The Bug-Eyed Wolf and Other Bugs

Find out what we're doing and thinking as we develop WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition and the Tower Fall expansion!

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loboLoco
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The Bug-Eyed Wolf and Other Bugs

Post by loboLoco » Thu Jul 02, 2020 1:11 pm



Most game bugs are not particularly entertaining, but we happened to see several that were lately, so today we'll share them for your amusement. These represent several different kinds of bugs:

1) User Error (or PIBKAC*): The titular bug today's video occurred after Steve (our 3D wolf artist) made a few changes to the wolf models, so I then had to swap in the updated model. Tommi (our lead Unity developer) had made this task quick and easy -- except for the IK stuff, which requires that we manually assign bones in the rig to several IK slots. Not hard to do, but I made a couple mistakes and voila, the bug-eyed wolf.

2) Data Disagreement: The undead hare bug occurred when a bug caused the host and clients (the other players in the game) to have different values for the hare's health, so when a client player killed the hare, it still had a bit of health in the host's game. Since the host runs the game simulation, Mikko (our multiplayer developer) found that "the hare was alive but in the wolf's mouth, while its AI on the client was trying to run away but couldn't, and the remote animal movement code got very confused."

3) Chokepoint: The Elk bug occured during a multiplayer stress test to see how spawning a large number of animals affects game performance. When we had over 150 animals spawned, another player joined the game, so the host had to send them an enormous amount of scent-track data. And that caused the game memory to run out of buffer space, which then threw an error, so, according to Mikko, "proper cleanup was not done and the data was left in the send queue. Then every time the host wanted to send updates, it first tried to re-send the already queued data, which kept failing so it couldn't actually send anything." And that left all the NPC animals high and dry, awaiting instructions.

4) And finally, the Death Trap bug isn't really a bug -- everything is working properly -- but it highlighted a problem that needed some attention: the bison only occasionally moved around while grazing, which wasn't a problem normally, but it becomes a problem if you happen to die right behind a bison. Fortunately, it's easily addressed by making the bison move more often when grazing (though you'll still want to be careful about when your click Revive.)

These and many other bugs have been identified during many, many hours of playtesting by George and Noah (our QA team), along with our dedicated group of private beta testers. We've fixed dozens of those bugs and, while we have many more on the to-do list, we're definitely making great progress with multiplayer. We don't have a date for multiplayer public beta testing and release, but we expect both before the summer is over.

* PIBKAC: Oldschool tech support speak for "Problem is between keyboard and chair."

______________
We have released the first episode of WolfQuest 3: Anniversary Edition (Amethyst Mountain) for PC/Mac on Steam and itch.io, as Early Access. While in Early Access, we are updating the game frequently with more features, multiplayer, and ultimately the Slough Creek episode with pups. The mobile version will come after the game is completed on PC/Mac platforms. We’ll then resume development of the next episode, Tower Fall (DLC).
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Re: The Bug-Eyed Wolf and Other Bugs

Post by SophieTheAiredale » Thu Jul 02, 2020 1:25 pm

When Your so Excited to run that your eyes pop out! Haha.
This is a really cool peek into what you guys go through to develop this game! I know it’s been hard with the whole global lockdown thing, but this is coming along great and looking amazing! (Aside from the bugs haha)

Anyway, multiplayer is looking good, but what would be the minimum to run a eight player multiplayer game? My computer runs okay, but I’m not sure how many players it would be able to support. Also, would the maximum amount of players stay at eight, or would it be bumped up to Around ten or twelve?
Sorry about all the questions, I’m just curious.

Kat-

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Re: The Bug-Eyed Wolf and Other Bugs

Post by elkhunter123456 » Thu Jul 02, 2020 1:41 pm

Enjoyed that little clip of the bison hunting and the pregnant wolf model is an excellent bonus to slough creek. Is the pink bar that was shown in the devlog, "P marks the spot" that was next to the affinity bar supposed to represent how pregnant the female is?

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Re: The Bug-Eyed Wolf and Other Bugs

Post by Zoopal55 » Thu Jul 02, 2020 2:05 pm

Ok, that's definitely something you do not see every day! Keep up the amazing work, looks epic, even the bugs ;), ESPECIALLY the bugs.

-StarBender2000 :wolf:

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Re: The Bug-Eyed Wolf and Other Bugs

Post by -Wolfdog- » Thu Jul 02, 2020 2:14 pm

Yay!! I love the wolf pregnancy. I never expected that and I'm overly happy about it. :lol:
Thanks for taking the time to show the bugs you've guys been facing. It means a lot and I love the bug-eyed wolf!

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Re: The Bug-Eyed Wolf and Other Bugs

Post by xc92u3 » Fri Jul 03, 2020 12:29 am

Hahaha! That's great! And the pregnant wolf model was a bit unexpected, but really exciting! ^^
The undead hare is my favorite XD

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Re: The Bug-Eyed Wolf and Other Bugs

Post by BlackMetal » Fri Jul 03, 2020 12:51 am

My favorite is the wolf with the bug-eyes. It looks really funny!

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Re: The Bug-Eyed Wolf and Other Bugs

Post by TimberWolf0450 » Fri Jul 03, 2020 12:32 pm

I never would have thought that you guys were going to add a pregnant wolf. It looks great so far!

Also, the bug eyed wolf is hilarious!

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Re: The Bug-Eyed Wolf and Other Bugs

Post by Phasoli » Fri Jul 03, 2020 2:24 pm

Honestly, that bug eyed wolf is just me waiting for Slough Creek to come out, haha.

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Re: The Bug-Eyed Wolf and Other Bugs

Post by TacticianLyra » Mon Jul 06, 2020 3:17 pm

Phasoli wrote:
Fri Jul 03, 2020 2:24 pm
Honestly, that bug eyed wolf is just me waiting for Slough Creek to come out, haha.
Hard same to that. Every weekly post gets me more and more excited!

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