Hello explorers! Welcome to another issue of Sapphire Documents. Today we are going to go over what will be in the next patch which we are finalizing right now, along with content being developed for future patches.

Up first is the stuff for v019

Spawn Director

This patch is all about creating what we are calling the Spawn Director. Previously Sapphire was set into a bunch of zones, if the player entered the zone the game would spawn mobs and they would constantly be zoning in and out of existence. This also chewed up a lot of system resources to populate the world, and if you ran fast enough you could “beat” the spawning and see monsters falling from the sky as the game attempted to catch up.

With the director it is all different now and based on a radius around the player.

We have two classifications for Mon spawns now, a close radius and a far radius. The closer spawns automatically populate Smart Objects on the map, so you’ll round a corner and a monster girl will be picking fruits, dancing, jumping around, talking to another girl, etc. The far spawns are for Mons walking around and spawn at a distance from the player, it's always in the direction the player is currently moving.

Once the player turns around and heads in another direction, the monster girls you cannot see are removed from the world, and new spawns are populated with the same logic above. What previously was close to 40 spawns, is now about 8 or 10. However, the world feels the same in terms of population.

This however does not stop the player from finding a girl they like and tracking her movements. As of now the girls after completing a Smart Object task will roam to bigger distances. So if you like a snake girl, and you follow that same girl she will roam the world, and the director will populate the space around you and her. Since the director is smart enough to know what girls you’ve taken an interest in.

Camera Tools and Focus

Next on the list is the new focus, analysis, and tracking system for the Camera. The previous system had the player “waiting” for the autofocus to lock on, and after doing so would pull the focus to the player. A lot of you guys did not enjoy this interaction so we have swapped it to a new system instead.

First, let me detail our goal for camera interactions. The goal is to force players into “choosing” when to take photos, as opposed to quickly taking several photos all at once. The slow-pulling autofocus was our first attempt at this. 

Our new system fixes several points of confusion.

Players never knew when a Monster girl would be included in a photo, the new system automatically adds a “grey box” around Monsters that meet the minimum distance requirements.

The player had to focus on one creature for a long time, but could never place that creature in other parts of the photo, leading to “center of the screen” type photos. This new system allows the player to quickly cycle through each Monster within range within the viewfinder and choose who is pulling focus.

Focusing so long on a Monster girl would lead to a good photo, but now that we do not need the long focus time players do not spend time trying to take a good photo. To fix this we now have an Analyze Monster system. To do this simply look at a Monster girl, start analyzing her, and when the bar fills up you’ll get some data from it. 

The first set is feedback on whether the photo you’re about to take is something you have already submitted, if it is new you’ll get a “!” icon for the category, if it's replacing something you’ll see the current score of the submitted photo. This matches the three categories for the Monpedia “General, Mating, Variants”.

The other thing you get is the Monster girl is tracked in the world for a brief period, she will also be visible on the Map Screen as well.

Lastly, we come back to the issue at hand, slowing down photography to be more skillful, quality over quantity. To do this we have implemented something the older fanbase might know, photo processing. Basically, you take a photo, and it takes a couple of seconds before you can take another. We have also added a photo animation to show this working along with a CPU icon on the viewfinder UI to show a recharge happening. As you play the game the goal is to give more CPU upgrades allowing for more photos to be taken before a charge is needed.

Sleeping Burrows

Our first iteration for sleeping positions in Sapphire was a bit… awkward. We have taken some time to update the Plains map to include “home or burrow” locations for each of the species. This means at that species allocated sleeping time they will be found there snoozing away together in the safety of a group.

Naturally, every species will get a location like this on the map, so finding where they sleep and snapping a few candid shots will be key to completing the Monpedia.

Okay, time for future patch stuff!

Narrative

First off we have completed the first round of vocal recording work for the audio logs found around the map and within main quests. Here is a sample of the first audio log you can find in the game. Click the image below or right here to hear the preview.

The cast did a fantastic job on getting everything done, so far we have about 40 minutes of audio to add into the game, which is about 20ish audio logs to find around the environment and via quests.

Lewd Content

We have been working on putting a few spicey environmental traps around the map which both the player and Monster girls can fall prey to. The first is a plant that will look just like any other plant, but venture too close and you’ll become its prey.

The vine limbs they have along with a tongue will be used in a whole manner of ways, being grabbed like this will be the first failure state players will encounter in the game, leading to a loss of time. Several hours locked in the clutches of this horny plant.

We are also working on a plant that will erupt in a cloud of lust spores, sending everyone into a sex frenzy similar to how the lust bomb works. Being caught in this won't be as bad as the vines for the player, but they will feel a loss of control.

So that about wraps it up. We are finalizing the next patch at the moment, so please expect that very soon.