It's time for WolfQuest's monthly contest to win a free copy of WolfQuest 2.7! Four lucky winners will receive a free copy of any version of the game (Mac/Windows, Android, iOS, Kindle). Here's how to enter:
Spring is coming to Yellowstone! The snow is melting and wolf pups are about a month old, just emerging from the den with ravenous appetites. Wolves no doubt will welcome the upcoming feast of newborn ungulates. We are adding mule deer and their newborns to WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition to give players more options to feed their pups as they journey to the rendezvous site!
When mule deer fawns are born, their mothers leave them hidden while they graze. Hungry carnivores can discover these helpless meals tucked in tall grass, nestled under bushes, or hidden in hollows. What’s the catch? Fawns are scentless, motionless, and very well camouflaged — so they will be harder to find than that old boot! Oh yeah, it’s also prudent to keep an eye out for protective mothers.
Named for their large ears, mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) are common in Yellowstone in the summer though in much smaller numbers than elk. Mule deer may sometimes gather in small groups but they do not form large herds. They live in varied habitats throughout Yellowstone: brushy areas, grasslands and coniferous forests. Their top speed is 72 kph (45 mph) — faster than a wolf — and they can change direction with a single bound. Mule deer often use a distinctive bounding leap called stotting (or pronking) that allows them to cover uneven terrain efficiently. This makes them challenging prey to catch. Mule deer also have sharp hooves that smart wolves avoid. Fawns will start out hiding, scentless and motionless in June. Once they are mobile, fawns stay close to their mothers and can also run fast.
Be sure to check out previous posts about mule deer coming in WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition (releasing later in 2018):
Today’s video shows a few more troubles we’ve had while trying to set up a good IK system for the wolf. (“IK” stands for “Inverse Kinematics” and that’s what makes a character animations adjust to the game environment, such as walking on a slope.) We’ve been struggling with this for awhile (see the “A Very Limber Wolf” post), and in fact have tried three different IK systems since January. These systems are designed for bipeds rather than quadrupeds, which often makes them hard to configure for accurate wolf movements. We do think we’ve finally got this figured out, using a plugin called “Final IK” and some clever work by Tommi and our wolf artist Steve— but not without a few more very amusing hiccups along the way, as you can see.
This week we’re answering some questions from our players. I’m sorry we can’t answer all of them — partly due to time constraints, but also because we’re still in mid-development and don’t have a final answer to some questions.
Do you have a release date yet? I can’t wait! Sorry, no. We’re still in the thick of development. It’s been 15 months now since we announced Tower Fall, and nine months since we announced WQ3. Back then, we certainly expected to have released *something* by now. But we originally had a pretty narrow scope for WQ3 (basically a rebuild of 2.7) and we felt pretty confident that we could get that done by the end of 2017....but as we worked on it, we kept thinking of ways to make the game substantially better -- truly the next generation of WolfQuest. We are improving many things, both large (like the maps) and small (like the IK system, which turned out to be not-so-small after all). And we’re redesigning every aspect of the game (Tommi spent a week in March just creating the new AI for cougars at carcasses) and that has ripple effects throughout the whole development process.
In short, both the game scope and the release date have been moving targets, which is frustrating for everybody -- including us, who have all the reasons in the world (including financial) to finish and release WQ3 and then Tower Fall as soon as possible. But we don’t expect to release anything before the fall, alas. If we could go back in time, we might have announced WQ3 as a remake with no mention of a deadline. We really appreciate everyone's patience. We'll get there. And we do think it will be worth it.
Will WQ3 still be "mission-based" like it is now, or are you working on a way to make the transitions between goals more natural? Will the gameplay be faster or slower overall, including the rate of growth for the pups? We’ve given this some thought and decided to keep the linear structure. That’s mainly because it generally fits the sequence of challenges facing real wolves at this point in their lives (finding a mate, choosing a den, etc.) It also is valuable for usability, as it helps players learn what to do, and what they’re supposed to be doing at any given time, which we feel is even more important with the larger maps and more naturalistic (and less obvious) animal behaviors.
We’re making each quest more complex and (hopefully) interesting, which should make them last longer. As part of that, we do want to make pup-raising more holistic and less a linear series of quests. As part of that, we definitely want to ensure that players can (and have to) spend substantial time hunting and maintaining their territory while raising pups.
How big are the new maps compared to the old ones? Is it about twice the size? The old maps are 2km x 2km. The new maps are 7km by 7km. So that’s a bit more than three times larger on each axis, but thanks to the magic of geometry, that means they’re actually 12 times bigger (4 sq km vs 49 sq km). See more in the Mapmaking blog post.
Will there be turn-based social arenas to communicate with other wolves, or will we have to draw from the emote panel in real time? The turn-based social arena is a thing of the past. We’ll give you a peek at the new Courtship gameplay in a future blog post.
Will we be able to manually rotate our wolves in the customization menu? Will we be able to alter the pitch of wolf howls in the customization menu? Will be be able to layer individual scars/markings over each other. so, say i want a scar on my wolf's nose and left foreleg; i'd select those two separately and they’d both work. The same thing with the ears and the gimpy leg. The new Wolf Customizer will let you rotate your wolf. We’ve experimented with pitch adjustments, but it quickly sounds like the scary-guy-on-a-phone in a horror movie or a misguided pop singer, so we’re not still evaluating that option. You’ll be able to select multiple body customizations (such as a torn ear and the radio collar). Multiple scars and markings are much trickier due to the way the textures and fur shader work, so we don’t have plans to support that.
Will our current wolves still be listed? Like their current exp/the wolf itself/etc? What about achievements? You’ll be able to import your 2.7 wolf into WQ3 (but not import it back to 2.7). We are designing something new to replace XP, but you will be rewarded if you’ve earned a lot of XP in 2.7. We plan to archive all 2.7 achievements and have a new, larger set of achievements for WQ3.
Will the prey HITBOX be fixed? Will there be a way to quickly bite prey then dash away unharmed? We’ve designed and built all-new attack mechanics. We're using colliders to determine who gets hit by an attack, and we make that determination at the moment the damage is dealt (instead of at the moment the animation starts, as we did in 2.7). We aim to do this with similar precision to other RPGs and action games. So if you get out of the way of those hooves in time, you'll be safe.
Will the wolf pups that you raise in the new update stick around for the next year's litter? The end-game message explains that the pups will stay with their parents to help raise a litter before leaving at age 2 to raise their own pups. This would be awesome to have in the game. The timeframe of the current game is pretty short, compared to the full life of a wolf: From age 2-1/2, when you leave their family pack to find a mate, to age 3-1/4, when you’ve taken your pups to their first summer rendezvous site. Tower Fall will extend this another six months, so then the game will cover a full 1-1/2 years of a wolf’s life. Still pretty short. We have ideas for another episode that would carry the story through the winter and spring. At that point, the pups would be yearlings, staying with the family for another year. And that’s where we’d be at the point where we can recycle the core gameplay for ongoing years. I guess that would be Episode 5. Hopefully we’ll get there!
Since mates now have personalities, will pups develop personalities too? Definitely. You’ll want to keep one eye on your bold pup.
Will there be new pup coat colors? Yes.
Will there be mechanics for illness in game? Yes, very simple mechanics—mostly, but not entirely, for pups.
Will the Eagle, Cougar, Fox, and Moose also receive new models? We are creating new models for all the animals in the original game. Eventually we want to replace the animals added in 2.7.x, but as those are newer and better models, that’s lower priority. However, they will all benefit from the improved AI programming so they will be more interesting.
Will we be able to see other predators hunting? We definitely want to make that happen, and the new AI will allow it….but it’ll take time to make it look good. We want to get WQ3 released before we all turn gray, so that may not be in the initial release.
Will the game have a higher quality sound design? I would love to hear a more realistic sound-scape for wolf quest, in particular, the footsteps so that they change with the terrain. Agreed.
Will cattle ranch still be in WQ3? If it is, will it be its own level like before or are you going to make it walkable? IE: You travel to the ranch by walking there, rather than teleporting. We would like to make the cattle ranch contiguous with the game map, for naturalism and also so it’s available in multiplayer. But it turns out that there are no livestock ranches just north of the Slough Creek area of Yellowstone — it’s pretty rugged mountains and national forest up there. So even if we collapsed the distance between the SC map and the park border, there aren’t any ranches to visit. But we do have some ideas but nothing to announce yet.
Will you be redoing the splash screen or will that be a surprise? We will be redoing it, and it’ll be a surprise (even to us, as we haven’t created it yet).
I have always loved the music in WQ. In one of your blog posts/videos, you were working with Tim Buzza on a new WolfQuest soundtrack. Will this soundtrack completely replace the current one in WolfQuest, or will you be re-using some themes from the old soundtrack (main menu, map exploration themes, etc)? If you will be re-using some tracks, how do you plan to integrate the old tracks in with the new without them sounding out-of-place? Tim is composing new tracks for WQ3 to fit stylistically into the existing soundtrack. He’s also going to revisit the original tracks and create new layers for them, so they’ll have more variety in our new layer-based soundtrack system.
Will there be people on wolfquest 3? If so, can the wolves touch them? Like bite, scare or kill? North American wolves avoid humans (there’s some speculation that this is a fairly new behavior — an evolutionary adaptation to the mass slaughter of wolves in the 19th and 20th centuries). Also, Yellowstone “manages” any wolf that gets too acclimated to park visitors. (There have been no wolf attacks in the park since reintroduction). So we’ve kept humans out of WolfQuest to reflect these facts. But since humans *do* venture into wolf territories in Yellowstone, WQ3 and Tower Fall will include more signs of humans.
Are there any plans to make any changes to Lost River and maybe add a few new things? We do plan to expand and improve the Lost River map, but the Yellowstone maps are higher priority, so LR improvements may come after initial release of WQ3.
What has been your favorite or most rewarding part of developing WQ 3 so far? Speaking on behalf of our team, there are all sorts of rewarding aspects, but for myself (Dave/loboLoco), the big ongoing thing is that we’ve somehow lucked into a self-sustaining game. People buy the game, which funds more game development, which (hopefully) improves the game, which leads to more game sales, and so on. I’d mainly worked on grant-funded projects for nearly 20 years, and with those you get a fixed budget and try (usually unsuccessfully) to stay within that budget, because there’s no more money coming — ever — no matter how the game turns out. So it’s a revelation with WolfQuest, to have an ongoing source of funding for game development. For two and a half years now, I’ve been pinching myself to make sure it’s real.
Submit questions for this week's blog post!
It's been awhile since we answered your questions in our weekly devblog post, so let's do that again this week. If you have a question about WolfQuest 3 that hasn't been answered in any obvious spot, post it here by Thursday morning (U.S. time). We'll pick some to answer Thursday afternoon.
What's Your Favorite Howl? (Devblog)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGwUwoWTLxk
Howls are iconic aspects of wolves — nothing says “wolf” like that long mournful howl in the distance. We know that players would like more howls to choose from when customizing their wolf. That’s in the works, along with some other improvements (including basic stuff like syncing the howl audio and animation better). As we work on new howls for WolfQuest 3, it would be very helpful to know which WQ 2.7 howls players most prefer. Hence this week’s poll: What’s your favorite howl? Please use the poll system in the YouTube video if you can, but if you can't, then just give your answer in the comments below.
Hence this week’s poll: What’s your favorite howl? Please use the poll system to answer, unless you can’t, in which case you can give your answer in the comments below.
We’d also like to know a few other things:
If you have more than one wolf, do you generally choose the same howl for all of them, or different howls?
Do you feel strongly attached to your current howl(s), or would it be okay to have a different set in WolfQuest 3?
Growlin' Grizzly
https://youtu.be/wQEMwSOFU9o
As Yellowstone’s biggest carnivore, grizzly bears deserve an upgrade in WolfQuest 3, so here’s our new griz, hanging out at a carcass. As in the old game, you’ll want to be careful around grizzlies. They like to dine on carcasses and are quite effective at taking carcasses (or whatever they want) from wolves. Even a big pack of wolves knows better than to take one on. But we are creating more interesting AI for the grizzlies, and depending on its hunger and your own patience and tactics, you might be able to claim a carcass from a grizzly. And stay tuned — we’ll have more about grizzlies in future devblogs!
Quick Facts About Grizzly Bears
POPULATION: About 150 grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) live in Yellowstone. They are generally solitary and avoid conflict except when obtaining food or protecting offspring.
SIZE: Females weigh 130-180 kg (300-400 lb), males 180-650 kg (400-800 lb).
TOP SPEED: 64 kph (40 mph) — which makes them just a bit faster than wolves.
DIET: Generalist omnivores. They eat rodents and other small mammals, insects, ungulates (especially young), fish, roots, pine nuts, and grasses. Grizzlies often scavenge wolf-killed carcasses.
Our bear is another great animal model from our partner, GIM, in Slovakia. This video also offers a preview of another new track by our composer Tim Buzza. We haven’t actually decided yet if this is the grizzly theme or better suited for something else in the game, but I love it so much that I wanted to share it here.
This week Tommi finished coding the genetics and other aspects of wolf identity, Andrei finished building the new wolf customizer, Zach made more progress with core multiplayer functionality, and Susan researched and collected animal sound effects, including the new grizzly vocalizations in this video. I worked on…well, more rocks as well as some game mechanic designs and a few other things we aren’t ready to share yet. We are, unfortunately, still a long way from release. Tommi said “There must be some kind of a rule that says ‘Twice the quality, ten times the work’.” Susan said this post should be titled “Bear with Us” and I was tempted by “Pokey the Bear.” But we’re making progress, slow and steady.
Genes Behind the Scenes (DevBlog)
https://youtu.be/wV-Dd_ror8g
This week, pups are being born across Yellowstone and beyond. Pups look fairly similar at birth but each one will grow a coat based on its parent’s genetic profile. So let’s take a look at the genetics that determine coat color.
We’ve always had a simple genetics model in the game for puppy coats, but we’re making a much more accurate model now for WolfQuest 3. Genetics has always been a bit daunting for me, but fortunately my neighbor Nathan is a geneticist, and after he explained it to me three times, I think I finally got it.
Most of the wolf’s genome has not yet been analyzed, but in 2009, scientists discovered a gene variant that controls coat color. This got a lot of press at the time because they found that it comes from dogs, many thousands of years ago, meaning that wolves and dogs have cross-bred in the past. They named this gene variant the “k locus.” Every wolf has two copies of this gene which, using standard genetics terminology, is indicated by a small “k” for gray coats or a capital “K” for black coats.
Other genes presumably affect the lightness or darkness of the coat, as well as the gray/brown tint, but these have not been discovered yet. (Genetics is expensive and there’s not a big financial payoff for sequencing the wolf genome.) Keep in mind “white” is tint of gray and is not caused by albinism. Because there have been no known albino wolves in Yellowstone there will be none in WolfQuest (we get a lot of requests for albino wolves).
So the K locus determines the wolf’s coat color:
If a wolf has two small k variants (e.g. kk), then it has a gray coat (which might be anything from white to dark gray or brown).
If a wolf has one small k and one big K (Kk), then it has a black coat (since K is dominant). This combination appears to give wolves extra resistance to disease.
If a wolf has two big Ks (KK), then it is black…but it’s probably also dead, since this combination is usually fatal before birth.
Based on this, we can accurately determine whether a pup will have a black or gray coat, based on its parents’s genes. The Punnett Square is a helpful diagram for figuring this out.
If both parents are kk (both have gray coats), then all their pups will have gray coats:
If one parent has a gray coat (kk), and the other has a black coat (Kk because KK rarely survive), then each pup has a 50% chance of being Kk (black coat) and 50% chance of gray coat (kk):
If both parents are black and Kk (because KK wolves rarely survive), then each pup has a 25% chance of being KK (black, and probably dying in utero), a 50% chance of being Kk (black), and a 25% chance of being kk (gray):
How will this work in the game? We will generate a genetic profile for each wolf which includes the K locus for coat color as well as other genes for coat tint and stats. For the player, this will be based on the wolf’s customization configuration (you choose and then the game generates the genetic profile). For NPC wolves, it’ll be generated dynamically for each wolf, based on Yellowstone’s wolf population (for an accurate distribution of gray and black coats) and standard genetics rules. So when your wolf meets a potential mate, you can infer a bit about its genetics and decide if you think it’s a good match:
If you have a gray coat (kk), then choosing a black wolf (which is probably Kk) gives your pups at least a 50% chance to be Kk, and thus have higher disease resistance.
If you have a black coat (probably Kk, but small chance of KK), choosing another black wolf could give your pups higher disease resistance — but there’s a good chance (25% to 100%) that some pups will die before birth. Litter size in WQ3 will vary (probably between 4 and 7, but we’ll tune that during beta testing), and this risk of a KK pup will add another element of uncertainty to litter size.
It’s very exciting to have this knowledge about the risks and rewards of the K locus so we can model those in the game. We also will include coat tint and stats in the genetics profile, but since scientists haven’t sequenced the genes that control those traits, we’ll use them only to determine those traits on the pup, without any health effects.
Many thanks to Neamara/Nightangelwolf for the adorable wolf faces.
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).
How to enter: http://www.wolfquest.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=84063
Cliff Notes (DevBlog)
https://youtu.be/cpUawoSEtaY
This week, Tommi has been creating stranger wolf behaviors. Andrei has been setting up wolf customization. Susan has been researching secondary missions, and our new developer Zach has been working on multiplayer. And I’ve been a bit obsessed with rocks.
One reason for our trip to Yellowstone was to see rocks up close and personal since, strangely, those are not common subjects of photography in Yellowstone. (Hmm, what else could people be taking pictures of?) The cliffs of Amethyst are made of conglomerate rock (formed from mudflows mixed with gravel stream deposits), along with some sandstone and siltstone. To create these cliffs, our rock artist Omar has created a number of repurposable cliff models. I then experimented with several shaders (which determines how light reflects off objects in a 3D environment) to find the best way to create the cliffs for the game. Today’s video shows that process.
One reason to put this effort into the cliffs (besides being a good challenge) is because these cliffs are the domain of the bighorn sheep, which was the top vote-getter in our February blog poll for a new animal to add to the game. We’ve partnered with Games-in-Motion, a 3D art firm in Slovakia, for many of our new game animals, and they just delivered the bighorn model, which is just as handsome as the elk and mule deer which they made for us last year. We will share more about the bighorn when we get the whole family animated.
WolfQuest Goes to Yellowstone: Slough Creek
https://youtu.be/0LUK_37Ce2U
Last September we visited Slough Creek in Yellowstone National Park! We hiked into Slough Creek to explore and see what it really looks like, so we can make the new Slough Creek map in WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition as accurate and realistic as possible. Although the autumn colors don’t match what we need in the game, which takes place in springtime, we learned a great deal about the look and feel of the place, and especially the kinds of rocks and grasses that are found throughout the area. Not surprisingly, there is nothing like really being there!
The current game map is a three kilometer hike from the trailhead. We headed first for Little Butte — your spawning point in the game. For those of you new to the game or returning after a long absence, Slough Creek is where you choose a den and raise your pups. This area is called the First Meadow, and yes, that means there’s a Second Meadow further upstream. We were hoping to reach it, but we had such a great time exploring First Meadow that we barely got beyond the edge of the current game map before it was time to head back. There are some enticing features further up, such as McBride Lake, which is just beyond the current game map, upslope from the Aspen Heights den.
Slough Creek is one our favorite places in Yellowstone, and perhaps the world. Wildlife abounds! We were thrilled to see black bear and mule deer families as well as signs of beaver, elk, badgers, and oh so many bison prints. We can see why one of the early wolf packs chose the area for their den site. In fact, more than one wolf pack has denned in this area since the 1996 reintroduction, and with the larger map, we’ll create more dens for you to choose from.
This video is the next installment in our WolfQuest Goes to Yellowstone videos from our research trip last September. If you missed the previous videos from our Yellowstone trip, check them out now!
