Sidenius

Towards the first build

In a previous post, I talked about how there will be smaller playable builds leading up to the first demo for those who can sign an NDA and don't want to wait. The first build would just be flying around in the world, so I wanted to give an update on what's left to do until it's ready. The biggest thing is the new world landscape, as I just ditched the previous landscape tech I was using for a different method with fewer limitations, but it needs to be developed further. I might cut out a sma...

World map size

The world map in Dragontwin needs some extra design considerations because of how unusual the game is. The problem is that the world needs to be huge, while at the same time being detailed enough to be able to walk around on the ground, and simultaneously needs to look good from the skies, and to top it off it needs to fit multiple factions with their own settlements spread out over large distances, possibly on different continents. Usually it is either one or the other, even for open world g...

Strategic game mode

As I've explained elsewhere, the vision for the game includes some elements of strategy and conquest to go along with fighting armies and burning castles. I've previously said that the closest similar game that comes to mind is Mount & Blade, but what exactly does that entail? When I say it's inspired by M&B, I mean in the general sense that it's an action RPG/strategy rags-to-riches sandbox type of experience. But it will be quite different in terms of mechanics, especially since I w...

Destruction

Environmental destruction is a feature that really fits in a game with giant fire-beathing dragons. I've been exploring different options to implement this for a long time but haven't really shown much of it. One thing that sets Dragontwin apart from many other games is the scale of everything, it's not enough to just be able to destroy some vases or a wall, ideally entire buildings or even cities should be destructible. That requires some special consideration.

Initially, I made a cust...

Flying auto-pilot

A planned feature for flying is that the movement of the dragon is partially controlled automatically, both to aid the player in flying as it is quite difficult to control, but also because the dragon has a will of its own. This is expressed in a few different ways. First, there's the self preservation aspect where if you for example attempt to dive straight into the ground, it will override your command and slow down to not crash. Then there is flight guidance that makes it easier for you to...

GDD and worldbuilding bible

So far, almost everything about the vision and lore for the game has resided in my head as I haven't found the time to write it all down. As the project grows in size and complexity, this needs to change, especially if additional people get involved. That is why I will now start working on something called a game design document, which is a kind of reference for what the game is about, what kind of mechanics are in it, how different systems interact, etc. Decades ago, these documents used to ...

The plan moving forward

The latest poll clearly showed that most patrons are in favour of having smaller builds released leading up to the demo(s) that will be released at some point in the future. I will therefore shift gears from now on and focus on getting what is currently in the game into a playable state for the first build.

Some patrons voiced concerns about this leading to an increased workload or a short sighted focus on getting builds out instead of focusing on the bigger picture. I think that won't ...

Incremental builds poll

Some patrons have suggested that I release smaller but more frequent incremental builds of the current state of the game in addition to releasing more feature-rich but infrequent demos. I have thought a bit about this and want to hear what the community thinks about it.

By incremental builds, what I mean is that the first build would be very simple and subsequent builds would progressively get more features and polish with each new release. For example, the first build may just feature ...

World map

The idea for the world map seen in the latest sneak peek is to function similar to how the overworld map works in games like Mount & Blade and Total War, but in this case it is not a separate map. It is still undecided how heavily the game will lean into this strategy game aspect (army/settlement management, diplomacy, etc) as those are pretty complicated to make even for large teams, but hopefully there will be at least some such features that can be handled from this map. Apart from tha...

World-making workflow

Workflow (a bit technical)
The new landscape tech I talked about in the last post has two cool features that aren't possible (at least not to this extent) with the default UE landscape tool. It can do deterministic procedural generation, as well as "stamping" heightmaps (like a single mountain) into the terrain at runtime. This allows for a new kind of workflow where the world consists of a procedurally generated base layer that simply adds some interesting variation to th...

New landscape tech

As explained in the latest update on Discord, I have invested in a new landscape system that is very different from the default UE landscape in several ways. It comes in the form of a plugin for the engine called Shader World that can generate a landscape at runtime on the GPU and render it using a method called clipmaps. It has many advantages over the regular UE landscape, with the two main ones being that it is more efficient and can be edited at runtime. This opens the door to letting the...

Character creator

This extended progress report features some additional information about the human character creator.

Technical breakdown
I'm using a UE feature called MetaHumans as the base for the mesh topology, shaders and facial animations. These are highly realistic digital humans that are freely available for UE users to download and play around with. A problem with MetaHumans however is that they are created in an editor and are not easily changeable after they have been mad...

Extended progress report

Multiple dragons
Previously, I've been on the fence about including multiple dragons because of performance considerations. I've made further investigations into this now and I'm now pretty sure I can get away with one or several additional dragons when the new dragon model is done because of some performance optimizations that will be done.

The first use for an additional dragon will be as a hostile dragon rider. I've been thinking more about the lore of the game an...

Extended progress report

This post features some additional information about the topics from the latest progress report on Discord.

EmberGen

I got a new gas simulation software called EmberGen with some of the recent Patreon funds that I used to make a new, customizable fire effect. I had a trial for it a few weeks ago but I ran out of time before I had finished the effect I was working on. The new fire can be customized in several ways, including colour, fire intensity and amount of sm...

First wallpaper (available for all)!

I have received some questions about what is meant by wallpapers in the Patreon rewards, so hopefully this post with an example and explanation makes it more clear.

The wallpapers will consist of either concept art or displays of the most up-to-date content in the game captured from cinematic viewpoints, with some light post processing applied. When the logo that is being commissioned is finished, it will also be displayed on the wallpapers. They will be made and posted at regular inter...

Dragontwin Patreon launch!

It's time to launch the Patreon page for Dragontwin!

I hope all potential patrons can find a tier that suits them. I designed the tiers to cover a broad range of budgets while still offering something new at each level. The rewards are spread out so that the low-to-mid tiers are great if you just want to keep up with Dragontwin, read the posts on various topics and see the latest footage, while the mid-to-high tiers are geared towards those who want to be more actively engaged in the de...