Hello everyone! It has been a few weeks since we dropped any information about our development for the game. The short version is that we are currently working on overhauling the scoring tech in the game, we have met some issues with specifically how Unreal Engine handles focusing and reporting that back to a usable state so we are building our workarounds.
That does not mean we have been sitting idle though, let’s break down some of the brand-new features expected to drop when the scoring gets sorted out.
Weather, Lunar Cycles, Lighting, and Time Passing
One great new feature of our game is a new lighting system. As of the next patch, the following will happen in-game:
- Weather effects have been added to Sapphire: Rain, Storms, Cloud coverage, and Fog. Other biomes will also have unique effects, but we won’t be tweaking those models until we get to that content.
- Volumetric clouds now affect the light within the world: Sun and Moon in the sky can be blocked by clouds, and the density and quantity of cloud coverage depend on the weather. It will be darker depending on how covered the sky is.
- Lunar Cycles progress per day: The Moon can progress from a New Moon to a Full Moon within Sapphire. We are still deciding on how long it will take to do so, as a major event will happen island-wide on a Full Moon.
- Day Tracking: Sapphire now has a 7-day cycle Monday - Sunday. Currently, this does not mean much, but updates to the bounty system along with the hotly anticipated intimacy update which adds in a variety of predator-related fail states, skipping days, or running out of time for objectives will be something that can happen. Island events can now also be tied to a specific day and time. To help with this a new UI system has been created, our goal is to include a lot of details in the system, so feedback on readability would be very much appreciated.
Music
A nice quality update coming in v021 is the music system and musical tracks made just for this game. We will be launching the early access game with 6ish tracks that will bring a lot of charm and vibes to Sapphire Island.
These include:
- Intro: a track for the Intro and Loading Screens of Sapphire Safari, likely to be added to trailers and promo media.
- Day and Night exploration tracks: Music that plays during normal exploration of the island during the Day and Night.
- Menu: a track for when the player activates the menu or submits photos.
- Stealth: a track that plays when the player enters Stealth or begins exploring a Nest.
- ???: a special tack that happens ■■■■■■ and ■■■■■ ■■■ ■■■■■■■ ■■ so be sure to keep your ears open for it.
Video link
Scoring
The elephant in the room is our scoring system. We needed to very much overhaul what goes into a photo score, and be able to score photos differently depending on the application. For example, a close-up of an open vagina won’t score well for a monpedia entry, but it will score very high for a bounty asking for a bunny girl vagina close-up. To do this we have created a color masking system, this means that the model's parts we want to track are colored, and a mask is used to filter out what the camera can and cannot see as a photo is taken. This leads to accurate identification of just what is inside a photo, meaning we can start to score photos better.
The basic rules are as follows:
- the more pixels are visible for a region, the more visible that region is.
- if we cannot see particular regions we can score things differently: Close-ups of faces can be scored differently than a full body shot, and a photo that considers landscapes applies scores for good use of the Rule of Thirds.
- for gameplay purposes, scores will be capped to a B+ unless the player takes a photo of the Perfect Point or PP of that particular animation. Hitting a PP on a drinking animation allows the photo to be scored much higher. Gameplay systems will be added to help the player identify the PP points.
- exclusions on animations now affect scoring: you cannot get a picture of a fox tail when they are drinking and have it be considered a drinking animation. Now a character will be excluded completely unless they have some of the scored areas visible in the frame.
As for the problems I mentioned above, the issue of focus comes about when the player wants to turn off the assistance systems we have and manually control ISO and DOF for their photos. We do not want to score a blurry photo the same as a well-focused photo so we need tools to understand if something is in the right focus. Hence why it is taking so long, the systems inside Unreal Engine 5 as a baseline do not give instant feedback, which makes it difficult to know the content.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1526900/Sapphire_Safari/
Anyway, that is it for now. We will continue to tweak the systems until we can get it perfect. Sorry for the delay on all this. Expect a fantastic patch once it is ready though!