WolfQuest: Classic news & patch notes

Multiplayer for WolfQuest Classic (v2.7) is no longer available due to new new security protocols on the server. The single-player game will continue to work and the game remains available on the iOS App Store and is still included if you purchase WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition for PC/Mac. We apologize for these changes, but technology marches on and with code dating back to 2007, it's no longer possible to continue supporting WQ 2.7 multiplayer.

Though not as vast as the Lamar Valley or as spectacular as Yellowstone’s geysers or waterfalls, Slough Creek is one of my favorite areas in the park. It was a delight to return there during our visit last August! Susan and I hiked up the valley, often bushwacking through tall grasses and dense woods, to gather photos and impressions of the area as reference for the new, expanded Slough Creek map in WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition. Slough Creek is, of course, where you establish a territory and have a spring litter of pups in the game. While we did not spot any wolf dens (those locations are well-kept secrets, to keep them safe), we did come across plenty of potential densites on our way to Second Meadow. If you enjoy this video, be sure to check out our other research trips! * Amethyst Creek (2019): https://youtu.be/9JacCZp7egA * Slough Creek (2017): https://youtu.be/0LUK_37Ce2U * Amethyst Mountain (2017): https://youtu.be/gu4apywl6nY While in Early Access, we will be updating the game frequently with more features, multiplayer, and ultimately the Slough Creek episode with pups. The mobile version will come after the game is completed on PC/Mac platforms. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall (DLC).

We’re excited to release this update, which has a bunch of bugfixes and minor improvements, plus some bigger and more exciting new features that give the NPC residents of our WolfQuest world more to do: from hunting to fighting to just hanging out. It’s available now and should auto-update via Steam or the WolfQuest launcher. Devblog video: https://youtu.be/f2HGe8nRqX4 NEW ANIMAL BEHAVIORS: * Stranger wolves (dispersals and pack wolves) hunt prey. * Bull elk rut: Bull elk challenge the resident bull in a large herd to a fight, involving a lot of bugling, circling, and clash of antlers. * Buck mule deer rut: Buck mule deer will converge near small doe herds and challenge each other to a fight, involving a lot of circling, eyeing each other, and antler clashes. Since mule deer don't live in herds as elk do, this is harder to witness. Try following mule deer scents and hope to find a situation where two males have converged on a family group of does and fawns. * Eagles are present throughout the game world: flying around, perching on dead trees, and hunting. Bald eagles hunt fish in the Lamar River while Golden eagles (new species!) hunt snowshoe hares. * Ravens are present throughout the game world. * Coyotes hunt snowshoe hares. * Foxes hunt small prey. OTHER NEW AND IMPROVED THINGS: * Custom markers on the World Map now appear on the Compass (faded with distance). * Added a third Gore level, now No Gore (carcasses do not turn bloody), Low Gore (carcasses turn bloody), and More Gore (carcasses turn bloody and skeleton and innards revealed during consumption.) The original intent was for Low Gore to be as described here, but it inadvertently switched to what we're now calling No Gore. We've renamed "Low" to "No" so it preserves your previous visual effect, but you can change it to Low Gore if you want a bit of blood. * Carcasses have improved textures (fur only on the skin, not on the exposed innards). * Adjusted colliders on the rock at the top of Fairies' Falls. Should be possible to jump onto it, and should be quite hard to get stuck. * Player wolf will sometimes crouch when facing an opponent, preparing to attack. * Moon casts shadows at night. * Competitors should be less likely to get stuck running in circles near you. * Minor performance improvement when many elk are spawned in vicinity. * Controller support: Added a steering sensitivity slider for controllers. (Many more improvements for controllers still to come.) * Stranger territory audio now part of Interface Audio (so not muted if music is muted). * Animals use walking turn more now, don't do the spin-in-place turn except in urgent situations. * Bite cursor should be hidden in Photo Mode. * Removed "mate" from badword filter for wolf bio. BUGS FIXED * Animals sometimes have snow on them when it hasn't been snowing. * Weird snow pattern on bears. * Sometimes grass density settings don't persist in later game sessions. * Unable to save your game or overwrite existing saved game (fixed a couple bugs; there may be others still) * Ravens gather at some distance from carcass. * When running in dual-monitor setup, with game on one screen in Fullscreen Windowed mode, game minimizes when you click on other screen. * Elk calves have Cow Elk label. * Fox fur looks bad. * On some computer systems, the mouse cursor has "hand grab" icon instead of pointer. * In "My Wolves" in main menu, sometimes one wolf is missing, and arrows are missing too so can't select another wolf. * Dispersal wolf is occasionally frozen. * The "So Sleepy, Bug..." alert is missing text. * Grass sometimes bends quite excessively in the wind. * Improved lighting on trees when viewing towards sun. * Reduced acceleration and deceleration speeds for cougar, coyote and fox. * In Basic mode, some areas have grass when grass is disabled. * In Customization, fur pokes through radio collar if you change coats after choosing the collar. * In Basic graphics mode, at some places in the game world, some distant terrain sections are missing. * Can get stuck on far side of Lamar River, stuck between two world-edge barriers. * Thin vertical lines appear around grass in Basic graphics mode. * Controller: Fixed incorrect labels on Controller Help image (ack!) * Sometimes wolves don't growl or snarl during wolf fights. * Various terrain tweaks.

https://youtu.be/fGdgxBHzoM4 The cliffs of Amethyst Mountain have been troublesome from the start of the project. I’ve made several attempts over the past two years but have never been that satisfied with the results — including the version that we released into Early Access, which was something of a last-minute effort to make them look acceptable. That version, which relied on very large meshes, created a lot of problems for players as they explored the cliffs — and weren’t even very accurate, as I realized when we returned to Yellowstone last month. So now I’ve made another go at it, using some new terrain carving tools that allow more control and naturalistic effects.  Third (or was it fourth or fifth?) time was the charm, and I’m much happier with this new version of the cliffs It’ll be in the next patch (v1.0t, coming next week).  And along with the cliff work, I took a few hours to create a sweet little spot on lower Amethyst Creek — a twin waterfall that we found on our hike last month. (Check out last week’s devblog if you missed it: WolfQuest Returns to Yellowstone: Amethyst Creek).

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/18289862/7b67fa40b70b93f75769db4618e8abec3b378763.jpg We're back from Yellowstone National Park, where we had an excellent time exploring the areas where the game is set: Amethyst Mountain, Slough Creek, and Tower Fall, We also met with Dan Stahler, YNP wolf biologist and one of our science advisors for the game. As usual, he had a wealth of fascinating information to guide us as we get deeper into the gameplay and quests for the upcoming Slough Creek mission -- including some hair-raising stories of rival pack raids on pup dens! We're now back in the thick of it and have been preparing the next patch which has more than fifty bugfixes and tweaks that our amazing Unity developers -- Tommi, Andrei, and Mikko -- did since the last patch. It's going into beta testing today and should be released in the first part of next week. We have also gotten bug reports on a some issues that appear to be due to computer hardware/software, not the game. Here are some comments on those: No audio whatsoever: Try uninstalling and then reinstalling your audio drivers (in your Windows Device Manager). That has worked for several people. No cursor appears when Emotes panel is open: Please try the tips here and let us know if they help. Game suddenly starts displaying rainbow/psychedelic colors: This seems to happen only on old AMD GPUs. If you see this problem, please try updating your graphics drivers. If that doesn't help, then please email us (bugs 'at' wolfquest.org) so we can try to investigate it with your help. Strange wolf reflections in water: This may also be fixed by updating your graphics drivers. Wolf is invisible or a thin black line: This occurs on Intel HD 3000, a very basic integrated graphics chip from 2014. This is below the game's minimum hardware requirements and probably also indicates the game won't run in general. If you're having other problems, check out our Knowledge Base, which has more troubleshooting tips.

Like elk hunts, game launches are not 100% successful on the first try. Thank you all for your patience and support as we persevere. We are working on it! Update: We have released the game on itch.io so if you purchased it there originally, it'll be available on your download page. Instructions here: https://support.wolfquest.org/help/get-wolfquest-anniversary-edition Still working to get it released on Steam. Very sorry for the delay!

https://youtu.be/KSIrH57zb0g This is a special news announcement because we want to share some information about WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition before the release on Thursday. We’ve decided to scrap a particular feature that we’ve mentioned over the past few years, and we wanted to get the word out before the release. We know it’ll be disappointing to a lot of players, but we do think it’s for the best. And that feature is: importing your wolf from the old game into the new game. It sounded good two years ago, but since then the new game has grown substantially bigger (and better, I think) and it’s problematic in several ways to import old wolves into it. You can easily recreate your wolf from the old game with the customization features – and it has new options, as well – but you won't be able to import your wolf from the old game. That will be a big disappointment to a lot of people– especially those who have been working to earn more XP and climb the ranks in the old game. But we’ve thought about it a lot and even aside from the technical issues, we think it's just the right decision — partly because it doesn't really make sense start the game as two year old dispersal wolf with a lot of XP and a high rank. Furthermore, we are developing a totally new XP system with some very cool stuff, but it won’t be ready for awhile yet, and so carrying over XP from the old game gets messy. So we are very sorry to scrap this feature at the last minute, but we hope that everyone will take on the challenge of starting fresh in WQ: Anniversary Edition to chart their course as a young wolf in the Lamar Valley. We’ve been getting many questions about how to get WQ: Anniversary Edition once it’s released. It’s pretty simple: * On Steam, if you’ve purchased the old game, the new game will simply appear in your Library, ready to download. * If you purchased the game on the WolfQuest website or itch.io, the new game will be available on your WolfQuest download page. Your email receipt from itch.io has the link for that, or you can have that email sent again. See our Knowledge Base for details:

https://youtu.be/lOLrZy7WzS8 We are one week away from the release of WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition early access for PC and Mac computers! It has been a lot longer haul to get here than anybody expected but this initial release is in sight and, of course, there's lots more to come after that: Slough Creek, Lost River, multiplayer, mobile, and Tower Fall! We are very excited how things are coming together and eager to get it out there! So we thought we'd just take this moment to look back at how WolfQuest began. A couple years ago, we made a video about those early days of WolfQuest and so we thought we'd bring that back around now. So we hope you'll take a little time and watch it while you're waiting for next Thursday and the Early Access release of WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition for PC and Mac! Wildest Dreams: The Story of WolfQuest (Chapter 1): https://youtu.be/bDeA-0I7xjM Catch up on all the development news at WolfQuest. org/blog

https://youtu.be/wLAY8q2c-yw WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition will offer three difficulty levels, which we hope will make the game fun and engaging for a wide range of players. Today we look at how we’re crafting the hardest difficulty level. Most of this work has been done by our summer intern George, who is a college student (majoring in computer science), competitive Counterstrike player, and coincidentally, my son. So he’s how he tackled it: When I first started designing the Accurate difficulty, I had two primary goals. The first was to create a difficulty that increased the challenge of the game, without turning hunts into lengthy, boring slugging matches where player skill is secondary to simple time spent on the hunt. The second was to try and replicate the success rates of real wolves in the wild. The core changes that make Accurate different from other difficulties reside in the multipliers Player Damage Dealt and Player Damage Taken. As a reference point, for the Challenging difficulty, the default difficulty of the game, these numbers are both set at 1. On Accurate, Player Damage Dealt is set to 1.5, meaning the player deals one and a half times as much damage to prey, and Player Damage Taken is set to 2.7, meaning the player takes more than two and a half times as much damage from prey on Accurate than on Challenging. Those are some big changes, and they make Accurate feel like a very different game. Hunts tend to be shorter but require more caution and active thought. Even the most skilled players won’t succeed on every hunt. Knowing when to give up the chase is crucial, otherwise your wolf might not survive the harsh wilderness of Yellowstone. Accurate is not for the faint of heart and is by no means necessary to enjoy WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition to the fullest. The game is designed to be engaging and well-rounded on Challenging, which offers a test of skill without being overly punishing, and there will also be an Easy difficulty, for those who want a more relaxed experience. But for the bravest souls, Accurate offers our most realistic, most difficult representation of the life of a wild wolf. _______________ We are releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access on July 25. That will be followed by multiplayer and Slough Creek some months later, then followed by the mobile versions. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall. WolfQuest 3 will be a free update to players who own WolfQuest 2.7.

https://youtu.be/dMHqkrI-24U There are so many elements to make a vast open-world environment believable — from the ground textures to the vegetation to lighting, fog, and weather — but one of the most important is shadows. But shadows are very expensive (that’s game dev term for “slows the game down”), so we’re always trying to use the least shadows we can. In a big map like Amethyst Mountain, that means we can only have shadows extending out 50-150m from the player — beyond that, nothing casts a shadow, which often isn’t even visible or noticeable, but with long views it becomes quite apparent and detracts significantly from realism. In the old game, we could “bake” shadows into the textures, which is great for both performance and visual quality — but that only works when the sun does not move. With our dynamic day/night and weather systems, it’s not an option. I’ve been looking for more than two years for a way to have distant shadow but had given up hope until last week I began talking to Georges Pax, a graphics and rendering wizard who developed the special type of shadows we use for grass and rocks in the game. He’d been working on an amazing new technique that draws shadows out to the horizon — and no more “expensive” than what we already are using for grass shadows! So today’s video looks at how his innovative technique makes WolfQuest’s recreation of Yellowstone look even better. If you’re curious to learn more about his work, you can find him on the Unity forum, where his username is tatoforever. _________ We are releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access on July 25. That will be followed by multiplayer and Slough Creek some months later, then followed by the mobile versions. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall. WolfQuest 3 will be a free update to players who own WolfQuest 2.7.

https://youtu.be/fQcbkopST48 We’re seeing more questions from players about what kind of computer hardware is necessary to run WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition. Given how much bigger and better this game is compared to the old version, that’s a good question — so that’s what we’ll look at in today’s devblog post. First, I’ll note that general game code is quite well optimized and runs on a wide range of CPUs (Central Processing Unit — the “brain” of the computer that runs the game code), so we don’t have any worries about that. It’s the game graphics that pose the bigger burden on a typical computer. Computers use a graphics card (or GPU: Graphics Processing Unit) to draw (or “render”) the visuals on your monitor. Many modern computer games require a dedicated graphics card — a special microprocessor that is fully responsible for that task — rather than the more basic GPU which is built into the computer. Today’s video looks at WolfQuest’s graphics, particularly why grass and trees are so demanding on a computer, and what we’re doing to make the game run on as many computers as possible. How do you know what graphics card your computer has? Follow the instructions here: https://www.wikihow.com/Find-Out-What-Graphics-Card-You-Have And here is the bar chart of common graphics cards shown in the video: https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/common_gpus.html What about mobile? We’ll do our best — stay tuned! _________ We are releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access on July 25. That will be followed by multiplayer and Slough Creek some months later, then followed by the mobile versions. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall. WolfQuest 3 will be a free update to players who own WolfQuest 2.7.

https://youtu.be/Zl2qW7-oF3U We’re still cranking away on the game, and while there are days when the bug list doesn’t seem to get any shorter, we are definitely making great progress. In fact, we’ve finally reached the point where we are confident enough of the game state to announce — yes, believe it or not, a release date for the PC/Mac version! And that date is next month, July 25th. On that day (a Thursday, conveniently), WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition will be available as an Early Access game on Steam and WolfQuest.org and itch.io. If you’ve purchased the game on any of those stores, you’ll be able to download it for free, as a new app that will live alongside WolfQuest 2.7 on your computer. We've also got a new Steam store page for WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition -- check it out! ___Will WQ3 be available on mobile? WolfQuest is available for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android & Kindle. So yes, WolfQuest 3 will be available for mobile phones and tablets...at least some of them, and/or in some form. Bigger maps and more animals may be too much for mobile devices with limited RAM memory. We'll do our best, but some low-end mobile devices will not be powerful enough to run the game. We will keep WolfQuest 2.7 (the current game) available as well (for both computers and mobile). ___Will my computer be able to run WQ3? For the PC/Mac version, we want to ensure that a wide range of computers can run WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition. We are adding more quality levels so we can boost the visual quality much further than it is now, but we will do our very best to make the game run decently on older computers. However, since we are adding so much to the game (bigger maps, better graphics, more animals), we can’t yet say how well we can attain this goal. We'll do our best, but some low-end devices will not be powerful enough to run the game. We will keep WolfQuest 2.7 (the current game) available as well (for both computers and mobile).

https://youtu.be/P8HA3RrjNSU A large kill, like an elk, provides a lot of meat for a wolf pack. Living in a feast or famine world, wolves often go several days without successfully making a kill, but they can gorge themselves and can quickly consume 20 pounds each.  Wolfing down your food is a handy skill in Yellowstone since there are so many uninvited guests happy to come to your dinner party.   In fact, Yellowstone wolves don’t usually move or cache carcasses. They concentrate on keeping control of the main buffet until their bellies are full or they are driven away by a hungry bear or stranger wolves.  If a wolf decides it is time to flee, they may grab a bite to go (and you can do this in WolfQuest 3).   As you can see in this video, bears, cougars, coyotes, ravens, foxes, and other animals benefit from wolf kills… and they don’t take long to arrive! Ravens are even known to follow wolves on the hunt so they can be first in line once the wolves tear open the feast. Hungry grizzlies are next to impossible to drive away and they are known to camp out to keep it for themselves. Every animal is alert at carcasses, assessing the risks vs. rewards. Since it is hard to eat and fight at the same time, you will have to decide whether you should dine or dash.

https://youtu.be/NeRnDq3jfW4 Yellowstone National Park provides an ungulate banquet – so these large, hoofed mammals are also the main course in WolfQuest. Elk are the top choice and were a key reason of why the park was chosen for wolf reintroduction.  Swift mule deer and nimble bighorn sheep might feed a clever wolf but they are hard to catch!  Large wolf packs even tackle dangerous bison. (Yes, bison hunting is at the top of the WolfQuest wishlist for a future episode).  Snowshoe hares and maybe an occasional beaver can provide a snack (and an enjoyable change of pace for WolfQuest players) even though they may be not worth the effort when elk are on the menu. Coming to WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition, many new and improved prey: * New elk models – bulls, spikes (young bulls), cows, calves * Improved moose model with new calves * New mule deer – bucks, does, and fawns * New bighorn sheep – rams, ewes, and lambs * New snowshoe hare model * New beaver (Slough Creek) * New carcasses  (with option for more gore or less gore) * New ability to carry small prey and meat chunks We are getting closer every week to releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain, for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. That will be followed by Slough Creek some months later, then followed by the mobile versions. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall. 3D Models by GIM Studios, Phillip Guerrero, and Steve Adamson. Music by Tim Buzza and Ben Woolman.

https://youtu.be/jS2Jr0Br58o We are all cranking away on the many, many little things that need to be in good shape for Early Access release (PC/Mac) — refining interface elements, optimizing the game for lower-end hardware, polishing many aspects of gameplay, and, of course, a great deal of bugtesting and fixing — but we’ve also got a few new features. Mostly we are waiting until we’ve got the game out before we tackle these, but recently our lead Unity developer Tommi spent some time setting up bull elk fights. Here’s how the National Park Service describes these battles: “The mating season (rut) generally occurs from early September to mid-October. Elk gather in mixed herds—many females and calves, with a few bulls nearby. Bulls bugle to announce their availability and fitness to females and to warn and challenge other bulls. When answered, bulls move toward one another and sometimes engage in battle for access to the cows. They crash their antlers together, push each other intensely, and wrestle for dominance. While loud and extremely strenuous, fights rarely cause serious injury. The weaker bull ultimately gives up and wanders off.”  (National Park Service - Yellowstone) As always, it’s one thing to get the basic functionality working, and another thing to refine and polish it — so you can see some visual glitches in today’s video. We’ll try to get those fixed up soon but we won’t delay the initial Early Access release for PC/Mac.  We will keep adding features like bighorn sheep and multiplayer in the months after release!

https://youtu.be/q6ly2jqO64I Last week we showed some things that are NOT coming to WolfQuest 3, so this week, to mark the 100th devblog, we’ve put together a list of 100 things that ARE coming to WolfQuest 3: NEW GAME WORLD * Huge open world maps * Dynamic day-night cycle * Dynamic weather with clouds, rain, snow, and storms * Realistic trees and vegetation * * Immersive natural soundscape * Lamar River and many mountain creeks * Spectacular cliffs overlooking the Lamar Valley * The summit of Amethyst Mountain * New and improved petrified trees in the fossil forest * * GAMEPLAY * All new gameplay, designed and built from the ground up * Sophisticated new ecological simulation * Complex and realistic AI simulations * Naturalistic movements of all animals * Realistic scents on the ground and wind HUNTING * New showdown gameplay with prey * Persistent elk herds roam the landscape * Large herds of elk move and flee in realistic formations * Challenging hunting tactics and mechanics * Realistic biting mechanics * Mothers protect juveniles from predators * High and low-gore carcasses * Coyotes harass wolves at carcass * Dangerous competitor conflicts at carcasses WOLVES * NPC wolves, adults and pups, have personalities * Persistent wolf packs claim and maintain territory * Strangers wolves fight to defend their territory * Freeform fights with stranger wolves * Potential mates roam the landscape * Freeform courtship with prospective mates * Trial period to get acquainted with prospective mate * Interactive emotes with prospective mates MULTIPLAYER * More information about each game displayed in lobby * Players can read other's wolf bios * Chat panel is resizable and collapsible * Players can side-chat with other players * Hosts can close the game to prevent more from joining PLAYER WOLF * Upgraded wolf model with many more actions * New HD coats based on original coats * More realistic fur * More howls for your wolf * Secondary howl for pack rallies * More body customizations * Customizable eye color * Wolf bio for single- and multiplayer * * WOLF PHYSIOLOGY AND ACTIONS * Resting restores health * Eating satisfies hunger * Sleep 16 hours a day (or suffer the consequences) * Carry small prey around * Pick up and carry carcass chunks * Drink from ponds and rivers * Use emotes while moving * Jump like a real wolf * Howl while sitting * More poses when laying down * Slide down steep slopes * Inverse Kinematics (IK) for more realistic physical actions * Permadeath option for player-wolf * Permadeath option for your mate * CONTROLS * New wolf controller * New camera controller with free cam * * Photo mode with freeze action * Better controller support * Rebindable key mapping ANIMALS * New elk herds with bulls, cows, spikes, and calves * New grizzly boars, sows, and cubs * New cougars * New ravens * New foxes * New coyotes * New snowshoe hares * Moose bulls, cows, and calves * Mule deer families with bucks, does, and fawns * Bighorn rams, ewes, and lambs * Beavers * * * Bull elk bugling and fighting * * * New wolf pup models and actions * Genetics and K-Locus DNA simulation for mate and pups MUSIC * Adaptive music system * Many new music tracks * Expanded versions of old music tracks AND MORE * New achievements * New collectables * * * * Custom markers on world map * Customizable interface scaling * More audio volume controls *

https://youtu.be/daOC6R6vDcc Believe it or not, we’ve pretty much fixed all the IK (inverse kinematics) issues that provided such hilarity in past blooper videos, but that’s not to say everyone and everything in the game always behaves itself. Here are some bugs that made us chuckle lately — but I’m happy to say that all of these are now fixed. We still have a long list of bugs to do (generally less entertaining than these), along with secondary features and a lot of testing and tweaking before the game is ready for Early Access release. But we’re getting there! __When? We are getting closer to releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain, for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. That will be followed by Slough Creek some months later, followed by the mobile versions. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall ___How much will WQ3 cost? WolfQuest 3 will be a free update to players who own WolfQuest 2.7.  If you are buying WQ 3 for the first time, the cost will be more than the current game 2.7 (so it's cheaper to purchase it now and get WQ 3 as a free update). The Tower Fall expansion will be an in-game purchase (DLC). ___Will WQ3 be available on mobile? WolfQuest is available for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android & Kindle. So yes, WolfQuest 3 will be available for mobile phones and tablets...at least some of them, and/or in some form. Bigger maps and more animals may be too much for mobile devices with limited RAM memory. We'll do our best, but some low-end mobile devices will not be powerful enough to run the game. We will keep WolfQuest 2.7 (the current game) available as well (for both computers and mobile). MUSIC CREDITS: * Werq * Disco Medusae * Loopster * Secret of Tiki Island All by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

https://youtu.be/GWzVhfDFGIM Alrighty, we’ve got our first official trailer for WolfQuest 3! Making a trailer sounds so simple — just play the game and grab some cool video clips. But of course it’s never that easy. These things need to be quite cinematic, which means a variety of camera angles — not just the standard over-the-tail viewpoint. Such angles can be challenging when you’re chasing a herd of elk or evasive mule deer! The video also needs to be as close to visually perfect as we can manage — things which are tolerable in the actual game are more glaring in a video, and this is especially tricky when the game still has some rough edges that we’re in the process of smoothing out. Nevertheless, editing video is one of my favorite activities, so it’s a lot of fun amidst the frustration. Note that everything shown here – except the first and last shots (howling alone and with mate) – is in-game footage, using the new wolf and camera controller. So we look forward to seeing what videos players make once we release the game….which is still “SOON.” No release date...and we probably won’t ever set one. It’s taken us a long time (longer than some of our players have been alive), but we’ve truly learned how bad we are at predicting these things. But, one day soon, we’ll ask ourselves “Is it ready?” and we’ll answer “YES!”

https://youtu.be/ARbj57w45-s This week we look at how we are creating the WolfQuest 3 soundscape.  In addition to adaptive music, we are building multiple layers of natural sounds – both environmental (wind, rain, etc.) and animal sounds – that help bring the WolfQuest world to life. Susan spent the last few months researching Yellowstone animals and gathering sounds that you might hear as wolf moving through the habitats of Yellowstone’s Northern Range.  She sorted the sounds by season, habitat, and time of day, so I could then integrate them into the game, using a framework that our Unity developer Andrei built on top of a terrific plug-in called Master Audio. I create audio collections, then place audio emitters around the game map, which play the sounds in each collection based on defined rules (randomness, frequency, and time of day). One challenge has been finding good, clean audio that was recorded by experts (who actually know the difference between a yellow warbler and a yellow-rumped warbler).  Field recordings require good equipment, loads of patience, and long hours of analyzing and cataloging. We are grateful, in particular, for the work of Dr. Jacob Job, Sound and Light Ecology Team, Colorado State University/Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division of the National Park Service. Read more about this work at https://www.nps.gov/articles/deeplisteningbringsrewards.htm . While you are waiting for the release of WolfQuest 3, treat yourself to a wolf serenade in Slough Creek at https://soundcloud.com/gaviaimmer/wolves-howling-at-dawn-in-yellowstone-national-park __When? We are getting closer to releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain, for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. That will be followed by Slough Creek some months later, followed by the mobile versions. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall ___How much will WQ3 cost? WolfQuest 3 will be a free update to players who own WolfQuest 2.7.  If you are buying WQ 3 for the first time, the cost will be more than the current game 2.7 (so it's cheaper to purchase it now and get WQ 3 as a free update). The Tower Fall expansion will be an in-game purchase (DLC). ___Will WQ3 be available on mobile? WolfQuest is available for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android & Kindle. So yes, WolfQuest 3 will be available for mobile phones and tablets...at least some of them, and/or in some form. Bigger maps and more animals may be too much for mobile devices with limited RAM memory. We'll do our best, but some low-end mobile devices will not be powerful enough to run the game. We will keep WolfQuest 2.7 (the current game) available as well (for both computers and mobile).

https://youtu.be/ARbj57w45-s This week we look at how we are creating the WolfQuest 3 soundscape.  In addition to adaptive music, we are building multiple layers of natural sounds – both environmental (wind, rain, etc.) and animal sounds – that help bring the WolfQuest world to life. Susan spent the last few months researching Yellowstone animals and gathering sounds that you might hear as wolf moving through the habitats of Yellowstone’s Northern Range.  She sorted the sounds by season, habitat, and time of day, so I could then integrate them into the game, using a framework that our Unity developer Andrei built on top of a terrific plug-in called Master Audio. I create audio collections, then place audio emitters around the game map, which play the sounds in each collection based on defined rules (randomness, frequency, and time of day). One challenge has been finding good, clean audio that was recorded by experts (who actually know the difference between a yellow warbler and a yellow-rumped warbler).  Field recordings require good equipment, loads of patience, and long hours of analyzing and cataloging. We are grateful, in particular, for the work of Dr. Jacob Job, Sound and Light Ecology Team, Colorado State University/Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division of the National Park Service. Read more about this work at https://www.nps.gov/articles/deeplisteningbringsrewards.htm . While you are waiting for the release of WolfQuest 3, treat yourself to a wolf serenade in Slough Creek at https://soundcloud.com/gaviaimmer/wolves-howling-at-dawn-in-yellowstone-national-park __When? We are getting closer to releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain, for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. That will be followed by Slough Creek some months later, followed by the mobile versions. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall ___How much will WQ3 cost? WolfQuest 3 will be a free update to players who own WolfQuest 2.7.  If you are buying WQ 3 for the first time, the cost will be more than the current game 2.7 (so it's cheaper to purchase it now and get WQ 3 as a free update). The Tower Fall expansion will be an in-game purchase (DLC). ___Will WQ3 be available on mobile? WolfQuest is available for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android & Kindle. So yes, WolfQuest 3 will be available for mobile phones and tablets...at least some of them, and/or in some form. Bigger maps and more animals may be too much for mobile devices with limited RAM memory. We'll do our best, but some low-end mobile devices will not be powerful enough to run the game. We will keep WolfQuest 2.7 (the current game) available as well (for both computers and mobile).

https://youtu.be/z6BIzwVJ_sU In the sprawling wilderness of Amethyst Mountain and Specimen Ridge, there are a lot of grasslands and a lot of forestland, but with few notable landmarks — so we need to make the most of what’s there! The most distinctive is the Fossil or Petrified Forest — a collection of stone logs and stumps which is all that remains of a forest that thrived 50 million years ago. Buried in volcanic ash, then gradually turned to stone as silica-rich groundwater permeated the ash, the ghosts of these ancient trees are exposed as the dirt erodes—becoming a fascinating landmark for WolfQuest! Today’s video looks at a new set of petrified tree models created by 3D artist Alex Yung for the game. They’re a beautiful upgrade from what’s in the game now and we imagine players will find the new fossil forest to be a great spot to hang out. Learn more about Yellowstone’s Petrified Forests! https://www.nps.gov/media/video/view.htm?id=FF5E18EE-155D-451F-6742DA2CCB613177 https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/yell/knowlton/sec1.htm

https://youtu.be/7S-doGWQLOs The game is really coming together, but we’ve still got a long to-do list. Some things on it are frustrating, like the occasional pauses and stutters you see in today’s video, and some of them are moments of delight, like the new Photo Mode that let’s you freeze the action and move the camera around to take the perfect screenshot of your gameplay. We created Photo Mode to help us take exciting promotional screenshots for our new, soon-to-be-launched WolfQuest.org website, but we like it so much that we’ll include it as a feature for players to use if they like. Check it out in the video! ___When? We are getting closer to releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain, for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. That will be followed by Slough Creek some months later, followed by the mobile versions. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall ___How much will WQ3 cost? WolfQuest 3 will be a free update to players who own WolfQuest 2.7.  If you are buying WQ 3 for the first time, the cost will be more than the current game 2.7 (so it's cheaper to purchase it now and get WQ 3 as a free update). The Tower Fall expansion will be an in-game purchase (DLC). ___Will WQ3 be available on mobile? WolfQuest is available for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android & Kindle. So yes, WolfQuest 3 will be available for mobile phones and tablets...at least some of them, and/or in some form. Bigger maps and more animals may be too much for mobile devices with limited RAM memory. We'll do our best, but some low-end mobile devices will not be powerful enough to run the game. We will keep WolfQuest 2.7 (the current game) available as well (for both computers and mobile).

Enter WolfQuest's April contest to win a free copy of WolfQuest 2.7! Four lucky winners can choose to get any version of the game (Mac/Windows, Android, iOS, Kindle). Here's how to enter: https://www.wolfquest.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=84835 https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/18289862/95bace652d5430fa4fb8a3954d4b3bf3cc5d39de.jpg

Yellowstone has a host of hungry carnivores. Everybody wants a piece of the carcass! https://youtu.be/AatLM1BkRRc As if it wasn't hard enough taking down an elk to feed your family! Armed with fierce teeth, claws, or loads of patience, there are plenty of Yellowstone animals, big and small, waiting to take your meal. There's a reason why wolves wolf down their food! While a wolf's biggest worry is other wolves, they never underestimate the dangers of North America's biggest predators: bears and cougars. Coyotes are always harassing and waiting to grab a share. And while smaller scavengers like eagles, foxes, and ravens aren't dangerous to grown wolves, they can easily gobble up your hard-earned kill. Did we mention dangers to your pups? Most everyone is happy to take out the competition before their teeth get too big. (Character artists: Steve Adamson, GIM Studio, and Ben Guerrero) ________________________ We are getting closer to releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain, for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. That will be followed by Slough Creek some months later, then followed by the mobile versions.

https://youtu.be/Mckcny6579s A wolf lives — or dies —by its sense of smell, relying on it to find prey, whether still alive or already dead. We’ve shown the new scent system in previous devblogs, but in the past few months we’ve been overhauling that system to make it more performant (e.g. require less computing power). Our crack Unity developer Nick first tackled the floating scents and then, in March, dove in deep — a lot deeper than any of us expected — to improve the ground scents (the smelly tracks that animals leave as they move around). When playing the game, you first follow airborne scents until you find the ground scent-path that animal feet have left behind, and follow that until you encounter the animal itself. So, both airborne and ground scents are critical elements to make the game fun and playable. However, having many thousands of these rendering at any given moment when on a scent trail (and especially when following a big herd) was having a serious performance impact, so Nick spent much of March engineering a new system to render these scent particles. What made the task so complicated is that the scents vary by color (indicating species) and alpha value, or transparency (indicating how long since the animal laid down the scent). These variations normally boost the number of draw calls (rendering hits to the graphics card) tremendously, but Nick used a new technique called GPU instancing which allows us to render many thousands of particles at minimal cost. We think you are going to love the new and improved scent system! As always, thanks for your patience as we get closer to releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain, for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. That will be followed by Slough Creek some months later, followed by the mobile versions.

https://youtu.be/nLzjSa-hthY Mark Twain once said, “If you don’t like the weather...just wait a few minutes.” Yellowstone weather can cover quite a range, often in the same day. Our challenge in WolfQuest is to create believable weather effects that make you feel like you are out in the elements (even though wolves don’t mind bad weather half as much as humans.) We’re using a Unity plugin called Enviro to create all our sky and weather effects. It’s amazing how far this tech has come since we developed the original game. Enviro gives us tremendous power to create realistic lighting, clouds, precipitation, and more. In today’s video, I spend some time tweaking many variables that controls the specific effects in the game, from fog and atmospheric haze to rain and snow.

https://youtu.be/q5pwF3H9U2E This week’s devblog is a variety pack of things we’ve been working on: ELK HERD NAMES A huge thank you to everyone who suggested names for the elk herds! We loved reading all your suggestions and appreciate the thoughtful comments (and sometimes humorous…e.g. hostile elf'‘s "the buck street boys") comments. In review, choosing a theme for elk herd names presented some challenges:

• There are 18+ herds just on the Amethyst map, so the theme needed a good variety of names.
• Names need to be short enough to fit in the GUI and each distinctive enough that you can read them at a glance and remember them.
• Since elk roam around quite a bit, place names wouldn’t be meaningful for long.
• Herd size and composition shifts over the seasons so herd names can’t meaningfully capture that info.
• As fun as it may sound, having the player name the herds in-game would get annoying – constantly interrupting your game to type in names (and we also imagine some…umm… inappropriate names).
• Most importantly, we do want names that fit our theme — the life and ecology of Yellowstone wolves.

So after much discussion, we decided to go with the popular suggestion of (drumroll….) Yellowstone vegetation names. Because:

• Elk love vegetation! They will be so pleased.
• There are lots and lots of kinds of plants in Yellowstone so we won’t run out of names.
• We can even vary the names thematically by map and season.
• Using plant names for elk herds best fits our theme — the life and ecology of Yellowstone wolves. And we love that players will get familiar with names of plants that grow in the park.

Amethyst Mountain elk herds will be named after bushes and grasses such as willow, gooseberry, ninebark, bitterbrush, sweetgrass, fescue, and pinegrass. Slough Creek and Tower Fall can include flowers in bloom. We have now added the new elk herd names to WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition and, as we hoped, they really are helpful in tracking the various groups of elk, especially when scents mingle and the elk roam. NEW MUSIC! Today’s video features some of the new music by Ben Woolman, whose fingerstyle guitar playing builds on WolfQuest composer Tim Buzza’s themes. Ben worked with Tim on some tracks in the original Slough Creek soundtrack, and we’re delighted to have him back to create music for WolfQuest 3. Hear Ben’s other music at http://benwoolman.net/ NEW TREE! Check out the new whitebark pine trees that we are adding to WolfQuest 3! These ghostly dead trees are remnants of a once thriving subalpine tree that have been decimated by a fungus and beetles.  See more work by talented 3D artist Toby Fredson at https://www.artstation.com/tobyfredson

It's time for WolfQuest's monthly contest to win a free copy of WolfQuest 2.7! Four lucky winners will receive a free copy of any version of the game (Mac/Windows, Android, iOS, Kindle). Here's how to enter the contest: https://www.wolfquest.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=84811 https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/18289862/95bace652d5430fa4fb8a3954d4b3bf3cc5d39de.jpg

https://youtu.be/CuDFNmpPRiM Everyone on the team has been so focused, working on various aspects of the game, that we haven’t actually played the game much in the past few weeks. So today, Tommi and I have each been playing through the Amethyst Mountain mission arc, looking for trouble. And we found plenty — not in the form of stranger wolves or grizzlies, but in various bugs and quirks and unexpected things that need tweaking, fixing, and polishing. Today’s devblog is a condensed video of highlights from my playthrough, particularly the trial period with the mate, the questionably skilled Wapiti 3F. This took me a big chunk of my day because, as I played, I paused repeatedly to examine issues. I even got Tommi on Skype screen-sharing  a few times to figure out what was going on and I created a bunch of new bug tickets as well. The game is finally far enough along that it is really fun to playtest, despite my irksome mate, that tenacious spike, and the other unexpected details.  Hopefully these issues also have some amusement value, so enjoy! We really are getting closer to releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access…but no date yet. That will be followed by Slough Creek some months later, then followed by the mobile versions. After that, we will resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall.