WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition News

This beta is only for Windows. It has several significant improvements and fixes but these might have unexpected side effects, so we are releasing it in public beta for a few days first. The save files in this beta are compatible with the current official release (1.0.5e) so there's no problem in switching back to that after trying the beta.

[h3]IMPROVEMENTS:[/h3]
* Set up quality levels for territory decay in Slough Creek, so on Easy, the player's territory decays substantially more slowly than before. (Challenging is unchanged, and Accurate is slightly higher.)
* More optimizations to prevent severe performance slowdown when many AI actions are occurring.
* Allow spaces in pup and mate names.
* Added "Pack" to header in Family Tree.

[h3]BUGS FIXED:[/h3]
* Occasionally wolf start spinning.
* Pup is visibly outside tall grass when they are hiding.
* Subquest tabs and panels are messed up on Quests panel.
* In Family Tree, "Play as wolf" button doesn't work in a particular case.
* Terrain and water issues.
* Typos and text edits.

Beta 3 released 7 June:

[h3]IMPROVEMENTS:[/h3]
* Yet more optimizations to prevent severe performance slowdown when many AI actions are occurring.
* Adjustments to ensure more variety in dispersal wolf coats.
* Enlarged the area for den and rendezvous site music to play.

[h3]BUGS FIXED:[/h3]
* Various glitches with animal movement.
* Summer elk calf is instantly mostly consumed when it dies.
* Newborn mule deer fawn glows in scent view.
* Issues with renaming mate and pups on Pack Info.
* Den can flood while player is away, forcing pups outside into danger.
* At end of Loaf quest, wait until player-wolf has empty mouth before triggering howling and spiral-up camera.
* At end of Find a Den quest, you can exit den by tapping a movement key, breaking elements of the season transition.
* Weird pup body angles when standing on regurgitants.
* Water and terrain issues.

NOTE: The wolves shown in the Family Tree are from snapshots taken at the end of Amethyst and at the end of Slough Creek. If you change your wolf between those snapshots, those changes will not appear in the Family Tree. However, this patch has some improvements so if you get a new mate and give them the same name as your mate in a previous snapshot, the game should detect that and create a new snapshot.

IMPROVEMENTS:
* Increased pup hunger in the summer, so they will require more food, and reduced the affinity threshold at which point pups leave the tall grass patches.
* Reduced odds of den flooding a bit more.
* Family Tree: Skip dying wolves when taking a snapshot (was creating a duplicate pup in the snapshot), several new measures to ensure that the game takes a new snapshot if a wolf is different than in previous snapshot.
* Pups now have smaller scentprints than adult wolves.
* Allow the mate to follow the pack into water at all times.
* Revised alert text if mate is starving while permadeath is disabled.
* Better/longer looping music when viewing and naming newborn pups.
* You can choose a rendezvous site outside your territory, and a notification now tells you that if you try.

BUGS FIXED:
* Player can get stuck after naming their pack at the end of Establish Territory quest.
* Summer pup freezes when being carried.
* Burned tree at rendezvous site has no collider.
* Pup may be considered safe in tall grass but visually is outside it.
* One of the sticks that pups can carry about is shiny.
* Red-brown stranger wolves have taken over Slough Creek. (Error in tint settings, corrected now but will only affect new games.)
* Grizzly spring/summer cub carcass mismatch with dying body. (Can still get stuck in dying animation, which will be fixed in next patch.)
* Mule deer fawn carcass is invisible at some distances.
* Mate gets confused/stuck/can't figure out where to go.
* Mate sometimes moves past den when returning from a lone hunt
* Bark on one Douglas-fir tree type is nearly black.
* One dirt den doesn't show in scent view.)
* Mule deer fawn carcass is crumpled oddly when laying on ground.
* Mule deer fawn carcass has wrong body-scent color.
* Ambassador wolves have a bit of white around the edge of their eyes.
* When creating a multiplayer game, the Text Chat and No Chat options are buggy.
* In multiplayer games, the word "mate" is blocked incorrectly.
* Terrain and water issues.

We are rolling this patch out. It's available now for Windows and Mac on Steam.

IMPROVEMENTS:
* Den now shows your den name in scent view after you have selected it.
* Reduced the amount of foam in sloping sections of creeks.
* Reduced the odds of a flooded den.

BUGS FIXED:
* Camera is frozen for client players at the start of multiplayer.
* Subquest popup about newborn calves and fawns does not appear at all. (Should and now does appear in early June.)
* "Hide and Snack" for newborn calves and fawns plays in a smaller radius around the mother than it should, so sometimes newborn is outside music trigger range.
* Game can be saved, or auto-save can occur, after mate dies, before game is terminated, causing problems.
* Snowprints don't disappear when snow melts.
* Wolf can get stuck when sliding into a rock.
* Text typos and errors.
* Terrain and water issues.

We are rolling this patch out. It's available now for Windows on Steam. Mac and non-Steam patches coming soon. on all platforms.

[h3]NEW:[/h3]
* In Establish Territory quest, if you claim 15 hexes and get them above 50% strength, but have not found four dens yet, there's new button on that quest panel that will reveal as many dens as you need to meet that requirement.

[h3]IMPROVEMENTS:[/h3]
* Made the "Sick pup" notification pause the game so players have time to read it.
* Increased the duration of non-pausing notifications a bit.
* Enlarged the star icon on World Map during Journey to Slough Creek to make it easier to spot.
* Adjusted excessively high food points on one cow elk meat chunk.
* Changed scent name for coyote, wolf, and fox dens to "Abandoned ___ Den" for clarity.
* Performance improvement when pups are eating.
* Various other text edits.
[h3]
BUGS FIXED:[/h3]
* In some saved games that have reached the Journey to Slough Creek quest, the star does not appear on map or compass.
* Camera is frozen at start of multiplayer games. EDIT: Oops, this is fixed only for the host. For other players, press the T key twice to snap out of it. Sorry, we'll get that fixed in the next patch.
* Mate and pups climb / glitch all over the rock above one particular rock den.
* Distant landscape does not have snow on it in early spring.
* Sometimes game performance drops when pups are eating.
* If your mate dies in the Leave Slough Creek mission, you are automatically taken to Slough Creek.
* Summer moose calf carcass disappears if you switch to Scent View and back out.
* If you choose to reset tutorial tips in mid-game, you may see all the previous tips all at once.
* If pups refuse to go into den and player tries to go into den, they are sent right back out without seeing the problem.
* Ground around tree dens is wonky in winter.
* Low poly terrain bulges above main terrain in SE SC.
* Can get stuck at a particular dirt den when trying to dig it out.
* Mule deer fawn in July gets bigger when it dies.
* Animals leave snowprints on exposed gravel ground.
* Player glitches when trying to walk into rock den in northeast area.
* Terrain and water issues.

The day of a big release is always very exciting, as well as stressful. The day after....well, not so much excitement, but still some stress. As we anticipated, there are some bugs and issues that slipped by, so today is a two-patch day: 1.0.6a rolled out a few hours ago, and 1.0.6b is rolling out now. These have a couple critical fixes, some important improvements to territory, and a bunch of smaller fixes and improvements.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We love how great the WQ community is at helping each other! If you’re looking for more tips or help with Slough Creek gameplay, be sure to check the Game Help (via the Pause menu) or on our Knowledge Base.

Some old-timers noticed that the Slough Creek trailer looked a bit familiar, and indeed it was inspired by what came before...as you'll see at the end of today's devblog.

If you haven't joined any of our social media channels, we encourage you to do so!

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/Gbcd3x3
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WolfQuestGame/
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/app/926990
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/WolfQuestGame
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WolfQuestGame

_______________
WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition is available now for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. The game currently includes Episode 1: Amethyst Mountain, Episode 2: Slough Creek, Lost River: Classic, and multiplayer mode in Amethyst and Lost River. (Slough Creek multiplayer is coming soon,.) The mobile version will come after the game (including Slough Creek) is completed on PC/Mac platforms. The next episode, Tower Fall (DLC) will follow. We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready!