Just coming in for a gentle landing...
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Happy Valentine's Day! Levin finally got Scoria to agree to that date. Including two versions of this picture so you can use it as a valentine if you'd like ♥️
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As part of working on combat, we've gotten the UI hooked up to damage and stamina for testing! The visual is still WIP, and the drain values are higher than normal for testing.
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Coding Looked into multiple potential systems for combat interactions, particularly in how to interface locational damage and melee attacks with networking. (Sorry for not much progress here! We've been busy.) Models & Misc Finished the T2 Dragon's Broadcast call. This was a pretty simple adjustment since it's the same as the T3 call with adjusted pitch to make T2 sound younger. Updated animations for Scoria's sprint flap and tap flap. Updated flight smacks and animated skims for all flying wyrms (except T3 Dragon). Updated and added sockets to the T3 Dragon. The sockets are placed near the wingtips and chest so trail VFX and dive wind can be attached. Tweaked the setup of our wing trail VFX to adjust the appearance while still keeping performance in mind. Implemented our existing flight VFX! These include wing trails, speedlines, dive wind, and a camera zoom. Each VFX can activate and scale according to different velocity. Players will be able to disable effects in case of motion sickness. We have some very adjustable parameters, so we still might tweak the look and feel! The wing trails especially have some potential for future cosmetics, with changing the colour and emissives.
Biweekly Newsletter February 06/2026 (1 image, 1 link)
VFX Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfrR...
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It was posted in our biweekly newsletter, haha! Glad you enjoy :)
Thank you so much!
We just implemented speed lines and a small camera zoom for diving!
(Note: we plan to allow players to disable camera movement in case it makes them nauseous!)
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Thank you so much! For KS we're going to have a free demo. The demo will have 3 adult wyrms, all the baby forms, combat, flying/climbing/swimming, a small map, and potentially an early version of hoarding.
Models & Misc Animated the T2/T3 Dragon's Skim animation, and edited its Smack. These are both flight animations related to colliding with obstacles. We'll be doing this for the other wyrms as well! Worked on some NPC and menu UI concepts. Coding Implemented basic flight crashes. Hooked up multiple modes per ray-casting logic with scaling based on angle/speed. Added smooth rotation from crashes. Fixed issues with the user losing control during a crash. Added crash animation logic depending on side/severity of crash. Cleaned up raycast logic per-wyrm You might remember the wing raycasts from last newsletter. Now we've put them to work with implemented crashing! In case you forgot, the raycasts help the game see where the wyrm's wings are. A collision with the green line will be less severe than a collision with the red line. Now that collisions are implemented, we have several types of crashes: Adjustments, Skims, Smacks, Crashes. These are in order of severity and have different effects on the wyrm. Check the video below to see for yourself! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oukYReTdLmU
Updated flight crashes based on testing feedback. Reworked crash angle and speed loss. Updated state logic for handling crash modes and severity. Hooked up crash animations. Fixed some bugs around animations playing multiple times. Fixed an issue where the wyrm would enter uncontrolled fall state during a stall (rather than the intended fall brake state). Fixed some issues around wing flap periodicity, particularly with Levin. Fixed some issues around falling and fall brakes (though they still need some work). Expanded options related to air resistance to help avoid excessive momentum preservation. Added in some basic scripts to help with wyrm stat fiddling. Now, we'll be able to adjust wyrm stats in a spreadsheet and import/export them to and from the game. This is particularly helpful with maintaining experimental versions of the physics for each wyrm! With the addition of crashes, all the main points of the flight system are done on the coding side! We'll still be doing number value tweaking and a couple more bug fixes in the background, but with this we're going to mostly move on from flight and switch to working on the combat system.
Biweekly Newsletter January 23/2026 (2 images, 1 link)
Collision Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oukY...
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Here's a closer look at our player HUD: top to bottom it's armour, HP, stamina, and anima (breath attacks), then hunger and thirst. The portrait changes depending on the wyrm you're playing, and body parts fade out as corresponding locational damage is taken.
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This newsletter is pretty short, we're sleepy from the holidays! **Code & Animations** * Refactored player stats (such as health and stamina) to fit them in with movement logic rewrite. * Updated stamina logic to permit more per-wyrm control in movement. * Stamina use now is able to react to external events (such as enemy attacks or artefacts). * Cleaned up clutter that had developed around player controls and some outdated debugging logic. * Reimplemented the hooks for the UI. - Animated T3 Juvi Dragon's Friendly, Threaten and Surrender calls. Here's the Threaten call! Again, we're keeping the juvenile calls pretty short and simple so that the adult T4 wyrms shine.
Biweekly Newsletter January 09/2026 (1 image, 1 video link)
Threaten Call: imgur.com/a/RupV7bS
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Very appreciated ❤️
Thank you so much! ♥️
Nope! Haha
Thank you!
Takeoff has improved- no more weird-lookin boost! And it works well on inclines too!
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Coding & Misc Finished polishing the Broadcast, Threaten, Friendly, and Surrender calls for T3 Fire Dragon. Animated the animation for T3 Fire Dragon's Broadcast. You saw this on Bluesky last week! Generally improved takeoff logic and interactions. These changes all work together to make takeoff feel less clunky. Moved the end of takeoff to be while still on the ground rather than in flight. Extended the initial boost of takeoff over a period of time rather than on the first frame. Implemented various utility functions to help with fixed-length impulses (such as flapping and takeoff boosts). Adjusted the "vertical push" of takeoff to help with feel when taking off from a lower point. Added in logic and animations for stationary takeoff (the only revealed wyrm who uses this is Levin). Introduced basic raycasting logic for flight collisions. Implemented a straightforward algorithm for deterministic raycasting based on player state. Raycasting depends on tucking, diving, and flapping, but not braking Added in wyrm-specific logic for selecting ray angles and variations to help with different wing shapes. Will likely be adjusted depending on the wyrm and testing results. Implemented basic collision modes detection depending on hit point, angle, and speed. The effects of collisions are still WIP. Flight crashes still work as intended, and the player can now crash with a fast-enough wing clip. Implemented injured fall behavior for hard flight crashes.
Raycasts essentially help the game "see" where your wings are during flight. We've visually represented these raycasts with red, yellow, and green lines (this is of course just for testing and not gameplay). Collisions with these lines will have different results. Green: Softer hit, likely a clip. Yellow: Harder hit. Red: Hardest hit, possibly a crash. As you can see, this allows players to pull off interesting maneuvers such as wing tucking in tight spaces to avoid wing collision. The space between the lines and the body is somewhat exaggerated for demonstration. This is intended to be synchronized across machines, so the traces may not perfectly match animations. The key difference is that we can calculate the raytrace angle based on clock time rather than frame count or other actions, so the result on the server will be exactly the same regardless of the client animations or calculations. This ensures the raytrace timing is consistent on all machines. This is very work in progress and not finalized.
Biweekly Newsletter December 27/2025 (2 images, 1 link)
Wing Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNwv...
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Fire Dragon's Broadcast call and accompanying animation is done! With the juveniles like Fire Dragon, we're keeping the calls much simpler and shorter to allow the calls of the unique adult wyrms to shine.
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This is Iceclaw's Crescent Strike skin. Subtle but beautiful!
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Art & Misc Improved and expanded some game UI concepts. Updated our prospective control map (very subject to change of course). Finished painting the Bushfire skin. This is one of our favourites for Scoria so far, and we hope you like it even more than the preview last week!
Coding This sprint was mostly spent bug-hunting! Improved ground logic to better handle momentum (especially when landing). Also includes some math-y fixes to help players slide less on turns. Improved ground collisions, especially with walls. You now slide off the wall instead of getting stuck to it. Fixed air collisions with walls to slide properly (though without friction until further testing for feel). Updated animation logic to include tap-flaps with transitions (which still needs some refinement). Fixed a silly bug where crouching would force you to move even if no other keys were pressed. Fixed a bug where the force from gravity was retained even after landing with tucked wings, making it impossible to get off the ground. With all these combined, we'd like to show you the improvements! Disclaimers: Transitions will be polished in general. Some of them are very snappy at the moment. The landing animation still needs to be added. Video breakdown: At the beginning it shows air to ground momentum preservation, where you'll be able to keep some of your air momentum if you land properly. Next, it shows tap flaps vs sprint flaps. Tap flaps are manual and consume more stamina in return for more power and control. Sprint flaps are from holding the button down and are more efficient. Note that for T3 Dragon in the video, its tap vs sprint is more subtle. Tap flap has a sharper and deeper wingbeat. Eventually, flap sounds will be different depending on flap vs sprint. Lastly, we finally implemented proper collisions for air and ground. Previously, colliding with something would get you stuck, needing to maneuver out of it. Now, you properly slide off the object. Keep in mind that for flight especially, this is missing a lot of crash-related animations! This video just shows the fact we got collisions working.
Biweekly Newsletter November 28/2025 (2 images, 2 links)
Skin: imgur.com/a/pupsjU3
Flight Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTiw...
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We've been working on painting a new Scoria skin called Bushfire. What do you think? It's still work in progress!
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This was just the result of the equation not having stalling implemented yet. It will be fixed naturally as we add the feature. Thanks for the insight though!
Biweekly Newsletter November 14/2025 (1 image, 1 link)
Flight Demo: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZGP...
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We're not opposed to getting creative with environmental colours. Here's an example of how we can tweak the same water asset to take on different tints! (Make sure to click to see the full image!)
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Thank you so much!
Didn't even spill my drink :)
"Attention passengers, we're approaching some turbulence so please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts"
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Biweekly Newsletter October 31/2025 (1 image, 1 link)
Swamp: imgur.com/a/2wHPXZh
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Here's the Common Venna's most common eating animation!
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Thank you so much! The flight system is going to improve a lot as well 💪
