WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition News

It's time for the monthly contest to win a free copy of WolfQuest! 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 also choose the WolfQuest Soundtrack and Music Extras if you already own the game.

[h2]This Month's Contest[/h2]
Email your username and your answer to the question: "What are three interesting facts about wolves?" to [email protected]

[h2]Deadline[/h2]
All entries must be received by midnight (Eastern Daylight Time) on Wednesday, April 22, 2020.

[h2]Random Drawing[/h2]
Winners are selected randomly from complete entries. Please enter only once in each monthly contest. 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.

We are making good progress with multiplayer. Today’s video features snippets from the dev team’s test session this week, which shows both overall progress and some new bugs arising from parallel development of a new physics/collision system by Tommi and Mikko’s work on multiplayer movement.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I asked Mikko to summarize some of the core challenges in WolfQuest multiplayer development. Here are his thoughts:

"An unfortunate fact of multiplayer games is that due to network latency things can never be synced quite perfectly. It gets worse the faster motion and more sudden changes there are. My principle here is that appearance is more important than accuracy to an extent. That's why I developed the movement algorithm which, while not 100% accurate, attempts to produce pleasantly smooth movement paths for animals. I prefer syncing things at a higher level, because knowing the intent of an action in advance makes it easier to reproduce the same action on other clients.

"That movement algorithm is probably he largest single piece of work in WQ multiplayer so far. I guess another challenge which is constantly present (to my detail-oriented brain at least) is various performance aspects. C# does a good job of hiding memory management, but unfortunately it also hides the costs incurred by it. Various APIs like BitConverter will happily return dynamically allocated arrays without concern for performance. Closures are another thing where it's easy to accidentally allocate memory. Not to mention various Unity APIs - did you know that the Vector3.zero property creates a new Vector3 every time it's called?

"One multiplayer-specific thing is making sure that things get synced in the right order. Animals need to have a flock, so the spawn event for the flock should be sent before that of the animal. Carcasses need some data from the origin animal, so the spawn of the carcass needs to be sent before the despawn of the animal. When a new player joins the game, care needs to be taken that various events regarding pre-existing objects are sent exactly once. That last one still needs a bit of tuning; if there are already at least two players in the game and another one joins they will get a duplicate spawn message for their own wolf (but the duplicate gets safely ignored, so it's mostly just an annoyance for me).

"And then there's the actions which require some kind of confirmation from the other party. Like picking up a chunk from a carcass needs a request to the host to spawn the chunk. The existing code expects that it can get a result immediately, and at least in the chunk-spawning case there's no suitable special value to indicate that it's not yet ready. So I created a network future system where a request is sent over the network and a future object is returned which encapsulates the result together with the readiness state. The caller can then poll that object for readiness and continue with the operation once the result is available."

________

While MIkko works on multiplayer, Tommi is focusing on Slough Creek, so we’re making progress on both simultaneously. Which will be released first? Whichever one is ready first!

______________
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).

The upcoming Slough Creek episode (in WQ: Anniversary Edition) will offer a variety of dens for player to choose from, from holes in the ground to tree root hollows to the topic of today’s devblog: rock dens. Drawing inspiration from wolf den camera footage from the Voyageurs Wolf Project* in northern Minnesota, I tried to create such a den for the game. So yes, this video is for those players who have requested a live feed of Dave working…..but for the sake of everyone else out there, most of the video is sped up 2500x.

Each den can take an hour or two to set up (not counting time spent later to tweak it, since it’s never satisfactory when I take another look later). We’re planning to have a lot more dens in the new Slough Creek map than in were WolfQuest 2.7. Not yet decided how many, but there will plenty to choose from. (And how will you find and choose them? Stay tuned!)

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


* Check out Voyageurs Wolf Project for lots of great video and research about wolves.
______________
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).

In today’s patch, we’ve put Floppy back in her enclosure. In the last patch, she decided to disobey the StayHome directives and has been wandering the hills of Lost River for a few days, but for everyone’s safety, we’ve put her back where she belongs.

But where did Floppy come from? In the game scenario, that’s something for wolves to wonder about. In the development of the game, that dates back to 2016, when we added moose to WQ 2.7. Today’s video tells the tale, but in short: it’s a feature, not a bug!

https://youtu.be/35XlTdxTtXc

_______________
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).

UPDATE: Rolling out hotfix 1.0.3f2 with two fixes:
* Can't change wolf eye color in Wolf Customization
* Mates are frozen in Lost River

GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS:
* Main menu: Added popup window to display recent patch notes.
* Wolf Customization: Improvements to controller support.
* Wolf Bio: Can add line brakes now with Return/Enter key.
* Modest reduction in frequency of mule deer spawning.
* Refinements to snow effect on Amethyst cliff rocks.
* Removed a few unnecessary words from badwords list.

GENERAL BUGS FIXED:
* Ravens don't flock to carcasses.
* Mule deer fawn entirely underwater when swimming.
* Eagles are not quick enough to fly away when wolf approaches.
* Bite points on wolf rear legs not quite aligned correctly.
* Error that can prevent WQ game launcher (non-Steam version) from working properly.

AMETHYST BUGS FIXED:
* Cliff rocks have no snow in wintertime.
* On World Map during winter, map is tinted dark when Pack Territories are displayed, but does not untint when those are toggled off.

LOST RIVER BUGS FIXED:
* Floppy is not observing StayHome directives.
* Various issues with object colliders, getting stuck on stairs, etc.
* Dave's Bowl sign shines through rain, snow, and fog.
* Elk scent tracks enter grocery store.
* On MacOS, some logs near beaver dam are missing textures.


GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS:
* Main menu: Added popup window to display recent patch notes.
* Wolf Customization: Improvements to controller support.
* Wolf Bio: Can add line brakes now with Return/Enter key.
* Modest reduction in frequency of mule deer spawning.
* Refinements to snow effect on Amethyst cliff rocks.
* Removed a few unnecessary words from badwords list.

GENERAL BUGS FIXED:
* Ravens don't flock to carcasses.
* Mule deer fawn entirely underwater when swimming.
* Eagles are not quick enough to fly away when wolf approaches.
* Bite points on wolf rear legs not quite aligned correctly.
* Error that can prevent WQ game launcher (non-Steam version) from working properly.

AMETHYST BUGS FIXED:
* Cliff rocks have no snow in wintertime.
* On World Map during winter, map is tinted dark when Pack Territories are displayed, but does not untint when those are toggled off.

LOST RIVER BUGS FIXED:
* Floppy is not observing StayHome directives.
* Various issues with object colliders, getting stuck on stairs, etc.
* Dave's Bowl sign shines through rain, snow, and fog.
* Elk scent tracks enter grocery store.
* On MacOS, some logs near beaver dam are missing textures.