Wassup explorers! Welcome to another behind-the-scenes on Sapphire Safari! Today we are going to go over all the changes we are making to the Stealth and Photo submission changes expected to come out in Builds v020 and v021 while giving a few more hints at the highly anticipated v022 and v023 builds that deal with sex and narrative. 

Lessgoooo!

Stealth and Gamefeel

A big sticking point for me personally (hi, me, being the director), was the reactivity to the player's presence in the world and the feedback for that reactivity. Anyone who’s played a stealth game would know, that user feedback on enemies awareness is crucial to making movement-based decisions. And that is no different in Sapphire as well. Getting seen means losing out on that perfect shot, or being pounced.

First, how the monster girls see.

It might seem a little confusing, but red lines represent their eyeballs, what they see. Blue lines are their peripheral vision, which would alert them to something new in their space to investigate. Green shows the blockage of peripheral vision, which if investigated is also blocking standard vision.

This is important to know as being seen changes how the monster girls react. Coming into a radius of any girl will begin filling in a bar that will change their awareness state. We call this their Sixth Sense or innate ability to feel something unusual within their surroundings. The charging increases faster if the following happens:

• The player moves closer to the monster girl.
• The player enters visual areas projected from the monster girl.
• The player makes noise (running, noise maker, etc).

There are other ways to influence the awareness charge speed:

• The player enters a hidden area (bushes) and does not move.
• The player exits the awareness radius.
• The player uses a tool to assist with their stealth.

There is also a difference between the player standing and crouching within visual range. This all comes together to represent the charge time. This is represented in a new UI/UX system that will emote the states above the girl's heads.

Once the awareness has been fully charged, the monster girl will enter a curiosity mode, in which she will search for the player, respond to new sound stimuli, and attempt to confirm their suspicions. Being spotting in this mode will very quickly fill the new bar, and once the curiosity mode fills up the monster girl will react to the shocking revelation she was not alone.

Any visual confirmation before the state change won’t affect them other than speed up the state change. Naturally, this is all subject to further testing, but the vibe inside the game has completely changed. Which brings us to our next point. What creativity this has created in the team.

Nests

Now that there is a functional stealth system with a decent amount of player feedback we can move on to building systems to reflect the new mechanics. Enter, nests. Previously each species of monster girl in Sapphire Safari had a designated sleeping space, meaning once you found it, you just visited those locations, and SNAP you got your picture. Now, you need to not only find their nest, but you need to sneak in, stealth around, find their sleeping space, and take photos. We are also adding in way more side activities, things like collectible items, species-specific orgy animations, and a case that would mark the nest as “cleared” for game statistics.

The key issue is that if you’re spotted, you’d be thrown out and would need to wait a full day for the nest to be active again. Each species would get something unique about their spaces.

These are being built out right now, but I don’t expect them to be functional for a bit of time.

Photo Submission

Now for extra future content, let's talk about the new photo submission UX changes, which are coming in v021.

Setting aside the process for “scoring” which is being overhauled, the process for submitting photos has changed. Each monster girl within a photo that has a registered icon above their head (a grey box) signifying they are within range can now be independently scored. During the submission process, you just pick which girl you wanna submit for, clicking will then show which categories are currently available. By default, the girl who is pulling the focus (the yellow box), will be open. 

Which leaves one big thing on the table. The OVERALL photo score. In the example above, the Sheep has a “D”, the snake has a “C-” and the photo itself has a “C-” score. So, in the future, you could have a closeup of a fox butt that, for the fox would be a great photo. For a photo itself would be a C+. Does that make sense?

This is pushing us into the next step, which is to make photo submission categories for regions. Much like how Monpedia is for girls with wobbly bits, the region category is for, well, the regions. For the current dev focus that means the plains area. But the full game will have at least 5 total regions to pick from. Within this new category will be the top regional photos that hold no scientific value, along with event sites, side areas, map-specific photos, etc. 

Narrative

So, the official script for the Plains region has now been completed! Woo! The total is just under 5,500 words, all of which will be fully voiced by two main characters, and two supporting NPC’s. If you include the already recorded dialogue for the hidden Expedition Logs (5,000 words) we have roughly 10,500 words, all of it is fully voiced. I would also say that depending on the main character you choose you’ll get a decent amount of variation in the dialogue as well, but some will be repeated. So the total recordings for the plains area is going to be about 13,000 words in total. 

Not a bad number! Currently, the vocal work is being done, and once the raws have been submitted I will be sharing some of the combined work for the game. Exciting stuff!

Aggressive Hand Holding

Lastly, I wanted to touch on the work being done for the upcoming intimacy patch for Sapphire Safari. This is the long-awaited update that will overhaul how sex works in the game, so let me go over our plans for it as it stands. Keep in mind it might change as we develop it all, mostly around the game feel and vibe. But here are the general ideas.

Predator hunting: The basic idea is that during all times of gameplay, a few of the species will have “predators” active and roaming the region. These are different from the director AI spawns in that they act more like players than normal monsters. They will hunt down targets for sexual conquest, with a deviation for the players themselves. The goal is first to stalk, then pounce on the target, forcing them into very aggressive 1 on 1 sexual encounter. Here are a few examples of the animations.

Physical Plants: We showed these off before, but they work like traps. Get too close they release tentacles and go to work.

Spore Plants: These are new, much like the physical versions, you get too close, and they spew spores in a cloud. Being caught in them as a player changes how they walk, if monster girls get caught in them they will enter a horny/feral mode and begin to seek out pleasure and sex.

The other content, namely the Player X Player stuff, and the familiarity scenes will come at a later date. This is more “gameplay” specific focused, as opposed to reward-focused.

Okay! That is it for now, thank you all for reading, we will continue to work on things and get it all dialed in. We hope you all are excited for things to come!