It is the end of June, which means two things:
We are now halfway through the year, and halfway to Christmas.
It is time for another edition of Dinolords Monthly!
This time we are presenting a new, much requested, feature that makes traversing the lands much faster, we are taking a trip down memory lane looking at some old screenshots of prototypes of the game, and collectively laughing at some of the many ways game development can present unforeseen bugs when you least expect it.
So saddle up, and let's get this edition of Dinolords Monthly rolling!
Mounts
"Oh Lord, he comin'!"
Yes, we heard each and every one of you, and we have all agreed right from the start. It has been the second most asked question after "Do you also get access to dinosaurs as the British", and was closely followed by "Can you pet the dinosaurs?".
So we are hard at work adding mountable dinosaurs into the game, first up, as pictured above, is the Utahraptor, complete with saddle and barding.
Traversing the land just became a lot more convenient (and much more menacing) when you can do it from the back of a cool raptor. You can also still fight and use abilities, build your base, queue unit production etc., all the same things you can do on foot, only you look about 2700% cooler while doing it!
We have a few extra ideas brewing on what different mounts can allow you to do - we heard the raptor is really acrobatic with those strong legs being able to jump quite far!
Looking Back
So much has happened over the last two years, we wanted to show a couple screenshots of how the game has progressed since then.
It is sometimes good to look back and reflect, sometimes you rediscover good things, and sometimes it can help confirm changes in directions that has compounded during development.
Dialing back the clocks to December 2022 when the first prototypes were rapidly iterated through, the game shared elements in spirit, but looked and felt vastly different: here is a screenshot of an early prototype with production buildings making resources, hovering circle timer and all.
At this stage, dinosaurs had not even been introduced to the concept, and it was much more a straight up medieval castle-sim with heavy inspiration from Stronghold. You managed production chains and saw a little city grow, but no real gameplay goal or challenge except balancing different productions in a game of spinning plates.
These cute little houses look so quaint! You can also see an early version of grass here, right from the get-go, we wanted to hone in on the visual style of the game, paying tribute to classic titles we all remember fondly, like Age of Empires and beforementioned Stronghold, while also looking fresh. It has very much been an iterative process, but it sure is fun to see these old models again.
And here, from spring 2023, we are starting to see some recognizable faces, although they have all gotten some major facelifts since then, there's a stockpile, a town hall, a quarry and a lumber camp.
And finally, a screenshot without UI taken fresh from the press this morning showing the current look of the game. Still very much in progress, but it is fun to compare where we started with where the project is in its' current state.
Making games is fun
We love making games, even when we sometimes hate making games. Sometimes, everything works out better than expected, and other times nothing works quite right.
It has been a while since we last had a segment of funny mishaps and bugs, so here's a little montage of things that have gone wrong.
This guy clearly ate something he shouldnt have. Although, he is absolutely primed and ready for a dino rave at the Paleo Club now.
When you make towers a little too cheap and a certain 3D artist on the team is keen to break the game, this happens.
That's one way of getting your 10.000 steps a day...
Who even needs an ox to pull the cart? Bonus is it brings a crows of onlookers!
Until Next Time
That's all for this edition of Dinolords Monthly, as always, thank you all so much for following along on how Dinolords is shaping up.
We hope these posts helps provide an insight in our process and what is currently going on, and as always if you have any questions or comments, feel free to let us know - we try to reply to everyone. You can also find us over on the discord server, where the conversation is slightly more informal.
Have a great summer, everyone! See you next month, and remember sunscreen and to drink some water!
-panxter