Introduction

Development of the Dragonica+ project has recommenced with a new direction of being development focused & aiming to act as a supporting project for the existing private servers of the Dragonica Games Team.

Dragonica+ is a development project that was founded by Paris & Azu in 2021. This project is in support of the Dragonica Games Team, a partnership & development group spanning some of the most popular private servers of dragonica. Through the development of our project we aim to provide unique and engaging features to share across all Dragonica Games Servers & Projects. As a by-product of this we will be creating our own vision and implementations of these features into an invite only experimental server with a zero monetization strategy.

Currently we are in the process of establishing our new permanent home on our development dedicated server with a generous 32gb of ram. Officially development will not recommence until after the 26th of May due to prior commitments but I am super excited to get back into our project.

Our first order of priorities are to develop modernized tooling for the development process that we will design for the community.

Dragonica Map Designer

Already Azu has worked hard to achieve an updated Map Tool which you can find in the Dragonica Games Discord, While this version is not feature-rich it's already a great foundation that we wish to further build from. We aim to make the process of designing dragonica custom maps easy & enjoyable.

Our next step for this tool is to integrate a custom nif-preview window when selecting palette items so that you can preview them without dragging them into your scene! Alongside fixing any bugs and making adjustments on features based on user feedback / requests!

Content

(2018)

(2023)

In terms of custom content we are focused on restoration and modernization of the Sapphire Dragon (Gremgris) cut content. To achieve this we have been restoring the functionality of the water shader system and upgrading it to be compatible with GSA maps so it can be used everywhere. We will also be working with our art team to develop concept art for new Weapons & Armor Sets based on Gremgris' Design.

Once we have established those baselines we will be working on creating gameplay content around Gremgris that we find most fitting to the original vision. The reason this is something we are developing sooner rather than later is due to the fact we have been wanting to complete this content since 2018.

It’s our ultimate vision to rebuild Dragonica from the ground up not only in terms of feature development & tooling but also content!

We will be creating fully custom, hand-made content from level 0 all the way up to a custom Lavalon Raid.

This is due to the gameplay becoming stale over the years in terms of PVE content, Very few projects have aimed to create a unique experience from the very beginning till the very end and that is what we wish to accomplish once we have developed our new tooling ecosystem!

While developing our project we aim to create seasonal / event based content that fits directly into the existing lore / world. Rather than having events be gimmicks for the player to experience, we want to tell stories through world-building creating events and seasonal experiences that even the NPCS get involved in!

Team

Regarding our new team size, We currently have two primary / active developers (Paris & Azu) and a supporting C++ developer (Khejanin). We have a primary Game Artist (Holly) & a supporting artist (Wander) who will be receiving direct training from us In addition to this team we also have many Advisory members such as the Dragonica Games team (ExW, Fisolino, Nosferati, Spidpex) and the Honorary (Lexy).

Current Features

This is a wip preview of a feature where NPCS will be able to move in real-time to new locations based on their own unique schedule (syncs with mood system timer). With this feature we aim to bring more life into the games world.

This system will also allow us to have specific shops only open during certain times of the in-game day as well as having NPCS change their stock during night-time. Combined with our interior revamp of the world, these NPCS will be able to travel to their own homes / inside their own shops. We aim to create new spaces for these new "living" NPCS to travel to such as taverns or unique points of interest.

I am excited about these new features as combined they will help us create a living, breathing, Dragonica World.

These are previews of the current day/night system we have developed, showcasing the dynamic lighting changes as well as glow map integrations, background music transitions & custom game-time clock with sync-able event triggers.

DAY / NIGHT:

WORLD:

Implementation of new maps: Odelia: 101001 Port Of Winds: 101002 Libra: 101003

We have established a new ID system for building our dragonica worlds that follows a predefined key pattern. This will allow us to easily navigate through any map by their Identifier & easily read & process information directly from the ID itself. NPCS have been stripped out of the new maps to act as a blank canvas, new camera settings have been set to allow for greater zoom distances.

New Interior Rooms(Shops & Services)

We have implemented wip interior sections for npc shops & services and plan to create modular interior environment kits to develop more indoor areas for you to discover throughout your adventures.

UI:

Custom Modernized Main Menu System.
Moveable UI Windows (Layout Customisation)

The Main Menu system has been reworked into a modern design that we plan to further develop. We have also implemented the first draft of a system that allows you to customize your UI layout and save its settings.

Combat:

Fluid Combat (Movement During Chain Combos).

Chain Combos have had their movement unlocked so that all classes can perform chain combos without interruption, This is part of our efforts to make dragonica PVE combat feel like pure hack & slash.

MISC:

Client Icons and Logos updated.
Game title references updated (discord rpc and application name).
Changed server level cap to 100, added GM level 101 - 999.
Added code for projection based shadow to player character
New characters can now always skip the tutorial.
Custom Discord RPC Integration.

Early on in the development of our project we established integration with Discord RPC to display player information, Such as Player Name, Class, Level, Exp, Class Icon, Location & Location Icon. We began to expand on this functionality with party-name display and join/invite system integrations through discord. We plan to fully-develop this integration even further displaying relevant gameplay statistics.

Initial changes were made for gold/silver/copper to be just 1 currency

Creation of new guard npc

During our development of moving NPCS I was exploring new designs for the fellowship guards to add visual variety. I also wanted to add more representation into the game through the inclusion of different skins/races for these new fellowship guards.

Outro

As we move further into this project's development I plan to create many more blog posts, video dev-logs and live discord streams to keep the community engaged with our development process. I can’t wait to share with you all the very exciting things we have planned moving forward, not only for Dragonica+ but for all projects within the Dragonica Games team.

Don't forget, This is only the beginning!

Most importantly we wish to establish and maintain a strong sense of community within our project just like we have done across many other servers!

Discord