Hi all,

Welcome to 2022 and we hope you all have a great 2022! We’re here with our first update of the year to address a number of code issues, UI changes and more!

We’ve spent the vast majority of our time over the past 2 weeks working on a lot of pressing issues relating to stability, performance and bugs this month and we’d like to share our progress with you all.

Save/Load Issues

We have made major changes to the Saving system, streamlining it further and optimizing the way it loads the core dialog and quest system which in our tests has proven to be a dramatic improvement for those players who were having the worst issues.

These fixes are totally backwards compatible and should address the problems for most of you all going forward! In  the very near future we’ll be limiting the number of save slots you can have to reduce further issues going forward.

UI Overhaul

We spent a lot of time this month working on our inventory management system, now each slot is selectable and has it’s own tab for you to select your equipment.

Player Stats are now visible here too:

Dialog Improvements:

During Dialog, you can now use the Keyboard keys 1,2,3,4 etc to choose dialog choices and spacebar to skip or select choices.

We’ve also added a floating name bar for the NPCs:

Optimization

We’re very aware that we’ve been creeping up in performance requirements lately and so this month we did a bit of spring cleaning early! We’ve boosted FPS and lowered CPU usage across the board by optimization in dialog cameras, NPCs roaming around the world, textures, particles and more!  

We’re always working on continually improving the performance in the game and we’re currently prototyping some much more radical changes.

Combat

We’ve changed our targeting system, moving back to our previous system with dynamic targeting. We felt that managing two combat targeting systems(which is what we had) ended up being messy and not what we intended; now we’re focusing on polishing and making one system. Additionally, a change some of you will notice is that thrust attack is now sprint + regular attack rather than having it’s own keybind.

We’re currently working on incorporating magic into the combat system this will be coming later this year with it’s own quest. Ranged upgrades and improvements are also on the way with bow crafting, arrows and some changes to enemy behaviour.

Squish goes the Bug

We’ve tried our best to go through as many bugs we could find in the last two updates and fix as many as we can in time for the update, including issues with Milk and Honey, Quest tracking, day/night issues, fast travel, NPCs, animations, typos, save/load issues and more! Check out the full change log below and we hope you now have a smoother experience all round!

We want to thank each and every patron for your incredible support.

Team Carnal Instinct

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Changelog v0.3.25:

• Added new visuals for the Inventory Screen
• Added weapons to the Inventory player character
• Added character names to dialogue lines
• Added numerical selection for dialogue choices
• Added spacebar to dialogue control for skipping lines and selecting choices
• Added keybindings for “World Map”, Quests” and “Inventory”
• Added a sex indicator to the dragon after the Winter Winds quest completion
• Added Armor stats to the Anubite equipment
• Added new visuals for interactive HUD elements
• Added code to the bed so if you sleep it can help fix any issues with the Day/Night cycle
• Fixed an issue with Quests not tracking correctly when switching quests
• Fixed bug with dispearing items in inventory when unequipping items
• Fixed a bug with the Craftsman using female animations
• Fixed an issue where day/night cycle could potentially get stuck
• Fixed an issue where Beast of Sobek idle SFX would linger after death
• Fixed an issue where if the player dropped from a great height the roll did not play
• Fixed an issue where if you left the form screen the enemies would sometimes not unfreeze
• Fixed a compass issue with Prisoners
• Fixed an issue in Iraya’s dialog with the choice line being duplicated
• Fixed an issue with many sounds still being able to be heard even with all options turned to 0
• Fixed the description on Esi’s shield so it’s now visible
• Fixed an issue with the loot bag so it doesn’t get broken by opening the In-Game Menu
• Fixed multiple issues with Nepthy’s dialog
• Fixed multiple issues Milk and Honey Inquisitor of bast cut scenes and dialog interactions
• Fixed an issue with the Inquisitor of bast enslavement getting the player stuck
• Fixed an issue with Neboo that made her less talkative
• Fixed a bug where Cursed Ones had too much stun resistance
• Fixed an issue with the Northern Drake Horns
• Fixed a bug where players could not free Prisoners
• Fixed issues with Jailer Keys not stacking, they can now also be sold and dropped
• Fixed a bug with the new item notification not including consumables already equipped
• Fixed bug where certian enemies would fall through the map
• Fixed the Fast Travel Icon in the World Map Legend
• Changed the voice lines for the dragon increasing the volume
• Changed NPC optimization to increase performance including new culling and code optimization
• Changed multiple text lines accross the game to resolve some grammar issues
• Changed the combat system to use only one type of targeting
• Changed various combat animations
• Changed Thurst Attacks to be peformed with light attack, while sprinting
• Changed the overall damage of various enemy AI
• Changed the Save/Load system to resolve the SaveGame issues