Category: Blogs

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our Dev Blog #13, which is going to be quite long. A lot of things have been worked on over the last 1-2 months, but we will try to keep things short and summarize everything in this blog.

A New Map

With the new update we introduced our new map “Altuis”.
Some of you might wonder “Why add a new map, when the old one isn’t finished?”.
There are several reasons, which made us decide to remove Larimara and restart from scratch.
The main reason was the size and the general overlay. The old map was quite small compared to Altuis. It didn’t take long to travel from one end to another and it had very limited space. Quests and NPC’s would have been very close to each other and would have made the different areas feel overcrowded and unnatural. As a dragon you want to fly and explore, find secrets or your own little favorite spot without bumping into another player or NPC every second.
Due to the size of Altuis we have more freedom when it comes to filling the world with NPC’s, villages, quests/quest chains, points of interest, secrets or simply bosses without having to worry about the level design being too overwhelming or immersion breaking.
Future aspects also played an important role in our decision to discontinue the work on Larimara.
Due to Altuis being a huge island, we are able to add aquatic creatures and give them actual space to move around in without having to do any re-designs of the map in the future. While we plan on giving aquatics the ability to move on land as well, their main habitats should still be lakes, oceans and rivers.

Abilities, Vocal Calls, Resting and Sleeping

Another larger addition are abilities, which are currently kept very simple until we have done further testing and improvements.
Each character, with the exception of wildlife, has gotten one melee attack and a special attack based on the element the character represents. In case you wonder where the regular fire breath went we showed in one of our social media posts: It will make a return with the addition of the modern Wyvern!
However a skill tree system, which would allow you to swap abilities is not off the table!

Combat has been added and we needed a more efficient way for players to recover and heal their wounds. A simple way of doing this is by resting and sleeping. Entering these states recovers certain stats faster than they normally would.
The recovery rates are currently not final and will be heavily adjusted with the addition of new things, which affect any of the character stats, to make sure the new states are still being useful when the game is more developed.

Because our characters want to communicate we also gave them the ability to simply roar at each other. Right now each character has one basic call, but we are already exploring the possibility of adding different calls including different animations to allow you to threaten someone, if they are trying to steal your treasure or to show them you mean no harm.

The Griffin

While the Behemoth is still in the making, we finished one of our backer creatures, the Griffin (Corvid/Panther mix)! Texturing this guy has been quite a challenge due to the large amount of feathers this sassy animal has. It comes with a piebald skin by default, which also includes the colorful reflection some birds have in real life. Colors and reflection strength are – as always – fully customizable!
This rather small friend is currently being rigged by our second animator and will hopefully join our other playable animals soon!
Make sure to hide your bread crumbs!

Titles & Generated Names

Always wanted a special title for your character? You can now choose one in the character customization menu by simply selecting one from the drop down menu above your dragon. The title will then show up in-game next to your characters name in a golden color.
Right now there are almost 100 titles to choose from, including 25 Indiegogo & Patreon backer titles and the number is steadily increasing.
However, not all titles will be available right from the start. Some will have to be earned through basic or more complex in-game tasks!

Sometimes it is hard to come up with a character name so we added the option to randomize character names. Simply clicking on the icon next to the character name field will generate a random name for your character!

Quality of Life

The latest update included a large amount of Quality of Life improvements, which we found have been necessary and have been requested by our community. Since it would take forever to list every single change and give a detailed description, we will quickly go over the most important parts with a brief explanation.

– The camera can freely be moved in the character customization menu by holding the middle mouse button
– Our effect & interaction system has been updated to go hand in hand with our ability system (e.g. your character will now burn, if someone hits you with fire breath)
– Effects like buffs and de-buffs including their timer and stack amount will now show on screen right next to the health bar
– FOV changes based on character speed
– Photo mode has gotten more options, including the option to take 360° screenshots and can now be toggled by pressing “P” instead of just opened
– Players are finally able to rebind their keys in the settings
– Volumetric clouds can be turned off in the settings, which replaces them with more performance friendlier 2D clouds
– Chat now shows system messages and announces when a player is joining or leaving the session
– We have added new settings, which allow players to turn off nametags, chat or the HUD entirely
– Color-blind mode with several settings has been added
– Character color saturation can now be reduced in the settings, which makes look every character in the game less vibrant
– Loading screens with tips have been added to let you know when the game or a map is loading
– In-game camera zoom so you can take a closer look at everything
– The option to get your character unstuck and teleported to the nearest spawn point
– Cloud saving, which uploads your savegame file to the steam cloud

There have been a lot more additions, but these are the most important ones and as the game is being developed we will continue to make more QoL changes based on our own tests and player feedback.

We hope you enjoyed the new dev blog and the update, if you have pre-release access to the game and please don’t stop making suggestions, because they help us to make QoL changes where they are needed!

If you like what you see and want to support us, don’t forget to wishlist, follow and/or share the project:
Steam – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1295900/Draconia/
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/draconiagame
Discord – https://discord.gg/draconiagame
Twitter – https://twitter.com/draconia_game
Reddit – https://www.reddit.com/r/draconiagame/

See you next time!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the last dev blog for this year!
This one is going to be rather short with the holidays getting closer. Many of us will be, or already are, taking a break from development stuff and will get back to work next year. On top of that, we have also been switching to a new engine version and are experimenting with new features and changes which came with the update.
However there won’t be any screenshots or hints at the new engine content from our side since we are only exploring new possibilities.

The Lindworm

This is rather old news at this point, but we know some followers prefer to read about updates in our dev blogs instead of our social media pages.
The Lindworm is now a playable creature and fully customizable like the European dragon. It comes with a new accessory set specifically made for this species, but also some backer and non-backer accessories which are available to European dragon players.
The Lindworm is one of the smaller dragons in the game and has it fairly easy when it comes to moving around on the ground and especially in caves and other narrow places.
It is not able to make burrows yet, but that doesn’t mean the mechanic has been removed from our to-do list. We will still add it later down the road when the foundation of our character system has been completed.

The Wyvern

Not so long ago, Lenar finished the Wyvern model, which many of you have been so excited for. We originally wanted it to have smaller, pointier scales all over the body, but made last minute changes and went for something less common in Wyvern designs and gave it more plated scales, which make the dragons skin look less impenetrable.
There is no date for when it will be playable yet because we still have the Eastern dragon to animate and implement, which has been modeled previously.
It will most likely be sneaked in when you least expect it

The Behemoth

Another model done and the next one already in the making.
Unfortunately we don’t have a preview of it yet because it is still in a very early stage and Lenar is taking some time off until next year.
However, you can expect a rather large redesign of the character. This doesn’t mean we have completely scrapped the original design, just that we wanted something more visually appealing to be the default model.
There is still a good chance the old concept will be turned into a playable creature.

In-Game Things

One of the main things we have been working on is our stats system, which is finished for the most part at this point, but will still require some minor edits as the games development progresses. The edits will mainly include the addition of unique or rare effects for specific scenarios (no spoilers).
With the system being mostly done, we were able to finally add consumables objects to the game. These are currently basic carcasses, chunks of meat and water sources, which restore thirst, hunger and/or health points – or drain one or more of these stats if you consume something “not so healthy”. Later we will add more unique consumables which will give your character rather complex stat boosts or even de-buffs. So if you decide to eat something rotten, we will make sure you will regret it. ;’)

But the stats system doesn’t only include the functionality of consumables. It also allowed us to manipulate stats like stamina and energy, which are partially being used in-game now depending on what your character does. Stamina for example is being used as soon as you move.
Even if you just walk around, you will notice that your Stamina points are slowly dropping. If you start to sprint or fly faster they will deplete quicker.
In many games stamina is only being used during attacks, sprinting or other fast and exhausting movements.
But everyone, who likes to walk longer distances knows that even normal walking can be exhausting over the long run. This means, if you want your Stamina to refill, you will have to stop for a moment and wait. The waiting time depends on your characters base stats, the resting state it is in and possible buffs or de-buffs affecting it.

Another thing we had briefly in the game is a new sky and weather system. Unfortunately we had to remove it, since it caused a fair number of problems on weaker pc builds. We are currently looking at alternatives on the side, which are easier on performance, but still have the same or at least a similar visual effect.

Final words

This year has been quite chaotic but we have made a lot of progress considering we were rebuilding the game from the ground up while some of us had and still have a full time job and other projects and tasks to work on on the side.
A huge THANK YOU also goes to our amazing community! The positivity, feedback, created content and the general support have helped us a lot. Especially during this pandemic, which will most likely follow us through the entire next year as well. It is a difficult time for many people in different ways, but we are doing our best to stay positive.

As mentioned at the beginning of this blog, many of us will take some time off during the holidays.
We will most likely release one more patch before we go into standby mode for the rest of the year to fix some issues and make smaller changes to the stats system. If you have been good this year, Santa Claws might also include a new playable creature (not the Eastern Dragon or the Drake)! 
But enough for todays dev blog. We hope you are able to celebrate at least a little bit and wish you HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Don’t forget to wishlist, follow and/or share the project:
Steam – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1295900/Draconia/
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/draconiagame
Discord – https://discord.gg/draconiagame
Twitter – https://twitter.com/draconia_game
Reddit – https://www.reddit.com/r/draconiagame/

See you next year (or on Discord)!

Hello everyone!

Welcome back to dev blog #11, getting posted earlier than planned. This means it will be a little bit shorter than the last one, but we have still got quite a few things to show!

AshesDrawn

Our illustrator AshesDrawn has finished the first illustration for the game, which you might have already seen on our social media or Discord server.
As new characters get worked on, she will make more illustrations featuring the dragons which have been added or are about to be added to the game. So if you missed her Draconia streams, there will be more in the future!
You can watch Ashes streams on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ashesdrawn

The Lindworm

The Lindworm aka “Lindy” will be the next playable and first flightless character in the game. While the model has been finished for a while now, we just recently started working on the animations for this weird animal.
We spent quite some time trying to figure out which movement types would suit it the most, since its overall appearance is based on images from old English folktales and is therefore extremely unnatural.
We ended up going for animations based on snake-like movements, which also occasionally involve the arms to give them more purpose apart from digging holes and digging up food, because arms have feelings too.

The Eastern Dragon Model

The Eastern dragon has been the most complicated dragon so far when it comes to character design. While we wanted to keep the traditional look for the default model, we also wanted to make it appear natural, which included a lot of anatomy work and the use of lots and lots of references to create the model.
After weeks of work and getting buried in feedback and references, Lenar finished the the Eastern noodle and we are quite happy with the result!

Luckily we had enough time to create the default texture and a backer pattern right after completion of the model.
It is also the only confirmed dragon species that will have the shimmer effect (shown in our latest dev blogs) by default. If you are not a fan of being a shiny rainbow boa, don’t worry! The effect can be turned off in the character customization menu!

The Wyvern

Our modeler Lenar just finished the Eastern dragon and moved right onto the Wyvern, which is probably one of the most popular dragons on Draconia’s roster.
Above are a few screenshots of the work in progress model. Let us know what you think!
You can occasionally catch Lenars streams on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lenarbialy

The Griffin

Our backer creature, the Griffin, hasn’t seen the light of day in quite a while. So here is a screenshot of the model, which is currently being textured.
The backer requested a piebald skin, because making it purely black would have made sense for a corvid based Griffin, but would have been too simple and wouldn’t have given players many customization options.

Level Design

Something we haven’t talked about in a long time is the level design of Draconia.
We are currently fleshing out the first areas of the game, which are the European dragon territory, the Lindworm territory and the Eastern dragon territory.
Each of these areas has its own theme going on, which represents the dominating dragon species in it.
Our main focus is currently the Lindworm territory, which features cliffs, dark pine forests and a lot of caves for Lindy’s to hide in.
These caves will come in different sizes and will be spread out all over the area. What else you can find in these depths apart from dangerous noodles is a secret, but exploring them will be worth it!

The European dragons territory is known for being purely volcanic.
This means you won’t find any green in it, but plenty of burned matter, ash and lava pools.
Of course European dragons need lairs as well, so you will find quite a few hiding spots underneath the black rocks, if you look closely! However these places are different from the Lindworms caves. They are less narrow and a bit easier to find, while still offering some protection from other dragons.
Some of them might even be a sanctuary to other species.

With the Wyvern model being made, we started to think more about the design of the Wyvern territory, which mainly consists of floating islands.
While floating pieces of dirt and rock can be cool, they end up still being super basic on a large scale. So we started asking questions like: Where do the Wyverns hang out most of the day? Do they have specific places to leave the remains of their previous meal in, like some real animals do? Do they have certain spots they enjoy resting in? Should they nest in the open or in more protected areas?
The last question led us to giving the islands a tiny redesign.
The Wyvern is the only character, which can latch onto walls and we combined this mechanic with their nesting habits. We ended up adding small cave-ins to the underside of the islands, which will be used as nesting spots in the future. These cave-ins offer more protection and also function as hiding spots, making the interactions between players or players and NPC’s in this territory more interesting.

Animations & Movement Rework

As we mentioned in other dev blogs before, we are constantly looking at improving certain aspects of the game. Lately these aspects have been the European dragons animations (more weight), the position of the wings as well as the overall movement.
The European dragons wings are now folded closer to the body to look more natural when they are not in use. Unfortunately folding them completely would result in a massive amount of ugly clipping issues so we went with whatever was possible and still looked good.
The general character movement has gotten a few additions: Players can now switch between walking and sprinting as well as normal flying/gliding and fast flying. Diving now increases the characters speed, while ascending slows it down.
We still have to do a lot of tweaking, especially when it comes to transitions, but we are getting closer to finishing the basic movement system.
Below you can find a video of the changes mentioned in this section of the dev blog.
Keep in mind: Everything is subject to change!

Interactions

And the last topic we want to briefly mention in this dev blog: Interactions!
Our programmer is currently working on our new interaction system, which will allow us to add plenty of new ways to interact with your environment. The first mechanics using this system will be drinking and eating once the foundation is ready. We hope you are hungry for some ribs!

Okay, the dev blog ended up being longer than we thought, but we hope you like it!
If you want to know more about the things we talked about or see more frequent updates join us on Discord or follow us on social media!

Don’t forget to wishlist, follow and/or share the project:
Steam – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1295900/Draconia/
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/draconiagame
Discord – https://discord.gg/draconiagame
Twitter – https://twitter.com/draconia_game
Reddit – https://www.reddit.com/r/draconiagame/

See you next time!

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to our dev blog.
Quite a few things have happened since we released the character customization and our pre-release players have created a lot of amazing looking characters already.
If you want to see a few of them, you should keep an eye on our Community Updates!

Character Customization

A lot has happened on the character customization side.
Until recently players had to create a new character every time they wanted to play, which was sometimes a bit annoying. So we added character saving earlier than planned and allowed them to save an unlimited amount of characters(for now).
The list will later also show the characters species and current level, which will make it easier to keep track of each characters progress.

Players can also finally give their dragons custom names.
The names between a players characters have to be unique, but they can still have the same name as other players.
While this most likely won’t change for single-player mode and listen servers, it will change for dedicated servers, which means players can’t use a character name that has already been taken by someone else on the same server. However the chance of a character name already being locked is extremely low since the restriction is only tied to that one specific server the character has been created on.

The character name as well as the players Steam name appear above the model in-game, visible to every other player in a specific radius.
Later it will also show a players clan and title in the name tag once these things have been added to the game.

Due to popular demand, we also added customizable accessories together with more customization options in one of our most recent patches.
Each accessory can now be given custom colors, because sometimes you just want your flower crown to look more Metal.

Character Models

If you have kept an eye on our social media, you might have already discovered the Eastern Dragon model or rather a work in progress version of it.
Lenar has been doing a lot of work on it recently and we are looking forward to the final result even though it won’t be in for a while due to the Lindworm being next on the playable creatures list.

Some of you have been asking us to give the skin of the Eastern dragon a shimmering effect.
You asked and we will deliver!
The effect will be customizable and allow players to choose up to 3 different colors.
Below is an example on the European dragon featuring 2 colors.

The second model we have been working on is not a main character, but a good boy…ahem…(playable) wildlife creature: The Drake.
It is currently missing the plates on the head and the back as well as the tail from the concept art. All these parts will be customizable, which means you can expect regional variations of this little guy.

All the other cool things

Not so long ago we welcomed AshesDrawn as a new artist to our team, who will work on a couple of Illustrations for the game.
Here is a work in progress image of the first illustration they are currently working on, showing the European dragon and the Lindworm, which will be the next addition to the game.

You can occasionally catch Ashes streaming on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ashesdrawn
Don’t forget to bring good vibes and dragons!

And last but not least: New features!
Even though we just added a simple in-game chat, we are moving away from the current version of Draconia being a walking & chat simulator by adding stats like health, hunger, thirst, stamina and so on.
Some of you might remember the old HUD element for these stats.
We scrapped it due to it being too distracting and started working on something new that covers all our needs without being too immersion breaking.
15 concepts later we came up with the version below, which will be at the bottom of the screen. It is still unfinished, but you can probably already see what we are going for.
The 6 slots at the top will show the characters 2 main skills (center), which are tied to LMB & RMB as well as a couple of other abilities, which are bound to the number keys (left and right).
The next row shows the mana, energy, health, thirst and hunger bars, while the bar at the bottom shows the amount of experience you need to reach the next level.
Buffs and de-buffs will be displayed on the left and right side of the character skills.
Some of these elements might change depending on player response.

That is it for this dev blog and we hope you enjoyed the read.

Don’t forget to wishlist, follow and/or share the project:
Steam – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1295900/Draconia/
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/draconiagame
Discord – https://discord.gg/draconiagame
Twitter – https://twitter.com/draconia_game
Reddit – https://www.reddit.com/r/draconiagame/

See you next time!

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to our new dev blog.
This one is going to be a rather short one since we have been mainly working on level art/design and character customization which we will be talking about in this dev blog.

Note: All features we will show you are work in progress. The customization will undergo bug fixing and polishing work like everything else we are working on.

When it came to the character customization we didn’t just want to add a variety of pre-made skins for each character but to allow players to customize them to their liking.
While pre-made skins can look cool, they don’t give the owner the “I made this :)” feeling (100 points if you get the reference). Even just changing a couple of colors on a character can make it look unique and give the player the feeling of having something special.

To make it easier for you to see which section you are currently changing we added highlights which make them flash up in a dark green.
Highlights won’t affect the colors you are choosing for that specific part of the skin.

There are no limits on which colors you can select for your character. We understand that not everyone wants to see dragons in bright and flashy colors but limiting players to a small set of “natural” options is a huge restriction in our book.
Instead we hope private server hosts will enforce a “only dark colors” rule.

While editing colors is pretty neat, changing body parts such as the horns and tail tips (and more if available!) of your characters adds a more unique aspect to the customization.
We have already added a small variety of horns and a tail tip option for the European Dragon but more parts will be added over time since body parts are a thing to work on in-between all the other major tasks.

Another little feature we added is the option to choose between different animations for preview purposes.
While the dragon has its wings folded in the idle state, you can’t see the patterns on the underside.
To fix this issue we added a couple of animations which make them visible. However we will add a special animation in the near future which will properly display all sections that can be edited on your character.

The third customization option is “Accessories”.
Accessories are objects that are not natural body parts. They can be masks, costumes and other cosmetics without any special purpose.
If you backed the Custom Tier on Indiegogo or Patreon, which included a custom accessory, you will be able to find it here!
Some backer items will already be included in the next patch of the pre-release version, which will be released once we have added the option to switch between patterns and have pushed the character customization through the first bug grinder.

That is all for today’s dev blog. The level design part will be included in a future blog when more progress has been made. We hope you like the character customization so far and are as excited for it as we are!

Don’t forget to wishlist, follow and/or share the project:
Steam – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1295900/Draconia/
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/draconiagame
Discord – https://discord.gg/Bhx4F8M
Twitter – https://twitter.com/draconia_game
Reddit – https://www.reddit.com/r/draconiagame/

Thank you for reading and your support!