We're going full speed with beta-testing the upcoming WolfQuest Saga, finding plenty of bugs along with many, many little things to tweak and tune and polish. Every day, the Saga gets a little better. One thing we're testing are the new achievements for the Saga. We have about 18 of them. Some will be in a new Saga tab on the Achievements panel, but others make more sense in the Core, Above and Beyond, and Life Arc sections. Especially with the Saga achievements, these take a long time to test, since they generally take several game-years, at least, for even a chance at unlocking them. But we're getting there.
Longtime WolfQuest player/beta tester/moderator Loach (Jessie Clarey-Berthiaume) has created all of the achievement icons already in the game, and she created the icons for half of these new achievements. Rolin Serna (who created the beautiful splash image that you see when you launch the game) created the other nine new icons. Each one is exquisite.
Loach recorded a video while making the Guard Dog icon, so along with a sneak preview of several of the new achievements, today's devblog features this video. Enjoy!
All these new achievements are coming with the Saga, which we expect to release later this year.
* The upcoming WolfQuest Saga is "the rest of the game," where your pups grow up as you have a new litter each year. Time will continue progressing through the years until you die. We expect to release it later this year (but we have not set a release date). ____________________
The WolfQuest Saga will continue! Stay tuned for more news in upcoming devblogs about it and other new features!
We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready.
Territory Tweaks in the Saga
Territory is an essential part of a wolf's life. The territory system in WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition has worked pretty well over the last five years, but as we have been playtesting the upcoming Saga*, we decided to tweak a few things.
With the addition of Hex Invasions in the Saga, territory quality is even more important than before. You should try to keep your hexes above 50% strength-- that's why we added the special "Strong" hex icon some years ago. But some players feel the need to keep their territory much stronger than that, above 80% strength, and since you can display the strength percentages on all hexes, it's easy to focus on that more than necessary. Which is fine -- if you enjoy maintaining territory (and some players do). But it's not necessary. We needed to make that clearer.
So now, in the Saga, there are four different hex styles: two styles for hexes above 50% -- the same "Strong" icon we've had for a long time, and a newer one, with a double outline inside the hex. This doesn't mean Super Strong. It just means you've marked it recently and gotten the strength above 75%. But rival packs regard all hexes that are above 50% equally enticing. So do what you like with those hexes, but it doesn't matter to rival packs if they're 52% or 99%.
We also have a new crosshatched hex icon for Weak hexes, which indicates they are below 25% strength. You should probably get out there and mark those soon!
Also, to try to discourage players from obsessing about hex percentages, we added a third option to the hex percentage display, so you can choose to show no percentage readouts (except on mouseover), or just the percentage for the hex your wolf is in at the moment, or percentages on all hexes. We don't recommend this last option. It's an awful lot of information, and it can lead you to focus too much on keeping hexes very strong when that doesn't matter. But it's up to you.
On another topic: we do have plans for multiplayer in the Saga, but that will come later, after we get the Saga for single-player in good shape and released.
So anyways, these territorial tweaks are another little improvement to the upcoming WolfQuest Saga, which is coming later this year!
* The upcoming WolfQuest Saga is "the rest of the game," where your pups grow up as you have a new litter each year. Time will continue progressing through the years until you die. We expect to release it later this year (but we have not set a release date). ____________________
The WolfQuest Saga will continue! Stay tuned for more news in upcoming devblogs about it and other new features!
We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready.
Problem-Solving in the Saga
With such a big expansion and revision as the WolfQuest Saga*, it's inevitable that we'll find problems --with the gameplay, with the arc of your wolf's life, with the visuals. So there's always a couple problems that need to be solved. Today we'll look at a few of those.
First: Once you've played through a year or two in the Saga, you'll have older offspring, who can stay back at the homesite as babysitters. But if they're not out hunting with you, how do they keep from starving? We could make them go off and find food on their own after you return from hunting, but that gets complicated in terms of pack activity, sleep, and such. The simplest solution is just to do the same as with the pups, and have the babysitters eat regurgitant, just as the pups do. Nice and simple -- and happily, I found a paper by Dave Mech (world-renowned wolf biologist and one of our original WolfQuest advisors) saying that packmates do indeed eat regurgitant at times. Problem solved!
Another problem is with dispersals. After a few years, your pack will have wolves of various ages, from pups of the year to yearlings to 2-3-yr old subordinates. We have a lot of behavioral logic about when a pup will decide to disperse -- based on age, personality, size of the pack, and more. But since it takes many hours to paly through year to year, these variables are hard to fine-tune. So Raul, who created the persistent pack system last year, whipped up a nice little simulation. I can load a save with large big pack and run the simulation forward for one year and see who has dispersed. So very rapidly, I can test different variables and see how they play out. Our goal is to usually have 5-9 adults (yearlings or older) in the pack, plus the pups of the year. So this simulation is a tremendous tool to let us tweak things to get close to that goal.
Finally wolf coats and aging. I've talked in past devblogs about this. Like human hair, wolf coats tend to get lighter, and sometimes go white, as the wolf ages. We have a wide variety of coats, and some are quite white since they're based on old wolves. That's always been a bit odd, but it's really odd in the Saga, when your pups get their adult coat in late summer -- and it's white! Someday we hope to implement a real aging-tint effect, but it's quite complicated and not happening anytime soon. So for now, at very least, we have created an alternate coat for the whitest of the coats. Your pups will get this younger version of the coat automatically, and all NPC wolves will get the younger version until they turn five. In the Wolf Customization, you can chose either the younger or the older versions, just click to toggle back and forth. We've also set it up so pups and other NPC wolves who have lighter coats get a darker tint in their younger years, automatically.
So there are always problems to grapple with, but we're making steady progress in solving them. We don't have a release date for the Saga, but it's coming sometime this year!
* The upcoming WolfQuest Saga is "the rest of the game," where your pups grow up as you have a new litter each year. Time will continue progressing through the years until you die. We expect to release it later this year (but we have not set a release date). ____________________
The WolfQuest Saga will continue! Stay tuned for more news in upcoming devblogs about it and other new features!
We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready.
Quests in the Saga
Let's take a look at how the quests are shaping up in the upcoming WolfQuest Saga.*
Since the very initial release of WolfQuest in 2007, the quests have expanded from just two -- learning to hunt and finding a mate -- to a more complete set in Anniversary Edition. However, we've always lacked the quests for "the rest of the game" -- where your pups keep on growing into adulthood. Those are what the Saga adds. That gameplay is mainly contained two new quests: Growing Pups, which takes you through the period of rapid pup growth in late summer, and then Young Hunters, when you help your pups learn how to hunt elk over the fall and winter.
These quests fill out the annual cycle. Once your pups have completed the requirements for the Young Hunter quest, you loop around, skipping the initial quests (Learn to Hunt, Find at Mate, Establish Territory). It's April again, time to find a den. And then you go right back into the pup-raising cycle -- year after year. (And because this expanded quest cycle is about twice as long as before, we've made Raise Pups and Loaf quests about 20% faster.)
Many players have saved games with their pups at the summertime home in Endless Summer (the point where the pre-Saga game ends) and are excited to grow those pups up and continue the story of their pack. The good news is that you will be able to grow up your pups from those saved games. Once the Saga is released, you can load that save and carry on into the Saga quests. But there's a caveat here: for these already-born pups, you won't have the option to toggle off the Sick Pups Can Die option for this litter of pups that have already been born. If you can’t bear this, do not proceed to next quest, just keep this litter in Endless Summer, endlessly. (Why this limitation? To keep the game both balanced and accurate to wolf life, you'll have smaller litters if you choose to disable death from sickness, but you need to select that option before the pups are born.)
A central aspect of the Saga is that time keeps passing, regardless of events. So if your mate dies, you still have your pups to raise. If your pups of the year all die, but you still have older offspring, then you're still leader of the pack and must survive with your family until you can find a new mate. Time will keep passing, your offspring will keep growing. If-and-when you find a new mate, you can produce a new litter of pups. On the other hand, if your pack only has your mate and some pups of the year, and those pups all die, then it's just you and your mate, surviving together, month by month, until the next litter of pups are born.
And if everyone dies, then you become a lone wolf, trying to survive. You can still hold onto some territory, though that'll be tough as a lone wolf. You can find a new mate quickly, or take your time. You could also try to join a rival pack if you find one needing a new breeder. Or you can just keep on as a lone wolf. Only 2-3% of Yellowstone wolves are lone wolves, but that can be you now, if you want -- scraping out a life in between the packs, getting enough to eat here and there, year after until you die...cold and alone. It's up to you.
These quests are shaping up well and we expect to release the Saga later this year!
* The upcoming WolfQuest Saga is "the rest of the game," where your pups grow up as you have a new litter each year. Time will continue progressing through the years until you die. We expect to release it later this year (but we have not set a release date). ____________________
The WolfQuest Saga will continue! Stay tuned for more news in upcoming devblogs about it and other new features!
We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready.
Switching Things Up in the Saga
WolfQuest has always sought to put players into the role of a typical wolf in Yellowstone National Park. Usually, wolves have a rather repetitive life: hunt, feed pups, maintain territory, rinse and repeat. And presumably, that's the way they like it.
Humans, however, do like some variety. So one goal for the upcoming WolfQuest Saga* is to add more variety to the gameplay. We can't really change up that core gameplay, but the new quests coming in the Saga will certainly help.
We talked about one of those a few weeks ago -- where the player can switch into the role of a pup as it disperses from the player's pack -- but that's not the only one. Another also involves dispersals: When you're playing as a dispersal, looking for a mate, you've always been able to form a new pack with another dispersal or by tempting a member of a rival pack to leave that pack and join you. But in the Saga, you'll also be able to join a rival pack! If you come across a pack which has lost one of its pack leaders, and the remaining leader is the opposite sex as your wolf, you can engage in courtship and then, if successful, become the new co-leader of that pack. (Note that this is only an option when you're a solo wolf -- we are not doing blended, Brady-Bunch families.)
Another new feature is what we're calling Pack Succession: if your wolf is an Elder Wolf (age 8 or older) or an Ironwolf, when it dies, you can either finish the game -- or you can continue the game by playing as either your widowed mate, or one of your offspring (anyone over the age of one). After you respawn as either of those, you'll carry on, leading the pack. You'll need to find a mate, of course.
In both of these new scenarios, the Family Tree will consider any pups of the year that you are now suddenly foster-parenting as your offspring, and they will appear in your Family Tree. Older offspring will not be in the tree, which is a compromise but necessary to avoid some crazy complications depending how things unfold subsequently.
These new features should open the game up to more stories for your wolf, for your offspring, and for your pack. Obviously this kind of expansion takes a lot of playtesting and bug fixing, so we're deep in it -- but we're definitely going to release the Saga later this year.
____________________
The WolfQuest saga will continue! Stay tuned for more news in upcoming devblogs about it and other new features!
We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready.
Silly Saga Bugs
The upcoming WolfQuest Saga* is a continuation of the existing game, but it's also a major revision of the existing game, with some very deep changes in multiple game systems. And that means bugs! Lots and lots of bugs. Most are not very interesting, but occasionally we not only get an amusing bug, but someone on the team or among our beta testers manages to capture some video of it. We're making great progress with these bugs as well as the seemingly-endless testing and tweaking and tuning of the gameplay. So today's devblog is all about those silly saga bugs that at least provide a bit of entertainment before the hard work of investigating and fixing them. Enjoy!
* The upcoming WolfQuest Saga is "the rest of the game." Your pups will continue to grow into the fall and beyond, learning to hunt under your supervision, and then becoming yearlings when next year's pups are born. Time will continue progressing through the years until you die. The Saga is currently in development but we do not have a release date for it. ____________________
The WolfQuest saga will continue! Stay tuned for more news in upcoming devblogs about it and other new features!
We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready.
Dispersals in the Saga
Today's devblog looks at an important part of the upcoming WolfQuest Saga* -- how your pups will disperse when they grow up. This gets complicated, so I'll take it one piece at a time.
NPC Pup Dispersing
As the years go by, your pups grow up and, sooner or later, they will disperse, heading out on their own to find or form a pack. Pups can start dispersing as yearlings, but two is the most common age for it, particularly in the fall and early winter. So somewhere between 15 months of age and 3-4 years of age, your pups are almost certain to leave your pack and seek their way in the world. Since your pups are, of course, known to you, they'll appear on the Known Wolves panel, so you can keep an eye on them and if they find a mate and form a pack, or join an existing pack, or leave the game map in search of greener fields elsewhere.
However, not every dispersal is successful. Sometimes a wolf will return to its natal pack for awhile before trying again. It'll be nice to have them back with the family pack for awhile.
Making Pups Playable
The game has always let you "grow up" any of your surviving pups to make them playable adult wolves. We wanted to keep this option in the expanded context of the Saga. Essentially it's the same, except that pups must now survive to age one before they become playable in the Family Tree. (If we had fully designed and built the entire game before releasing it, we probably would have made pups playable only after they've dispersed in the game -- but now that's too restrictive and likely frustrating, since it can take several game-years for a pup to disperse, and some may not survive that long.)
Somewhat related: The unlockable coats work the same way as before -- if a pup has an unlockable coat, it's unlocked when you finish the Loaf at Rendezvous Site quest. You don't have to keep them alive until they're a year old to unlock the coat.
Branching Out as Dispersed Pups
This is where it gets complicated. When a pup disperses, we thought it would be fun to switch over and play as that pup within the same game universe, with that continuity of location, rival packs, territories etc. So when one of your pups disperses, you are notified about that event, with the option to switch roles and play as that dispersed pup (either immediately or later). If you choose to switch, the game splits off with you as that young wolf in the Find a Mate quest (since that pup has already learned to hunt in the Young Hunters quest). As a freshly-dispersed wolf, your natal or birth pack will tolerate you for awhile, so you can sleep in their territory safely while you search for a mate. (Thoug unlike NPC dispersals, as a player-wolf you can't rejoin your natal pack). But once you find a mate, your old pack becomes a rival pack, with no holds barred! (There is some evidence in Yellowstone that related wolves in rival packs are less hostile to each other, but we concluded that it wasn't feasible to incorporate that into the game.)
When you switch to play as the dispersal, the game world is carried over, exactly as it was. But of course, as the days and months go by, it will gradually change. So, if you later load the game with your original wolf (the parent of the dispersal), those two versions of that game universe won't be kept in sync, as you the player and all the NPC wolves make decisions about their lives, their packs, their territories. So yes indeed, the multiverse coming to WolfQuest, with branching universes and multiple realities. Perhaps a bit weird, but we decided on this design so the game can support a range of role-playing and storytelling preferences.
To keep things from getting too confusing, each wolf (whether created by the player, or a grown pup) has one identity. This is not that odd, except that pups become playable in the Family Tree before they disperse in the game. So if you start a new game with a grown pup via the Family Tree, but then later go back to the original game save when they're still a yearling and play through that so they eventually disperse, you'll have to make a choice. To switch over and play as that dispersed pup in that same game universe, you'll have to override the that wolf's save file (resetting its age to whatever age this dispersing pup is). You can't have two versions of that pup, just like you can't have two versions of any of your wolves.
So, as I said, it's complicated! But it's all working well in our playtesting so far. And the Saga in general is really shaping up. We still have to finish a few more features, and of course do much more playtesting and bugfixing, but we are excited to get the Saga into everyone's hands, later this year.
* The upcoming WolfQuest Saga is "the rest of the game," where your pups grow up as you have a new litter each year. Time will continue progressing through the years until you die. We expect to release it later this year (but we have not set a release date).
