Yearly Archives: 2015

DoN has fully embraced nature!

This entry was posted in News & Roadmap on by

Some good news, DoN is now a pure nature/ecology simulation focusing on the inter-relationship between flora (plants and trees) and fauna (insects, reptiles, birds and mammals). Ecological elements such as weather, changing seasons, plant and animal lifecycles will be fully simulated and true to nature.

DoN Autumn Scene 1 - Trimmed

New Gameplay Modes

Players can select from the following gameplay modes:

1. Solitary creature: Explore the world as solitary creatures (prey/predator/both depending on their position in the food chain)
2. Eusocial colony: colonize the habitat by controlling eusocial insect colonies (honey bee colonies, ant colonies, etc)
3. Creator mode: Design a biome with plants, insects, reptiles, birds and mammals of your choice and watch the simulation flourish or join the action directly by controlling a creature or colony.

No more RTS/strategy gimmicks – this is exclusively a nature game now!

DoN Rain 2 v5

Summer Sunrise Cmp

Steam Greenlight

All this is an enormous amount of dev work and also the reason why I haven’t released new videos for so long. The game is being rebuilt from ground up and this is a time-consuming process with many technical hurdles to cross.

I will be releasing DoN to Greenlight as soon as a working prototype with a small collection of plants, insects and reptiles is ready. Beyond that though, the dream of creating a rich nature paradise including birds, mammals and many other species depends solely on community interest.

If this idea resonates with enough people, the game will be developed further as a rich and diverse ecosystem with many different biomes and natural phenomena.

You can visit DoN’s Steam Greenlight Concept and provide feedback there as well.

Butterflies Polllinating

Spring 3 cmp

DoN needs your support!

Without your help in spreading the word and your feedback, DoN cannot realize its potential as the nature game we’ve all been waiting for. Show your support for DoN in any way you can!

Winter cmp

Thank you!

More Living Flora! Watch Fern grow from fiddleheads to a thick forest!

This entry was posted in Living Flora Teasers & Demos on by

DoN’s Living Flora Simulation aims to approximate natural growth of various flora and it is against this backdrop that the Real-Time-Strategy gameplay of DoN thrives.

In its first leap towards covering non-flowering flora such as moss, fern, etc under its gambit, the Living Flora Simulation now supports spore based reproduction (as opposed to seed based reproduction that was the only mode of floral reproduction supported in previous builds of the game). This video shows Fern unfurling tiny fiddleheads into large roomy plants while reproducing via spores using pre-determined simulation parameters that influence the resultant growth patterns.

Another thing! The dream of running massive flora populations at an acceptable 60 FPS is also something I’ve been keenly working on and I’m thrilled to report that this is now reality! As demonstrated in this video, DoN can manage lifecycles of not just hundreds – but THOUSANDS of individual flora, all running at a smooth buttery 60 FPS!

In coming months the Living Flora Simulation shall further blossom, incorporating such key features as decay simulations, day-night cycles, weather and perhaps even seasons! The possibilities are endless and these are exciting times for DoN indeed!

Major Updates! RTS redesign, Future roadmap for DoN

This entry was posted in Teasers & Demos on by

It’s been a while since the last update and here is the reason why – DoN has undergone a major overhaul! This transformation includes a renewed focus on the RTS (Real-Time-Strategy) elements of the game and other much needed gameplay improvements.

The real challenge from here is to create a sense of that much loved 4X strategy gameplay without sacrificing the sense of adventure which Third-Person action unfailingly delivers. In the coming months DoN will attempt to walk a tightrope balancing not just RTS and Third-Person, but also the “Living Flora” simulation elements of the game; The Living Flora simulation aims to provide an immersive, realistic and (most importantly) a warm stirring experience of nature’s floral beauty, pollinator lifecycles and their intertwined relationships.

This update offers a glimpse of new features added in recent months and provides a briefy summary of DoN’s roadmap so CHECK IT OUT! DoN is heading towards a Steam Greenlight submission somewhere in Q4 of 2015!

Like, comment, and share this video! You can also visit DoN on the Steam Concepts page which offers a preview of Drunk On Nectar’s Greenlight submission.

Dev Diary #1 Flying AI / Aerial pathfinding for UE4

This entry was posted in Dev Diary on by

 

AI units in Drunk On Nectar need to perform complex tasks such as flying around the map foraging nectar, fighting rivals and capturing land all while evading not just obstacles along the ground as in most games (for which the default NavMesh in Unreal Engine would sufficie), but obstacles high in the air such as tall, dense trees, landscape formations and so on.

To achieve this, I wrote a custom 3D aerial/flying pathfinding solution for Unreal Engine in C++, check out this video to watch the system in action. One part of this solution that admittedly needs work is better decomposition of the navigation volumes across a map with complex obstacles. I’m working on a different NAV building algorithm for this and will post an update with a hopefully tighter decomposition (i.e. lesser number of volumes and a more visually pleasing spread of volumes across the map). For now, the system works well for my game and I haven’t noticed any adverse performance implications either!

While I don’t go into too much detail of technical implementation in this video I can post more if people are interested (and if I can find the time!)

DoN’s Living Flora System revealed!

This entry was posted in Living Flora Teasers & Demos on by

I alluded to a ‘Living Flora’ system on DoN’s Steam Concepts page and there were many questions asked on what Living Flora meant and just how much of the map would live.

Well, finally here’s a video to provide a taste for Drunk On Nectar’s Living Flora system!

 

The Living Flora system is one of the cornerstones of DoN’s strategy gameplay. This system allows plants in the game to do more than just sway in the wind as pretty props; flora in DoN dynamically cycle through their natural lifecycle(s).

So what on earth does that mean? Plants in DoN first exist as seeds. These seeds take root, form shoots and eventually form one or many flower buds that blossom and bloom. If a flower is pollinated successfully by a pollinator (bees, butterflies, basically -You, the player!) then the plant forms seed pods around the flower bud while the flower itself withers. These seed pods are then carried around the game map (through a complex process to be described later) and these seeds take root to usher in the birth of the next generation of plants!

To make all of this easier to digest I will be creating a Living Flora playlist on DoN’s youtube channel where I’ll upload bite sized content so the Living Flora paradigm can be better understood, especially from a gameplay standpoint.

I will also be creating another youtube playlist on ‘The Basics of Drunk On Nectar’ which will focus on core gameplay rules, victory conditions, etc so that everyone has a much better idea of the overall gameplay.

Look forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions!

— Venugopalan Sreedharan