Hey everyone!
It's been a little while but I've got some updates to share!
New features, additions, and content:
- The game now fully pauses! This has been one of the largest asks since I released on Early Access, but there's never been a good time for me to be able to sit down and give it the attention it needed. It took a fair amount of work to get in, and required long term testing to ensure it didn't create any unacceptable new issues. The game will now automatically pause all action while menus are up, as well as in certain other situations like pen decoration. This should make things much less stressful when you need to step away for a bit or spend some real time in the menus, and it also enables this next feature on this list!
- Photo mode! By clicking a new button on the bottom-right portion of the screen, you can enter an in-game photo mode which lets you move the camera around, adjust lens settings, and save off in-game screenshots with or without the UI in multiple resolutions. I've loved seeing everyone's screenshots since launch, and this mode should enable you to get even better pics than before!
- Wobbledogs now features an integrated auto-backup/restore system for your save files. There's been an issue in the game where if your computer unexpectedly shuts down (due to a crash, power loss, etc) while you're playing, or even shortly after you've finished playing, it's possible for your save file to get corrupted. After some thorough investigation, I've been able to determine that this is an issue that ultimately stems from how Windows handles file operations. This is an issue I've even been able to reproduce in other games, and while it's not something I know how to reasonably prevent, I can introduce additional safety measures, which I now have. The game will now automatically retain a rotating collection of 2 backups for each of your save files. In the event that you experience file corruption, the game will prompt you to replace your corrupted file with the last valid backup if one exists. This is not a foolproof system, and it can only restore your save to a previous session, so there will still be some data loss in instances like this. However, it should vastly reduce the chances of ever completely losing your data, and my hope is that this feature acts as a solid last line of defense for your saves.
- New in-game trunks that you can use to manage and store your otherwise loose objects!
- A new in-game goal with corresponding Steam achievement.
- A search feature in the Dog Storage screen that lets you filter results based on dog name.
- Scroll sensitivity and UI scroll sensitivity sliders have been added to the in-game options menu.
- The command console open keys are now remappable.
Adjustments:
- Dog wings now pop off and turn into unique objects during dog death.
- Consolidating the naming convention for dog commands so that they now all end with exclamation points.
- Dogs were almost never getting angry unless they had the "Mean" trait, so I've made a few changes that should make anger a more common emotion. I'm going to keep an eye on this and will readjust if dogs are getting too mad all the time!
- Using the scroll wheel to adjust object scale in Decoration mode should now feel much smoother.
- Mystery goals now show their names. This should enable players to chat about them and ask for help without looking up a list of all hidden goals, and may also provide some hints for how to achieve them. The names themselves aren't really spoilers and were easy to look up on Steam, so this change should only make things a little more player friendly while preserving mystery for those who want.
- The cleanup button in Decoration mode now cleans up puddles as well.
- Planum Mirabilis now makes a dog wide as well. There was previously no existing flora that would reliably make a dog wide before the player had completed the wide dog goal, which many found frustrating and unfair. This should enable players to more purposefully achieve their wide dog dreams without relying solely on luck.
- The game now enforces a minimum resolution to prevent issues where players' game windows were accidentally getting set so small that they could no longer navigate the in-game options menu to increase the window size again.
- Made some adjustments to camera movement calculations such that these movements should now be more consistent across framerates.
- If you try to pan the camera while focusing on a dog, the game now attempts to seamlessly exit dog focus mode while leaving the camera roughly where it is, which allows for much finer camera control, especially in the new photo mode.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an issue resulting in dogs seemingly randomly developing an uncountable number of back legs.
- Speculative fix for some non-english computers exporting dog codes with inflated ages, causing the dogs to die immediately after being imported regardless of original age. I wasn't able to reproduce this issue but if the cause is what I think, this problem should now be solved.
- Fix for an issue that caused the game to initially fail to localize correctly if the game was played by someone whose operating system was in an unsupported language.
- Made fixes to leg size calculations that were causing dogs with bodies shorter than a certain threshold to automatically have their legs set to the smallest size possible. These tiny legs are still possible through genetic manipulation but will no longer be the default.
- Fix to prevent dogs from grabbing cocoons and bringing them into dens, which would result in issues if the dog attempted to hatch while inside.
- The close menu button should now properly close the radial menu when using a gamepad.
- Fixed an issue that could cause infinite loading screens in the event the game tried to migrate an existing dog with invalid genetics.
- Fixed an issue where "mega default" dogs would appear in the event a dog was missing a looped gene. These genes are now generated on load if missing.
- Idling on the main menu no longer contributes to the "time played" goals for the last opened save.
- On-load fixup for files that saved with more than the maximum allowed number of dogs.
- Fixed rare timing issue that could cause the game to softlock in the event that a ghost auto spawned at a very specific timing interval during the cocoon hatch sequence when there were already 10 dogs in the world.
- The camera cursor should now be set to the correct icon when panning the camera in Construction mode.
- It should now be way less common for your dogs to start digging while in mid-air.
- Fixed a grammatical error with one of the in-game flora descriptions.
- Poop is now correctly affected by gravity machines.
- The pet/grab swap key binding in the HUD now properly updates right away when you switch the in-game language.
- The pet/grab swap key binding in the HUD now properly updates right away when you swap between gamepad and mouse.
It's been wonderful to see so many people enjoying the game and having a good time hanging out with their dogs. This patch was largely focused on quality of life improvements, but I still have plans for more features and content going forward, so stay tuned!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1424330/wobbledogs
