Dragon Engine

Welcome to Dragon Engine. The product of more than 20 years of research into video game design and code, Dragon Engine aims to do things other games can’t while also telling a good story. Spanning the entire Legend Setting, it’s a combination of social media platform, open world fantasy RPG and creativity toolkit for content makers. It is currently being built in GDevelop for a release on the Android Google Play Store. There will be frequent updates with new content after its release. Here are it’s planned features. This page is subject to change as I make progress in development. The current planned cost is $20 for a copy.

Story Mode

Story mode contains the game’s many official plot lines and will contain more over time. The main quest line is named Absolute and follows four mercenary draconian, all male and two of whom are married, as they track down a series of magic anomalies spanning the entire Legend Setting. Other smaller plots are planned spanning a single world each. Through Creator Mode players can write, script and make their own plots and share them for use in Story Mode. Plots are structured using dialogue and unique NPC spawns along the following categories.

Gold Quests
These large, continent-spanning quests grant potent rewards when finished like fast travel, unique crafting recipes, or even owning an estate within the nation they help. They are composed of branching sets of silver quests.

Silver Quests
These smaller but still large chunks of story can be used as single adventures or as part of a gold quest. They are composed of structures of bronze quests.

Bronze Quests
These individual missions are composed of single objectives each and can be completed in one location each time, even if the player has to travel to it.

Cobalt Quests
These social life and dating themed narratives follow a different branching structure and always involve meeting a friend, ally, or lover for food or conversation.

Rose Quests
These user-generated quests allow for romance plots and dating on a more serious level and have their own game play style.

 

Dialogue
Dragon Engine dynamically builds dialogue, quests and rewards around the player as they navigate its dynamic and changing world. The world maps are a constant and more of them can be created in Creator mode. Through Creator mode players can also make and share their own quests with the ability to add in custom voice lines and narratives.

The core of this dynamic world is the Dynamic Dialogue Engine. There is no dialogue tree. There is no generic voice line selection wheel. All dialogue is held in one menu that the player can open and close during gameplay. This contains social moves, abilities that correspond to their chosen weapons and equipment. Using these, and the hundreds of voice lines available in the single menu, the game references what NPC they are speaking to and selects an appropriate response from them. There are six planned voice styles for the game, three male and three female, and I am fully voicing each one myself for every possible dialogue line. More moves will be added frequently as the game line moves forward.

Main Stories
These are some of the quest lines I’m currently planning or writing for Dragon Engine.

Absolute
The official main video game plot, Absolute follows four male, gay draconian mercenaries as they track down a simple missing item job in Ascala and from Ascala venture to the entire setting. Two of them are married and all of them sing their own theme music during combat.

Allegro
A fantasy tragedy set in the steampunk-nature themed world Chandesh. In the wake of a disastrous war, one military ethics professor is sent into enemy territory to record both sides’ stories about the conflict while they are still in living memory.

Duskbringer
One leonin from somewhere in the Astral sends a dream projection of himself to Hell in pursuit of the answer to a question. After testing him the rulers of Hell grant him his request, but then ask him to help them with a sudden invasion from no known source. Are they happier than he is?

Creator Mode

There is ample room for narrative in the Legend Setting and Creator Mode is designed to make use of it. It allows for the player to make or alter landscapes, making unique maps that fit their chosen story or setting. It also contains tools for making 3D art and making animations using NPCs and normal screen recording software. Anything built can then be shared with other players or used as a shared realm to show off art or other creative work, making an online museum open to friends or the public.

Creator Tools

The following is a list of the planned tools for Creator Mode.

Water – Change tiles to water and pick its depth. I’m looking into adding waterfalls as well.

Baton – Control an NPC and make them walk, run, or play animations in real time.

Microphone – Add or import audio and build dialogue sets.

Fire – Add special effects and lighting.

Stone – Build foundations for structures, walls and roofs.

Leaf – Alter ground and foliage.

Feather – Toggle flight mode.

Snow – Alter weather and the time of day.

Wind – Spawn or make NPCs.

Sword – Spawn props and items.

Paint – Make a decal or add a painting.

Spark – Make a crafting recipe for a spell or NPC summon.

 

Art and Animation
One of the core goals of Dragon Engine is to make graphic art and video content for the end user. Using the tools here, making a custom NPC, giving them clothing and having them play an animation form the basis of this goal. Using screenshot software or screen recording software Dragon Engine provides a basis for making digital art. Having a team of players cooperate, where one of them is off camera directing with the baton and one or two of them are screen recording in first person can make a film project easier to accomplish. All content made in the game is yours. You paid for the software, after all. Commission work is also viable, making custom NPC characters, world, or stories to voice act. These are the game’s goals.

Story and Characters 

Dragon Engine draws on the entire Legend Series game line for characters and their statistics. Rather than having characters and enemies be set once each for a location or region, Dragon Engine dynamically draws from lists of characters including both named heroes and generic professions. Who is in a building working, at a store shopping, or in a wilderness region fighting the player or players is procedural. The Legend Series will be added into the game as it comes out.

Quests work by adding characters, often monsters or adversaries, to regions in the same city or within a reasonable distance of it. Any quest that involves travel will devote itself solely to that job and present dynamic challenges along the way. Fast travel is not allowed for these. Defeating the new characters, befriending them, or learning something from them is the entire quest including payment and the player or players never have to travel back to a quest giver to resolve a story and claim a reward.

The core of this system is spawn stones. These small objects can be set along the ground and will spawn characters dynamically from a chosen list or set of lists. The characters in Quantum are the ones used here and Quantum is designed to be compatible fully with the game’s character generation system, clothing and narrative. Rather than spawning one enemy, spawn stones spawn military units, friend groups, or entire platoons of soldiers based on the player’s Tier. Tier goes from one to four.

Social combat is possible with all characters while physical combat is only possible on wild or quest spawned opponents. Social combat relies on a character’s Traits and in particular their roles, like warrior, messenger and sage, to determine what options are available. Any change in Traits or roles from equipment or spells reflects in what options the character has. All of these are fully voiced dialogue, creating a dynamic conversation out of parts. All voice acting is done by me. I have a ton of theatre training and I’m planning six voices for the game with every line in each voice once, three per gender.


C J Mcpherson