Lost River: On the Road Again

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loboLoco
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Lost River: On the Road Again

Post by loboLoco » Thu Jun 09, 2022 12:58 pm



With the last round of game updates (injuries and elk stumble) released, I've switched my attention back to the upcoming expanded Lost River map. For those new to WolfQuest, Lost River is a fictional location somewhere outside of Yellowstone where some mysterious events have forced all humans to evacuate the area. The Classic version of Lost River first appeared in WolfQuest 2.7 in 2015, and this new, greatly expanded version of Lost River will be available as DLC (price TBD) once completed. I've been working on it, off and off, for over a year in a separate project, and finally this week I cleaned it up and imported it into the main WolfQuest project so I can finally have the actual game running on the new map. Today's video offers a little sneek peak. The map is very much a work-in-progress, with many many things left to do -- but it's still great to see the game in action here. One of those many things that needs doing, also shown in today's devblog, is refining the forest patterns on the map using some algorithms and Perlin noise patterns.

There's plenty of work still to do before this expanded Lost River map is ready to release. While I'm working on it, the rest of the team is focused on the WolfQuest Saga and related improvements. Stay tuned for updates about all these things coming (sooner or later) to WolfQuest!
________________________________________

The WolfQuest saga will continue! Stay tuned for more news in upcoming devblogs. More maps and wolf customizations are also coming in 2022!

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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rowantobias
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Re: Lost River: On the Road Again

Post by rowantobias » Thu Jun 09, 2022 4:36 pm

reminds me so much of the forest up in norcal, i'm loving it so far! good work as always!

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Re: Lost River: On the Road Again

Post by DinoDogDude209 » Thu Jun 09, 2022 8:45 pm

I have to say, I'm liking how the expanded Lost River map is looking so far. There's definitely a long road ahead for it (pun intended)
but I think it's definitely coming along pretty well. I think it's cool to see familiar locations in the new map, like the fire tower.

Even though this devblog showed an in-progress version of the new Lost River map (like all of the other Lost River devblogs so
far), I'm really liking how it looks so far. The landscape is really close to what I think of when I think of the mountain west, especially
the mountainous areas of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and eastern Washington and Oregon. It also looks like there's a good mix of forests and grasslands, which I think will make for a nice, varied environment.

I do hope that we'll get to see some natural landscape types that are distinct from the ones in the Yellowstone maps. It would be cool
to see some larger, more extensive aspen forests like the ones you see in certain parts of the Rockies. It would also be cool to
see some Ponderosa Pine forests, since that's a forest type that you don't really see in the Yellowstone area, but you find it across the
rest of the American west. I also noticed that there seem to be some pretty high mountains in the new game map, so I hope we'll get
a chance to explore some alpine meadows up above the treeline. I'm also hoping that there will be some riparian areas with a combination of plants like willows, aspens and cottonwoods, to give us some some more areas to hunt those beavers!

I also noticed that the new Lost River map is a lot more green than the old one was. That could just be a difference in the season
(since the old one seemed to be set in the fall, while the new one appears to be set in late spring or early summer) but either way, it's
interesting to see Lost River being depicted differently here, regardless of whether it's just a difference in the seasons.

One more thing that I found interesting, is that the end of the video showed a wolf sitting in front of a sign that says
"Lost River National Forest" with "U.S. Department of Agriculture" written below it and with the U.S. Forest Service logo featured as well. This confirms that Lost River is located in the U.S. and not somewhere in western Canada. However, it also poses a lot of questions for me. I wonder if the new map is inspired in any way by any real national forests? Will the Lost River national forest encompass the entirety of the new map, or will it only be the wilderness areas outside of the town? Was this area turned into a national forest before or after the town was abandoned? How recently was the town itself abandoned, and are there still humans in the area? So many questions, and this makes me even more excited for the new map to release. I can't wait to explore it for myself and discover more about this mysterious place.

Keep up the great work!

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