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).
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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.

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).
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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.

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.

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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.

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.
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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.

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.



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.

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.

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).

In the upcoming WolfQuest Saga,* pups will keep growing -- changing from cute little furballs into enthusiastic, awkward teenagers who must plunge in and learn how to hunt the hard way. These older pups needed some new music tracks that captured their gangly charm -- and today's devblog look at how WolfQuest composer Tim Buzza approached this challenge. Tim's music has been at the heart of WolfQuest since the very beginning, and we're delighted with what he came up with for these new tracks. Enjoy this peek into his creative process!



* 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.
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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.

Longtime WolfQuest players (or at least, longtime followers of this devblog) may remember the trouble we had getting the wolf's IK system to work well. IK (Inverse Kinematics) refers to the mechanics of a chain of objects, such as bones and joints in a leg or arm, and how their positions are calculated when interacting with other objects. One of our challenging tasks in the development of the Anniversary Edition was creating an IK system for wolves, so they would interact more naturally with their environment — both the ground and other objects such as elk who were fleeing for their lives from the wolves.



Inverse Kinematics is hard -- and Inverse Kinematics for quadrupeds is really hard. So we decided to use a software plugin called Final IK, which is considered the very best IK system available for Unity. It was designed for bipeds, but the FinalIK developer added some modifications for quadrupeds, so it worked well to some degree but by no means in all the ways we wanted it to work. But it sufficed.

Since then, Mikko joined the WolfQuest team, and after focusing mainly on multiplayer for several years, he was available and interested in a new challenge, so he took on the challenge of creating a custom quadruped IK system. I asked him to explain the process:

Mikko says:

The original motivation for the new IK system was to avoiding 'space legs' (where the wolf stood perpendicular to the slope, like walking around the exterior of a spaceship). FinalIK's quadrupedal grounder is just two bipedal grounders glued together and it can't handle the pose modifications necessary for making a quadrupedal animal behave sensibly on slopes. I also had improvements to bite IK in mind, given all the trouble we had with it in FinalIK — particularly how forelegs were often not positioned sensibly. I don't recall if a simpler interface was one of my original goals, but it's certainly become apparent as a benefit along the way. FinalIK is comprised of many separate IK components (we used fullbody IK, look at IK, grounder IK and aim IK) which partially affected the same bones. This not only necessitated assigning references at multiple places but also made it hard to reason about which part or parameter of it was responsible for what aspects of the overall pose. Something that definitely came up during implementation was tail IK. Without space legs, the tail pose on slopes was obviously wrong so I had to do something about it. Fortunately it was pretty simple, probably the simplest part in all this.

Some of the biggest and so far unresolved challenges are related to some advanced features. I've had to shelve a lot of code because it was taking too long and I wanted to get the basic features done first. But it may be better to concentrate on ones pertaining to currently present features. One challenge has been dealing with all the different animations with different features. I've identified five kinds of foot motions which have meaningful differences (stationary, sliding, gait, acyclic and airborne). Then there's root motion (animation making the animal actually move) which required some additional work. I can't make many assumptions about how different bones are positioned, so the IK has to be flexible and deduce a bunch of parameters from the state of bones after animation is applied. Another challenge is detecting at which points during a gait the animal's feet touch the ground. Again I can't assume anything about foot height or velocity during the step, so I need to analyze the animation frames in a generic way. There are at least some cases currently where grounding is detected incorrectly and I need to improve it at some point. Lack of animation is also its own challenge. If no animation is playing, nothing will reset the positions of the bones between frames. Since the IK has to take cues from the animation, there's a risk that without an animation a feedback loop will form when it instead acts on its own result from the previous frame.

Bite IK is the most complex type of IK in use here and it took a while to arrive at a good algorithm for it. I first tried some general-purpose algorithms, but they tended to have the problem of making the wolf's spine look either stretched out or scrunched up. I wanted to retain the feel of the spine's shape from the animation. Eventually I came up with a custom solution which bends the spine in a couple of different ways and has some tweakable parameters to fine-tune the appearance. Avoiding "space legs" relies on the animal being in an upright orientation when the IK begins its work. In the initial integration I did this by adjusting the orientation of the model's root transform (it's like a base to which the entire model is attached). However it turned out that when a root motion animation wants to move the animal, it uses this same transform and the conflict caused some badness. I had to refactor the IK so that instead of rotating the base of the model it instead grabs the spine and rotates that to being the animal to an upright orientation before further processing. When doing this kind of work it's important to understand how the various positions and directions relate to each other. Numbers in the inspector may have the correct information but they're hard to grasp intuitively. To make it easier for myself to see what the IK is doing, I've added various debug graphics. The orange line is the spine before any IK is applied. Yellow lines show the positions of bones after the overall orientation has been adjusted to match the surface under the animal but before any actual IK. Green lines show the IK result. Cyan vertical lines are raycasts made for leg grounding and slightly darker blue vertical lines are raycasts used for body orientation.

And of course there's the usual challenges of any complex software project. The IK consists of half a dozen sub-components and I have to keep them and their interactions straight. My long experience as a programmer helps enormously here, but even so in the early stage there were times when the code felt like a giant ball of yarn and it was hard to tell what should go where. Gradually I was able to untangle it and put it in a manageable shape.


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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.

Territorial conflicts have long been part of WolfQuest, but they've always been limited, even in Anniversary Edition. Players can't start claiming territory until they've found a mate. In spring and summer, packs are pretty busy with their young pups, so they don't have time to really focus on their territory. But this is changing in the upcoming WolfQuest Saga* -- as the pups of the year grow bigger and stronger, the pack leaves the rendezvous site and becomes nomadic, following the elk herds. Now the pack has more time and energy to strengthen and expand their territory. And that means more conflicts between packs.



As we began working to make rival packs more aggressive and expansionist in the fall and winter seasons, we realized that this also created an opportunity to improve the gameplay around territorial conflict. In the game previously, rival packs could weaken your claim on a territory hex just by being in it (for example, if they chased an elk herd into one of your hexes and spent some time in it). In the new system, rival packs must deliberately invade a hex with the intention to claim it from you.

So in the Saga, when a rival pack invades one of your hexes, you'll see an onscreen alert about it. You don't HAVE to respond, though. Maybe you don't care that much about that particular hex, Naybe you've got more critical things to deal with at the moment. It's up to you. But at least you get the info and can make the best decision for yourself and your pack at that moment. (However, if you do not go fight them for the hex, they'll be emboldened and move on to another hex of yours.)

Like anyone, rival packs prefer an easy challenge over a hard one, so they'll be more tempted by weak hexes along your border. And of course, you can look for weak hexes on your neighbors' borders and invade them -- and those packs will evaluate the situation and decide whether or not to defend their hex. They're more likely to respond if you invade a strong hex vs a weak hex. But beware: if you invade a rival pack's hex, whether or not they respond to that takeover attempt, they'll often invade your territory in return. So be careful if you don't want to start a pack war.

Because packs are most expansionist in fall and winter, defending your border -- and perhaps conducting a few invasions of your own -- becomes another thing to keep you busy while you help your pups learn how to hunt elk. As with hunting, your pups will be cautious in fights initially, gradually gaining XP and confidence to participate as time passes.

All this is coming later this year as part of the WolfQuest Saga!

* 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.

v1.1.2g - Released 4 June 2024

* Known Wolves: NPC wolves spawned on other maps are not assigned names at birth.
* Hellroaring Mountain DLC: Territory hexes on east edge of map are unclaimable.
* Hellroaring Mountain DLC: Chewed Radio Collar mispositioned when summer pup is carrying it.
* Small white sphere at entrance to one Amethyst den.
* One AM den doesn't glow in scent view.
* Minor terrain and water issues.

v1.1.2g - Public Beta

NOTE: Game saves ARE backward compatible with the last released patch, v1.1.2f. Multiplayer games are also backward-compatible either, so you can play with those who have that last-released patch.
BETA 1

* Known Wolves: NPC wolves spawned on other maps are not assigned names at birth.
* Hellroaring Mountain DLC: Territory hexes on east edge of map are unclaimable.
* Hellroaring Mountain DLC: Chewed Radio Collar mispositioned when summer pup is carrying it.
* Small white sphere at entrance to one Amethyst den.
* One AM den doesn't glow in scent view.
* Minor terrain and water issues.


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1) In the Steam app, go to your Library, then right-click on the WolfQuest: AE name in the left column and choose Properties.
2) Then go to the Betas tab and select the WQ current Beta option in the pulldown. No password is necessary. Steam should then start downloading it. Later you can switch back to the public version in that Betas tab, by selecting NONE in that pulldown.