Another Dam Video

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loboLoco
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Another Dam Video

Post by loboLoco » Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:09 pm



Actually, this is our first dam video, but maybe not our last! Beavers are coming soon to WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition! Today’s devblog looks at how we are modifying the Slough Creek environment to match what beavers really do in the real world.

Unlike the other game animals that roam around to find what they need to survive, beavers set up shop in specific places and then modify their environment to suit themselves. So before the beavers can move into WolfQuest, we’ve had to spend some time learning about what makes good beaver habitat and then recreating that in the game map. We also wanted to give them the very best of homes, so 3D artist Aaron Hillaker has created new and improved 3D models for their dams and lodges. We knew the beavers would also need more willows and aspens to eat and use for construction -- but figuring out just where to put them took some research. Lucky for us, we have great science advisors and Google satellite images give us clues about where to place our new rodents in the game.

We’ll share more about beavers and how wolves can interact with them in a future post.
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WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition is available now for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. The game currently includes Episode 1: Amethyst Mountain, Episode 2: Slough Creek, Lost River: Classic, and multiplayer mode in Amethyst and Lost River. (Slough Creek multiplayer is coming soon,.) The mobile version will come after the game (including Slough Creek) is completed on PC/Mac platforms. The next episode, Tower Fall (DLC) will follow. We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready!
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Re: Another Dam Video

Post by -Wolfdog- » Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:39 pm

The video title cracks me up :o

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Re: Another Dam Video

Post by BlackMetal » Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:46 pm

I'm so excited about this! Looking forward to see some of them. :beaver:

Keep safe and healthy! :wink:

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Re: Another Dam Video

Post by AveryCF » Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:08 am

I absolutely love this! Not only did you show us some new map additions/changes (And it was nice to see a google maps comparison after playing even more of Slough Creek, because I was beginning to recognize way more from the real thing, than in-game.) but I loved just hearing some beaver facts. I never thought about how the river/stream going from a large strip to suddenly narrow on maps could mean a beaver was around, but now that you pointed it out, I just find myself fascinated...
Like the majority of people, I knew beavers built dams or small lodges in still waters, but I never really thought about where/the signs of them. I've only seen a beaver once in the wild when camping a few hours up from where I live, years ago, but it sort of makes me want to look for more signs that wildlife has left behind/changed, once we return to a... More "normal", less indoors world, haha. Thank you for teaching us about this on top of more game design. <3

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Re: Another Dam Video

Post by DinoDogDude209 » Sun Apr 04, 2021 9:19 am

I love this, honestly. These beavers are going to be so unique in the game! I think these beaver dams and lodges are going to make the game more immersive, and will help to make the Slough Creek map feel more alive. I think this will help to make the Slough Creek map feel more like an actual lived-in world, and less like it's just a place for players to raise their pups in. In addition, beavers will be both the first rodent and the first mostly-aquatic mammal to be depicted in the game, which are two things that we've never had in WolfQuest before, and I hope that the beavers and their unique game mechanics will pave the way for other unique new animals to be added to the game someday.

I also appreciate the fact that the team is trying to replicate the actual, real beaver dams and lodges that are in the real Slough Creek! That's some serious commitment to realism. It would've been easy for the development team to just throw some riverbank lodges all along the length of the creek in the Slough Creek map, and then call it good. I don't think many players would have complained about it if they did. However, the team instead decided to really go above and beyond and try to replicate the real beaver colonies in the real Slough Creek, and that's honestly incredible. Hats off to devs and their commitment to realism!

It's also really cool to see how the team goes about creating these natural features in the game. It's interesting that the old beaver dam model from Lost River was temporarily used as a placeholder model for the beaver dams in Slough Creek, that really shows that game development is an iterative process! I also find it interesting that a brand new beaver dam model was created just for the beaver colonies in Slough Creek, and that new dam model is definitely much more realistic-looking and detailed than the old one! Speaking of the old beaver dam and lodge models from the Classic Lost River map, I'm interested to see whether those old models in that map will also be updated, or if they'll be left unchanged there until the Lost River expansion DLC is released. I'm also interested to see if the actual beavers themselves will reside in the Classic Lost River map that we currently have in the game, or if they'll be exclusive to Slough Creek until the Lost River expansion DLC is released. I'm hoping that we'll have the actual beavers themselves in Lost River Classic, because I think that would really help to make the classic version of the map feel truly complete, and also because beavers seem to be an important part of what happened to Lost River.
I'm also interested to see if the Lamar River area in Amethyst Mountain will have any of those riverbank lodges, though I'm guessing that it probably won't because Lamar River takes up a much smaller area in Amethyst Mountain than the main creek in the Slough Creek map.

Regardless, I'm very excited to see the environmental changes that beavers will create in the game!

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