Update 1.0.1 released with new animal behaviors!

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loboLoco
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Update 1.0.1 released with new animal behaviors!

Post by loboLoco » Fri Oct 25, 2019 5:29 pm



We’re exciting to release this update, which has a bunch of bugfixes and minor improvements, plus some bigger and more exciting new features that give the NPC residents of our WolfQuest world more to do: from hunting to fighting to just hanging out. It’s available now and should auto-update via Steam or the WolfQuest launcher.

NEW ANIMAL BEHAVIORS:
* Stranger wolves (dispersals and pack wolves) hunt prey.
* Bull elk rut: Bull elk challenge the resident bull in a large herd to a fight, involving a lot of bugling, circling, and clash of antlers.
* Buck mule deer rut: Buck mule deer will converge near small doe herds and challenge each other to a fight, involving a lot of circling, eyeing each other, and antler clashes. Since mule deer don't live in herds as elk do, this is harder to witness. Try following mule deer scents and hope to find a situation where two males have converged on a family group of does and fawns.
* Eagles are present throughout the game world: flying around, perching on dead trees, and hunting. Bald eagles hunt fish in the Lamar River while Golden eagles (new species!) hunt snowshoe hares.
* Ravens are present throughout the game world.
* Coyotes hunt snowshoe hares.
* Foxes hunt small prey.

OTHER NEW AND IMPROVED THINGS:
* Custom markers on the World Map now appear on the Compass (faded with distance).
* Added a third Gore level, now No Gore (carcasses do not turn bloody), Low Gore (carcasses turn bloody), and More Gore (carcasses turn bloody and skeleton and innards revealed during consumption.) The original intent was for Low Gore to be as described here, but it inadvertently switched to what we're now calling No Gore. We've renamed "Low" to "No" so it preserves your previous visual effect, but you can change it to Low Gore if you want a bit of blood.
* Carcasses have improved textures (fur only on the skin, not on the exposed innards).
* Adjusted colliders on the rock at the top of Fairies' Falls. Should be possible to jump onto it, and should be quite hard to get stuck.
* Player wolf will sometimes crouch when facing an opponent, preparing to attack.
* Moon casts shadows at night.
* Competitors should be less likely to get stuck running in circles near you.
* Minor performance improvement when many elk are spawned in vicinity.
* Controller support: Added a steering sensitivity slider for controllers. (Many more improvements for controllers still to come.)
* Stranger territory audio now part of Interface Audio (so not muted if music is muted).
* Animals use walking turn more now, don't do the spin-in-place turn except in urgent situations.
* Bite cursor should be hidden in Photo Mode.
* Removed "mate" from badword filter for wolf bio.

BUGS FIXED
* Animals sometimes have snow on them when it hasn't been snowing.
* Weird snow pattern on bears.
* Sometimes grass density settings don't persist in later game sessions.
* Unable to save your game or overwrite existing saved game (fixed a couple bugs; there may be others still)
* Ravens gather at some distance from carcass.
* When running in dual-monitor setup, with game on one screen in Fullscreen Windowed mode, game minimizes when you click on other screen.
* Elk calves have Cow Elk label.
* Fox fur looks bad.
* On some computer systems, the mouse cursor has "hand grab" icon instead of pointer.
* In "My Wolves" in main menu, sometimes one wolf is missing, and arrows are missing too so can't select another wolf.
* Dispersal wolf is occasionally frozen.
* The "So Sleepy, Bug..." alert is missing text.
* Grass sometimes bends quite excessively in the wind.
* Improved lighting on trees when viewing towards sun.
* Reduced acceleration and deceleration speeds for cougar, coyote and fox.
* In Basic mode, some areas have grass when grass is disabled.
* In Customization, fur pokes through radio collar if you change coats after choosing the collar.
* In Basic graphics mode, at some places in the game world, some distant terrain sections are missing.
* Can get stuck on far side of Lamar River, stuck between two world-edge barriers.
* Thin vertical lines appear around grass in Basic graphics mode.
* Controller: Fixed incorrect labels on Controller Help image (ack!)
* Sometimes wolves don't growl or snarl during wolf fights.
* Various terrain tweaks.
Dave/loboLoco
WolfQuest Game Producer

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elkhunter123456
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Re: Update 1.0.1 released with new animal behaviors!

Post by elkhunter123456 » Fri Oct 25, 2019 6:23 pm

YESSSSS. i have been wanting stranger wolves to hunt prey for a long time. Thank you so much for this update. I see now why you have not posted a devlog in a while :D :D :D

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Re: Update 1.0.1 released with new animal behaviors!

Post by DinoDogDude209 » Sun Oct 27, 2019 9:45 am

This is great! The new animal behaviors add a lot more immersion to the game, and make for more interesting gameplay as well. Watching those eagles fly around and hunt prey adds a lot more life to the world, and the interactions between the different animals really help to make the environment feel alive and add some character to the animals and make them feel more like real, living, breathing animals. They feel less like mere video game models going through their animations and more like actual animals. Predators hunt prey, animals will fight for mates, and prey animals watch the horizon for potential danger rather than just running away when players enter their detection range.

However, while I love these new animal behaviors, they do cause some problems, and there are some things about them that could be improved. First of all, the animals' pathfinding isn't always that good, and while trying to hunt prey, NPC wolves will often run around wildly and randomly attack prey rather than attacking prey in a coordinated pack like real wolves do. There may still need to be some polishing done with the way the AI interacts with one another. Second, the spawn rates of certain animals seem to have been increased, which is good in some respects, it helps to make the world feel more alive at times, but it sometimes gets a little ridiculous. Mule Deer seem to spawn much more frequently now, especially the bucks, and sometimes they form very large groups. The spawn rates for the buck Mule Deer might need to be slightly lower to accommodate their new rutting behaviors. These are, of course, quite minor problems in the bigger picture, but might need to be tweaked in the next patch.

In addition, I think there's room for even more NPC interactions in the future, such as cougars stalking and hunting Mule Deer, bears catching fish in the Lamar River (like the bald eagles do), animals stopping to drink from bodies of water as they wander from place to place, bears hunting large prey, Bull Moose fighting (like they did in 2.7), bears scratching themselves on trees, eagles landing on the ground to eat their prey after hunting, and other interactions between different animals in the game. Of course, none of these are necessary, and I'm sure that some of them would be difficult to implement, but I feel like they would help to add even more immersion to the game and make the animals seem even more like real animals.

Regardless, I think that this new update has definitely improved the game and created a more immersive and interactive experience in the game.

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Re: Update 1.0.1 released with new animal behaviors!

Post by -Wolfdog- » Mon Oct 28, 2019 2:16 pm

Yesterday I saw an eagle swoop down and catch a rabbit!! Incredibly awesome, than you so much for this great update! Although yesterday, I still saw bears and stranger wolves running around in circles lol. Love it when my wolf crouches and prepares for battle!

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Re: Update 1.0.1 released with new animal behaviors!

Post by YellowEye009 » Thu Oct 31, 2019 8:08 am

Amazing update! I played it the other day and a coyote snatched a hare infront of my eyes :shock: . That was supposed to be mine! :x :D :D

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