Aaaaand it's a wrap! The latest r5.24.3 update is mainly fixes to uncaught bugs, but r5.24 is now out buck naked :3

The r5.24 is now complete, next we'll start working on r5.25 and more information about that will come soon (including the vote results) ^^

As for the r5.24.3; The Patreon builds are here: https://www.patreon.com/rufflenecks/posts?tag=patreon%20build

And Steam release is tomorrow! The Steam release version is this update, instead of the r5.24.2 that was announced before ^^

Here's the full change list for r5.24 and its subreleases:

Changelist r5.24.3:

• Improved AI pathfinding; They should no longer spin and get stuck in places and instead react and run from player properly. They should also recognize trees better and behave more smartly when running away from player.
• Improved raycasting to fix issues where wrong objects were hit when trying to interact with things.
• Changed unfollowed crew to return to camp instead of docks.
• Fixed issue with swimming causing mismatching results in actors and AI.
• Fixed occlusion culling issue with Sinnae’s act and The Cotton Ball.
• Fixed props not getting turned off when changing characters in Showroom.
• Fixed issue with Character Creator not being interactable with if player selected Create a New Character from new game menu.
• Fixed unfollowed crew still attempting to spawn act ghosts.

Changelist r5.24.2:

• NEW Options menu - Fully customizable graphics options, act filtering, and gui text size and speed in conversations. Some other gameplay options are also customizable, but those will be expanded further in the future.
• NEW Crew saving - When you capture a prey you can recruit them to crew by looking towards them (See on screen tips!). When you load game, your follower is loaded in with you, and all the other crew members are loaded into a camp near Kirhaal. Maximum number of recruited crew members is 3, but you can have one non-crew follower that is also saved when exiting/saving/loading the game.
• NEW Bosun, the second main crew member that’ll stick around with you long term. Also like Cabin Paw, he will eventually be sexable. Unlike Cabin Paw, he is huge though!
• NEW Map and handling of map - Map is pannable, and certain rumors appear on map as “hot spots”, and location names are automatically translated on mouse hover. Currently working as a “toggle”; You press M and it opens, and press M again to close it. While map is open, player can’t move (at least for now, we’ll still explore if holding map key instead of pressing would open some kind of simpler map that you could keep open while running)
• NEW Added a playable default male character with vagina (Erri) to cover all four combinations of bodies and genitalia.
• Optimized Kirhaal further when the city is viewed from a distance; Besides general level of detail meshes, it also replaces the houses with “billboards” at long distances.
• Optimized orange forest vegetation further.
• Adjusted swimming particle opacity so that they aren’t so obscuring.
• Added a way to leave the mansion with carefully placed rocks.
• Added override text to Character Creator to guide player to finish up the first page before trying to continue customizing the character itself.
• Added version number to main menu and to bug reports (No more unmarked bug reports from 2 year old builds that still circulate in the internet for some reason…)
• Added some extra lines for Cabin Paw to give hint of the Bosun and the crew camp’s location to player.
• Added more hotkey customization options to the keybinding customization in launcher.
• Changed all vegetation to use mip maps and adjusted maximum texture size of pretty much everything to optimize GPU memory usage better.
• Changed Character Creator and Showroom buttons to use same button elements as Options Menu for consistency of GUI elements.
• Changed default swimming sound volume to half of what it was before (half of what it was originally before it was already halved once).
• Fixed New Game -> New Character process taking to character selector instead of taking directly to creation of new character.
• Fixed elusive color picker.
• Fixed spooked prey being unable to evade trees if further away from player when using lower quality settings.
• Fixed swimming camera being too over eager when going for a swim in the river.
• Fixed spawners occasionally spawning characters underground because of an Unity bug where Unity doesn’t respect navmesh areas when baking height mesh for navigation, by literally cutting water triangles from under the terrain so that Unity couldn’t force the navigation bugs in.
• Fixed some causes of prey spinning in place instead of running away when scared (doesn’t necessarily fix it completely, but improves it).
• Fixed ancient bug of genitalia check going haywire if “slot 1” in animation accepted both penis and vagina having characters in it.
• Fixed ESC menu opening over interaction overlay (showing both at the same time).
• Fixed character file loading speeds.
• Fixed some issues in initiating acts while follower is swimming.
• Fixed a freak bug where act ghosts appeared with characters in act.
• Fixed acts occasionally not appearing around the area where the player is looking at.
• Fixed position, rotation, and location manually of all the few thousand acts on Skiia.
• Fixed some uneven navigation surface issues on Kirhaal docks.
• Fixed some Showroom POV issues when changing acts.
• Fixed Kess not accepting rumor about the orange forest.
• Fixed Pail giving wrong directions to Cotton Ball.
• Fixed ESC menu button sounds in Character Creator.
• Fixed “current character hat” appearing in Character Picker in Main Menu.

Changelist r5.24.1:

• Fixed dock and some other static meshes not being blend with the terrain.
• Fixed misaligned act appearing in the fountain (moved outside of the fountain, and aligned properly).
• Fixed “hat” not being abandonable in some cases.
• Fixed some new acts having characters in off positions.
• Fixed Sterling not agreeing to talk without promising to bang her, and turning her down first.
• Fixed Showroom genitalia checker not checking genitalia properly.
• Fixed characters getting assigned to wrong slots in some acts.
• Fixed filtering in character picker.
• Fixed “Tasting” not having animated doggy tongue.
• Added missing sound surface information.
• Added necessary colliders to support splashing and sfx for ocean, river, and pools near statues.
• Changed animation handling of Showroom to match Island’s animation handling (which also fixes tongues on Showroom).
• Changed Showroom to return to default animation when characters are changed to prevent mismatching animations from occurring.
• Changed act position indicators to have emissive material so that they’re easier to spot at night.
• Changed eye <-> head weights of random NPCs so that they use more eyes and less head to look at player.

Changelist r5.24:

• NEW Kess will finally give female players a reward for rumor hunting!
• NEW Cabin Paw, the first actual crew member (who’ll come with you on the ship and to other islands, but you’ll get to pick between male and female Juin in later builds, default to female for now). Will potentially be sexable in the long term, but not for now!
• NEW Minor NPCs: ~20k words across 9 characters that expand the world and lore, but do not have a full act associated with them (we’ll eventually vote and see who should be sexable :3). Minor NPCs are identifiable by “darker” name text.
• NEW Reworked new game system - You can now start a new game with the same character, and load different save states and autosaves through the Continue game button, and the system streamlines creation and starting of a game with a brand new character.
• NEW Save states system - You can talk to Cabin Paw to create new saves or load old ones. Do note that prey is not saved until we’ve added proper prey processing and inventory system.
• NEW Kirhaal has been reworked and is a lot more city -like now.
• NEW The Cotton Ball and Sterling’s shop are replaced with prettier custom houses.
• NEW Graphical overhaul to make things prettier in general. Namely new water shader with reflections and prettier waves, and updated and prettier day/night cycle.
• NEW 14 new acts to spice up the selection on island. Largely pawing and pawjobs and a little bit of anal.
• Added bunch of different kind of act locators around Kirhaal.
• Added texture streaming to optimize GPU memory usage.
• Added an unlockable quick travel path between Kirhaal and other side of the mountain.
• Fixed acts in Showroom and on island having issues assigning characters to right slots.
• Fixed shadow cascades being wrong between different quality settings.
• Fixed advance time used in some conversations advancing minutes instead of hours.
• Fixed missing Davh tongues (dunno how this made in originally).
• Fixed alignment of random acts, they’re now a bit more interestingly aligned and better positioned.
• Fixed conversation variables defaulting to NULL instead of 0 and false which was causing some odd behavior with some conversations.
• Fixed Spirit being there after act.
• Fixed time progression taking you out of Spirit conversation.
• Changed and optimize Kess’ tit lamps because they were a bit too unoptimized and performance heavy.
• Changed all conversation animations to have some crossfade when played to remove occasional snapping.
• Changed city lamps to be a bit more optimized.
• Changed day night cycle to be faster (day 120mins/night 90mins)
• Changed unenterable houses to have some “light glow” in the closed windows so it looks a bit more lived in.
• Changed Main menu to match the new Kirhaal.
• Changed Sterling to be a bit easier to bang.

With luv,

Ruffle and the Team <3