I made a purchase at the end of the last event, to activate the 5th breeding cave and so get a 5th dragon from the collected eggs. Of course, Tolzar disappeared after that, but I have a comfortable gem stash, so I wasn't too unhappy about it. Until this event started and magic collection is sparse, making those Tolzar rewards pretty important. Not only that, but I was away from internet for a while and missed playing the first week of the event, so I was feeling very much behind in the magic accumulation. I emailed Deca, and got a very nice response from Carol, offering to transfer my park to a new id in order to restore Tolzar. But then (whine factor?) the next day Tolzar reappeared, probably the same time he suddenly reappeared in everyone's park. So I was happy. Then, a couple of days ago, I got another message from Carol, saying that, because I had missed the Tolzar magic for a while, she had added some magic to my park's total! Above and beyond, reminds me of the delightful days of BFS customer support, and a very good portent for what's ahead in our game's management, I am so happy with the new owner!
PSA: Deca has made an announcement on Reddit and Discord regarding their current status and future plans with DragonVale.
As you can see, Deca will be using Reddit and Discord as their official platforms to communicate. We know many of our members are not connected to these social media sites, so moderators (and members) will post links and/or screenshots as announcements are publicised.
The DragonVale Community forum moderators did reach out to Deca when they took over DragonVale last month. They are aware we are here. However, Deca has used Reddit and Discord in the past with their live games, so they’re familiar and comfortable with those sites. They have not used forums as an outlet to communicate, and even social sites like Facebook and Instagram (the IG account is still private), are not currently being utilised. So far, Discord has been their main line of communication, and now Reddit (this is their first post on Reddit).
PSA PSA PSA Just noticed with SANDBOX that the numbers of offspring given in the list of parents does not always agree with the numbers of offspring when you select two parents and tap on them Am trying for Spellmason in my baby park; the drop down parents list S and wisp as having 5 offspring If I select those two parents, they then list 9 possible offspring S and darkling says 5; but then lists 9... Not sure what’s going on I’m back to using S and LBolt instead...
Last Edit: Mar 8, 2020 12:30:00 GMT -6 by Kiwichris
PSA PSA PSA Just noticed with SANDBOX that the numbers of offspring given in the list of parents does not always agree with the numbers of offspring when you select two parents and tap on them Am trying for Spellmason in my baby park; the drop down parents list S and wisp as having 5 offspring If I select those two parents, they then list 9 possible offspring S and darkling says 5; but then lists 9... Not sure what’s going on I’m back to using S and LBolt instead...
The difference is because you could be breeding in the rift - the other four are possible rift dragons. (Abraxas, Kampos, Plumewing & Voltaic)
If you are using Lightning then you are not breeding in the rift, so only six results - of which lightning is one.
Last Edit: Mar 8, 2020 20:41:12 GMT -6 by MinyaZ: Clarification
I know many of you don't read reddit or follow the Discord channel. There was a great opportunity on Discord to have a discussion with a former Backflip employee today. I've captured most of his responses to post here, for those interested. He was an artist for DV and DVW and had a lot of interesting insight on various DV things. These are all copy/pasted from "Eric TD":
Hey, I animated all three of those - Tusk, Knarr, and Spectrapod. As to why they all have swimming animations that they almost never use, it's mostly because I was bad at checking with the design team to see how they intended to use the dragon in-game before jumping into animating it :man_shrugging:. Swimming animations are pretty quick to make though, so no harm in being thorough I think
I was the technical artist for Dragonvale and Dragonvale World for the last two years, as well as one of the final employees to leave Backflip. I'd be happy to answer any other random questions you guys have about Dragonvale
You might be surprised - I'm not sure how many developers are still around, but we were all very active in following fan feedback and discussion here and on Reddit. We've never been far, even if we couldn't directly respond to things :wink:
Funnily enough, the one I'd consider most difficult to animate isn't out yet. Rigel may have been the most fun to animate, though I only did some of its animations
Nope, I worked for Backflip, but have now moved onto another project. I worked on DragonVale until the end of January
I worked as a technical artist, which is hard to define, but mostly involved taking on technical challenges to empower the art team. I was heavily involved in creating costumable dragons, and did a fair bit on animation on DragonVale. I also did a bunch of modeling, rigging, texturing, and animation on DVW. I was very heavily involved in making Ophiuchia, which I'm quite proud of
Animation has a bit of a learning curve, but it's a lot of fun when you get the hang of it! I only animated in part of my time though, the full time animators were responsible for a large percentage of the game's animations
I didn't do very much dragon design or 2d art, since my technical skills are a bit stronger than my 2d art skills, but I do know the process pretty well. I did get a chance to design a dragon from start to finish right at the end though, with lots of feedback from the art lead - I'm a big fan of insects and crustaceans, so I designed and made Spectrapod
The main limiting factor behind park size should be your phone, we worked really hard to keep the game performing well
(on fury): Things were pretty split in the office over that poll as well, all of them had a few developers rooting for them to win
It never existed anything more than a silhouette though, we didn't know either what they'd be in the end
Yep! I loved the Cthulu one, but we felt really strongly that making the other silhouettes into dragons would cheapen the community's decision, so there was never any plan to make the other three
(on spectrapod sizing) : Yeah, it's definitely tricky to get, I haven't managed it yet... I wasn't part of that discussion, but it's probably since it was our first rainbow rift dragon in a long time
Spectrapod's head was the main opportunity to get 'dragon' shape language into the design - I tried to incorporate a balance of fleshy and carapace portions, but the shiny carapace is definitely favored
Yep! I had a fair bit to do with the chrysalis kaleidoscope event. I'd have loved to do another spider dragon, but the final decision on which designs to pursue belonged to the other artists
I didn't do very much dragon design, that was mostly up to our very talented 2d artists - Spectrapod is the only one I can claim that role on. That's why it's my favorite dragon :wink:. Trilobite is definitely a competitor though
As a heads up, Deca's dragons are likely to feel a little different as they get into the groove of things. It took us years to really nail the universe's style, which is apparent if you compare the new dragons to old monstrosities like the Flower dragon :upside_down:
They'll come up with their own new take as well, I have no doubt
Definitely, likely thousands, most ideas just don't come together to the quality level needed to release them. The average dragon would have 3-5 wildly different versions during concepting before an idea was picked to move forward with
Our designers made decisions around dragon income based on some pretty intense balancing math, I couldn't guess how the final number is picked though
A cephalapod dragon would have been a lot of fun, but tentacles are very difficult to do justice to while also keeping the number of pieces a dragon is divided into reasonable - who knows though, Deca may pull it off in the future
When ghostlies came out the art team was going through some personnel changes between teams, so we were way short-handed and couldn't produce much content for the event. Ghostly dragons came as a result of the engineering team looking for ways to bridge the content gap, then continued for a bit as a way to bring a bit of new life to old favorites
(on ghostlies): I'm not sure about their difficulty of getting them, sorry. It may be something Deca would be willing to update though
Quite a few dragons we're considered for ghostly forms, but not all of them worked well with the shader. I don't remember which though, I wasn't very involved in that process
The hardest thing was working with the custom game engine DragonVale had - it's ten years old now, and working with a game engine that old is by definition full of challenges and limitations. Newer games work on purchased game engines with way more development features that you don't have to code in by hand
DragonVale came out before Unity, the game engine, did - at the time there were no commercial game engines for mobile, writing one yourself was the only way to make a mobile game
Nope, there's no chance of the engine ever changing. You'd have to rebuild the entire game, I can't imagine a scenario where a team would ever consider it. They'll find new ways to push the system though, like we were doing with costumes and shader tech
We were just starting to think about adding a new trait towards the end. We didn't get far enough in that exploration to hand anything off though
(on a new trait): Maybe! I wouldn't expect any large changes like a new element soon - it's a big game that takes a while to learn how to develop for, but I'm sure it's something they'll consider as they get comfortable with the codebase
I'd love to see the Mech trait come over from DVW, those dragons were a ton of fun to work on
Most enjoyable was definitely pushing our creative limits and seeing the fan reception when we pulled something cool off
(on negative reception): Ghostlies and Evolution Decos definitely come to mind, in my time on the project. We tried hard to incorporate the feedback we got from them though
Spectrapod and Third Leapyear are a bit more complex than any other dragons, we bent the usual efficiency rules a tiny bit since they were our last epics
Not all of the dragons I worked on are out, that's about as much as I should say there though
Upgrading the rift was one of our leading 2020 ideas
We were definitely working towards finishing the golden collection, I feel like we may have been reasonably close to doing so - I'm honestly not sure how many we had left
I'd be really surprised if Deca doesn't finish the collection, hybrids are a good way to get a feel for working on the game before tackling more complex epics and whatnot, but we'll see!
We definitely had plans for basic element hybrids, but I'm not going to give information on them for now - we handed off some information and ideas to Deca, and I have no insight about whether they'll pursue them or something else
There were probably game inspirations in some of the dragons, but we always tried to avoid anything referential - we wanted DragonVale to be it's own stand-alone universe as much as possible
We definitely tried to! I'm pretty proud of what we accomplished, as well as my predecessors. I'm glad the game gets to live on, that was unknown, even internally, for a while there
(did the staff play?) : Yes, nearly everyone. We had quite a few max level players on the team, as well as a handful of complete collections I believe, without using any developer advantages
There were quite a few of us that wanted to represent the development team in places like this, but we were asked not to. I believe that came from some of the legal complexity of being owned by Hasbro, but I'm not certain
For every studio with great player communication there is a studio where it went very poorly, so it can be seen as a risk from the management level as well
(on closing): It was very out of left field for everyone sadly. I don't know why they decided to close us, but they had a terrible fiscal year and have simplified their business across the board, which was definitely part of it
It had more to do with risk than income, I think. We had some new games (can't say more than that unfortunately) that were getting ready for release. Launching games is really expensive though, and in many cases don't pay for themselves if they don't build up a good player base. After a bad fiscal year Hasbro may not have been feeling up to taking risks
(on Mike in support, cause I said he was awesome): Mike always did an amazing job for sure, he's a really cool guy in person as well
thanks, quil, for posting those. Now I am wondering if any of the old developers still play!
And I sort of hope that one thing they DON'T do like before is constant back-to-back events... I really like the normal gameplay with *occasional* spice of events...
Thanks Quil, that’s an interesting read. I always thought the Ghostlies must’ve been a bit of a stopgap 😆 & a definite big up to Mike, he really was awesome!!
Post by dragonglow on Mar 13, 2020 10:56:53 GMT -6
Posting this here because I think more people read. Made a gem purchase 3/5/20 and when almost done the BF screen came up and I didn't receive the gems but the money was taken out of my Amazon account. (Was a support the game purchase.) Contacted DECA and sent receipt they are supposedly working on this. Then last night I was on my game around 6:00 p.m. Eastern time but when I went in later the game won't load. When I open the black screen with the large red B comes on and that is all the further it will go. Has anyone had this before and any suggestions? I know to e-mail DECA but they are gone for the weekend Berlin is 5 hours ahead of us. One of the draw backs with overseas ownership. They won't get the e-mail until Monday.
Actually the folk with the knowledge will always read new posts dragonglow , so I’ll move this to Tips and Strategies thread tomorrow Sorry I don’t know what to offer except emailing support ☹️
Last Edit: Mar 13, 2020 12:24:35 GMT -6 by Kiwichris
Actually the folk with the knowledge will always read new posts dragonglow , so I’ll move this to Tips and Strategies thread tomorrow Sorry I don’t know what to offer except emailing support ☹️
Posting this here because I think more people read. Made a gem purchase 3/5/20 and when almost done the BF screen came up and I didn't receive the gems but the money was taken out of my Amazon account. (Was a support the game purchase.) Contacted DECA and sent receipt they are supposedly working on this. Then last night I was on my game around 6:00 p.m. Eastern time but when I went in later the game won't load. When I open the black screen with the large red B comes on and that is all the further it will go. Has anyone had this before and any suggestions? I know to e-mail DECA but they are gone for the weekend Berlin is 5 hours ahead of us. One of the draw backs with overseas ownership. They won't get the e-mail until Monday.
Thanks dragonglow
I had this (only the red B on the screen) once some months ago. I solved it by deleting and reinstalling the game. But it is always kind of stressing. At the moment I would make sure that the game can be downloaded from the store before deleting it.
dragon list (last dragon : Gatren) DV friend id: Crumble#7733 friend link coop friends always welcome, but all my gems are spoken for
Post by dragonglow on Mar 13, 2020 14:42:17 GMT -6
I checked on Amazon and it is there, that is where mine came from. It is not in my app store. It shows DECA under the app where you buy it from Amazon. I am away from home and will return tomorrow night as far as I know. I do have my game saved on facebook. If I uninstall/delete from my fire can I reinstall from facebook? What is the danger in losing your dragons? I can see where this can be stressing!😟 Would you mind laying out how you did and what you did so I can try and do this without having a heart attack. Does that change your park ID?
Just to be clear the screen is black with large red B and studios under the B.
Thank you Crumble much appreciated.🌞
Took a while and some digging but I did find the DragonVale app in the app store. Had to open two other apps on dragons to find. So I can get off Amazon where I got the one I have or from the app store.
Last Edit: Mar 13, 2020 15:37:22 GMT -6 by dragonglow
Posting this here because I think more people read. Made a gem purchase 3/5/20 and when almost done the BF screen came up and I didn't receive the gems but the money was taken out of my Amazon account. (Was a support the game purchase.) Contacted DECA and sent receipt they are supposedly working on this. Then last night I was on my game around 6:00 p.m. Eastern time but when I went in later the game won't load. When I open the black screen with the large red B comes on and that is all the further it will go. Has anyone had this before and any suggestions? I know to e-mail DECA but they are gone for the weekend Berlin is 5 hours ahead of us. One of the draw backs with overseas ownership. They won't get the e-mail until Monday.
Thanks dragonglow
I had this (only the red B on the screen) once some months ago. I solved it by deleting and reinstalling the game. But it is always kind of stressing. At the moment I would make sure that the game can be downloaded from the store before deleting it.
Please see my post a frame up. My fire wouldn't let me post a long one here. Thanks
Last Edit: Mar 13, 2020 14:47:28 GMT -6 by dragonglow
Before deleting and reinstalling, try the basics of force closing the app on your device and then rebooting the device. That solves the vast majority of login issues.
If you do need to delete and reinstall, your game is safe with your Facebook login. If you have ever taken a screenshot of your park id, that is even better as a backup but not required. I'd even bet Deca could help you based on your in game friend id too if there were issues.
When you reinstall and login with anything other than an Apple ios account (which uses game center), you may see a brand new park first. Connect your game to Facebook and then under 'options / switch park' you will see a list of all parks tied to that account. Pick your park from the list and load it.
If you have access to any other devices, you could always try it there first. And old phone, spouse's phone that doesn't play, etc. It's less scary doing the delete / reinstall when you know you're seeing the park on a second device.
Before deleting and reinstalling, try the basics of force closing the app on your device and then rebooting the device. That solves the vast majority of login issues.
If you do need to delete and reinstall, your game is safe with your Facebook login. If you have ever taken a screenshot of your park id, that is even better as a backup but not required. I'd even bet Deca could help you based on your in game friend id too if there were issues.
When you reinstall and login with anything other than an Apple ios account (which uses game center), you may see a brand new park first. Connect your game to Facebook and then under 'options / switch park' you will see a list of all parks tied to that account. Pick your park from the list and load it.
If you have access to any other devices, you could always try it there first. And old phone, spouse's phone that doesn't play, etc. It's less scary doing the delete / reinstall when you know you're seeing the park on a second device.
Just what Quil said. After reinstall the game opens with a brand new park. You may have to do part of the tutorial before you have the possibility to login to facebook. I'd like to add that when you go to options-> switch park it might be possible that you don't see your park at first. if this is the case tap on the show hidden parks button and it will be shown.
If you have connected your game to facebook,it is safe. Making and keeping a screenshot of your park ID in addition is also a good idea. So don't get a heart attack even if at first sight it looks like all your dragons have vanished, they are still there out in the net.Maybe they are making a party.
But of course try a device restart first. Maybe that'll do the trick.
dragon list (last dragon : Gatren) DV friend id: Crumble#7733 friend link coop friends always welcome, but all my gems are spoken for
Post by dragonglow on Mar 13, 2020 18:34:02 GMT -6
Thanks Quil. This does give one a case of the nerves but I guess you just jump in with both feet. I can't get into my park as it is so I guess anything is worth a try. Was able to get in touch with son he said he would help me tomorrow night via phone and walk me through. He has a computer degree and is a gamer so knew what I was talking about when I told him what you and Crumble had said. He said we would try the force closing first and if that didn't do it we would do the uninstall/reinstall. He is going to look up on how to do the force closing on my kindle fire. I sure hope my park info is there on facebook the icon is there but I hope the info is. When you have put this much time and effort into something.... I just don't want to lose my dragons.
I have never done a screenshot but have my park ID and my dragonglow O416 in a number of places in case I ever need. He said he would show me how to do a screenshot next time we are out there.
Before deleting and reinstalling, try the basics of force closing the app on your device and then rebooting the device. That solves the vast majority of login issues.
If you do need to delete and reinstall, your game is safe with your Facebook login. If you have ever taken a screenshot of your park id, that is even better as a backup but not required. I'd even bet Deca could help you based on your in game friend id too if there were issues.
When you reinstall and login with anything other than an Apple ios account (which uses game center), you may see a brand new park first. Connect your game to Facebook and then under 'options / switch park' you will see a list of all parks tied to that account. Pick your park from the list and load it.
If you have access to any other devices, you could always try it there first. And old phone, spouse's phone that doesn't play, etc. It's less scary doing the delete / reinstall when you know you're seeing the park on a second device.
Just what Quil said. After reinstall the game opens with a brand new park. You may have to do part of the tutorial before you have the possibility to login to facebook. I'd like to add that when you go to options-> switch park it might be possible that you don't see your park at first. if this is the case tap on the show hidden parks button and it will be shown.
If you have connected your game to facebook,it is safe. Making and keeping a screenshot of your park ID in addition is also a good idea. So don't get a heart attack even if at first sight it looks like all your dragons have vanished, they are still there out in the net.Maybe they are making a party.
But of course try a device restart first. Maybe that'll do the trick.
Thank you to you and Quil appreciated more than you know.😊
Before deleting and reinstalling, try the basics of force closing the app on your device and then rebooting the device. That solves the vast majority of login issues.
If you do need to delete and reinstall, your game is safe with your Facebook login. If you have ever taken a screenshot of your park id, that is even better as a backup but not required. I'd even bet Deca could help you based on your in game friend id too if there were issues.
When you reinstall and login with anything other than an Apple ios account (which uses game center), you may see a brand new park first. Connect your game to Facebook and then under 'options / switch park' you will see a list of all parks tied to that account. Pick your park from the list and load it.
If you have access to any other devices, you could always try it there first. And old phone, spouse's phone that doesn't play, etc. It's less scary doing the delete / reinstall when you know you're seeing the park on a second device.
Thanks Quil appreciated more than you'll ever know. See my post to you above Crumbles post I answered.😊
Last Edit: Mar 13, 2020 18:48:53 GMT -6 by dragonglow
Post by dragonglow on Mar 14, 2020 20:14:26 GMT -6
Thank you Crumble and Quil for all your help. Had to uninstall and reinstall which will give you pause. Thank God I have a son who has a computer degree he walked me through what to do. Have my park and dragons back😁🎉 need to get caught up in park and rift. Thank you again for your help and for letting me know what needed to be done.😊
Friend🦋dragonglow#0416
'... overwhelming goodwill, and witty humour, profound grace and compassion blended with the spice of relentless taunts.'
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