We hope you are having an awesome start to the holiday season! For those who missed it, we hosted a livestream on YouTube last week. We went over some new content and answered some of your questions as well. Check it out of you haven't!
In November, we have continued our progress to create the adult animation sets for the next three dragons to be added to the game. With only a handful of each adult set left, we will likely be finishing the adult sets in December and moving onto the juvenile and hatchling sets. The younger age animation sets will take less time as most of the work is tweaking current animations to fit the juvenile and hatchling models.
We have also been working on other aspects of the game needed for the 1.0 update. Continue reading below to find out what our team has created this month, but first...
A Word From the Lead Developer
Greetings all,
We just wrapped up a Thanksgiving livestream where we showed off some of the stuff we've been working on as we get everything ready for our game's 1.0 release. If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it, it has a lot of good information and sneak peaks of what's coming.
We also got to take a few days off and enjoy Thanksgiving with our families. Indeed we are very thankful for all of you, especially those of you who have been with us since the beginning. Speaking of which, December 4th marks our 3rd anniversary since DoD came to Early Access in its early Alpha state. Fast forward to December 2020 and the early closed beta version released featuring the Acid Spitter. Fast forward again to July 2021 and we saw the release of our Beta version with the Shadow Scale. Fast forward once more to April of this year when we released our third dragon, the Flame Stalker. I know many of you are looking forward to our next release of 1.0 coming in 2023 which will feature not 1, not 2, not even 3, but 4 5 new playable creatures including the Biolumer, Inferno Ravager, Blitz Striker, Magma Elemental, and the playable Swamp Snapper AI. It's a lot of new content coming in one massive update that will change our game forever.
Release is a special time, we have one chance to get it right, and we're going to get it right! We plan to release patches to our Test server and allow our Testers and Patreons to comb through the content and find bugs which we'll fix, then when we have a stable build, we're going to put that build up on a public test branch that players can download and play on their own private servers. Once all the content is in and the bugs are worked out and game is polished for release, we will push the build to release and the current Beta will be moved to a Legacy branch on Steam. Why? Because release will be using the next gen version of Unreal Engine (UE5) which requires more compute and graphic power and memory to run. Don't worry though, we plan to put some of the new content in Legacy as well, just don't expect a new map for Legacy as it will eventually be deprecated once we don't see anyone using it.
We don't know when in 2023 that 1.0 will release, the only answer I can provide is, "When everything is ready." It's a lot of work, but we've already begun testing 1.0 on our Test Server. UE5 is beautiful. The adult anim sets for the new playables should be finished by the end of January, then we'll make the necessary modifications for the youth sets which should take 1-2 weeks per set. Then it is test test test, polish, balance, test, polish, release.
We will be hosting a Holiday/Anniversay livestream later this month on our Test Server featuring some of our favorite content creators and will be giving away some Plushies, Collector's Soundtrack CD's, and game keys. It should be bioluminawesome! You won't want to miss it! Livestream Date TBA
We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 2023 will be awesome!
This is DoD, and we have DRAGONS.
- Jon Slabaugh (Lead Dev)
And now onto the blog...
Mega Map Update
A hatchling cave system
We are continuing to flush out the landmarks and height map in the upcoming Mega Map. Our focus is on the lower right side of the map, which will be polished and added to the testing server first while the next section is being worked on.
The square objects you see in the screenshots are placeholders for environmental assets. Some of these assets will be custom created by our Environmental Artist, Brigade.
Check out the thumbnails below to see some screenshots of different views of landmarks begin created.
Animations
Biolumer Dragon Mating Display Animation
As stated above, we are almost done with the adult animation sets for the three dragons coming in the 1.0 update, with the Inferno Ravager trailing a bit behind. We are expecting to finish the adult animations in December and will then begin working on the juvenile and hatchling sets.
Check out some of the animations our team has created for each of the three dragons below.
Biolumer Animations Lay Down, Flap, Glide, and Hover
Inferno Ravager Glide, Sit, Stalk, and Hover
Blitz Striker Bile Attack, Sniff, Sit, and Flap
VFX
Acid Spitter Bioluminescence
Our VFX artist, Flicker, as been working on the bioluminescence for our dragons. As most of you know, when a Biolumer Dragon uses its bile attack on another dragon, the chemicals in the Biolumer's spit will react with the dragon's scale chemistry and reveal its hidden bioluminescence. This effect will be temporary and does not harm the targeted dragon. However, dragons in PVP servers may want to wash off this effect as soon as possible, as it will make it an easy target for enemy clans.
A dragon's natural bioluminescence may also become visible in certain locations in the new map, including in the underground cave systems of the Shimmering Caverns.
Check out some of the bio spit effects we have created so far!
Shadow Scale Bioluminescence
Inferno Ravager Bioluminescence
Flame Stalker Bioluminescence
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!
Some of our favorite recent screenshots...
by BeliK#6971
by Reubs_93#2946
by Kem#1680
Some of our favorite artwork from the community...
by . , Jaeger , .#4612
by [SMOKE™] SilverKitty14#9122
by spotycoffee#2709
Thanks for reading!
~The Day of Dragons Development Team
Don't want to miss out on updates? Follow us on our social media accounts or become a patron to get updates before they are released!
Sorry for the delay with the Dev Blog this month. There have been quite a few things that have come up in the last few weeks and I was unable to write it up. However, here we are now! We have lots of juicy development news for you, but first....
A Word from Our Lead Developer
Greetings everyone,
As some of you know, earlier this month we were attacked by a hacker. I wanted to write an in-depth explanation of what exactly happened.
I woke up early on the morning of September 9th to a bunch of messages letting me know that our Official servers had been compromised by a hacker that goes by the monicker "123." According to the server logs, it appeared that the hacker had cracked two of our admin's Steam accounts and used their accounts to begin slaying and banning users from the servers. The logs displayed our admin's Steam ID's and logged the slays and bans to those ID's. Our Senior Administrators quickly acted and removed those Steam ID's from having Administrator access on our official servers. After a staff meeting, we decided to require all of our Admins to use 2-Factor authentication on their Steam accounts (aka Steam Guard) to prevent their accounts from being compromised. We also enabled 2FA on our Official Discord to prevent Moderator accounts from being hacked and compromised (which would be a nightmare, could you imagine?).
That evening we released a patch to the game which included Server Admin Passwords, additional logging, and some experimental user validation features. The patch was broken as no user could pass validation now. Two hours later we released a hotfix followed by another patch immediately after. These new patches caused issues as there were features being worked on for 1.N that were not finished and things in 1.M had changed and I was tasked with going through code and trying to undo the 1.N changes, revert things back to 1.M, all while introducing new security features to prevent more hacking. It was very stressful. We also talked to our admins who had appeared to have been hacked the day before and they assured us that their accounts were not hacked and they were already using Steam Guard. This could only mean one thing, the hacker was using Steam ID spoofing software. A little bit of Google research showed me that this is an issue in multiple online multiplayer Steam games including CS:GO and told me that the vulnerability rested somewhere in how the game retrieves Steam ID's from players.
The next day, we woke up to servers that were down again, our night staff encountered the hacker who again kicked, banned, and slew players causing us and our players a lot of grief. But this time the hacker was logging in as my own developer account. We released another patch to fix things that had broken in the previous patch the night before, as well as putting passwords on our Developer accounts, but this patch included it's own set of issues such as players spawning out of bounds. A total of 3 patches and 2 hotfixes were released on September 10th alone. We had also received reports that hackers were on private servers kicking, banning, and slaying players by logging in as Private Server Admins and also as me. They were again able to fake their Steam ID's, bypassing our game's validation checks, and spawn in as the dragons of other players as well as admins. We left our servers offline that night and I continued working on a new patch to both fix the 1.M/1.N issues as well as find the backdoor that these hackers were using to bypass our Steam ID validation checks.
On September 11th, we released a hotfix followed by another patch. Again, the patch failed to fix the vulnerability and the hacker(s) were able to attack both public and private servers. This of course forced us to shut down all servers again to protect all the player data on all Official servers.
For the next 14 hours I studied the logs and dug deep into the Engine code and Steam Subsystem plugin to find the backdoor the hacker had been using to allow him to login with an injected Steam ID. I knew that the hack was client side, as the hacker cannot access the server remotely, they must be injecting their Steam ID at login during server-client network communication. This was going to be challenging, but my brain loves a good challenge, and I've never been faced with a problem I've not found a working solution for.
On the afternoon of September 12th, I finally found the vulnerability in the Steam subsystem that the hacker had been exploiting to inject a fake Steam ID to the server during login. I won't go into details on exactly what I found or what I did to fix it, but I am positive that that particular vulnerability in the Steam subsystem is patched. I was pretty excited when I figured it out and thank you to all of you who believed that I could.
All in all, this hack made us better. Our Admins are all now using Steam Guard to secure their Steam Accounts, our Discord Mod/User accounts are protected with 2-Factor Authentication, our game now uses Dev/Admin access passwords, client-server remote procedure calls are now encrypted preventing hackers from calling them from memory which now won't work without the key provided by the server, the changes in 1.N that made it into the 1.M patches actually make some things smoother such as flight and running, I learned some important things about Unreal's netcode that will benefit 1.0, and all of this happened in the Early Access Beta, which is better than if it had happened in 1.0.
The hacker(s) tried to hurt DoD, but in the end,.. they only made us better.
Jonathan Slabaugh Lead Developer - Lead Designer - The Only Programmer Day of Dragons
Now onto the blog...
Mega Map Update
We are ALMOST done creating the overall landmass for the Mega Map's continent. We have made some changes to it and added some more area as well.
The land area to the east of the volcano has been increased, giving room for more burnt and temperate forests. We also moved the desert dunes closer to the volcano. The area the dunes used to be in has transformed into a grassland area which will be home to three large lakes.
Up north, the floating islands have moved a bit west and we have filled more of the ocean in the tundra area to make room for a frozen desert, which will be the home of the Snowslayer worms. Then you may also notice a new sand bar/island area to the south. These islands will be covered in tropical forests.
We plan to do a few more edits to the overall landmass and then we will begin adding details and really bring this map to life.
Animations
Inferno Ravager Walk Animation
Over in our animation department, our team is working hard to bring the next dragons to life!
While animating the Inferno Ravager, we discovered an issue with the wing membranes clipping as it moved its arms. After some work, we were able to come up with a solution! Much like how a bat's membrane works, the Inferno's wing membrane will shrink and stretch as needed. This way we can keep the natural looking membrane size without having the issues that come with it. With the membrane issue fixed, we have been working on redoing the animations.
The Bio animation is going well! We have nearly completed all of his land locomotion animations. Like the Acid Spitter, the Bio will have an extra ground speed known as a "sprint". This will make the Bio very fast on land and able to run circles around most other dragons. However, Acid Spitters can still out pace a Bio on the ground, so these cosmetic dragons should keep on their toes.
We have also begun animating the Blitz Striker. Like the Inferno, the Blitz will also have the shrinking membrane to prevent its wings from clipping. Currently we are working on the land and air locomotion animations.
While the new dragons are being worked on, some of the old are getting some love as well. We are working on creating some new Acid Spitter animations such as the secondary idle animation shown below. This animation will play if your character does not move for a certain amount of time, bringing more live to the dragon. After all, it can be tiring standing in one place too long.
Inferno Ravager Fly Animation
Bio Dragon Trot, Run, and Sprint Animations
Blitz Striker Slither Animation
Blitz Striker Glide Animation
Acid Spitter Secondary Idle Animation
Models and VFX
We are finishing up the last few Kickstarter stretch goal dragon models!
Arguably the best dragon ever (not biased), the Feathered Zygovo's adult model is complete. It is now completely feathered and adorable.
We have also determined the sexual dimorphism for this species. The Zygovo will be one of several species that does not use bile to incubate its eggs and instead sits on its nests. Therefore, like snowy owls, the females will have extra spots on their backs to help with camouflage while they lay on their nests.
We are now working on the baby morphs and perfecting the coloration of the Feathered Zygovos. If all goes well we plan on having the babies covered in down instead of feathers.
Onto the other side of the size scale, the Ice Behemoth dragon has also made progress. After going through several different design ideas, we have finalized the horns for the male behemoths. These horns will be perfect for hunting the dangerous Snowslayer Worms in the frozen desert area of the map.
With the male's design done, we will now start working on the baby morph for this massive dragon.
MORE WORDS
Dev Q&A Livestream
Our next Youtube Livestream Q&A will be on...
Friday, September 30th at 1:00 PM EST
Join us while we celebrate our 3 year Kickstarter Anniversary! We will answering the community's questions and showing off the latest updates we have in store for the UE5 update!
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!
Some of our favorite recent screenshots...
by Dark Mink#2670
by JennyS#5422
by TargetVudu#4808
Some of our favorite artwork from the community...
by ghosteater#5611
by Kimmy#6669
by Oka/Karta#7648
That's all for this month's blog! See you next month and thanks for reading.
~The Day of Dragons Development Team
Don't want to miss out on updates? Follow us on our social media accounts or become a patron to get updates before they are released!
We have recently experienced increased hacking attempts to compromise the integrity of Day of Dragons Servers. This patch attempts to circumvent the new hacking methods by adding additional account verification to users connecting to the server to prevent Steam ID spoofing/impersonation, adding additional server logging, and adding an optional password for /admin panel access.
Added an experimental function to circumvent Steam ID spoofing.
Added additional logging to servers when a player is auto-kicked for any reason
Server logs now show Admin ID's when Admins use Admin commands
Servers may now password protect the admin panel via config. Add sAdminPassword=yourpassword to enable password protection. By default password protection is off and /admin will still work as always. We highly recommend turning on password protection to safeguard your server from hackers. With a password the admin panel command is /admin password
KNOWN ISSUES: Possible skin issues as we were working on new skin functionality but did not have time to fully implement it.
Dev Blog #19
Hello everyone!
Welcome to another Dev Blog. This past month our team has been focusing on making the transition to Unreal Engine 5.0 along with creating content for the big 1.0 update. While the UE5 migration is now complete, we still have a lot of work to do before we are ready for 1.0. Let's turn to our Lead Developer, Jon, to hear more about what's to come...
A word from our Lead Developer
Greetings Dragons and Hatchlings,
A few days ago I did an impromptu Dev Q&A as I showed off our dragons in UE5 with Lumen Global Illumination on the old Dune Desert landscape from Alpha. I absolutely love Lumen and the new features in Unreal Engine 5. I wish UE5 was already out 2 years ago when I began to work on the DoD Beta. It's got some great features that we are going to make full use of such as Lumen dynamic global illumination, large world coordinates, world partition, level instancing, dynamic data layers (which allow us to change the world after a quest event without changing it for those who did not progress that far yet), and a new dynamic water system - to name a few. But as I mentioned in the video, the UE5 migration is complete, and I am just working on fixing up a few minor issues, such as UI, before sending the UE5 version of the UE4 version of DoD to the Test Server to see if I missed anything.
We plan to make the UE5 version available for open testing once the closed testers comb through it to make sure everything is working as intended. Since our UE4 mega map used World Composition (which has been deprecated in UE5), we'll be bringing back the old Desert Dunes landscape from the Alpha for testing purposes (and only on the test version) until the Mega Map is ready, which will then replace it for map testing. The map is huge, 40km x 40km, if you include the Ocean. Such a large map is quite an undertaking but we're happy to have Branton with us full time working on bringing the world of Jrakhon to life.
Update 1.0 will mark the end of Early Access for Day of Dragons and the official Release for the game we decided to make post-Kickstarter and we hope our years of hard work will speak for itself when you play the release update which will be our biggest update ever. Release will include the Mega Map; new UE5 features including Volumetric Clouds and new Lumen lighting; new dynamic weather system; the new Elemental faction; new playables such as Magma, Inferno Ravager, Blitz Striker, Bio Dragon (KS exclusive); new AI such as the Swamp Snapper, Dune Weaver, Whiskered Paddletail, and the giant Sandslayer Worm; new Quest system; New loot system (dragon pearls); New skin crafting system; Improved Genetics, new Elder progression mechanic, changes to stats, and much more.
For those of you who missed the announcement in Discord, we are excited to announce that we have hired a Comic artist from our community (you might know her as Ztarli) who will be working with me and Katie in creating a Day of Dragons comic called, "Legends of Jrakhon" which will be published to our Patreon for Dragon tier subscribers. This comic will explore the lore and backstory of Day of Dragons starting in the late First Age when the Elementals arrived. Check out the cover page below.
We're excited to be working with Ztarli on creating this comic and hope our comic/lore fans will love it. To all the Patrons reading this, Thank you for making this comic possible. ːsteamhappyː
The best days are ahead of us for Day of Dragons, and we're only getting started. Following the 1.0 update we will focus on adding in the stretch reward dragons from Kickstarter and continuing to update our game and Mega Map with each major update. Thank you so much for your patience as you wait for more updates (and the big update) and thank you for believing in us when so many others doubted. We appreciate your support!
Remember, this is DoD and we have DRAGONS!
- Jonathan Slabaugh Lead Developer for Day of Dragons
---
Now onto the blog...
Mega Map Update
Branton has been hard at work creating the height map data and greyboxing the landscapes for our upcoming Mega Map. This giant map will feature a variety of biomes including temperate forests, grasslands, tropical forests, tundras, deserts, volcanic wastelands, burnt forests, and ocean environments.
Our Level Designer, Zaicho is now moving on to blocking out the points of interests and large landmarks of the different biomes. Once the areas have been blocked out, he will go back and rebuild the landmarks and add detail to the overall environment. We are very excited to see this massive landscape coming to life.
Here are some of the points of interest we have begun blocking out.
Animations
Our animation team is working on bringing to life the remaining creatures for the 1.0 update. Please keep in mind that all of the animations are WIP and not yet finalized.
We have come into more complications with the Inferno Ravager, so it will be a little time before we are able to show its tweaked animation set. However, Karly has begun working on the Bio Dragon. The Bio Dragon's movements are inspired by deer and hares as you can see in the two animations below.
Bio Dragon Walk Animation
Bio Dragon Trot Animation
We are also working on bring some of the AI creatures to life, including the dangerous worm species and the passive Dune Weavers.
The Sandslayer worm and the Dune Weaver will both be found in the Dangerous Dunes of the Mega Map. The Dune Weaver is a passive AI and its only defense will be curling into a ball and hoping its hard armor like scales will be able to protect it. The Sandslayer worms, however, are another story. These large, carnivorous worms will hide under the sand and snatch up any dragon who comes too close. Only the bravest dragons will dare travel into the worms' territory to reclaim the treasures they hold.
Slayer Worm Idle Animation
Dune Weaver Roll Up Defense Animation
Dune Weaver Walk Animation
Models and VFX
The next dragon we will be adding to the model room is the Ice Behemoth. This will be the biggest dragon to join the line-up yet.
Up until now, the model and images you have seen of the Behemoth has been of a female. Males of this species will sport a dangerous set of horns used to spar for the attention of the extremely rare females and to fight the Snowslayer Worms that live in their territory. We are still in the process of designing these deadly weapons.
Check out the image below for some of the possible ideas.
Our VFX and Model team has also been working hard on perfecting and feathering the Feathered Zygovo Dragon. This micro-class dragon will be completely covered in feathers. To give the feathers a realistic feel, our VFX artist, Flicker, has created a unique set of feathers for it and will be placing each feather card by hand. This will be a lengthy process, but will be well worth it for a natural looking feather placement.
(be nice to him, he's naked in this picture)
Check out the images below to see just a handful of the feathers Flicker created for the Zygovo.
With the large ocean waters of the mega map, one fish will not be enough. Our Concept Artist, Xilev, designed an oceanic species of fish and our Environmental Asset Artist, Brigade, created its model. This new fish species is inspired by real life salmon, tuna, and dolphin fish. It will be found in the coastal waters that boarder the continent and will be the main food source of the Singe Crest.
That is just some of what our team has created this month. We will continue working towards the 1.0 update and we thank you for your patience. Game development can be a very slow process and we couldn't have done any of this without your support! Check out the community spotlights below and see you for the next dev blog!
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!
Some of our favorite recent screenshots...
by grapesoda#4398
by Jeckoiriii#6969
by Dark Mink#2670
Some of our favorite artwork from the community...
by ghosteater#5611
by ♦ Layka Nima ♦#6353
by Thar#3493
Thanks for reading!
~The Day of Dragons Development Team
Don't want to miss out on updates? Follow us on our social media accounts or become a patron to get updates before they are released!
We apologize for the gap in Dev Blogs over the past few months. A mixture of life events and the release of the Flame Stalker had our attention focused elsewhere. But, we will try to once again give monthly updates on the development process of the game.
As some of you may or may not be aware, we have recently changed the development timeline on our Trello Roadmap. This is because we are making the switch to Unreal Engine 5.0! With this change, we are working on some exciting new content, some of which we know you have been asking for.
Read about the reasons behind the switch to UE5 from our Lead Developer below.
A Word from the Lead Developer
Greetings everyone. I hope you are all doing well this summer.
Before I talk about UE5, let me address the elephant in the room... oh wait, that is not an elephant, it is an Inferno Ravager. Many fans have asked, "When is it coming out?" The answer to that question is Update 1.0. Obviously, the follow up question is, Why? Why was it pushed back? Well, when we finished it's animation set, much was broken. The adult back legs were too short for walking/running, the baby arms were too short as well, many of the animations were unusable. It simply did not meet my quality standards so we had to go back and fix a lot of things on the Ravager. Understand that this is our first Wyvern. The body is much different than a dragon since its wings are also its front legs/arms. With a dragon, we had the ground stuff figured out from the Acid Spitter Drake, just add wings. But with a Wyvern, it is our first Wyvern and to quote a friend, "Mistakes were made" but were fixing those mistakes and plan to release the Ravager with update 1.0. One of the things we had to do with it is go back to the drawing board and decide how it would stand on all 4's, how it would walk, etc. This is one of the reasons we hired Xilev, our 2D Sketch Artist who helped us conceptualize those things in these awesome sketches seen below.
So that's why it has been pushed back and we are committed to making it right before releasing it instead of releasing it and then fixing it later. But enough about that, let's talk about the other thing.
Most of you have heard the big news that Day of Dragons will be switching to Unreal Engine 5. This is extremely exciting for us because of all the open world tools that UE5 offers to game developers and how Day of Dragons will use them. Let's look at some of these tools.
World Partition. World partition means no portals. The old world composition system of UE4 meant to make a huge world I had to load all the maps on the server and then load and unload each map on the client using portals. With World Partition, we can simply create the huge world and the engine takes care of loading and unloading the areas and actors that are too far away for you to see or interact with, freeing up resources and memory. I love it.
Large World Coordinates. LWC uses 64bit floats instead of 32bit floats for world coordinates meaning that we no longer need to use client origin rebasing to make up for the lost precision and accuracy of movement and projectiles being synced over the network. 64bit precision allows for very far distances from origin (0x,0y) that 32bit cannot offer. In 32bit UE4, precision begins to take a hit after only 1500 meters from origin (center of the world) and for our 16km map, the farther you got from origin, the more lag/desync you would experience. LWC will fix that.
Lumen Global Dynamic Illumination. UE5 introduces an amazing upgrade to its lighting system with Lumen. FINALLY we will be able to use dynamic lighting (needed for real time-of-day simulation) without losing color accuracy, shadow accuracy, and shading/ambient light accuracy. Lumen gives us the accuracy and beauty of static lighting with dynamic lights such as the sun and moon directional lights which move during time of day transitions. Lumen is going to make our world look accurate and beautiful. I cannot wait to play the new map using Lumen lighting.
Volumetric Clouds. UE5 has something our fans have been begging for, volumetric clouds that you can fly into and above while First Flight is playing just like in the movies. ːsteamhappyː We'll make it scalable for players on low-end machines and allow you to switch to 2D clouds if needed, but for those with good PC hardware, ACTIVATE FLUFFY CLOUDS!
There's other cool features too including their new water/river/ocean system, better animation tools, new physics system, etc. Playing DoD in UE5... well, it's going to be awesome.
- Jon Slabaugh Lead Developer
Now onto the juicy stuff!
New Skins and Skin Crafting
Concept Artwork created by Xilev
One of the exciting changes coming to the game will be the new skin system. The updated skin system will allow us to use a broader range of colors when designing each skin as well as use different patterns designed by our 2D Skin Artist(s) and then translated into 3D using Substance by our Technical Artist. Here is our first example of a new Shadow Scale skin pattern designed by our 2D Artist, Xilev and brought to life by our Technical Artist, Flicker.
Upcoming Shadow Scale Skin Pattern top view
Upcoming Shadow Scale Skin Pattern bottom view
We will be combining this new skin system with the new nesting system in update 1.0. Dragons who invest fully into the Breeding tree will be able to craft skins using color swatches derived from the dominant/recessive color genes of the parents as well as any unlocked colors to apply as a color mutation in the egg. This feature and more will be included in the next update to our nesting system.
Creating the Mega Map
The world of dragons is about to become quite a big larger. With the current Forgotten Forest Map, the world is 16 x 16 km square. While for most games this would itself be an extremely large map, flying makes traveling from one edge of the map to the other too easy. We originally wanted to remedy this by creating four separate 16km maps and having a portal system to transport players from one biome to another through our mega map system. However, with the release of Unreal 5's open world tools, our plans have changed.
With Unreal Engine 5.0, we are creating one mega continent containing multiple biomes without needing to use portals. This new mega map will be a minimum of 32-40 square kilometers, or four of the current maps combined.
Concept artwork of possible mega continent design
This new mega continent will host not only the five originally planned biomes (the Forgotten Forest, Lava Lands, Winter Winds, Shimmering Caverns, and Dangerous Dunes), it will also contain tropical, canyon, ocean, and island biomes which were being planned as an expansion map later down the line. However, our island biomes won't all be surrounded by water. Players will be able to live on floating islands located in different parts of the map, as well.
Below, check out the video of our Level Designer, ZaichoThePsycho, walking you through just a small section of the upcoming map as well as images of more areas to come.
8k x 8k Coastal Region
8k x 8k Gulf Region
8k x 8k Canyon Region
Upcoming Dragons, Models, and more
Big Dragon Rig
Blitz Striker Rig
New dragons are also getting prepped for gameplay. The still-to-be-officially-named Bio Dragon is now completely rigged along with the Blitz Striker. The Bio will be the next dragon to be animated.
The Feathered Zygovo is also getting tended to. We are currently working on feathers, textures, and tweaking the look.
Feather placement test on the Feathered Zygovo
Other dragons are also getting some tweaks. After issues that arrived during the animation process of the Inferno Ravager (which has temporarily been placed on hold due to walking issues due to leg length), we are going through all of our wyvern models and changing the leg to wing length ratio. This will prevent the dragons from having legs that are way too small for their bodies.
The Singe Crest was the first to receive the new portions and now has a more suitable leg length (and smaller feets).
Tweaked wing and leg length on the Singe Crest
We plan to release the Inferno Ravager along with the Bio Dragon, Blitz Striker, Sandslayer Worm, and Magma Elemental in update 1.0 which will debut on Unreal Engine 5.
On the VFX side of development, our team has been preparing for the transfer to UE5. Our VFX in UE4 were built in Cascade and UE5 uses Niagara, and so Flicker had the task of converting all current UE4 FX over to the new particle system. Unlike most animal survival games, Dragons use a lot of visual fx for their element abilities, so making Niagara versions of our VFX particles was required. VFX has also been working on creating the damage skins for the remaining modeled creatures as well as some other projects.
Bio Dragon damage vfx
Cave Cutter damage vfx
Dune Weaver damage vfx
For Environmental Assets, we are nearly finished with our next two set of corpses. The Swamp Snapper corpse will be added in the next update. Since this AI has a unique body plan, he will be getting his own yummy corpse for dragons to snack on.
Wyvern corpse model WIP
Swamp Snapper corpse model WIP
After the corpse are completed, our Environmental Asset Artist will move their to creating the nests for the next set of dragons as well as starting some new projects to create special environmental landmarks for the new mega map/continent.
With new diets soon to be added to the game, we will need food sources for these dragons as well. The Bio Dragon is a nectarivore and will need a plant to drink from. Our concept artist is currently working on designing the Bio Flower and it will then be sent to Brigade to bring to life. This current design is inspired by Columbines and Passionfruit flowers.
Bio Dragon Flower WIP concept
That's all for now. Our Lead Developer, Jon, was able to do an unscheduled Dev Q&A. If you haven't seen it yet, we suggest you check it out!
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!
Some of our favorite recent screenshots...
by Katharsis#9449
by Lummetus#5250
by milf#2262
Some of our favorite artwork from the community...
by ProwlerPaws#1414
by Oka/Karta#7648
by Nihil#6527
Thanks for reading!
~The Day of Dragons Development Team
Don't want to miss out on updates? Follow us on our social media accounts or become a patron to get updates before they are released!
This patch fixes a vulnerability allowing hackers to compromise the server as well as increase server performance.
Updated FS textures & UV resolution
Tweaked network settings to improve network performance
Increased crit chance bonus for nest genetics on PvE servers
Made improvements to AI server performance
Fixed a vulnerability that allowed hackers to run server commands without the admin panel
Beta Patch 1.M.2.0
Beta Patch 1.M.2.0
Server/Client
This small patch attempts to fix the server lag players are experiencing when the server capacity is over 60 players as well as improve food detection of small corpses such as Thornbacks.
Improved Server Network Performance to reduce lag
Improved detection of small food sources for all dragons
This patch grants all players access to the Flame Stalker Dragon - our second starter dragon, as well as fix many issues and make improvements based on community feedback.
FLAME STALKER
The Flame Stalker Dragon is now spawnable for all players.
Fixed all reported Flame Stalker skin issues
Added missing sleep sfx
Added Flaming Mushroom to Forgotten Forest
Flame Stalker eyes now glow properly in PvP mode
Underwater grass can no longer be set on fire
Improved Flame Stalker's food detection hit box
Improved ground fire SFX
Flame Stalker Hatchling and Juvenile emote animations should now blend out properly
Flame Stalker can now use heat vision while flying but not while boosting, but costs more stamina
Slightly increased Flame Stalker fly speed
Slightly increased Flame Stalker fire breath damage per second
Fixed an issue where peers were not seeing fire in the same direction as the owning player
Heat vision and ground fire SFX are now affected by SFX volume slider
Fixed an issue where Fire breath would not do damage if the fire was not moving
Fire breath now targets correctly to the reticle
Added new Flame Stalker skins
GAME
Updated Canyon region of Forgotten Forest beta map
Improved ambient lighting on Forgotten Forest beta map
Players kicked for latency now properly get the "Desynchronization" message and should no longer need to restart their game to join the server
Players who manage to fall through the map now take damage instead of fall forever
Local, Group, Clan chat tabs now show colored text
Players who go out of map bounds will now take extreme damage
Reduced chance of applying a second and third stack of bleed if already bleeding
Removed collision from tiny trees in the brush areas (Acid Spitters can now zoom zoom)
Creatures swimming underwater can no longer be damaged with Fire or Acid damage types
Improved server & network performance
Added unique sleep SFX for all dragons
BUG FIXES
Fixed several issues related to desync detection
Fixed an issue where dropping a nest sometimes caused a client crash
Fixed an issue where opening the social panel sometimes caused a client crash
Fixed an issue where accepting an egg invite sometimes caused a client crash
Fixed an issue where players who timeout during server join would sometimes cause a server crash
Fixed an issue where the [A]lpha Class designator disappeared from Biology block in Character panel
Fixed a rare issue where a player could experience an infinite black screen after loading into the server
Fixed an issue where players with lower specs were being kicked for connection timeout before fully loading into the server
Loading flapper should no longer stay on in the spawn menu
Fixed an issue where the get up animation would play again if emoting after standing up
Fixed the /mute /unmute admin chat command for offline players (for real this time)
Hunger/Thirst icons now show when logging in if hungry or thirsty
Fixed an Elder growth exploit
Day of Dragons Beta Update 1.M
Day of Dragons Update 1.M.0.0
Server/Client Update
In this content update, we are adding a new playable Dragon, the Flame Stalker. This is our iconic dragon seen on our hero image for Day of Dragons. In the lore, the Flame Stalkers were the first dragons to appear in Jrakhon, with Jrakhon the Firstborne, the Dragonking. We are excited to be adding our first fire breathing dragon and our second free starter dragon to the lineup and we're sure fans will love him.
Being a new playable dragon, Kickstarter backers with the Beta Headstart perk get 7 days headstart access to the Flame Stalker. This means that for 1 week, only those with Headstart will be able to spawn a new Flame Stalker, but they can nest other players in as one. Then on April 6th when headstart is over, we will be making Flame Stalker spawnable for everyone with patch 1.M.1.
Patch 1.M.1 will also add the new Flame Stalker mushrooms to the Forgotten Forest temporarily until the Lava Lands biome has been completed.
Other highlighted features include daily elder growth ticks that anyone can claim just by logging in. These ticks grant 1 mushroom worth of growth every 12 hours making Elder attainable by all players, however, mushrooms remain the quickest way to grow to Elder.
We know you will all love this update. Thank you for your support!
DRAGONS
The Flame Stalker Dragon has been added to the game. This dragon breathes fire and has a special heat sense ability allowing it to see heat signatures of any creature, even cloaked Shadow Scales! To breath fire, hold the Attack button. Bile drains and recharges quickly and fire breath is cheaper if your bile is full. Heat sense will turn itself off automatically, to keep it on, press your Special ability while it's active. Heat sense uses stamina but is cheaper when in the stalk stance.
Added Flame Stalker Dragon (Headstart access, unlocks for all on April 6)
Added Heat Sense ability
Added Fire breath
Added new crosshair for fire ability
Added new Fire damage with burn chance
Added new Flame Stalker skins
Added new Flame Stalker emotes
FX
A lot of new visual effects and sound effects have been added including Burn DoT. Burn DoTs apply damage overtime and each tick of burn has a chance to apply. The only way to remove burn is either wait or go in water. Also note, that if you experience frame lag from all the fire, turn down your Video Effects setting.
Added new stackable burning fire effect and icon
Added new burning HUD effect in 1st Person mode only
Added many new fire sound fx
Added new ground fire burning vfx and sfx effects
Added missing Shadow Scale footsteps sfx for juvi/hatchie
BALANCE
We made some damage mitigation changes and speed tweaks to balance out gameplay with the new Dragon and also added a new way to get to Elder.
Players are now granted 1 mushroom tick of growth every 12 hours (tracks offline players) but players may only claim one tick per 12 hours by logging in to the game for 1 minute. Ticks apply to each character individually.
Tweaked Shadow Scale mitigations and speeds
Tweaked Acid Spitter mitigations and speeds
Reduced the amount of food that mushrooms were giving to large dragons
MISCELLANEOUS
Updated Leucistic skins for Shadow Scale and Acid Spitter
Added Little Dragonlings music which now plays for parents and hatchling on hatch
Made improvements to flight takeoff syncing
Added content for upcoming recessive gene nesting system
Reworked and improved Dragon bite hitboxes
Tweaked footstep sound spawn location
Missing player avatars now show a DoD avatar instead of a blank white avatar in social panel
SERVER ADMINISTRATION
Admins now appear Red in admin panel
Fixed an issue where admin /mute /unmute commands were not working
BUG FIXES
Fixed an issue where players could lose their dragon on Spawn menu if they did not cycle the dragons first
Fixed an issue where Acid Decay could be applied on players in water
Fixed an issue where status effects persisted on corpses after death
Fixed an issue where players who log out with a status effect would login with a broken status effect
Fixed an issue where Acid Spitters could still receive Decay if bitten by another Acid Spitter with Decaying Bite
Fixed an issue where Thornbacks were always bloody
Fixed an issue where corpse scent plume was not always above the corpse ragdoll
Fixed issue where corpses were getting stuck in players mouths and wouldn't release
Beta Patch 1.L.7.0
BETA PATCH 1.L.7.0
Server/Client Patch
This patch focuses mainly on fixing long-standing bugs and issues and improving server performance.
Doubled the amount of Day time so that Time of Day is now a 2:1 Day/Night ratio. Night remains unchanged.
Nights are now slightly brighter
Added Player Ping to Players list in Social Panel
Removed Full Screen display window option as this mode has been deprecated from Windows 10/11 and caused many client crashes
Improved flight take off syncing in that players trying to take off in high latency situations should be able to properly sync and take off
Improved Shadow Scale flight maneuvering to better reflect its air agility and to prepare for unique flight characteristics between species
Reduced SS charge breath button hold down time from 2s to 1.5s
Reduced SS charge breath subsequent charge ticks from 2s to 1s
Reduced cooldown on Acid Spit from 2.5s to 2s
Optimized server processes to increase performance
Improved the Server's Cheat/Desync Detection
Fixed an issue where pitch was not inverting properly after the last patch
Fixed an issue where corpses would sometimes glitch out and not be able to be picked up or eaten
Fixed an issue where some players would crash after opening the Social Panel
Fixed an issue where heal ticks would break Shadow Cloak
Fixed an issue where level ambiance and level music would sometimes not play
Fixed an issue where hatchling movement would not replicate to the server if held longer than 5 minutes
Fixed an issue where players without the Patreon Rewards Pack could enable jellies cosmetic
Fixed a server crash related to corpse physics bodies
Fixed a server crash where Server was unable to retrieve Steam data for a client
