WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition News

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Today’s patch has a few new things and a bunch of fixes, mostly to issues in last week’s game update. We’re most excited about the new aspen trees, made by vegetation artist Kerry Baldino, with gorgeous fall colors and elk damage — when other food is scarce, elk chew the bark on the lower portion of the trunk.

NEW:
* Mates will now hunt snowshoe hares.
* Aspen trees, replacing the placeholder model.
* Aurora borealis (northern lights) appear occasionally at night.

IMPROVEMENTS
* Reduced attack damage dealt by all mule deer.
* Reduced mule deer fawn's max health by 25%.
* Refinements to fox swimming action.
* Tweak to Grizzly Boar fur length.

BUGS FIXED:
* Free camera (right-click to orbit) doesn't work.
* Tree trunks sway out of sync with branches.
* Wolf walks funny after loading a saved game where it was on uneven or sloped ground. (IK)
* Wolf forelegs bend oddly during some bite attacks (fixed some cases, not all yet). (IK)
* Wolf forelegs sometimes angled back stiffly when biting another wolf's neck. (IK)
* Wolf sometimes does handstand on carcass. (IK)
* Sunlight shadow direction is incorrect in early morning and late afternoon.
* Abrupt change in light direction a little while after sunrise.
* Eagles dip underground when landing.
* Sometimes you can't bite the cougar.
* Carcasses sink into ground twice before disappearing.
* Wolf can get stuck running along the border north of the Lamar River.
* Reduced microstutter when elk herds despawn.
* Bumpy terrain in a few places.
* In some spots, distant terrain is missing in Basic graphics mode.

We’re excited to release this update, which has a bunch of bugfixes and minor improvements, plus some bigger and more exciting new features that give the NPC residents of our WolfQuest world more to do: from hunting to fighting to just hanging out. It’s available now and should auto-update via Steam or the WolfQuest launcher.

Devblog video: https://youtu.be/f2HGe8nRqX4

NEW ANIMAL BEHAVIORS:
* Stranger wolves (dispersals and pack wolves) hunt prey.
* Bull elk rut: Bull elk challenge the resident bull in a large herd to a fight, involving a lot of bugling, circling, and clash of antlers.
* Buck mule deer rut: Buck mule deer will converge near small doe herds and challenge each other to a fight, involving a lot of circling, eyeing each other, and antler clashes. Since mule deer don't live in herds as elk do, this is harder to witness. Try following mule deer scents and hope to find a situation where two males have converged on a family group of does and fawns.
* Eagles are present throughout the game world: flying around, perching on dead trees, and hunting. Bald eagles hunt fish in the Lamar River while Golden eagles (new species!) hunt snowshoe hares.
* Ravens are present throughout the game world.
* Coyotes hunt snowshoe hares.
* Foxes hunt small prey.

OTHER NEW AND IMPROVED THINGS:
* Custom markers on the World Map now appear on the Compass (faded with distance).
* Added a third Gore level, now No Gore (carcasses do not turn bloody), Low Gore (carcasses turn bloody), and More Gore (carcasses turn bloody and skeleton and innards revealed during consumption.) The original intent was for Low Gore to be as described here, but it inadvertently switched to what we're now calling No Gore. We've renamed "Low" to "No" so it preserves your previous visual effect, but you can change it to Low Gore if you want a bit of blood.
* Carcasses have improved textures (fur only on the skin, not on the exposed innards).
* Adjusted colliders on the rock at the top of Fairies' Falls. Should be possible to jump onto it, and should be quite hard to get stuck.
* Player wolf will sometimes crouch when facing an opponent, preparing to attack.
* Moon casts shadows at night.
* Competitors should be less likely to get stuck running in circles near you.
* Minor performance improvement when many elk are spawned in vicinity.
* Controller support: Added a steering sensitivity slider for controllers. (Many more improvements for controllers still to come.)
* Stranger territory audio now part of Interface Audio (so not muted if music is muted).
* Animals use walking turn more now, don't do the spin-in-place turn except in urgent situations.
* Bite cursor should be hidden in Photo Mode.
* Removed "mate" from badword filter for wolf bio.

BUGS FIXED
* Animals sometimes have snow on them when it hasn't been snowing.
* Weird snow pattern on bears.
* Sometimes grass density settings don't persist in later game sessions.
* Unable to save your game or overwrite existing saved game (fixed a couple bugs; there may be others still)
* Ravens gather at some distance from carcass.
* When running in dual-monitor setup, with game on one screen in Fullscreen Windowed mode, game minimizes when you click on other screen.
* Elk calves have Cow Elk label.
* Fox fur looks bad.
* On some computer systems, the mouse cursor has "hand grab" icon instead of pointer.
* In "My Wolves" in main menu, sometimes one wolf is missing, and arrows are missing too so can't select another wolf.
* Dispersal wolf is occasionally frozen.
* The "So Sleepy, Bug..." alert is missing text.
* Grass sometimes bends quite excessively in the wind.
* Improved lighting on trees when viewing towards sun.
* Reduced acceleration and deceleration speeds for cougar, coyote and fox.
* In Basic mode, some areas have grass when grass is disabled.
* In Customization, fur pokes through radio collar if you change coats after choosing the collar.
* In Basic graphics mode, at some places in the game world, some distant terrain sections are missing.
* Can get stuck on far side of Lamar River, stuck between two world-edge barriers.
* Thin vertical lines appear around grass in Basic graphics mode.
* Controller: Fixed incorrect labels on Controller Help image (ack!)
* Sometimes wolves don't growl or snarl during wolf fights.
* Various terrain tweaks.

Win a free copy of WolfQuest! Here's how to enter:

WolfQuest forum - October giveaway contest

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). Note that WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition is not yet available for mobile.

BUGS FIXED
* Game crashes during launch on very old CPUs. (Fixed in August, somehow snuck back in, sorry!)
* Sometimes wolf coats change during gameplay.
* Cougar carcass is white
* Elk herd is occasionally frozen in place.
* Mates sometimes go off the cliff. (Still possible if you try hard enough. Be kind.)
* Some aspen trees (still placeholder) have black trunks at night.
* Gnarly whitebark trees are floating in air when seen faraway in Basic graphics mode.
* Sometimes animals kick up dirt particles instead of snow particles when on snow. (Fixed on Medium Quality terrain, may still happen on lower quality terrain settings, due to performance optimizations.)

NEW:
* Some splashes added where mountain creeks join Amethyst Creek.

NEW:
* Press the "i" key on your keyboard to hide/show the game interface.
* In Photo Mode, with tutorials off, the camera icon fades after two seconds (reappearing if you move the camera as a reminder).

CHANGES:
* Minor reduction in RAM memory usage.

BUGS FIXED
* Snow doesn't fade away on wolves sometimes. (But still some other issues with snow on animals, working on that.)
* In Basic graphics mode, some trees are missing, especially in the Burn. (But some aspens are still missing, working on that.)
* In Basic graphics mode, some missing sections of cliff area when viewed from a distance.
* Some problem spots on the new cliffs.
* Mate and other animals can fall through cliff rocks and become stuck inside.
* Animals fall through invisible section of terrain in far northwest corner of map.