The Wilds
Eagles enter The WILDS
NEW ANIMAL:
+ EAGLE - Welcome the eagle to the roster! Our second bird in the line-up wields a dangerously sharp beak and talons that make it a formidable foe to any animal! Includes both Bald Eagle and Golden Eagle subspecies.
NEW FEATURES:
+ RE-REVAMPED FLIGHT MECHANICS -Redid the flight AGAIN and really think I nailed the controls for flying. With default movement giving excellent bird-eye views of below and sprinting giving you dynamic camera-controlled fast flight/diving for excellent maneuverability.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
+ FLIGHT - While locked on to a live enemy animal, auto-landing is now disabled to make air-to-ground combat easier.
+ DRINKING - Increased rate of water gain while drinking.
+ DEHYDRATION / STARVATION - Decreased rate of health loss while these status effects are active.
BUG FIXES
+ DENS - Added a bed to the den in the cliffs for birds.
+ FLIGHT - Detection not longer causes you birds to fall out of the sky.
+ FLIGHT - Birds would change directions when flying up/down but not moving forward.
KNOWN BUGS
+ RATS - Body breaks apart when grabbed.
+ CINEMATICS - Lake and River water flashes white on start/end of cinematics.
NEXT UPDATE
I'll be pausing new animals for a month while I do a GAMEPLAY ONLY update! First up is a revamp and expansion of pack and mate mechanics.
Revamped Flying enters The WILDS
NEW FEATURES:
+ NEW SKILLCHECK EVENT - Birds can now grab fish out of the water by successfully completing a timing skillcheck event.
+ RESPAWN OPTION - Added a respawn option in case your animal gets stuck somewhere, it will force your animal to respawn at either your current den or original spawn point.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
+ FLIGHT MECHANICS REVAMP - Flying now has a "sprint" mode we'll call fast flight. Controls are swapped to a more manuevarable variation and flight movement is both faster and constant.
+ FLIGHT AUDIO - Added some ambient wind that varies based on speed to make flying more immersive.
+ FLIGHT BOOST - Flight boosting will flap your wings and give your bird even more speed but will drain stamina quickly.
BUG FIXES
+ PAUSE MENU MISALIGNMENT - The pause menu wasn't being properly anchored so it just didn't show up on ultrawide resolution monitors, this has been fixed.
+ BIRD FLOATING ON START - Birds are now flying properly when the game is started
KNOWN BUGS
+ RATS - Body breaks apart when grabbed.
+ CINEMATICS - Lake and River water flashes white on start/end of cinematics.
Ambient Animals enter The WILDS
NEW FEATURES:
+ AMBIENT ANIMALS - Added ambient Seagulls by the shore as the first Ambient Animals in the game. Ambient Animals will not be interactive and exist simply to provide more atmosphere and intruige to the game.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
+ LOCKED CAMERA RENAMED - The previous "Locked Camera" option has been renamed as "Assistive Camera" and had its description rewritten to be clearer about what it does and which setting is right for you.
+ ASSISTIVE CAMERA - Tilted the assistive camera up a little more to give the player a better view.
+ PERFORMANCE - Made some changes to how various things are rendered and saw a pretty good performance boost as a result. I'm deepening my understanding of how some more advanced rendering techniques are done so hopefullly more and more improvements will come over time.
BUG FIXES
+ ENDLESS HEAD SHAKE BUG - Fixed the problems caused by attacking dead critters that caused your animal to get stuck endlessly in a head shaking animation.
+ RIVER TELEPORT GLITCH - Sometimes traveling through rivers would cause your animal to instantly fly into the sky, this has been fixed.
KNOWN BUGS
+ RATS - Body breaks apart when grabbed.
+ CINEMATICS - Lake and River water flashes white on start/end of cinematics.
Instinct enters The WILDS
NEW FEATURES:
+ INSTINCT - Introducing the first iteration of the Instinct mechanic. Your animal's heart will begin to beat at opportune moments, allowing you to activate abilities that will help chase down prey, escape from predators, dodge attacks (dodge not implemented yet) and more.
+ INVERT Y-AXIS OPTION - Added an option for those whole like inverted Y-axis (up and down) look controls.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
+ LOCKED CAMERA REVAMP - Created a hybrid locked camera, that both allows you to look around and have the camera follow your animals look direction.
+ CAMERA - The locked camera now also adjust the up/down look directions to match the slope of the ground.
+ CAMERA - K/M now defaults to the locked camera style.
+ CAMERA - Smoothed out the camera motion when attacking.
+ TARGETING - Targeting now applies a custom Depth-of-Field that focuses on your target.
+ JUMPING - Your animals can now only do a full jump when moving, standing still and jumping will now do a small hopping motion.
BUG FIXES
+ MOOSE DENS - Moose didn't have any dens, this is now fixed.
KNOWN BUGS
+ RATS - Body breaks apart when grabbed.
+ CINEMATICS - Lake and River water flashes white on start/end of cinematics.
World Expansion enters The WILDS
CRITICAL:
+ DATA WIPE - All data will be wiped upon update.
NEW ANIMAL:
+ MOOSE - Welcome the moose to the roster of playable animals! The moose is the largest species of deer and while being a herbivore it's impressive size and strengths makes it capable of standing on equal footing with even the most dangerous predators.
NEW FEATURES:
+ MASSIVE WORLD EXPANSION - The world is now 4x larger than before. Breezy Mountain Passes, snow covered Mountain Peeks, large Grassy Meadows and more now await you. I had orginally planned on only doubling the size but decided to do the full map, I wasn't able to fullu detail it all but it's a great start and I'm excited to head feedback on how to further develop it.
+ REVAMPED AMBIENT AUDIO - Ambient Audio will now change based on season and time of day and various parts of the world will have their own sets of Ambience. This is still a hold-over until I manage a full modular ambience system.
+ CUSTOM WEATHER ZONES - Weather is now area specific as well, with some areas constantly snowing, and others where it will never snow and have their own unique weather systems.
+ TRAILS - Replaced the old static footsteps with dynamic trails. When animals move through the world they will now carve a small depressed trail for a much more realistic look.
+ CONTRAST AND SATURATION OPTIONS - New options for adjusting the color contrast and the crispness of the game display.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
+ CAMERA - More improvements on the camera, making it much smoother to look around, and better positioning for the player when zoomed out.
BUG FIXES
+ CONTROLLER SPRINTING - Sprinting wasn't stay toggled on for controllers / steam deck. This should be fixed now.
KNOWN BUGS
+ RATS - Body breaks apart when grabbed.
+ CINEMATICS - Lake and River water flashes white on start/end of cinematics.
Sleep Revamp enters The WILDS
NEW FEATURES:
+ SLEEP REVAMP - Redid the sleeping mechanic to now do a dreamy look out over your den and let you have full control in modifying the time/season of the game in realtime.
+ FULL CONTROLLER SUPPORT - Everything menu / feature of the game is now usable with controller. I'll continue to improve upon this as we go, redesigning more menus to be more functional for both control styles.
+ MENU REWORKS - Moved all the of the game's menus into a master list on the pause screen, this makes our main character menu much more navigable and gives quick easy to find access to newer players.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
+ CONTROLLER CAMERA - More improvements to the camera functionality for controller users.
+ TURN SPEED INCREASE - Drastically increased the turn speed of all animals to give movement a much more responsive feel.
BUG FIXES
+ CONTROLLER TARGETING - There was a bug double calling the targeting functions and making them very jittery on controller, this had been heavily smoothed out.
KNOWN BUGS
+ RATS - Body breaks apart when grabbed.
+ CINEMATICS - Lake and River water flashes white on start/end of cinematics.
Settings / Controller 2.0 enter The WILDS
NEW FEATURES:
+ VOCALIZATION WHEEL - Vocalizations have been moved to a popup wheel, use 'R' on keyboard or LB on controller
+ CONTROLLER REWORK - Complete overhaul of the controllers input mapping, be sure to check out the setting menu to look through new keybinds for controller.
+ DYNAMIC INPUT LISTINGS - Buttons listed for actions will now swap depending on if you are using keyboard or controller.
+ SETTINGS REVAMP - Revamped the settings menu to work much better with controller and just more usable overall.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
+ INPUT PERSISTENCE - If you use a controller on the main menu the game will now remember the device when entering the game and automatically connect it.
+ CONTROL SWAPPING - You can now swap back and forth between controller and keyboard with ('start'/'enter').
+ NEW UI MUSIC - Replaced the UI background music with something a little more lowkey
+ SEPERATED CONTROLS - Any settings under the 'Control' tab are now specific to that device and can be set separately.
+ NEW SETTINGS - Added settings for V-sync, Framerate, and Brightness to menu.
+ BEAR - Nerfed (lowered) the bears attack power.
BUG FIXES
+ UI AUDIO - Fixed a bunch of bugs when setting UI / music audio.
KNOWN BUGS
+ RATS - Body breaks apart when grabbed.
+ CINEMATICS - Lake and River water flashes white on start/end of cinematics.
+ PACK ACTIONS - Still need to rework the AI more to make these active. "Pack Surround" and "Pack Attack" may appear as options but are non-functional.
Critters enter The WILDS
NEW FEATURES:
+ CRITTERS - Critters are smaller non-playable animals that populate the world. The introduction of critters adds the Duck, Rat, Turtle, and Frog to the list of animal you'll find in the world!
+ RAGDOLLS 2.0 - A massive overhaul of the "ragdolls" or physics based animal movements after death and pouncing. Much of the constant glitching has been removed, bodies move in more realistic ways, and we introduced some hybrid controls ragdolled animals to simulate "death struggle".
+ CUSTOM CURSOR - Added a custom cursor to the game menu.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
+ CARRYING PENALTIES - Carrying animals will now restrict your animal from running at full speed.
KNOWN BUGS
+ RATS - Body breaks apart when grabbed.
+ CINEMATICS - Lake and River water flashes white on start/end of cinematics.
+ PACK ACTIONS - Still need to rework the AI more to make these active. "Pack Surround" and "Pack Attack" may appear as options but are non-functional.
Lookouts enter The WILDS
NEW FEATURES:
+ LOOKOUT POINTS - Removed the proximity based cinematics and replaced them with interactable lookout points that will officially discover zones and play cinematics.
+ CINEMATICS 2.0 - Remade the cinematics to be MUCH smoother and heavily minimized any jerky motion, added sweeping orchestral music and a zone title screen.
+ DISOVERABLE MAP LOCATIONS - Undiscovered dens, lookout points, and other interactions will now appear as "?" until discovered.
+ LOCKED CAMERA OPTION - Under the gameplay settings menu you can now find an option to lock the camera.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
+ PERSISTENT LOCATION - Instead of respawning at your den, your animals will now keep their last position in the world unless killed. If killed they will respawn at last active den.
+ WORLD MARKERS - World markers will now automatically disappear when reached.
+ FOX SIZING - Made the fox 10% smaller to better represent real world size.
+ MAP CONTROLS - Added control, hit F with the map open to focus on your current animal.
BUG FIXES
+ VITAL SLIDERS - Vital slider weren't properly displaying thirst and hunger on animal change.
+ DEN - Dens weren't properly restoring as active upon resuming gameplay.
+ VARIOUS BUGS - As always many other various bugs were fixed / improved.
KNOWN BUGS
+ CINEMATICS - Lake and River water flashes white on start/end of cinematics.
+ PACK ACTIONS - Still need to rework the AI more to make these active. "Pack Surround" and "Pack Attack" may appear as options but are non-functional.
Fox Furs enter The WILDS
NEW FEATURES:
+ FOX FURS - Added 9 additional alternate fox textures representing the subspecies American Fox, European Fox, Sierra Nevada Fox, and the Canadian Marbled Fox.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
+ MAIN MENU - Added additional vignetting to top and bottom of the main menu to make text more readable.
BUG FIXES
+ CRITICAL - The bug that was locking people out of the game should be fixed (again).
+ FOX HITBOX - The fox wasn't responding to damage, this should be fixed now.
+ GRAMMAR - Fixed some types and grammatical errors (thanks discord folks).
+ VARIOUS BUGS - As always many other various bugs were fixed / improved.
KNOWN BUGS
+ PACK ACTIONS - Still need to rework the AI more to make these active. "Pack Surround" and "Pack Attack" may appear as options but are non-functional.