Pupdate: Behind the Genes

[loboLoco]

Today’s devblog takes another look at our genetics system in WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition, now that we have built it out for pups in the upcoming Slough Creek episode. (We first looked at this in a 2018 devblog, which you can watch here.)

Since our systems designer and lead developer Tommi is responsible for this system, I’ll let him explain it:

“We made a mini-genetics system for the game. Instead of the around 20,000 (functional) genes a real wolf has, yours has 50 (25 allele pairs). They code for black vs gray (1 pair), coat selection and tinting (9 pairs), your stats (6 pairs), and personality (9 pairs). This means all these traits are inheritable to your pups! When we create your pups, we apply the Punnet Square law on each of your pups, on each of these pairs. Then we take this newly formed genome and find the right coat, the right tints, the right stats, and the right personality for everyone.

“Now, you may remember from school that allele pairs like this have "dominant" and "recessive" alleles. However, we only applied this to the black vs gray pair (or "K locus" as the experts call it): kk is gray while Kk, kK, and KK are all black (blackness is "dominant"). All the other genes are simply summed up with no concern for dominance, so to be very bold, your pup will need to have BB + BB + BB in the Cautious-Bold triplet. Conversely, a very cautious pup has bb + bb + bb. An average pup would have something like Bb + BB + bb. This is realistic enough for our purposes, since many genes do work in this manner. (The K locus is the only "real" gene in our genome - everything else is just a simple model we made up.)

“When it comes to stats, we ended up kind of accidentally representing something that comes up in genetics a lot: tradeoffs. Each of the six genes boosts one stat while reducing another. So, for example, SS would boost strength by one while reducing stamina by one, while conversely ss would reduce strength and boost stamina (and Ss would leave both alone). This means your pups will be just as balanced, stat-wise, as any new wolf you create. Unless they got unlucky and rolled KK on the K locus, which is known to be a bad combination: if that doesn’t kill the pup before birth, it has a significant impact on its health and vitality, making survival even more difficult than usual.”

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To learn more about the personality system for mates and now pups, watch “For Better or For Worse."

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We have released the first episode of WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition (Amethyst Mountain) for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. While in Early Access, we are updating the game frequently with more features, multiplayer, and ultimately the Slough Creek episode with pups. The mobile version will come after the game is completed on PC/Mac platforms. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall (DLC).

[elkhunter123456]

It was great having a refresher on the genes that will be in wolfquest 3 slough creek. this devlog also answered a lot of my questions about the slough creek episode.

[Zoopal55]

Nice! Been hoping to look into some more slough creek game play and updates! Very interesting to see how behind the genes works, hope I don't get one of those pups that decides later in tower fall it can attack a grizzly, or a bull moose. Honestly I have had two worst mate experiences, and 1 perfect best mate experience. Lets go with the positive first, not all were wolf stats perfect, my mate was able to retain their health well in a hunt as well as actually help me attack the elk we were chasing(on challenging, perma-death settings), they also were good at maintaining themselves in a fight, and social would often interact with my wolf which I enjoyed, but not to the point of annoyance. I was able to test multiple encounters (like bear, stranger wolves, other pack wolves, and cougars, And different types of prey, like mule deer, moose calf, elk, ect. Anyway this wolf was perfect in every way...and I ended up accidentally deleting the save. Well done gamer! But on the other side one of the two worst mates I have had is 1) perfect genetics but faraway and does absolutely nothing useful. I do not know if this may have been a bug at the time but my mate literally did 0 biting on the hunt, of any type, and when interacting would always get so much health down even though they hardly did any work and did little dmg to the prey in general. In an encounter my mate would just run in circles. I ended that relationship quickly, as we were still in trial. 2) The stalker wolf, I actually made this wolf my mate just for the fun of it but this was in Lost River update shortly after the packs got named, was looking for the ghost pack dispersals and was not finding them, I did find a rip van winkle pack wolf though who was considered a potential mate near the corner of the city. I left him and moved on looking for the one pack and ended up going all the way on the other side of the city at full gate. I turned around as the msg popped up "There are dispersals near by...ect." The same wolf, from the same pack, with the same Id was sitting there slowly walking up. So it was not that far so I was not to disturbed, I left him and went towards the large mount. at full gait. On top of the mount I picked up many wolf scents from another pack featured but not the one I was looking for, near the man-mad wooden platform I had done a turn to go backwards from the platform to look west of the mountain and there was the rip van winkle wolf, same ID( I Checked). At this I sent a bug report and quit game, as obviously there was something wrong with this wolf. And that is the story of the best and worst mate/potential mate encounters.

Sorry for the long read, but I thought this was pretty funny.

-StarBender2000

[BlackMetal]

I always remember Gregor Johann Mendel when I watch videos about genetics. This always reminds me of my school days, when we learned the three Mendelian rules. Unfortunately I don't know exactly how they work, but this video showed me - thank you very much at this point - how one of them works.

Keep up the good work and stay safe and healthy!

[Nek0chan]

This was very interesting! I watched the first video about wolf genetics, but it was nice having a review neverthless, I'm learning a lot from these videos. Awesome progress!

[-Wolfdog-]

I love learning about canine genetics since I've played several games involving the K locus!
I think that it's really cool how you've dedicated so much time and detail into this. I absolutely love the puppies' emotes. Very, very excited for Slough Creek! It's just on the horizon now lol

[Kitsuhime]

I love this! Hopefully the slough creek arc can be released soon without you guys encountering any issues. I know you all work hard and if you decide to take a rest, it will be well deserved!