-Lost Dragons-

[HorribleGoat 1473]

-LOST DRAGONS-

ARMA III Total Modification

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When the War finally ended the galaxy was in ruins and mankind struggled to survive in the cold depths of space. Many worlds were lost, many wonders of technology forgotten, scattered all across the galaxy when the spacelane network collapsed plunging the great nations of men into chaos. For decades we were lost.

In 2235 Unity-Project successfully re-established some of the old space network bringing together hundreds of worlds and launched out a great effort to reclaim what once was lost.. For a moment men rejoiced together in peace but it was not to last as new rediscoveries soon sparked up secret arms race between the surviving nations.

The race back to the stars began as fortune hunters set out into the void to seek out glory and fame.

In Lost Dragons you take up the role of a member of a fortune hunter company racing to find one of the most powerful Old World relics, the mighty Dragon class warship hidden on a long lost world of New Eden. Unfortunately you are not alone as others have found their way here too and it is up to your skill and cunning to ensure you emerge victorious from the battle. There is no turning back now - Dropship ETA 1 minute.

Welcome to the treasure hunt.

Lost Dragons is a multiplayer total modification aiming to bring out a new thrilling gamemode for Arma3.

Our concept is futuristic objective based team warfare with randomly generated map elements to ensure every game is a unique experience with completely new set of units, weapons, structures and terrain.

+LoDR Features a 20x20 square kilometer map with unique post war/ long deserted atmosphere with unique randomgeneration element that ensures every game is different from the others. Explore the ruined cities, military bases, hidden laboratories and fallen warships to find the location of your prize.

+Complete set of new units, from your basic gear to powerful war relics scattered around the battlefield.

+Powerful new weapons to lay waste upon your rivals and claim the victory

+Challenging main victory goal with multiple ways to win.

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Mission details:

(Subject to change)

+World of New Eden is covered with lush Jungle (as Arma allows it) and the abandoned cities will be partly reclaimed by nature as well as ruined by battle.

+Terrain will consist of fixed elements and a great number of randomized elements that will make every game different. (objectives, key buildings/ locations, weapons, vehicles, spawnpoints, AI-enemies)

+Max team sizes will be decided through testing

+Player takes control of a small AI squad, but main gameplay focues on team PvP spiced up with some Independet AI combat.

+AI characters will be portrayed as cyborg/robot drones and the area will have roaming abandoned AI combat drones and possibly wildlife elements lurking in the shadows.

+Supporting drone units will have quite bad aim and are there to act as drivers, pilots and firesupport. (crappy aimbot module installed)

+Players will have access to their respective teams basic gear throughout the game and may alter their loadout.

+Starting equipment selection in a pre-start menu and respawn loadout customization.

+More exotic and powerful weapons may be scavenged from various locations but beware the limited ammosupply on these weapons.

+Players begin the game from a randomized dropzone with HQ-vehicle, supply vehicles and a few light transports. (This is no military operation)

+Light combat vehicles, light armored transports, recon vehicles and personal transports are available throughout the game. (Droid pickup / aerodrop)

+More powerful vehicles may be reclaimed from the battlefield. (military bases, battlelines, supply caches)

+Scavenged vehicle may be damaged or low on ammo and can be repaired and rearmed in designated locations.

+Main objective is to find and activate the last of the mighty Dragon class Warship:

+Dragon is an autonomous weapons platform capable of immense destruction and cannot be controlled without a command module

-> First objective is to find and begin the restoration of a Warrior class Battleship that acts as the command unit and can access the Dragon (2-4 Warriors in good enough shape will be present on the map)

+Once found the Warrior will act as a forward base and must be defended.

+The Dragon is hidden somewhere in the area and the location can be found through simple exploration or by gathering Intel from various objectives

-> Intelpoints come available by time as the HQ vehicle scans the area and compiles recovered data.

-> By gathering intel you narrow down the area the Dragon is hidden on the map

+Once operational the Warrior battleship must be flown (yes flying battkeships) to the Dragons Location and they both need to be defended while docking and while the Dragon starts up.

-> Both sides have access to Warriors and may interfere with the docking procedures or even steal the Dragon if they manage to down the other Warrior.

+Note that these are very powerful vehicles and will need full team effort to manage full operational status and also taking one down is not an easy job.

-> Once the Dragon is awakened there is still a change for the opposing team to sway the race as the round will end when the Dragon completes its powerup sequence and becomes fully operational.

+By attacking certain weakspots with enough power the sequence may be interrupted and if the winning team is held off long enough the dragon may be stolen even in its awakened state.

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You may find us at:



MODDB - LOST DRAGONS

and

Make Arma Not War - Contest

Your support is always appreciated!

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+We are excited to announce that we have a new and pretty solid idea how to implement walkers into the mod and preliminary testing of the concept is underway. This is a huge step and requires a lot of work and so might not make it to first release.. But we will keep you posted on the matter.

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Planned tutorial ALPHA is finally out and after a few hours of tedious waiting for the upload to complete it is finally HERE! Please be welcome to try it out and give us your first impressions! Oh and tell your friends too! We actually had a great time playing the "Hacking Contest" with 8 people and hope you will too! (And also how do you like the command-line interface? :D)

For most up to date news, follow us at MODDB

First test of a new soldier uniform:

Ingame shot

Test render 1

Test render 2

Test render 3

WIP Map

OpFor AR-42 WIP1

OpFor AR-42 WIP2

AR-42 Ingame WIP

Test render of a jungle tree

Tree Ingame!

AR-42 Redesign A

AR-42 Redesign B

Armored Transport Vehicle WIP 1

WIP Flyer Sneak Peek 1

WIP Flyer Sneak Peek 2

WIP Walker Sneak Peek 1

WIP Walker Sneak Peek 2

Walker Leg Design Test - video

New Bluefor Corporation armored explorator suit

Opfor armored suit SneakyPeek

Opfor Dropship 2 3 4

Opfor Recon Vehicle interior WIP

Map Revisited V 6

New Fern bush foliage and first shot of the map ingame

Dragon Sneak Peek 01

WIP Objective Asset 01

HK-4002 Hacking Tool WIP

Armored Recon Vehicle 1 2 3 4

Alpha footage of the Hacking Tool in action

Aegis Close Defence System

Blufor Corporation Drone WIP

Edited October 9, 2014 by HorribleGoat
First Alpha is now out!

[L3TUC3 32]

Sounds like a great concept. I look forward to playing it.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Thanks L3TUC3! We've been planning this for quite some time now and wanted to bring something different to the table. :D

[R0adki11 3949]

Looks like an interesting concept, i will keep my eye on this :)

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Thanks alot Roadki11! We try to keep steady pace on the updates as new assets become available for screenshots. And the map and mission are hopefully entering testing in the coming month.

[Seb_Ennis 10]

I only joined this forum to post on the make arma not war entries. they look awesome! Especially this one!

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Thanks alot Seb_Ennis!

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Couple of new sneakpeeks uploaded on moddb! Walker design is coming up quite nicely and we're got most of the animation pipeline figured out. Pics on first post.

Also there has been great progress on the gameplay feature scripting and we're confident we'll be able to post some more detailed info quite soon.

We've had quite a long discussions on how the gameplay features such as data/information gathering would be implemented and all kinds of capture the flag type object retrieval ideas were first tossed around, but we thought such might take too long as the terrain is large and also the carried objects could get lost as players die and drop them in the middle of nowhere. They could be shown on the map after retrieval and carried dataunits/discs/sticks/drives could be stolen, but still the time factor was an issue.

From the beginning the datathingies would have had to be retrieved by hacking whatever machine held the information and after some thought we decided to take the hacking process even further and create the whole new interactive data retrieval system around a hacking minigame that ties at least one player to carry a hacking tool and the others to ensure his safety while hacking and promote the teamplay we wish LoDR to be all about.

Hacking itself will take a minute at tops, but reward is not always guaranteed and also if the hacker comes under fire he better have nerves of steel to carry out the process. Most of the game will play around the hacking since thats how teams progress towards winning but there will be other roles too. There is scavenging aspect as the map is littered with weapons and vehicles players need to defend themselves and harry the opposing team and also to rob the victory in the final battle if they find themselves losing on the data gathering. Also someone need to tend to the HQ vehicle and restoration of the Warrior Battleship that can lead you to the Dragon and victory, will you repair, rearm and refuel your ship or will you trust that it'll make it to the end by itself?

This discussion led to some pondering on how long a game like this should and could last? This is something that can only be speculated until we can test the whole set of objectives, but we've calculated that a round might take from 1-3 hours. Whatever the real target time is the mission will be configurable so that length can be adjusted by changing the amount of available datanodes and difficulty of the hacking.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

The walker system has been tested out and it works! Great news right? This will definitely open new areas in Arma modding. (Walkers that are not just walker looking tanks.. -> stepping over things, nice hill climbing, walking, running, etc.)

Then the bad news.. So far animating the damned thing has proven a great challenge and has already taken quite a few days without much progress and there are more important assets and features to work upon so I will come back to the animations again on a later date when theres more time.

[bushlurker 46]

Map looks great so far! - Well done!!

B

[haleks 8212]

Nice! I'm glad to see so much SF mods for a change!

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Map looks great so far! - Well done!!

Thank you Bush!! Means a coming from a veteran mapper such as yourself!

Nice! I'm glad to see so much SF mods for a change!

Indeed! Although realism aspect of Arma series has always been fantastic, theres been lack of alternative content. We hope to add a little to the mix.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

After Bushlurker said the map is looking great so far I felt a bit of pride for the little hatchling that is slowly breaking out of her shell, still something was missing. Then a day or two passed and I saw a picture of an epic real life location and thought "that is IT" and set out to rework quite a bit of the original plan. I Finally had figured the unique landscape element that might just bring the map from great to epic. :D Fingers crossed I can make it happen. You'll know when you see it finished.

As said freetime on past week has been mostly spent on mapping and working around the kinks of the Terrain Builder and the silly typos in the configs. Theres been a couple of moments when hope has seemed lost, but like a phoenix rising from the ashes, our map has finally started to come together. I did know from previous experience that the amount of work is enormous but because of that when something fall through and succeeds its so much more rewarding too.

Couple of new pictures for you all to see on the first post

[kibot 2]

I always thought It would've been fun to see more SF into ArmA3. You've got my support.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

I always thought It would've been fun to see more SF into ArmA3. You've got my support.

Thank you! Your support is much appreciated.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Wrote up on ModDB about our plan to release first Lost Dragons alpha by the end of the month.

ModDB News

Greetings!

We've almost reached a point with the mod that we feel confident in releasing an early Alpha of Lost Dragons for some public testing. It has been a short year for us and there is still so much to do. Competition vise our goal is to be able to show our skill and enthusiasm with a few finished assets and working core gameplay and then keep on improving the assets and features. Have to say these are really really exciting times.

We aim to incorporate some of the core gameplay elements and assets into a first version of a tutorial mission where all elements of the mod will eventually be showcased. Currently our code wizard is working on the intelligence gathering via hacking the datanode/storage/machinethingy and we hope to gain some input on how people feel about the feature.

The hacking is done via hacking tool and custom commandline interface. The hacker then manually inputs certain commands to upload files found on the target and certain files will then grant access to all kinds of intelligence i.e weapons caches, vehicle depots and most importantly the location and access codes for the Dragon.

There is a small minigame simulating the hacking process and the manual commandline operation is meant to give players opportunity to learn the process and thus gathering intelligence faster based on their own skills. System itself is very easy to use and will have full command help to guide you on your first hacks.

We also wish to showcase the Warrior Battleship and gain some input on it, the flighmodel is currently just thrown together and will be overhauled by time. It needs to be flown quite carefully, but it is worth it when you get all guns to bear on your enemies!

Along these two main elements our first alpha will showcase the new characters, equipment and vehicles to give you a better view and feel on what we are doing how our mod will eventually look.

We really hope to reach our goal at the end of the month and we are going to work hard to make it happen.

Also I've got a personal goal to be able to show at least a WIP version of the Dragon Dreadnought ingame! Im hoping that the 900 meters of steel and gun turrets will make even the grumpiest arma purist to smile.

On the feature front we laid down some new ideas on the mission randomization and while we first wanted to make the cities and areas of interest to have buildings and whatnot to be randomized to give more unique gaming sessions we now aim to bring the planned system a step further and randomize most of the building structural layout too.

This will really be a stresstest on how much objects A3 can handle but if the engine allows it we are going to have dynamically generated skyscrapers and military installations that will always surprise you. This way the Hunt will alway feel like a plunge into the unknown and keep players on their toes. This will also bring a quite nice effect to building destruction as all the different parts can be destroyed separately. Shot a bigass missile at a 10-storey building? Now there is a bigass hole in it!

Also this feature as all the others will be usable as a standalone module if someone wishes to expand the building block assets on their own missions.

This is one of the major features on our list and I'll post more about it when we have propely tested the theory behind it. Also if A3 just can't handle it, we can always go bigger in scale.

I'll keep you posted!

-Goat

As stated we aim to build a sort of an singleplayer tutorial to showcase current features and assets to let you guys see where we are going with the mod. Playable multiplayer mission to actually test the gamemode is on the way and we hope to release alpha on that soon after the showcase.

[reecef11 10]

That sounds sweet!

[anthariel 165]

Original project, good luck! I'm looking forward to trying it ;)

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Thanks Anthariel! Looking forward to hear your opinion!

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Couple of new pictures up on ModDB! I've been fixated on the Dragon model for a few days now and it was quite refreshing to whip up these Alpha assets and actually get something done. It is not easy to build a convincing and at least semi functional looking & nearly 1km long monster of a battleship. Everything is so huge. You could have a family living in the missile tubes or a small village in the engine blocks. It will be "fun" to work out the interior when the outer shell is complete.. :D For real it will be awesome though also really challenging.

But gotta prioritize and work on the stuff we still need for the Alpha.. It would be awesome to show the Dragon in all its glory, but we'll get there eventually if not this time. If I haven't yet said the first alpha will be a singleplayer tutorial mission to just test out the hacking and maybe try out the Warrior but we do intend to release a multiplayer playground mission with all kinds fun ways to try our features and assets in a multiplayer enviroment. There will be gun range, hacking competitions, racing and whatever fun we come up with. For testing purposes of course.. ;D

The real Treasure Hunt gamemode mission will then follow soon after and will be built and expanded along the playground when features and assets reach state where they can be released for testing.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

A3 got an update which is great and along it the A3 tools also got an update which I have quite mixed feelings about..

It is great but it also broke Mikeros toolset for me and I had to rely on AddonPacker which proved to be complicated. For some reason I it first deleted all our map project folders and I had to rebuild them from source material. AddonPacker just can't pack it right and does not give out anything useful in the log to pinpoint whats wrong.

Anyways got a new vehicle packed and running! (Pics on ModDB) This might affect our goal of Alpha release or at least the map will be one of more early WIPs.

Hopefully the problem with the tools will be resolved soon!

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Again more progress! This time we are proud to present first footage of HT-4002 hacking tool in action!

The interface is command-line operated with very neat randomized folder and file structure for the hacker to comb through in search for the right files.

Main idea is that the speed of the hacking is almost totally related to the players speed of typing and ability to spot the right files from the corrupt clutter. So it is not just press a button and wait for a progress bar to fill up, what you do and how well you do it matters.

Check out the video here : LoDR on ModDB

Oh and don't forget to support us at Make Arma Not War

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Finally it is here! We are proud to present our very first Alpha release of Lost Dragons!

It is slowly but surely sinking uploading into our ModDB page and I'll be posting the link as soon as it is up!

Mind you our Alpha isn't very large but we do appreciate any feedback you come up with to make next release even better!

Lost Dragons Alpha Build 1

-2 feature showcase tutorial missions included.

-1 multiplayer free-for-all competition

-1 Single player tutorial for the command line interface familiarization

-Opfor and Blufor Corporation characters and some vehicles & weapons to try out as well as the frist WIP release of our new 20kmx20km map Necropolis

-Package contains readme file with installation instructions and also lots of information about the mod itself, especially the functions and scripts that make lots of cool stuff possible are explained inside.

And do give us you support if you enjoy our little starter pack!

Lost Dragons MANW Contest Entry

--Edit

The upload might actually take an hour or two :D

Edited September 5, 2014 by HorribleGoat

[cruoriss 12]

Nice

Will try it as soon as its online .

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Just woke up from a little nap and alas, it is online!! Yeay!

Download Link!

Do tell your friends too! The feature test mission is much more fun with friends sneaking upon you or showering you with grenades while you complete the hack objective! :D

Edited September 5, 2014 by HorribleGoat