Opening Doors in Lost River

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loboLoco
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Opening Doors in Lost River

Post by loboLoco » Thu Aug 11, 2022 4:20 pm



Work continues on the upcoming Lost River expanded map DLC. The gameplay is largely the same as in other maps and quests, of course, but there are a few special features, like going inside of buildings. That's been a popular request from players since Lost River Classic released in 2015, and we're finally realizing it in this expanded version. This raises a few complications, the biggest one related to the navgrid and NPC pathfinding. We designed the navgrid for vast outdoor environments, and they simply are not suited for the confines of interior spaces. So I pulled Tommi away from his ongoing work on animal AI for the Saga (see the note below for more on that) so he could design and create a navgrid subsystem for small areas. This week's video shows how this new subsystem works at the Lost Cup Coffee shop in downtown Lost River.

The new Lost River map has about a dozen buildings with interiors to explore -- but be advised that these are not safe refuges from rival wolves, so you'll need to stay on guard even when hanging out indoors. We have a good amount of work left on this DLC but we do expect to release it later this year.

\Regarding the Saga: As we began working on the Saga early this year, we realized that our AI system was good but we wanted it to be better. The AI was one of the very first systems we designed and built for WQAE, five years ago now, and Tommi had ideas for doing much more with an improved system. So that became the first phase of Saga development (and it's not very exciting to show off in devblogs) but we got the improved AI system operational earlier this summer so now we can focus on new AI behaviors in the Saga for growing pups and NPC wolves. If you don't know about the WolfQuest Sage, watch this video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx-X2fL-3oE
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The WolfQuest saga will continue! Stay tuned for more news in upcoming devblogs about it and other new features!

Once the game is completed on PC/Mac, we will turn our attention to other platforms.

We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready.
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DinoDogDude209
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Re: Opening Doors in Lost River

Post by DinoDogDude209 » Sat Aug 13, 2022 3:38 pm

All the little sneak peeks at the new Lost River map have me very excited for it. I always thought it would be cool to be able to enter the buildings in Lost River, so I'm glad that this is going to be included. I really appreciate the amount of work that went into making that possible, and seeing how the new map is being made is really cool!

If the team is still open to ideas for features, I think it would also be really cool if we'd be able to climb up onto the rooftop of a building in the downtown area, maybe via some kind of stairway? Although I'm not sure how difficult that would be to implement, I think it would have the potential for players to get a really cool birds-eye-view of the area, not to mention making the cityscape of Lost River more interactive and dynamic. If it wouldn't be too difficult to implement it, I'd love to see that feature!

Also, it was mentioned towards the end of the video that all NPCs would be able to enter these interiors, rather than just the player and their mate. While I think that's realistic, I also feel like it would be cool if there were some "secret" areas that only the player could enter. For example, maybe the player could crawl under the porch of a house, or crawl into an open ventilation shaft inside a building, but their mate (and other NPCs) couldn't, sort of like how we can enter our dens? I know some RPG games have little secret areas like these, which often have easter eggs or hidden achievements included within them, and I think that it would be very cool if we'd be able to find these in the Lost River map. If the team doesn't want to include something like that, I completely understand (obviously it would require extra effort for something that most players probably wouldn't notice), but I just think it would be very fitting for the Lost River map. Again, it's not necessary, and I don't expect it to be added, it's just an idea.

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