Sapphire Safari - Henley
Hello explorers! Hope you all are enjoying the latest patch for Sapphire Safari. I know we have had a lot of really positive comments about the scoring and weather tech added to the game! But today we are talking about a bit of ye’old in n’ out. The hokie pokie. The wham-bam-thank you-mam. The “you get the joke now so I’ll stop”. We talkin, sex.

Over on our community Discord, we held a meeting to discuss our plans for the very anticipated v022 Intamacy Update for the game, we also addressed a lot of questions you all had so be sure to join our Discord for the next time we do it. In the meeting we broke down our plans for the patch and how we will release it.

The short version is that v022 will be broken up into five milestones, each one a micro-patch that we can release quickly as it is completed. Let me go into better detail on what you can all expect.

v022a
This patch is focused on patching the model issues we have had up until now, basically aligning the model legs, renaming bones, and fixing face shapes for every model. They have been broken for quite some time now and getting this done first means we can push out new animations without backtracking. On top of the fixes, we will be adding the final three species that will be found in the Plains region.

The Crocodile Predator called Caicadaly - Our first “small” classification predator in the game. She can be found around the rivers and bodies of water on the island, hunting those silly enough to loiter around the water.



The Bee Prey called Sweedee - Sapphire Safari’s first “tiny” classification species. She will have a job pollinating the island flora and enjoys being used as a sex toy. You can find her buzzing mostly everywhere but her Hive can be found closer to the mountains.



The Undead Wolf Special called Malous - The first special spawn species you can find on Sapphire Island she will have to be “unlocked” before she can be spawned, the hows and whys are up to the player to discover. Even if you manage to get her spawning, finding her will be quite difficult.



v022b
Now that our models have a better foundation the next task is overhauling the current sex system called Doll. This means replacing all the prototype sex animations and adding in a larger pool of animations along with speed variations, cuming scenes, and post-sex animations. This also will come with an IK fix, so all those misplaced hands, dongs, and sex collisions will be fixed with this.

Adding to this we will be putting in our first variation on a cum fluid system, we want facials and bukkake to be a possibility in this game, so expect to see some bunnies covered in cum very soon.



Finally, for this patch, we will be adding our vine flora trap creature. This is a stationary plant that will grab unwilling creatures (including the player) and use their vines and plant tongues on them. This will include a spawning tool that can interact with Sweedee as she pollinates them.



v022c
The big boi patch, the predator system. What can I say about this that you wouldn’t already know? Our three predator classification species - Kokai (snake), Furloin (fox), and Caiadaly (crocodile) will get a brand new AI system that enables them to hunt, stalk, and sexually use any species they deem tasty enough. This also doubles for the player, if they are spotted by an active predator they will become the target, being attacked, filled, and dragged off to their nest.

We will also be adding things like torn clothing and dripping fluids after the player makes their escape, this all coming off the game's first “failure state” aka being caught is bad.



Lastly for this patch, we will be adding the “Mating Tab” of the Monpedia accessible, so you can start scoring photos for sex acts.

v022d
The other aggressive plant will be added in this patch, the Spore Plant which will start a new system. The spores shot out will turn normal prey into sexually aggressive creatures, who will pounce the closest species they can find (player included) and do what they like. If the player is spored they will be woozy and drunken-like, and moving will be harder to control.



With the spore effects in place, we can then add in the “Pink Moon” event. On every full moon in the game, the island natives will go sex crazy, and be fucking each other for the entire night. The player if caught during this time won’t be able to escape until the next morning. So if you want to capture the event as a photographer be sure to not be seen.

v022e
The final micro patch for the intimacy update, this time we are focused on turning on the familiarity system and adding in a bunch of rewards here. Meaning the more familiar a species is with you the closer you can get where you can eventually walk up and interact with them, engaging in some sexywexy. We will also have 3 unlockable reward scenes with each species, which will include very unique animations making the best use of their anatomy.



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

So that wraps up our plans. I know you all have been waiting a very long time for this, and we thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for how you’re enabling us to spend time polishing and making the best game we can.

Thank you!
Blobbs: Remastered - nutter666
Hi everyone!

It's been a little while since there was any Blobbs related news on here, but whilst it might have seemed like i'd just released the game and vanished after patch 1.01a, i've actually been quietly working away on some new stuff which I hope to reveal later in the year.

For now, i'm releasing Patch 1.02 which fixes a few issues I noticed and adds functionality for the new stuff. Most of it is under the hood that you probably shouldn't even notice, but here's a list of changes for anyone interested.

Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed Green Blobbs not being able to be spawned in the level editor (and possibly other places) on April 20th (due an unanticipated side-effect of the 4/20 Easter Egg).
  • Fixed an issue with the Music Player which was sometimes causing new tracks to start before the previous one finished.
New Additions:
Two new types of Blobbs have been added to the Level Editor, consider these a teaser of new content coming later in the year,
(Spoilers Ahead)
Infectious Blobbs - which release a noxious gas which can infect (some) other types of Blobbs, transforming them into Infected variants.
Vaccine Blobbs - which release a cloud of inoculating mist which will revert infected blobbs back into their original form and vaccinate uninfected blobbs to prevent them from getting infected.
Infected Variants of Basic Blobbs -Green, Blue, Red, Yellow, Orange & Purple Blobbs can now become infected, and will spread the infection further they if are exploded before they get cured.

Misc Updates & General Improvements:
  • Reworked the functionality of cosmetic variations to better support "theming" how the blobbs look without having to make an entire new version of that blobb. (This also identified and then subsequently helped fix the 4/20 Bug).
  • Updated the Level Selection screen and level pack selection logic to simplify/streamline adding new official level packs in the future (hint hint)
  • Added functionality (currently un-used in this patch) to allow for multiple "pages" on certain screens (such as the achievements screen) so more can be added in the future without having to cram it all into one page.

It doesn't look like much when it's just bullet points on the patch notes, but a whole lot of work has been going on behind the scenes to future proof the game and make it possible to add additional level packs, more crazy blobb types and even more achievements to unlock. I'm really looking forward to sharing more news about new content in the coming months, talk soon!

- Nutter
Starcom: Unknown Space - justkevin
Looking at my task tracker recently I realized it's been ten years since I started work on what would eventually become Starcom: Nexus, the precursor of Starcom: Unknown Space. Actually ten years ago to the day, I followed Unity's "space game tutorial" to figure out how to get a 2D spaceship moving on screen.

I've already written a very long postmortem on the process of creating that game, but I thought this would be a good occasion to look at the question "where does the time go?" Like specifically, having spent well over ten thousand hours developing these games, what am I doing all day?

Using data exported from the task tracker, I went through and randomly sampled blocks of time and categorized them to see what kinds of things I was spending time on, and how much.

I organized the data in two ways: features that players would recognize, and hats that I wear. By "hats" I mean what role/skillset would do this task in a mid-sized game company with dozens of employees. I'm guessing a bit on this one-- while I have worked on game projects with small to medium sized companies, it has always been in a fairly narrow role.

Features

All
Percent
Gameplay
11.7%
General gameplay mechanics and core game logic not included elsewhere
Combat
6.4%
Weapon design, balancing, damage handling, VFX
Community
6.1%
Interacting with players, support, weekly updates like this one, etc
Gameworld
5.5%
Game world specific mechanics: region placement, sector handoff
Shipbuilding
5.5%
Shipbuilding logic
Missions
5.4%
Mission design and creation
Playtesting
5.1%
Playing the game myself to see what's broken, what feels wrong, etc
Anomaly
4.8%
Creating anomalies
UI
4.2%
UI design and programming
AI
3.9%
AI design and programming
Marketing
3.8%
Game promotion, trailer creation, youtuber outreach, etc
Factions
3.7%
NPC design
Music & Audio
2.7%
Music and Sound FX
Planning & Production
2.6%
Deciding what to prioritize, misc stuff not covered elsewhere
Bug fixes
2.5%
Investigating and fixing bugs outside of the normal dev loop
Interaction Systems
2.4%
Anomalies, conversations and general station interactions
Trade & Inventory
2.3%
Trade system, drops, resources and item system
Map & Edgedar
2.2%
Map system and Edgedar (the icons around the side of the screen in the main view)
Localization
2.1%
String symbol tables and translation
Creator
2.1%
Content authoring tool
Save & Load
1.8%
Save system
Crew
1.7%
Crew management, skill check system
Technologies
1.7%
Tech research tree and effects
Planets
1.6%
Planet visuals
Main Menu
1.5%
Parts of the game when you're not in the game
Proc Gen
1.2%
Procedural sector and planet generation
VFX
1.2%
General visual effects like nebulae, non-combat particle effects, etc
Steam
1.0%
Build deployment, store page creation, etc
Business
0.9%
Taxes, paying contractors-- the fun stuff that everyone gets into game dev for
Story
0.8%
Narrative planning
Regions
0.7%
Manual (non-procedural) region layout
Optimization
0.4%
Performance profiling, optimization
Analytics
0.2%
Player analytics review

Hats

Hat
Percent
Programmer
32.9%
Any coding/programming
Game Designer
16.8%
Designing missions, balancing enemies, gameplay tweaking
UI Designer
8.4%
Creation of all the UI systems, icons, layouts, excluding the programming
VFX Designer
7.3%
Particle systems, shaders
QA
7.1%
Playtesting, reviewing player F8 feedback
Producer
6.5%
Planning, interaction with contractors
Community Manager
5.8%
Responding to player emails & discussion forum posts
2D Artist
3.6%
Anomaly images, item images
Marketer/Video Editor
3.1%
Trailer creation, influencer outreach
Writer
2.7%
Writing anomalies, dialogue
3D Modeler
2.0%
Creating ship modules, other models, coordinating concept artist and modeler efforts
Sound Designer/Music Director
1.5%
Creating game sounds, directions for composer
Analytics
1.1%
Choosing metrics, analyzing anonymous player analytics
Business
1.0%
Misc business stuff: taxes, paying contractors, renewing LLC, etc.

This is just the time I spent. There have been several talented contractors who have composed the game's music, created the alien portraits, created 3D models for the modules, etc. It's also not super precise, because a) there are a lot of tasks that don't get tracked and b) this was a random sample. But I think it's ballpark correct.

In other news, I'm continuing to press on with work on Kepler. There's still a chunk of content I want to add, but in the next week or two I'll start thinking about timing for making available for opt-in.

Until next week!
- Kevin
Project F4E - [BD] Flamiflami
TONS OF NEW CONTENT IN THIS PLAYTEST!
Patch notes will be released on Playtest's day

Get ready to playtest Project F4E in Europe and North America starting today and for 4 DAYS! Wait a minute… Someone is telling me that we’ll also have a South American Server for this test!

GRAB YOUR KEY HERE

PLAYTEST DATE
EU: April 10th to April 13th, 4PM to 9PM CEST
NA/SA : April 10th to April 13th, 4PM to 9PM PST

We’ll open the servers at 2 pm CEST instead of 4 pm on April 10th to prevent critical issues!

WHAT’S NEW?
If you missed our previous Steam news, here is a preview of what we added in this Playtest.

PATROLS
Now, several monsters will scout the area instead of staying static and idling.

NAMED ENEMIES
You’ll now be able to find some unique and named enemies across the map. They have their own goal and might impact the state of the map! One of them is PitPaw, the mad alchemist. PitPaw wants to run an experiment on a rare breed of Shardspine Muncher and must go to his lab to conduct it. What will happen if he succeeds? I wonder.

NEW PROGRESSION SYSTEM
We want players to unlock new content and elements gradually. That’s why we are experimenting with a new quest chain system to gain access to the Dragon Vault. The Vault is a dangerous place, and you’ll have to prove your might before you can break into it!

MONTH OF FUN #2
Get ready for epic Giveaways, Contests, and surprises across all our games for one month! The current event linked to our game Minion Masters is already live! Join our Discord server to keep an eye on the upcoming events and join the fun by CLICKING HERE!
Edengrall - luisedgm
We have finished the system to sync animations on both face and body, as well as hair "equipping" and physics.



We are still working on the hair physics configurations as each hair part needs different values for the tension and inertia for each bone. Also my brother is finishing up configurable particle generators to be called mid animation, so we can add cute particles too.



We are close to having the default faerie ingame now, by next friday we should have it following the player, doing cute animations and emoting. Then we will make the cutomization screen so you can build your Faerie and the intro cutscene where you get her.

This should be done before the end of the month we expect to release Faerie Update part 1 by April 26, we will release an update with the single faerie, then we will start working on the larger faerie colony system with several faeries.

InfraSpace - Dionic Software
Hello everyone and welcome to the April update!

This time, we have 3 main news for you:

Volcano Map

It's been a long time coming and today we're finally releasing the Volcano Map!



The map is designed to be a little challenge for more advanced players. There is not so much building space and the terrain is very sloped, so you have to be more selective about how you organize your city. This becomes more important in the mid- to late-game as the industries are getting more complex and the layout of your roads matter more.





Localization Update

Most of our translations were done by the community so far, which we are really thankful for! But that also means, that not all localizations were at 100% done all the time. Now that InfraSpace is pretty much done, we worked with a localization company to get the languages with the most players up to snuff. That's why German, Spanish, Japanese, and Russian should be at 100% completion now. French will probably be done with the next update.

Mac Crash Fix

I'm sorry this has been plaguing mac players for a while. There was a crash that could happen sometimes when you upgraded the adamantine mine. If a car was currently on the way to the mine as it upgrades, the car would try to reroute to a building that is no longer valid (because it has been replaced by the new mine stage). This would crash our routing algorithm, something which was graciously ignored by the windows version of the library because of different compile settings.

In any case, it's fixed now, so let us know if you're having any other issues!

As always,
Happy playing!

Ruins To Fortress - nb-mago


Dear Community,

The time has come – our demo is live! For a year now, mago and crimi have been tirelessly working on this game, and we're eager to hear your feedback. For a long time, we could only test the game in small sessions, either together or with friends. But now, we believe it's ready to present you with a playable version. Currently, about 90% of our ideas have been implemented and integrated. There may still be the occasional bug lurking in the game. We hope you'll have sessions with as few bugs as possible, but please bear with us if that's not the case.

To help you get started, we've prepared plenty of additional content for you:
- A demo FAQ is available.
- There are guides in various languages.
- A wiki listing all available items among other things.

As for the future of the demo:
We see the demo as an ongoing public beta. After addressing initial bugs, we aim to gradually incorporate the remaining 10% and consider your feedback until we have a game that satisfies both you and us. Only then will we release the full version.

Limitations of the demo:
Currently, about 10% of the content is still missing. We also plan to offer different maps containing various biomes and differing in size. Later on, we hope to enable randomly generated maps.
Additionally, the game world is not yet persistently saved. This means that if the server goes down, the world disappears. We aim to change this in the coming months.
Furthermore, language support is currently limited to English. Although there isn't a lot of text in the game, we haven't had the opportunity yet to integrate support for multiple languages. Based on the demand we see in the demo, we currently plan to support the following languages: French, German, Spanish, Portuguese.

Thanks for reading!

Apr 5
Idle Fairy Fantasy - 所以呢
1. Add three new items: Sword Cultivation Lingpai, Dharma Cultivation Lingpai, and Shadow Cultivation Lingpai
FOUNDRY - Mr.McDuck
Hello there!

Welcome to another FOUNDRY Friday episode. This is a premiere, the first FOUNDRY Friday written by two different team members!

First, our performance magician Yog will present his most recent improvements that targeted the large and tremendously creative factories our community built for the Release Date Trailer. Because enormous factories are an important part of Foundry, having good performance has been a key focus point and we’re working hard to keep the frame rates as high as possible. The bases we receive from our community are essential to spot bottlenecks and issues, thanks to everyone who sent us large bases.

After that I (Patrik aka MrMcDuck) will recap our recent Feature Highlight videos and dev streams.

Performance Improvements
A few weeks ago, we released a trailer featuring some amazing bases made by our community. But as the creators of those bases already know, they were pushing the limits of the game. So beyond featuring these bases in our trailer, we've been using them to help our optimization efforts. Here's one of my favorite bases, made by Falk, that was featured in the version of Foundry used to make the trailer, running at 10fps:

And here's the same base, which has close to 100,000 pieces in it, running at close to 90fps in the latest version:


You can see the framerate drop to about 70fps at the beginning of the video. Unfortunately that was my capture software and as soon as I turn it off, the frame rate goes back up to just under 90.

There's still more performance work on the way but you should at least be able to see a significant increase to your base performance come May 2nd!

Feature Highlights & Dev Streams
In the past two weeks we have released two feature highlight videos which are covering essential mechanics in FOUNDRY. The first one is about automation in general, and the second one is about mining. Give them a look in case you haven’t already seen them:

Automation:

Mining:

Stay tuned as we have more of those videos coming up!

In addition to the feature highlight videos we are having a weekly dev stream until release on May 2nd. You can rewatch the first dev stream here:


In that stream we showed off a late game test base with many of the launch version features. On top of that we were talking about the game in general and answered community questions.
Our most recent dev stream from yesterday can be found here. This time we were focusing on mining, digging and the voxel system. The streams provide an opportunity to see more of the game while you can ask us any game related questions.

Thanks for reading and hope to see you on the next stream,
-mrmcd


Follow us on socials:

Stay tuned for more news!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/983870/FOUNDRY/
Frostpunk 2 - tommy


Hello Citizens!

We couldn’t be more excited to finally share this with you!
Frostpunk 2 Beta will be available during April 15-22. Starting at 7PM CEST | 1PM EDT | 10AM PDT.

Return to the unforgiving Frostlands and experience a glimpse of our ambitious sequel in which, among the need to survive, you'll face a new and deadly threat: human nature and its insatiable thirst for power. The Beta features a part of the sandbox mode called the Utopia Builder Preview.

You can play the Beta in English and Simplified Chinese only. All the other languages listed on the store page will be available upon the game's full release.

Make sure to check the system requirements here.

▶Pre-order Deluxe Edition now at -10% and get access to a full 7-day Beta!◀


Take care,
11 bit studios
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