More character designs

I felt it would be best to keep the drawing momentum after creating a very successful design of the Dragonkin character (shown in the previous post), and kept sketching a few more characters in parallel with doing more worldbuilding and gameplay planning.

After years of working on this, I came up with a sort-of design philosophy of my own on how to better structure my thinking about the gameplay process. I called it a "10-10-10 rule". It asks important questions of what does the player do in 10 seconds, 10 minutes and 10 hours. 

I'll give a quick example of a generic shooter game:
> 10 seconds:  You walk/run around level with your keyboard keys, aim and shoot a gun at enemies using your mouse.
> 10 minutes: You explore the level, pick up items, learn and strategize best approaches against various enemies.
> 10 hours: You complete multiple levels and progress through the storyline, unlock new weapons and customizations.
As you can see, the description of what player does changes drastically depending on the time-span examined.

Perhaps one day I'll talk about this philosophy in greater detail (once its thoroughly tested), but I brought this up just so you'd have some context for what I'm about to say!

Hopfel is working on prototyping the 10-seconds aspect (he has just returned from his vacation), which is "the bread and butter" of the game. This is where it must be made to feel good to play, otherwise the rest of the experience will be so much lesser. 

In our case, 10-seconds will most likely involve using the virtual "telekinesis" ghostly hand-cursor to pick up and move objects and sensually play with characters (or rather, their specific bodyparts), locomotion around the level, interaction with "vore"-inventory (items are stored inside the character's innards) and skill/action usage. Thankfully we have the systems for all of these in our codebase already, what remains is to put it all together in a way that feels good for the player to interact with it all. Soon we'll see it in action and make a decision from there.

I'm working on the "10-minute" aspect right now, while loosely outlining the "10-hours part". This part involves content, it bears the answer to the question of "why" player is doing various actions described in "10-seconds" part. It is all about gaining, managing resources and progression.

I'm still figuring out how to incorporate various living beings interacting in juicy kinky ways into the gameplay process naturally, making it a core part of the game rather than a side-activity. I'm going through lots of ideas, for example, here's one I rejected:

One of the ideas was about finding Dragonkin in the wild and then milking them for resources. It sounds fun, but if done too much can lead to conveying the wrong message - I want to make a game about sensual harmony with the world, not about exploiting it for resources.

However, after so much searching, I might be onto something very interesting now! Here's the story of it:

Spirits

What if I took Spirits that are so important in the world of Dragotheria, and made it so you, as the player, engage with them directly in various ways.. Make the spirits be the central aspect of the game (like guns in Borderlands or Pokemon in the respectively-named series). 

In a nutshell my idea involves that you find Spirits in the wild, then do something pleasurable to them (using the telekinesis-hand you can pleasure them, or stimulate your character instead, all while they watch) - every Spirit can have its own kinks and species preferences, randomized to some degree. If they liked what they saw, you can ask them to join you. Spirits may also need you to give them some Essence or other gifts.

Once joined, you place that Spirit on your "hotbar", and it grants you a skill or an ability to summon/place that spirit down on the ground. Every spirit can grant skills from a pool of random ones and it features different stats, so it can make searching for new spirits a repeatable activity.

I'm not going to show the list of skills I outlined because they are just nebulous ideas at this moment. But the main idea is that all the skills are not about damaging or hurting others. On the contrary, I want to theme it all around kinks, pleasure, restoration and protection. If there's combat then I want it to be akin to a friendly competition, not a kill-or-be-killed - that just doesn't fit well with the atmosphere I'm trying to create. 

With this mindset, getting access to more skills means you can do more kinks, which means you can recruit more Spirits. However it provides a lot of challenge when designing adversaries (and I'm still struggling with that).

Hotbar is, of course, limited, so player will have to strategize and make choices which spirits to keep, and which will have to be put to some other uses (plenty of ideas, but not relevant for this post).

Some spirits can grant traversal skills, such as gliding over ley-lines or blinking through a rift between realities. This is where the metroidvania aspect comes in: some spirits may grant you access to previously unreachable locations.

While gameplay involving spirits sounds good in theory, I realized that these tiny incorporeal spirits might not be necessarily sexy, so they alone aren't enough. We need something more: like actual big, beautiful Dragonkin of flesh and blood! But I don't want to design a separate disconnected mechanic just to feature sexy interactions with the Dragonkin... This is when a wild idea appeared to me...

Ascension

What if I took the lore idea of Spirits being uplifted to Dragonkin and presented it within the game in a similar fashion to evolutions in monster-catcher games? I could design/model the characters in a way that makes it easier for me alone to create different versions of them for different evolution stage (sort of like character customization, but simpler).

What if player started with a puny Wisp, and needed to level them up. After that they can "Ascend" to become a Spirit, then they can be "Uplifted" to a higher form, eventually to become a full Dragonkin? Perhaps Spirits gain experience through player using the skill they grant, and perhaps if the Spirit sees a kink they like they can be temporarily "inspired" to gain more experience. Spirits probably would need to consume Essence that your character produces during climactic lewd activities - Essence is the universal fuel and nourishment in Dragotheria after all.

I'll have to put a bunch more work into these ideas to properly solidify them, as well as coming up with more straightforward names to different stages of Ascension. But overall I like how it ties in the sensual theme: we start with simple Wisps/Spirits and then though our shared lewd experience with them, they get to ascend into much sexier Dragonkin!

Perhaps there can be different branching Ascension paths to keep it interesting (and to cover a wider species-preference range for different people). Player can make a choice between their spirit becoming orthograde(anthro) or pronograde(feral), and then, yet another branch allowing the player to preserve a pure, non-Dragonic look to their teammate (I temporarily called them Precursors).

I haven't yet figured our how the skill mechanic will work after the Spirit stage however... Perhaps they can no longer be summoned, but Uplifts and Dragonkin can act as companions to do lewd activities with, and pronograde ones can act as mounts. As you can see, I need to put more work to these ideas still.

Sketches

I did a bunch more sketches of these characters and their Ascension forms.

Wisps are pretty much all the same, except they feature a different head design, reflecting the creature to come. Such simple design should save a lot of time on the most basic form of the spirit.

Spirits are incorporeal, floating and glowing creatures that resemble an animal taken as a base. Not sure about them featuring interface between their legs at this stage yet, they're spirits after all... so a null-crotch then? Or perhaps that is a missed opportunity for some lewd sizeplay? Let me know what you think, but it's better to talk about spicy things in Discord.

Uplifts offer us a choice between ortho/prono (anthro/feral), although both are simply different body form preferences, the Spirit's consciousness stays the same between the two. They both feature some elements of the Dragon anatomy on them - horns, spikes, but they're not fully Dragonkin just yet. From this point player has a choice, for them either to become a full Dragonkin, or to hide their Dragon ancestry and embody a pure, non-hybrid form - a Precursor. Uplifts can produce basic-quality Essence.

Dragonkin are almost Dragons, but still retain a lot of influence from their original Spirit form. They are much more powerful: bigger in size, they have more internal capacity (inventory space), they produce better Essence, and all of them can have wings (optionally) to fly.

Precursors are about retaining the authenticity of their Spirit selves. They reject the powerful Dragonkin benefits in exchange for a different elemental alignment (I haven't talked about elements, have I?), a different perspective on Dragotheria. This is where "Theria" comes into play from the name, by the way - the name has duality to it on purpose.

***

With me explaining what each stage is, here are the sketches with my further comments. 

I draw sketches directly from the side (and sometimes from the front) to figure out the design and proportions of these characters. I don't care about beautiful poses or perspective - that's all a distraction and will actually be detrimental when I use these sketches for my modeling process.

Here is a Rat Ascension line. Perhaps this one doesn't have a pronograde version, but can always switch to quadrupedal locomotion. Also have you ever seen a rat-dragon hybrid before? I think he's so sexy!

Close-up of the rat/mouse Uplift face, inspired by a friend's sona. It was fun to draw!

I already did made Kirin before (it was a temporary model and I need to make a better one soon), but I wanted to see how different Ascension levels would look like for the deer. I worked very hard on the orthograde (antrho) proportions to make them more animalistic, and less human. And did my best to make the spirits look cute.

I also did only inserter (male) versions for now, will do receiver (female) variants later. Since the reproduction works differently in Dragotheria, the interface you have between your legs is just a matter of personal preference. Both produce Essence and feel very, very good to use :}.
Though I, personally, can't wait to see some udders! Hmm... can I make it so even some inserters can feature udders?

Here is a canine therian as well. I'm still dreading of how I'm going have to make fur, and that moment its fast approaching...

Perhaps in time I'll get to make a dinosaur ascension lineup. Both for feathery...

and scaly!

Conclusion

As you can see, my mind is very full right now with all the ideas and designs. I didn't even mention that every character I've sketched so far I'm also considering as a potential avatar for VR.

I have even more notes in my notebooks, both digital and paper ones, all depicting various gameplay ideas and mechanics. And I'm also continuing to write the WorldAnvil articles for everyone to read eventually. All of this has officially became not just my job, but my life. But if that's what it takes to make a world of sexy Dragons, then I'm more than happy to devote myself to such cause.

With lots of Dragon Love.
- Salireths.