yeah, it was someone on Facebook who encouraged me to do that in this version - i was going to leave it for an update. I need to put this in the game, but the dragons are called Dracozids, and they get offended if you call them dragons (even though i call them that in my marketing descriptions so people will know what they are - let's pray dracozids dont read game descriptions One of my first games was a dragon flyer called Nimian Flyer, and a LOT or what motivates me comes from my dream of flying like a bird. Thats why flight was so important for me to add to the game. Thanks for trying it. BTW if you get tired trying ti find the dragon shape shifting power, you can always enable all the shape shifting using the cheats in the options.
I was just reading Nullzone's answer to this and realized i forgot to chime in (thanks Nullzone!) Im testing how to have the map be the world itself, and when you click the camera zooms up about 500 meters over the landscape. Its a bit tricky just making sure i get the perspective right, but it should be more like Skyrim where you can actually see landmarks. It will definitely be in an update, quite a few people have mentioned this so although the current map is i admit kind of an afterthought it think having a map is more important than i realized
Haha I saw the cheat, but decided I would try and get the different shapes on my own. Managed to unlock the dragon! Yay! And yeah, I was a bit confused when it was called a Dracazoid. I see three more locks in the shapeshifting menu. I think one is the beetle, but not sure what the other two are. Being a dragon is making it a lot easier to see what's out there. I'm not sure what you have planned for the quests, but any chance you'll add attacks for the animals? I really just want to be able to breathe fire, but it might be cool for each animal to have an attack so shapeshifting would be for more than just exploring. (Although I haven't seen any reason yet to use my weapon at all.) Btw, I saw someone mentioned the map -- I think a GPS that shows you where you are and which towers/runes you've been to might be handy.
Thanks Breinstein Im glad to hear it works on an iPhone 6s. i only have an iphone 6 for testing, and i find that it gets about 50% of the max quality. With 2gb in the 6s i imagine you can turn the grass all the way to ultra etc and have a beautoful experience. iPad Air is pretty good too - its all about that ram allowing these newer devices to handle more things. Ill be adding in some higher qulaity options soon too so that new devices can max things out. yeah, i love playing with the filters too - you should see what the new ones can do: SOme of the new lighting filters im testing for the update: Anyways the focus now is to smooth out, polish, update and streamline the world now that the core app is ready. And you know maybe there is something to your description as an art director (i love art direction) - im adding in presets soon so you can change instantly to like "Moody grey" and "Fable" style looks. BrightRidge was looking OK until about a few month ago when i bought Rise of the Tomb Raider (great game) and ended up reading this article: http://tombraider.tumblr.com/post/131652404185/dev-blog-physically-based-rendering-and-post It was SUPER inspirational and introduced me to a whole new path. This is when time of day, filters and all those options were added once i realized there was so many ways you can effect the look. The game was originally going to be just one time of day because in my mind i wanted full control over the look of every place, and it took a while for me to relinquish control over that. But now when i see how different you can make the game look at different times of day under different circumstances its a no brainer and im so glad i added that in. Anyways thank you so much for writing to me - every bit of feedback keeps me inspired. Its funny how the brain works and someone will say something, that leads you to think about something else, and eventually has an impact on what we're doing even if you dont know it
Thanks for giving it a try Talbs and the helpful feedback yeah it is kind of deserted. You can use the spirit view to find animals but the focus is very much on exploration only. But i am working on a 1.2 update that will add a storyline to the game and give it a framework to explore in, so i hope youll keep an eye out for that update - i am aiming to have it ready for May. I would have liked to get them out with launch, but as one person/no budget i really needed to get the game out there so i could get some inspiration and encouragement, to feel like i had actually done something. It was beginning to feel like myself with my computer all alone for 6 months and i wanted to bring the game onto dry land You know, i meant to add a feature where if you hit a creature once they will forgive you , because i think people are hitting someone they meant to talk to, and then its all downhill from there relationship wise The town is actually just the BrightRidge inn - you can fast travel there in the options, and it will be the hub when the quests arrive. I love the eagle flying too - nothing like a birds eye view. And if yo look hard enough (or use the cheats) you can get a Dracozid's (dragon) eye view too - they are the fastest flyers.
Im so glad he liked it Tats cool about Grandmas sweets - that should make it into the quests. My friends son thought the original in patrons were robotic, so i gave them this kind of swining animation, but i think there are ways to make them even more interactive. For the qests it would be a good idea to flesh them out. Not that the core game is ready, it is easier for me to polish and finesse things, so im really glad you bring things like this up. It helps me track down what needs work and how to improve. Those particles are pretty! Unity has a lot of particle effects and until ow i dont thnk ive made a lot of use of them (which is surprising because particles are cool). Im going to look at revamping the particles and making more use of them - i think they add fun and visual excitement to things. Thansk for the link
i'm glad you want to try it. Check your messages - i sent you a promo code so you can try it risk free
Thanks for Nullzone for his advice, and im glad it finally worked for you and sorry to hear it crashed at all. The original game was downloadable on devices that coudlnt support it, so it was important to me to limit this one to devices that can. I havent experienced it crashing at start yet, but i dont have every device or operating system. But i should get crash information from iTunes soon, and i am always optimizing the game. Maybe it is because i am preloading mesh colliders and textures? I noticed in general the start spinning whell is linger sometimes than before. Anyways it is all of this feedback that gets me thinking and helps me track stuff down so thank you for taking the time to write about the crash here, and thank you so much for giving BrightRidge a chance
This is great advice - thank you for posting it. That sucks about the crash and im not sure why it did that. Maybe once i get crash feedback from iTunes it will help me figure it out. Its one of those things that i cant seem to recreate but once out in the wild the game goes through so many more thousands of systems, so its important for me to get this feedback here to help me keep streamlining the code.
Finally tried the Spirit View, after taking so many screen shots at some of my favorite spots. Is the right thumb stick in Spirit View usable? I moved the camera out and was going to... Grab more screenshots in Spirit View until I noticed the thumb stick.
Not going to argue with the artist but I still disagree that BR is deserted. Once you move away from the typical "over there should be an NPC, and a questgiver here", it is way more populated than e.g. Aragon (which was rightfully criticised for having a bland and empty environment): you can't walk two steps without stumbling over something to discover. And that's what makes a world "populated" to me. E.g. that it's not just "a busy quest hub, then empty wilderness, then a dungeon chock-full of monsters, and then nothing again". On an unrelated note: Now, I have to switch off the cheats and try to find the Dragon shapechange myself And I'll have to find the time to finally post a tour through Brightridge.
Alright. Just did some tweaks and, I switched off the game's tree distance and the game runs like a charm on my iPad. Got maxed out shadows, dof, water reflections all while maintaining a good fps. Also, Rob, I recall you saying you can get pets in the game. Can we do that now, or is that for a future update?
My pleasure small nitpick: pretty sure you mean storage and not memory/RAM? Ask and you shall be enlightened: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?p=3334561#post3334561 Just adding that you should ABSOLUTELY NOT run Batterydoctor with an active network connection, always switch to Airplane Mode first. I caught it sending a metric f-ton of collected data about my device and what I was doing (including which sites I visited etc.) to hell-knows-where.
Wow, a nice cold ale at a Texas sunset - that sounds so relaxing Work can be stressful, can't it? It's super important to make sure you get rest and relaxation if you are goingto work hard, so make sure you do what you need to do to get those breaks. Oh and Happy Easter! Yes about the map - i'll be trying an interactive skyrim type version that uses the actual terrain as its base. The filters are some of my favorite things - i really cant wait to add the presets. Ive found you can have so really crazy looking moods when you combine them. pro tip - try global fog - i might add it on by default at a weaker setting - but it like provides instant atmopshere Great idea about the bloom intensity. I plan to add more granular controls to the options - i dont see any reason why the players shouldnt be able to fine tune things as much as i can in unity. Actally i am testing Unity's new bloom which includes n antiflicker check. On the devices i notice the bloom makes these bokeh like circles than can be overbright, so i think the new bloom mostly solves that, and having the intensity control shouldhelp things too. The new Bloom filter im testing for an update has a softer effect: The stuttering is my fault on swimming - you arent imagining things Its very tricky to make good logic for entering and leaving the water, and the bumping ws justa bad side effect that i decided to try and fix later because it was taking so much time. After i sit back and take a quick break ill revisit it though and see how i can fix it. Its fixing things like that that make the world feel so immersive. Thanks so much for you support today and up until now. I actually opened a Patreon account but never went though with it, but ill rethink that because honestly if i can get the opportunity to work on the games full time i could really bring the level of polish and features that i envision in amore timely manner.Being able to only work on BrightRidge in my spare time has really limited what im able to do, but i am glad to have the core outand im looking forward to polishing things over the spring. A big setback between this and the original was upgrading to Unity 5 which broke almost everything. i didnt anticipate having to spend so much time just recreating what was already there. But now I know the engine and ti be honest it has been wonderful to have access to all thess new features that let me do things like dynamic time of day Enjoy your cold ale
I love that you added the screnshot Do you mind if i inline it here: Kind of like Jonah and the whale. No thats a bug. I mean, i know a Baedle is a bug, but thats a game bug too The Baedles originally had a proper collider but therewas soem interference with the way the AI activates and deactivates itself based on your location. Now that that's fixed i should be able to add back the collider so we can jumpon top ofthem again. Another part of the problemis that the mother tends to stop too close to you so she is basically on top of you, which can cause havoc when you're trying to see your environment. Ive made a note to fix it on my priority list - thank you PS i should ad a beating heart inside there just in case people still end up inside after the fix - at least there will be some surprise
Yeah, im excited to get a new ipad eventually so i can see how high the settings can go I love far shadows with full grass the best, oh and global fog turned on. I removed the first person because it wasnt working... BUT... Now i have the bow and arrow working again which is basically first person with a reticule at the center, so i think i will add back FP just by removing the reticule - in the meantime you can switch to OPTIONS > ACTIONS > BOW to get a first person effect.
So awesome to hear how you play The animals will have attacks in the quest update, well i mean you will have an attack when you are i shape change mode (the animals themselves can already attack you if you provoke them). Combat wont be a focus but the animal shapes do come in to play - i am working on one quest where you lead a pack of wolves. The map will get a zoom out update so we can see exactly where you are - im finessing that now Actually i think the last two locks are unavailable at the moment and will also be in the update - there are two new creatures coming soon too - rock creatures and the mysterious sentines...
I just made a note to remove the joystick during spirit view. Theres a bug that when you switch sometimes the actual joystick stays there on the screen. You can circumvent this for now by OPTIONS > SETTINGS > JOYSTICKS to off so they wont show up (but they are still usuable). The joystick isnt usable in spirit view anyways because you can actually move the animals since theyre following their own routines (although you can rotate and zoom the camera). Its cool that youre taking screenshots. Are you using the in game Photo Mode? I should update that too so you can change effects and filters and zoom while you are in photo mode OPTIONS > CAMERA > PHOTOMODE If you take any nice pics i'd love to see them!
