Developer Update Totally not interesting development update

[Seiichi]

As always it's been a significant period of time since the last development update, but hey, at least this time I will have some solid progress to share with players.

Recently our developer Dragon has managed to resolve the rubber-banding issue with our updated code base, so players will actually be able to play and not stand like statues... Unless they're holding eggs but that's their own poor life decision. This means that since shortly after the closure of Dragon's Prophet Europe and Savage Hunt we have been able to mostly invest time into doing stability and QoL functionality updates. Here are some of the changes we have made:

• Fixed a bug with object loading, which significantly decreases loading time and provides better performance, though not necessarily a FPS increase.
  • We've made another change that should hopefully further increase loading times and fix stability and performance, though it is probably only a minimal difference.
• Added configuration options to ignore skill, stat and talent popups when leveling up or swapping masteries.
  • DisableNewSkill = True
  • DisableTalentPoint = True
  • DisableAttrPoint = True
  • DisableBagFull = True
• Overhauling the chat system to fix many bugs, and also to add new channels.
  • We will be adding a trade and recruitment channel; these will be global channels and use megaphones the same as World chat.
  • We will be adding language specific channels, primarily for the following languages: German, French, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Turkish. We may be willing to add more channels depending on the population of that region.
• Removed intro movies when opening client.
• Removed button mash mechanic from capturing Dragons.
  • This is being done to hopefully make it easier for players who have issues with their hands.
• Increased Shard Bag to 32 pages.
• Increased Auction House to 60 items.
• Increased Recipe limit.
• Increased Friends List to 500.
  • We are also looking at increasing the room mate size, though that is dependent on finding it.
• Added new functionality so we can release items that allow for maxing out or randomizing the attribute/attribute rate bonus of a dragon without re-egging (this means all skills, and levels remain).
• Added new functionality so we can release an item that will allow changing the attribute bonus stat for a dragon without re-egging.
• We are looking into increasing the maximum stats for wild and marketplace dragons (as they use the same system). This will not apply to the egg system as they are on they're on a separate system, but the previously mentioned items can be used to get the new stats.
  • New maximum stats are going to be 9/11.70 for wild caught/marketplace Dragons, at least to start with. We are hoping that the boost in base stats will help to make Dragons a bit more viable for end game dungeons while we start looking at raising the dragon level cap, higher level dragon armor and being able to overstat or shard Dragon armor.
• New Emoji parsing system similar to Discords where you do :<keyword>: dppout: for a custom pouting pillow emoji). This system is a bit more versatile as it does not have the same bugs that are in the current emoji system. We can also add as many emojis as we wish without much overhead to players.
• Discord Rich Presence has been implemented.
  • It currently shows your character name, your level and the character class.
  • It also has an option that will show your current subzone in game; this can be disabled with a new setting we have added to the configuration: DisableDiscordLocation = True
• Fixed High Texture setting in Windows 8+.

We are also currently in the process of packing the data for the new patch that will include Alstromera the new summer-inspired Sylvaran. We also have a new surprise dragon that was a random act of science that will release sometime later, and three of the conversion dragons that will be making an appearance soon. @Aiden and I have also been keeping an eye on the entries for the Phantom coloring event, and will be picking out our favorites soon.

There is no current ETA for the source update, as we will be doing some serious testing, and possibly doing some more performance and stability fixes, and making sure that the update is all polished up for release. Once that is ready I will be making an announcement for the update. After the update we will mostly be looking at updating the UI engine, and other performance and stability improvements as they are desperately needed.

 

[Kitalia]

Ty Ty Ty, on the recipe update, does that also include being able to delete white recipes, from Weap/Armor/Tinker/etc??

 

[Seiichi]

Ty Ty Ty, on the recipe update, does that also include being able to delete white recipes, from Weap/Armor/Tinker/etc??

No, just increasing the amount, we may look at being able to delete recipes however.

 

[Cippman]

woah! :Q_

 

[Tl shambles]

Fixed a bug with object loading, which significantly increases loading time and provides better performance, though not necessarily a FPS increase

as long as i don't have to wait 15min to log in, like GTA V, i approve this step

 

[Kitalia]

btw...umm shard pouch expansion...it sounds like it needs a right good testing..the kind only JB can provide..*hint hint* *wink wink*

 

[THARGOR]

the kind only JB can provide..*hint hint* *wink wink*

good point - since most of the new players have reached the point where farming shards makes sense - but never had the chance to do that with JB - it would be great to give those players that opportunity too

 

[Seiichi]

as long as i don't have to wait 15min to log in, like GTA V, i approve this step

It's about ~5 seconds from double clicking to getting to the login screen (due to no intro movie). This is on a NAS HDD and not on SSD, so speed may go up but probably not by much as most of this startup is initializing memory and runtime libraries.

 

[WyvernWarrior]

"Added new functionality so we can release items that allow for maxing out or randomizing the attribute/attribute rate bonus of a dragon without re-egging (this means all skills, and levels remain"

I'm currently doing my first Egg in the Circle, and this sounds amazing! This is my first time on a private server for any game, and ya'll are doing so much more work and better work than the devs/pubs have done for the past few years. I'm guessing it's a small group that worked hard to learn the engine and whatnot, vs the actual devs

 

[Seiichi]

"Added new functionality so we can release items that allow for maxing out or randomizing the attribute/attribute rate bonus of a dragon without re-egging (this means all skills, and levels remain"

I'm currently doing my first Egg in the Circle, and this sounds amazing! This is my first time on a private server for any game, and ya'll are doing so much more work and better work than the devs/pubs have done for the past few years. I'm guessing it's a small group that worked hard to learn the engine and whatnot, vs the actual devs

Currently the team for DP is as follows:

Dragon: Primary Developer; does anything source related (client, server, tools etc)
@Light: Developer; primarily does maintenance and patches
@Haterslayer: GM; events and Human Resources (aka torturing players)
@Aiden: GM & Designer; mostly does retextures and such now, however she is a professionally trained 3D modeler and animator, we just need to fix a tool to let her actually do work.
@Vipera: Concept Artist; she will be doing concept art, coloring pages for events, and also merchandise
@Seiichi (myself): I do everything that isn't listed above.

We also have a few people who volunteer help:

@Heroine: helps with compendiums and creative writing as I'm lazy and don't like doing that myself
@Sovi: concept art, merchandise and also learning to do textures from Aiden.

There are a few other people who do concept art and merchandise like @22RII and also recently @ORCA.

 

[Kitalia]

umm tried the recipe..and it still says Cap/200..(cant learn more recipes)

 

[Seiichi]

umm tried the recipe..and it still says Cap/200..(cant learn more recipes)

That would be because this is not a patch note, but a development update and is still a while off from release.

When the update goes live, it will be a large announcement.

 

[OwnliE]

Well let me say hello at all, im new and rly enjoy playing in Ur Server <3 Well i have a question, maybe ita the wrong place Here to ASK but i will try is There any Chance to create new content to this Game Like new Equipment for Characters, new dragons etc... ? Ive a unreal engine Background and im willing to create some new Stuff for the Game so is There any Chance or ita Impossible because u dont have the engine for the Game to do this ?

 

[Seiichi]

Well let me say hello at all, im new and rly enjoy playing in Ur Server <3 Well i have a question, maybe ita the wrong place Here to ASK but i will try is There any Chance to create new content to this Game Like new Equipment for Characters, new dragons etc... ? Ive a unreal engine Background and im willing to create some new Stuff for the Game so is There any Chance or ita Impossible because u dont have the engine for the Game to do this ?

We have everything, the issue is that everything needs to be fixed or updated to be workable. There were a lot of poor decision made in the early development of the game, and most of the libraries or middleware is now been abandoned, or the companies who developed it are out of business.

• Initial source code update, mainly focusing on quality of life, some performance improvements and also some functionality improvements
• Performance and optimization update, focusing primarily on updating the UI engine and also GPU/CPU/RAM optimization
• Refining the development tools so that we can create maps and export new objects into the game; the game uses its own proprietary format for objects and models which breaks compatibility with most formats
• After we've done the above we'll focus on content.

 

[OwnliE]

Ok thx =) I dont think i can handle this with my Gamedevelopment based C++ skills, if i can i will tell u

 

[Tl shambles]

After we've done the above we'll focus on content.

Hello, i am very thankful for all the effort and work you put into this game and appreciate your high response rate to the gamers (something we don't know from the old GM's).
I don't want to be unpolite but do you have an expected time span where you can say: ok, we have done the "clean up" part, now we focus on new content?
like a year, maybe 2, maybe longer?

sorry for craving so hard :/

greetings

 

[Seiichi]

Hello, i am very thankful for all the effort and work you put into this game and appreciate your high response rate to the gamers (something we don't know from the old GM's).
I don't want to be unpolite but do you have an expected time span where you can say: ok, we have done the "clean up" part, now we focus on new content?
like a year, maybe 2, maybe longer?

sorry for craving so hard :/

greetings

We currently are estimating 2-3 months to have everything we want done with the new client, and also testing (most of that will be a buff to wild/marketplace dragon stats).

It is extremely hard to give time estimates on other things because of how badly optimized the game is, and how poorly a lot of the game is coded. The tools for example are pretty problematic, as we have to figure out how to use them without any documentation so there will be a lot of trial and error.

 

[Tl shambles]

We currently are estimating 2-3 months to have everything we want done with the new client, and also testing (most of that will be a buff to wild/marketplace dragon stats).

It is extremely hard to give time estimates on other things because of how badly optimized the game is, and how poorly a lot of the game is coded. The tools for example are pretty problematic, as we have to figure out how to use them without any documentation so there will be a lot of trial and error.

Glad to hear that, i am looking forward to it! Thats quite fast

is there also something planned with debuffing enemys, because every 2nd one of them seems to knock back/stun/silence or knock the player down which is really annoying?

sorry for asking so many questions

br

 

[Seiichi]

Glad to hear that, i am looking forward to it! Thats quite fast

is there also something planned with debuffing enemys, because every 2nd one of them seems to knock back/stun/silence or knock the player down which is really annoying?

sorry for asking so many questions

br

No, because for the most part players at the end game are much stronger than any enemy other than bosses, and most of the time bosses are just HP tanks.

 

[Tl shambles]

No, because for the most part players at the end game are much stronger than any enemy other than bosses, and most of the time bosses are just HP tanks.

understandable, thx for your time