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[Zanzetkuken The Great]

I've seen that they're going to be putting out an update on the 14th, so let's see how that goes.

[alexandertnt]

I'm going to cut them some slack on the whole "It's early access" thing because they sort of have a monopoly on "playable dragon" games at the moment. That novelty is enough to make the game for me.

(Fuck yeah! Playable dragons! Have my money!)

I don't like how... "Warcraft" everything looks at the moment. Low res un-bumpmapped textures, and the models are very bulky.

[Rolan7]

If it turns into sort of a Magic Carpet III, where you fly around attacking other dragons' lairs and defending your own, and evolving up more powers (and potentially using gold instead of mana as a resource to fight over), that would be sweet.

... Posting to watch just on this ghost of a chance.

[Moogie]

I'm all for more dragon games, but why do they all have to have such stiff movement and cardboard animations? In the age of Unity and similar, there's no need to still be using Planeshift-era game engines.

Even the aforementioned Drakan had smoother controls. I know it's basically a 'tech demo' right now, but this is the tech they're demoing, it's the fundamental core of the game, and it's not going to change unless they rewrite the system and do it better.

[alexandertnt]

Well, the animations are largely an artistic thing, not an engine thing. (It just so happened that people got better at animating at the same time engines improved).

Unity also doesn't provide any procedural animation systems (IK, physics-animations, head looking etc) for non-humanoid rigs. I have used Unity pretty extensively, and the animation system is quite underwhelming.

[Niveras]

This almost peaks my interest, but not quite. I've considered that it would be pretty neat to have a god-game/"overlord"/dungeon keeper/dwarf fortress kind of game where you're a dragon (selected from a variety based on the D&D colours), where you start in a lair and eventually develop a complex dungeon rivaling something you'd see in an MMO or a D&D PC game (BG2, NWN, etc), including having minions based on your progress/research/colours (perhaps even unique interactions, such as a frost/white dragon having undead minions), and having to defend against increasingly powerful adventurer parties as your fame grows. I may have even posted about in the Games You Wish Existed thread. (There's also some world raiding, which is primarily how you acquire assets for expanding, and is the biggest point of comparison to this game.)

But above all it has to be quality. Like, AAA quality. Like, Mass Effect budget. To be fair, a major studio can fail on either art assets or strong gameplay as easily as an independent developer, but I don't have much faith in any studio relying on early access/crowd funding to meet such high expectations, and it's not a vision that I want tainted by a poor showing.

So I'll keep an eye on it occasionally, but I don't think I'll ever buy, let alone buy in early.

[Silfurdreki]

I'm all for more dragon games, but why do they all have to have such stiff movement and cardboard animations? In the age of Unity and similar, there's no need to still be using Planeshift-era game engines.

Even the aforementioned Drakan had smoother controls. I know it's basically a 'tech demo' right now, but this is the tech they're demoing, it's the fundamental core of the game, and it's not going to change unless they rewrite the system and do it better.

The first game that can pull off a good looking and smooth flying model for something that has flapping wings will be an instant classic for me. The standard video game up/down/left/right/forwards/backwards movement has so far always looked and felt extremely stilted with things like birds or dragons. I'm not convinced it's actually doable to make it good looking and enjoyable by combining the two.

Give me a system where you would have to circle to stay above one place, or at least transition into a hover by not just stopping mid air and I would pay anything a decent amount to see it be made into a good game.

[TempAcc]

Lair had some ok animations (outside of the whole dragon duel in mid air thing). That game wasn't half bad in my book, it was just... weird with the gameplay at times and not very clear with the mission objectives at times. Also buggy.

But yea, the dragon animation does remind me very much of drakan order of the flame considering you can stop and float in mid air, go backwards, sideways, etc. I dont really care if the animations are that great to be honest, as long as the game delivers an open world dragon game that isn't boring as all hell and has at least some good level of customization, maybe even some level of randomly generated content, but thats probably wishful thinking on my part.

Anyways, like everyone before me said, its too barebones to fork 18$ over. Even in the actual site they're not very clear with the direction they're going with this game. Just vague mentions of fighting other dragons, burninating the countryside and lore. From what I've seen in the forums, they're actualy asking the players what they would like to see in the game, which isn't bad, but it kind of shows they dont have a concrete plan for things just yet. At least they seem to be very active.

[lijacote]

this could turn out pretty good.

It could be the game of my dreams, if it turns out as good as I imagine it could.

The first thing I saw was the flying backwards. Oh god, no. Not that way. Noooooo. Noooooooooooooooo!

[ventuswings]

Fantasy setting does not mean you shouldn't appreciate good aerodynamics 

[Ozyton]

Fantasy setting does not mean you shouldn't appreciate good aerodynamics 

One of my biggest problems with dragons (and any flying creature, or even vehicle in some cases) in games is that they don't give any fucks about flight paths. When trying to shoot them out of the sky they will jerk around in unpredictable ways because it's more difficult to program an AI that knows how to path using believable flight dynamics.

So, who wants DCS: Black Shark Dragon?
IL-2 Sturmovik: Dragon edition?

EDIT: I suppose in terms of controls game devs only know how to do 2 types of controls: somewhat jerky human movement and conventional automobile movement. Trying to put a horse in a game tends to use either one of the two, and it looks ridiculous. Try putting a flying thing in the game... oh god.

[Silfurdreki]

Memememememe!

Me!

...

I want it. Though it should definitely have peasants to burninate in addition to a good flight model.

[dennislp3]

Went ahead and grabbed it. I have always wanted a proper dragon simulation game as I think its a concept with lots of potential and would love to see it happen

[nenjin]

This seems like it could be great....when/if it's done.

[Mephansteras]

Posting to Dragon

Nice! 

PTD