About this image

Not much to say about that one. Not much to be seen in here either. Just my loving dragon couple, Drake and Kaira, in their human/Breton shapes. Thought it'd be fitting for Valentine's Day, but due to heavy workload yesterday I again missed the mark. It wasn't really taken with anything specific in mind, I just found the scene interestingly comfy, when Kaira went to sleep in a shabby old Inn and Drake accompanied her until up to the bed.

I patched SultericDrums' companion Stoker Wolff to look like Drake here, like I already did Viconia DeVir to look like Kaira before, so I can switch him and the Creature Dragon in and out whenever I like now (there's only 1 Drake, and he's either in human(oid) shape OR dragon form, the other is each time just left behind/stowed away in a towing cell). Playing along their individual quests and romancing features also does a lot in role playing the two and their relation, if I feel like it.

One day I will create my own two companions, Drake and Kaira, like who they really are, with all their unique features, abilities, interactions and stuff, just like in my (head)stories, and without copying or re-using anybody else's frameworks as well. But for the time being, the two mods only patched by me locally will suffice. Besides, it's already giving me lots and lots of ideas.

Speaking of the Creature Dragon, I'm sadly seemingly not in the mood currently to continue work on this one for a while. Every time I open Blender and look at the incomplete lacking model, I immediately turn away again after a couple minutes of inactivity and thinking, with just a "nah, maybe another time" ending thought in my mind.


I re-visitied my "procedurally generated mazes" framework again in the meantime, very pleasantly also performing a huge lot better and smoother than before on my new machine now. The randomly created mazes can actually be traversed now without any stuttering or slow-downs anymore, dynamic lighting and random visual effects included as well.

I'm currently adding in random regionally controlled environment clutter and monsters, spiders for a start (yeah, I know, nothing for Arachnophobes), but I'm in the process of teaching them to "web up" their environments based on rules and procedural calculations, so I won't have to dive into cluttering up the environments myself anymore either, once I'm done. The inhabitants will do it for me, and just like the mazes themselves I won't even know the outcome before I see it with my own eyes.

As an added bonus, this cluttering up is not a "once-only" event either but a continuously repeated one. The spiders will actually "expand" their nest, and the longer you stand and just watch, the dungeon will become more and more covered up in their cobwebs, entangling traps you better not get yourself into too much, or signaling threats alarming every spider nearby of your, or anybody else's for that matter, presence when touching them.

This being spiders is only a start, a proof of concept, if you like. Later on the kinds of inhabitants will increase, and what they clutter up their environments with will follow suit accordingly. Maybe two kinds of maze inhabitants will clash, maybe cooperate, or perhaps they'll mutually "divide" the territory into controlled areas, and only those incautiously venturing into each will suffer the consequences. We'll see where this gets me, when I get there.

Well, that much about the theory. As of right now it's just fun watching things develop. Be it ideas I have to integrate into the existing scheme, or be it the actual maze and its environments, as designed by its inhabitants in game during runtime, instead of me or anybody else having to do all the design and cluttering work and knowing the outcome already before even visiting it.


I hope to continue with my other projects as well again soon, but this lack of free time doesn't exactly help with my lack of motivation either.
But enough of this status report spam for now. Enjoy the picture, tell me your thoughts about my numerous running and future projects, if you like, or just enjoy your day!