WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition News

Known Issue: Sometimes there's no sunlight in the main menu, when in Basic Sky & Vegetation mode. For now, fix it by switching to Enhanced, then back to Basic.

Fixes:
* Game won't load after doing certain add/remove actions with Emote Favorites.
* Can't wake up or stand up after sleeping.
* Wolf urine is invisible.
* Game soft-locks after marking territory.
* Stranger wolves are frozen.
* Elk are frozen and hovering in air.
* NPC animals take big leaps off cliffs.
* Grass is floating above cliff rock.
* Gap below bottom of sky and distant landscape.
* Several glitches with NPC animals.
* Wolf frozen after howling while sitting.
* Grizzly bears won't stop fighting.
* Can run through trees in Basic graphics mode.
* Various minor issues with terrain, rivers, and fog

Changes:
* Added a confirmation popup when deleting a saved game.

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Note that PC/Mac users will get both versions of the game: WolfQuest 2.7 and WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition Early Access for PC and Mac. But you can also request a mobile version of WolfQuest 2.7 (and get WQ: Anniversary Edition as a free update for mobile, when it is released).

This patch has several performance improvements:

• We switched to a different method of streaming terrain tiles, which should (a) reduce the degree of stuttering sometimes and (b) make it less likely to find yourself in a spot (hunting an elk herd for example) where you repeatedly trigger the loading stutter because you're running around within a small area.
  
• We optimized the some code to reduce micropauses when animals are spawned.
  
• We found a few other things to optimize with vegetation spawning.
  

All this should make the game play more smoothly. We are still working on several more optimizations, including overall reduction in the terrain loading stutter.

FIXES:
* Wolf neck distorted when sleeping and stalking.
* Wolf walk and stalk animation speeds wrong.
* Wolf drinking audio plays too soon, lasts too long.
* Inappropriate animation on wolf when male ungulate charges it.
* Various terrain and river refinements.
* Various text errors.
* Several quirky things with grizzly bears issues (walk speed, snow).
* Several cougar animation issues.

CHANGES:
* Switched to new method for loading terrain chunks. Worst stutter is unchanged, but may be less frequent (that is, less stutter some of the times).
* Optimized animal spawning code.
* Emotes panel will tell you if the Favorites group is full when you try to add another emote to it.
* Modest reduction in RAM memory usage.

(Out for Windows now, Mac update coming shortly.)

Two notes on performance:
* The last patch worsened performance a bit, at least on Enhanced Sky & Vegetation setting. We've fixed one thing that caused that, but still tracking down what else changed. Sorry about that!
* We are making progress on the stuttering lag that occurs when terrain chunks load. We hope to have a good improvement on that in the next patch.

FIXES:
* Trees lean excessively in Basic Sky & Vegetation mode.
* Autosave icon (running wolf) gets stuck in corner of screen forever.
* Possible fix to "can't get up from sleep" bug.
* Grizzlies and coyotes live in peaceful harmony.
* Dead mate won't die.
* Territory meter (hex icon) is sometimes inaccurate.
* Unable to name mate.
* Moon is ginormous in Basic Sky mode.
* Emote Favorites don't save.
* Wolf plays inappropriate animation to some grizzly attacks.
* Snow dust too bright at night.
* Wolf fur around neck and face has problems when radio collar is selected.
* Wolf's neck bulges when howling while sitting.
* Slight echo of wolf howl is audible after howl ends


CHANGES:
* The game adapts if you change the sex of your wolf after creating it (in terms of prospective mates).
* Display resolution pulldown does not list duplicates.
* In Basic Sky & Vegetation, cliff wall terrain added so those rocks don't float when seen from the valley.
* Atmospheric perspective added to Basic Sky & Veg mode.
* Hare swimming looks slightly better.
* Adjusted volume of some music tracks.
* Modest reduction in RAM memory usage.
* Possible slight performance improvements on low-end hardware.
* Some placename labels added to world map.
* In Basic Sky & Vegetation, cliff wall terrain added so those rocks don't float when seen from the valley.

Fixes:
* Can't switch to higher quality setting selection on computers with moderate or low VRAM. (Something broke new functionality in Thursday patch.)
* Those meat chunks have finally fallen to earth (though if you have a nice stash of them like the player who submitted the first bug report, you'll have to pick each one up and put it down for the fix to take effect.)

UPDATE: Out on Mac now as well as Windows.