Dragons Breath

A for IWP purchase of helms players can wear to get into character and match their dragon
Signage for a coming soon game mode where players try to claim the most torches in their flame color by the time the round ends
Future game mode where players compete in a 3vs3 team battle. Players try to light the other teams torch while also defending their own.
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Inspiration

We wanted to create a fun game and mechanic that would be enjoyable and easy to play for both a virtual and mobile experiences. We felt flight and battle games would be suitable to accomplish our goals as long as we had an interesting theme that could grab attention and give players a more unique experience. The idea of fantasy and dragons would take a dogfighting-type game to a level of fun that would be enjoyable for all and grab their attention.

What it does

Players enter the world and immediately see an inviting platform which draws them in to investigate. This is where we have a custom UI interface for selecting a dragon to use in battle. Once a dragon is selected that player is moved to a holding area for dragons. Players can mount their dragon here and a countdown clock begins that will start the battle urging remaining players in world to select and mount their dragons as well. A random terrain environment will be chosen to battle in for this round. Dragons defeated in battle will respawn to the holding area where they can rejoin the game or choose another dragon. When the game ends the player that defeated most opponents and had least defeats is declared the winner.

How we built it

The design of the space was used with a combination of Horizon asset library assets and models brought in through AI asset sites like Meshy.AI. Assets were brought into blender for optimization and to separate body parts of the dragons for animation of wings. We used sites like Picmonkey and Inkscape to design our UI and GUI images for the controls for both VR flight mechanics and Mobile mechanics. These images were also used to create simple instruction boards using imagery to explain the game with less words that might be difficult to read in mobile. A website called Blockade labs was used to generate a skybox for some of the terrain environments. We hope you love the music score. I had a composer friend create me an original soundtrack for the world and each environment plays a different battle music.

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges faced were figuring out the different ways a player would control their dragon in VR as well as in mobile and still feel like the gameplay was as still just as fun on a mobile device and able to compete with someone playing in VR. We created different controls as the experience is very different and feel we have accomplished that major challenge. We also had to make sure our mobile players had an easy way to interface with the game using the GUI buttons. We wanted to create our own unique buttons that really helped the player understand what each of the buttons can do as compared to using stock GUI that are not as translatable to our game specifically. The last challenge we faced was the "seats". You cannot move a player into or out of a "seat" so we had to move players to an area for mounting and dismounting their dragons. Better control of the seat gizmos would have made for easier development of this game.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud with the immersive design and mechanics as a whole. We feel the concept is strong with expandable potential while also having fun immersive mechanics that transport you to a fantasy world. We love the new GUI interfaces and how custom we are able to make them for the game. The dragon selecting area takes the interface to a new level where the UI for selecting dragons is 2D in the foreground for the player, while the dragons' cycle through in front of the player in 3D. This gives the selection process a feeling of depth.

What's next for Dragons Breath

We have so much more in store! Had we had more time for development we would have showcased several modes of gameplay. The game has expandability with more dragons to be added, more helmets to wear, and new terrain environments to battle within. The goal after the launch of this first battle game mode is to add two additional game modes. The second mode is a battle but incorporates 10 torches scattered throughout the terrain. Players will seek these out and claim each torch in their fire color. The goal for this mode is to have the most torches claimed in your color by the time the round ends. The third game mode will have only two torches, one on each end of the terrain. Players will play in teams to defend their torch from being lit by the other team while they seek out to light their opponent's torch. First team to light the opponents team torch wins. (capture the flag inspired). These 2 additional game modes will expand our game but will not be ready by the deadline of competition. In addition to adding more dragon choices, we plan to have an animation on the dragons during their selection rather than an idle pose but may not due to the time spawning takes to load in dragons and the random battle environment. We want to get players into the game faster and not have a long wait time due to spawning. The dragons currently cycle though in a simple idle pose for now showing a coming soon on future dragons that will be added or unlocked. Since spawning in an environment can take awhile, we are looking to optimize our current environment models. When we have more time we plan to reduce and optimize many things in the world.