier 3, 4 and 5 patrons!
In addition to some fixes, the world now features large forests, grass and rocky beaches. These have some impact on performance compared to the previous empty world, so let us know how it runs on your system and we'll make adjustments/settings for the next version to make sure it's not too heavy.
This time the goat hunting challenge is also a little easier, featuring 3 goats instead of 5 ...
2025-02-28 15:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostWith the switch to the new customizable dragon model, we're also taking the opportunity to explore making the dragon fully physics-based, something that both me and our engineer Georges (currently working on the battle system) have extensive experience with. So what's the difference between that and the way it's currently done?
Some of you may think that the current dragon is physics-based because of how it moves, but it's actually not (at least not in the usual sense of the word). All...
In the past few weeks, Dragontwin has gone from a primarily solo developed project to a real team effort with multiple people putting real hours into it. What has been seen so far in the early access is still mostly things made by me except for the music, but now there is a lot more progress going on behind the scenes. Here are the people involved:
Michael is a technical artist who has been involved for quite some time already, mostly exploring different landscape solutions with me. Cu...
The first early access build version 2 is now available to tier 4 and 5 patrons!
Apart from bug fixes and tweaks, it features a new experience customization menu where you can toggle the rider, change dragon color and dragonfire color, change time of day and adjust the weather.
Furthermore, in the last version we awarded a "Goat Hunter" role in Discord to a member as a reward for finding all 5 goats placed around the map as a surprise. Although this was mostly a fun joke, some mem...
2025-02-14 15:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostNext week on Friday 16:00 CET (GMT+1) the first EA build will become available for tier 4 patrons, along with some fixes and additions.
The biggest addition to this version will be a customization menu where you can toggle the rider, change dragon and dragonfire color, adjust time of day, choose weather, and possibly some more things added next week. There has also been some tweaks to mostly visual stuff. Depending on how long the remaining bugs take, there may also be some adjustments...
As promised, the first early access build was made available to tier 5 patrons this week! Even though the hours leading up to the launch were very hectic with lots of last minute tweaks and fixes, I managed to get it out at exactly 16:00 CET (UTC+1) on Friday without any major issues. It felt a bit surreal seeing people streaming it in real time shortly after!
Overall those who got to try it seem to be really enjoying it and there has been a lot of positive responses and good feedback!...
The day and hour has come! It is now possible to play the first build for tier 5 supporters. As mentioned in previous posts and on the website, the build is rolled out with 2 week intervals per tier, starting with tier 5.
The first build features free flying in the first region as seen in the latest sneak peeks, as well as a tutorial that hasn't been shown previously. More features and content will be added in subsequent builds, with the highest priority features being dragon ground mo...
Now it is less than a week until the first early access build drops! As explained on the website and in previous posts, each new build (including the first) is rolled out to patrons biweekly in batches based on tier, with the highest tier getting first access. The first build will be available to tier 5 (Guardian) on Friday at 16:00 CET (UTC+1) and then the same day and time for the next tier every two weeks. ...
2025-01-27 01:29:40 +0000 UTC View PostIt's now less than 2 weeks until the first early access build can be played and things are generally looking good. As seen in the latest sneak peek, the new landscape has now been added along with most of the music that is planned for this build. The settings menu is still WIP with some options added and some left to do, along with the custom key bindings discussed last week.
Apart from some settings, smaller additions and fixes, the main big thing that remains to be added is the new d...
2025-01-20 00:02:52 +0000 UTC View PostI was recently contacted by someone from France who asked if it will be possible to rebind keys in the upcoming early access build, because apparently they have a non-QWERTY keyboard layout. I wasn't planning on having it in the first build since it takes some time to implement, but this made me reconsider that.
I want to get an idea of how high priority this should be by having a poll where you can enter your keyboard layout. All that matters is that the main keys follow the QWERTY la...
First Patreon update of 2025! This is a good opportunity to go over the progress towards the big thing this month, namely the first early access build. As previously mentioned, the first build is scheduled for end of January. If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading the info page on the website for more details: https://www.dragontwin.com/earlyaccess .
The exact date has now been decided to Ja...
As you hopefully know, the plan for the game is to be a single player experience. There are many reasons for this, the most important one being that multiplayer complicates pretty much everything. It is sometimes said that making a game multiplayer triples the development time, ain't nobody got time for that, especially not for an over scoped game on a shoestring budget. It also limits what you can do, it would be very difficult to have battles with tens of thousands of units or more if it wa...
2024-12-29 23:58:21 +0000 UTC View PostOne key feature of Dragontwin is being able to create your own dragon. The goal here is to make the best dragon creator in existence, which I'm pretty sure we'll succeed in (to be fair, there isn't a whole lot of competition to begin with). The system itself has been mostly worked out at this point and the new dragon model is made to be customized with it. This will be the main priority along with ground movement once the first EA build is out, and there will even be a dedicated intern who ge...
2024-12-22 23:52:25 +0000 UTC View PostGliding around peacefully among the clouds is all well and good, but what's the point of having a head mounted flamethrower on a flying oversized lizard if you can't use it to wreak some havoc? That's where the battle system comes to the rescue.
As you may have seen, the goal is to let the player take part in truly epic battles straight out of a fantasy movie from the back of their dragon. Together with the strategic mode that has been discussed before, this forms the strategy game aspe...
2024-12-16 00:35:26 +0000 UTC View PostWhile the main attraction in Dragontwin is the dragon gameplay, it's important to also give some love to the human element of the game and include the option to dismount the dragon and play on foot. However, this also introduces a lot of challenges as the game has to be designed for two different scales with different requirements.
When on foot, the requirements for fidelity in both graphical details and interactions are higher while the requirements for scale are lower. For example, in...
2024-12-09 01:23:38 +0000 UTC View PostIn this week's post, I want to give an update on the progress towards the early access release (a.k.a the first build).
To recap, the initial plan was to have a kind of closed testing build available for tier 3+ patrons released before the end of the year. This would be a very barebones version without the polish and functionality necessary for public viewing, and thus would require an NDA. This plan was later replaced with a new plan where additional work is put into making the build ...
I've observed that the fanbase for this game is divided into two camps that we can call the dragon survivalists and the Targaryen conquerors. The Targaryen conquerors generally love the current dragon riding concept inspired by GoT/HotD while the dragon survivalists would really rather just play as the dragon itself, but they're still here because... dragons. The initial concept for the game was actually just that, to play as a dragon in a kind of "Smaug simulator" where you start off as a sm...
2024-11-25 01:00:39 +0000 UTC View PostIn this week's post I want to address the question of what you will actually do in the game, or rather what the goal is in terms of gameplay and progression. I've previously listed a bunch of features that I want to add, some inspirations, and the overall genres, but there hasn't really been a clear picture of how it all fits together into a cohesive experience (partially because I hadn't figured out all the pieces yet). So in this post I will put into words roughly how I imagine the...
2024-11-17 23:17:14 +0000 UTC View PostAs mentioned in this week's Discord update, I've decided to use a custom launcher to download/update the game and have a Patreon verification from within the game to grant access to it. I'll be talking some more about the implications of it in this post.
The way the launcher works is that you first download it from for example the game's website. Then the launcher downloads the game from a server, which also keeps track of when a new update is available and what files changed since you...
The original plan for the world was to have it split into many regions, each being its own large open world. Then the player would select and load into the desired region from the world map. The past few months I've been looking into how feasible it is to have everything as a single huge mega-world, making quite a bit of progress with multiple approaches while also discovering many limitations of doing this. I've now decided to go back to the original plan, because the time and effort spent g...
2024-11-03 23:32:25 +0000 UTC View PostAs the time for a first playable build draws near, I've been trying to come up with potential issues that can arise from the way its rolled out. To recap, the current plan since around the end of summer has been to make incomplete/buggy testing builds (referred to as playable builds) available for tier 3+ patrons who don't want to wait for a more comprehensive demo that would be available for all patrons, as long as they sign an NDA since there can and will be bugs/problems with those builds....
2024-10-28 02:15:23 +0000 UTC View PostAs discussed previously, the first playable build is planned to be made available for tier 3+ patrons before the end of the year, under the condition of non-disclosure. A little over a month ago I made a post about what was left to do until it is ready, where the main points were the new landscape system, UI and some flying improvements and fixes. The flying is pretty much ready now, UI will likely be ready in the coming two weeks or so, but the landscape system is still in development and no...
2024-10-20 22:33:03 +0000 UTC View PostThere has barely been any UI in the game so far, just a small dot where the mouse is pointing and a highlighted area when breathing fire on the ground. In some older videos there was also a kind of rotating bar that showed the rotation of the dragon, but I removed it eventually until I had time to make something better. In the initial playable builds, the plan is to include this kind of flight indicator, a bar compass at the top of the screen, an indicator for the wings angle of attack, and a...
2024-10-13 22:57:05 +0000 UTC View PostHere's another example of an alternate camera mode zoomed out to the side for a kind of cinematic viewpoint. You can still control the dragon in all the same ways, but this mode may be more suitable when just flying and chilling.
2024-10-07 00:01:52 +0000 UTC View PostOne compliment I often get on Dragontwin videos is that the camera is very immersive, almost like a movie. One guy even refused to believe that it was a game, not because of the animations (which is the usual suspect), but because of the camera. He said that game cameras don't move like that, or something. And I agree, they usually don't. They're usually boring, stiff and uninteresting. Whenever someone thinks Dragontwin gameplay is a pre-rendered cinematic, I consider that the highest form o...
2024-10-06 23:00:19 +0000 UTC View PostLast week I presented some preliminary lore around dragontwins, focusing on how they are created and what they look like. This week I'll continue down that path but instead focusing on sine of the effects of the bond. As I said in the first part, these are mainly ideas for now and not necessarily final lore.
The shared soul results in certain character traits being amplified in the human depending on the temperament of the bound dragon. While many draconic traits are positive, it is not...
2024-09-30 00:21:37 +0000 UTC View PostI haven't talked much about the lore of the game before, mainly because it is still being worked out, but this week I wanted to share some ideas about the most important piece of lore in the game. Since there's a lot to unpack, I will only focus on how Dragontwins are made and what they look like in this post, and leave capabilities and such for later. This will mostly be me rambling about some half-baked ideas that may or may not make it into the lore in the end, but I think it'll be interes...
2024-09-23 00:34:18 +0000 UTC View Post