Dragon Documentary - pre-alpha released for free

[Kubold]

Hi,

In 2012 I started to make Dragon Documentary. This was my second game ever I tried to build only by myslef. I stopped working on it loong time ago, but now, I finally realized very clearly, that I'm never going to "drop everything for about two years and finish this game".

So basically, it's a pre-alpha (as in alpha = all features are implemented). You can't really win, but you can fly and burn dudes and houses. It's not finished and it has some bugs. It will probably not work on built-in graphics cards - the dragon is controlled by physics simulation.




Download the build here (Win64):
http://www.kubold.com/?page_id=467

Enjoy!




CONTROLS:

Think of the dragon as a JETPACK. IT will help you to get the proper mindset.

In AIR:
——-
Hold Space – go up vertically (flap wings)
Hold RMB – go down vertically (air dive)
WSAD – the directin you want to move horizontally
Move mouse – aim with the head/look around
LMB – breathe fire

When you hold RMB while landing, it creates a ground shockwave, that will make humans fall on ground

On GROUND:
——–
Hold Space – go up vertically (take off)
WSAD – the directin you want to move horizontally
Move mouse – aim with the head/look around
LMB – breathe fire
Press RMB – attack with claws
Press scrollwheel (or E) – bite and hold
Hold scrollwheel (or E) – eat human (regenerates some health)



Dragon Documentary v.0.08 Known Issues and Bugs:

a) menu

– even if you don’t have an Oculus Rift, the Oculus Rift view warning will show up at start
– Mouse cursor doesn’t appear in Main Menu (it’s invisible). Use keyboard arrow keys or WSAD to navigate.
– If you use Oculus Rift, The keyboard will not work in the Main Menu on first screen. You have to blindly use the invisible mouse cursor to click any menu button. The keyboard will work from that point.
– Graphics options reset every time you restart the game
– the FOV, Bloom etc. graphics options will not work on Oculus Rift Camera (but work on normal camera)

b) gameplay

– there are no objectives in the game, so you can’t win it. It’s just a sandbox. When you kill everyone on the stage, you can just fly around endlessly.
– it induces nausea on Oculus Rift (especially DK1). Nothing can be really dne about it, except getting used to it.
– camera clips through environment. Sometimes you will see the ground from underground for a moment etc.
– sometimes dragon will flip 180 degrees and will walk upside down. It will fix itself when you take off the ground.
– Oculus Rift camera doesn’t show HUD.
– when you eat a Wizard, and take he’s powers (the deathray), and you go out of “mana”, you have to press the fire button again to re-gain the fire breath (it doesn’t happen automatically and it should).
– AI of humans is just dumb. They could do all sorts of “robot toy” things. Walk in place, get stuck on tree, jump off a cliff…
– sometimes death animation on humans doesn’t trigger. They will stand there or walk, but they are dead. Zombies, man, zombies…

c) all things that should be, but they are not in there

– trees don’t burn etc…


--------------
http://www.kubold.com
kuboldgames@gmail.com

[ThreeDeeVision]

Not too bad! Ran great on my setup with settings maxed. I kept clicking outside the window and losing focus of the game, which would pause the game and I would have to take off the DK2 to start again.

Something about the camera position made me feel a bit uneasy, it might be the position directly behind the dragon. Maybe a vertical camera offset would help with this. I liked the look of the world though, and it was fun attacking the little villagers.

I could see this being a pretty fun game with some additions. Maybe the main character would be a wizard that rides the dragon, and you could have special attacks for the rider as well. It could make a great RPG, with different attacks and power-ups. A built in XBox 360 config would be nice as well.

[Kubold]

Hi,

glad you liked it! I realise that this is far form perfect (and far from finished) yet.

For Oculus, the camera from version 0.08 is way better I think - it's not directly behind dragon's back, it follows the dragon very smoothly, like a drone. I changed it in 0.09, because it wasn't fast enough for non-vr gameplay.

As for things like clicking outside the window - I can't do anything about it. It's Unity's bug. For now, the solution is simply turning off other monitors and playing in Extended Desktop mode in full screen.

Oh, and there is no wizard on the dragon's back. But you can EAT a wizard and take his powers (the death ray) for a bit 😄

[ThreeDeeVision]

"Kubold" wrote:

Oh, and there is no wizard on the dragon's back. But you can EAT a wizard and take his powers (the death ray) for a bit 😄

I know there isn't a wizard on the dragon's back, it was just a suggestion for a game addition (if you are planning on adding stuff to this game). If you made the player into a wizard that tames dragons, it would add a new dynamic to your game. The player would start the game as a wizard with some minor powers, and then as they became more powerful they could tame more powerful dragons. You could also add a camera view from the person riding the dragon.

[Kubold]

Heh, no, I'm sorry 🙂 This is completly not what this game was supposed to be about.

Traditionally, in books, movies, games and legends there is a hero who protects the village from the evil dragon. This game is the other way around - you are the evil dragon, who raids villages and you eat heroes for breakfast.

[ThreeDeeVision]

"Kubold" wrote:
Heh, no, I'm sorry 🙂 This is completly not what this game was supposed to be about.

Traditionally, in books, movies, games and legends there is a hero who protects the village from the evil dragon. This game is the other way around - you are the evil dragon, who raids villages and you eat heroes for breakfast.

No reason to be sorry, it is your game :). It looked like a work in progress, so I figured I would give you some ideas if you were ever going to expand what you have done so far. In order to keep people interested, it would be a good idea to have some sort of skill tree for the dragon, so you have something to work towards.

I was thinking having the player be a wizard would allow you to ride different dragons, so you wouldn't be 'stuck' with the same dragon throughout the game, but you could change the dragon through powerups and skill tree selections as well.

As it stands, it is a pretty good little demo. But in order for it to be a game that people spend time in, it will need some pretty big changes. Regardless of these facts, you did some great work here and it got me thinking about flying dragons in VR.

[nightbane30]

*Looks at post*

"ThreeDeeVision" wrote:
Not too bad! Ran great on my setup with settings maxed.

Thinks to self, "Woah! How did this guy run it fine with settings on max?"
*Looks at signature*

GTX Titan X

Oh....

[Kubold]

Yeah... I have 970. It was pretty much impossible to maintain 75 fps on my old Radeon HD 6950 on any demo that is not built with "unlit" cubes an no skinned characters. If you want to fight 50 knights with a dragon that breathes lot's of particles, you just have to have good graphics card. Also, the fact that is on Unity 4 doesn't help - a "Total War" game engine would be much better, since it's optimised for rendering hundreds of little humans 🙂

And this is nothing, because we will have to pull steady 90 fps with 2x the resolution soon.

[ThreeDeeVision]

"nightbane30" wrote:
*Looks at post*

"ThreeDeeVision" wrote:
Not too bad! Ran great on my setup with settings maxed.

Thinks to self, "Woah! How did this guy run it fine with settings on max?"
*Looks at signature*

GTX Titan X

Oh....

:lol:
Yeah, this thing is a beast! GTA V looks so good with all the settings cranked.

[rockerjohn]

This game is awesome! thanks for the share!

Docur