Hello explorers! Welcome to another phat build of Sapphire Safari! Version 018 took us WAY longer than we ever could anticipate, reasons I'll go into later in the post. The highlights? We have a metric assload of new general animations, thousands of interactable points for monster girls, new AI systems, new photo goals, and tracking systems. I kid you not, this patch was a huge labor of love, and now it is time to share it all with you!

Every Mon a Goal

The biggest feedback our players have given us is directly related to the input and feedback systems related to goal tracking and overall completion. It was always our goal to make this immediately visible to players, and now we are very close to that goal.

The Guide Book is the new way to interact with all completion-related goals, in this patch we focused entirely on the Monpedia experience. This means we have a system for making discoveries of Monster Girls, tracking the photos you have taken of them, and learning more about their biographies and habits.

Finding discoveries is easy, simply use your camera and collect proof! Anything undiscovered is listed in the Monpedia as a silhouette so be sure to cat…SNAP them all!

Each species will also have its own full tracking goal to complete. 9 photos for the General Tab and all their Variations of fur/skin/scale colors are now goals the player can view and submit for.

The General category of the Monpedia was our first overhaul for the patch. Within it, players will need to submit the best-scored photo possible for each type of behavior for every species of Monster Girl. The behaviors added in this patch are the following:

• Eating: Photos of the target eating and drinking things found in the world. 
• Sleeping: Photo of the target sleeping (currently WIP).
• Grooming: Photo of the target bathing, or grooming.
• Socializing: Photo of the target talking/laughing (currently WIP).
• Exercising: Photo of the target stretching, swimming, lifting, running.
• Relaxing: Photo of the target sunbathing, laying against an object, sitting in the sun.
• Playing: Photo of the target dancing, playing tag, and splashing water.
• Curiosity: Photo of the target in a curious state.
• Tool Use: Photo of the target using things either the player dropped or environmental (currently missing and WIP).

We also put together the Variation category as well, within this section players are tasked with taking the best-scored photo showing off the unique patterns and colors of each species! Depending on the species, some may have more varieties than others.

Depending on the photo taken, along with what species of Monster Girl is visible a single photo can now be used for several photo slots. It is up to the player to decide on where the photo is best used for maximum effect!

To achieve all this, it took a huge amount of work, first the AI system was completely overhauled, and the AI now is given a job to do and it does it. The previous system of an NPC having needs and hunger was just not sustainable. Couple this with a new spawning system in a future patch and the player will be discovering new and exciting things around every corner and behind every rock!

Optimizations and Appealing Aesthetics

The largest improvement we have made to date for the look of Sapphire Safari is within this patch. Previously our game had a baked lighting model, with zero shadows. It seemed okay on the surface but our new build in v018 has a fully dynamic shadow and lighting system! In my honest opinion, the lighting adds a whole new level of detail to Sapphire, the sun and moon both illuminate the world and cast shadows over the map. Also, because the new system might be a little intense for lower-end systems, turning off shadows now actually turns it off, improving performance by a considerable amount.

The Map and UI have received another push, this time to make it more readable and to combine the aesthetics into one design direction. The map is one of the bigger fixes, it now sits within a scaled window, and the same stylings are applied to the system.

One of the biggest unavoidable Frame Rate drops for Sapphire was the use of the camera, entering the viewfinder or ADS (aiming down sight) used to have a blurring effect applied to the outside of the reticle. We have since dropped the system in favor of a nice blur texture, the improvement in framerate is significant. Along with the removal of the viewfinder camera casting on the hip of the player, this patch will see massive FPS improvements across all systems.

Save File Versioning

Alas, we come to one of the downsides to focusing on new updates like this. It means that we have outdated all existing progress and photo submissions for Sapphire Safari. In order to make sure that as we patch going forward we will be introducing a mandatory save file wipe per patch. Basically, you will need to start a fresh save for each update we have, once we have all the mechanics in place we will make sure saves are perfect moving forward.

Having said that, the game will automatically archive all the photos you’ve taken on a previous build, so they won't be usable in the game, but you will still have those photos on your computers.

We have also taken steps to add in config file versioning as well, this means if our system is using a new config setup, and the local copy on a customer's PC does not match, it will reset the local version. This is to stop things like rebindings being wonky, or any system settings getting overhauled and causing issues. You will need to set up any unique configurations again, however, you will be warned in the game when it happens.

Widescreen and Ultra-Widescreen Support

Some of our more hardcore audience have expressed the desire to have their excessive monitor real estate supported within Sapphire Safari, so we have added a bunch of fixes and settings tools to support massive monitor resolutions, including UI framing and FOV sliders.

Changelog v018:

Monpedia Overhaul

• added guidebook
• added new monpedia format
• replaced photo quests with general photo category
• added variation photo category
• added final names and descriptions for monster species
• added species discovery experience
• replaced scoring stamps in monpedia
• added completion percentage tracking to the guidebook and monpedia

Camera Systems

• replaced viewfinder ui for higher performance system
• removed camera screen from hip camera model for higher performance
• added new gameplay tag system for better photo response
• added variation stamp to photo discovery
• added grey stamp for lower par scored new photo discovery
• added landscape focus call to auto focus system
• removed photo output scaling options due to the possibility of overloading vram
• limited photo output to fixed resolutions only (1280x720, 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 3840x2160)

AI and Behaviors

• replaced monster needs system with smart object priority system to reduce roaming ai
• added 2500 smart object animation points to the plains
• added simple nighttime behavior and sleeping schedule
• added simple socializing system behavior
• replaced npc and player identification behavior

Map and Levels

• fixed map break for bridges
• fixed map break for hotspring
• improved volcano placement
• fixed despawning zone on plains
• swapped duplicate beacon icon for power icon
• changed display text on particular notifications

Systems and Tech

• added dynamic time-based lighting and shadows
• added time of day information to save file for better resume functionality
• removed transparency from tab menus
• map menu added to hologram aesthetic
• map fow texture replaced
• tab menus placement fixed for better readability
• added system menu options for disabling shadows for performance increase
• fixed head bone alignment on player models for head swivel
• added map reset on resolution change
• fixed softlock on climbing animation interaction
• added save file compatibility system with photo archiving
• added config file compatibility system for settings
• removed the analytic capture system (thank you for the reports, minimum specs have been found due to the data supplied)
• added system setting wizard to systems options
• removed dynamic resolution settings due to issues with map discovery
• created optimizations for integrated graphics systems
• removed depreciated keybindings
• added working fov slider for widescreen and ultra-widescreen systems
• added hud width restrictions for widescreens and ultra-widescreen systems
• corrected missing embellishments for widescreens and ultra-widescreen systems

Future Focus

With this massive step out of the way, what do future patches look like for Sapphire Safari? Well, the very next patch we will be doing will focus on the Camera Scoring system. This means we will now be able to check every single creature in a photo, score each creature individually, and create a new user flow for submitting photos with multiple species within.

Camera Scoring update > Spawner overhaul update > Sex and Intimacy update > Research Level rewards > Narrative update (perhaps) 

We aim to make the next couple of patches much faster than what the Monpedia General patch took, but who knows what we will run into.

Thanks for your patience!