Dragon: The Game

Open-world action RPG -- be your dragon. Out in Early Access. Full release in 2016. Press and video producers reach us at: info[at]dragonthegame[dot]net

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

I don’t believe a successor has been chosen for this position yet, so you may experience a gap in updates. Sorry about that! Hopefully this position will be filled quickly.
It’s been great interacting with everyone, and I wish you all the best.
Have a good 2019!

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

A quick note from your social media correspondent:
This will be my last post for you guys. I’ve enjoyed working for Dragon, but this year I’ve decided to pursue other opportunities.

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

Happy Holidays from Dragon!

Our apologies for the slow year. We hope to review our strategy so that we can improve in 2019.

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

There’s a slight hitch in the animator that causes the dragon to twitch randomly when taking actions. It’s a bit funny, but not quite what we’re going for. We’re smoothing things out, but either way, we’ll be sure to show you more of our progress before we break for the holidays.

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

The new dragon model can now run, walk, and fly with the animations synced to the model’s speed. We don’t have any screenshots or video this week due to a hard drive failure, but everything was backed up, so no data was lost. We hope to show you more next week!

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

Ground movement physics are coming along! Here are some screenshots from our recent test footage. Note that these were taken in a sandbox environment, not the more detailed environment that will be featured in the actual game.

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

We’re still in the process of fusing our upgraded environments with the new dragon model. As part of the process, we’re rebuilding the dragon’s animator and movement controller. No screenshots this week since Grant’s out of town, but we hope to share more in the near future.

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

We don’t have any screenshots for you this week as we’re still finding a balance between environmental demands and this new model, but we expect to have some for our next update!

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

Grant is working on migrating the updated dragon model into the game. It’s prettier and more customizable than the current one, but also much more graphically expensive.

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

Here’s our first screenshot featuring Unity 2018’s fancy new graphics. We’re still figuring out the optimal balance of detail vs. size of world vs. density of objects that will let us deliver an environment that looks good and can run on the average player’s PC.

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

Grant has started the process of upgrading to the latest version of Unity. If all goes well, we’ll have screenshots to share next week!

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

This should provide our players with the best graphical experience possible.

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

We’ve had questions on the Steam forums about what version of Unity we’re using for Dragon. Currently, we’re working with an older version, but we plan to upgrade to the latest version available (currently Unity 2018.2.6) after we get done optimizing our base code.

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

As development proceeds, you’re sure to encounter some bugs - some amusing, some frustrating. If you’d like to report a bug, you can do so at [email protected]. Be sure to include “BUG” in the subject line!

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

However, since this will determine the size of the scene we can load at any given time, we’ve decided it’s worth spending the extra hours. We appreciate your patience!

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

We’re trying various configurations of Dragon’s assets and textures in order to optimize performance. Each iteration takes about 15 hours to build and test, which is the source of the recent development slowdown.

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

This Monday, we’ll be having a meeting to discuss the current development slowdown and how to fix it. Details to follow next week!

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

Grant’s still working on the patch. Meanwhile, our writer is organizing the backer-submitted NPCs and working on fitting them into our existing storylines.

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

Grant’s hit a slight bottleneck with asset optimization/load management. It’s part art, part science, all slog, but we’re working through it! I’ll keep you updated.

[Dragon: The Game @DragonTheGame]

Sorry for the late post! I was hoping to wait until the patch was ready and update then, but we’re still not quite there yet. We appreciate you bearing with us as we hammer out the details.