Running of the Wolves V3 released

Holy shit, this has taken some time to get over the finish line.

So whats new?

• New Plains World for purchasers and supporters.
• Male Player Character
• M/M, M/F and F/M captures and takedowns now available
• New Inventory System
• More optimisation!
• Tweaks to dungeon spawning
• Fixes to prevent players falling out of the world
• A Fuckload of bugfixes and tweaks

Obviously, there's a few really big things there, with the Male characters and new world taking the bulk of the time spent. All I can say is to get stuck in and have fun with the new stuff!

Plains World

A new world map, new dungeon style and several open Plains levels. You can access it after completing The Forest. Just head down to the lower town in Pineridge and you'll see the new entrance. 

So far, this is just using the same characters as before, but it does give new levels to play in. This is the first stage of Plains, and eventually it will have its own unique enemies and wildlife.

Male Player Character & Animations

This is the big one and the first proper gay content. As a Maned Wolf, he's bigger and tougher than a Squirrel, but less agile. Currently this doesn't make much difference, but we will be adding species abilities soon which will give different gameplay options. This now means that clothing pickups are coded Male or Female, which will eventually be sellable in the shops.

The other big change is that there are now M/M takedowns and captures available, and it seemed rude not to, so this has been opened up so the only combination still missing is F/F.

Female Enemies...

They can get you now, if you are a male player. Female players are still safe from them.

Inventory

The inventory system has been totally scrapped and a brand new one has taken its place. It's a lot more modern and readable. It is still a work in progress, with a few more features still to come. There will be a Live player preview so you can see the clothing changes on your character, and we'll be getting rid of the current pause system and merging it into the Inventory, so everything is all in a single place.

Optimisation

I can't believe it took so long, but all enemies have had Level Of Details added. This means that if someone is in the distance, they should now be using a low-poly model, with only the ones up close being at full poly. This should help with things like the Dungeon where you have a lot of enemies but usually can't see most of them. The game is still having to handle 17k of polygons each. This should now be down to 1k each when not visible or when tiny.

Pineridge

There were some stairs you couldn't climb. Now you can. Some areas players could get stuck have also been removed or blocked up.

Dungeons

The enemy spawn number has been halved. We've also put things in place to stop howl propagation. What would happen, is an enemy would see you and howl. Any enemies hearing the howl would be alerted and also howl which would spread across the level and get everyone after you, Now they will not howl on hearing a howl. This should be permanently fixed soon as well. only canids should be able to howl. Also, if a crystal blocks your path now, just punch it.

Bugfixes

• Fixes to pads being inaccessible in world maps
• Fixed deer not moving
• Fixed wolves not taking any damage
• Various other things found while testing

Whats next?

Honestly, we're not sure yet. The plan now is to take a few days off while people play the game and respond to any bugs found while we work out the next development stage. The Poll we did on anticipated features seemed highly in favour of a new Dungeon enemy, improved movement, hornlizards, Wildlife, updated combat and the Forest Boss.

There's a few items we think are going to help with playability, which might be in the next update: 

• Canid Models and Wolves need model updates. We have the models, we just need to build and implement them which is a hefty job.
• Controlled Sex - we spent a fair bit of time working on this, but the end result wasn't where we hoped to get it, so that has been put aside for this release. We'd like to continue that.
• Shops

So, for now, the new update should be available as soon as this update  is posted. As usual, have fun and let us know of any bugs you find, either through the form or on Discord.