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 bigges...

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...

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...

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, i...

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 preser...

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 someth...

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 f...

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 build...

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/settle...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 cinemat...

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 yo...