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It’s almost 2018! Everyone wants to know: When will WolfQuest 3 be released? (and where’s Tower Fall?) The short answer is: 2018. But no release month is set yet (though it's not imminent).
Why the moving date? When we started work on Tower Fall, we thought we could have it done by the end of 2017. But then we decided to dig in and create a complete remake of WolfQuest. That mean a fresh start on the codebase to create a modern foundation for the game. Still, we thought we could have that done by the end of 2017 (or even early 2018). Neither expectation has come true, unfortunately.
That’s the bad news. The good news is the reason why: As you’ve seen in our weekly blog posts over the past four months, we really are making a bigger and better version of WolfQuest. We’re rethinking and redesigning each system of the game, from the wolf-controller to stranger wolves (both hostile and potentially friendly) to hunting mechanics to elk herding behaviors. We’re making vastly larger and more realistic maps. There will be new and improved 3D animal models and animations living in a world of more realistic terrain and flora. And each of these has, naturally, taken far more time than we had optimistically imagined.
So where are we at with development? We’ve built all the new core game systems, and some of the secondary systems. Now we are weaving all those systems together to create the actual game. Doing that often triggers some revision and refactoring of the code, but we are making good progress to get the game basically playable. To speed things up, we’re bringing on another full-time programmer to help Tommi build out those secondary systems and integrate them into the whole thing.Then of course comes testing, tweaks and bugfixing, and more testing before release.
So…when? When it’s ready. But as our wolf above indicates, there’s too much uncertainty to give a specific release date yet. (That new emote is called “airplane ears.” It expresses uncertainty.)
If you have questions, we encourage you to first read past blog posts and see the FAQs at WolfQuest.org/blog. Scan the comments first and see if you find your answer. We really don’t mind player questions, of course, but the more time we can spend making the game, the sooner you will get to play it.
Thanks to everyone for your encouragement, patience, and community spirit. We know it is hard to wait. (It’s hard for us too!) This next year is going to be a very busy one and we are so excited for the launch of WolfQuest 3, followed by Tower Fall. We wish everyone a Happy New Year!
- 10 May 2018
loboLoco wrote:Do you have a release date yet? I can’t wait!
Sorry, no. We’re still in the thick of development. It’s been 15 months now since we announced Tower Fall, and nine months since we announced WQ3. Back then, we certainly expected to have released *something* by now. But we originally had a pretty narrow scope for WQ3 (basically a rebuild of 2.7) and we felt pretty confident that we could get that done by the end of 2017....but as we worked on it, we kept thinking of ways to make the game substantially better -- truly the next generation of WolfQuest. We are improving many things, both large (like the maps) and small (like the IK system, which turned out to be not-so-small after all). And we’re redesigning every aspect of the game (Tommi spent a week in March just creating the new AI for cougars at carcasses) and that has ripple effects throughout the whole development process.
In short, both the game scope and the release date have been moving targets, which is frustrating for everybody -- including us, who have all the reasons in the world (including financial) to finish and release WQ3 and then Tower Fall as soon as possible. But we don’t expect to release anything before the fall, alas. If we could go back in time, we might have announced WQ3 as a remake with no mention of a deadline. We really appreciate everyone's patience. We'll get there. And we do think it will be worth it.