WolfQuest
Our Douglas-firs are Tree-mendous
Thank you to the folks who have requested a video update about trees! Anyone who has been following our progress knows that I love working on the 3D environment of WolfQuest, so it should it should come as no surprise that I also love trees. Here’s a joke: How do trees get online? They just log in!
But seriously, trees are a critical part of the environment, both ecologically of course as well as visually. Douglas-fir are the most common tree species in WolfQuest, because they’re the most common tree in Yellowstone’s Northern Range, which is the heart of wolf country in the park. But they’re not the most common tree in Yellowstone — that’d be the lodgepole pine, which is the dominant species throughout the rest of the park. But Douglas-fir likes the cool, moist, north-facing slopes of the Northern Range, so they predominate there.
Here’s a fun fact about Douglas-fir: the name is hyphenated, and that’s to indicate that it isn’t a true fir. It’s genus name is Pseudotsuga, which means ‘false hemlock” — it resembles a hemlock as well as a fir, but it’s a different genus entirely. Douglas-firs grow to about 30m or 100 ft tall, and can live for as long as 600 years in Yellowstone. Their thick, corky bark protects them from fire so, unlike lodgepole pines, they can survive moderately intense forest fires.
So Douglas-fir is an important tree species for the Northern Range, and for the game. We’ve partnered with Kerry Baldino, one of the best 3D nature artists around, to create some new Douglas-firs for WolfQuest (along with other vegetation like the fescue and sagebrush we showed a few months ago, see link below). We also sent our old WolfQuest senior producer Steve Allison-Bunnell out into the field (he lives in Montana) to take comprehensive photographs of Douglas-fir bark, branches, and needles. Kerry used those photos to create a basic model of the classic Douglas-fir form, and now he’s working variations to give make our forests more realistic. Today’s video shows the first batch of Kerry’s trees in a test scene, which also uses several other tools by amazing Unity developers: Enviro for the sky and lighting system, a new vegetation spawning tool called Vegetation System Pro, and tree shaders created by vegetation shader wizard Forst.
In future videos we will share more new trees cottonwood and lodgepole, along with the finished forest environment complete with understory vegetation. In the meantime, check out our past videos about making the terrain!
Render in the Grass (New grass and sagebrush)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBMV_q00yKQ
Cliff Notes (Creating cliffs)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpUawoSEtaY
Texturing the Terrain (Creating realistic ground textures on the terrain)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnW_ZO0GESM
Roughing Up the Terrain (Using new tools to create more detailed terrains)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_PIVvLP-wQ
I'm the Boss...or Not
We’ve had wolf fighting in WolfQuest since the very beginning, but it was confined to the turn-based social arenas with stranger wolves. In WQ 2.7, we added stranger wolves defending their territory in Slough Creek, but you can’t actually fight them. You stay in your territory, they stay in theirs, and everyone’s happy. But since fighting is such an important aspect of a wolf’s life — fights are the number one cause of death of wolves in Yellowstone National Park —we’re building a much more realistic system for fighting in WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition.
Our goals for this fighting system are the same as for all the new game systems in WQ 3: to represent the complex, dynamic, and active nature of a wolf’s life within the constraints of a game simulation (and our own limited resources). Fighting of course is a common mechanic in computer games, but we want to make sure that our wolf fights are not merely recreational, but truly represent both the reasons for fighting — namely, to claim and defend territory — and the tremendous dangers that fighting presents for wolves. We also want to our NPC personality system to come into play, so a bold wolf responds differently in a conflict than a cautious wolf.
So we’ve designed a system where territory, personality, and the power balance (based on the relative number of wolves on each side of a conflict, as well as their current health) are all factors in how the wolves behave. How aggressive are they? Can they be intimidated by growls and snarls, or do you have to actually fight them, with all the risks that entails? Furthermore, this dynamic changes from moment to moment as the situation changes.
We’ve built the core system now and have been playing around with it to evaluate its fun-factor….and we think it’s pretty fun. For that we’ve been using placeholder animations and doing our best to ignore a lot of awkward moments when the wolves bite each other. Now the next step is to make it look good, by refining all the various ways that wolves can interact in a fight.
This video gives you sneak preview of some of the gameplay. Once we get everything working better, we’ll show more in a future blog post.
Notes:
* This is pre-alpha (i.e. very rough!) gameplay footage, just enough to prototype the new fighting mechanics. We’re now working on refining the animations and interactions.
* In nature, wolf fighting is almost entirely between packs, not within packs. While the latter has been known to occur, it’s only in much larger packs than the small family pack in WolfQuest.
* Fighting will be an option in single-player games, and in pup-raising multiplayer games (with your pack against NPC stranger packs). We do hope to add player vs. player in the next episode, Tower Fall.
And thanks to JayPlays for video clips from WolfQuest 2.7! Check out her channel for gameplay videos of WolfQuest and many other animal games! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4e517fIfsizbfEf_HsnFaQ
WolfQuest Giveaway Contest (August 2018)
Win a Free Copy of WolfQuest!
It's time for the monthly contest to win a free copy of WolfQuest 2.7! Four lucky winners will receive a free copy of the game. Winners can choose to get any version of the game (Mac/Windows, Android, iOS, Kindle).
This Month's Contest
Send your forum username, email, and your answer to the question: "What is something interesting that Yellowstone wolves are up to in late August?" to contest1@wolfquest.org. Winners are selected randomly from complete entries. Please enter only once in each monthly contest.
Deadline
All entries must be received by midnight (Eastern Daylight Time) on Friday, August 31, 2018.
Entry Requirements
Valid entries must include:
• Your email address.
• Your WQ forum username (Required! If you haven't registered for the forum, now's the time!)
• Answer to the question: "What is something interesting that Yellowstone wolves are up to in late August?"
Random Drawing
Each complete entry will be assigned a number. We will then use a random-number generator to generate four numbers. The entries bearing those numbers will each win a free copy of the game.
Good Mate Hunting (Devblog)
We’ve been making good progress with the new hunting mechanics — not only the chase that we’ve shown before, but also now in the showdown when elk stand their ground and defend themselves. The player attack mechanics aren’t quite done yet, but here’s a peek at the mate’s attack AI. It’s so much more active than in the old game. Tommi Horttana, our lead Unity developer, created these behaviors, so I’ll let him explain more:
"The mate's AI uses a few simple actions: approaching, circling, attacking, and sprinting away. It tries to get behind the elk, though in this one-on-one case it's pretty hard. Every now and then it'll try to attack, but might be scared off mid-way by the elk's counter-attack (with or without getting kicked).
The tricky part is building the AI calculations ("scorers" in Utility AI terms) around when exactly to do each of these things. How often should the mate try to attack, and how much risk should it take? What should it take to scare it away? Should it always keep circling in one direction or frequently change the direction? How far should it circle? If it does land a bite, how long should it keep it?
And how does personality (mainly "Cautious - Bold" but also the other axes) influence this? We decided to give both ends of the "Cautious - Bold" spectrum their own pros and cons. A Bold wolf will waste less time fiddling around while a Cautious one will be smarter about timing and target selection. We also want to use uniform mechanics for other fights, so we can use the same / similar AI."
I’m so excited about how the wolf and elk are in constant motion, circling and turning. It really captures the dynamism of a wolf-elk encounter so much better than we were able to do in the old game. In fact, there’s so much movement that it’s difficult to get all the animation transitions to work smoothly, but we’ll get there.
You can also see some of the gorgeous clouds in our new dynamic skybox, drifting across the sky at sunset. (These are maximum quality; we’ll have simpler clouds for less powerful computers and mobile.)
FAQs
___When will WolfQuest 3 and Tower Fall be released?
We are aiming to release the first episode, Amethyst Mountain, by the end of 2018 for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access, followed by Slough Creek in early 2019, then 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 likely be more than 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 there's a good chance that some mobile devices won't be able to get it, and/or we will have a simpler version of it for some mobile devices.
___Will WQ3 be a new game?
For PC/Mac, we plan to release WolfQuest 3 as a new app on your computer, so you can keep WQ 2.7 and play either version of the game at any time. (On mobile, we are still working on the plan, since app stores are more restrictive about app upgrades.)
__Will my wolves import?
WQ3 will use the same player accounts as 2.7. You’ll be able to log into WQ3 and import your existing wolves and they will remain available in 2.7 as well (though you won’t be able to import a wolf from WQ3 back into 2.7). We are still deciding about how ranks and achievements will integrate into WQ 3.
The Story So Far (Devblog)
A year ago, we announced WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition, with great optimism that we’d release it by the end of that year. So where are we now? Well, here’s the story:
Interest in and support for WolfQuest 2.7 (the first paid version of the game)was much greater than we ever imagined, so by late 2016, we felt confident that this wasn’t a flash in the pan and decided to start work on an all-new map and episode, taking the story of the pack forward through summer and fall. Our science advisor Dr. Dan MacNulty recommended setting this new episode in the Tower Fall / Yellowstone River region, so we dubbed the new episode “Tower Fall” and dove into development. We already knew that a new episode would require a completely new codebase in order to develop the kinds of sophisticated animal behaviors and gameplay that players expect and deserve these days. So our Unity developer Tommi Horttana spent winter and spring on that, while we also started working on the new environments and animals that would populate the new episode.
But by summer of 2017, we couldn’t ignore the many problems with adding this all-new, vastly improved episode onto the existing game, with its decade-old code and game systems. So we decided to shift focus and remake the original game so we had a solid new foundation for the entire game and future episodes. When we hatched this plan that summer, we intended to keep the scope modest and simply remake the existing game features and systems with the new codebase. But of course, that meant devoting months of time and energy to recreating 2007-era game designs. Did we really want to do that — even if it would let us get this remake done and released fairly quickly?
As we reviewed each system in the game, we had ideas to redesign them in much bigger and better ways. More naturalistic scent systems! Animals that persist throughout each episode! Bigger herds of elk, with more realistic and exciting herding behaviors! More accurate and exciting hunting and attack mechanics! Cleverer competitors! Vastly bigger maps! More realistic vegetation! Dynamic day/night cycle! New music with an adaptive music system! Mates and pups with personalities! Better fur! Sophisticated genetics system! And what the heck, let’s add some more animals too!
Well, you don’t need to guess what happened then. Each new feature has taken longer than our everlastingly optimistic plans anticipated. Just as we learned ten years ago with the first version, in a 3D world it’s very easy to break the illusion of reality, and by cranking up the realism of our eco-simulation, we’re also cranking up how easy it is to break that illusion, and how much work it takes to maintain it.
So here we are a year after announcing the remake, chugging along with a full head of steam and all hands on deck. Earlier this year we brought three more Unity developers onboard to work solely on WolfQuest, and they’ve helped us make enormous progress. We’ve built all the main game systems and most of the secondary systems. Multiplayer should be in good shape next month. I couldn’t be more excited about what we’ve been able to produce. I don’t think there will be any game like it out there!
But alas, we still have an awful lot still to do, and we don’t see a way to complete the entire game and release it by the end of this year. Those of you who’ve been around since the early days can’t be blamed for thinking I’d have learned my lesson by now. And perhaps I should never share out loud my eternally optimistic release targets. So yes, we have revised our goal, once again.
Now we’re aiming to release Amethyst Mountain (the first level/map) before the end of the year on PC/Mac platforms (Steam and Itch.io). It should be in good shape although not completely done, so we’ll likely call it “Early Access” or something like that for awhile. We’ll then focus on Slough Creek with the goal of releasing it in early 2019, and then finish the mobile versions — it’ll take quite a lot of work to get this massively larger game to run on the widest range of mobile devices as possible. And then we’ll get back to Tower Fall, aiming to release it….well, I guess I’d better not make any predictions.
We’ll continue to make these weekly blog posts and videos. We hope they provide a bit of entertainment while you wait and a peek into to the joys and pains of indie game development.….including the challenges of release date predictions.
Note: Our beautiful new WolfQuest game icon was created by longtime player and forum moderator Juliet Manolias (Sambhur).
See all our development videos! We’ve organized them by category here: http://www.wolfquest.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=84491
You Had Me at Playbow (Devblog)
Not long after wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, researchers witnessed — for the first time ever — a lone dispersal wolf joining a pack to become a breeder and pack leader. This encounter lasted many hours and involved a great deal of howling, tail wagging, playbowing, and other social interactions before the lone wolf was accepted into the pack. While that encounter involved a dispersal joining an existing pack, it provides a good guide to how dispersal wolves likely meet and interact when deciding whether to form a pack. So we drew on this knowledge when crafting the “social arena” in WolfQuest back in 2007, which we designed as a stylized turn-based encounter that emphasizes the communicative aspects of certain social behaviors.
We’re drawing again on that seminal 2002 paper about the Yellowstone wolves, but as with every aspect of WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition, we’re going bigger with the new social arena. We wanted to make this new courtship gameplay more naturalistic, giving every wolf freedom of movement to create a more dynamic situation. We also wanted to let each wolf’s personality shine through. But the biggest fundamental decision was to discard the quiz-structure of the old social arena. Instead of requiring a correct sequence of emotes, many different emotes (from a subset appropriate for courtship) can boost a potential mate’s level of interest. But then what’s the gameplay? Aha — it’s not IF you can persuade another wolf to be your mate, it’s if you can successfully persuade the wolf you WANT to be your mate.
So instead of the old stylized 2D turn-based encounter, courtship in WQ3 will involve the free-roaming player and one — or more — other wolves who might become your mate. Yes, our science advisors tell us that it’s common for dispersal wolves to roam with siblings, so you’re just as likely to meet a pair of wolves, or perhaps even three — each of whom might be interested in finding a mate for themselves. (Not all wolves you encounter will be so friendly, of course, but we’ll talk about that in another blog post.) Some of these wolves will respond more readily to your courting. So as you interact with them, you can get a sense of their personality from their actions, to help you decide which (if any) you’d like to have as a mate. Furthermore, you should also evaluate their genetic diversity to avoid picking a mate that is too closely related to you or would make a bad genetic combination with you (see our Genetics video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV-Dd_ror8g ).
Once you do persuade another wolf by filling their heart-meter, you and your potential mate can proceed into the second phase of courtship, to further evaluate each other before making your final decision. We’ll talk about that a future blog post.
A couple notes:
* We’re still polishing the wolf movement — it’s pretty good but not as smooth as we are aiming for in the final game.
* Currently the potential mates do not do any contact emotes (chin rest, lick muzzle, sniff noses) — we hope to add that, but it’s a bit tricky.
* Though you can meet many more potential mates than before, wolves are monogamous so you have to choose just one.
* We do hope to add the possibility of your mate dying — so you then need to find a new mate — but most likely will add it in an update next year.
Emote Yourself (Devblog)
We’re adding more emotes to WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition — which created a design challenge. With 18 emotes, how do we display them all while offering fast access to each one? Another constraint was that due to the revised control scheme (which keeps the mouse locked and invisible for steering — more on this in a future blog post), we couldn’t leave the emotes popup panel onscreen all the time as we did in WQ 2.7. We experimented with common RPG interfaces for this type of thing, then refined the design into what you see in today’s video: Press and hold the E key (or Emotes button on mobile) to display the popup, then choose an emote from the Favorites category, or select a different category and choose an emote from there. While the Emotes panel does cover up much of the screen, it’s only for a moment while you select a button.
What’s new:
* T2 (tail straight back)
* T3 (tail angled down)
* T3.5 (tail straight down)
* Airplane Ears
* Ears Back
* Growl
* Snarl
* Chin Rest
* Submissive Lick
* Sniff Noses
This new Emotes panel not only accommodates ten new emotes (for a total of 18, with room to add more in the future), but it lets you customize it by choosing which emotes should appear in the default “Favorites” category. You’ll also be able to assign hotkeys to each emote for even faster selection. (For the tail actions, we know players would like to do these while engaged in other actions, and we have that on our wish list.)
A couple notes:
* Those last three emotes require another friendly wolf nearby, so we’ll show those in another video in the near future.)
* The voice animations use real wolf vocalizations, including some from the ambassador wolves at the International Wolf Center.
* If you are interested in learning more about wolf body language and the complexities of wolf communication, be sure to check out the in-depth International Wolf Center videos at https://www.youtube.com/user/IntlWolfCenter
Shave and a Haircut
WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition is taking much longer to develop than we expected — that’s bad. But a new fur shader could give the wolf much more realistic fur— that’s good! But now we have to spend more time experimenting and configuring it — that’s bad. But the final wolf will look so much better — that’s good!
This is sorta the story of WQ3 game graphics — new tools keep coming out that promise better visuals and/or better performance. It takes time to evaluate each one, so we first have to do a pre-evaluation to see if the promise of that tool is worth spending time evaluating it. But when the new tool is as amazing as XFur, which I demonstrate in this video, it’s definitely worth the extra work. This new fur shader by Jorge Pinal Negrete uses the same technical method (“shells”) as the fur shader we used in WQ 2.7 and what we’ve been using in WQ3 until now, but takes it to another level, offering control over fur length, thickness, occlusion (shadowing), and more. The result is thicker, plusher fur that flows along the contours of the wolf’s body. And to top it all off, Jorge has created an FX module that renders effects like snow on the wolf’s body. It looks fantastic and will add so much realism to snowy days in the game.
What makes it even more fun to work with Jorge is that he actually played the original WolfQuest game many years ago, so he’s got some affection for the game and has worked very hard to ensure that XFur meets our particular needs. Jorge also created the eye shader that we showed in a video awhile ago -- he's a talented guy! (And If you use Unity, be sure to check out XFur in the Unity Asset Store.)
Let’s see…what questions will you all have?
* Will the mobile game use this fur shader? No, but Jorge is making a mobile version that should look a lot better than the fur in WQ 2.7. Don’t know yet about snowy fur on mobile.
* Can my wolf have wet fur? That would be a cool effect but it’s tricky to create so we don’t know.
* Will there be new coats to choose from? We know that everyone would like to have more coats to choose from but we don’t plan to offer more initially.
* Can my wolf have more than one customization at a time? Yes. We’ll show that in a future blog video.
____________________
How can I support WolfQuest game development?
• Buy the game! (You'll get WolfQuest 3 for free if you buy the current version.)
• Tell your friends that WolfQuest is a great game! Games sales are why a little game about wolf ecology is still going strong after more than ten years.
• Give WolfQuest as a gift to a friend! Steam and itch.io make it easy to gift games.
• Buy the music extras and consider leaving a tip.
• Donate to game development at https://fundly.com/wolfquest.
• Follow, subscribe, and support WolfQuest on social media and Steam. Good buzz keeps WolfQuest alive.
• Write reviews. Great ratings and positive reviews from our fabulous players make a huge difference. Take the time to give WQ some love wherever you are online.
We appreciate all the ways players support WolfQuest! We truly wouldn't be here doing this without you.
Win WolfQuest! July Contest
A Little Elk Music (Devblog)
A few months ago, WolfQuest composer Tim Buzza and I were talking about new music tracks for WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition, and I realized that we really needed new elk hunting music. The bigger herds, the better herding behaviors, and the vast new grasslands to chase elk across — they all called for an epic new track that captured the energy and exhilaration of an elk hunt — something like Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyrie that we used in the blog video last year about elk herding behaviors. So…no pressure, Tim.
Tim of course came back with an amazing, epic piece of music (actually, a set of tracks to use in our adaptive music system) that, as usual, lifts the gameplay to the next level. And now we’ve got all the elements of the elk hunt working well enough to show how they all come together (though the usual caveats about “still tweaking and refining” apply). Here my mate and I are hunting elk together. My mate is pretty social, so she likes to keep an eye on me as we run together — and she does indeed bite elk too, though that’s not shown in any of these shots. How bold your mate is about selecting and attacking elk will depend upon their personality. In multiplayer games, several wolves can attack the same elk, biting the front and rear legs during the chase.
This video has the HUD hidden for cinematic impact, but you may notice that the elk don’t have healthbars when you approach. Instead, you have to bite them to learn their health level (shown by the small red dot). We’ll talk more about the new hunting mechanics in a future blog post.
EDIT: Oops, a couple things on the wolf (head position and gallop animation) got set incorrectly last week, when we had to rebuild the wolf model after it blew up. Those''ll be fixed in future videos.
____________________
How can you support WolfQuest game development?
• Buy the game! (You'll get WolfQuest 3 for free if you buy the current version.)
• Tell your friends that WolfQuest is a great game! Games sales are why a little game about wolf ecology is still going strong after more than ten years.
• Give WolfQuest as a gift to a friend! Steam and itch.io make it easy to gift games.
• Buy the music extras and consider leaving a tip.
• Donate to game development at https://fundly.com/wolfquest.
• Follow, subscribe, and support WolfQuest on social media and Steam. Good buzz keeps WolfQuest alive.
• Write reviews. Great ratings and positive reviews from our fabulous players make a huge difference. Take the time to give WQ some love wherever you are online.
We appreciate all the ways players support WolfQuest! We truly wouldn't be here doing this without you.