Hello esteemed explorers! Welcome to another developer diary for Sapphire Safari, today we will go over our mechanics porting to UE5 along with some very exciting jiggle physics!
Early on in this pivot, we made the decision to build the game around first-person mechanics, this would allow us to focus on content and scenes above the player, build scale both of our monster girls and the environment better, along with making stealth and peeping way more engaging. As such we also needed to scale back the traversal mechanics as well.
Players will still be able to climb, mantle, jump, etc, these will all just be context-sensitive. So do not expect a dedicated jump button and to be bunny hopping around the environment!
We also have built the first-person camera with the ability to see your own body! Female perspective anyone?
Here is the first look at the Depth of Field working with our new UE5 camera system.
Previously we had a focus on keeping all the photography done in Sapphire Safari "within" the game, mostly we wanted to make sure we could work within closed systems like consoles and such. However, with this UE5 build, we figured focusing on quality was vastly more important to the user experience as the quality of the image stays very consistent if we are actually writing to the hard drive (kinda like taking a screenshot but vastly more detailed). Below is an example of what the full image is written to a PC will look like. Keep in mind I had to compress this to make sure it fits as our quality options for the photos taken can be set however you like.
Here is an example of what the system does after taking a photo.
The problem we are combating with this solution is that there can be a noticeable lag due to content being written on the PC but lowering quality options can make for some jaggy-looking photos. Our best solution here is to match the user's screen resolution for the game and scale up and down the quality from there, but ultimately those choices can be modified by the needs of the end-user.
Here are two examples of this, the first image is set to the user's screen resolution (3446x1361), and the second is half that output (1725x680). The second image is way way faster to process than the first but at a cost of overall quality. However we expect that this won't affect most users, and those thirsty for greater detail will have to take the hit to performance for what they desire.
Here is an example of the zoom and focus tools working in-game, and how they can affect the photos you take. The focus was adjusted to make buns look detailed with the rest being out of focus.
And now, onto the jiggles! We spent a bit of time working with UE5 and the physics systems they have to make sure that breasts, butts, tails, ears, thighs, and all those good things wiggle in a realistic manner that does not break immersion.
Here are some earlier attempts.
Without too many constraints things tend to go wild. Here is what after some tweaking it looks like.
This is looking really nice, and it is all thanks to our new rig along with the physics engine that comes with Unreal 5. Lastly, for this post I wanted to show off a WIP shot of our second Monster Girl, the Monkey!
She has a lot more work to go, but so far her face is in a nice spot. There seems to be a reason you do not see a lot of Monkey Girl waifus, as that monkey-like face is really hard to get right!
Hope you enjoyed the post, we will have more information soon!