TheGatewayOfRealities

Early Prototype Game-Jam Build

One of the driving motivations for last month's endeavor was an attempt to make a tiny playable build in just that amount of time, for a Game Jam held on Itch.io.

And we did it! I wouldn't say the prototype is any good just yet, there is so much to improve. But despite unstable early-access engine, our untested API and me being knocked out for 10 days due to illness, we still managed something in a month!

This prototype is nothing exciting: its very short, it's extremely simple, f...

The Big Reboot

Apologies for taking a long time between updates: I re-wrote this post 5 times during the month, then when I had it almost ready, I got very ill (and still recovering). Overall we also needed more time until we could show some screenshots of what I'm about to talk. I hope you'll find it worthy of the wait!

* * *

So you all know how we haven't managed to make a new build in a few years, and despite us pushing for it with all out strength, it wasn't approaching any faster.

W...

Concept Art: Living Books and Scrolls

This is a short post, almost like a tweet. Just showing a concept-art pic I just finished, and more will come later!

So, lately I've been sketching and planning objects for the game, items, technology, interiors and exteriors... There is a lot of things design to fill the world with, and I'm taking all the shortcuts and simplifications I could think of. The tabletop prototype I talked about before is helping me a lot to make a choice between what sort of objects should be done first. 2022-01-12 15:32:30 +0000 UTC View Post

Happy holidays!

By Salireths.

Hello dear patrons! I wish you a murry x-mas and yappy holidays!

This time it will be a rather mediocre post, because this month so far was a bit of a lackluster: I attempted a bunch of ideas, but didn't get to finish any of them because I got into more prototyping, and the requirements kept changing all the time, as I discovered better ways of making things!

The Tabletop

The most important news is that I sta...

Protoessence, the seed of Dragons

Author: Salireths.

Foreword

Initially I said that the game will keep the adult features as optional, however since then I discovered many errors in such direction. By making any feature optional, it is essentially as not having it at all, except the time and a lot of effort has been spent on it nevertheless.

If a feature is optional, it means something else is intended as a core experience. Not only it would stretch my time even thinner, ...

Sexy Derg on the way

Apologies for the lack of posts lately, I was moving to a whole different country and looking for new apartment to rent, doing all the paperwork, etc. It took almost the entirety of September, but I think I did it all rather quickly, considering.

Dragon Character

Meanwhile I made some time to model the Dragon that you folks voted for! I utilized my new VR headset and Gravity Sketch to create him! And it was so much fun to do, I just couldn't go back to doing topolog...

Kobold - Remastered

The remastered version of the TGOR-Kobold avatar is here! Now available for social VR platforms like NeosVR and VRChat, and additionally for Blender usage for creating any render or animation you wish.

Available in our new Itch.io store, the first of many new things that are planned to be released there!

You can find more information about the a...

August Update

By Salireths.

Hello, dear Patrons!

It's not a huge update this time, but I'm doing the best I can to squeeze work in the little time I have between some potentially life-altering changes, both happening right now and coming up very soon.

I'm not going to cover all of these changes here, as some of them are personal, however even without that I have plenty to talk about:

Dragon Model

2021-08-21 11:28:19 +0000 UTC View Post

Dragons. For your pleasure.

By Salireths

And here we get to the round two of our voting poll! Previous round overwhelmingly shown the love, the desire, the lust for Dragons… Which is just perfect, after all, there is no one better than Dragons! So let's create a few!

I apologize this took a bit longer than I initially planned - I was busy investigating new venues of how I could extend the reach of our Gateway, but I'll get back to this another time, now let's talk design.

Help us make the best furry/scalie creator

After we somewhat sorted out the environment assets, landscapes, rocks and trees, and made sure they all fit within our particular art style (one that we still needed to figure out also), we went back to the much-anticipated character editor! (well, at least I anticipate it)

Right now we are in the middle of a lot of considerations for it. We're creating designs for creatures and mapping out every bone in their bodies, carefully measuring the implications of each technical decision for ...

Planting trees in our world

Author: Salireths

I've modelled and then added some neat trees and shrubbery into the level…

Of course it's not as simple as it sounds, especially since I never modeled proper semi-realistic trees before! That one old tree I did doesn't count - its way too cartoony. It was quite a learning experience, and I'm just getting started - I will be adding more tree species and variations over time.

With all this new shader and environment work that is going on, t...

New world art assets, more realism now?

Author: Salireths

In the previous post we have looked at the process of texture creation, however, game environments are not made just out of textures alone! Textures have to be applied to 3D geometry with the help of the shaders, and that's what I've been so busy creating.

Shaders are, roughly speaking, small programs that run on your GPU for each pixel on screen to render each frame. It accesses geometry and texture inf...

2021-06-01 13:32:20 +0000 UTC View Post

Why our textures are unlike other games

By Salireths

First I need to apologize for the lack of posts last month, I was knee-deep in reworking the graphics, and there wasn't just enough exciting things to show because they weren't finished yet!

This month I'll try make up for that with a few more updates.

Textures, everyone who is even remotely familiar with games knows this word (but not always what it means), this is what is responsible for creating all the wonderful details in the virtual worlds...

We reinvented game animation

By Salireths

A lot research and development has gone into this new animation tech, all to achieve an unprecedented character customizability and player-driven body control (including control over individual bodyparts), unlike anything the Furry Fandom has ever seen before!

But first, let me explain why it's so important that we chose to animate characters procedurally, instead of sticking with the original plan to do it how the most other games do it.

2021-03-28 05:52:26 +0000 UTC View Post

Role-Play or Action, what player are you?

I keep posting news about our new in-depth character customization system, and on the technical side we got it all covered, and it is progressing well! However, there is a number of different ways the ability to customize your character can be integrated into the gameplay.

In this poll I'd want to ask what approach you think you'd enjoy the most - I want to know what type of player you are, after all we're making this game for you!

Here is more information about each option, pleas...

Species that we want to see in-game

Author: Salireths

I made a wish-list of archetypes for our species customization system. There is a lot of options that we can add into the game, we're going to explore them in this post!

Keep in mind this post is text-heavy: I present you only the broad plans, not everything will end up in the game - it's not a promise of features, it's just work-in-progress ideas. You can use it as a reference of what to expect in the near-future creature designs, and also to su...

1 Model and ∞ Customizations

Author: Salireths.

The goal of the month was to put the character-creation process "on rails", all to make it faster to create models of bodyparts for customization system, as well as plan out a unified skeleton that can animate both bipedal or quadruped, "anthro" or "feral" creatures at once!

Material on this topic is not the most presentable just at the moment - it's still deeply work-in progres...

Still improving Characters, why?

AUTHOR: Salireths

Thank you

2020 has been a difficult year, so much that there is no need to elaborate why. Thankfully, we've had measurable progress on our game, even if not as much as I'd want to have.

I'm immeasurably grateful for all your continued support through these trying times (that are sadly not quite over at this moment). It enabled us to continue reaching for the stars and keep making our dream game. We might be a couple months behi...

Eight pillars of style

Author: Salireths

After I've completed the preview of the city, I found a way for the game to have a better art pipeline, one that would be much more fun for me to keep creating, would take less time to complete, and would have a unique look further reinforcing the new character style.

Khzandithri, the world puzzle assembles

Author: Salireths.

🔶🔷 Please note that all images and gifs shown in this post is a form of concept-art. While it is 3D, it is not representative of how it is going to look in-game. It is merely a preview lacking many details. 🔷🔶

By this point you are probably familiar with my struggles with level design, as my journey of making the hub-level hasn't been easy at all. It's not just enough to make a pretty level layout a...

Living Shuttles and AI Beginning

Living Shuttles

Author: Salireths

This month I've worked on many assorted things, ships, technology, gameplay, main game-area/vessel concepts... Which I've spent whole 15 days just trying to find what I need, thrown away countless ideas, scribbled dozens of sketches - all to find just one worthy concept...

I keep wondering, why is sci-fi so hard to do? If I were to make some generic fantasy castles and villages it...

2020-09-29 18:18:13 +0000 UTC View Post

Stats System

Author: Hopfel

Hi, it’s Hopfel again!
Previous month I have worked on the stats system and added a lot of features. All graphics shown are “programmer art” as usual and not meant to be the final look.

Effects

Due to our movement system being physically simulated we have direct access to how much energy is burned with locomotion. In the following gif you see the energy usage to the left (yellow) and stamina bar (orange)....

Making a bigger world to explore

Author: Salireths

This month I've dedicated to the multiverse of Khzandithri: creating the overworld map, and making other platforms visible in the background for player to see as they'd soar through the skies on their ship - something I drew on concept art before. Though I didn't quite get to making the actual ship yet, that will be the next month.

I also found some time to think about the mechanics of travelling. While its only on paper still, I'd like to pursue...

How we're making Interior Levels

Author: Salireths

The next build, and the beginning of the game in general, is going to take place on a ship that you use to travel - to do that we needed to up our game with the interior design.

If you remember, thus far we've been experimenting with various natural environments, but we've never allocated proper attention to the interiors (aside from boxy untextured level blockouts).

The challenge here is how to make a level-building system tha...

Weapons, items and where to put them

Author: Hopfel

(All art and interfaces shown in this post are mostly programmer art and not final. Readability and layout are subject to change once we do user studies so all mechanics are communicated to players appropriately.)

Items in TGOR are very valuable and we want to put emphasis on physical interaction. For this reason, items aren’t stackable but in turn allow for many different interactions. Among other things, one focus of this m...

Sexy environments, how and why

Author: Salireths

As I work more on environments, I realized that I need a better-fitted design language, as I wasn't happy with what I was getting with all the "crystallic" technology. It looks too industrial, doesn't suit a luxurious and comfort-loving species.

Taking a lot from the idea of tentacles and organic parts that I've shown in my previous posts, I decided to develop them further. I can make it match a new design goal, informed by the gameplay and the s...

How we improve custom-species editor

Author: Salireths

While it all started as just an experiment, the new art-style has exceeded my most optimistic expectations!

It keeps proving itself being a much faster (hours instead of days) and fun way to make new body-part models for creating all kinds of species, and with its unique appearance it just captivates me, I can't look away from it! 

...

Home-Instance work in progress

Author: Salireths

Last week (a bit more) I've been hard at work conceptualizing player home. 

In our current iteration, player starts the game in their home, and then familiarize themselves with the core game mechanics in a safe environment before they get to start venturing into the world.

Just a disclaimer: anything can change, it's all work in progress ideas, sketches, and rough black and white blockout models. However I'm q...

2020-04-10 18:07:29 +0000 UTC View Post

Fantasy of our Game

Author: Salireths

According to a recent conversation in our Discord, some people are still unsure what the game is about... Honestly, I don't blame them even though I made a lot of posts about it. Gameplay design is a complex topic after all!

So, in this post, I'll approach this question again and try to explain it from a new angle.

Plus, of course, many things have changed since the original simple "dinosaur life sim with adult features" premise, the theme ...

Vore, Textures, New Character Style

Author: Salireths

This month was loaded with working on a bunch of small features (and art) that together add up towards the build. While we started a bunch of things, we didn't have quite enough time to polish them and make them fully presentable, so instead, in this post we're going to show a bunch of work-in progress shots of what's been worked on last month, and we would love to keep on making posts like these more often. 

     &n...