https://youtu.be/envkYw5FJc4
We’re adding more emotes to WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition — which created a design challenge. With 18 emotes, how do we display them all while offering fast access to each one? Another constraint was that due to the revised control scheme (which keeps the mouse locked and invisible for steering — more on this in a future blog post), we couldn’t leave the emotes popup panel onscreen all the time as we did in WQ 2.7. We experimented with common RPG interfaces for this type of thing, then refined the design into what you see in today’s video: Press and hold the E key (or Emotes button on mobile) to display the popup, then choose an emote from the Favorites category, or select a different category and choose an emote from there. While the Emotes panel does cover up much of the screen, it’s only for a moment while you select a button.
What’s new:
* T2 (tail straight back)
* T3 (tail angled down)
* T3.5 (tail straight down)
* Airplane Ears
* Ears Back
* Growl
* Snarl
* Chin Rest
* Submissive Lick
* Sniff Noses
This new Emotes panel not only accommodates ten new emotes (for a total of 18, with room to add more in the future), but it lets you customize it by choosing which emotes should appear in the default “Favorites” category. You’ll also be able to assign hotkeys to each emote for even faster selection. (For the tail actions, we know players would like to do these while engaged in other actions, and we have that on our wish list.)
A couple notes:
* Those last three emotes require another friendly wolf nearby, so we’ll show those in another video in the near future.)
* The voice animations use real wolf vocalizations, including some from the ambassador wolves at the International Wolf Center.
* If you are interested in learning more about wolf body language and the complexities of wolf communication, be sure to check out the in-depth International Wolf Center videos at https://www.youtube.com/user/IntlWolfCenter