Whew, February was over so quickly I almost missed it.

But that doesn't mean anyone has to miss this edition of Dinolords Monthly!

This time, we are looking back at a big convention, some clever CPU shenanigans, and how to make the world of Dinolords feel real and tangible!

The biggest Danish event for all kinds of gaming and play was held at Bella Center in Copenhagen, and similarly to the last two years, we participated as parts of the TAGS ("Tomorrows Awesome Games Showcase") booths where a lot of Danish-made games, big and small, are shown off with playable demos for the crowd.

Our booth when I arrived wednesday evening to set up the computer, cameo traffic cone because safety first!

We had a busy couple of days where the demo was being played constantly - I don't think I saw the seat empty for more than half a minute before a new player rose to the challenge. And it was great to see so many people, both young and less young, being curious and excited about what we are making.

The event was completely sold out, with more than 10.000 people attending per day, we had our hands full tending the booth and showing off Dinolords, and we are thankful to everyone who dropped by and said hi.

Friday evening, as an addendum to Copenhagen Gaming Week, Spilprisen (the Danish Game Awards) was held at Bella Center. It was scheduled to start 1 hour after the convention closed, so we did what is most appropriate answer rushed out to grab a quick pizza before rushing back, ready for the show!

Speedrunning a pizza dinner with a good chunk of the team.

This year we had an extra reason to pay attention to the show because our programmer Lukas was called on stage as part of the Talents of the Year segment. It is a celebration of distinguished talent that are new to the industry, and we are super proud and happy that Lukas was selected to be part of it.

It was a lot of fun to celebrate all the cool things that are happening in the Danish video games industry, and also a great way to have a party with fellow gamedevs you don't get to see everyday. While the Danish video game industry can sometimes seem small compared to other countries and even our neighbors, it is great to see how much is happening all over the country, and a huge congratulations to all the winners!

Now, back to Dinolords! We (and by "we" I mean the colloquial "we", as this has very much been Lukas' brainchild) have been looking at different gamemodes for Dinolords. Some of you have tried our Campaign idea during the playtests, which is still under development but can be summarized as a dynamic map of different levels with changing circumstances that you play through as a string of pearls, unlocking units and trying to rid the map of the pesky invading Vikings. Between levels you use Amber to unlock upgrades and changes to how you play the game to become stronger and do more cool stuff.

And while we think that gamemode is great, we also acknowledge the need for a more one-off style of playing where you select a level and just play once. This serves multiple purposes, and some we hope to share more information on soon, but for now, I would like to talk a little bit about what we have chosen to call Skirmish.

Skirmish is, in essence, a more traditional RTS-esque way of playing Dinolords. You open a level-select screen where you can choose what map you want, difficulty, and other modifiers, and you then load in to a map where you play against a CPU-controlled opponent that is playing in a similar way to you, meaning: A dinolord runs around, explores, constructs a base, trains units, unlocks research and upgrades, contests points and eventually the victor is crowned via elimination.

Sped up in-editor footage of a CPU dinolord expanding their base.

Creating a CPU-controlled enemy that has the ability to dynamically change strategies and prioritize what to do next, sort of helps solve a couple of challenges for us:

Firstly, it creates a great experience playing against the computer because you are both going through similar movements; you decide what to focus on building your base, what units to train, where to expand your operations on the map, and how to get ahead.

Secondly, it helps us test how it feels playing against something that is more-or-less a mirror of yourself as a player in what you can do in the game, unlike the more objective-oriented levels we are making for the Campaign mode.

And finally, it forces us to look at the British and the Vikings more like two factions; how are they similar, how do they differ. Like in other RTS games, picking one faction over another is always a choice of sacrifice vs payoff in how they differ from each other, and we keep finding ways that the Vikings surprise us.

We are very excited about this new way of playing the game, and can't wait to see how it fares once it reaches a playtest!

We touched on this before, but that was a long time ago and there is a lot happening when it comes to making the levels feel like real, "lived in" places where you can imagine different threads of life has happened. So let's have a look at some of the new things that have been added that helps achieve this goal, starting out with a bunch of ruins, the "newest" in terms of how old they are in-lore first:

An abandoned small village or settlement, who knows what caused the to leave the place becuase one can almost imagine it to be pretty cosy when it was active. But those are barely even ruins, they are brand new! How about something older? Like old Roman ruins:

What an aqueduct that must have been when it served to supply water to a town at some point, beautiful! But we must go older! Way older!

Now we are talking, prehistoric megalithic structures, now that's got some age to it!

It's all coming together, and while it's clear that total and complete historical accuracy has been a hallmark from the beginning, it is still nice to be able to trace some of the major turning points through the environment of the levels as you play the game.

Thank you for coming along on this edition of Dinolords Monthly, I hope you found it interesting!

There is a bunch of stuff going all as always so these posts only reflect aspects of what is happening with the project, but we love the ability to invite you inside the engine-room and see what it's like making a game like Dinolords.

And as always, you are most welcome to join us over on the Dinolords Discord[discord.gg] where we hang out and chat a little more informally and you can ask us whatever questions you might have about the game, or what our favourite dinosaur is!

If you can't get enough of stuff like this, my colleague Jesper does a weekly summary of our friday show-and-tell that he posts on the official Dinolords subreddit and on Discord, go have a look!

Catch you in the next one.

-panxter

Two Dilophosaurus go round the outside,
round the outside, round the outside.
Guess who's back, back again?
Monthly's back, tell a friend!

It's been a while! Christmas and new years happened, and with Michael's big new years post, we decided to skip the regularly scheduled Monthly, but that means that this edition is just that more meaty! So saddle up your Utah Raptor and let's dive straight in, starting with a look at a new feature!

This is a pretty big one, and some of you might have already tried it during the latest alpha or seen it on livestreams and videos, but we also wanted to show it off and highlight some of the things this new toggle allows for everyone. First, let's dig into what issues we are trying to solve and then look at the solution we came up with.

Dinolords is a genre hybrid, we are trying to mix RTS and strategy gameplay with ARPG elements, and in that, we have a main player character to whom the camera is locked and you move around with WASD. So far so good!

BUT, we also understand that this is very foreign for players coming from more traditional RTS games with a completely free camera and mouse controls.

So we have added, and are experimenting with, a feature called Wingsight (internally also affectionally known as "Bird-mode" even though it's a Dimorphodon and not a bird at all!).

Entering Wingsight, adding my ranged units to a control group and sending them across the bridge.

We believe strongly in the fantasy of playing as a character in the middle of the battlefield, and we also find the restrictions of having a following camera to afford some interesting gameplay and suspense about what is going on outside of the screen. But Wingsight serves to alleviate the players longing for more traditional RTS-style free camera, without completely negating the fantasy and gameplay we think is part of what makes DInolords great.

So how does Wingsight work? It is an alternate camera mode you can toggle in and out of via the tab-key. When you press it, the Lord sends out a Dimorphodon that flies high up into the air and the camera zooms out further than normal, giving you a larger, more top-down view than the regular view. You can then move the bird Dimorphodon around much faster than the lord is able to run, but there is a range limitation around the Lord where it slows down drastically.

Furthermore, you have additional zones around your Town Hall, and you are able to place down "Outpost" buildings, allowing you to quickly Wingsight to them and remote control production, or unit movement, even with the Lord not directly present. You can also jump quickly to these points via the minimap, offering an experience that is more akin to more traditional RTS, while keeping some of the interesting elements of the camera limitations intact.

Using Wingsight in combination with control groups adds some pretty cool levels of strategic control to the battlefield, and the ability to micromanage your units a lot more than before, while remaining a feature that can be optional, for those who would like a simpler experience.
A display of my strategic genius, letting my ranged units act as meat shields, selecting my melee control group and sending them in after the battle has ended. A true battlefield mastermind, I am!

We are still working on the specifics of Wingsight and everything mentioned is of course subject to change, but so far it feels very right for the game, and we are really looking forward to getting this in the hands of more players in future alpha tests!

You might have caught wind of this if you follow our twitter, we are working on adding seasons to our levels. For now, we have summer everywhere, and we want some more ways to really make levels stand out and look different, so in addition to our plan of adding biomes with different vegetation and appearance, we are looking to make them all work in different seasonal attire.
"Let it snooooow, let it snooooow, let it SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!"

To start out, we are adding winter, which feels very topical as the outside temperature has been in the negative °C for weeks here in Denmark. There really is nothing like coming inside after being out in a freezing, windy January morning to plop down at your desk, warm coffee or tea ready, and load up a vista of freezing, windy, snowy landscapes!

But, I must say, it does look great, and it looks much more interesting "live", as the snow is shimmering and snowflakes are slowly falling from the skies, screenshots or gif's compressed to hecc can't show it as good as the video over on Twitter[x.com].

Starting the day I went on a vacation, we opened up for another round of playtesting, and 1000 of you got an email and installed the Alpha! First of all, we want to express our gratitude to all of you who dedicated your time to play the alpha and filled out the feedback form. It helps us out tremendously and it is so incredibly exciting to see the streams and videos that come out during the playtest, as well as reading all the messages, ideas and feedback over on the Discord. So a big Thank you to all of you.

You guys played 4814 levels and trained 155,755 units! That's almost 4 times as many units as there are people on Monaco! Wild!

Of those 155,755, almost 30,000 were dinosaurs, with the most trained being the Compsognathus with 11,995 units. A little upset there wasn't just 5 more for a clean even 12,000. But imagine twelve thousand compsognathus, and the absolute nightmarish cacophony of screeching that would cause (I promise, there's a fix to the compy screech frequency coming soon!).

You also constructed 48,417 buildings, which is a lot. It's 7 times as many as there are skyscrapers in the world. Some proper entrepreneurs you are!

And to support all that construction and training, you gathered so many resources!

• Food: 734,976

• Gold: 130,660

• Wood: 984,132

• Stone: 249,611

• Eggs: 134,767

• Amber: 1,415,652

Those are some absolutely huge numbers!

Before we wrap up this absolute unit of a Monthly, let's look at some of the new assets that are being worked on for the game. And why not start out with a unit, feels topical somewhat:

Protoceratops is really causing a rift in the team, some thing it's the ugliest thing (not the 3D model, that's gorgeous as always, but the dinosaur itself), and some of us think it's a sassy little diva that is going to live it's best life, thriving, in it's lane.

Next up is a bunch of new environment assets. Sometimes it can be easy to forget just how many things are needed to make a world feel real and "lived in". They all make the maps feel much more tangible, and it takes a lot more than just adding a tree and a bush. So here are some of the new things that has made their way into the game:

If you, like me, can't get enough of seeing all the new things that are added to the project in these art- and content showcases, our 3D wizard Jesper has started compiling some of the stuff from our weekly internal show-and-tell and putting it up on Reddit and Discord[discord.gg]! Go have a look, and we do out best to reply and interact with everyone!

That was all for this edition of Dinolords Monthly.

Thank you everyone for following along on this wild journey we are on, thank you for reading our monthly news, thank you for playing the Alpha if you did, thank you for engaging with us and for wishlisting the game. It is all very humbling to feel the overwhelming support from all of you, and we promise to do our best to make Dinolords the best game it can be!

Catch you all in the next one, and until then, happy Valentines Velociraptines Day!

-panxter