We are very happy to announce that we have finalized our discord server for public use! If you are interested in joining here is the link: https://discord.gg/3mQnjNSMcW
The server will be used to give special information to those that want some more details on Lost Paws. It will serve as a central hub for all our other social media. In addition, we will release early info on upcoming dev logs and some additional detail on what we are currently working on. We also hope to run events and give out livestream times for our Steam page on there as well.
Thanks for reading and see you in the next one!
Graphics Update and New Release Date
Hi fellow Dog Lovers!
We are back and better then ever! During the last month, we have revamped the graphics of the game giving it a new polish and taking some of your feedback into making it look and feel even better. The changes can be seen in our Trailer:
and our new screenshots:
We have tuned various post-processing elements including utilization of color curves and tuned contact shadows. In addition, we have made major changes to lighting in the scenes with use of interior GI and changes to lighting as a whole adding various lights to "paint" certain zones to improve lighting in certain places to make it look as good as possible. Overall, it creates a brand new lighting environment and gives the game a facelift.
Now to address the elephant in the room. We have moved our release date to Q2 in 2023. We are confident this will be our final change to the release date for early access. This change is due to all the feedback we got in the Nextfest Survey as well as a desire to vastly expand and enrichen the environment as much as we can. We want to implement as many suggestions as possible. As always, we will keep you all updated as development progresses. Please wishlist and follow if you want to stay up to date with the latest news. Excited to share our plans with you all in the near future!
Thanks for reading and see you in the next one!
Thanks for Attending Steam NextFest!
Hi fellow dog lovers!
We here at Dungeoneering Studios wanted to thank everyone for attending Steam NextFest and checking out Lost Paws! It was an amazing experience for us with many firsts including out first ever livestream. We hope to do more streams, stories, and posts in the future. Until then thanks again and keep being awesome!
Lost Paws Third NextFest Stream
Hi fellow dog lovers!
Check out our third stream for Lost Paws today at 9 PM EDT! Dr.Objection will be taking the reigns this time to show off what Lost Paws has to offer. We are excited to show off as much as we can. Hope you enjoy the stream, and if you did, feel free to check out our demo and wishlist the game to keep up to date with its development!
Lost Paws Weekend NextFest Live Stream
Hi all!
Announcing our second stream of Lost Paws! We will be streaming Saturday at 1 PM EDT. Are you ready for more adventures with our fluffy doggo? We are excited to show off as much as we can. Hope you enjoy the stream, and if you did, feel free to check out our demo and wishlist the game to keep up to date with its development!
Lost Paws October NextFest Update
Hello friends and fellow internet denizens!
We are back with another update just in time for the Steam October NextFest. Real quick, we will be having a demo of the game available during Steam NextFest (Oct. 3 - 10). Feel free to check it out! If you download the demo you will have the opportunity to take a survey and enter for a chance to join our beta program as we get closer to our release.
This month's series of updates contain the start of longer progression features of Lost Paws. The biggest additions are the role-playing skill tree, the in-game achievement system, additional details in the map, a new tutorial, item and spawnpoint rebalancing, HUD changes, new NPCs, some graphics improvements and a variety of optimizations and options now added into the game.
Skill Tree
The skill tree is the main way you can progress in the game. As you play the game, you will be able to gain milestone points (more on that later) and spend these milestone points to get skills. As for types of skills and decision you can make, three branches exist for you to customize the path you take as a stray doggo.
The prototype skill tree:
The first pathway for the skill tree is the wild dog. The wild dog is accustomed to staying away from people and being in nature. They feel at home in the forest and get more out of it. By going down this pathway, you can hunt small animals (like squirrels) and do amazing physical feats. Eventually it will make living in the wild easy and allow you thrive on your own.
The second pathway is that of the street dog. A street dog is a doggo gone rough doing whatever it takes to survive. By going down this pathway, you will be able to smash certain objects and in the future cause general chaos. While it won't make you many human friends, it will allow you to thrive in the city without human support.
The third pathway is that of the friendly dog. A friendly dog loves interacting with humans and easily becomes best friends with almost any human they meet. By going down this pathway, you can do tricks to get gifts from almost anyone and in the future get special interactions with other humans. This path makes positive interaction with other humans easy and allows you to thrive by being their friends.
We have several of these in the demo for you to get and try. Smell Vision is your starting skill which will allow you to go into a first-person mode and sniff out valuable and dangerous things in the game. Smash and Grab is the first skill for the street dog and allows to to break objects to get valuable things from inside them. Roll Over is the first skill for the friendly dog and allows you to roll over to get things from regular NPCS. Lastly, Hunting Instincts is the first skill for the wild dog and allows you to do a mega jump and hunt squirrels.
Example of Smash and Grab:
The other type of skills are the passive innate skills which get better over time as you play the game. Barking, jumping, and running all improve as you do them in the game making you louder, jump higher, and run faster. All this progress can be tracked inside the skills panel at the top row of icons.
A lot more can be said about the skill tree, but the above was just a brief overview to get the general idea. We'll likely talk more about it in the future for both details and future plans.
Achievements
The primary way to get skills is by obtaining Milestone Points. Milestone Points (MP) are primarily obtained by doing achievements which can be seen in the Achievements Panel. Each achievement is a type of task that once completed will give you a specified amount of MP. The achievement types mirror the pathways from the skill tree; meaning that the things you'll naturally end up doing by aiming for a certain dog type will give you Milestone Points. The actions you do can be tuned to get as many as Milestone Points as you can which can be technically applied to any of the pathways; so plan accordingly. What kind of doggo you'll be is completely up to you!
Example of achievements and milestone points:
New Scenery and Map Enhancements
In addition to the inclusion of the skill and achievement systems, more of everything has been placed in the world. Firstly, some of the NPCs hobbies are now showing through with a new concert area, gardens, and a basketball court. In addition, we also opened up a new apartment which you can explore. To top it off, we added some more details throughout the world including more inside the vet, the pound, alleys, superstore, and suburban streets all of which will give the world a little more fleshing out.
Some new flower beds added to the mansion:
New interactable have been placed in the scene including breakables for Smash and Grab, a basketball to play with and instruments you can mess with. New NPCs have been placed around in the vet, the pound and some angry NPCs in a few places. Much of the world also has much of its spawnpoints reworked. Many have been added in old places where there have been none or few before and the items list for them have been updated and balanced.
New basketball to play with:
Lastly, we also did some graphical adjustments. Reflection Probes have been added throughout the world to give glass a little more detail. We also tuned various materials for proper shine and lights to be more optimized with a new lighting controller and make them look a little better.
HUD/UI Update
Another huge change to the game was our HUD for the game. The old HUD, just like most of the UI, is a work in progress as we continue to tweak it to make it better and better. Based on popular request, we changed the bar to icons with color fills to make it easier to understand what each of them represent and take a little bit of the stress off of management. To clear the HUD up a little more, we moved the stamina bar to the center with a fade depending on if you are running or not to make it easier to notice when you are running and not present when you are walking.
Another sample of the HUD in action:
We also made a lot of other little UI changes. We introduced Shibu, a veteran stray, who helps you if you want in a new tutorial. You can always silence him by pressing the end key. Lastly, the Options Panel received some additions and touch up to make it look a little better.
Final Thoughts
Thanks for reading! We did skim over some thing for sake of keeping the article at a reasonable size, and we'll likely revisit some of these topics in the near future. If you liked what what you saw, consider wishlisting and following us. We will be a part of Steam NextFest, with a demo you can try out with all the changes there. In the demo you will be able to fill out a survey to get a chance to join our beta program as we get closer to the release. Thanks again and hope to see you in the next one!
Lost Paws NextFest Live Stream
Hi all!
We are excited to announce we will be streaming Lost Paws for Steam NextFest! This will be the first of two streams. So if you can't make this one on Thursday October 6 at 6 PM EST, we will have another Saturday October 8 at 1 PM EST. Expect to see an awesome doggo, flying garbage cans, and a lot of shenanigans. Hope you enjoy the stream, and if you did, feel free to check out our demo and wishlist the game to keep up to date on its development!
See you there!
Lost Paws will be attending Steam NextFest October 2022
Hi friends and fellow internet denizens!
Excited to give a brief update that we will be attending Steam NextFest October Edition which will be October 3 - 10. We will have a a fully ready demo available and some special surprises to share. Hope to see you there!
Lost Paws Summer Dev Log
Greetings friends and fellow internet denizens!
We are back to discuss all things open world and doggo in Lost Paws. Over the course of the summer, we have made many adjustments and changes as well as added a ton of new content to the game. The overall design goal was to adjust things based on your initial feedback, add much more to explore in the game, and refine various systems in the game to give things a better feeling and flow.
The World
We have changed various sections of the world and shifted parts of the map around. Firstly, we made a few things bigger to fit better with the dog and humans. As a result, we changed several buildings in town. We added a hotel, car repair shop, and cafe. In order to make the spaces feel good with the new sizes, we had to expand the number of building to give the alleyways a real feeling of closeness which actually contrasted quite nicely with the wide open spaces in nature. Overall the new building should give a better feel for the town and many new places to explore to find treats!
The new hotel being built:
In addition to the town, a whole new area was made as a little side area for you to explore. It includes a mall, a vet, the pound, and a few houses. This place will be where you will likely end up if you end up having a fateful demise as the vet and pound are where you will spawn if something goes wrong. But it is more than just a place to respawn. It will eventually be built up to give the player new options to find new items and serve as a stopping point in the long adventure toward the city. It gives the traveling doggo a great place to stop and get items to keep going.
The Vet getting built up:
In addition to civilization, nature also got some attention. The Ronald River was finally added before entering the city. The grass all over has been optimized with GPU instancing and have had its shaders modified to look better in the new environment. New boundary areas have been set up to make the distant areas look better. Log cabins have also been added to give a little character to the woods. Overall these new areas should give many opportunities for you to play the way you want.
Let there be Sound
Another big element was a ton of sound effects. Most interactions now have a sound associated with them giving more feel to the game. In addition, ambient sounds were added to certain zones with fading based on where you are located. Examples of new sounds are people screaming when the dog gets hostile, the dog panting, people grunting when hit, and more dog lover sounds when interacting. More sounds will be added in the future but many core interactions now have them.
More NPCs
Another thing that was added was new NPCs. Our NPC system is like our spawner system in that they spawn when you enter an area. This is done to ensure that every time the experience is a little different each time you play. NPCs that are not special are bunched together into crowds making them easier to work with. We have many new crowds up and working, which walk about and can interact with the dog. The variety of them and how they spawn have been enhanced to prevent too many of their body doubles from showing up. About 7 new character types have been added and many more variations of those characters are available to make up new crowds. Together the new NPCs and system changes should make the town feel even more alive.
Sample of a new crowd:
Build the systems
A few other systems have been changed or added. Firstly the cars have received a massive overhaul. They now patrol the town going to various places as time goes on. They also adhere to left and right lane traffic flows as well as have timer controls making them more lifelike. Certainly makes navigating the town more interesting!
On top of that, the dog can now be an extra good boy and sit. In the future when the dog sits, NPCs will interact with the Dog. Right now the main focus is to have the dog lover pet the dog when sitting near the dog lover. Any other suggestions are welcome!
Dog Sitting:
Hope you enjoyed this dev log of some of what we worked on so far this summer! We plan on showing more as things development progresses. If you want to stay up to date and support Lost Paws please wishlist the game on steam. It helps out a ton!
