Tamer: King of Dinosaurs News

Hello fans!

Our monthly update was a bit delayed by the holiday. We hope you all had a great season.

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We're almost finished with the new romance map which we've been calling the "Onyx Forest." So who will you enjoy some quality time with in this area?

That would be Sheela, of course.

This is actually her second romance quest, and it's one of the more interesting ones in the game. Sheela approaches Victor and asks her to make a special weapon - something that can handle large dinosaurs.

Victor agrees to help, and this leads to them going on some good old hunting rounds together so they can get the materials necessary to make it.

We've mentioned this before, but Sheela is unique in that her romance quests involve combat, where the other girls do not. Her third quest in particular involves some serious deadly predators, and we'll be showing that off sometime early next year when the map is finished.

Also, here's the area of the map that leads into the onyx forest:



And two more areas that have received a significant amount of work lately:





UPCOMING ROMANCE MAP

So what's next for the romance maps? That would be the harvest grove! We're not even going to try to hide it - this one is for Galmine.

We'll talk more about what the quest entails once it is nearing completion.

For now, please enjoy this excellent concept art! Can you guess what the plot is about from the picture alone? Let us know!



ALPHA TESTING

We're happy to announce that Tamer is already fully testable in a pre-alpha state and that we'll be upgrading to alpha by the end of the year!

The first alpha build will be tested internally. Once we have a good handle on everything, we'll be recruiting testers for the next iterations and getting general feedback on the game.

Below you can see the upgraded race module in action. We'll likely have a video showing this off next week.

You know, it's funny...the whole racing concept came about when we started doing the first few tests and realized that riding dinos actually felt really awesome and we wanted it to be a significant part of the gameplay.

Now it's one of our favorite aspects of the project!

We're all big Mario Kart fans and we think you'll feel and enjoy the similarity between how the dinos control and how smooth and casually satisfying it can be, especially the boost system.



SHEELA ROMANCE

We talked about Sheela's second romance scene in this post, but the first one is shaping up to be one of the best! Right now we're cleaning up the animation for the post-NSFW sequence, which is really touching and reveals a lot about Sheela and Victor's relationship.

Our actors absolutely knocked it out of the park!

Here you can see the shoot in real life:



And here's how it translated to 3D. As you can see, we have some cleanup to do to get them together and holding hands. FYI - making characters hold hands in animation is a massive pain in the ass, but the actor's insisted we have that extra layer of intimacy for this scene and they were 100% right!

Well worth it, and it will show in the final product.




KACERIE NSFW TEASE


Here is a picture of Victor doing some reverse cooch-muching on the eager Kacerie. Not much else to say about it...we're working on "the pink one" and her scenes now and finding it to be a lot of fun.

We'll post some NSFW preview videos on our Discord server soon!

Revamped Game Trailer for Tamer: King of Dinosaurs:
We're thrilled to share our updated SFW trailer for "Tamer: King of Dinosaurs"! After some adjustments to comply with platform guidelines, we've added two new scenes starting at 1:05—catch Trel's formidable stance and Sheela's personal revelations.

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Meet the New Kacerie:


We’ve revamped Kacerie's design to better align with her depiction as a high-fashion model in the books. Her updated look features a more aesthetically pleasing face and fuller, flowing hair. Check out these previews of Kacerie showcasing her new look in various outfits.

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NSFW Scene Audit:
Our team has meticulously reviewed all NSFW content to enhance appeal and efficiency. Exciting improvements are underway, and we invite you to view an uncensored preview on our Discord server.


NSFW Sheela Preview:
Our animation team is currently focusing on Sheela, ensuring her submissive yet passionate nature shines through in her scenes. We're experimenting with dynamic, cat-like poses that highlight her devotion and agility, including a unique carry-fuck pose. Exclusive preview videos are now available for our Awesomesaurus-tier supporters on Discord.






Romance Scene Concept:
Inspired by the breathtaking Azores, our latest romance scene concept aims to recreate this unique setting in the game. This mysterious location and the lucky lady accompanying you there are waiting to be discovered in-game.





Cutscene and Animation Progress:
We’re diving back into cutscene production with an additional hour of scenes to block this month. This phase sets the stage for the fully realized scenes, which will include advanced lighting, VFX, and post-processing effects. Keep an eye out for more polished previews and video updates as we enhance the game's visual storytelling.








Fort Progress:
We've been focusing on enhancing the fort—your primary base in the game—with detailed elements that reflect each character's role.













Fort Gate Concept:
Innovating from the book's description, we’ve conceptualized the fort’s gate as a vertically flipping "doggy door." Our concept artists have crafted detailed illustrations to guide our 3D modeling process, ensuring the gate functions seamlessly within the game environment.




What’s Next? Dino Racing:
We're adding an exhilarating new dino racing feature to spice up map traversal. This competitive mode promises a natural and exciting addition to the gameplay.

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Expect more details in a Patreon-exclusive update next month.

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We'd like to give a warm welcome back to the general public! Since this is the first update of the month, it will be available to everyone.

For those that support us on Patreon, you know that last week we discussed putting together an updated trailer for YouTube that will allow us to dodge the adults-only tag. This black mark unforunately destroys us when it comes to the algorithm and made the trailer very hard to find and display.

Apparently YouTube doesn't like sexy spider-women talking about being inseminated or horny cat girls straddling our protagonist in front of a fire, so we're going to replace both of those sequences.

One will be of Trel standing up on her legs Doctor Octopus style and intimidating Victor during their first meeting. The other will be Sheela standing solo in the jungle looking sexy.

Here's a very rough, unlit preview of the Sheela sequence:



Those abs...my god.

The updated trailer is expected to hit early next week, so we'll post it for everyone as soon as it's uploaded. Then there will likely be a separate update post at the end of the week exclusive to our Patreons.

GALMINE POLL WINNING OUTFIT

One of the perks of being a Ride the Lion Patreon is getting to vote on our sexy outfit polls! As you can see in the video and from the preview pics below, we've completed Galmine's most recent outfit and it turned out really damn good.



We're currently doing some revisions to Kacerie's model, so once that's ready we'll have an outfit poll for her to celebrate!

BIRDERMIC TECH

Also featured in the video is a simple but important environment tech that we've developed. It allows us to give the appearance of having many birds on the screen without severely impacting performance by actually having a ton of 3D models in action.

For those that have read the books you know that this is key because the pelagornis, aka the orange birds, are a menacing presence faced by the tribe all throughout the first book.

You'll fight them several times to defend the cave while your fort is being cosntructed, so this tech gives us the opportunity to make them even more intimidating. We can also control the speed and density of this effect, so we can get exactly the feel we want.

3D TO CONCEPT

Right now we have the entire map constructed in 3D and fully traversable by our actors. However, we still don't have a 100% clear idea of how we want it to look. That means we benefit greatly before making the detail pass by having a solid concept artist show us the potential of these piles of polygons.

What we do is take a video and many screenshots of the important areas and pass it on to our artist, like the one below:



Then they come back to us with an awesome concept like this:



This gives us exactly what we need to add the necessary details. We'll show you an updated comparison once we finish the detail pass on the map, but this will happen later down the line when we look to upgrade from alpha to beta.

PROLOGUE ANIMATION

If you've read the Tamer books (and if you haven't, you can get the first one for free...SO WHY HAVEN'T YOU?) then you know all about the epic pool party with Victor on Earth.

You can also see exactly how it looks in the Tamer Visual Novel, which is available on YouTube for free.

Here's a playlist of all the current visual novel videos!





As soon as the studio finished reading the books we began to discuss if it was viable to recreate this Earth sequence in 3D. We quickly came to conclusion that while we really wanted to do it, it would take a ton of additional assets like over a dozen hot babes in bikinis.

This would be a massive resouce sink and didn't include any actual gameplay or romance scenes, so we decided to pass on it.

This also extended to Victor's arrival on Dinosaurland after the initial alien abduction.



Here he meets shark-man-warrior Heracula and military monkey bro Sergent Kelg right before they get into a big scrap with some deinonychus.



Since we already have some excellent 2D art and an amazingly talented animator that is happy to work with us, we decided to repurpose these visual novel assets and create an awesome 2.5D parallax animation to kick off Tamer!

This will not only look awesome, it will massively cut down on the runtime before players get to the actual game. We didn't want everyone sitting through 45 minutes of cutscenes, so we know this will be the best solution to get the critical prologue information across while still setting a good pace.

And since we have the actual VN available, players still have the option of watching the full introduction on YouTube.

We're going to try and finish this before the end of the year, but it might get postponed until Q1 2024 depending on how production goes and what requires our attention.

WHAT'S NEXT

Next week on our Patreon we'll have the new trailer for the game available. See you there!

Hello fans! Welcome to our first Steam update (this is for August 2024).

DEVELOPER INTERVIEW

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We wanted to give you some more inside information on not just the game's progress but how this whole thing started, and we're bringing it to you in the form of a collaboration video with one of our studio members who also happens to be a long-time YouTuber.

We were impressed with Halfpint's dedication to providing fair and solid coverage of a variety of titles from the mainstream to even indie adult, so we asked him to help us provide feedback on our own project.

Little did we know at the time that he was pursuing a career in video game development himself! He proved to be a valuable asset to the studio, so we brought him on as a real team member to help out the studio management and even do level design and map work in Unreal Engine.

This is the first time the general public will be able to see an interview with the madman behind this whole thing, Michael-Scott Earle, as he talks about why he decided to turn his best-selling series, Tamer: King of Dinosaurs, into a video game as well as the progress of everything.

It's a really great, in-depth look at what it takes to make a project like this happen, so please enjoy!

We're also considering doing some future Q&A in a format like this when we have further updates to make, so please let us know what you want to hear about the game!

CUTSCENE PROGRESS

We now have over half of the cutscenes in the game blocked out with cameras or posed with full sequencer timing down.

This has been a really tough process, but it's paying off!

Tamer's narrative, especially the romance with the hot alien babes, is its key selling point.

We think people are going to be blown away at the sheer volume and quality of footage we were able to produce with this game as a small indie studio. We truly feel it's impressive stuff and we're going to be sharing more with you as production continues.

We still need to wait for final environments to wrap them up like you see in the demo that's available for download on Steam now, but here's a few previews of the pre-alpha blocking with raw performance capture for some scenes that will be in the full game:



And of course, one of our romance scenes with fully clothed actors:


As you can see from the image above, we still have a lot of animation cleanup to do once the cameras are established. This is especially true for the romance scenes where character's limbs stretch and bend in all sorts of sexy ways.

If you want to see some more spicy previews, consider supporting us here so you can see our monthly BTS content on our Discord server!

MAP PROGRESS

We're making more progress with the map and have started installing the VFX like atmospheric fog, which you can see here.



The landscape is also coming together nicely. We're starting to add some smaller details and bringing cohesion to some areas.

Each area of Tamer's map is broken down into different biomes, and each one represents a different kind of gameplay and level of alert.

Below you can see the valley:


This is where the fort and cave exists and it is the safest area in the game, generally speaking. You might have to deal with some occasional apex predators wandering in and ruining your day, but no spoilers for now.

Something else we haven't discussed yet is that our map features some nice Metroidvania-style progression when it comes to unlocking paths.



Victor and Sheela can generally reach most of the early map on their own, but you will occasionally reach areas with things like fallen logs and brambles that need to be cleared to progress.

So how do you do it? By taming dinosaurs, of course! As you tame larger and larger dinosaurs, you'll be able to break through these barriers and open up much larger areas with greater challenges and rewards.



Something else to note is that some paths are simply too narrow for some dinosaurs. When you encounter these, you'll need to go ahead on foot. This is a tough decision to make because there are some seriously dangerous dinosaurs out there.

Not having access to a mount to run away could cause fatal outcomes if you're not ready to fight, but this is part of the excitement of the game! The map should feel like a real pre-historic jungle with danger lurking around every corner, and that's how we want the player to feel when they choose to enter these areas.

WHAT'S NEXT

The second update of August will have a video showing Victor riding around on Hope (his first parasaur mount) through the game's map.

We'll also talk about future demo content and when you can expect it at that time!

We know that many people enjoyed our NSFW demo but wanted more than just a sex scene simulator, so we're talking about plans to give our supporters access to real gameplay soon.

That's all for now!


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