Day of Dragons News

[h3]Hotfix 1.J.B.1[/h3]
Optional Server Client Hotfix

FIXED

• Invisible Thornback Crawler Mounds
  

[h3]VERSION 1.J.B.0[/h3]
Patch Requires Server/Client update

ADDED

• There are now more mushroom spawns in the conifer forest with the river
  
• There are now slightly more mushroom spawns in the redwoods
  
• Thornbacks now build mounds they call home, find the mounds to find food. Each mound is home to up to 4 Thornback Crawlers
  
• Added more Thornback Crawler locations
  

CHANGED

• Thornback Crawlers are now more vocal
  
• Mushrooms now provide food based on size of the consumer. The smaller you are, the more food you get per mushroom.
  
• Server desync detection is more lenient for players with high pings
  
• Server desync message now says "Desynchronization" instead of "Unusual Activity"
  

FIXED

• Fixed hole in big log at lone tree
  
• Fixed broken AI spawner in NE Redwoods
  
• Fixed floating trees along river bank
  
• Fixed missing collision on some trees
  
• Fixed Possible Server Crash
  

Please note: Those who own or rent private DoD servers will want to do a clean install of Day of Dragons Beta, as the Beta and old Alpha are different games and are not compatible. Visit our Discord for the latest server configuration.



[h2]Alpha to Open Beta Patch Notes[/h2]

[h3]ADDED[/h3]

Creatures

• Shadow Scale (Starter Dragon)
  -Special Ability Cloak (Q)
  
• Acid Spitter (DLC)
  -Special Ability Decaying Bite (Q)
  
• Thornbacked Crawler (AI)
  -Poisonous effect when consumed
  

General mechanics

• Physics-based Flight v1.0
  -Crash and Fall Damage
  -Hatchlings can now glide if dropped from high heights
  
• Swimming v1.0
  -Swim Bladder buoyancy control (Acid Spitter only)
  
• Night Vision v1.0
  -Unique Night Vision for Shadow Scale
  -Unique Night Vision for Acid Spitter
  
• Mutations and Genetics
  
• Hatchling Carry and Struggle v1.0
  
• Nesting v1.0
  -Skin Crafting v1.0
  -Prompt for when ground is not flat enough for nest placement
  -Nest Waypoint
  -Ability to build a nest
  -Nests can now be destroyed with pierce/blunt damage if unprotected. Nests are unprotected if the sire or dam are more than 50 meters away. Only the sire or dam must be within 50 meters to protect the nest, not both
  -Courtship Emote (5)
  -Nest Panel v1.0
  -Custom Nest Models for Acid Spitter and Shadow Scale
  
• Campus and Waypoint Marker
  
• Dynamic Growth system including Hatchling, Juvenile, Adult, and Alpha growth stages
  
• Death Camera
  -Death SFX
  
• Ragdoll Corpse physics and carrying
  -Corpses now spawn a blood pool decal where they died
  
• 1st Person Camera
  
• Persistent Clans
  
• Alpha Growth system and unlocking mechanic
  
• Custom AI system
  
• Added Animation IK/FK
  
• Melanistic skin is unlockable for non-Kickstarters. Good luck!
  

UI and HUD

• Character Panel (I)
  -Growth Bar at bottom of screen
  -New Stat system
  
• Social Panel (O)
  -New Group/Clan invite system through Social Panel
  -Ability to go Offline to avoid appearing on Social Panel player list
  
• Admin Panel
  -Admin panel auto-refreshes every 5 seconds
  -Admins can now mute/unmute players to restrict their ability to use global chat
  -Admins can now replenish players hunger/thirst/sickness
  -Admins can now grow players to juvenile or adult
  -Admins can now reset AI and clear corpses
  -Admins can now slay, port to, or summon players
  -Opening Admin Panel puts Admin in "Super" mode
  
• Character Select Menu with full DLC support
  -Players can have 1 character per species per server
  -Skin selection
  -Can now select Kickstarter and Patreon Skins
  -Can now select Shimmer skin effect for exclusive skins (KS2019 skins)
  
• New Loading Screens and Icon
  
• New / commands including including /help to list all commands
  
• Status Effect icons for Hunger, Thirst, Poison, Bleed, Super, and Decay
  
• New HUD Graphic
  

Survival & Combat Systems

• Stamina exhaustion mechanic (when stamina is fully drained, it takes a while before starting to regenerate)
  
• Bile exhaustion mechanic (when bile is fully drained, it takes a while before starting to regenerate)
  
• Resting Mechanics (sit/lay/sleep)
  
• Health now receives a regen boost when really low
  
• Sickness Mechanic
  
• Added ability to drink from any water source (hatchlings can drink from puddles)
  
• Hints for interactions (talk, eat, drink)
  
• Many new damage types (Piercing, Blunt, Plasma, Acid, Fire)
  
• Decay/bleed stacking, both stack up to 3 times
  
• Added armor and bile regeneration
  
• Added targeting camera (aiming ranged attacks)
  
• Wound, Bleed, and Decay VFXs
  

Setting and Server Configs

• New Game options
  
• New Video options
  
• New Audio options
  
• New Input options
  
• Simple Profanity Filter
  
• Full Partial Gamepad Controller support + keybinds
  
• Many new server config options
  
• Admin command and player kill logging
  
• Streamer mode to hide location and mute in-game music
  
• Spectator mode
  

Environment

• Forgotten Forest Biome v1.0
  -Interactive foliage dependent on creature size
  -Nharogk, Jrakhon's moon
  -Map theme music now plays when spawning in map for the first time
  -Footstep SFX for various surfaces
  -Edible Fauna
  

[h3]Changed[/h3]

• Removed playerholder dragons, AI, and maps
  
• Keybinds changed
  
• Improved Safelogging system (to safe log, you must sleep for 60s, exiting sleep should cancel timer, check timer on your ESC menu)
  
• Redesigned Chat system (All, Global, Local, Group, Clan)
  
• Removed many slash commands as new Character panel makes them obsolete
  
• Optimized chat data to decrease packet size
  
• Chats now use a queue system to prevent chat lag
  
• Redesigned starvation and dehydration mechanics
  
• Revamped Bite Combat
  
• Redesigned Projectile/Bile Combat
  
• Steam Master Server List should now show player counts
  
• Game now runs a hardware benchmark on first startup and adjusts video settings accordingly (please delete your Save/Settings/Graphics.sav file)
  -Can now run benchmark from Video panel
  -Benchmarks no longer run at startup
  
• Game now load Medium settings as default
  
• Shadows can no longer be disabled to prevent gaining an advantage over other players
  
• Low foliage setting no longer disables foliage, just reduces it further
  
• Unlimited frame cap removed (capped at 60 FPS) and replaced with 4 settings, Auto, 30FPS, 45FPS, 60FPS.
  
• Save setting save names changed to remove any issues when updated to version 1.0 from version 0.8
  
• Refactored & optimized server/network code
  
• Refactored game code
  
• Server tick rate & replication frequency increased to attempt to reduce movement jitters
  
• Client>Server network optimizations & smoothing improvement
  
• Network optimizations
  
• Netcode optimizations
  
• Updated FMOD to version 2.01.09 increasing SFX performance
  
• All creatures have been balanced with the new systems
  
• Group size is limited to 10 players
  

[h2]Closed Beta to Open Beta Patch Notes[/h2]

ADDED

• Players on PvE servers can now type /pvp to flag themselves for combat allowing dueling or death. Flagged players have red glowing eyes. Flagging can only be toggled if safelog is available. To safelog, go to sleep (Hold Shift+R). To unflag, type /pvp again when safelog is available.
  
• Added new exotic skin crafting recipes for both Shadow Scale and Acid Spitter
  
• Added missing controller icons to keybinds menu
  
• Added more landmarks and water locations to the map
  
• Added more AI spawn locations
  
• Added more mushroom spawn locations
  
• Added more player spawns
  

CHANGED

• Shadow Scale Dragon is now available to all players as a starter character
  
• Deprecated Day of Dragons Alpha (goodbye cruel world) Players switching versions must delete their save game folder and app data saves folder (2 directories).
  
• Day of Dragons now supports Vulkan. To switch RHI, type -dx12 or -vulkan in the Steam launch parameter. -dx12 is recommended for Windows 10 users having issues running the game.
  
• Updated various SFX
  
• Nights are now darker
  
• Admin /unstuck ability now fixes even more common player bugs
  
• Hatchling struggle ability is now 100% guaranteed to escape on PvE servers with an increased chance to escape on PvP servers
  
• Tweaked mushroom spawning & spawn rates
  
• Rebalanced ASD and SSD armor and damage stats
  
• All chat channel now shows different colors for different channel chats to help distinguish the channels better
  
• Accepting a nest invite of the same species now reduces your corpses food value to 1 to prevent corpse feeding from egg invites
  
• Reduced Stamina drain on Acid Spitter
  
• Increased Acid Spitter & Shadow Scale swim speeds
  
• Improved flight takeoff syncing
  

FIXED

• Improved player collision detection at high speeds to prevent flying through terrain
  
• Fixed missing physics on some water ponds on Forgotten Forest
  
• Fixed up some AI spawners using old method that caused a server infinite loop lockup
  
• Trees no longer look extra sharp
  
• Players should now correctly spawn randomly around the map (fixed bug causing players to spawn in only a few spawn points)
  
• Fixed multiple floating grass areas on Forgotten Forest
  
• Fixed bug where wounds would appear on a dragon after server restart even if they were not damaged
  
• Fixed bug where players who pick up a bug as it is despawning can no longer pick up bugs anymore or fly.
  
• Fixed an issue with admin corpse tags showing for corpses that have already despawned
  
• Fixed several audio bugs
  

Day of Dragons Genesis Open Beta goes live for everyone on July 21st with our first starter dragon, the Shadow Scale. On July 21st the beta client and server will be pushed to Steam default branch and the early Alpha build will be deprecated. Players who update to beta will need to delete their save folders. Detailed instructions are available in both our Steam pinned messages and on our Discord. Server owners will want to visit our Discord to download our new server config guide. Kickstarters with the Beta Access perk and owners of the Acid Spitter DLC can try out the preview Beta 1 week early by switching Day of Dragons to the beta branch.

The Open Beta is just the beginning for Day of Dragons, we still have more content to put in before the game can come out of Early Access (to see the content we are working on check out our roadmap on Trello). We still have more dragons to make, more animations to make, more sounds to make, more biomes to make, we have so much more work to do, but Open Beta is the true beginning of our Early Access game, it's the first taste of the Kickstarter-funded Day of Dragons game. This is what we have been working on for almost 2 years and we cannot wait for you to play it as it is only the beginning of what is to come for Day of Dragons.

We will fly with you all in the Forgotten Forests on July 21st!

Greeting Dragons,

As you know, we do not have a dev blog this month as we are all hands on deck working hard on the Open Beta release coming next month in July (confirmed). With the release of the Beta, it brings with it a new era for Day of Dragons, a completely new and different game than the Alpha, built on a different version of UE4, with many new features, optimizations, and feel. That said, when the Beta releases next month, the old Alpha will be deprecated and no longer available or playable. In it's place will be the new Beta version of Day of Dragons which we have spent the past 20 months since our very successful Kickstarter campaign building from the ground up. It's the reason the Alpha has not been updated in over a year, because we deprecated it, and replaced it with the Beta. I say that because there is a lot of confusion concerning the Alpha. The Alpha was a passion project, the work of one person trying to do it all himself with absolutely no funding, then pitched his idea on Kickstarter hoping to raise $12k to hire someone to make 3 simple models with the hope that after enough time, the game would self-fund itself to where more custom content could be made and added. But Kickstarter didn't raise $12k, it raised over $500k, which enabled us to make a much higher quality and custom game from the ground up than the Alpha was ever planned to be. The funding enabled us to make Day of Dragons the way it was dreamed to be! (Thank you Kickstarters!) Being that we had the funding, there was no reason to spend any more precious time on updating the Alpha, and so we put all of our time into building the Beta, which is so much better than the Alpha in every way. Once you play the Beta, you would never want to touch the Alpha again, the difference is like night and day.



The Day of Dragons Beta is the accumulation of 20 months of hard (funded) work by our small team of developers to bring to you all the promise we made during our Kickstarter campaign, a dragon survival game like no other. We have used the funding to design and create our own models, sounds, animations, mechanics, effects, music, UI, and code - just as we said we would - and have proven the naysayers on YouTube all wrong. We didn't do what they accused us of doing, we didn't do what they said we'd do, we did exactly what we promised we'd do, we made a dragon survival game from the ground up using the funding our backers supported us with - and we're just getting started! It's only been 20 months and we have made tremendous progress! Most games take over 5 years and millions of dollars to finish. We're by no means finished yet, we have A LOT MORE planned for Day of Dragons, just look at our new Roadmap on Trello. But we have come along ways from a Kickstarter demo to a fully functioning game in just 20 months, and I want to thank our dev team for working so hard these past 20 months to get us to the Beta stage.



Day of Dragons has the goal to bring you something truly special, a game where you literally feel like you are the dragon. A game where you can roleplay, a game where you can PvE or PvP, a game with quests, AI boss fights, alpha class progression, secret unlockables, exploration, clans, and the most amazing physics-based flight system you will have ever have experienced in any survival game! The flight is beawesome! We offer server communities the tools to host their own dedicated servers, with custom configuration options to help server admins create the environment they want with the rules they want for their world - and our servers are very stable, highly optimized with very little lag able to host up to 100 players with no issues. We also provide server owners an intuitive admin panel for server admins which makes managing your server communities very easy - and all of that will be available to you next month with the release of the Open Beta as you will be able to host your own Day of Dragons Beta servers. If you want to rent a server, we highly recommend Nodecraft and have been working closely with their team to ensure Day of Dragons server hosting is fully supported.

We have so much planned for Day of Dragons, our devs love our game and we love our community. I hope you are all as excited as we are for the Day of Dragons Open Beta scheduled for release in July (Kickstarters with Beta Access perk will get it a week early). We are passionate about our game, we have goals, we have plans, and we have the vision. Day of Dragons is the Dragon survival game you have all been waiting for - and we are going to prove it to you starting with the Open Beta as we introduce to you all our first flyable dragon (and first starter dragon) the Shadow Scale available to everyone with the Open Beta release in July!

We hope to fly with you all soon!

- Jonathan Slabaugh, Lead Developer for Day of Dragons