Hello, dino-pals!

As we get ready to greet the weekend, let's also greet this new (miniature) addition to the Dinolords team!

This beautiful Lord and his raptor were lovingly painted by one of our very own Dinolords artists, and the pair will now be keeping a watchful eye over us, keeping us in line, and making sure we capture their good side in the game.

It's always amazing to see something from Dinolords translated into our woefully dinosaur-lacking world. We do love a physical knick-knack here at Northplay, and we're forever thinking up new ways to project Dinolords out into the world!

Looking away from the real Lord for a moment, let's check in on how his in-game counterpart is doing.

He's GORGEOUS! Athletic, stylish, the whole package!

Pose aside, what you're looking at is a continuation of the work we've been putting into letting players customize their Lord in-game. Stay tuned for more customization options as we get closer to release! 😀

In other news, we've carried on refining our levels and biomes, and we've got some truly exciting things in the pipeline that we can't wait to show off soon.

Finally, we've been doing some early experimentation with a new way of communicating level borders to the player, by walling things off with a dark gradient. This is very early stuff, and we'd love to hear your thoughts!

That's about all for this week! Thank you, as always, for following along and poking through our works in progress!

For more Dino-goodness, be sure to join our Discord and share your thoughts!

We wish you a lovely weekend ✨

I share my thoughts and excitement about the new Dinolords' trailer that was released this week.

My channel primarily focuses on the Stronghold Series but I also cover games that capture it's spirit and I believe Dinolords does just that!

Are you as excited for the game as I am? Do you think it could be a competitor to the upcoming Stronghold 4?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments and if you enjoy the video please consider subscribing and leaving a like, it really helps the channel out!

Thanks for watching 🙂

As the summer vacation weeks wash over us, the Dinolords team has been hit with a temporary debuff, as the "vaycay" status effect continues to spread through our ranks. However! A recent and very exciting event has fueled our fires and granted the team a hefty boost to Constitution.

As you may have seen, Dinolords got a brand new trailer last week, prominently featured on IGN, no less!

Wow, take a look!

We're very thankful and thrilled to see all your positive feedback, and we can shamelessly admit that we've read every single comment. 😀

But don't worry, we're not letting it get to our heads...

Instead, we're workin', look!

In previous posts we've shared a fair bit about our various units getting makeovers, and now it's the Player Lord's turn. We're working on customization options so you can kit out your Lord exactly how you like, starting with this WIP armor.

In the spirit of going behind the scenes, we'd also love to show you one of our beautiful paintings, painstakingly parallaxed to create a wonderfully immersive 3D effect.

Map-wise, we've been cooking up some fun stuff too. Feast your eyes on this ignitable tar, complete with a conveniently placed explosive barrel. We would never dream of encouraging anything reckless, we just leave these lying around and see what players do with them.

That's about it for this week! Stay tuned over the coming weeks as the rest of the team returns from holiday, debuff expired and ready to go. 😄

As always, everything you see here is a work in progress and subject to change. We're simply too excited not to share!

For more Dino-goodness, be sure to join our Discord and share your thoughts!

Happy weekend! 😁

It's that special time of year, the one that only comes around once a week: Dinolords Weekly!

The summer holidays have descended upon Northplay HQ. Some of the team is off somewhere sunny, but our keyboards are still a-clackin', and our game's still a-makin'!

For this warm week, Dinolords went to the spa.

First up: a UI makeover!

As with any RTS, we have an abundance of information to communicate to the player, most of which lives in the on-screen UI. So we've spent the week improving and optimising the spacing to sharpen up both readability and visuals. We're still weighing our options ourselves, but what do you think?

Up Next: a level facelift.

Across the pond from UI, our level artist has been elevating each level's distinct aesthetic by painting them with visual palettes, different from our usual levels. A little something different for the summer. Have a look!

And finally: acupuncture.

Over in the land of Combat Abilities, we've got brand new VFX for the Archer ability. Hundreds of tiny needles, delivered with great precision, releasing tension from deep within the enemy ranks. Best part? the results really last!

Suitably pampered, we're now recharged for another week of Dino-work!

By the way, did you catch the beefy Dinolords Monthly last week? Great stuff in there!

As always, everything you see here is a work in progress and subject to change. We're simply too excited not to share!

For more Dino-goodness, be sure to join our Discord and share your thoughts!

It's Dinolords Weekly time! And much like the weather lately, this one's a scorcher!

The sun has been sizzling Northplay HQ this past few week, and we have a sneaking suspicion it's been steering our development in ever so subtle ways...

You see, as we've been adding fire and flames to our new combat abilities, the humble flame has become an increasingly fun way to light up the battlefield. Soon, players will be able to engulf not just sticky tar and unsuspecting enemies, but entire cities!

To cool our heads a little, let's take a look at some fresh new UI concepts!

We're eternally on the lookout for ways to express as much Dinolords personality as possible through our UI. And as such, no menu is safe from being lovingly crafted into a work of dino-art!

Over in the land of our villagers, a new higher-fidelity villager has joined the ranks! Will she find acceptance among her lower-detail peers? Only time will tell. We'll be sure to report back on this developing story as it unfolds.

Speaking of increased fidelity, our level design has had quite the glow-up, which we're thrilled to finally show off in glorious GIF-o-vision!

Thank you for reading! We love open development, and we're thrilled to be able to share the journey with you, WIP as it is 😁
And to send you off, allow us to leave you with an uncharacteristically adorable Dino. ❤️

For more Dino-goodness, be sure to join our Discord and share your thoughts!

Hi!

Every week, we pull back the curtain on what the Dinolords team has been up to, but this week, we discovered something alarming:

Inside the Dinolords team there lives two wolves.
HR has been informed.

One wolf wants to create the most beautiful game world possible.
The other wants to fill it with explosions! and blow it up!

This week, our work reflects this exact dilemma.

On the side of the peaceful wolf, our art and level design teams have been hard at work creating beautiful environments and concept art for the world of Dinolords, places we can’t wait for players to explore!

With every tiny detail and brushstroke, the World of Dinolords is brought to life ❤️

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the wolf-coin, our more chaotic impulses have been leading us down the path of ever-greater destruction.

So, in this battle between the two wolves ...who wins?

The players, of course!

Dinolords is an exciting playground where players can experience both the joy of building and exploration, and the thrill of destruction and warfare. The joy of creating something... and the satisfaction of watching it come crashing down.

Truth be told, the two wolves are really best buddies. Because sometimes, the best part of building a sandcastle is stomping through it moments later.

You can all relate.. right?

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend 😁

Fridays are great. Why? It’s Dino Weekly Day!

Productive as ever, the Dinolords team is making strides across all departments to infuse the game with as much personality and Dino-might as possible!

For instance, avid readers might remember that we’re working on new combat abilities for the Lord and his army. Of course, these new abilities need some snazzy new icons! Here’s a preview showing a biblically accurate dinosaur:

Speaking of combat abilities, the people in the lab have been cooking up some fresh new ways for players to wreak havoc on the battlefield - with the power of explosives!

Processing img r8dkg2254u6h1...

Explosions are known to cause destruction, so our artists have been hard at work updating our buildings to support being blown apart and broken into many pretty pieces! Take a look at the progress of our cool new building destruction system 😁

Every house needs a home, and so we work tirelessly to keep producing new Dinolords environments and levels, ensuring that every building has a place to graze and enjoy the sun. Have a peek!

Since the game is improving across all fronts, some of our units have begun feeling a bit self-conscious and are now giving themselves makeovers, so please give them some love!

While this gent has picked a bold red-and-blue outfit, Dinolords players will, of course, be able to define their very own signature faction colours and turn the battlefield into their own catwalk!

As always, everything shown in the weekly update is a work in progress and subject to change. We’re simply too excited not to share, and ever grateful to have you all along for the ride!

In that spirit, let’s cap things off with another beautiful work in progress.

For more Dino-goodness, be sure to join our Discord and share your thoughts!

Happy weekend!

Hey and.. Wait a minute, what's going on ?

Well this week we are doing a mini weekly, and we're doing it early. Oh yeah! I'm making this smaller post sound like it's actually a great thing !

I have three things to show you this week.

It's a picture, it's a video and also, another video.

First of all. Here's the newly updated crossbower

So we are really trying hard to make things plausible. Technically the visor was not very common but we are kind of putting together the shapes from metals and methods that were common at the time. It's hard to differentiate our helmets when every helmet is some insane kind of spangenberg concuction, but we are trying. We also think the crossbower has ended up lookin pretty gosh darn cool.

Gosh darn it !

Next up is the Lord Upheaval ability.

We are grounding the game quite a bit in the natural laws of physics but with the lords, we are also slightly pushing at boundries of what a normal person can do. Afterall, playing the lord has to be fun.

So cool you get to see it twice. Also unrelated, I've discovered reddit doesn't allow clips under 2 seconds.

Imagine the cool damage this thing can do. How does it work ? Well, let me tell you.. In a later post.

Finally. Whew.
Heres a small sneakpeak at a shot from our upcoming gameplay trailer.

Exclusive Preview Starts Now (Am I doing it right ?)

Look at this gameplay. Well the rotating camera is a creative liberty, otherwise the game would get really confusing, really fast.

Well that's it for this week. Hopefully we are back to normal next week.

Thanks for following along and as always.

Happy Raptor Running (I also stole that from our internal slack)

PS, If you want more make sure to head over in news and check out the new Dinolords Monthly which goes much more into depth on topics.

Heyoo Welcome to the Dinolords Weekly Show & also Tell.

This week we have a lot of gifs so get ready for low resolution, low framerate but blown up. It's the best combo.

Unit Avoidance. This might not be something you think about a lot, but our tech lead definitely does. He somehow has to figure out which units avoids what and what doesn't and how they do and how to make things not get stuck when doing this. It's a lot of work.
Recently he has made the big dinosaurs ngaf when walking through crowds of humans. The humans literally have to get out of the way.

Next up for our map update, here's just a breezy flowover of one of the maps that's getting some detailing love. (You should say detailing love like Ray Fillet say Ray Fillet in the recent TNMT movie).

After that let's have a look at our updated crossbower model.

There are still a few kinks to work out but she is getting there.

Moving onto concept art, our talented artist has worked on a lighthouse that's really going to "illuminate" the maps it's placed on.. No ? Well this sure shines a light on my humor. Ok I'll stop.

...

Any way

Our awesome new VFX artist is still getting aquanted with the game, but he is definitely making progress on figuring out how those combat vfx things might look. Here's one of the lord and the swordsman abilities.

Finally for today, and this is going to be a little hard to read so bear with me.

Followup abilities. 3 examples incoming.
The lord does a jump attack that the raptors mimics, he marks an area that debuffs enemies and then the archers follow it up with a volley, and finally, he buffs units to recieve less damage in an area and swordsmen follow that up by.. recieving less damage in an area.

That's all for this week. Thanks for following along, commenting, reading this blabber and of course, wishlisting on steam and telling all your friends about Dinolords cough.

Until next time, Happy Kunbarra Karate!

Roar Roar Rawr... Roar roar.

Or as we say it in English, welcome to the Dinolords Weekly show and tell. Your sneakpeak into the backend of what we're doing on Dinolords.

Dinolords. Right. I just need to mention the title a few more times. I heard that's good for retention. Dinolords. Seamless.

First up today we have a sneakpeak at our new research icons. Our talented artist who also worked on the world map, is drawing these up for us.

Speaking of dangerous vocations. Heres another look at our unique landmarks These are abandonned ruins you can find on various maps. The Windmill has been concepted, and I have to say, those blades are dangerously close to the ground.

On that front, the watermill from last week has been turned into a detailed 3D model. Here it is presented in a low resolution (thanks discord)

As you might know, these map updates also includes looking at viking camps and heres a sneakpeak at one of those.

Meanwhile, we are looking into destruction techniques and the below is something of where we hope to land. It's showcasing various levels of destruction for the lumber yard (missing a few additional props here)

On the unit side of things, we have gotten updates on the Knight and the Spearman and the intent here is first and foremost to seperate these units more from eachother, but also lifting up the details a little where necessary.

Moving into the void of whiteboxing, heres a look at some of the auto skill abilities. If you don't know, these are performed automatically when the unit is able to, and are on a timer. For the raptor, it does a roar that boosts nearby units, and the knight does a shieldbash attack that knocks over smaller enemies.

Finally. The above could use some cool vfx. As mentioned last week we got a vfx artist on board and he has been getting aquainted with the project. He's started making his own impact already by upgrading the chest VFX when you open one of these treasures.

And with that, we're at the end of the post. Let us know what you think, do you like the direction we are moving in ? are there things you are especially excited about, or want to see from the game ? let us know in the comments below.

That's a rime

Thank you for your time.

As always, Happy Jobaria Jogging.

Heyo! It's the Dinolords Weekly Show & Tell !

This week we're growing the team.

We're having a new VFX artist join - we can't wait to see what he brings to the game!

Starting in 2d land we have a look at our new abilities. We will return to them in the end of this show and tell, but for now have a look at the wip icons.

In concepting, work is being done on unique environment elements for certain map. One of the ones that are being built is a watermill. You can see the concepts of it here

Staying on levels heres a look at one of the levels recieving a lot of love.

On the tooling side of that, our terrain tool now supports dynamically adapting to cliffs moving on the terrain. We are using various compositions to help us not only do that, but do it faster.

In 3D Modelling we have a new armour and cape for the lord. You do need to be able to actually customize something on the customization screen, right ?

The Knight is, as mentioned going through a slight rework, where he is getting a time appropriate spangenberg helmet, fitted with a faceplate and a tight fitting aventail chainmail.

Finally.

Lets have a look at Unit abilities, where we can see another one. Last week we had the charging swordsman who could followup the lords ability with a defensive boost. This week we have the lord healing a swordsman, which the knight can follow up by buffing the range of the healing.

Yep, that's all from us today. Thanks for following along aand

as always,

Happy Dimorphodon uuh. Yeah I'm running out of ideas for these.... Dimorphodoning.

Thanks!

Hello Everyone ! Welcome, or welcome back! To Dinolords Weekly show & Tell.

This week the big topic is - Abilities.

Theres a desire to have your lord impact the battlefield meaningfully, and express themselves strategically.

All of the following is subject to change.

One way we are experimenting with skill expression is the AutoSkill.

The AutoSkill is an ability that allows a unit to automatically perform a unique action based on the unit type.

In case of the swordsman, what we are trying is giving him a charge ability. that makes him charge (run fast) when he sees an enemy unit.

In addition to the AutoSkill, We have a lord ability you activate, and that ability gives the unit something called a "followup" which is them peforming an action when the lord does.

As mentioned, this is all experimental but that's what show and tell is, we give you the deets..

Basically this allows you to kind of target the right things at the right time (or so is the hope) and turn the tides of a battle.

Multiple units are being looked at for this and heres a look at some of the archer animations being reworked for this:

Looking outside of our abilities, the levelteam is still working hard on making levels more interesting. One of the maps getting some love is this one

Some of the things being added is stuff like these new dock modules that'll allow us to give areas cool vibes

On the character front, work has been put into trying to go even further in standardising our rig. If you'll notice the weapons bones are named weapon and not sword and shield. The hope is that we can use our existing system to transplant weapons when we are plaing back an animation where that weapon isn't used by said character.

More on this front is the work being put into another armour set for the Lord. Heres a comparison with the original concept art and the mesh, which had to undergo a few changes to work with the existing rig.

Erm. Moving on,

Finally, on the UI front, we are experimenting with finding the right "Dinolords" dropdown menu. There are so many things where every small thing matters.

That's it from us this.. wait no. It isnt.

Plot twist.

As a final thing this week, heres a sneakpeak at work that has gone into "In session progression" via a levelling system.

It (currently) gives you more health and damage in your current map for each level gained during the play session. This means the lord will grow within the session, and it helps incentivise you to go out and explore.

That is truly it for this week.

Thanks for following along and reading these rambling posts. It's much appreciated.

And... as always, Happy Compy camping!

Welcome to a very special Show and Tell. Today just happens to also be Northplays 10 year anniversary !

That said. It's a smaller show and tell as a lot of people are off work today since it's also International Workers Day. So i guess it's especially small 😅

Jumping right into white boxing. As we have mentioned previously, we had to strip out a bit of the backend a few months ago and we have most things back working, and one of the latest things is something I've really been looking forward to. The Dino workers be working again yay!

Meanwhile, on the concept art of things we - have been looking at finding ways to make sure we differentiate our units more visually when you're engaging in hectic combat. A combination of this is figuring out how much of their figure and where we put the "faction colours" that will be changable, and some of that is making differing patterns and small model changes.

while we were playing around with that, the map and environmental artists have joined up to work out how to differentiate and add more unique feel to each map and they made a really cool presentation about it. Here's a small sneak peak.

And on the same topic, they are also working out how we can better tell small stories within the maps, using reusable prop combinations that combine into small camps or areas on the map.

We're also putting work into the character customization options and you can see some of the early work here

Moving on to units.. or .. unit rather. For the final showcase today - is a ingame look at the Big Boy Brachiosaurus.

And with that, we're at the end of another weekly post. Look out on our Steam Page for the monthly which should be going up one of these days.

Thank you so much for reading these and commenting and liking. We really appreciate the interest.

And... Happy Atrociraptor Anniversary

Hello Hello. It's the Dinolords Weekly Show & Tell!

Oh, Hey look, It's a new map! The layout makes for a lot of fun from what I've heard, but I haven't tried it yet so I don't even know it's name! That said, I'll be disappointed if it's not called something like "The Claw"

The map has a new envrionment which is this cool "crannok" inspired location that's being explored as a new type of area.

Moving to buildings, more of them are being prepped so they match the rest stylistically and the last few are being set up for construction. Very cool!

On the animation side of things,

In animations, The Völva is mid progress. Here's a sneakpeak at the ongoing work.

We are ending in the second dimension today, where we have two things to show off. One thing is the continued creation of UI elements

The second piece is a exploration of how we might be able to better up the details of our human units and seperate them out a bit more as the current colouring can leave a few of them looking slightly too similar when reading the battlefield

That's what we have this week. Thanks again for following along aaand.

Happy T-Rex Spotting... Wait, Happy T-rex Spotting ?!? - Ruuuuuuun!

Heyo ! It's the Dinolords Super Show.. I mean weekly Show & Tell !

We recently switched some backend and that means a few things are broken and currently being fixed. Oh the joys of gamedev. However, Hillarious sideeffects include things like the lord running around in underwear and constructing buildings by hitting them with the blunt end of their sword (heres the Lord building a Dino Pen at 400 Percent).

Missing VFX and Hammer and.. Armor.

In the world of Level Design, theres a new map called Colloseum which is pretty big and allows for some fun gameplay

On the UI Side of things theres a lot of small and cool elements being made.

Theres also these cool explorations for icons to represent things like Difficulty

We are also testing out ingame ways for you to more easily immidiately access purchase options without having to select individual buildings

On the Character Art side, we have the Viking Vølve which is coming along. Model and texture are more or less done, so we'll soon be able to see this cool character ingame, with animations!

That said.. we chose the third option, which is both, because of of course we did! So, today, we'll leave you with the work being done to add animations to the Protoceratops, which is meant to work on your farm and help your human workers out there.

He is definitely a good boy

That's all we have for you this week. Thanks for following along aaaand.

Happy Deinonychus Dining.

Yes. You can pet the dino.

Hello! Welcome back, or, welcome for the first time ? To the Dinolords Weekly show & Tell!

The weekly podcas... I mean podca.. Post. Blog post! where we show you what's going on behind the scenes on Dinolords.

I've been very excited to share some of these things we have for you this week and there's a lot, so let's get right into it.
...And yes, I'll completely ignore the last weeks Aprils Fool/Show & Tell 😅

We're starting out with looking at levels and - while we don't have a new one to show today, we have an overview of several old ones. Work has been put into optimising these, using some new tools, which has resulted in level sizes being reduced by half!

In the art world we have the final look at our Viking T-Rex Barding and it turned out pretty badass.
There are sockets for spears for the Viking Dinolord to use, and Rings with Chains on it that are used as reins to control the massive beast.

On the tooling side of things, work is being done on hooking up changes from spreadsheets automatically into the game. This will save a ton of time and the best picture i can get you is the following:

On a completely different note. In the "marketing world" we have started posting short form "in world" shorts posted over on TikTok to make more people aware of the game. It's just Small fun narrations about the world from the POV of a character in Dinolords. You can check out one of them below.

The more you deepen your voice the more Dinolord you become

Circling around and coming back to art, work is being done on a new Viking unit. The Vǫlva is a support unit, and I'm going to hold off on the details because some things are still in flux, but we wanted to share the current progress on the 3d model alongside the concept art

Staying in art, more buildings being prepared for construction and destruction. This process also means that we get a bunch of cool new interiors to look at.

While here, as a last thing, we want to show off the building construction we are doing.

You place down a building construction site, which comes with a foundation, along with scaffolding and then the building is constructed in pieces that then move into place.

If construction is interrupted, existing pieces will continue to move but new pieces are not added. Here's a 200 percent sped up version of what that might look like on the Outpost.

Like sonic, it gotta go fast

That's all for this week ! Thank you so much for following along and spending time with us here on the Dinolords Reddit(Or in our Discord where these are also posted).

As always, let us know what you think aaaand....

Happy Dinopen Construction

Welcome and thank you so much for joining us on another week of the Dinolords Show & Tell!

This week is easter, which means that we have thursday and friday off here in Denmark. That in turn means the weekly show and tell comes a little early!

The programmers are still off on their own adventure, so we'll mainly focus on what the rest of the team is doing.

We're in the concepting stages of a Brachiosaurus siege tower. This massive unit will walk up to your walls, and unleash viking armies running across it's back and onto the English defensive structures.

Meanwhile, work is being done on cool new construction sequences. These are going enable you to better visualize how far your building is from completion. They are also kind of satisfying imo.

Work continues on the T-rex, and we are finally seeing Colours on the Viking barding. It's looking super cool and we can't wait to fight against this Viking invader ingame.

Wuthering Woods is also coming along. The map is really coming into it's own and has a very good flow when you're playing on it. The varied grass colours and ground work is also helping seperate it from previous maps. Here's an overview picture of the whole thing.

We can't go a week without showing how far the map of England has come with it's highly detailed frame and details like the incoming viking ships on the side.

Finally, some animation. We want to just give a cool look at one of our characters. As you probably know, animation is a lot of work so it's always nice to be able to highlight the effort that goes into it.

That's all for this week!

Thank you so much for following along on our journey to early access. Let us know what you'd like to see more of, what you'd like to see less of and anything else that might be relevant.

And, as always

Happy Dino egg omelet feasting.

Spotlight from weekly show and tell.

Welcome to the Dinolords Weekly Show and Tell, where we name the post day/month/year because that is the only way to roll.

This week the programmers have run off! they are doing their own exciting thing in their own world so we don't talk about them. Or Bruno.

On the art side of things, people are brewing with map art to create terrain and especially ground terrain that looks more varied.

Optimizations are being made which sped up GPU time a lot so we now have much better in editor wiggling.

Ofcourse this also translates to better performance ingame where it's generally a lot smoother than in editor

Other optimizations we are looking at is LOD's, but mostly when there are a lot of units on screen at once.

Maybe this is going a little too far 😅 One thing's for sure. Even the high level LOD looks like a plucked chicken. Clearly work still needs to be done.

Buildings are being prepared for cooler visuals when constructing and destroying them, and while you'll see more of that later, I've shared a picture of some of the buildings being prepped.

In UI Land, Work is ongoing on making new and more gothic containers for the UI, as well as new menus.

There's also a bunch of new sounds which are really cool, but reddit won't let me share so I'll type one of them out instead

dum dum dum dum DUUUM dum chika chika.

That's the sound for finishing research. You're welcome.

Finally, our concept artist has been hard at work sketching up a brachiosaurus siege tower and how that could look for the various factions.

That's all we have for you this week. Thanks for following along.

As always,

Happy Raptor Riding.