Dinolords News

[p]Like all good things, even the spookiest month of the year must come to an end. But there is a silver lining - that means it is time for a new edition of Dinolords Monthly!


This month has been very focused on production as a result of no big events or streams or trailer deadlines to race towards. Which has been a welcome change in all our schedules that usually consists of one task after the next more-or-less frantically chained together.

As a consequence of actually getting a bunch of "real" work done on the game, this means that there is less of an overall focus of this issue of Dinolords Monthly, but I have tried to touch base on some of the areas of the game that has seen some big progress over the past month.

[/p][h2]Unifying Untitled Units Uniformally[/h2][p]Up until now, the humanoid units in the game have primarily consisted of a basic melee type and a basic ranged type. We are working on adding a bunch more units, more typically akin to what you would expect from an RTS-type game where different units might be good in certain situations or setups, or works as effective counters against different enemies or fortifications.

Some of them were hinted from Lina's art showcase in last month's edition, but this time we will have a more descriptive look at some of the units.

Overall, on the philosophy of unit design in the game, we try to consider a "rock/paper/scissor" approach to unit design, and new units have to offer something different and not just be a straight upgrade compared to another unit - there will be other ways to increase unit power, so having two functionally identical units with different values does not make for interesting gameplay.

[/p][h3]Knight[/h3][p]Knights are heavy, defensive units wearing big shiny plate armor and carrying a huge shield. When in your warband, knights can be commanded to slam down their shields in a wall formation and provide cover from incoming blows and arrows - super handy especially if there was a unit that could fire some sort of piercing bolts...

[/p][h3]Crossbow unit[/h3][p]Oh hey, look, a unit that can fire some sort of piercing bolt!
Slow loading but heavy damage with piercing bolts that can pass through multiple units.
Not entirely meant as a straight upgrade from a regular archer, but something different where each still offers pros and cons in different situations.

[/p][h3]Dilophosaurus[/h3][p]Skittish ranged attacks and the ability to spit slowing gunk on the ground to crowd-control other units, paired with a fast ability to get out of harms way makes this little bugger one super fun addition to combat and really moves the battle around on the map!
And while the specifics of its design isn't completely set in stone, it represents the first introduction of terrain-modifying effects to the game, a system we hope to expand with other effects like fire and more.

[/p][h3]Scutosaurus[/h3][p]Chunky guy who can dig itself under structures and pass obstacles paired with a solid melee attack. An experiment into different layers of unit navigations - what if a unit could dig, hide underground, or dig a tunnel beneath walls?

[/p][h2]Combat Testing[/h2][p]All of the above and many more units led us to needing a setup where we can test units in combat, both against each other, but also against the player, because all the hypothetical design is worthless if the result is not engaging and interesting and leads to cool gameplay.

So we set out to create a simple level where we can quickly add friendly and enemy units and press go to see how different combinations of units interact.


The layout is pretty simple but it is deliberately made to afford as many aspects of testing as possible; there is a friendly and an enemy base so we can see scenarios from the perspective of the attacking or defending force, and there is a big field in the middle where we can just throw units against each other or against the player to see how different matchups feel and how they play out.

And while we had a bunch of chaotic fun just spawning in loads of units, we also made many important discoveries. Among them were the fact that units lumped together too much when fighting with many units, effectively turning the fight into a moshpit.

This had led us down a spiral of unit navigation handling and navmeshes and pathfinding and behaviour, but that will be a story for a future monthly.

[/p][h3]Environmental Effects[/h3][p]Another area that has been seeing some major progress is the environment and weather effects - we now have a weather system that can introduce wind and rain and change the lighting of the level to reflect a storm or a quiet afternoon breeze.

Additionally, we have been playing with fire, literally! A level can now burn based on the flammability of the surface, which means dry grass burns really easily but a rain-wet bog does not really want to ignite.

[/p][h3]It's a wrap[/h3][p]That's all for this edition, thank you all for following along, and watch this space when we are back next month for the November edition.[/p][p]-panxter[/p]

[p]Do you remember? The 21st ooooof September! We certainly do, and while this entry in the Monthly segment is slightly delayed, we have a lot to talk about.
In this edition of Dinolords Monthly, we will be checking out what tea and/or beans were spilled at The Spill, a live-streamed event at Coffee Stain Studios, and we will check out our new offices!

Oh, also, we have a new devlog out, in which we talk about the latest visual upgrades to the game along with the new Warband system. Then we go to Gamescom and is showered with media attention.

[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]
[/p][h2]Spilling the beans[/h2][p]On Tuesday the 8th of October, Michael, Kasra and Ulrik drove all the way up to Skövde in Sweden to visit Coffee Stain Studios and take part in the first version of a new livestream called The Spill, you can watch the VOD here:
[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]
It was an absolute blast to participate in the stream, firstly because of the super chill format with a more conversational interview style, but also because of the great reception in the chat with a lot of hilarious and spot-on comments from everyone.
We keep getting humbled by everyone sharing our interest in Dinolords, you could not ask for a better motivator to make something great!
So thank you to everyone watching, and to Coffee Stain Studios for hosting such a cool event.

[/p][h2]Move it, move it![/h2][p]Our base have been at the center of Copenhagen for many years now, the last 10-or-so of which we were at the helm of running a coworking space called Spilhuset where we shared office space with a handful other companies with some awesome people. Spilhuset was located in an old charming yellow building in the middle of Pilestræde, all the walls were crooked and some of the doors could not be closed while others could not be opened.
An era is coming to an end though, and on the 15th of October we will have closed the door at Spilhuset for the last time. It has been an amazing journey to work alongside so many talented people, witness each others successes and failures, share experiences and knowledge, but unfortunately we were not able to find a solution to keep Spilhuset running, which meant we had to move to a new office.

In many ways, moving an office is not entirely dissimilar to moving a house or an apartment, over the years loads of 'stuff' accumulate, and packing it all down into boxes takes way longer than you think because many things inspire reminiscing about all the stories that have occured over the years.
But now we are here at the new place, in a building thats at least 100 years newer than the old office, behind the same desks and computers, back in action working on making Dinolords the best game we can make.

[/p][h2]Dinosaur, Minosaur![/h2][p]
We have some super cool work being done on some of the mountable dinosaurs, for instance we have both Viking- and British-themed saddles and visuals for the dinosaurs being worked on right now.
This will help make it easier to spot who's who at a glance, but it's also just super nice to solidify the dinosaurs as part of the world with saddles and flags and regalia that fits with the respective faction.
It needs to be clear visually when you get a dinosaur, especially if you 'take' it from the Vikings, that it is now yours, and it needs to feel cool, which this definitely helps with.

[/p][h2]Concept Sketch Showcase[/h2][p]Finally, it would be a shame not to showcase some of our super talented artist Lina's concept sketches, here are some for some armor and some units:
See you lords next month! In the meantime, why not join our Discord?[/p][p]-panxter[/p]

[p]As the keen-eyed among you might have spotted, Dinolords made an appearance at the business-area of Gamescom along with our friends at Ghostship and the other projects they are publishing.

The main objective was simple but intense: talk to as many press outlets as possible within a span of two days. In this edition of Dinolords Monthly we are going to dive into what that experience was like, and some of the coverage we have seen as a result.

[/p][h2]The Gamescom Experience, but slightly different[/h2][p]On Tuesday the 20th of August, Michael, Ulrik and Kasra journeyed to Köln with a packed schedule ahead of them. To tell the tale of what happened, our Game Director and CEO Michael has written the following segment:

We traveled to Cologne in Germany to participate in the yearly video game pilgrimage that is Gamescom. We were going as part of the Danish Games booth with our publisher. This was the first time that we were showing the game to outside people, and so we were naturally excited and nervous.

We had 19 x 30 minutes of press briefings presenting the latest build of Dinolords. That is 9.5 hours of nonstop talking and showing off the game to journalists and let me tell you... it was crazy. The response in the room was very positive and we felt like most of the people we talked to really understood what we were trying to achieve. They were excited and full of praise for what they saw.

Journalists see hundreds of games at conferences, so you're never guaranteed that they'll write anything after a demo. So when you get back from the conference you sort of just wait, and hope they do. This past week we've gotten some very nice articles on top tier outlets like Rock Paper Shotgun and Rolling Stone (!) calling it one of the best experiences at gamescom. It's been overwhelming to see our game resonate with so many people and it's confirmed to us that we're heading in the right direction.

- Michael

[/p][h2]Pressing Matters[/h2][p]So what were they talking about during all those hours in a small meeting room with press from all over the world?

Firstly, and most importantly, we had spent some time making a small, tailored level specifically made to fit the time restraints of the press meetings; it had to take around 15 minutes to play from start to finish, and we of course wanted it to showcase as much as possible of the game. As you might imagine, this was no simple feat, but we ended up with a scene that did most if not all of what we wanted it to, and here’s a short video with some gameplay footage recorded straight from that demo level:

[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]After Michael, Ulrik and Kasra returned home, we were all eagerly awaiting to hear about their experiences - they barely had any spare time to send a raven while they were down there, so we had lots of questions. And right as we were talking about it all, the articles started popping up and drew our attention.

Here are some highlights, starting out with the English ones:

“It’s an utterly stupid idea that shouldn’t work half as well as it does, but video games can get away with ridiculous concepts like dinosaurs in medieval times. It’s so dumb it’s brilliant.”
- Issy Van Der Velde for Rolling Stone

“You could end up firing an arrow made from wood you collected, by the fletcher you recruited, to work in the workshop you built, using materials you gathered, and frankly that’s just as cool as any dinosaur.”
- James Archer for Rock Paper Shotgun

“While it may sound like a daydream that's gone too far, Dinolords was one of the most refreshing games I've seen this year - and that's actually got very little to do with the premise.”
- Lloyd Coombes for GGRecon

And one in Danish, translated quote:

“‘But guys, Vikings did not ride dinosaurs in the past’, a sentence we all found entertaining, and even though it’s mostly true, it did not matter in the slightest because Dinolords was fun to play.”
- Kasper Pedersen for Arkaden

[/p][h2]What's next?[/h2][p]So while this has been sort of an internal milestone, going to Gamescom with something playable, we have also been working on the rest of the game. For the foreseeable future, we will be putting a lot of focus on adding more content for the game.

We want a broad selection of interesting units, buildings and dinosaurs, but we also want interesting systems to interact with. This requires a bunch of things to be made, from 3D models that needs meshes, textures and animations, to the underlying systems that needs to support units with interesting abilities, different characteristics and the capacity to act and interact in meaningful ways on and off the battlefield.

And finally, while we are not ready to expose the full roster of units and buildings just yet, we want to at least throw a bone and share a couple of ideas that we are currently working on. These are heavily subject to change still, so anything can happen.

First up is AoE (Area of Effect) interactions; imagine a patch of flammable tar that spreads on the ground and slows units passing through. And if lit, it creates a damage-over-time effect to units stood in it. Or a toxic poison cloud that disorients units and allows for more tactical control over the battlefield. Well, this is currently something we are working on. Having modifiers that dynamically can alter the course of battle and create different interactions you have to navigate around, both friendly and enemy.

And secondly, we have been looking at different dinosaurs (and especially the scale of different dinosaurs, since some of these were absolute units and we are in awe of the size of this lad especially).


Lastly, as hinted in the screengrab above, we are looking at, eh, units that don't walk on normal solid ground. That being both flying and water-oriented dinosaurs. This is still incredibly early, so we are not even sure how this could even work, but we want to make sure we explore this properly. If we end up having either airborne or swimming dinosaur units, they need to make a net-positive contribution to gameplay. We have been bouncing some fun ideas around like what if a pterosaur-type could fly in, pick up a unit and either transport or lethally drop them somewhere else.

[/p][h2]Until next time[/h2][p]That was all for this instalment of Dinolords Monthly. We are still absolutely thrilled to follow the feedback we get from press, but especially also from all of you guys on the discussion board and over on discord. And while we are already having a lot of fun making Dinolords a reality, it makes it a bunch more meaningful to see that it resonates well with other people than just ourselves.

So a big thank you to everyone who has written a comment, a thread, a message, on videos, articles, forums and chatrooms. We try to read everything, and know that we do read it and we share and discuss what we see a lot.

Catch you in the next one.

Steel and Scale.[/p][p]-panxter[/p]

[p]The page has just turned on the calendar, which means it is time for a new edition of Dinolords Monthly where we take a look at some of the things that have been going on in the game. We are still hard at work, and because of some things coming up in the near future, this edition will be a little shorter than usual - let us call it a Monthly Lite.
This month we are going to check out some improvements on some visual aspects of the terrain, so let us take a dip and touch some grass!

[/p][h2]Water is wet[/h2][p]The water was in dire need of some attention, it was based on one of our first quick solutions of just adding a shader that looked a little like water to a flat plane. And while it served the purpose of conveying that it was in fact water, it did not really meet the standards of the visual quality we want for the game.
So after some work and fiddling, we have drastically improved how the water itself looks - just have a look at these before and after screenshots:


There are still some additional details about the water that are still in the works, which includes some dynamic waves that warp around the edge and terrain dynamically, making the waterline look much more like water and less like Z-fighting. There’s also some better foam in the works, but all in all it already feels like a 1000% improvement when compared to before.

[/p][h2]The grass is greener[/h2][p]We have been looking at grass a lot lately. Tall grass, short grass, green grass, brown grass, soft grass, coarse grass, well-kept grass, wild grass, lush grass, there are so many variables to play around with when it comes to the green narrow-leaved plant that grows everywhere.
Kacper, our technical artist, has made a great in-depth post over on the-site-formally-known-as-twitter, where he showcases some of the features of the new grass system for Dinolords, you should go there and check it out in detail but here are some of the highlights.


The density and size of the grass can now be manipulated via layers where noise can be used to make the grass look a lot more visually interesting and less uniform.
Wind effects have been improved drastically, and now affects both the grass and the small foliage as well.
Grass samples coloir from the terrain texture underneath, meaning we can make more dynamic areas with dry grass or swamplands and much more.
Stamps can be placed that affect density and size to make clearings around buildings and the like much more natural looking where we previously just removed the grass from the footprint of a building, we can now fade the height smoothly.
Grass can be automatically removed from textures where we don’t want it to grow like on paths, sand, rocks etc.
And the grass now responds to the lord and units walking over it, where it gets pushed down and slowly raises back up!


So many cool grassy things!

[/p][h2]That’s all folks[/h2][p]That was it for this ‘lite’ edition of Dinolords Monthly.
As per usual, if you are not there already, we have a discord you can join here, where we chat a little more informally about what is going on and we answer any questions that might pop up.[/p][p]-panxter[/p]

[h2]Prelude[/h2]
This was originally posted in 3 parts over at our Dinolords Discord. For more deep dives and sneak peaks, you are more than welcome to jump over and have a look around !

This is about the journey I took to make our new Viking Ships. These magnificent vessels are something I’ve wanted to take a crack at for a while but the opportunity just hadn't presented itself until recently. The main issue is that we don’t currently have naval combat, so what are the use cases here ?
But on the other hand, the game is about Vikings invading England, and the Viking ships are such an essential part of their cultural identity and mythos that it was important to establish how Dinolords Viking ships might have looked.

Not only that, but the research that goes into medieval cultures and time spent coming up with our variants of them helps us get to “know our factions better” if that makes sense. So research like this has a direct value on the ship, but this whole process also has an indirect value in that they help shape the visual language of the faction, and therefore, a big part of the game.

One thing that’s also worth keeping in mind is how our Vikings differentiates slightly from the history you remember, since they found dinosaur eggs about 20-30 years prior to the game. It’s not that long ago, but as a modern day comparison, it’s not that long ago the internet was invented either.

Disclaimer. I’m not an expert and anything I say might be wrong. I’m just learning about stuff here and I wanted to share what I’ve discovered.


[h2]Knowledge is a river. WINK[/h2]
When I started to look into Viking ships more seriously, I already knew a lot.

1. They had dragon heads,
   
2. They had cool flowing planks on the sides that kind of went up into a peak.
   
3. They were slim and mano.. Mani.. manoeuvrable and they worked well in shallow waters.
   
4. Uh Yeah There is no 4 so apparently I didn’t know that much, but who doesn’t like more points on a list ? Those are the best parts !
   

(Example of a Viking ship bow at least partially peaking. Showing The Gokstad Ship. Great picture by Karamell from wikimedia)

So i sat down and started to think on how to make a Viking Ship that would both be recognizable as that, but would also look specifically Dinolords.

[h2]Seeing is Believing[/h2]
One thing to note.

I think it’s really important to have things that not necessarily work, but they need to look like they work so when you look at it - it might not have actually existed, but it looks like it would have existed and you can kind of see how and why it would have worked.

This is something that I also share with some others on the team and we try to bring it with us when we consider designs and concepts.

All the above meant that it was time to research. My paltry knowledge could only get me so far.
Unfortunately there is no learning montage in real life so I had to do it old school. I kicked over my bookcase on my way to the pc and went on Wikipedia.

Then I went to other Viking ship related websites and things started to look up. At the stern. Of a ship. A Viking..ship.

[h2]Ship Types[/h2]
According to danishnet.com There are multiple Viking ship types, and each of these had subcategories.

(Might also represent the before image of a safety brochure of why you shouldn’t keep open fires near fabric. Incredible Image by Óscar CR from Pixabay)

Warships. These are the ones you think of when you think Viking ships. They were for carrying Vikings to battle. We have Snekke types, Drekkar and other types here(sorry to the ships that got left out. Skeid. I'm looking at you).
The Drekkar ships are the ones with mounting points for - presumably dragon heads.
I say presumably for as it turns out, the dragon heads show up in text and drawings, but have never actually been found. Not yet at least.
Heavy Merchant Ships. I don’t think i need to explain this one. They carried items of value. Like goats and sheep and maybe a little barf from those goats or sheep, or a drunk Viking.
Light Merchant Ships. The same but less sheep.
Small boats. Hello.

The interesting thing here is that the small boats designs are still used for small Norwegian boats today. Super cool. That’s long lasting ship design !
(Norwegian Snekke. Photo from Alan Wilson from Stilton, Peterborough, Cambs, UK. wikimedia)

Imagine a fleet of these. Put a Viking shield on there and you’re good to go… Oh wait, that’s … Uuh…This might be the wrong boat. search for Norwegian snekke and you’ll find it. Probably. Maybe.

I had learned much, but I needed to know more, like basic ship design based on the above picture mistake. But also, how were the bows and sterns constructed ? This is foreshadowing by the way.
Running into the street and asking the first stranger I meet about it, while frantically shaking them, didn't seem like the best solution. So I needed to find another way.

That leads us to…


After all, what’s better than looking up old ships online ? A lot of things. But in this case, what I wanted you to say was “going to visit them in real life!” So that’s what I did.
[h2]Expectations VS Reality[/h2]
Meanwhile in the land of … Unity, experiments had been taking place. In Unity. What are the odds. Trying to implement a full scale ship proved, like expected, a bad fit for the game.

“Oh my. That’s quite the Viking ship you have there. It’s literally the size of my village, and WHY is it entirely on land. Does it have wheels ? Does it even count as a ship when you can park it across the only main road to and from the village ?” - Presumably the first character you meet after arriving with this.

So I Needed to play around with scale until I found something decent.

“Why is it still parked on the main road ?? I have goats to feed !” - Presumably the same character when you arrive in something more reasonably sized.

[h2]Let’s GO[/h2]
Then it was off to the museum. I already knew that in the 1960s they found 5 original Viking ships partially preserved at the bottom of the bay where the museum stands today, but they also reconstructed these as seaworthy ships, using period appropriate tools and have sailed around in them.

(The bay where the ships were found. Presumably how it looked in the viking ages. Classic viking architecture on display. Photo is by Jami430 and from wikimedia)

This was super cool. Especially the idea of visiting and boarding a reconstruction for really taking in some of those more intimate details.

“BUT isn’t this game actually seen from an almost isometric viewpoint ?” you might ask. Well huzzah ! Is what I have to say to that.

You’re right of course. But investigating something up close really helps with discovering what areas to focus on and where you might want to get creative or even skip things.

Traversing the museum building and the associated area, The following really stood out.

(Viking ship.)

[h2]The Bow and the Stern.[/h2]
The sterns were made from a single piece of wood, and then the planks actually ended further down, and the peaks were literally carved into this single piece of wood. This was a revelation to me in how to approach the ships and give me some ideas for both how to unwrap and texture the hull, as well as some of the finer details.

(Original bow or stern from a Viking ship. Note how it’s a single carved piece of wood with holes for bolt attachments).
[h2]Shield mountings.[/h2]
Multiple interesting things came from this. First of all, the shields were partially obscured because the mounting points were planks with holes in them that you could stick the shield into. But even more surprising was that when the shields were mounted, it seems that they would cover some of the oar holes, so it’s likely that they only used this for intimidation at landfall or when sailing with the sail.
Another point that leads to this is that the shields apparently added significant drag to the ships, slowing their top speed quite a bit.

(Original viking ship, shield mounting point)

[h2]Speed.[/h2]
Speaking of speed. Keanu and Sandra Bullock were great picks for leads in that film. Oh right. But Viking ships were also very fast. Reconstructions show that they can match the interceptor.. No, that doesn’t make sense. There's no ship that can match the Interceptor for speed.. But that’s a debate for another time. What I really mean to say is that Viking ships can match sailing ships going all the way up to the early 20th century in speed. That’s quite the engineering feat to remain unbeaten for several centuries after.

I guess they had a.. Need.. for speed.. OKAY I’m sorry. I couldn’t leave it hanging there after all the other references. (For anyone doing a quiz, the movies referenced here are Speed, Pirates of the Caribbean and Need for Speed. Which is a video game first and foremost, but was also made into a movie. Who knew)

I didn’t have a picture showing the speed of the ships, So instead I’m giving you a quest. Go to https://theroarbots.com/dinosaur-pirates and look at the pictures I found by searching for dinosaur and ship. Incredible.

Where was I.. OH
Watching the real life size remains of the ships were impressive and boarding one of the reconstructions was a lot of fun, even if it didn’t sail anywhere at that time. I felt the whole trip gave a lot of insight, and now it was time to take everything and put it into the model.

(Most pictures say a thousand words. This one just says two. Leg Day)

Spoiler alert I had already been doing some of this stuff. Of course. But the story wants what the story wants and it didn’t feel natural to incorporate here. So I’m saving it for next time.

If you’re ever in Roskilde, Denmark and even have a passing interest in Vikings or ships (or maybe even Viking ships?!?) I highly recommend you go yourself. It was - In two words - Super cool.

Next up is:


[h2]Time Constraints VS Knowledge[/h2]
I knew I wouldn’t have time to make more than a mainline variant of the ship but I’d want to keep my options open for a future return where I could make a cargo version, so I decided to compromise with a ship shape that allowed the boat to be used as both a warship and a cargo ship. This means a slightly wider midsection of the boat, and a floor that could easily be cut into multiple pieces.

At the same time, Learning about how the peaks were done, allowed me to cut the seams for the sides in the unwrap, the texture layout if you will, in a way that were both true to the real ships but also allowed a larger surface area for the smaller parts of the peak. The same can be said for the bolts, which now flow with the planks, until the single piece stern or bow, where the bolts go up the sides where the planks would attach to the stern or bow. I Guess you could argue that this is peak ship design ohoho.

(blue lines are the sweat of their enemies. Red lines are.. the seams where the texture is going to be split up. Obviously)
[h2]Seats & Shields[/h2]
The seats were something I went back and forth on. I was going to add chests as some Viking ships used those as both seats and storage for each Viking, but I only really saw these planked seats when I went to the Viking ship museum. I decided to lean towards that, and then return to look at the idea if I do find time for a cargo variant of the ship.

(seating arrangements. Or well. Top view.)

I was originally going to have Viking shields hang over the side, held up by some item inserted on the back, but learning about frontal shield inserts at the museum, I opted to add these wood and metal holders to the outside of the ship. Usually you don’t see modern renditions of Viking ships with parts of their shields covered on the front, and it was something that was both surprising to learn, and something I wanted to integrate in some way, as I felt it - and this is sort of ironic when you think about it since this is true to their actual design - would help our ship design stand out.

(shield mounts)

During this I also learned more about Viking shields themselves. How they were usually made out of wood planks, strengthened in the back and bound by leather, not metal on the sides. A lot indicates that they were bound in leather on the front as well, but I wanted to maintain the more macro detailed wooden look so I opted to simply bind the sides.

(viking shields left is the back, right is the front)
[h2]The Head of the Snake[/h2]
The Drakkar ships with their mighty snake / dragon heads are something I thought about a lot.

(that’s not how the meme works ? well phooey to that.)

But I also thought about them in relation to this project. This was both something that’s iconic for Viking ships and something that’s only been found in drawings and not on real ships. That made them the perfect place to differentiate the look of our ships. Drawing inspiration from our Dinosaur lore, I used a wonderful T-Rex skull model, made by our Intern turned Colleague, Philip, as the centrepiece for the ornament. I then proceeded with adding the classic Viking Ship snake tongue, and then it came time for finding a way to hold the Dinosaur skull in place.

One minor -unrelated- note here. Viking Helmets DIDNT HAVE HORNS.

[h2]Viking Helmets[/h2]
(Contrary to popular beliefs, Viking helmets had neither horns nor trees growing out of them. Superb Image by Christoffer Nyland from Pixabay.)

Viking helmets and their horned legends are a sticking point for many Danish people. Especially when pointed in the wrong direction. But where did the legends come from, where did they go, where did they come from, cotton eye joe. That is the question and that is the answer. Or a question.. And an answer.. Maybe not the right one. Moving on.

Ceremonial helmets with horns have been discovered and that’s the most likely origin, but I wanted to do something more. So I decided to build this entanglement that sort of resembles a horned helmet - top piece - for the t-rex skull.

(ornamental bow. No you don’t need to bow. This is a bow !)

I had originally envisioned this in wood, which led me to the idea of twisting two layers of branches around each other but I ended up changing the material to copper. #gamedev

There's a reason though.

It’s a material we use quite a bit for our Dinolords Vikings and copper is also used for old statues and castle roofs which only added to my opinion that it was the right choice for the ornamental helmet and horns.

Also I liked the aesthetic and contrast that it brought to the ship. It’s a game that’s seen from far away, at an almost isometric point, so having focal points that draw you in is always advisable.

Finally I added some red painted lines, but tried to get the look in line with the nordic drawings from the time period, and I also had small ornamental details go down the bow and the stern like they did on many of the ships discovered.

(Here I seamlessly shrunk the ship so you could see the bow and the stern at the same time, using special effects. Magic !)
[h2]What's for the future of the ship ?[/h2]
Well. Like previously mentioned, I want to make a cargo version at some point, drawing inspiration from one of the ships I took a picture of.

(Looks so cozy ! Just add a T-rex and you have the boat scene from jurassic park 2. Or you know, maybe Moana. Tomato tomato.)

Another benefit is that the things learned about their construction methods and even their materials, mean we can hit something that feels more grounded - even if it isn’t realistic. That can help the player immerse themselves in a universe which features fantastical things. Like 5 meter tall lizard chickens.

We really want to make something that feels like it could have existed even if the concept is ridiculous. Researching and understanding how people lived back in those days allows us to make something that strikes a balance between the rule of cool and something that looks realistic. If that’s the impression people are left with when playing it, then we succeed. Well that and “wow holy shit what just happened” as a T-rex throws it’s body through your castle wall during a thunderstorm.

Thanks for following along. I’d love to know your thoughts and talk about all things Dinolords and be sure to let us know if you want more of these deep dives.