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Sapphire Safari News

Sweet Release

Hello explorers! Man a whole lot has happened since we released va004 of Sapphire Safari on Itch for our early adopters. The feedback and support have been absolutely amazing and we have been on the top sellers for a while now! The energy surrounding the project has renewed our vigor considerably and we have been hard at work making the next patch.

Before we get started though, thank you very much for your patience in waiting to hear any sort of news from us, it took much longer than I anticipated to get my new house setup, then we had a funeral and lastly, my family and I were hit with COVID, 3 years of avoiding it only for us to get nabbed now. Feels bad man. The rest of the staff has been working diligently though.

So production update time! We have expanded our team with a second programmer! His role right now mostly consists of adding extra features into the game, stuff that we were considering adding in much later once the core gameplay loops have been added. Things like our UX for the main menu and other things.

[h2]Main Menu[/h2]
The biggest feedback we received for the first build was the lack of the main menu, so we got you! Originally it was going to be something really simple but the new programmer has jumped into it with both feet giving us a 3d environment to float around.



This is just the first pass at least, from this menu you’ll be able to look at your photos, your upcoming quests, the new Monpedia function, choose your playable character (male or female), and choose the island destination along with the time of day you want to explore in!



Game settings wise we have all the standard stuff, which should allow for older hardware to tweak settings as they need for better performance. We also will have values in there for choosing how the Futa content works in the game.

  • Off.
  • Low spawn chance.
  • Medium spawn chance.
  • High spawn chance.

We are not 100% sure how we will handle the content offerings if Futa is turned off completely (stuff like quests taking a photo about Futa etc), but that is a problem for future us.

Other notable settings are the photo output changes, basically, you can set up how big the photos the game takes will be, options right now allow for matching the current resolution of the game, along with scaling down and up from that point. Naturally taking massive photos will impact the game performance.



  • Scaled Resolution

Photo exported at a percentage of game resolution. Exporting at 0.5 is 50% creates an image half the resolution experienced in-game. Warning high values may cause hitching when taking photos.

  • Fixed Resolution

Export images at the specified resolution. This may provide images framed differently from what is seen in-game depending on the monitor aspect ratio. Warning higher resolutions may cause hitching when taking photos.

[h2]Monpedia[/h2]
This feature is very exciting to talk about, basically, as of the next patch (hopefully), we will have the first iteration of the Monpedia, an auto catalog system for documenting the wildlife on the Sapphire Islands.



Filling out the entries for a species increases the familiarity which will allow the player to get closer to the Monster Girl and eventually open up interactions with them.

[h2]Doll System[/h2]
Alright here is the big cheese, the whole reason for our move to UE5 and the main reason we had massive downtimes from the original release of Sapphire. The Doll system is our overly complicated interaction system with ultimate customization for interactions with an unlimited number of participants. Let me elaborate…

Each position in our game requires a tone of prep and planning. Since every pose will need to have a tone of locking points created and those points documented correctly.



This next build will include the Missionary position and configuration options for that pose as well, and maybe the Jacko pose as well. Depends on how long it takes. However, each model in the game is capable of matching these poses and the system will intelligently blend these poses together. So if you grab buns leg and pull it to an unrealistic position once you let go of the leg she will move it back to a more comfortable position.



These customizations sit between animation loops and facial expressions. Here are some better examples of this in action.





Also in terms of insertions, we are working on a “rubber” type system to not leave weird-looking gapes. Manually fitting everyone to all Monster Girls would end up being a lot of work so building something more automatic is ideal.



[h2]Narrative[/h2]
This is a really interesting portion of development that should help deliver better experiences to players using our systems and such. The basic idea of the game is as follows:

The Sapphire Islands are discovered, they are teeming with brand new species of animals called Monster Girls who have shown alarming curiosity for Humans. The first team of scientists/explorers head into the islands and eventually stop communicating with the outside world. Your job is to follow in the footsteps of the first team and discover their whereabouts. The secondary objective is to document the wildlife.

In terms of NPC’s here is what we were considering to help deliver the story. Keep in mind the names will likely change in the future.

First Team:

  • Bucky: The team's Anthrozoologist. Bucky has a reserved type of personality but is constantly compared to his father's achievements. Wishes
  • Claire: The team’s Ethnologist. Very eager to make a name for herself Claire is the type to dive into any opportunity and get her hands dirty in the process.
  • Chad: The team’s Ecologist. By the books and professional in every regard. Chad is also the most senior on the team.
Second Team:

  • Player Character Oscar (male): A wildlife photographer known for his extreme patience and award-winning photography.
  • Player Character Jamie (female): Fresh out of college and ready to make a name for herself.
  • Professor Frida: Advisor and handler for the Second Team visiting the Sapphire Islands, she will be running the ship and helping plot the course for the duo of Oscar and Jamie.

Whatever character you choose the other will become an NPC who has their own tasks and roles in the game.

[h2]Timeline[/h2]
The last point I want to bring up in this post is our early adopter release timeline. We want to give ourselves at least a month per patch to do three “sprints” of development with one sprint for testing and bug fixing. This means that each patch should drop at the beginning of each month if nothing explodes. This next patch we are looking to drop around September 1st.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1526900/Sapphire_Safari/

All done, looking forward to your feedback!
Kinky

Cheeky Butts

Another week and we are back doing another Dev Blog!

First, the final polish on our second girl the Monkey has been completed. Some of you might recognize her inspiration, and if you do it might result in you needing a cold shower…

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The next Monster Girl on the list for creation is the Apex of the region, a Tiger Girl.

In other news, we are hard at work refining the first jungle map. Space-wise it is quite large, allowing the player to explore and roam about the area.



​We have separated the space into four areas.

  • Jungle Floor: This is the first area the player will have access to, it includes the rainforest floor along with a river, beach access, and a lake.
  • Swamp Outskirts: Nothing is needed to access this area, it will be home to more aggressive Monster Girls and a more muddy environment.
  • Canopy: The tree tops are the home to Monster Girls who can climb and fly!
  • Plateau: Not exactly a mountain top, but high off the jungle floor is a more rocky environment.




Some areas the player will need to return to with new equipment to access, so expect new areas and quests to open up the more you explore areas.

Lastly, we are almost done with the new spawn system, once we have that in place we can start internal testing to see how the girls feel in the new environment. If there are issues with how alive it all feels, we have a secondary plan to make it all work. Testing comes first though!

Thanks for reading!
Kinky

Jiggle Wiggle

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!

Unreal Moves

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Aside from the sneaky little teaser trailer above, our biggest news is that the move to Unreal Engine 5 has officially begun! There are a few growing pains that we are dealing with at the moment related to how the new rig works, more bones in a body tend to do that to ya… However, with that still being the case we have managed to push ahead with the rigs and get our new systems-ready models into the game.

It does mean that a lot of the older content cannot be used, so a complete system overhaul is going to be needed. This means the jungle island we made ready for the new build, will need to be rebuilt. Some casualties are to be expected I guess.

Anyways here are some interesting glamor shots we have of the process!



The next part is getting lighting models right for the game, night time is a very difficult prospect to overcome as we always want visibility even in the darkness. Lucky for us UE5 has great defaults we can use as a starting point.



The style we will likely end up with is what's called VibranceA and honestly, it's a very good starting point, shadows are not too dark, and visibility is good.



Next is getting the cel-shading in for the monster girl models



The goal here is that we want our models to always be easy to spot, this should happen night and day.



Buns is a little too short though, nothing a few points of scaling can't fix!

Hope you all enjoy the latest information about the game, we hope to post more soon!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1526900/Sapphire_Safari/
Cheers,
Kinky

Models and Monster Girls

Salutations photo enthusiasts! Welcome to another Sapphire Safar development update. In this installment, let’s talk about our plans for the rainforest area which will be featured in the new system overhaul looking to drop sometime in July this year.

A couple of days ago we tasked our fantastic Discord community to arrange their top choices for the upcoming patch in terms of Monster Girls to add! After an exhaustive discussion lasting the whole damn day, the gentlefolk within the community came up with the following list to possibly represent our rainforest.

  • A cheeky Monkey
  • A delightful Frog
  • A tasteful Snake
  • A powerful Crocodile
  • A succulent Plant
  • A devouring Mantis
  • A fluttering Humming Bird
  • A sleepy Bat
  • A busy Bee

As for the Apex Predator in the rainforest, the community decided on...

  • A Tiger during the Day
  • A Panther during the Night

I have set up a poll to see which of the Monster Girls you all want to see in the region the most. The top 4 choices will make it into the game within that area.

Head here to vote on your choice! https://strawpoll.com/polls/B2ZB3l6DjyJ

So far we have selected the following Monster Girls to be in the next patch.

  • The return of Bunbuns our mascot Rabbit Girl.
  • The return of our second mascot the Fire Pony.
  • The cheeky Monkey girl from the community selection above.

We have started to work on the overhaul for the models once more, and I know you all might be wondering why we have to overhaul the models -AGAIN- well that has a two-part answer.

The first is that the models needed to be overhauled to match our new rigging system for the locomotion, cuddling, and facial animation system we have built over the past 6 months. To do this we would need the help of the original model author however he has decided to move on to another project. So we have a new modeler Mr. CumminHam to take over the reins!



The second reason and the biggest is that we are moving the project over to the Unreal 5 engine! This is to take advantage of the new IK systems they have in place which will make our efforts with our cuddling system that much better. Trust me, it will be worth it for sure!

Anyways here are some WIP shots of the new Bunbuns model against the older version! We are staying true to the original design while making her far more animal-like in appearance!



Until next time!
Kinky