Whew, February was over so quickly I almost missed it.
But that doesn't mean anyone has to miss this edition of Dinolords Monthly!
This time, we are looking back at a big convention, some clever CPU shenanigans, and how to make the world of Dinolords feel real and tangible!
The biggest Danish event for all kinds of gaming and play was held at Bella Center in Copenhagen, and similarly to the last two years, we participated as parts of the TAGS ("Tomorrows Awesome Games Showcase") booths where a lot of Danish-made games, big and small, are shown off with playable demos for the crowd.
Our booth when I arrived wednesday evening to set up the computer, cameo traffic cone because safety first!
We had a busy couple of days where the demo was being played constantly - I don't think I saw the seat empty for more than half a minute before a new player rose to the challenge. And it was great to see so many people, both young and less young, being curious and excited about what we are making.
The event was completely sold out, with more than 10.000 people attending per day, we had our hands full tending the booth and showing off Dinolords, and we are thankful to everyone who dropped by and said hi.
Friday evening, as an addendum to Copenhagen Gaming Week, Spilprisen (the Danish Game Awards) was held at Bella Center. It was scheduled to start 1 hour after the convention closed, so we did what is most appropriate answer rushed out to grab a quick pizza before rushing back, ready for the show!
Speedrunning a pizza dinner with a good chunk of the team.
This year we had an extra reason to pay attention to the show because our programmer Lukas was called on stage as part of the Talents of the Year segment. It is a celebration of distinguished talent that are new to the industry, and we are super proud and happy that Lukas was selected to be part of it.
It was a lot of fun to celebrate all the cool things that are happening in the Danish video games industry, and also a great way to have a party with fellow gamedevs you don't get to see everyday. While the Danish video game industry can sometimes seem small compared to other countries and even our neighbors, it is great to see how much is happening all over the country, and a huge congratulations to all the winners!
Now, back to Dinolords! We (and by "we" I mean the colloquial "we", as this has very much been Lukas' brainchild) have been looking at different gamemodes for Dinolords. Some of you have tried our Campaign idea during the playtests, which is still under development but can be summarized as a dynamic map of different levels with changing circumstances that you play through as a string of pearls, unlocking units and trying to rid the map of the pesky invading Vikings. Between levels you use Amber to unlock upgrades and changes to how you play the game to become stronger and do more cool stuff.
And while we think that gamemode is great, we also acknowledge the need for a more one-off style of playing where you select a level and just play once. This serves multiple purposes, and some we hope to share more information on soon, but for now, I would like to talk a little bit about what we have chosen to call Skirmish.
Skirmish is, in essence, a more traditional RTS-esque way of playing Dinolords. You open a level-select screen where you can choose what map you want, difficulty, and other modifiers, and you then load in to a map where you play against a CPU-controlled opponent that is playing in a similar way to you, meaning: A dinolord runs around, explores, constructs a base, trains units, unlocks research and upgrades, contests points and eventually the victor is crowned via elimination.
Sped up in-editor footage of a CPU dinolord expanding their base.
Creating a CPU-controlled enemy that has the ability to dynamically change strategies and prioritize what to do next, sort of helps solve a couple of challenges for us:
Firstly, it creates a great experience playing against the computer because you are both going through similar movements; you decide what to focus on building your base, what units to train, where to expand your operations on the map, and how to get ahead.
Secondly, it helps us test how it feels playing against something that is more-or-less a mirror of yourself as a player in what you can do in the game, unlike the more objective-oriented levels we are making for the Campaign mode.
And finally, it forces us to look at the British and the Vikings more like two factions; how are they similar, how do they differ. Like in other RTS games, picking one faction over another is always a choice of sacrifice vs payoff in how they differ from each other, and we keep finding ways that the Vikings surprise us.
We are very excited about this new way of playing the game, and can't wait to see how it fares once it reaches a playtest!
We touched on this before, but that was a long time ago and there is a lot happening when it comes to making the levels feel like real, "lived in" places where you can imagine different threads of life has happened. So let's have a look at some of the new things that have been added that helps achieve this goal, starting out with a bunch of ruins, the "newest" in terms of how old they are in-lore first:
An abandoned small village or settlement, who knows what caused the to leave the place becuase one can almost imagine it to be pretty cosy when it was active. But those are barely even ruins, they are brand new! How about something older? Like old Roman ruins:
What an aqueduct that must have been when it served to supply water to a town at some point, beautiful! But we must go older! Way older!
Now we are talking, prehistoric megalithic structures, now that's got some age to it!
It's all coming together, and while it's clear that total and complete historical accuracy has been a hallmark from the beginning, it is still nice to be able to trace some of the major turning points through the environment of the levels as you play the game.
Thank you for coming along on this edition of Dinolords Monthly, I hope you found it interesting!
There is a bunch of stuff going all as always so these posts only reflect aspects of what is happening with the project, but we love the ability to invite you inside the engine-room and see what it's like making a game like Dinolords.
And as always, you are most welcome to join us over on the Dinolords Discord where we hang out and chat a little more informally and you can ask us whatever questions you might have about the game, or what our favourite dinosaur is!
If you can't get enough of stuff like this, my colleague Jesper does a weekly summary of our friday show-and-tell that he posts on the official Dinolords subreddit and on Discord, go have a look!
Catch you in the next one.
-panxter