One more Sapphire Document for the books. Let’s talk about the Christmas update coming this month!

Unreal 5.1 update

Yes, we have been building around issues that Unreal Engine 5.0 had, these have mostly been corrected for us in the new version 5.1. Let me explain. First, we have new tools for Navmesh placement and AI pathfinding.

The Navmesh update finally can build around our environment assets leading to much more natural ai pathfinding - aka no more monster girls running against a tree like a dumdum. The ai can now see how they can navigate, what they can fit under, and what they cannot. It’s a really solid update.

Next AI building tools have been updated, aka State Tree. I mentioned this a few times already in our older dev blogs, but the new tool is really really nice!

Here is what the old fleeing ai graph looked like

And here is what the state tree version looks like, which also mixes in other ai states they can act on.

The quick version of this tool is that our AI will be vastly more responsive along with us being able to add far more requirements and complicated setups to get exactly what we want from the system. Cool stuff!

The other tool that we want to make use of in this 5.1 update is the new keybinding system they have, this will come in a later update as we are guessing it will possibly break a lot of things in the game, so we would need to dedicate a longer dev time to it.

Lastly, we are still looking to swap from a screenshot system to an internal capture system with an image output to speed up the photo-saving process, but we will need to test this more before I am confident we can release it to the public.

Moana Tropic Assets

The asset list for Moana Tropic continues to grow, first, we have our “abandoned campsite” for our main narrative being built, this also includes assets for side quests and loot boxes to find in the environment.

Next, we have a POI asset for our massive ancient tree mentioned in the Moana Tropic description. This will likely be our first “Monster Den” asset for the game. More info on that soon!

New Map sneak peek!

We are building a new “Winter-Themed” map so we can start enabling our Research Level system for player unlocks. The first step is doing a small overhaul to the Depart Tab in the boat menu. No longer does it make me motion sick with the camera movements!

The islands are also clickable now on the HUD presented. Not sure how we will handle the discovery of new islands. We will test and see what works.

So the map itself is a snow biome area, we are going to make just a small area playable from the beginning due to the player needing access to the “Winter Clothing” tool we have yet to build. Anyways here is a sneak look!

Obviously, this is a WIP look at the map, so it will likely change in the future a considerable amount if the path loops are not fun.

Cheers for now! Stay tuned for the release sometime before Christmas!

Thanks,
Kinky