Sapphire Safari - Christmas Update v010 (Patreon)

Merry Christmas explorers! We have a very festive update for you all, just in time for the holidays, our gift to everyone for a fantastic year of development.

Where to start though? We have a lot to go through, so how about the content that took us the longest to build?

Judging and Score

The first version of our photo scoring system took a long time to get right, we had a lot to build to ensure players were making lovely photos and rewarding players playing well. We do this by measuring visibility, how much of the girl is seen, and focus or clarity. Next, we look at the framing of the subject in the photo, are they following the 2/3 rule or center framing? Finally, we add in bonuses for the nudity visible and additional points for photos submitted to the monpedia.

After a score is given for a photo a letter number is assigned to the photo, this will help players determine how well received a photo is.

Processing Photos

With the new 5.1 Unreal Engine upgrade, we managed to get a starting version of our ideal photo process system in place. Previously it was saving to the HDD a massive photo that would actually pause the game to process all the effects on the photo, if you have a slower hard drive in your PC this can sometimes take a second or two PER PHOTO. Unacceptable, it also pushed a full notification on the desktop about a screenshot being taken, also unacceptable. Our new system builds the photos in the engine much much faster and eliminates the need for post-processing burden on the CPU. The next step is building far more lens effects into the system so we do not need to rely on the cinematic system (as it's quite heavy).

Not only that we now have a much more pretty animation for snapping photos! A new UI for the camera is coming soon as well, so this whole focus should feel and play really nicely within the next few updates.

Nippy Wallows Island and new Monsters

The big new content update for v010 is the snow biome island called Nippy Wallows! This is the first version of the map, so things feel a little simple right now, but we have massive plans for the space!

“An almost impossible snowscape formed around a slow-moving glacier, the depth of which has yet to be confirmed. The landmass is the host to several undocumented species of monsters seemingly unaffected by their extreme isolation.”

We also have two new Monster Girls to photograph!

From left to right:

Snubuns: A natural evolution of the Bunny Monster found on another island. Snubuns have evolved extra thick padding around its body to insulate them from the cold and natural tufts of fur stop snow from reaching their torso while it moves around.

Rubee: It is not unusual to see these creatures gathered together attempting to shelter one another from the cold and likely predators. Its personality is quite skittish with all attempts at interaction ending in failure. Occasionally you’ll see a variation with a bright red nose.

These two girls are exclusive to Nippy Wallow!

Research Level

The last massive addition to the game which is just a little buggy right now is our Research Level mechanic. Within this new system, playing the game, getting photos judged, applying new content to the monpedia, everything increases your Research Level. Growing to new levels unlocks new content!

For the sake of showcase, in order to unlock the new island Nippy Wallow and the two new girls Rubee and Snubuns you need to level up your Research Level to level 2.

Supporters of the $5 tier or higher can find their downloads here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/76267856 

Changelog v010

• Added new island Nippy Wallow
• Added Rubee monster girl on Nippy Wallow
• Added Snubuns monster girl on Nippy Wallow
• Added v1 Photo scoring system
• Added v1 Retirement Level system
• Added additional props to Moana Tropic
• Updated Depart screen on boat menu
• Heavily optimized photo-saving system

We didn’t manage to finish our AI system overhaul this patch, and the state we had it in at the end of the development time (if we wanted to launch before Christmas that is) broke the whole game. So the next build should be a nice update as well.

We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas, our team is going to take a nice break and come back super fresh for 2023! We hope you join us!

Cheers,

Kinky