Interaction System work-in-progress

The term "interaction" is extremely wide... 

Most games make it that your "gun" or "sword" is the way you "interact" with the world... Which in their example is kind of true, but games should not be only about violence, and there should be other ways you can "Interact" with these amazing, full of opportunities, virtual worlds...

The Gateway of Realities is a systemic game. It doesn't have a lot in terms of narrative planned, but it makes up in systems we've been building and constantly iterating on all this time. We're putting it all together so the game can keep creating "emergent gameplay", a variety of situations that "emerge" from a set of rules and simulations, allowing player to experiment with environment, items, creatures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_gameplay 

Action spiral UI, our interpretation of a radial menu for selecting actions.

Interaction with objects initially started as an idea inspired by Sims games, where with the help of a conveniently placed radial menu you can dictate what exactly your character is going to do with a designated object... However that alone isn't enough for our needs: having a big list of functions that do specific things is not quite an immersive, elegant solution.

IRL everyone uses their hands (and other parts of the body) to interact with objects, "aiming" them at specific points in space and doing some kind of mechanical work (think about fingers pressing keyboard buttons). What else uses aiming in games? That's right, combat systems are all about that... so that's another clue.

So if we put two ideas together: we'd have a much smaller list of functions and an ability to aim them, almost like magic spells: aim first, "cast" after. So aim your fingers to the your mouse wheel to scroll down this post, because we're just getting started!

Quick concept of "Extra Senses" mode, showing interaction points, smells and a waypoint.

This is the example of how such aiming will work: first player holds the interaction button and it activates a mode similar to "Survival instincts" or "Witcher senses" or any other object highlighting feature in modern games.

Then the interface highlights the areas of the objects which player can individually interact with (later we can extend the system to allow smells and navigational points to be shown as well).

Player needs to aim at one of the interaction points of interest and let go,  after that the action spiral UI will be shown with the available actions.

Creatures can have variety of different "point of interest" all around the bodies. Player can even select one of the points on their own creature as the target to do "self-interactions" and emotes, for example starting to clean themselves by licking.

Other complex objects, items, machines, flora, can have multiple of those "points of interest" as well.

Points of Interest on a female Hizathri, when "Extra Senses" mode is active, the game highlights areas player can select an action to interact with separately, such as her face, feet, or her cloaca.

So now we know how aiming works, let's talk about the actions themselves.

I will be using action of "licking" as an example, but the system is of course not only just about "licking", it's just something fun (and versatile) to consider! Mating actions will use the same system, so you can aim your reproductive organs in the same way. But for now, imagine having the tongue as a weapon by other game standards, except you're not dealing damage with it, you're using it to interact with the world.

Lick aiming test, the green glowing bodyparts and outlines, are just how default animation bones are visualized

After designating what you want to lick, the character will automatically approach it and pick a comfortable pose to start licking it, reaching for it if needed. 

In the very first room of the Reality, which player will enter after starting a new game, there will be a DNA-locked door. It will not only prevent player exiting the room without choosing their first starter creature, but it will teach them about interactions, especially the fact that your creature can lick anything. 

The DNA-Lock will react to the character's saliva, and will open the door, but it's not the only thing it will react to - anything that has DNA information will work, some creative player can even pee on it (let's just hope nobody licks it afterwards). 

• By the way: Like in real life, DNA contains information about the creature and it's a part of any tissue or liquid produced by organic bodies, in general it will be used in many things later on, such as male seed carrying the DNA information to the female egg cells and mixing it up... 

One licking animation, different creative applications... 

The tongue is not just scripted to work with DNA-locks, it works because of its properties of covering it in saliva instead, that is interesting because it can sometimes produce unexpected results: tongue, when interacting with objects, makes them wet with saliva... Therefore, completely unintentionally, you'd be also able to water plants by licking them (since they expect to be wet). 

This is a great example of emergent gameplay, situation that emerges thanks to defined rules and simulations. Surely sometimes it's silly, in some cases it might even feel like exploiting something - but it's all a lot of fun to discover these little secrets of a simulated game world! Some of these secrets we ourselves wouldn't even predict.

A Hizathri licking her freshly laid egg... Hot and cute!

There will be, of course, simple decorative objects that don't react to when they are rubbed with wet bodyparts, so licking them would be pointless, aside from making your creature look silly and cute, which in some cases can be a desired effect, especially while roleplaying. Character will still reach and lick it regardless.

More creative uses of licking... (poses are very static because they are not animated yet, its all work-in-progress)

Speaking of roleplay, perhaps you're feeling lonely and want to lick another creature? 

Well for that you definitely need to "aim" your lick, because outcome of such action will be completely different depending on what part of their body you're licking... 

NPCs would theoretically (we haven't worked on NPCs yet) be able to react to that in different ways depending on some of their own variables (such as their personality or relationship with the player), while other players would get a prompt to allow or disallow such "inappropriate" action done to them.

Licking water is essentially the same as drinking it... 

One last example will be a body of water, which of course you can lick. What will it do? Since it's a liquid, It will get into your character's mouth to drink it, after that water will get inside the stomach and start to be digested/absorbed. In case water was muddy, some dirt items will get into the belly as well... And down the "rabbit hole" we go, simulation of the organism takes the wheel from this point, all up until it makes another puddle on the floor again, but this time it wouldn't be exactly water again (and will perhaps unlock some door with that)... 

However simulation of organism and items is a giant topic for another time, design of which we just recently drastically improved (but it still needs more work), for now that shall conclude this post! 

Hope you enjoyed all the images and gifs, as well as the much more adult style of this post, it feels good to have Patreon switched to adult and be able to share such lovely details with you! With this you will definitely get a better understanding on what we're working on exactly, and how the adult features seamlessly integrate with the regular ones!

Thank you for reading!