Dev Blog #9

26 Jan 2021Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

Hello again, everyone!

We hope you are all had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! The first month of 2021 is almost over and we've been hard at work on the Genesis Update. We have some very exciting news to share with you as well as our thoughts on how our first Open Testing Event went.

Open Testing

Screenshot by the Gyldenfyre clan

Overall, our first Open Testing Event was a huge success. Thank you to everyone who came on and helped us figure out how many players our servers can withstand! We were able to reach around 165 players on the server before the lag became a big issue. We then rebooted with 100 player capacities and had zero issues with lag and stability. The servers are much much improved over the alpha servers and with all the new server configs, players will love hosting their own. Going forward, official servers will run at 100 players per instance which is what we recommend for all shared server instances, but the hard cap is set at 200 to allow dedicated private servers with the hardware and bandwidth to run double the normal capacity.

We enjoyed playing with you all and seeing everyone test out the new Acid Spitter model and map. A huge thank you to those who made online media content, such as youtube videos of the event, and to those who have shared their thoughts with us. It was fun and informative to hear everyone's opinions and feedback on the direction the game is going.

The open testing server is currently still available to those who own the Acid Spitter DLC or backed the kickstarter at a tier with Beta Testing. Once the Shadow Scale is in a playable state, the Open Testing Branch will be permanently open to everyone. If all continues to move smoothly, we expect this to happen in the next month or so.

We will continue to work hard and create a beawesome game. Thank you again!

New Animations

Our development staff took a much needed break during the holidays, but we are back to work and are very happy with the speed of development. Karly has been working very hard to bring our dragons to life.

Shadow Scale

idle

The Shadow Scale is now the focus when it comes to animation. As stated above, we hope to have the Shadow Scale in a playable state within the next month so we can permanently open our testing server to the public. Check out some of Shadow Scale's work-in-progress animations below!

Trot

Run

Glide

Flapping

Hover

Acid Spitter

The Acid Spitter is nearly 100% animated! There are just a handful of animations that need to be completed. Once they are, we will begin to polish those animations.

New Mechanics

We are also developing some new mechanics for phase four of closed testing. Once all major bugs have been worked out, they will join the Shadow Scale in the open testing branch.

Custom AI Coding

Some of you may have already spied our first custom AI creature to be joining the world of DoD during the Open Testing Event. Not only will Genesis feature custom AI models and animations, the code will also be custom. Like the nesting seen in Open Testing, Jao is creating an AI creature mechanic from scratch.

We are planning of having at least two AI species ready for the Genesis Update; the Thornbacked Crawler and the Bulbous Spined Scrab.

Thornbacked Crawler

Bulbous Spined Scrab

Crawler Walk

Crawler Idle

We will have more information on the behavior of the individual AI species as their development progresses.

Baby Carry and Struggle

Adult dragon players will now be able to pick up any appropriately sized hatchling even if they are not in their group. However, hatchlings will be able to fight back against unwanted attention or attacks using the struggle mechanic. Struggling will cause the holder to rapidly lose stamina and result in the baby being dropped once the holder's stamina has reached zero. The baby will then have a period of time to escape or without pursuit while the adult regains its stam.

Our DoD Family Grows

We have some exciting news to share with you. Our team is growing once again! We are happy to welcome our new VFX Artist as well as our new Environmental Asset Artist. Check out what each of them has been up to so far.

Custom VFX

Our VFX artist has started working on the Acid Spitter's signature spit attack. She will be making custom bile attacks for all the creatures along with other effect such as blood splatter and more.

Custom Nests

The first task of our Environmental Asset Artist is to create custom nests for the dragons. Each species will have their own unique nests that match their needs and bile type. The Acid Spitter's nest is made from river stones and just big enough to hold their clutch size of five eggs.

Dev Q&A Livestream

Our next Q&A livestream has not yet scheduled. Stay tuned and watch for updates to find out when the next one will be!

From the Community

Each blog post, we pick some of our favorite screenshots and artwork posted by the community to showcase here. Want a chance for your submission to be showcased on our next blog? Post it in the appropriate channels on our discord!