WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition News

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https://youtu.be/9JacCZp7egA

We returned to Yellowstone National Park last month for another round of on-site exploration of the areas we depict in the game.

Today’s video follows our hike into the northern edge of the Amethyst game map, as we ford the Lamar River and follow Amethyst Creek into the highlands. Along the way, we saw a plenty of wildlife — birds, bison, pronghorn, and even a toad in the Lamar River — and plenty of discarded elk antlers. We also took note of many things to improve in the game, as we try to make the game world match the real world of Yellowstone as closely as we can. Little things like how much the grass and sage moves in the wind, and bigger things like the density of trees and grass along the creeks. Plus ground textures, rock forms and textures, and all sorts of things that we’ll try to incorporate in the coming months.

We saw no wolves on this hike, but the very next day — after a terrific meeting with one of our science advisors, YNP wolf biologist Dan Stahler, — we watched a black wolf trot a mile or two up the Lamar Valley, eventually crossing our route before turning and heading into the hills. (We got amazing views through binoculars but no photos or videos, alas.)

In the coming months, we’ll share more videos of our explorations of the Slough Creek and Tower Fall maps, so stay tuned!
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We have released the first episode, Amethyst Mountain for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. 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).s we can. Little things like how much the grass and sage moves in the wind, and bigger things like the density of trees and grass along the creeks. Plus ground textures, rock forms and textures, and all sorts of things that we’ll try to incorporate in the coming months. We saw no wolves on this hike, but the very next day — after a terrific meeting with one of our science advisors, YNP wolf biologist Dan Stahler, — we watched a black wolf trot a mile or two up the Lamar Valley, eventually crossing our route before turning and heading into the hills. (We got amazing views through binoculars but no photos or videos, alas.)

BUGS:
* Game can get stuck on the "Crash Detected" screen.
* Bold mates often leap off cliffs.
* Hare and Meat Chunks move out of mouth when switching to Photo Mode while sprinting.
* Grizzly Sow freezes sometimes.
* Raven is missing feathers on underside of wings.
* Mule Deer Buck carcass has blank eyes and teeth.
* Fight and Flight meters don't display in certain situations.
* Grizzly cub can get too far away from mother.
* Some scent readout text is too long for interface panel. (Elk ground scents with long herd names)
* Grizzly cub carcass misaligned after death.

NEW:
* Tutorial Tips now available for browsing in Game Help panel. (More help info still to be added.)
* New alert if your mate is starving and needs to eat.
* New alert text when you reach the border of the map across the Lamar River.

EDT: Patch released for Windows and Mac now.

EDIT: Hotfix patch 1.0r just released to fix a nasty bug:
* If you load a saved game that's in the Learn to Hunt mission, you won't get credit for elk kills, thus cannot finish the mission.
* Also has new option to disable Dust Particles in Graphics Quality Settings (for very low-end hardware)

BUGS FIXED:
* NPC animals don't avoid some boulders.
* Stranger wolf packs can be decimated and their territory disappears (fix only works in new games).
* Carcasses sometimes spawn underground.
* Wolf foreleg distorted when biting elk as they collapse to prone pose.
* Cursor glitches out on world map.
* Ambient bird and animal sounds stop and do not resume after game is paused.
* Some Canyon pack female dispersals are labeled incorrectly as male.
* Photo mode tip sometimes stays onscreen too long.
* Sometimes Learn to Hunt mission is skipped or abbreviated when starting a new game.
* Autosave / Last Autosave button label doesn't display until mouseover
- Photo mode tip appears when Show HUD is off
- Elk carcass has fur when fur setting was off
- Snow appears on wolves in main menu after exiting game during snowfall
- Two music tracks play at once (fixed some issues, might still be more).
- Carcass consumption level differs between normal view and scent view.
* Moose and mule deer carcasses lack consumption textures.
- Cow Moose had has fur when it should not.
- Fur is not enabled when it should be, if the game started with a disabled fur setting.
- HUD Scale setting not saved.
* Targeting indicator didn't always appear when targeting something. Also reduced targeting range from 40m to 30m, to match the previous max distance.
* Wolf can fall through map in certain spots (partial fix, better fix coming in next patch).
* All NPC wolves have the same eye color.
* Wolf can sort of walk up the big craggy whitebark pines.
* Some glitchy issues in the Fossil Forest (not completely fixed yet).
* Broken mate when loading a saved game.
* In Basic graphics mode, rivers do not respect fog.
* Sometimes there's grass in the ponds.

NEW:
* Meat chunks now will attract predators.
* Water splash sounds added when wolves are in water.
* New Display option for Exclusive Fullscreen. This devotes all your computer's resources to the game, improving performance a bit, but is slower when switching to other applications. (Previous option, properly called Fullscreen Window or Borderless Fullscreen, is still an option with correct labeled.)
* Added trees and somewhat more grass along the creeks (based on Yellowstone visit).
* Added aspen trees (but these are placeholder tree model, better one coming soon).
* Added new tutorial tips about territorial marking and when mate affinity is low.
* Added visual effect on Territory Hex icon (below wolf badge) when entering and marking territory.
* Added visual effect to Fight/Flee meter when bars change.
* Mate personality now affects how close to player-wolf it lays down for sleep.
* Personality now affects distance when doing emotes.
* In-game time now displays in Pack Stats.
* Elk herd ground scents now show elk herd name.
* Fixed howls and affinity: now it respects maximum affinity from socialization over a period of time. Except when the mate initiates a howl on their own accord and the player then responds.
* Added mate behavior where, if health is 5% or less, it'll avoid all threats and lie down, only getting up to eat and follow the player.
* Added more tips and factoids on loading screen.
Taking damage now adds up to 50% Flight meter instead of 20%.

CHANGES:
* Some reduction of stutter/lag when loading new terrain chunks.
* Some improvements to grass and sagebrush in Basic graphics mode.
* Some refinements to snow on fallen logs in forest.
* Revisions to Pack Stats, Game Settings, and Controls panel layouts.
* Adjusted far left end of wolf eye color range to make it more gray.
* Tutorial tips progress is now saved per computer user, not per game
* Removed some unnecessary word filtering in Wolf Bio.
* Adjusted the math behind Audio sliders, to make more usable.
* Taking damage now adds up to 50% Flight meter (was 20% before)
* Power balance considers near-dead animals 30% "worth" healthy animals (instead of 0%).
* Taking damage now adds up to 50% Flight meter instead of 20%
* Various tree and terrain refinements.
* Increased wind effect on grass and sage.

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.