Dragonfly Variations is an insect-laden action game with a strong emphasis on team tactics. Here, the position matters most: Protect your own, coordinate with your team members, and hamper the opponents. In the background of the action looms the absurdist reality of a Communist Eldorado - and one giant, man-eating panda...
The context of this game is a bit on the absurdish side - on purpose. True, games rarely stray from the "tried and true" genres, and strong absurdic, or surrealistic strains, while visible in other media, are almost non-existent in digital gaming. Hence the style of this game, the "unrealism" of it all, may produce strong disfavor from many facets of gaming culture... but this is one of the reasons why these kinds of "experiments" should be undertaken: While it's not a "major" gaming statement, it's still a little knock on the frameworks of gaming culture, a peek to what could lie beyond the present confinements.
Picture a vaguely oriental Communist Eldorado: golden wheat fields, apples by the bucketful etc. Then there's this gigantic, carnivorous panda, loitering around in those wheat fields, which suffers a massive stroke from eating too much cholesterol-laden communist workers. As it happens, the panda was just contemplating on the nature of humans - but since it doesn't really "get" humans, it's rather thinking about insects, since they reflect the world of men in a panda-friendly manner. So, the game takes place in the panda's stroke-laden mindscape, where insects frolic and compete in their mechanistic ways. You play the insects.
That's the backstory, at least. As an instance of development, Dragonfly Variations is an experiment of fast, semi-improvised group design, where each participant contributes a topic of interest: Something that they would like to test in the context of a game. Thus you have, for example, a "Posterized" graphical style, reminiscent of the communist utopian style with an absurdist bent - and a backstory of similar interests. After the monumentally long development cycle of Air Buccaneers, we needed to try something light - and different - to avoid developer burn-out. Overall, the development process of Dragonfly Variations, short as it was, has been quite refreshing.
This is a multiplayer team game, through and through: The ideal size of the player pool is from 6-12 - you can play with four players, but you won't get the same level of tactical play, no way, no how. When you have a sufficient amount of players, though, you can get a lot of tactics even with the simple controls. The game is all about position: You can fire at the other players, but instead of doing damage, you push, or pull them - the idea is to enhance the position of the players of your own team, and place the opponents in inopportune positions.
There are two game modes: Domination and Point Collection. In domination, a glowing sphere circles around the game area, pulsating between light and dark colors. When either team has more players inside the sphere, it will collect points when the sphere is light, and lose points when the sphere is dark. The player must coordinate to "attack" into the domination area at the right moment, and disrupt the plans of the opposing team - likewise at the right moment.
In Point Collection, the players have to use triggers to manifest point pellets to be collected - but since the pellets manifest quite far from their triggers, the successful point collection depends on well-planned actions with the other team members.
Roughly, the critical play areas could be divisioned as follows: Establishing communication between team members; tactical cooperation (planning and defining roles, modifying the roles in relation to other players etc.); and finally, synchronization of actions (knowing who is doing what, and when).
You need a retail version of UnrealTournament 2004 to be able to play Dragonfly Variations. Your UT2004 must be also patched to the latest version v 3355 which can be downloaded from here. The installed game files require 82 MB hard drive space.
Installation instructions:
Starting Dragonfly Variations
You can start Dragonfly Variations from the shortcut created during the installation to the Windows Start Menu.
You can also use any of the following alternate methods:
Controls
In Dragonfly Variations you control a flying insect, either a dragonfly or a cricket (the flying kind, not jumping). The controls mostly use the same keyboard settings as normal UT2004. The critical controls are:
In addition, mouse is used to control the point of view, and flight direction. The fire button (normally mapped left mouse click) fires a beam that pushes other players (outwards from you) - the beam does not do any damage. The alt fire button (normally mapped to right mouse click) pulls the other player (towards you) - and likewise does no damage. You can push and pull both players in your own team, and in the team opposite. The pushing and pulling is used to enhance the position of the players of your own team, and place the opponents in inopportune positions.
Game objectives
There are two game modes, Domination and Point collection:
Domination:
The objective here is simple: A glowing sphere circles around the game area, pulsating between light and dark colors. When a team has more players (dragonflies or crickets) inside the sphere, it will collect points when the sphere is light, and lose points when the sphere is dark. When either team reaches the score limit (70 points by default), it wins the match. Occasionally, the panda thinks about apples, triggering the Apple Rain mode; during Apple Rain, point scoring is doubled.
Point collection:
Two spiders hover in the air on either side of the play area (if you need to ask - they have gas in their abdomen, the poor things). Flying on a spider triggers a queue of fireflies on the opposite side of the area - these fireflies can be collected for points. When either team reaches the score limit (70 points by default), it wins the match. Occasionally, the panda thinks about apples, triggering the Apple Rain mode; during Apple Rain, point scoring is doubled.
Success in both modes depends on tactical communication, team cooperation and synchronization of the players actions.
HUD
The HUD contains the following items:
Setting up Dragonfly Variations dedicated server is a straightforward operation. First you need to have a UT2004 version 3355 installed on your server machine. After this you should install Dragonfly Variations normally to your server, see Requirements and Installation section located on top of this document how to do it.
After the installation, you should have UT2004\Dragonfly folder containing the Dragonfly Variations game folders and files.
Starting server
There is a bat file inside UT2004\Dragonfly folder named DragonflyServer.bat and by running it you start a dedicated server on your machine. If you are using Linux or don't just want to run the bat file, the command for starting the server is the following. You should run the command from the Ut2004\System folder.
ucc.exe server PAC-Dispersion.ut2?game=PacGame.PACGameInfo -log=PACserver.log -MOD=Dragonfly
INI files
Unless specified otherwise, the dedicated server uses UT2004\Dragonfly\Dragonfly.ini file for the settings file of the server. The file will be generated automatically first time you start the server. There is good documentation at the Unreal Admins page about UT servers and how to configure them correctly.
LudoCraft Game Design and Research Team
Game Design
LudoCraft
Lead Programmer & Developer
Tuomo Korva
Art & Level Design
Heikki Korva
3D Models & Animation
Tomi Kujanpää
Original Game Concept & Text & Audio Design
Pekko Koskinen
Animation & 3D Models
Laura Vallius
2005
ludocraft.oulu.fi/dragonfly/
University of Oulu -
Department of Information Processing Science
Contact information:
Lead programmer & developer: tuco@planetunreal.com
Dragonfly Variations MOD site: ludocraft.oulu.fi/dragonfly/
Copyright (c) Ludocraft 2005. All rights Reserved.