Hello, hello! I've been quiet for a bit but a lot's been cooking behind the scenes. I realize that this blog post's subtitle might sound a bit scary, but please read until the very end for all the details!
This update brings you a feature that I've been wanting to put into the game for a very long time. I'd originally tried to get this in for the Early Access launch, but it proved too complex and I didn't get time to work on it again until now.
Automation Options:
This is a new sub-mode of the main game that you can enable/disable at any point by toggling a new button on the top-right corner of the screen. When turned on, the game enables a whole suite of options aimed at automating aspects of the simulation to turn things into a more passive, screensaver-like experience suitable for chilling out in front of, running on a second monitor, or even streaming.
All of these options are adjustable, so you have a lot of control over the experience. You can run this mode to have the game mostly play itself, or you can choose to automate nothing except dog poop cleanup. It's up to you!
The sub-feature I'm most excited about with this new mode is automatic breeding. Automation Options introduces a new breeding system where dogs will automatically lay fertilized eggs that hatch in the pen, letting entire dog lineages progress without ever having to enter Breeding Mode!
Game Adjustments:
Petting a cocoon to increase a dog's mutation rate should now have a vastly increased effect. I audited the system and discovered that it was not doing nearly as much as it should have been.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a loading softlock that could occur in the event that your computer's system time got set backwards since the last time you played. This had to do with how the game would search for automated backup save files and would result in an infinite loop of trying to find the oldest file. This could have resulted in rare softlocks for users switching time zones, or during daylight savings switch-overs.
Fixed an issue where tutorial prompts would not automatically update when switching the in-game language.
Fixed an issue that resulted in the toybox "new item" notification icon not properly displaying/hiding itself when switching save files. This icon should now correctly show and hide itself to match the state of the current file you have open.
And with that, the big news...
The subtitle is true, this update marks the end of active Wobbledogs development and gameplay updates. I'll explain more in a second, but first I just want to say that this is not the end you might imagine! Not only will there still be a few more content packs being released to all of you for free in the future, but there are also a few more exciting things happening behind the scenes with announcements to come!
But it's true that feature work has ended. I've been working on Wobbledogs for a very long time. 7 years, in fact. It released on Early Access 2 years ago, and it's been fully released for over a year. It's been my full time job this entire time outside of a few short breaks and brief side gigs. There is of course more that I could add, but that would be the case even if I worked on this thing for the rest of my life. I'm proud of where the game is at. I love Wobbledogs and I'm beyond happy that I got the opportunity to bring it this far. There were many many points during development where I nearly quit, and where I wasn't sure things would ever come together, but I'm happy I was able to stick with it.
The community that's grown alongside this game has been so wonderful. Putting a cap on development is bittersweet for me because although I'm proud of where the game is at and excited to move onto new things, I also know that many of you will be disappointed. I don't like disappointing people, and it's hard for me to make this decision knowing that I will be. In the end, however, I also recognize that I'm very lucky. To have a community that cares this much is special. I know there are many of you who would excitedly wait for updates for as long as I kept putting them out, and that's not something to take for granted. Your enthusiasm is what's allowed this game to grow.
That said, my time on Wobbledogs is done. It's been great, but I was never going to be able to work on this forever. There are still more games I want to make, and with the support that Wobbledogs has received, I'm lucky enough to be able to keep on making them.
I'll be around for the next few weeks to keep an eye on things and fix any new bugs that might've popped up from this update, but after that it's time for me to relax a little and give myself a very very long vacation :')
Thank you all so much, and I hope you'll all look forward to whatever it is I end up making next!
When placing objects, you can now rotate them in increments of 45 degrees. I hope this opens up way more pen customization opportunities for everyone!
Game Adjustments:
While flying, dogs will sometimes more around horizontally as well. They aren't smart about it (this isn't something they can reliably use in place of walking to get around), but they'll move around more now. Make sure they don't get themselves into trouble (impossible)!
New Content:
New suite of seasonal objects! There are a few little gameplay flourishes with these, so have fun!
2 new carpets and one new wallpaper.
3 new foods.
3 new flora.
6 new decorations.
A new type of den that can only be constructed out of snow!
During the month of December, the game will now increase the drop rate of winter themed capsule decorations.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed display issue where if a dog had only boosted flora of a specific type in its gut, the flora view would still list the unboosted version as well.
Fixed an issue where placeable object footprint offsets would be incorrect after planting something in placement mode.
When you have more than 20 dogs out at one time (via cheats), their guts now generate correctly.
Fixed two camera bugs that resulted in being able to view a dog den interior with the normal skybox background, and viewing the pen with the black interior background.
Happy Haunted Season! I've got some fun new additions to the game for everyone!
New features:
By popular demand, you can now pet the robo vacuum.
A new UI menu is now accessible from Dog Storage via a little DNA icon that now shows up next to the selected dog's 3D portrait. This screen lets you view a dog's genetics in full detail and compare them across life stages. Because this is new data being saved as of this patch, existing dogs will not have a full history to view (they'll look the same across all prior ages, apart from growing in size), but dogs going forward will save their past genetics as they age up so you can see exactly how they've changed! One thing to note with this feature is that this data will not be captured in dog codes and will not be transferred when you import a dog, as it would inflate the size of dog codes significantly.
New Content:
New suite of seasonal objects!
3 new foods are now accessible from the Spooky Food Dispenser (automatically unlocked as long as you have that dispenser unlocked as well).
3 new flora.
9 new decorations.
3 new toys.
During the months of October and November the game will now increase the drop rate of spooky themed capsule decorations, and will prioritize spooky themed toys over non-themed toys when digging on a spooky carpet.
New Cheat:
There is now a cheat command to adjust the number of max dogs out in the pen at any given time. This is a debug feature and as such may have bugs. It also intentionally does not save/load once you've closed the game. If you set this number too high then your game could chug to a halt and crash so please use it responsibly (or not)!
SetDogMax (e.g. SetDogMax 12)
Bug Fixes:
Cores should now correctly save their quality when going in/out of storage chests. This will not retroactively apply to cores already in the chest before this version update.
Cores in the pen should now correctly show their dog's name when viewed in the storage chest UI.
You can no longer manually spawn dog parts as these objects require script support when created and would be broken when spawned in through cheats.
Fixed a visual bug where the goal claimed popup would not correctly fade the entire screen on a widescreen monitor.
Fixed a soft lock when a dog with a beta head tried to apply the desaturated colors mutation.
Fixed a dog migration load softlock in the event that a dog's dom/rec genes tried to migrate while missing properties.
Hello, hello! I wanted to address a few bug reports that came in since friday, as well as one or two things I noticed myself. Your bug reports help me a ton so thank you everyone for being diligent!
Bug Fixes:
Toys no longer duplicate when falling out of bounds.
Dogs will no longer open their eyes in photo mode if they've been closed because you've been petting them.
Dog particles will now correctly restore visibility upon exiting photo mode with their toggle set to the off state.
The game was incorrectly detecting the location during breeding mode in some instances, mistakenly allowing you to delete breeding dogs. This may have broken before the last major update, but I just noticed it now. I believe it was the result of a race condition that I got lucky with when first implementing the check.
Additionally, I wanted to sign off this little patch with a dog for everyone to import if they want to! This little guy has 2 pairs of back legs, so feel free to introduce them to your gene pool if that's something that the previous update messed up for you. If you'd like a pup with even more legs than this, I'm sure there are plenty of folks in the forums or the game's discord who'd be more than happy to help!
Hey! I've got a few quick fixes for some bugs that popped up from this newest patch.
Bug Fixes:
There have been scattered reports of the new vacuum object not working for some people. I saw videos where it would move over to a puddle and then rapidly stop/start, and this seemed to happen very consistently to those who encountered it. I tried a lot of different things including getting save files from people affected and wasn't able to reproduce, but I did make some adjustments to the vacuum logic that I feel have a very good chance of fixing this bug. These are only speculative fixes, so please let me know if the vacuum continues to malfunction after this patch and I'll take another look! I'd also like to note that the vacuum will only move to clean up puddles if they exist, and if it can find a valid route over to them, so please make sure it's got room to move if you'd like it to do its job!
In the mac version of the game, the dog wing icon in the flora guide somehow got completely unlinked and was showing up as a white square. It should now appear correctly.
I'd also like to explicitly address an issue that many people have been reporting. After this update, lots of people had dogs lose extra pairs of back legs. This is actually the (unintended) result of a bug fix, but let me explain why.
With the newest update since there was a slight genetics change, the game had to go through and update every existing dog's genetic info to conform to the new pattern. It tries its best to keep everything in tact, but in instances where existing genetics had some invalid or buggy sections of their gene (very common with imported dogs since many have hand-edited ancestors, but there have also been in-game bugs in the past that caused issues like this), this genetic updating can sometimes result in slight changes like this. The back legs issue specifically is I believe because of a bug that existed at launch that messed up the back leg number gene for many dogs when upgrading their genetics. This patch fixes that bug, which makes dogs much more stable going forward and should help prevent genetic upgrade issues like this in the future, but does also mean that back leg number got reverted for dogs affected by this issue. The gene should mutate just fine going forward however, and you should definitely be able to get your extra legs back, after which they should be there to stay for good.
I'm very sorry for this unintended adjustment to your dogs, but believe me when I say it's a healthy change in the long run. I wish you all the best of luck on your journeys to re-mutate these missing limbs!
Hey everyone! I've got a fun little update to share!
New features, additions, and content:
There's been a little robotic vacuum in the game for a long time, but it never had any functionality associated with it. With this update, the robo vacuum is now a fully featured little object. It'll automatically search out any puddles inside the room it's in to go and clean. An existing in-game goal has been updated to give this object as a reward so that everyone can get one without relying on luck. If you've already completed that goal and claimed the reward, you should be able to claim it again and get a little vacuum of your own as soon as you load up your file.
A new wing number mutation has been introduced, so dogs can now have multiple sets of wings!
There are now 30 additional dog names in the random dog names pool the game chooses from.
There is now a "dog particles" toggle in Photo Mode to let you turn the dog emotional particle effects on/off for pictures.
We set them live earlier this week, but you can now earn Wobbledogs-themed Steam trading cards, emoticons, backgrounds, and badges!
Adjustments:
Breeding two dogs with empty guts now produces an egg that hatches a dog with zero flora in its gut as well. In the past it would have default flora in this instance.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug that let you duplicate toys if you held "shift" while taking them out of the toybox.
Dogs with the beta dog head easter egg mutation should no longer break the game when they die.
Head-based mutations and achievements now work correctly with dogs that have the beta dog head easter egg mutation.
Fixed an additional pupation soft lock.
The debug command to disable UI now does so in a way that doesn't turn off the entire UI object and should no longer result in the game logging errors.
Just letting everyone know that Wobbledogs trading cards, profile backgrounds, emoticons, and badges are now available to all!
I hope you enjoy! I think the badges in particular are really fun. Full localization for all of these items will be added later this week, along with another little update for the game itself.
Hey everyone! I took a little time off last week and came back to several new bug reports. Here's a few more fixes I wanted to get in before starting in on anything new!
Bug Fixes:
Gut flora effects should no longer be processing while the game is paused (other than if you have a dog's gut flora view up). This means that scaph will no longer multiply uncontrollably if you pause the game then walk away from your computer.
The gut flora field guide was incorrectly reporting 100% completion progress if you had all but 1 piece of information unlocked because of how the game was rounding those numbers for display.
There were instances where exiting photo mode could leave the in-game view blurry. The ones I'm aware of have been fixed.
This isn't a new issue, but it was brought to my attention that ghost dogs could autonomously attempt to eat floor toys like Doggy Boppers, which would result in physical mayhem.
Hope you've all been enjoying the new patch! This is just a quick hotfix for a wing physics issue that was causing dogs to spawn with inverted wings in situations where the game was not paused during generation.
With this fix I think I've squashed all the significant new issues, but please do continue to report problems as you find them!
