WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition News

Lucky winners will receive a free copy of WolfQuest 2.7 (and PC/Mac users will also get WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition Early Access for PC and Mac)! Winners can choose to get any version of the game (Mac/Windows, Android, iOS, Kindle).

Or you can choose the WolfQuest Soundtrack and Music Extras.

[h3]How to Enter[/h3]
Email your answer to the question: "What are three interesting facts about wolves?" to [email protected]. Winners are selected randomly from complete entries. Please enter only once in each monthly contest.

All entries must be received by midnight (Eastern Daylight Time) on Sunday, December 22, 2019.

[h3]Random Drawing[/h3]
Each complete entry will be assigned a number. We will then use a random-number generator to generate three numbers. The entries bearing those numbers will each win a free copy of the game or soundtrack.

One of my favorite elements in WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition is the dynamic snow, which accumulates everywhere….except for the rocks on the cliffs overlooking the Lamar Valley. But no longer! The shader we’ve been using for those rocks didn’t support dynamic snow, but we’re switching to a different shader now which does. It’s a spin-off of the amazing MicroSplat shader that we’re using for the terrain, so the snow and other rendering effects will match the terrain quite nicely. Today’s video shows that new shader in action. It’s been a lot of setup and tweaking (and in a couple of those shots, the cliff rocks are a bit dark still), but it’s coming together.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This isn’t available yet — it’ll be in the next update. (No date on that yet, still wrangling with a couple other things). But do you know what IS available? The updated WolfQuest Soundtrack with all the new music from WQ: Anniversary Edition! All sales revenue helps support further development of the game.

Watch our video about it.

Buy it here on Steam!

Already have the WolfQuest Soundtrack but still want to support the game with a direct donation?

The WolfQuest Original Soundtrack & Music Extras pack includes the soundtrack to WolfQuest Classic and new music of WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition, composed and performed by Tim Buzza and Ben Woolman, plus a 25-minute video featuring Tim Buzza talking about how he created the signature sound of WolfQuest and many memorable tracks in the game. The soundtrack currently has nearly two hours of music, and we will be adding more tracks as we continue to develop the game! All sales revenue helps support further development of the game.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

NOTE: This pack is identical to the one as sold as DLC for the old WolfQuest game. (Steam doesn't allow us to share DLC across multiple game products, so this is a duplicate of that one.)

Buy it here on Steam! (If you already purchased the Music Extras for the old game, you'll get the new tracks as a free update.)

TRACK LIST

WOLFQUEST (CLASSIC)
Composed & performed by Tim Buzza

1. Title Theme
2. Exploration
3. The Chase
4. Danger!
5. Low Hunt
6. High Hunt
7. Death
8. Foreboding
9. Into the Woods
10. Wary of Strangers
11. Attack
12. Sleeptime
13, Waking Up
14. Bear Attack
15. Satisfaction

SLOUGH CREEK
1. Slough Creek Exploration
2. The Creek
3. Mission Completed
4. Pups
5. Playing with Pups
6. Death of a Pup
7. Defending the Den
8. You've Got Pups! 9. Freeplay
10. The Ranch
11. The Journey
12. Danger at the Creek
13. Rendezvous

LOST RIVER
1. Lost River Main Theme
2. Lost River Exploration
3. Neighborhoods
4. Lost River Chase
5. Low Danger
6. Danger–Lost River
7. Low Hunt–Lost River
8. High Hunt–Lost River
9. In the City
10. Bear Attack–Lost River
11. Dying
12. Dying Extended
13. Bonus Piano Theme

WOLFQUEST: ANNIVERSARY EDITION
Composed & performed by Tim Buzza & Ben Woolman

1. Exploration Unplugged
2. Roaming
3. Herd Ahead
4. Flight of the Wapiti
5. Elk Showdown
6. Dinner Music
7. Sweet Dreams 8. Rumble
9. Sunny Meanders
10. Chilling
11. Exploration (Fingerstyle)
12. Lazy Day
13. Courtship Conversation
14. Maybe-Mate Melody
15. Chasing Meals
16. Idyll Idle
17. Menu Music
18. Food Fight
19. Night Ramble
20. My Mate and Me
21. Ungulate Hunt (Fingerstyle)
22. Wild and Free

WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition is in early access. We will be adding new tracks as we release the new versions of Slough Creek, Lost River and, eventually, Tower Fall.

The elk hunt in WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition is designed to realistically capture the challenges and dangers facing wolves in Yellowstone as they seek their main prey. For players, this means mastering many skills: how to find a herd, identify a vulnerable member, deal damage with risky bite-holds, and when hunting calves, avoid the dangerous hooves of the mother. We asked JayPlays, a popular YouTuber and longtime WolfQuest player and beta tester, to suggest some tips and tactics to help players hunt elk more successfully. Here’s her video — enjoy!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

(And then go enjoy many more videos of WolfQuest and other animal games on her YouTube channel.)

One of the top questions we have been getting lately (other than When is mobile?) is: which will we release first, Slough Creek or multiplayer? And WHEN? Even with our small team, we have been working on both multiplayer and Slough Creek simultaneously, and we’ll release whichever is ready first! Since we have proven over and over that we are terrible at predicting release dates, we are are not announcing any specific dates — but we are making lots of progress! Here’s what the core WolfQuest team has been working on this month:

Our lead developer Tommi is spending several weeks on an overhaul of the pathfinding system. We have a pretty good system in the game now, but it doesn’t handle all situations well — which would become a bigger problem in Slough Creek if we didn’t tackle it now. The bighorn sheep will also need it to find their way around on the cliffs.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Tommi’s update:
“The new pathfinding system will make NPCs more aware of the lay of the land, so they know where they can walk easily, where it's going to be harder, and where they just can't go. For example, mates will now be able to walk around normally near cliff edges without accidentally jumping to their doom. And on the other hand, animals will not mysteriously run in circles when trying to attack you because they think you're standing in difficult territory (even though you're nowhere near that). They will also be able to, when necessary, find paths up the cliffs despite the many impassable areas.

“This has been challenging because we want the above-mentioned precision without creating too much memory or CPU load. So I've been trying out various methods to detect where we need a lot of precision (complicated areas like cliffs) and where we can do with very broad strokes (open areas). I also decided to treat impassable areas separately from the waypoint grid, unlike before, because it's much more important to know where exactly the cliff starts than where exactly the quickest path up a slope is. Next I'm going to zoom from representing the terrain to how individual animals navigate it. The new method should be simpler but more accurate in finding ways around trees, bigger rocks, other animals, and the den, addressing issues such as the mate often running in a weirdly oscillating way when following you.”

Andrei, our developer who handles most of the secondary game systems, has been focusing on controller support.

Andrei’s update:
“WolfQuest gameplay fits well with a joystick (e.g. XBox, PS joysticks). We just need to better map special and fine tune sensitivity. In the current state, the main actions are already mapped (except Emotes) for controllers but some shortcuts we have on keyboard are still to come. So I have been linking UI elements for the player to navigate from one element to the other in an intuitive way. I am also creating the various "highlighted" states for the different UI elements so they are selectable. For UI, everything is already working, but we need a way to access every part with joystick, which don't have a visual cue like cursor for mouse.”


Mikko joined the team earlier this year to take over multiplayer, though we also dumped quadruped IK (inverse kinematics) on him. We are thrilled to add his expertise to the team.

Mikko’s update:
“I have been working on multiplayer since I joined the WolfQuest team in August, taking over from another developer who built the prototype code. Most recently I have focused on improving the logic of spawning animals, especially when a player first connects to the game. By enforcing an ordering between spawn and update messages, I am eliminating log errors about unknown objects that, while relatively harmless during development, made the logs difficult to read. I am also making sure that animal properties get synced properly at spawn time - which was glossed over during the prototyping stage.”


Part of Susan’s work is content research. Lately, she has been spending time studying and locating wolf pup vocalizations for the upcoming Slough Creek episode.

Susan’s update:

“Accurate wolf pup recordings are quite challenging to find and decipher. I am hunting for audio clips that can approximate wolf pup communication. In general, matching game sounds to animations always requires a lot of simplification of extremely complex vocalizations. The challenge of game sfx is that they need to sound realistic and not be too unique or intrusive (or they become annoying when repeated). Quality wolf pup recording are rare as scientists rarely disturb denning areas and observations are most often made from far away through long lenses. Also, outdoor recordings are often filled with ambient noise that won’t work in the game. Most wolf organizations that have captive wolves have not systematically recorded/catalogued individual pup sounds so it takes some digging to locate appropriate audio for our animations. To further complicate matters, many of the sounds pups make are made when socializing in groups so individual vocalizations are hard to find. The upside is that I get to watch lots of cute pup videos!”

And for myself, Dave (loboLoco), I’ve been working on the Slough Creek map — it's a great place to spend time on gray November days!

___________________

The first episode, Amethyst Mountain, is available as Early Access for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, . 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.