A Medley of Multiplayer Matters

Along with good progress on core multiplayer functionality, we’ve also been adding other features to enhance everyone’s experience. Today’s devblog looks at several of these:

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• Instead of private games, the multiplayer host can restrict access in three new ways: making the game available to all their friends (using the in-game Friends list), or selected friends, or one or more Packs (groups) that they belong to. Choosing one of these options will make their game appear only in the lobby for those selected players and no one else. We think this will be more efficient and user-friendly than the old private game-name and password method, and we hope it will greatly reduce the number of players who hold spots for friends in open games.
  
• Sometimes a player will leave the game (intentionally or not) but wish to return soon, so we now keep their wolf, resting quietly, in the game for five minutes. If they return in that time, they resume control of their wolf. If they don’t, then the wolf is removed. We hope this will smooth over some annoying but inevitable disconnections.
  
• The Pack Info panel shows basic information about all player-wolves in the game: health, stamina, wakefulness, along with their stats and their bio.
  
• The text chat panel is much more versatile: you can resize it, detach it from the corner and move it around, minimize it, and change the font size and opacity to suit your preferences.
  
• Pack Rally is back! Much like in the old game, players can howl together to boost their spirits and their stamina for a period of time. A new wrinkle: if any player-wolf dies while the rally is in effect, the rally is terminated. We added this after thinking about the big wolf fights that we’ve been testing in multiplayer, where NPC wolves behave rationally (preferring not to die), while player wolves find death a more acceptable option. By losing the rally boost, we hope to give players a bit more incentive to stay alive.
  

All these are coming soon in WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition multiplayer. We don’t have a release date, but it won’t be too much longer now.

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Thumbnail Screenshot Image by Sass
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We have released the first episode of WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition (Amethyst Mountain) for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. While in Early Access, we are 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).