Planning How to Expand & Avatar Progress

Rrah-Rrah!
I'm a bit late with the post - I'm considering a lot of ideas which I didn't want to talk about before I was absolutely sure. But now I feel like I found my way that is worth talking about.

Levelling Up

First up, here's a short story about my development struggles and successes.

A few years ago, my discontent with Unreal Engine's reliance on a incomprehensible for me programming language forced me to begin a journey of learning. I studied different game engines and their programming languages in hopes it would give me an ability to create again. I turned to Godot because it has a similar programming language to Python - something I was relatively comfortable with thanks to Blender expertise. Then, after my introduction to VRChat, I began poking at Unity and learning C#. After a while of making a bunch of bad game prototypes (which I refuse to show) I got comfortable with C#, so much I could even write standalone programs. This was a huge breakthrough for me, I felt like I leveled up! However working with Godot and Unity still had me miss Unreal Engine's many features I fell in love with, but I still hesitated. It's a deep dungeon with a boss blocking the entry - my oldest nemesis, the C++ programming language.

Recently, I worked up the courage and decided to try it again though... And realized that I can actually do it now. I can program! All the years of training has led me to this moment! Turns out, Unreal Engine's C++ is not that much different from Unity's C#, but if not for the experience I got, it would continue to overwhelm me. And the great IDE I purchased, which has helped me tremendously with C#, is now helping me with C++ as well (JetBrains Rider).

Finally, that I've got my programming skills to a comfortable level for game-dev, I'm finally ready to continue work on the game by myself, in an engine I know and love. I feel like I have the freedom to create again, and it's downright inspiring. But, as much as I'd love to bunker down for a few months and just program a game without showing any progress to anyone - it's obvious it won't bring me enough income to survive further...

This is why I've been working on plans how to improve what I create on the internet - especially how to turn it into a proper business that would excite people again. Something that hopefully would be able to bring enough income to support my life expenses so I can continue working on what I crave for people to finally experience. I want to fix my past mistakes, to give people something to enjoy no matter what state the game is in. And it's paramount for my health to do that without the immense pressure to produce playable builds regularly (which turned out wasn't really achievable).

What Dragotheria is About

The game I still want to make can be described as an RPG set in the same unique biological-fantasy world I have created (and continue to work on every day). Game should be smaller, singleplayer, but it's still all about Dragons (and other creatures) in various adult, dark, sexual, violent, biologically unsettling themes. A place to forego your humanity and transform into something else, alien, primordial, feral. You know, the good stuff everyone totally enjoys!

But the trick is, this time it's not "The One True Game" I wish to make as my (and Patreon's) main focus, instead I would love everyone to look at Dragotheria as a collection of different works unified by the same world, represented as an assortment of various products. A franchise if you will, except on an smaller, indie scale. The game is one part of it, and it's a very long-term project.

There is a big practical reason to that. For example, while working on any game, I'm creating levels, landscapes, dungeons - and all the assets for them. It's a lot of work (majority of it even) which I noticed isn't very exciting for people just to see screenshots of on Patreon. That is not great for my motivation nor my income.

But I realized something, since I'm making an RPG, it makes me think of an audience who does like to build and explore their dungeons - the Tabletop RPG crowd. And hey, since we have Dragons here already, what if I offered some Dungeons for those who support me? Using the same assets created for the game, I could utilize my resourcefulness of an experienced tech artist to render beautiful battle-maps in Unreal Engine 5 with all of it's dynamic lighting and my fancy shaders. I could speed it up by programming my own building tools, which would also help me make levels for the game.

After this idea, I began thinking intensely - what other aspect of game development can also be useful as some other product?

I could make a prototype of the RPG game using Virtual Table Top systems: it could start with something simple to try out skills, stats and rules. Game design is all about quick iteration, so testing out game ideas in action, before having to spend time on programming, promises to be very efficient. But I could also invite people, making it actually fun and playful for myself to develop further, and to bring some enjoyment to people participating or watching the recordings of game sessions! It could even generate some material to narrate abridged retellings of for YouTube. If the TTRPG version of the game turns out any good, it would be great to one day publish it as a standalone system or an array of supplements with plenty of my art and worldbuilding packed inside, but we can think about it later - we've got to get the basics done first.

The 3D character models I create for the game can be rendered as tokens and customizable portraits, allowing people not only use them for tabletops, but also to pose and render personal character reference sheets (e.g. for commissioning art of them). And I can provide some Blender tutorials to help people work with these 3D models.

Even the Avatars I'm making for VR are part of the Dragotheria world. They are much higher quality model versions of what the RPG game will use (and thus they require much more time to make). And they can be used for more than just VR - they can be posed and rendered for high quality 3D art things for various tastes and needs. Also, animations are a thing people tend to enjoy too, and I can even try myself at making comics. Obviously, the comics would be set in the Dragotheria, giving me a chance to reveal more of this fascinating world!

New Directions

With those new directions, my art is now split into two distinct categories, which I simply called "SD" and "HD". Let's recap some of the possibilities:

SD: Characters and environmental assets, primarily created for the RPG game. Possible uses:

• RPG Video Game.

• Virtual Table Top RPG maps, tokens, art for supplement PDF and VTT compendia.

• Customizable, poseable characters and ref-sheet renders.

• Art, animations and comics.

HD: Characters created for usage in social VR platforms as Avatars (and accessories for them). Possible uses:

• Social VR Avatars.

• Advanced customizable, poseable characters and ref-sheet renders.

• Art, animations and comics.

All of this, of course, requires additional work and dedication. It's not simply a "byproduct" of me working on a game, but something I'll be spending time to create specifically for people to use. It's very important that those projects are also successful business-wise so they could sponsor my work on the game and further Dragotheria projects.

If you have more ideas of what I can pursue, please let me know! I'm always open for suggestions. All I want is to make it possible for people to enjoy Dragotheria before its video-game part gets to a playable state.

Now, I'd love to have a lightning round segment to share some of the progress I've had recently, what I'm working on and what I'm planning to finish soon. There is not much to show cause I've mostly been programming tools and I didn't have time to make much art using them yet, but soon I will...

HD Art Style (Avatars)

Finalized Shader in Blender, with a click of a button people will be able to swap scales to feathers to fur on different areas of the body.

Imported model in Unreal Engine, where I had to re-create the same shader to make it look the same in-engine. This is done so I can render high-quality art with my Avatar models and pose them quickly using cool Unreal Engine's features (though they require more time to get working).

I wasn't able to recreate my Blender's saliva shader in Unreal Engine - but I'll be looking into other ways to make bubbles form in the mouth, perhaps with particles or its new fluid sim features even!

I'm glad I began with importing to Unreal, as opposed to Unity and directly to VRChat. I'm in the process of a lot of refactoring and renaming so this and any future models remain compatible with both engines.

I'm making tools for easy customization and export. My avatars are advanced and would be impossible to customize for other people normally, but these tools make it easy even for someone who has never opened Blender before (provided they watch my tutorials first, which I still have to work on before release).

One of such tools was finished: the color customization system. It's a collection of hundreds of color pickers and sliders that affect what color and material the character's different regions of body are.

I'm working on another system, a way to pick and choose body-part variants for the character, and merge them down into an optimized model. Ears, horns, manes and fins - all the optional bits.

Last system in my Blender tools plugin is export. I'm programming a custom exporter to make the characters appear in Unity with just a couple clicks. It's not trivial to make...

After that is done, Unity setup still remains. I will also need to make a copy of my shaders there, animate wings, add more VRChat specific customizations and features, prepare documentation, tutorial videos and finally release it... So much work D:

Additionally, I made tools to create fur in Blender. Normally making stylized fur like this takes way too long, but now I have a quick way of authoring it using curves in a few minutes. I used it for a commission, but I'll also be using it for any upcoming HD style Avatar models too. Someone in VRC suggested to release it publicly also.

SD Art Style (Games)

The Avagal model is an example of SD character style.
It's not breathtaking by any means, but it gets the design idea across and still looks rather cute! Initially I made it for a Unity prototype, but I'm improving it now by increasing texture resolution and writing a shader to give an ability to customize their colors in Blender and Unreal (maybe later Unity too?). After that's done I'll be ready to make dozens of similar character models in less than a month.

I'm planning how bodypart swapping, damage states and dismemberment will work. Not going to show a screenshot of it here, but it's an important part of the game to present how damaged the character is. Don't worry, tis but a flesh wound! It can be healed with Dragon organic technology, and if not - there are those who specialize at producing new bodies for those whose was destroyed. It's also to make it easy to swap between different body-parts on the SD models similar to how it works on HD Avatar models already (e.g. for the NSFW bits).

I'm working on modular level assets.
Snappable building blocks for walls, floors ceiling, decorations, textures, decals, etc. I've done this before, but I wasn't very efficient because I was trying to be "original" with my designs, without mastering the fundamentals of environmental art first. This time I took plenty of references to fill the gaps in my knowledge - talking to other game developers (now that I met them in VRChat) and getting a behind-the-scenes tour on some of the big game productions also helped tremendously. At first I'm creating these grids for measure, when that is done and I'm sure it works, I will be adding actual textured walls - "measure twice, cut once".

Conclusion

Thank you for reading!

There is also one more thing that will take some of my time away soon: I want to return back to YouTube, so instead of these long hard-to-read posts I could create entertaining videos for everyone to see and hear once again.

As you can see, I'm overloaded with tasks to do, but I've got to make it work - Patreon is my only income source and I have no safety nets protecting me from a certain fall.

This is why I thank you so much for your continued support in these trying times.

With lots of Dragon Love,
- SalirethS.