Sidenius posts
Dragon creator status
As mentioned in a previous post, a preliminary date for the dragon creator release is set to January 31st. Now that it's just a few weeks away, let's see where the dragon creator is at. Most of the major features are more or less ready, being able to morph, add parts, swap parts, pose, save/load and as seen in the latest sneak peek, also being able to run around with a character to see the drag...
2026-01-12 03:05:06 +0000 UTC View PostDragon creator scenes
Another planned feature for the dragon creator is being able to change the scene/background to different locations, as well as adjust the time of day and lighting there. So far the sneak peeks have used a cave environment with neutral lighting so that you can clearly see things changing, but I have ideas for other types of environments that would be interesting as well, maybe even one that is s...
2026-01-05 02:42:49 +0000 UTC View PostLooking forward
This will be the last post of 2025, so let's talk about the plan for the upcoming year!
As mentioned in a previous post, the goal is to release a standalone version of the dragon creator early next year, preliminary date January 31st. Once it is out, I'll pivot back to working on the movement and physics to get the full ground-takeoff-flying-landing movement implemented for custom dragon...
Realistic dragons
I recently had to think about what kind of limits to put in place when working on the morphing for the dragon creator, because some morphing combinations result in unrealistic or odd proportions. The choice is to either limit the range of morphing so you can't end up there, or leave it to the player to simply not morph like that if they don't want a weird looking dragon. I like freedom, so the ...
2025-12-22 05:31:18 +0000 UTC View PostWing customization
People often ask about wing customization in the dragon creator, which I'll talk about this week. The wings are made as a swappable body section, so you can choose the overall look by clicking on them and selecting a wing from a menu. This will decide the shape, number of fingers, claws, etc. The wing size will likely be an option as well in this version of the creator, but later on it may depe...
2025-12-15 01:22:07 +0000 UTC View PostShowcase
I was recently approached by someone who was organizing a new games showcase, hosted by a group of medium sized creators across the gaming media landscape, with a combined subscriber/follower count in the millions. Contrary to the big industry showcases where companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to show a trailer, in this showcase it was instead the hosts that had picked games they we...
2025-12-08 02:34:38 +0000 UTC View PostColoring
One aspect of the dragon creator that hasn't been shown much yet is being able to change the color and texture of the skin. There are many ways this could be done with different levels of control, from a simple color picker to full blown free painting.
I looked into free painting briefly and while it does technically work, the main issue is that whenever you change the body of the dragon...
Dragon creator status update & ETA
This week I'll talk about where the dragon creator is currently at and when it will hopefully be ready for download. There has been a lot of progress since the last showcase, both new features and improvements to what has already been shown.
In terms of visuals, we have finished a new base head and a new legged upper body variant with a more classic western dragon look, improved the tors...
Posing
I've talked before about being able to pose the dragon in the dragon creator, which I'll further elaborate on in this post. The idea is to have two modes that you can switch between, editing and posing. When editing, you can change the features of the dragon like usual by swapping parts, morphing, etc, similar to what has been shown so far. When switching over to posing, you instead get control...
2025-11-17 02:01:08 +0000 UTC View PostBody morphing
I've previously talked about how the head morphing will work, letting you shape the head by grabbing areas and moving them around almost like clay. The goal is to allow the body to be shaped in a similar way, to make it thicker/thinner, more/less muscular, bigger wings, etc, to represent the full range of dragon bodies typically depicted. One challenge with this is that, as opposed to the head,...
2025-11-10 02:41:41 +0000 UTC View PostSaving and sharing dragons
One thing I've been looking into this week is making it possible to share dragons that were made in the dragon creator so that they can be loaded up by someone else, possibly for further modification. At this stage, having a full blown workshop with server hosted files and in-game browser is outside the scope of the initial dragon creator release at least, but I wanted to see if I could make so...
2025-11-03 01:40:13 +0000 UTC View PostFront leg types
Another thing we've been working on adding to the dragon creator is being able to change how the front legs are attached to the body, since it differs between different dragon designs. The current version has the legs sitting right underneath the wings, with the chest unoccupied so that the wings can get maximum flap power. This makes it kinda look like a primarily winged creature with legs add...
2025-10-27 02:22:11 +0000 UTC View PostHuman in dragon creator
Someone suggested in the last post to add the option to walk around as the human in the upcoming dragon creator standalone so that you can see the dragon up close and feel its size, which sounds like a cool idea. This would be pretty easy to add since it doesn't involve any physics or combat, just walking/running around in third/first person view to look at the dragon from different angles. A p...
2025-10-20 01:42:32 +0000 UTC View PostDragon creator standalone
In a previous post I pitched the idea of prioritizing getting the dragon creator ready for testing first and releasing it as an early standalone before the big main version where you'd also be able to take flight and so on. So the standalone would be just the creation part plus some way to pose the dragon and show it off, which would be made available for download similar to the current EA whil...
2025-10-13 02:13:17 +0000 UTC View PostHead morphing
One thing we've been working on this week is the dragon head morphing functionality in the dragon creator. I wanted something more satisfying than simply having a bunch of menus with sliders for each feature like in most character creators, which quickly kills any creative momentum and makes most people not want to spend too much time on it. Instead, the goal is to be able to hover over any par...
2025-10-06 01:32:53 +0000 UTC View PostUpcoming focus
Now that the sneak peek streak is over, let's look at what will be the focus in the coming weeks/months.
The overall main focus will be on getting the new dragons ready and fully playable, including customization, physics, animation, ground movement and flying. With the dragon creator foundation mostly done, I know the range of body types that will be possible and can start adapting the ...
More eye customization
Here are some more examples of eyes you can make in the dragon creator!
2025-09-22 06:50:05 +0000 UTC View PostDragon creator release idea
For the next early access version, the goal has been to include the first iteration of the dragon creator and the new physics based dragon, among other things, making it a pretty huge update with a lot of moving parts that are added all at once. An idea I've had is to instead first release a separate build with just the dragon creator as a standalone, to get it out to players much earlier than ...
2025-09-22 06:37:46 +0000 UTC View Post