Eight Dragons News

Following a bug report we've made some changes in how we're handling controller inputs. An oversight made when switching to the Unity engine meant that redefining your controls could lock you out of the menus when using a controller - very silly of us, but we've fixed it!

Our updates are like buses - you wait ages for one and then two show up almost at once! A shorter one this time - we've added more props to the levels, and things now fall out of them when you break them. In particular food, will which boost your health! We're sure that'll come as a relief to just about everybody - we know it can get a bit tough sometimes. Especially since we've also tweaked the enemy behavior to make them slightly more aggressive...



The other thing we've added is an option to the Graphics menu to let you turn off the CRT filter. We love it, so it's on by default, but we know some of you aren't fans of it. And some of you might be trying to play on a CRT, and don't need that filter when you've got the real thing!

It's been aaages since the last update, we know. We've been moving the game from an in-house engine to Unity - that's a pretty hefty change behind the scenes. For most of you that means there are some little tweaks to how the controls work - hopefully you'll find the movement a little bit tighter than before, and most of the issues people have had with controllers should now have disappeared.


For those of you who haven't been playing because you don't have Windows, there's good news for you too - Eight Dragons now works on Linux and SteamOS, and will very soon work on MacOS too. (It might already work, but it's a lot easier to find people with Linux to test the game than people with Macs.)


It isn't all behind-the-scenes stuff that's been going on, either. We've also improved the look of the game. We've improved the shader effect to make the game look more like its running on an old tube television. We've added a whole bunch of different animations to our heroes to spice things up. And we've also added breakable props, like trashcans and parking meters. Some of them, like trashcans, can also be picked up and thrown around!




Like we said at the start, it's been ages since the last update. Way too long, in fact, and that's sadly been unavoidable because of the engine change. Nobody wants months of updates saying "we're working really hard, but you can't see any of it yet". Those days are over though, so here's what's coming over in the next few weeks:

• MacOS support!
  
• More pickups - something to boost your health at last!
  
• More props - everybody likes throwing things!
  
• Some level changes - because we really don't like the Docks!
  

And once those things are done (and a few others) we'll finally be ready for an actual release! Thanks to all of you who've bought and played Eight Dragons - we couldn't do this without you!

While the coding side of our team is working on those big features we've talked about, the art side has started looking at improving the look and feel of the game. The first thing we've got to show you is in our latest update - the Downtown level has been drastically upgraded, with more and nicer things to look at and distract you while gang members try to beat you up...



There'll be more of this in the coming weeks, so keep your eyes peeled!

It's been a couple of weeks since the last update, but we haven't been doing nothing, despite how small this update is!

This update adds support for German, Russian, Spanish and Chinese languages. Yes, we know that won't affect most of our existing players, but we thought it'd be nice to let some more people play too! We're going to add more languages later on, but we thought we'd find out how badly we've done with this round of localisation before going any further...

That's not a huge change for two weeks of work, we're sure you'll agree. But that's because we're working on some quite big features that just aren't ready yet. We appreciate your patience - it'll be worth it!