carnal_instinct

v0.3.43 is now LIVE for AVATAR Tier+

Published: June 18th 2022, 12:45:02 am

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Hi All,

Finally an Avatar update around the middle of the month, it's been a while but we're back on track. It's been a struggle for a little while - the reasons for which will become clear in the development update at the bottom of this post - but we've balanced the workload once again.

Firstly a bit of a clarification as to the difference between Avatar and Ascended builds. Over time we've let the distinctions slip in order to always push content as soon as possible, but such an approach is unsustainable in the long run. We're therefore reinstating what the updates were always intended to be.

Ascended is the latest gameplay content. This means sex scenes, quests, new mechanics, locations, playable races, etc. This update will generally drop at the end of a month.

Avatar is a bug-fixed version of the previous Ascended update with the addition of new cosmetic content. This means new clothing options, skins, hair/horns, and the like will be a feature of Avatar. This update will generally drop mid-month.

Sometimes the lines will blur a bit, or we'll have a bigger than usual month and some content will bleed one way or another, but this is generally a solid breakdown. It means that there's always something new for players in each and every update whilst also allowing us to alternate workload and take occasional rest days through the month.



This update brings four horn variants which now fit the Male Draconids - no longer will your scaled beefcake be lacking in the head-accessory department. We've also got two new Jaguar skins for Female Felians, bringing back some of the variety we lost with the addition of the cosmetic customisation system.



As I mentioned above, sometimes content will bleed between updates. In this case there's an improved version of the Twisted Missionary, increasing the duration and adding more natural movements. In total there are twelve new animations in this set, each approximately twice the duration of those they replace.


Development Update

So enough with the mystery box, what exactly have we been working on that's taken so much of our time? Well a few people have already guessed; we're in the process of moving to Unreal Engine 5. Initially we avoided announcing this as we decided to not make the move if it increased the development time of the project. What we've discovered is that we're actually able to reduce development time due to efficiencies in our pipeline thanks to Nanite.



In the image above you can see approximately the same development time applied on both the left and right. Whilst the pillars on the right are still a little work-in-progress, we're able to build a far more richly detailed world in the same amount of time. We're also able to drastically reduce the texture budget, lowering the impact of the game on GPUs with less VRAM.



The fidelity we've been able to achieve is honestly incredible. We're so impressed with the updated engine that we couldn't justify continuing solely in UE4. Despite our initial cynicism, UE5 has won us over. That isn't to say it's without problems, which is why we're running the versions in parallel until we're at Alpha, but the risks are far outweighed by the benefits.



We've been rescaling our world map to take advantage of the new optimisation features of UE5, resulting in a playable area nine times the size [edit: I was tired and put four times, it's much larger than that!] of our current world map (not just the current playable area, the whole map). Wait, I hear you scream, it'll be an unplayable walking simulator! Fear not. In the UE5 build we now have working prototypes of sailing and riding, as well as an early version of transformation into an exotic form.



So, what's the difference and how soon can you expect to get your hands on the UE5 version? I think the above image speaks for itself. We haven't yet finalised our small props kit, so the UE5 version is missing the crates, barrels, ropes, and other details that help finalise a scene, yet it's already far more detailed than the UE4 version.

In terms of becoming playable we've made some significant progress in that direction, enough that the roadmap isn't particularly accurate, and we're gradually approaching what we consider an Alpha build of CI. Once we have all major systems working in the UE5 build, we'll push it live and keep the UE4 as legacy.

We hope you're as excited as we are for the incredible boost towards true AAA quality that we've managed to make with the upgrade to the game engine. I want to thank every one of you so much for your amazing support; the game is now almost unrecognisable from where it began and it's entirely thanks to your help.

Team Carnal Instinct

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Changelog v0.3.43

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