The next patch, v1.0.8l, is now in public beta! Available on Steam for Windows and MacOS. Instructions for opting into public beta at bottom of this post.
This features the new in-game injury system plus a whole lot more. But first: this patch is not backward-compatible with the last patch, 1.0.8k, so if you get this beta, then switch back to 1.0.8k, the game will break. We recommend making a backup of your User Files folder if you think you might want to switch back to it. You'll find that on Windows here: Documents\My Games\Wolf Quest Anniversary. And on MacOS, in your User directory/Wolf Quest Anniversary. (If you're not sure what's involved with that, you might just wait until this patch is out in general release. It shouldn't be too long.)
The new injury system has two tiers of injuries: major and minor. (Watch the devblog linked below for more info.) We're looking for feedback about the frequency of both types of injuries. Our goal is for players to typically get several minor injuries over the course of the game-year (from fall through Endless Summer), and perhaps one or two major injuries in that time, depending on how cautious or reckless they are. We'd like feedback about that goal, and then especially detailed feedback about how frequently you get injuries. One of our beta testers, Rowan, created a Google spreadsheet to track this data, noting each hunt, each competitor fight, etc., and everyone is welcome to make a copy of it and use it. If you use this, then share it with us by sending the link to [email protected]. You can also keep notes on a scratchpad and submit a Feedback Report (F11 in game) with your notes. Thanks!
What else is new? We've added three new dens, nestled underneath the roots of old Douglas-fir trees. And lots more! Browse the notes below for details.
We hope to release this patch next week -- along with the new DLC pack!
Links:
* New Injury System devblog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZo_-JEtO2g
* Google Spreadsheet for tracking injuries: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18leDMXZ4KizQ-h5xbFOG6Yn7GFGIB0EvjxIsvt7Thp8/edit#gid=0.
Our email address: [email protected]
BETA BUILD NOTES
NEW: INJURY SYSTEM
* Player wolf and mate can get injured when taking damage from NPCs. Wolves can suffer a minor injury anytime, but can get a major injury only when they currently have a minor injury, and health is below 60% so it's prudent to avoid danger when you have a minor injury.
* Minor injuries reduce one attribute (Speed, Strength, or Stamina) by 1 and last 1-2 days (healing is faster when health is above 90%).
* Major injuries reduce one attribute by 7 and have one other effect: Slower eating with jaw injury, faster stamina drain when sprinting with torso or leg injury. They last 2-4 days (healing is faster when health is high).
* Major injuries to jaw and torso have no visual manifestation.
* Major injuries to the legs cause the wolf to limp until the injury is healed. Note that the wolf does not treat the limpy leg differently when laying down or doing some actions (it's not horribly painful, it's just sensitive to bearing weight, though there are moments, especially during intense action, when the wolf will put weight on it).
* Mates can suffer injuries (indicated with slash marks on mate's health meter in the wolf badge). They won't carry pups or other things with a major jaw injury, and they lag behind if they have a major leg injury. NPCs can also suffer injuries, but it's unlikely to occur.
NEW: DENS
* Three new dens underneath tree roots in central and eastern Slough Creek.
NEW: OTHER:
* In Slough Creek Endless Summer, a new button on Pack Info to jump ahead to next year, carrying over your current territory to Establish Territory quest.
* In multiplayer, you can choose an initial season when starting a new Territory Quest or Pack Life game in Amethyst or Slough Creek.
* "Favorite" toggle on My Wolves, and filtering option to show only Favorites.
* Wolf bio moved to its own tab on Pack Info, with readout of coat name and K locus at bottom.
IMPROVEMENTS:
* Modified the spinaround actions so if NPC animal is fleeing, it must first decelerate before spinning around. (This is intended to help the "turn on a dime spinaround" issue when attacking fleeing animals.
* Boar grizzly roars at start of charging attack.
* Most major body customizations (like ears) are visible in scent view.
* Wolf now has its own barks, none shared with coyotes.
* Added a delay before mate regurgitates after sleeping.
* Amethyst cliff rocks now have nice blending between mesh and terrain.
* New notification text if grizzly kills a pup but then is chased away.
* Dispersal wolves now have a small chance of having a body customization.
* Grizzly fights: Variety of tweaks and refinements.
* Competitor and prey NPCs now look at you (follow your movements) during confrontations.
* Increased maximum food points on moose carcasses.
* Added scent gland mark on wolf tails.
* Autosave icon now respects Hide HUD.
* Hide HUD alert appears for two seconds now instead of three.
* Added an alert if player tries to save a game with a name (such as "con") reserved by Windows file system.
* Controls: Added entries for beaver ambush actions to Controls Remapper.
* Pup sickness: Reduced maximum duration a bit.
* Reduced the maximum effect of bent and flat ears (which didn't work well with some animations like howling).
* Bigger teeth on wolves, the better to eat you with.
* Some improved wind audio.
* Declining pup hunger will prompt mates to go hunting sooner than previously.
* Pups get hungry a bit faster.
* Better Douglas-fir bark texture.
* In Pack Info, readouts turn red when they become concerning.
* Hunger meter on wolf badge has yellow tinted area indicating extra food storage for pups.
BUGS FIXED:
* Options menu doesn't stay open on newborn pups screen.
* On Load Game and Saved Game panels, multi-select deletion doesn't work.
* Some international letters don't appear properly in Saved Game naming field.
* Activating Photo Mode just as a quest is completed will freeze the game.
* World Map is low opacity, and missing rival pack names, if opened in a certain sequence.
* Lost River music stops playing after sleeping.
* Music stops at certain point during Loaf at Rendezvous Site.
* Multiplayer: Danger at Den music plays during rival wolf territorial fight if traveling to new homesite.
* Multiplayer den fights get out of whack after the first player dies or otherwise disengages from the fight.
* Multiplayer: Various glitches where the game gets stuck waiting for a player to respond.
* Controller not detected if it's active before launching the game.
* Controller not detected if plugged in while game scene is loading.
* Controller: Custom control mappings are not loading when controller is connected but not used at game start.
* Controller glyphs missing on certain Game Help entries.
* Beaver scent trails don't get cleared during season transitions, so they can be very very old.
* Player gets stuck if sleeping in the den when Raise Pups quest ends, and then sleeps again before exiting den.
* Wolf carousel breaks after certain sequence of actions
* Mate starts to return to den when it has regurgitant but immediately stops some distance away.
* Mate hangs out far from den when it has food to regurgitate.
* Flea Load notification won't go away in certain circumstances.
* When game resolution is low, targeting arrow covers up target animal.
* Some runts are not smaller than other pups.
* Sometimes pup blocks player from digging out a new den.
* Occasional issues when logging into account.
* Icons for newer coats on Wolf Customization don't have rounded corners.
* Can't earn Second Timers achievement.
* Eagle attack on den never ends.
* Wolf gets duplicated if two wolves have the same ID when player pulls from server.
* Stray tuft of fur on wolf's right ear.
* Added names for coats without them.
* Tree issues with lighting and snow.
* Text errors.
* Terrain and water issues.
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BETA 37
IMPROVEMENTS:
* Reduced odds of a jaw injury and increased odds of foreleg injury.
BUGS FIXED:
* In multiplayer, injury tutorial tips cannot be closed with anything but mouse.
* Wolf has fur in game scenes even when disabled in Game Settings.
* One of the new tree root dens has rock den icon.
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BETA 38
BUGS FIXED:
* Multiplayer: In certain circumstances, Good Memory perk doesn't display dens to all players.
* Controller: Emote subpanel selection doesn't work.
* Lost River: Hank's Ditch is missing a few sections of concrete.
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BETA 39
IMPROVEMENTS:
* Reduced odds of minor injury a bit.
* Changed threshold for red text in Hunger from 50% to 30%.
* Adjusted position of radio collar.
BUGS FIXED:
* Eagle continues attacking after getting bored. (Please test how den / rendezvous site fights end, both victories and defeats, as well as putting pups in the den when the eagle is attacking, and report back if anything weird happens.)
* Game pauses for awhile when NPC wolf dies.
* Sometimes limpy leg effect doesn't go away when injury heals.
* Wolves walk above the ground on some Amethyst cliff spots.
* Grass growing at entrance to one of the new tree dens.
* Reduced volume of injured-jaw eating sound.
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BETA 40
NOTE: This has extra debug logging about injuries in multiplayer, so please submit a bug report if you notice that the injury display in Pack Info shows incorrect status for another player.
IMPROVEMENTS:
* During den raids, the Enter Den button is disabled so you cannot enter the den (either accidentally when you meant to bite an attacker, or intentionally to hide from the fight).
* Raised the terrain at the rocky outcrop behind the new tree den near Gravel Fan, to make it easier for animals to navigate.
* Snowprints now match limpy status.
* Improved colliders around northwest rock den (with the steep vertical rock over the den entrance) to reduce glitchiness when wolf runs into rock wall.
* Reduced durations of injuries in Accelerated Time multiplayer games. Probably needs tuning, please submit feedback with comments.
BUGS FIXED:
* Game freezes when NPC wolf dies (really fixed this time).
* Flickering on ground at the new tree dens.
* When fur is disabled, textures on pups at start of Raise Pups quest is messed up.
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BETA 41
NOTE: This has extra debug logging about injuries in multiplayer, so please submit a bug report if you notice that the injury display in Pack Info shows incorrect status for another player.
IMPROVEMENTS:
* Slough Creek Multiplayer, Accelerated Time: Adjusted pup hunger rate to rebalance it after recent change to increase pup hunger rate in general.
BUGS FIXED:
* Coat gene odds rerolled when player clicks Modify Wolf, rather than only if coat or tint is changed. (For more about this, see new devblog post.
* In Pack Info: Bio readout, some black coats are labeled Gray.
* Coats from International Wolf Center wolves don't have names in Pack Info Bio.
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BETA 42
IMPROVEMENTS:
* Increased odds of major injury a bit.
BUGS FIXED:
* Wolves float above a couple Amethyst cliff rocks.
* Mate sometimes stops and wants to regurgitate during den/rendezous trips (but can't since pups are too far away, so appears to be stuck).
* No footstep audio when limping wolves move.
* Mate teleports around a lot in Hank's Ditch in Lost River (and possibly other odd pathfinding bugs).
* When traveling, pups can get lost while pretty close to parents.
* Mule deer freeze when fleeing.
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BETA 43
NOTE: This has even more debug logging about injuries in multiplayer, so please submit a bug report if you notice that the injury display in Pack Info shows incorrect status for another player.
IMPROVEMENTS:
* Updated Loaf at Rendezvous Site completion text with info about Jump Ahead button.
BUGS FIXED:
* No footstep sounds when wolf is cantoring (between trot and gallop, usually when carrying something which slows them down).
* Terrain texturing issues.
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BETA 44
NEW:
* Several new ear injuries in Wolf Customization.
BUGS FIXED:
* Multiplayer: If one player has Good Memory perk, other players don't see those dens on World Map in many circumstances.
* Multiplayer: Pack Info shows erroneous injury status for other players in game.
* Injury Healed notification says wrong body part was healed.
* Lost River: Some missing objects.
* Slough Creek: Sometimes wind audio sounds odd (multiple audio playing simultaneously).
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BETA 45
IMPROVEMENTS:
* Multiplayer: Increased marking power in Story games with two players.
* More improvements to wind sound effects.
* Hid the Jump Ahead to Next Year button in Endless Summer if the player-wolf has no mate.
* Set terrain blending to be disabled by default on Fastest quality level.
BUGS FIXED:
* Multiplayer: If you start or join a game with a wolf that does not have Good Memory perk, then leave and reload or rejoin with a wolf that does have that perk, your remembered dens do not show on the World Map.
* Wolf Customization: Some customizations with sliders have slider at 100% initially.
* Wolf Customization: Sometimes Ear slider position is not retained correctly later.
* Several limping animations are truncated, causing visual glitches.
* Mate Injured tutorial tip appears (and pauses the game) every time the mate is injured.
* Half Black coat texture has a thin white line along the right cheek.
* Wolves and pups inside den don't respect Fur quality setting.
* Wolf rendering in wolf badge and Perks panel don't have fur.
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BETA 46
IMPROVEMENTS:
* Play an audio cue when player heals from injury.
* If mate died during Endless Summer and player gets a new mate, jumping ahead to next year will revive the former mate, so the confirmation popup about jumping ahead now has a note about regenerating the family snapshot in that situation.
* Reduced stamina penalty for major torso injuries from -7 to -6, to avoid a total potential penalty of -10 (with -2 wolf and -1 minor injury), which would give wolf infinite stamina.
BUGS FIXED:
* Multiplayer: In certain situations, if you initially host with a wolf that does not have Good Memory perk, then leave and load the save with a wolf that does have that perk, your remembered dens do not show on the World Map.
* Multiplayer: In Pack Info, sometimes the readout showing total attribute penalty from an injury doesn't update reliably when tabbing among wolves in the game.
* If multiple injuries heal while sleeping, notification only shows for one of them upon waking.
* At start of new game, player-wolf often has minimal fur effect (until player clicks button on intro panel).
* In Setup New Game, the wolf search field doesn't work.
* Big cracks in Amethyst terrain.
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TO GET THE BETA BUILD
1) In the Steam app, go to your Library, then right-click on the WolfQuest: AE name in the left column and choose Properties.
2) Then go to the Betas tab and select the WQ current Beta option in the pulldown. No password is necessary. Steam should then start downloading it. Later you can switch back to the public version in that Betas tab, by selecting NONE in that pulldown.