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[Kubold]

The game is about a dragon, who just woke up from his 100 years of sleep and found his valley infested by humans. They got to go.

Dragon Documentary is a TPP action game, in which you can be a dragon, flying, burning human towns and castles, defeating whole armies and dogfighting other flying foes, like witches on broomsticks or da Vinci’s flying machines.



The game was started in 2012 on Unity. I didn't work on it for longer time, but now I think it will be good to release what I have, as a "pre-alpha demo". It supports normal monitors, Oculus Rift DK2 and DK1 and 3D SBS mode.

I would want your feedback, especially about the controls. I myself find them intuitive (think "jetpack", rather than "a plane"), but almost all my friends and family that played that game, find the controls very, very difficult.

YouTube Gameplay Trailer

Download version 0.08 (Win64)

https://docs.google.com/uc?id=0B5eiP1k4yXXiWVMwTE5IX2pIUEU&export=download

or

http://kubold.com/Dragon/DragonDocumentary_v0.8_Win.zip

Download Version 0.09 (Win64) (better camera I hope)

https://docs.google.com/uc?id=0B5eiP1k4yXXiZXdDMFNlV3B0YjQ&export=download

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)

YOUTUBE Controls video

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Known Issues (besides "this game is not finished"):

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…

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Kubold
http://www.kubold.com
e-mail: [email protected]
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kuboldgames
twitter: https://twitter.com/KuboldK

[Quicksand-S]

My download failed four times. Not sure what was going on with that. My actual internet connection doesn't seem to be having any issues. The fifth time, it actually worked.

-I selected Windowed mode and it came up full-screen. When I alt-tabbed, it went into windowed mode.

-I would really recommend a slight delay when iterating through menu options. As it is, a fairly quick tap of the Down key will skip over options.

-If I breathe fire, let go of the button, then breathe fire again I only get a short burst and it fizzles out. Is that intentional? It came across as maybe a problem with a timer not being cancelled when I released the button.

-That extreme depth-of-field/tilt-shift really bugs me. Why make 60% of the screen blurry when you're on the ground? Shouldn't a dragon have really good vision?


And...that's basically where I stopped. The controls seem to be set up decently. I don't find them particularly confusing. My issue was the camera. Every time I flew into the air, the camera would show my dragon from below and off to the left. I couldn't see anything but the sky and my dragon, so I couldn't navigate or attack things. On a related note, I feel like dragons should be able to glide. Having it drop like a rock every time I released the spacebar didn't feel right.

Anyway, I thought maybe the game expected me to be using my gamepad, so I went back and tried that, but the level started in Rift-mode while the Oculus Rift warning was still onscreen. I had to press Escape to get to the menu.

I flew toward the castle, dropping every few seconds so the camera would move and I could see where I was. Then, before I got killed, the camera moved to a better spot. When I respawned (btw, I think the screen said, "Loadiag"), the camerea was better. I still felt unwieldy, though. I feel like a dragon really needs a "hover" mode (ie. more like a helicopter than a jetpack). I just went back and forth between rising and falling, so I couldn't aim at anything properly.

The dragon looks pretty great, but I couldn't have fun with the game at this stage.

[Kubold]

Thank you for the comments!

This actually IS the problem I've been talking about all along (with the controls). It's not that they are not working per se (as in "I press and nothing happens"), it's just I am the only person in the world that has no problem controlling the dragon with that setup. And I actually find it fun and precise. What I am trying to determine here, is why:

a) is it because they are simply bad and I am strange, because I find them precise and easy
b) is it because there is a learning curve, like in simulators? So if you play more than 5 minutes, you will start getting better at it

Problem with determining which one is it, is huge. Because, of course, everybody will quit after 60 seconds, if they will not like the controls at first moment and just say "it's bad!". Same as they would for example, never ride a bicycle again after first fall, if nobody told them "keep trying, you will like it, when you'll learn it".

I mean, I simply could decide "ok, nobody likes it, it's bad". But the problem is I LOVE this controls. You said "no fun at this stage", but this stage is pretty much the final stage, if it comes to steering - this is the effect of carefully tweaking drag forces, gliding mechanics, diving, wing flapping force etc.

Anyway. I made a short tutorial video with dragon controls:

Youtube controls example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUcZk9D_pDs&feature=youtu.be

If anyone else wants to test, please, I will be most grateful, even if the verdict is "it's bad". But I would love more detailed feedback, like the one above ("it's bad because...")

[Quicksand-S]

Thanks for the video.

In my case, there seems to be something very strange going on. I started like you did. I just held space. The camera moved out in front of my dragon, facing up and backward until I started holding W.

With gliding, I think my issue is that I don't have control over the pitch of the dragon. It feels strange to just slowly fall without any real control over the speed of my descent (apart from starting to flap). There's also an issue where if the dragon is already aiming slightly down, switching to glide mode doesn't slow him down much. I feel like he should level out when you hold W.

I also find the camera very frustrating because I can't just look where I want to. At least a third of the time, it's pointing in a direction I don't care about and I can't change it, and even when it's in the right direction I often can't see enemy troops because they're blurred.

Fighting the flying machine felt terrible. It shot me through walls constantly, but I imagine that's just a temporary bug. The bigger issue was that fire doesn't go very far while you're in motion so even when I flew up close to it, I still couldn't burn it because the fire couldn't keep up with me. I ended up having to land and burn it, which was no fun. I think it might be better if the velocity of the fire particles had the dragon's velocity added to it. An increased flame range would be nice too, and it might be a good idea to have the cursor change to show when something is in range (if it already does, it's not very noticeable).

Anyway, after that flying machine stuff, I went and explored the nearby town on foot, except that I couldn't see the enemies 20m away because of the depth-of-field. I ended up getting killed by a jousting knight from out of nowhere because I couldn't look around with the camera.


After playing a bit more, I got used to flying and could manage to burn the archers on the towers without having to land first. I started to like how the flapping worked. It does feel pretty dragon-like (although I still want the ability to hover more easily). It felt pretty good to fly around in the open, but dealing with enemies was still a bit frustrating and it wasn't because of the handling. I think my biggest issues are actually with the camera.

I can get used to everything else, but if I can't see where I'm going, or where I want to aim, or what's below me, or where the enemies are, then that messes up everything for me. I'd do better with a much tighter camera (ie. one that doesn't lag behind my movement), a lot less depth-of-field, and the ability to look sideways and down without such restrictions.

[Kubold]

Thank you very much for playing more! This is a huge help for me

I just realized why I didn't notice the camera rotating too slow and not showing where are you turning. Lately I've been testing this on Oculus Rift almost exclusively - and you can actually turn your head in a VR helmet, so you always look exactly where you want to. So I made the camera smoother and smoother, do reduce nausea... but at the same time the cam got worse and worse in normal monitor mode.

I'm making a camera behaviour switch now, different movement for the Rift, different for normal mode.

[Quicksand-S]

Just one more comment that I didn't think of earlier: I don't own a Rift yet, but I know how much depth-of-field irritated me in 3D movies. When the actual 3D effect is already taking care of what's in focus and what isn't, it can be pretty annoying (and hurt a person's eyes/head) if they focus on something and it stays completely blurry. Maybe you're used to it, but I imagine that a lot of people will be looking around with their eyes and will feel strange/uncomfortable because of this setup.

[Kubold]

I think I managed to make the camera more playable in 0.09 version.

Download v0.09 (Win64): https://docs.google.com/uc?id=0B5eiP1k4yXXiZXdDMFNlV3B0YjQ&export=download

I used a totally different approach - instead of a separate camera object "smooth following" the dragon, the camera is now parented to the dragon. I just offset it's position a little, basing on dragon's current velocity, what imitates "smooth follow" results. I also toned down the DOF and made the fire breath longer.

Anyway, I forgot to address the rest of the feedback:

- the "out of fire breath" thing is by design. If you breathe fire, stop and immidietly breathe again, the dragon will go out of breath. You got to let him take the air in for 1 second after breathing fire.

- in Oculus mode all the postprocess is off, so DOF also is off. Mainly because of FPS (it's hard to maintain 75 fps during battles even on Geforce 970) - postprocess is very expensive.

- windowed mode is ignored at launch and the game starts in fullscreen - I guess Oculus plugin does that (as well as displaying the health warning). I used the plugin out of the box, something can probably be done about it.


I also didn't mention some experiments I made here

- enemies always spawn randomly (in same places for now, but sometimes it's pikemen and a wizard, sometimes archers, sometimes copters etc.)
- some houses have gold in them that you can collect (I don't really know why would you do that, but - it's a video game, so you gotta collect coins, tradition, right?)
- the dragons grows bigger, breathes further and has more health, with every human he EATS. (grows like 0,06% every time, to a 3x cap)
- you can eat a Wizard to steal his "deathray" for a while. You can shoot it instead of fire breath

[Quicksand-S]

I haven't tried the new version yet, but I forgot to ask about "eating" enemies. Is there a proper eating animation in place? Every time I tried to eat enemies on top of the towers, the dragon just kinda shrugged and I wasn't sure if he was doing anything.


Update:

Ok. I tried the new version. When I first started in Windowed mode, it came up in a window, but froze with a big white rectangle on a black background. Even the Task Manager couldn't forcibly close the thing. Kinda weird. I went ahead and played in full-screen with no issues.

With less depth-of field, I could tell that I was eating enemies (or at least knocking them down), but I still think that animation could use a little tweaking.

The camera is so much better now. I managed to burn a flying machine with no trouble. Felt good.

I think my only other issue at the moment (apart from wizards having incredibly long range) is that it's hard to aim the downward dash/smash move. I feel like it should head for my cursor, or the center of the view or something (when looking/aiming down), so I know exactly where he's going to land. Either that, or maybe just have a semi-transparent landing marker projected at the right spot.

I do still find it frustrating that I can't look sideways or down. The dragon turns his head all around. I should at least see what he sees, if not more, shouldn't I?

Anyway, this version is actually pretty fun to play. All the little adjustments made a big difference.

[woodsmoke]

Wow this looks very good. I shall try this out.

Edit: Amazing! Flying/Gliding is fun.
Sometimes when "jetpacking" up the dragon goes higher when the wings are moving up. That looks wierd.