WolfQuest
Early Access Release Date
We’re still cranking away on the game, and while there are days when the bug list doesn’t seem to get any shorter, we are definitely making great progress. In fact, we’ve finally reached the point where we are confident enough of the game state to announce — yes, believe it or not, a release date for the PC/Mac version! And that date is next month, July 25th. On that day (a Thursday, conveniently), WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition will be available as an Early Access game on Steam and WolfQuest.org and itch.io. If you’ve purchased the game on any of those stores, you’ll be able to download it for free, as a new app that will live alongside WolfQuest 2.7 on your computer.
We've also got a new Steam store page for
WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition -- check it out!
___Will WQ3 be available on mobile?
WolfQuest is available for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android & Kindle. So yes, WolfQuest 3 will be available for mobile phones and tablets...at least some of them, and/or in some form. Bigger maps and more animals may be too much for mobile devices with limited RAM memory. We'll do our best, but some low-end mobile devices will not be powerful enough to run the game. We will keep WolfQuest 2.7 (the current game) available as well (for both computers and mobile).
___Will my computer be able to run WQ3?
For the PC/Mac version, we want to ensure that a wide range of computers can run WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition. We are adding more quality levels so we can boost the visual quality much further than it is now, but we will do our very best to make the game run decently on older computers. However, since we are adding so much to the game (bigger maps, better graphics, more animals), we can’t yet say how well we can attain this goal. We'll do our best, but some low-end devices will not be powerful enough to run the game. We will keep WolfQuest 2.7 (the current game) available as well (for both computers and mobile).
Carcass Camera Trap
A large kill, like an elk, provides a lot of meat for a wolf pack. Living in a feast or famine world, wolves often go several days without successfully making a kill, but they can gorge themselves and can quickly consume 20 pounds each. Wolfing down your food is a handy skill in Yellowstone since there are so many uninvited guests happy to come to your dinner party.
In fact, Yellowstone wolves don’t usually move or cache carcasses. They concentrate on keeping control of the main buffet until their bellies are full or they are driven away by a hungry bear or stranger wolves. If a wolf decides it is time to flee, they may grab a bite to go (and you can do this in WolfQuest 3).
As you can see in this video, bears, cougars, coyotes, ravens, foxes, and other animals benefit from wolf kills… and they don’t take long to arrive! Ravens are even known to follow wolves on the hunt so they can be first in line once the wolves tear open the feast. Hungry grizzlies are next to impossible to drive away and they are known to camp out to keep it for themselves. Every animal is alert at carcasses, assessing the risks vs. rewards. Since it is hard to eat and fight at the same time, you will have to decide whether you should dine or dash.
Meet the Prey
Yellowstone National Park provides an ungulate banquet – so these large, hoofed mammals are also the main course in WolfQuest. Elk are the top choice and were a key reason of why the park was chosen for wolf reintroduction. Swift mule deer and nimble bighorn sheep might feed a clever wolf but they are hard to catch! Large wolf packs even tackle dangerous bison. (Yes, bison hunting is at the top of the WolfQuest wishlist for a future episode). Snowshoe hares and maybe an occasional beaver can provide a snack (and an enjoyable change of pace for WolfQuest players) even though they may be not worth the effort when elk are on the menu.
Coming to WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition, many new and improved prey:
* New elk models – bulls, spikes (young bulls), cows, calves
* Improved moose model with new calves
* New mule deer – bucks, does, and fawns
* New bighorn sheep – rams, ewes, and lambs
* New snowshoe hare model
* New beaver (Slough Creek)
* New carcasses (with option for more gore or less gore)
* New ability to carry small prey and meat chunks
We are getting closer every week to releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain, for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. That will be followed by Slough Creek some months later, then followed by the mobile versions. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall.
3D Models by GIM Studios, Phillip Guerrero, and Steve Adamson.
Music by Tim Buzza and Ben Woolman.
Battling Bulls (Devblog)
We are all cranking away on the many, many little things that need to be in good shape for Early Access release (PC/Mac) — refining interface elements, optimizing the game for lower-end hardware, polishing many aspects of gameplay, and, of course, a great deal of bugtesting and fixing — but we’ve also got a few new features. Mostly we are waiting until we’ve got the game out before we tackle these, but recently our lead Unity developer Tommi spent some time setting up bull elk fights. Here’s how the National Park Service describes these battles:
“The mating season (rut) generally occurs from early September to mid-October. Elk gather in mixed herds—many females and calves, with a few bulls nearby. Bulls bugle to announce their availability and fitness to females and to warn and challenge other bulls. When answered, bulls move toward one another and sometimes engage in battle for access to the cows. They crash their antlers together, push each other intensely, and wrestle for dominance. While loud and extremely strenuous, fights rarely cause serious injury. The weaker bull ultimately gives up and wanders off.” (National Park Service - Yellowstone)
As always, it’s one thing to get the basic functionality working, and another thing to refine and polish it — so you can see some visual glitches in today’s video. We’ll try to get those fixed up soon but we won’t delay the initial Early Access release for PC/Mac. We will keep adding features like bighorn sheep and multiplayer in the months after release!
100 New Things in WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition
Last week we showed some things that are NOT coming to WolfQuest 3, so this week, to mark the 100th devblog, we’ve put together a list of 100 things that ARE coming to WolfQuest 3:
NEW GAME WORLD
* Huge open world maps
* Dynamic day-night cycle
* Dynamic weather with clouds, rain, snow, and storms
* Realistic trees and vegetation
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
* Immersive natural soundscape
* Lamar River and many mountain creeks
* Spectacular cliffs overlooking the Lamar Valley
* The summit of Amethyst Mountain
* New and improved petrified trees in the fossil forest
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
GAMEPLAY
* All new gameplay, designed and built from the ground up
* Sophisticated new ecological simulation
* Complex and realistic AI simulations
* Naturalistic movements of all animals
* Realistic scents on the ground and wind
HUNTING
* New showdown gameplay with prey
* Persistent elk herds roam the landscape
* Large herds of elk move and flee in realistic formations
* Challenging hunting tactics and mechanics
* Realistic biting mechanics
* Mothers protect juveniles from predators
* High and low-gore carcasses
* Coyotes harass wolves at carcass
* Dangerous competitor conflicts at carcasses
WOLVES
* NPC wolves, adults and pups, have personalities
* Persistent wolf packs claim and maintain territory
* Strangers wolves fight to defend their territory
* Freeform fights with stranger wolves
* Potential mates roam the landscape
* Freeform courtship with prospective mates
* Trial period to get acquainted with prospective mate
* Interactive emotes with prospective mates
MULTIPLAYER
* More information about each game displayed in lobby
* Players can read other's wolf bios
* Chat panel is resizable and collapsible
* Players can side-chat with other players
* Hosts can close the game to prevent more from joining
PLAYER WOLF
* Upgraded wolf model with many more actions
* New HD coats based on original coats
* More realistic fur
* More howls for your wolf
* Secondary howl for pack rallies
* More body customizations
* Customizable eye color
* Wolf bio for single- and multiplayer
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
WOLF PHYSIOLOGY AND ACTIONS
* Resting restores health
* Eating satisfies hunger
* Sleep 16 hours a day (or suffer the consequences)
* Carry small prey around
* Pick up and carry carcass chunks
* Drink from ponds and rivers
* Use emotes while moving
* Jump like a real wolf
* Howl while sitting
* More poses when laying down
* Slide down steep slopes
* Inverse Kinematics (IK) for more realistic physical actions
* Permadeath option for player-wolf
* Permadeath option for your mate
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
CONTROLS
* New wolf controller
* New camera controller with free cam
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
* Photo mode with freeze action
* Better controller support
* Rebindable key mapping
ANIMALS
* New elk herds with bulls, cows, spikes, and calves
* New grizzly boars, sows, and cubs
* New cougars
* New ravens
* New foxes
* New coyotes
* New snowshoe hares
* Moose bulls, cows, and calves
* Mule deer families with bucks, does, and fawns
* Bighorn rams, ewes, and lambs
* Beavers
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
* Bull elk bugling and fighting
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
* New wolf pup models and actions
* Genetics and K-Locus DNA simulation for mate and pups
MUSIC
* Adaptive music system
* Many new music tracks
* Expanded versions of old music tracks
AND MORE
* New achievements
* New collectables
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
* Custom markers on world map
* Customizable interface scaling
* More audio volume controls
* [NOT YET REVEALED]
Some Things That Are Not Coming to WolfQuest 3 (Devblog)
Believe it or not, we’ve pretty much fixed all the IK (inverse kinematics) issues that provided such hilarity in past blooper videos, but that’s not to say everyone and everything in the game always behaves itself. Here are some bugs that made us chuckle lately — but I’m happy to say that all of these are now fixed. We still have a long list of bugs to do (generally less entertaining than these), along with secondary features and a lot of testing and tweaking before the game is ready for Early Access release. But we’re getting there!
__When?
We are getting closer to releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain, for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. That will be followed by Slough Creek some months later, followed by the mobile versions. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall
___How much will WQ3 cost?
WolfQuest 3 will be a free update to players who own WolfQuest 2.7. If you are buying WQ 3 for the first time, the cost will be more than the current game 2.7 (so it's cheaper to purchase it now and get WQ 3 as a free update). The Tower Fall expansion will be an in-game purchase (DLC).
___Will WQ3 be available on mobile?
WolfQuest is available for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android & Kindle. So yes, WolfQuest 3 will be available for mobile phones and tablets...at least some of them, and/or in some form. Bigger maps and more animals may be too much for mobile devices with limited RAM memory. We'll do our best, but some low-end mobile devices will not be powerful enough to run the game. We will keep WolfQuest 2.7 (the current game) available as well (for both computers and mobile).
MUSIC CREDITS:
* Werq
* Disco Medusae
* Loopster
* Secret of Tiki Island
All by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
WolfQuest 3: Amethyst Trailer
Alrighty, we’ve got our first official trailer for WolfQuest 3!
Making a trailer sounds so simple — just play the game and grab some cool video clips. But of course it’s never that easy. These things need to be quite cinematic, which means a variety of camera angles — not just the standard over-the-tail viewpoint. Such angles can be challenging when you’re chasing a herd of elk or evasive mule deer! The video also needs to be as close to visually perfect as we can manage — things which are tolerable in the actual game are more glaring in a video, and this is especially tricky when the game still has some rough edges that we’re in the process of smoothing out. Nevertheless, editing video is one of my favorite activities, so it’s a lot of fun amidst the frustration.
Note that everything shown here – except the first and last shots (howling alone and with mate) – is in-game footage, using the new wolf and camera controller. So we look forward to seeing what videos players make once we release the game….which is still “SOON.” No release date...and we probably won’t ever set one. It’s taken us a long time (longer than some of our players have been alive), but we’ve truly learned how bad we are at predicting these things.
But, one day soon, we’ll ask ourselves “Is it ready?” and we’ll answer “YES!”
The Music of Sound (Devblog)
This week we look at how we are creating the WolfQuest 3 soundscape. In addition to adaptive music, we are building multiple layers of natural sounds – both environmental (wind, rain, etc.) and animal sounds – that help bring the WolfQuest world to life. Susan spent the last few months researching Yellowstone animals and gathering sounds that you might hear as wolf moving through the habitats of Yellowstone’s Northern Range. She sorted the sounds by season, habitat, and time of day, so I could then integrate them into the game, using a framework that our Unity developer Andrei built on top of a terrific plug-in called Master Audio. I create audio collections, then place audio emitters around the game map, which play the sounds in each collection based on defined rules (randomness, frequency, and time of day).
One challenge has been finding good, clean audio that was recorded by experts (who actually know the difference between a yellow warbler and a yellow-rumped warbler). Field recordings require good equipment, loads of patience, and long hours of analyzing and cataloging. We are grateful, in particular, for the work of Dr. Jacob Job, Sound and Light Ecology Team, Colorado State University/Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division of the National Park Service. Read more about this work at https://www.nps.gov/articles/deeplisteningbringsrewards.htm .
While you are waiting for the release of WolfQuest 3, treat yourself to a wolf serenade in Slough Creek at https://soundcloud.com/gaviaimmer/wolves-howling-at-dawn-in-yellowstone-national-park
__When?
We are getting closer to releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain, for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. That will be followed by Slough Creek some months later, followed by the mobile versions. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall
___How much will WQ3 cost?
WolfQuest 3 will be a free update to players who own WolfQuest 2.7. If you are buying WQ 3 for the first time, the cost will be more than the current game 2.7 (so it's cheaper to purchase it now and get WQ 3 as a free update). The Tower Fall expansion will be an in-game purchase (DLC).
___Will WQ3 be available on mobile?
WolfQuest is available for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android & Kindle. So yes, WolfQuest 3 will be available for mobile phones and tablets...at least some of them, and/or in some form. Bigger maps and more animals may be too much for mobile devices with limited RAM memory. We'll do our best, but some low-end mobile devices will not be powerful enough to run the game. We will keep WolfQuest 2.7 (the current game) available as well (for both computers and mobile).
The Music of Sound (Devblog)
This week we look at how we are creating the WolfQuest 3 soundscape. In addition to adaptive music, we are building multiple layers of natural sounds – both environmental (wind, rain, etc.) and animal sounds – that help bring the WolfQuest world to life. Susan spent the last few months researching Yellowstone animals and gathering sounds that you might hear as wolf moving through the habitats of Yellowstone’s Northern Range. She sorted the sounds by season, habitat, and time of day, so I could then integrate them into the game, using a framework that our Unity developer Andrei built on top of a terrific plug-in called Master Audio. I create audio collections, then place audio emitters around the game map, which play the sounds in each collection based on defined rules (randomness, frequency, and time of day).
One challenge has been finding good, clean audio that was recorded by experts (who actually know the difference between a yellow warbler and a yellow-rumped warbler). Field recordings require good equipment, loads of patience, and long hours of analyzing and cataloging. We are grateful, in particular, for the work of Dr. Jacob Job, Sound and Light Ecology Team, Colorado State University/Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division of the National Park Service. Read more about this work at https://www.nps.gov/articles/deeplisteningbringsrewards.htm .
While you are waiting for the release of WolfQuest 3, treat yourself to a wolf serenade in Slough Creek at https://soundcloud.com/gaviaimmer/wolves-howling-at-dawn-in-yellowstone-national-park
__When?
We are getting closer to releasing the first episode, Amethyst Mountain, for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. That will be followed by Slough Creek some months later, followed by the mobile versions. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall
___How much will WQ3 cost?
WolfQuest 3 will be a free update to players who own WolfQuest 2.7. If you are buying WQ 3 for the first time, the cost will be more than the current game 2.7 (so it's cheaper to purchase it now and get WQ 3 as a free update). The Tower Fall expansion will be an in-game purchase (DLC).
___Will WQ3 be available on mobile?
WolfQuest is available for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android & Kindle. So yes, WolfQuest 3 will be available for mobile phones and tablets...at least some of them, and/or in some form. Bigger maps and more animals may be too much for mobile devices with limited RAM memory. We'll do our best, but some low-end mobile devices will not be powerful enough to run the game. We will keep WolfQuest 2.7 (the current game) available as well (for both computers and mobile).
Really Old Trees (Devblog)
In the sprawling wilderness of Amethyst Mountain and Specimen Ridge, there are a lot of grasslands and a lot of forestland, but with few notable landmarks — so we need to make the most of what’s there! The most distinctive is the Fossil or Petrified Forest — a collection of stone logs and stumps which is all that remains of a forest that thrived 50 million years ago. Buried in volcanic ash, then gradually turned to stone as silica-rich groundwater permeated the ash, the ghosts of these ancient trees are exposed as the dirt erodes—becoming a fascinating landmark for WolfQuest!
Today’s video looks at a new set of petrified tree models created by 3D artist Alex Yung for the game. They’re a beautiful upgrade from what’s in the game now and we imagine players will find the new fossil forest to be a great spot to hang out.
Learn more about Yellowstone’s Petrified Forests!
https://www.nps.gov/media/video/view.htm?id=FF5E18EE-155D-451F-6742DA2CCB613177
https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/yell/knowlton/sec1.htm