It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! And that means the page of the calendar has turned and it's time for a Dinolords Monthly!
We were so busy with the big test that we skipped last months edition, so hopefully we can share some cool stuff in this one to make up for it.
The big thing for us was the closed Alpha test here on Steam. We had an overwhelming amount of interest to try out the latest test build of the game, and 1200 players ended up instaling and trying out what is currently there to play.
Since this was our first test done via Steam, we had to put a cap on how many players we let in, which also means we only let in a fraction of all those of you who signed up. We had an overwhelming amount of people sign up for the alpha, way more than we could feasibly handle. That means that a lot of you did not get any exciting emails with invitations to the test, unfortunately. But there will be plenty more opportunities as we will be doing more playtests in the future, and sooner than you might think so stay tuned.
We have some fun numbers to share with all of you, so without further ado, here goes:
4407 levels were won
136 levels were lost
312 levels were restarted
163 levels were quit
Y'all need to up the difficulty, you are too good!
137178 units total were trained for combat
Swordsmen and Archers were the most popular choices, but there was still a lot of dinosaurs trained too:
20579 Deinonychus
16478 Compysognathus
3917 Utah Raptors
3668 Dilophosaurus
1272 Scutosaurus
1032 Ankylosaurus
636 Pachycephalosaurus
You all rid the lands of resources, absolutely no tree-loving to be found here, in total you guys collected:
925795 Wood
772313 Food
320100 Stone
81151 Gold
And you collected a total of 586427 amber and unlocked 7909 nodes on the amber charter!
A lot of buildings were constructed as well, land developers would be so proud of us for gentrifying so many neighborhoods. In total, 55824 buildings were constructed!
7597 Houses
5634 Palisade Walls
5442 Hunters Lodges
3747 Barracks
3230 Dino Pens
3150 Lumber Camps
It has been great reading all your comments, thoughts, and replies to our survey, and we are being very thorough dissecting it and condensing it into concrete designs that help shape the future development of the game.
We absolutely loved seeing all the content you all put up while testing, whether it be livestreams, youtube videos, reels or screenshots, and I think we have watched it all - If you think we havn't seen your video or something else, send us a link and I'll make sure to share it with the team. There were some hilariously galaxy-brained strategies being tried, including Compy-Rush with more than a thousand Compys completely covering the screen (poor poor CPU trying to handle that many units!), and also some very creative ones trying to break the systems of the game like the Infinite Gold Militia strategy. The creativity of you all is so great, keep it up!
And lastly, if you missed out on this closed alpha, don't fret. There will be more tests coming in the future (more detailed are tba), and as always you are more than welcome over on our discord server, where you can chat with all of us in a more informal setting, as well as reading what some of the testers have experienced.
So even though we all have been super curious following the test, we have still been hard at work on the game, adding, tweaking, changing, implementing a bunch of stuff. And as per usual we would like to offer a peek behind the scenes on some of the stuff that is currently being worked on.
Starting out with the more visual stuff, there's a couple new creatures finding their way into the game. First up, the T-rex is getting a bit of a glow-up. It was needing a rework because the old rig had some limitations, and in that process, it is being redone to fit in better with the visual direction the game is moving in. Here is a screenshot from Philip of how the high-poly version looks:
Next up, we are aiming to have a dino-related upgrade to a lot of the buildings in the game. We have already shown the Lumberyard with a Triceratops and the Stockpile with a Jobaria to aid in construction, and currently in the works is a menacing addition to the Fisherman's shack, the Siamosaurus. I am not sure how they managed to avoid it just straight up eating all the fish, because it sure looks hungry:
And lastly, on the creature-side is a... hound? While it seems a little left-field, we have had a vision about the world of Dinolords still including animals that we know from our own timeline, which is also why there's deer, hares and horses. So adding a big doggo seemed like the perfect addition! Here's a textured high poly render, such a good boy:
Moving along, we have some new buildings, upgrades to current ones, and some that will be dino-fied with some cool scaly friends to help production:
... and other lies we tell ourselves. As with most lines of work, things can go wrong. I guess the difference being that in gamedev we get funny screenshots to laugh at when it does.
So it has been a while since last time we did this, I feel like it's time to see some of the good ones:
T-rex? More like T-rextra! We meant it when we said a glow-up!
Don't know why exactly, but the horse has been horsing around and been the subject of many great moments.
Man or mouse? Or I guess more accurately, Deinonychus or mouse?
These guys were ready for Christmas with enough ham to feed several small villages. Stonks going through the roof, literally!
That's all folks!
Now, there will be some news coming later this month, so stay tuned on this page.
Until then, we hope you all have a great December, and catch you in the next one!
-panxter