Dinolords News

[p]"It's....
be-....
-ginning to look a lot like Christmas!"

And as yet another page on the calendar flips over and we prepare ourselves for the seasonal stress and winter depression, the light of a single candle flame brightens up the mood - we can rejoice, for it is time for another edition of Dinolords Monthly, where we check in on some of the things we have been working on for the last month-or-so!

This month, we will have a look at some of the things that have been happening over on our Discord (shameless plug in case you want to have a more in-depth look and have a chat with all of us, head on over!),

[/p][h2]Oh lawd he comin...![/h2][p]Over the past year, our main character has seen quite a few iterations. For this segment, I will hand over the word to our 3D model master, Jesper, who will go over the history of the Lord model:

When I came aboard the project, the Lord looked like this:


It was a pretty cool look, but at the time, it was clear that he was built for the original look of the game - and that look was now changing. The art was becoming more detailed and with it, a more realistic art style was also decided for the characters.


"I feel like I could get lost in your eyes. Like Zod got lost in the phantom zone"
At first, with several characters, I tried to lift them visually by updating the textures to something more detailed.

This helped with matching the updating environment, but having buttons for eyes ended up just not fitting with the direction the visuals were going in, and also lead to the characters having terrible night vision - so at this time, I started swapping out the heads of the characters. We didn't have time to rebuild the full bodies but at the same time, we also wanted to make sure that we showed the general idea of where we were going so this is the compromise we landed on.


I guess we were trying to get ahead.......
I'll see myself out. Well maybe not because I still have things to post.

With the trailer fast approaching, something was missing. A cape. Obviously. And armour I guess. But mostly a cape. That said, the lords outfit didn't work for a cape, so a new body was built.


Not all heroes wear capes - but all Lords do !

The Lords new body was built under considerable time constraints but he made it. A few things were fixed afterwards, like the colouring of the cape - but his detailing was always a bit bare bones, and I had plans to go back in and add more later.

But there were other, more important things to do. Rebuilding the other characters, adding new characters, getting new people into the art pipeline, making dinosaurs for the dinosaur game is also something felt important... and... so on.

Over time, the Lord that was made for the first trailer looked outdated. Thing I wanted to fix became more and more.


"Hello darkness my old friend. Why is my hair see-through from the inside again" - And the answer to that is - Game Magic!

This summer, it was suggested that we should have a new - updated - Lord. At this time, there were many things I could do better by starting over.

I got to work, with a plan of having two different body types to choose from. This would mean two versions of every armour set, but also expanded abilities to roleplay in the game.

Due to deadlines, I ended up focusing on the first body type for the initial deadline and then went back to finish the second body type afterwards. We all wanted to make sure we got as good of a lord as we could for it.
At this time, I called in help too. Lina drew up amazing patterns that I could plaster on the armour, and Philip drew a texture for the face of the initial body type. The previous lord literally just had a single colour facial texture, so there were a lot of improvements to gain here.

For the cape I worked with a new physics solution that was... a lot better.


Gain - Cool Cape. Also gain - Giant bald pattern from dodge-rolling so damn much. Realism TM or something. OK so that latter part was actually fixed. That said, you can go bald if you want to and I'll get to that in a moment.

I went back and created the rest of the second body type, and a second outfit for each character. At the same time Ulrik was also brewing on a character creator that we will show off another time when it's further along. This is where you can choose to be bald btw!
We are a small team, but we also believe in giving options where possible. What we have now is a base and I hope we can expand a lot further with that base so that people wont feel constrained when building their new Lord. Here are the two Lord body types with the same armour.


That was a relatively small dive into the many revisions of The Lord. I could go much deeper but then we would be here all day. Hope you got something positive out of it !

Thank you Jesper for the rundown, but absolutely also for the visual upgrade - what a make-over!

[/p][h2]Concept art[/h2][p]

Lina has made this super cool drawing of the Stegosaurus unit, complete with longboat-siding, shields and archers.

Over on Twitter, you can check out a neat timelapse showing the work from sketchlines to fully coloured!


[/p][h2]Buildings[/h2][p]
Brick by brick, we are chipping away at the specifics of base-building!


During November, and most of December as well, big things are happening to the base-building elements of the game. I guess one could say that we are doing foundational work for how you progress through building, upgrading and managing your base.

Designing things like that is impossible to do in a vacuum, as it interweaves tightly with unit production, level design, session pacing and loads of other factors - all of which also can't be designed in an isolated setting.

This results in something that might feel a little scattered, but is the product of incremental work on multiple systems in parallel.

The details of base building are still setting, so we are not quite ready to reveal it all yet, but expect news on this soon.

[/p][h2]Until next time[/h2][p]That's all, folks!

Next time it is the December edition, and due to holidays and me taking a couple days off, that edition will be pushed slightly into January.

Until then, we all hope you all have a great time with your families, friends, loved ones, pets, dustbunnies, or dinosaurs.[/p][p]-panxter[/p]

[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]