BioDraconica

Rrah, rrah!

It's been a while since I last posted - I knew it's going to happen as soon as I start getting into programming of my game, as I can't really show how awesome my code is, while visually it's just gray boxes and moving cubes. So I started preparing art-related materials instead, and it took me on a long journey of its own.

The game is now called BioDraconica This is a work-in-progress sketch for its logo.

First up, a long overdue task was to figure what the game is actually about. I didn't want to sway too far from my old original game - the core pillar is still to make a game about Love of Dragons. But what is the best way to show my love and affection? What game mechanics, what setting will capture the feelings I have to Dragons?

So much soul-searching after, yet I haven't figured it out exactly - it's all too deep, complex and spiritual for me, and the human culture we live in doesn't even have an analogue to it, there is almost nothing to reference as a starting point.

But! I do have a working draft!

The Game

While I wrote a proper 30k+ words-long Game Design Doc (multiple times over), to keep this post short, it can be summarized in just two sentences that I repeat to myself like a mantra:

Displaced into another world and transformed into a creature, your new life begins amidst the Astral fogs, within the ancient temple of Dragons. Every day you spend training, repairing, crafting, and bonding with your Dragon-kin pack to prepare to fight the ancient darkness together.

A quick textured level mock up. It's not where you'll spend much time, it's more of a dungeon to explore, maybe find snacks or hoodies.

Think of it as a "Single-player Dragon Life-Sim Action-Adventure with Creature-Collector elements". I do everything to keep the scope humble enough for my skills and time, yet I have to make it an interesting and deep enough game - it's an impossible balance.

The Life-Sim:

It's important to give the player space and time to explore themselves as a creature. This is why I want to give the player a dilapidated temple to restore and look after. Why a temple? Statues of Dragon Gods, libraries of knowledge, farming, brewing, cooking, crafting, training unarmed combat skills, cultivating your body's inner draconic potential, inviting other Dragonkin to live alongside you, performing sensual rituals together - any of that would fit so well within a the fantasy of daily temple life.

It's not about survival, it's about everyday life - similar to Stardew Valley or My Time At games, but with an entirely different focus. Not on farming, not on tinkering, but all about connecting with Dragons and their powerful, sensual culture that I so yearn to show.

Mix Tantra, ancient Greece temples and Shaolin monasteries, except it's all about Dragons. I think with such design homages, an average person can easily imagine what life is like inside such a temple. What do you think?

I just started designing the architecture of the Temple, but here are some rough sketches if you're curious. These aren't "concept art" by any stretch, just a glimpse into my process of thinking.

The Action-Adventure:

Creatures are extra sexy when they are adventuring with plenty of action: fighting with their teeth and talons, spreading wide in that tail-lash slo-mo attack.

For sure, it's going to be the most challenging development part - I struggle with animating characters, but I think of it as "just one more skill" I have to learn. Thankfully, I have already made a very good Control Rig in Blender and laid out a base programming groundwork for the combat system already.

The idea is to let the player spar with Kin to train their Draconic martial-arts skills further, and the winner has to share biological Essences with their partner - it's about trust and affection to each other, not rivalry. It helps everyone to grow stronger, which is important, as the Shadows (my oldest antagonist design) are ever-present...

The Creature-Collector:

If there is one thing I do best, it is the Creatures - the sexy, cool and powerful ones. Instead of capturing/taming, I want to channel my Love of Dragons through gameplay and story, such as sensual Bonding Rituals, mutual affectionate feelings, equal partnership both in battle and in a cozy nest. Take it in all contexts, it works for SFW and NSFW situations.

I hope this fantasy sounds like a game you'd like to play. I'm certainly extremely inspired to develop it for the years to come.

And for those who don't instantly get this fantasy (perhaps, the more "normie", non furry, non otherkin players), I decided to employ familiar Isekai tropes: start as an ordinary boring human, spoilers happen, get reincarnated/TFd into a creature, now have to adapt to a new world. They may not see the sexy appeal of the creatures, but at least they can have a "power fantasy" of being a "cool" Dragon, right?

Creature Editor

In the previous post I have talked about a Raptor character being made out of modular parts. Unfortunately, I had to cancel that idea (not the Raptor, they will return)... Its main goal was to make a user-friendly creature-editor, but despite my best efforts, I realized too late that it's impossible to do so in Blender - the word "Blender" alone is enough to scare off 95% of the target audience.

I didn't give up however: I set on a quest to simplify that system to use it in BioDraconica instead. Creature-Collectors offer a lot of variety, but I have only two paws to work with (and I'm a Wyvern). So instead of modeling/texturing/animating every creature uniquely, I can make characters out of reusable modular parts, and offer some degree of customization too.

These two creatures reuse the same animation rig and they have the same body, just different head, accessories and textures. And it now takes a 2-4 days to make a new unique variant, which is a big improvement.

I also simplified the art style yet again, opting for a more hand-drawn look. All the sculpting and procedural texturing I did looked great, but it was taking way too much time - it's something I can keep only for select few models that I still plan to release as VR avatars.

Now with the new style it takes just a few hours of scribbling on a tablet - the process that I enjoy much more. I did spend several weeks programming a whole new set of shaders though, and I still have to implement this style in-engine, but it's a one-time effort I'm starting right after this post.

The NSFW Scare

Steam, pressured by payment processors, has made it really hard to work on NSFW games, even banning an ability to outright update them or use the early-access model... It's never certain what censorship tyranny we will have to face next anywhere, not just on Steam.

However, I still want to express my Love to Dragons unconstrained by prudish corporations. To keep this flame of hope alive, I have came up with a creative workaround idea for this, similar to what devs did before Steam even allowed NSFW games - essentially an official NSFW patch/mod (most likely accessible via Patreon at start).

To keep the work of my life safe, I should make both SFW and NSFW versions of BioDraconica. Perhaps that will even expand its target audience to people who aren't interested in NSFW. And thanks to the new line-art hand-drawn art-style, the creatures of both versions still get to canonically enjoy having a sensitive orifice under their tails.

In SFW version the orifice is implied, obscured by the line-art. It's just a horizontal black line under the tail - it could be a wrinkle, it could be a stylized shadow, it could be a rendering artifact, who knows? Why are you looking under there anyway?

In NSFW version, the lovely hole is much more detailed, can be spread open in animations. Characters have additional dialogues about such themes openly. Since the game focuses on biology and transformation, the patch can introduce new customization options: slits, sheathes and "erectable organic interfaces".

Perhaps the Dragonkin were just like alien birds: kissing with their cloacas, but existence of a convenient protruding fleshy (prehensile) organ between one's legs was discovered only after their visit to Earth?

Conclusion

With my new modular characters, rigs and art-style completed, It really shouldn't take me as long to post again here, and I will keep iterating to improve the quality. While I'm busy quietly programming BioDraconica, I want to keep making something fun and sensual using these characters - perhaps you'd have any requests?

Thank you for reading and your continuous support, even through this time without posts. I simply wouldn't be here without your help.

Rrrah-Raaa! With lots of Dragon Love,
— Salireths.