Hello Draconians!

With this patch, we are introducing the targeting system and adjustments to the character camera, marking the first phase of combat changes.
Both features were available for testing over the past week, and we have made additional improvements based on your feedback.

Below is a summary of the changes we have made:

Added: New NPCs and story bits
Added: New daily quest
Added: Interactive level art
Added: Experimental collision check when turn offset is being applied to avoid wallhack
Added: New targeting system
Press t to target
Press t to switch between targets
Hold t to disable targeting
Added: New major story location (currently inaccessible until the first world event is ready)
Added: Experimental LODs to larger level assets
Added: Upscaling methods
Updated: Interacting with NPCs can now unlock new dialogue branches when talking to other NPCs
Updated: Made further performance improvements
Updated: to Unreal Engine 5.5.1
Updated: Several locations to be ready for more storyline implementation & the addition of first major world event
Updated: Interaction animations and default idle state of some already existing NPCs
Updated: Fae dragon egg description
Updated: First and second island
Updated: Newly installed game's default video settings will be set to low instead of epic (only if no config file found in AppData)
Updated: Misc. Settings got renamed To "Gameplay"
Updated: Reduced interaction trace size to avoid interaction through thin colliders, e.g.: landscape
Updated: Increased render distance of large level assets
Updated: Constructions that generate items will now generate up to 10 different items; they can now generate 4x as many items; their crafting costs have been doubled; the construction limit has been set to 1 personal generator and 3 clan generators (subject to change)
Updated: Some interaction texts
Updated: Turn offset and camera lag (to decrease character offscreen situations when flying at high speed), acceleration, dive speed, dive acceleration/deceleration, turn speed/arc, etc. of all 4 flying characters
Updated: Free Cam (hold ALT/LB) reset speed can now be adjusted in the settings
Updated: Controller input - Added scrolling through menus/lists with RTB (R-Stick)
Refactored: Camera system
Fixed: Various code changes/errors/warnings caused by engine version switch
Fixed: Silent assert error caused by old and deprecated code usage in our gameplay system
Fixed: Simmatres missing its opacity
Fixed: Luxmatres blocking interactions
Fixed: Some level assets being misplaced
Fixed: building mode Place/Cancel text being cut off
Fixed: Jump not working when using a controller (Y-Button)
Removed: Old targeting components


DEV KITCHEN

A few images and videos of the other things that have been cooking in the dev kitchen.

The finished Behemoth model

The new Eastern Dragon models got their default skins.

The Quetzacoatl concept art. While the Quetz will still be mainly scaled, we changed the scales to imitate feathers. The final model will feature both, the typical leathered membrane and bird-like wings merged into one.

Here is a peek at the head of the new Quetz model. You can find more work in progress images of the rest of the body on our Ko-fi page.

Work in progress Kirin skin.

The Crabling skin has been finished and our texture artist has moved on to work on the Goliath crab skin.

[Redacted]

SKIN CHALLENGES

We have also started running weekly skin challenges on Discord that everyone can participate in.
These challenges are for players who enjoy creating skins based on specific themes.
Here are the top skins from the challenges that have concluded so far.

SOCIAL MEDIA

DISCORD: https://discord.gg/draconiagame

INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/draconiagame/

BLUESKY: https://bsky.app/profile/draconiagame.bsky.social

YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/draconiagame

REDDIT: https://reddit.com/r/draconiagame/

Patch 0.5.0.0 is ready for testing on the beta branch "buildtest"!

If you want to join the testing, right-click Draconia in your Steam library and go to "Properties > Betas > Beta Participation" and select "buildtest - public developer build branch".
You can only join the testing server "[US] Draconia - Test Server #1" while you are on the testing branch.

We are primarily looking for feedback on:

- The new character + camera movement (movement has not been reworked entirely, only the character camera which is movement based!)
- The new targeting system (Use "t" to target enemy AI)
- Render distances of level assets e.g., foliage, rocks, etc. (please include your video settings)
- Performance

However, if you notice anything else new in this patch that doesn’t feel right, feel free to mention it here.

Patch notes for this beta patch:

Added: New NPCs and story bits
Added: New daily quest
Added: Interactive level art
Added: Experimental collision check when turn offset is being applied to avoid wallhack
Added: New targeting system core c++ classes
Added: New major story location (currently inaccessible until the first world event is ready)
Added: Experimental LODs to larger level assets
Added: Upscaling methods
Updated: Made further performance improvements
Updated: to Unreal Engine 5.5.1
Updated: Several locations to be ready for more storyline implementation & the addition of first major world event
Updated: Interaction animations and default idle state of some already existing NPCs
Updated: Fae dragon egg description
Updated: First and second island
Updated: Newly installed game's default video settings will be set to low instead of epic (only if no config file found in AppData)
Updated: Misc. Settings got renamed To "Gameplay"
Updated: Reduced interaction trace size to avoid interaction through thin colliders, e.g.: landscape
Updated: Increased render distance of large level assets
Refactored: Camera system (part 1);
Fixed: Various code changes/errors/warnings caused by engine version switch
Fixed: Silent assert error caused by old and deprecated code usage in our gameplay system
Fixed: Simmatress missing its opacity
Removed: Old targeting components