We've got a new public beta out on Steam and, along with the usual variety of bugfixes and minor improvements, it has three notable new things:
1) In multiplayer games, you can now move between Yellowstone maps (currently Amethyst Mountain and Slough Creek) whenever you don't have pups, same as in single-player. Run to a section of border with the "To [Map Name]" label and you'll be asked if you want to move (using the procedures of either Host Decides or Majority Rules).
2) The devblog a few weeks ago talked about how, among real wolves, males are more likely to disperse to find a mate, while females are more likely to stay in their natal (family) pack. We have added this behavior to the game. So now, when looking for a mate, you'll find more males in the dispersal groups, and more females interested in courtship in rival packs. To make it easier to find a prospective mate, we've also added some visual clues: a red heart icon indicates courtable wolves on the compass (when they howl back) and on the Scent View panel.
3) For several years now, NPCs in the game (rival wolves, dispersal wolves, and grown-up pups) have sometimes had an "NPC Coat" -- a coat that is not available to players in Wolf Customization, so it's restricted to those NPCs. We've decided to open these up by making them unlockable. So now, if you raise a pup who has one of these coats, when you make them a playable adult wolf (in the Family Tree), the coat is unlocked so you can select it for your own wolves. This is not retroactive, so it will only occur in new games (in this beta and then the v1.1.1g patch release) that you start fresh. (Note that we have some cheat prevention code in there so you can't trade wolves with the coat. You must start a new game (or jump ahead to next year) and raise the pup on the same computer. After the Family Tree snapshot is generated and the coat is unlocked, it's then registered to your WolfQuest account – so it'll remain unlocked if you get a new computer. If you don't have a game account, it'll remain unlocked on that computer.)
See what else is new and improved in the beta notes here.
This public beta is available on Steam now for Mac and Windows.
___________________
The WolfQuest saga will continue! Stay tuned for more news in upcoming devblogs about it and other new features!
Once the game is completed on PC/Mac, we will consider porting the game to other platforms.
We do not announce specific release dates. We will release them when they are ready.