Hello everyone, welcome to this week's progress report. 

Level: 
We have been reviewing all props this week, evaluating which of them are ready to be implemented into the sandbox, and fixing those that need some adjustments. We expect around 400 props, maybe more, to be added for the coming build. This includes Galactic Ranger and native Kerpali props such as beds, chairs, chests, buckets, plates, cups, bottles, cutlery, food items, and many more. At the same time, we are continuing to build more props that will probably be added in a second batch later on.
We have also been working on some look-development for our landscape material to improve its visual quality, such as making the desert dunes region more readable and giving it a more natural flair by improving textures and adding landscape details. 
Further, we continued our work on detailing the Adûn region using our procedural content generation tools.

Code:
This week, we have implemented an anti-air behaviour that allows NPCs to dodge flying drop-kicks if they are already targeting the player. This is needed, as the drop-kick would be very overpowered otherwise.
We have also been resolving many smaller issues, e.g. NPCs immediately sheathing their weapon upon defeating their target instead of playing the attack move to the end, loot containers not being visible once the NPC is despawned, NPCs immediately cancelling their pursuit when shot from a distance, and a few other minor tweaks.
On another note, we have started working on improving various UI screens. The inventory has already received a small, but incomplete overhaul, now with armor slots for story mode, as well as a more detailed item stats view and the ability to compare weapons and armor with their equipped counterparts.

In the sandbox, all recent additions like character morph targets and clothes customization have received Event/Lua support.

Character:
More progress has been made for the big boss’ body hair situation - no, shaving was not an option :D We have also made a female skeleton-character for Maya’s proportions, and transferred some of the new outfits over to Maya and Jadeen.

Animations:
In the animation department, work on the final boss continues. We also wrapped up all attack animations for the finisher moves, so all that is left to do there now is to transfer the "victim" animations over to all humanoids and to also make one for each monster that can be finished.

Design:
We have made some very nice progress on the romance side of the story, working out more and more details for each of the six romance options in the game as well as the Maya + Max romance itself, now reaching a point where we will begin setting up some of those.

We also finalized the background story / lore about the origins of the Kerpali and Kerpal history, e.g. what exactly happened before the ship crashed, who or what started the war with the lizards, etc. Not all of this will find its way into the game, but some strong hints and "historic documents" can be found by the player.

Further, we have implemented Max's quest to join the Warrior tribe. The quest is available after finishing the 'we come in peace' main quest and talking to Maya about 'learning how to fight'. Additionally, plenty of dialogue between Max and Agon giving information about warrior culture and their role in the game world has been added.

Work on AI tweaking is continuing, as well. We are now setting up data for factions and their behavior, e.g. who helps who in combat, who is indifferent, who attacks on sight, etc.

A new weapon type has also been implemented: the greatbow, a larger, more powerful, but slower version of the bow.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team

Level:
This week, we continued our work in the Pillar Region, placing large-scale roots to give the area the dense, overgrown feel of thick undergrowth. These additions help reinforce the region’s unique atmosphere.
Tech Art returned to landscape and material work, testing features such as tessellation and improved color grading to enhance visual fidelity.
Meanwhile, Level Artists addressed internal feedback for the Adûn dungeon, implementing targeted improvements and bringing in the next batch of props to further develop the Alpha Camp.

Code:
This week, we have finished implementing the ranged combat AI. We will most likely need to tweak and balance it a bit here and there, but everything is there feature-wise.

We have also been working on improving ammo handling, resolving issues like picked up projectiles not getting merged with equipped projectiles and the weapon not remembering which ammo it had last loaded when shot empty.

In the sandbox we added the ability to override existing morph target values of characters (For example, breast deformation on costumes). This way your custom imported clothes can also deform the character if needed. Other morph targets that are usually controlled by outfits like "elf ears" or "cumflation" can also be controlled more granularly this way, offering a greater range and interpolation instead of just "off" and "on".

A few more quality of life features were also added:
All options that reference externally loaded assets (models, textures, media etc.) now have a "Reimport" button, which will clear that asset from the game's cache and reimport it from scratch. This way you don't need to go back to the main menu or constantly change the name of the asset just to see it update in game.
We also added Copy/Paste buttons to various settings panels to easily copy data between objects. These panels include the prop settings, fingers/toes, events (updated) and the new outfit customization. In the case of prop settings, the prop type is not important, if you copy some prop with a "Color" setting, any other prop that has a setting named "Color" can have that data pasted into.

Character:
We are currently working on research into how to best display body hair for our boss-character. We have also been transferring a few of the new outfits over to other characters.

Animations:
In the animation department we turned our attention to finisher moves this week. These will trigger when attacking an exhausted enemy and deal an extra large chunk of damage in a special, paired animation (despite their name they do not necessarily kill). We also continued our work on the final boss. 
On the cutscene front, the mocap cleanups are progressing well and are speeding up with the growing familiarity of the raw mocap to polished states. Currently, we are still working on the "reading datacube" cutscene, which is close to completion.

Design:
We implemented the missing blockout versions of the boss intro and side quest cutscenes. The bosses which got a cutscene are Chakkar in Apoc, Gorgh the Meatgrinder in the cannibal caves, and Lazra the commander of Adûn. Quests that got cutscenes are 'Going into the Woods' showing Rhoc's transformation, and 'Pain is Pleasure' showing Mona humiliating Max. We have also reworked the intro cutscene for the Max X Koodie minigame.

In addition to that, we have worked on lore snippets you will be able to find in locations like Yterra or the laboratory. They come in the form of logs or notes and tell about the happenings on Kerpal from the distant past.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team

Hello everyone, welcome to this week's progress report. 

Level:
This week, we continued refining Adûn with additional detail work—focusing on defensive structures, lighting improvements, and small adjustments to enhance the area's overall atmosphere.
We also revisited the runtime grass spawner, extending its functionality to support grass placement on rocks and cliffs for a more natural and diverse terrain.
In the Warrior Village, we continued iterating on the blockout, working to make the NPC profession workspaces feel more believable and grounded in the world.
Lastly, we developed new tools to help us populate large, open areas more efficiently with props and decals, streamlining the detailing process across expansive environments.

Code:
This week, we continued working on ranged combat AI. We refined the projectile velocity prediction we implemented last week and based on it, we implemented a volley shoot behavior; The NPC will fire several shots in quick succession and then reposition itself to shoot another volley.
We also updated to DLSS 4, offering improved upscaling quality and multi-frame generation support.
On the sandbox side of things, we finished the first implementation of clothes customization. You will have the option to change the color, hue shift, roughness, metallic, specular and desaturation of each clothing slot of a character individually.
We added an object follower prop that takes a target prop and tries to move/rotate/scale towards it. Each transformation type can be enabled/disabled individually in addition to their respective follow speed/smoothness.
The edit mode UI has also received some upgrades: It’s now possible to add favorite props to a new dedicated prop tab for ease of use.
Additionally, we added a new "Quick Search" window for props, which is accessible using Ctrl+F. This searches through all props and custom collections to make it easier to quickly place something that you do not exactly remember where it was located in the prop tabs.
We also added the ability to move the inspector to the right side of the screen instead of sharing the UI space with the outliner.

Character:
Our character department is continuing the work on the final boss, getting into the details and texturing of his body.

Animations:
In the animation department, we added shock staggers for all monsters this week - now Max' trusty stun mace can give them all a proper zapping! We also implemented the sword moveset we finished into the engine, all that is left to do there is some fine tuning by Game Design. Thirdly, we started work on animating the final boss of the game.
The Max X Kenda X Kenda minigame is mostly done, only needing a few adjustments.

Design:
This week, we continued the design and implementation of the quest to join the Warrior tribe, including more dialogue explaining the Warrior's role in the game world and faction background information. We also prepared the implementation of the side quest related cutscenes and the transfer of the existing outfits to armor items, which will be significant for the iteration of the inventory UI. Last but not least, we tested and improved the distribution of water sources in the desert, refining Max's journey through it.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team

Hello everyone, welcome to this week's progress report. 

Level: 
Our Environment team has made great progress placing the updated tree blockouts in the pillar region, helping to shape the area’s overall look and feel. Alongside that, we’ve begun implementing the latest batch of finalized prop assets. Polishing efforts have also continued across key locations — most notably the Warrior Village, which is coming together beautifully. 

Code:
This week, we started working on ranged combat AI. To start with, we implemented an algorithm which allows us to calculate the velocity a projectile needs to hit a moving target.

We have also made some adjustments to crouching and climbing; you can now directly climb into gaps the character can only enter while crouching and you can't stand up anymore if there is not enough space to do so. Climbing should be more reliable when falling down now, as well.
The development on the Spline Mesh prop has been completed. It has settings for custom materials, collision, global thickness, thickness at each spline point and whether it should loop.
Internally, we built a tool that allows us to quickly convert story mode props into sandbox-compatible props, which will be helpful for adding the first batch of story-mode objects soon.

We also started work on outfit color customization.

Character:
We continue to progress on the enemy creature variations and modeling of the end boss. Additionally, we have created more small outfit pieces such as a female tank top and summer dress, and shorts for the males to get the summer vibes going. We also made a small user-requested transfer of the tuxedo model for Corbac and Drakon.

Animations:
In the animation department, we had a lot of animation transferring to do this week. We created dodges for all humanoids and staggers of different lengths for the monsters - depending on their weight class and the attack and weapon used, they will stagger lightly, normally, or heavily, which is important for balancing. We have finished the move set and combat AI for the hyena enemy, as well. These fellas from the old pre-demo days can now make their proper comeback as the Blackrocks' attack animals.
We are also almost done with the animations for the Max x Kenda x Kenda minigame and aim to have it implemented in the engine by next week.

Design:
In the design department, we continued testing different dialogue camera set-ups and exploring ways to improve the dialogue camera for features like emotes. We have also done a lot of reviews of the Adûn area and worked on new concepts for the A-level romances.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team

Hello everyone, welcome to this week's progress report. 

Level:
Our level team has been quite busy making a first-pass lighting setup for the Adûn area as well as improving and adjusting materials, collisions and other aspects of many props that will soon be added to the game and sandbox.

Code:
This week, we have finished implementing the flying drop-kick attack. While it still needs some polishing, everything is there and functional from a mechanics standpoint.

On the sandbox side of things, we added a few more quality of life improvements:
The file explorer window now has the ability to add folders to a "Favorites" category. Additionally, the sorting mode is saved now.
Internally, we added the ability to change the order of prop options. This means we can group relevant options together in a meaningful way now compared to the previous way where all the options were grouped by option type (float, integer, color, etc.).
We created a base prop type for the new upcoming wave of props from story mode - These will all have the option to change the default color, but also offer settings for predefined color variation, wear and dirt masks.
We also started working on a spline mesh prop, allowing you to create things like pipes, cables, or any other longer bendable objects. Instead of relying on physics, this prop can be posed via a spline, similar to how the camera path prop works.
Other than that, a few small things have been improved, like being able to change character physics settings via event in sex scenes, adding a clickable bounding box to skinned meshes and being able to change the render target prop reference camera via event using its name instead of guid.

Character:
This week, our character team has been making good progress on some enemy creature variations, the raptor, the arac, and the hopper, who will get improved textures and new texture sets to create jungle/desert variations.
The model for the story mode end boss has left the block-out stage and entered high-poly sculpting.
A few small outfits such as modern boxershorts, a nightgown and a wide sweater were also created this week.
We also added a skeleton character based on Max to the sandbox to make pictures like this possible.

Animations:
On the animation side, we finished work on all combat staggers for human and kerpali characters by transferring impact and juggle staggers for the heaviest of attacks - like the aforementioned drop-kick attack you can do from flight that knocks NPCs to the floor. Next up on the task list will be doing the same for monsters, based on their weight class of course. We also finished work on the sword move set and can soon hand it over to Game Design for implementation.

Design:
This week, we have started design work on camera system improvements to possibly achieve more immersive and varying frames during dialogue, while also minimizing cases where the camera doesn't work too well with certain blocking environmental objects around the talking characters. We have also picked up story writing and quest design for the Alpha Camp again.

Furthermore, we designed some additional head pieces for the player characters that will enhance combat capabilities. E.g. a ballistic lens to help ranged weapon accuracy.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team