Hello. C J here. I’ve got some fun screenshots of the current development state of Dragon Engine. It looks good. All walls, ground and floor tiles were hand modelled by me in Android software. Their collision boxes and placements were also done by me. I thought I’d enumerate some of the game’s features and the order I’m getting to them in.
Terrain Tiles
All of the floors, ground and walls are tiles of specific lengths and widths. They lock together to make the environment including the insides of houses. We can see here a mostly complete house. This looks good and also means I can reuse them infinitely. I also have grass and I’m working on trees and flowers.
Terrain Design
I’m working on making a menu that players and I can use to add or modify terrain. Each terrain tile can be swapped for another one of the same type, using a base bedrock tile as the default. I’m working on adding water as well but not swimming. This will be how I build the maps for Story mode and can be used by anyone in Creator mode. I’m starting on planning the user interface today.
Spawn Stones
I want the game to be replayable so I have a system that spawns NPCs for me so they change arrangement and type every time a map is loaded. These are spawn stones, small items that I can embed in the ground as a detail. They pick NPCs from a list and will shuffle which ones they spawn every in game day from that list. Content packs can include new lists as DLC. This actually saves me a ton of work as well.
Dynamic Script
Dragon Engine doesn’t end. You can beat the main storyline Absolute but the game can’t actually be finished. The script is stored in the player character’s Journal menu and is read out loud when triggered by an in game action or event. There’s one of it. It can self-generate quests out of patterns I’ve discussed here earlier. It can also generate conversations with NPCs and with ally characters. NPCs might give story missions but once done returning to the quest giver is never necessary. This is easier on my end and means there’s no backtracking for the player.
Crafting
The game will share the exact same gems and crafting recipes as Quantum. I’m doing the Starter Set for Quantum at the same time because the recipes need to be done and added to the video game at launch. Every Expansion will be added to both games simultaneously. This is how the players level up and each weapon or weapon type has different moves. Spells and armour are also crafted items.
Server World
Every Android account that owns Dragon Engine is allowed to customize any number of maps and save them. Two of these per account are allowed to be shared as server worlds. Others can join in and use the worlds to display art, find art commissions, share text tiles, find customers for novels and plan in person events. I’m working later on the specifics of the code for this but no matter what it’s one of the game’s goals. The owner of a world can make and maintain community bulletin boards, grant crafting privileges, kick and ban people. However, whoever starts a world is responsible for it for the life of it being online. I’m also adding in-world text chat.
Art Creation
The real reason behind the split between Story mode and Creator mode, along with the server world structure, is to allow for art to be made inside the game. Making a custom map to use as a background, customizing a character to your liking and then using the in game camera function to record an image is allowed. Selling these images for money is also allowed. Live recordings would make great movies or TV shows for display on YouTube. Buying a map pack or character pack off me as DLC comes with the license to sell anything made with it, often through the shared museum mode. This does not take extra work on my part to set up. I’m just stating that this is allowed.
Mature Rating
The game will have a mature rating due to only the fact that people are allowed to host art of sex or nudity. I thought that was safest rating to have. I mean consensual nudity. Hosting images of actual real humans is not allowed. Any form of violence in media is not allowed and cannot be created using Dragon Engine. Action and adventure do not count as violence. I’m packaging the game with the ability to aid in creating this kind of art and I know user generated content isn’t rated by me regardless.
This is a long list but it really reduces down to tiles, the character customization system and the dynamic script. Then it’s just multiplayer and crafting recipes.
C J Mcpherson
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