- Leaving Unity and what that means for The WILDS - 14 September 2023
Due to unity’s out of nowhere decision to force a pay-per-install model on all games using their software: ‘The wilds’ is going to enter a dormant period for an undetermined amount of time I have been developing with unity for over 10 years. its all ive ever known, I taught myself how to code, animate, and design games as a 1 man team. as of this morning i have cancelled my subscription to unity and will be moving to unreal engine. I’ve poured 5,000+ and 2 1/2 years of my life into the wilds alone, so this is not a decision i make lightly. The two main issues for me: 1. Decoupling the cost of development from revenue earned makes no sense and I believe has extremely insidious and coercive repurcussions. An install DOES NOT EQUAL money earned. 2. Retroactively imposing this fee on games developed years ago under different terms is unbelievably brazen, dishonest, and i would be shocked if…
- Visual Audio Wheel enters The WILDS - 24 August 2023
Release Version 1.5.0.2 NEW FEATURES + Visual Audio Wheel - Entering into detection mode now also gives your animal a visual display of nearby footsteps, greatly improving your ability to hunt down prey and avoid predators. GAMEPLAY CHANGES + ANIMAL SPAWN DISTANCE - Increased the distance from your player at which animal spawn in at, since we can now track from much further we can spawn animals further. (this should also reduce occurances of animals popping in and out) BUG FIXES + EAGLE TAIL FEATHERS - Eagle's tailfeathers were not changing appropriately when changing your primary skin. KNOWN BUGS + BABY MOOSE - The baby moose's eyes are wonky, I need to do some re-touching on the model. + CINEMATICS - Lake and River water flashes white on start/end of cinematics.
- Splashes enter The WILDS - 22 August 2023
Release Version 1.5.0.1 NEW FEATURES + SPLASHING - Added some splashy particles to the water that are based on animal size and speed, alo added a bunch of new water sounds, for more realistic experience in water. GAMEPLAY CHANGES + HERBIVORE GRASS - More good changes to improve the annoyance of the grass always overriding what herbivores are trying to interact with. + FAST FEED - With the doubled up actions on buttons I was able to bring back the fast feed, just put food in your mouth and target a mate to be presented with a Feed option. + JUMP/LAND AUDIO - Added custom audio for jumping and landing on all ground types. + RAGDOLL CAMERA - Smoothed out the camera when entering / exiting ragdoll. + LICK WOUNDS - Added all the animations for 'Lick Wounds'. + SLEEPING - All mates now sleep when you do. + FRACTURES - Mates can no longer get fractures until I figure out why they were constant…
- Fractures enter The WILDS - 18 August 2023
Release Version 1.5 NEW FEATURES + FRACTURES - Brand new Status Effect "Fracture". When jumping off high cliffs, if your animal tumbles upon landing there will be a chance of fracturing a bone. Your animals movement speed will be reduced and they'll take self-inflicted damage upon attacking until healed. + CAMERA REVAMP 3.0 - Reworked the gameplay camera and targeting camera AGAIN with a focus on keeping the camera more affixed to your animal, less jerky motion and smoother transitions, and improved viewing angles from all directions / in all gameplay states. + EYE CONDITION - Added an options for eye "conditions" while Blind is the only current option maybe we can come up with more in the future. GAMEPLAY CHANGES + KEYBIND CHANGES *CRITICAL* - The two interactions keys have now been reworked to use a TAP/HOLD system. Each have primary and secondary actions you can access by switching b…
- Jump Revamp enters The WILDS - 14 August 2023
Release Version 1.4.9.1 GAMEPLAY CHANGES + JUMP REVAMP - Completely changed the jump code and improved animations to feel more fluid. + FALL DISTANCE - Increased the distance required for a fall to cause your animal to Tumble. + SNEAK SPEED - Increased the speed of sneaking SIGNIFICANTLY on most animals. (mostly predators) + JUMP STAMINA PENALTY - There is now a small penalty on your stamina for jumping. + COUGAR SPRINT - Improved visuals of cougar sprinting. BUG FIXES + STEALTH LEVELING - Stealth ability is now leveling properly. KNOWN BUGS + BABY MOOSE - The baby moose's eyes are wonky, I need to do some re-touching on the model. + CINEMATICS - Lake and River water flashes white on start/end of cinematics.
- Eye Customizations enter The WILDS - 11 August 2023
Release Version 1.4.9 NEW FEATURES + ADVANCED EYE CUSTOMIZATIONS - Personalize your animals eyes with ultra-detailed customization tools. Choose from different iris styles, change eye color, pupil size, iris size, and overall brightness fo unique looks. + HETEROCHROMIA - Animals can now have two different colored eyes. + REALISTIC EYE MOVEMENT - Animals will now appear more alive than ever with detailed eye movements based on their current focus and even do micro-movements for maximum lifelike behavior. GAMEPLAY CHANGES + SPAWNED ANIMALS - Spawned animals will no have unique eye colors. + MATE CUSTOMIZATIONS - Mates will no stand still while you're in the customizations part of the menu. BUG FIXES + MISSING AMBIENCE - Backing out to main menu and re-entering a game would cause sound to be temporarily missing. KNOWN BUGS + BABY MOOSE - The baby moose's eyes are wonky, I need to do some r…
- Ranks enter The WILDS - 8 August 2023
Release Version 1.4.8 NEW FEATURES + RANKS - You can now give your pack members various ranks to set the Hierarchy of the pack. These are mostly superficial for now but I hope to tie them into the AI later to determine eating order etc. + DEBUG - In the Main Menu -> Settings you'll see a new button in the bottom right called Debug. Clicking it will directly open the locations of the save files as well as a debug file to help with sending me Bug Reports. + CUSTOMIZATIONS - Added two new sliders for modifying your animals color. Play with saturation / brightness to give your animals more unique looks. + QUESTS - New possible quest will have you hunt down and defeat a random animal in the forest. GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + OPTIMIZATION - Improved the save/load code to HIGHLY limit the hiccups in the game when breeding, changing mates, and bonding. + BREEDING - The game will now focus on newly bre…
- Bug Fixes enter The WILDS - 2 August 2023
Release Version 1.4.7 GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + ACTION WHEELS - Improved the usability of both new action wheels making it easier to select with the mouse, control via scroll wheel, and selection with a basic click. + NIGHTTIME VISIBILITY - Increased the brightness of the moon to add more visibility to nighttime gameplay. + TARGET CHANGING - When Targeted, you can now only swap to similar type targets. (ex: If targeting an NPC animal, you can only swap to other NPC animals) + DRAGGING SPEED - Sped up most animal drag speeds by 50%. + MATE LIST - When you click a mate from the mate list it not automatically swaps to their targeted information panel. + MATE BEHAVIOR - Mates will now report directly to you when you attempt to inspect them, this avoids you having to chase them around. + CAMERA MOVEMENT - Made the camera "snappier" and a little faster. Previously it felt like the camera "moved in…
- Command Wheel enters The WILDS - 26 July 2023
Release Version 1.4.6 NEW FEATURES: + COMMAND WHEEL - Use the new command wheel to order your packmates around and change their behavior. Make them sit / stand / lay down / stay close to you and more giving far more control over the pack. GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + SWIMMING REVAMP - Changed the way swimming works, sped up all animals swim speed and increased inertia effect when entering water. + FOV OPTIONS - Added even more options for increasing FOV. + SKILL BASED EVENT SFX - New sounds for the skill-based event and now the timer will show first and then a small delay before starting giving the player more time to prepare. + FISH EVENT - Land animals will now need to be targeting a fish to initiate the skill-based event. + UI HIDE TRANSITION - Cut the transition time in half for hiding/displaying the UI. BUG FIXES + EAGLE - Eagle walking would stop after a few steps. + SKILL BASED EVENT - Fi…
- Interaction Wheel enters The WILDS - 21 July 2023
Release Version 1.4.5 NEW FEATURES: + MATE INTERACTION WHEEL - When targeting your family members you'll see a new option for "Interact", this will call your mate to you and reveal several interactions. *Work-in-progress most interactions don't work yet* + DEVELOPER NOTE - Apologies the Interaction Wheel is mostly useless for now, one of the critical bugs listed below was severe enough I had to get an update ready before the wheel was done. GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + COMPASS REWORK - Small reworks on the compass making icons more visible and the compass in-general cleaner and more visible. + COMPASS DISTANCE - Icons focused in the center of the compass will now reveal their remaining distance. + FLIGHT - Auto-landing is now disabled while Targeting, tap the Descend button when on the ground to force landing. + DETECTION MODE - All animals can now move while in detection mode, running will exit…
- Eagles enter The WILDS - 9 July 2023
Release Version 1.4.4 NEW ANIMAL: + EAGLE - Welcome the eagle to the roster! Our second bird in the line-up wields a dangerously sharp beak and talons that make it a formidable foe to any animal! Includes both Bald Eagle and Golden Eagle subspecies. NEW FEATURES: + RE-REVAMPED FLIGHT MECHANICS -Redid the flight AGAIN and really think I nailed the controls for flying. With default movement giving excellent bird-eye views of below and sprinting giving you dynamic camera-controlled fast flight/diving for excellent maneuverability. GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + FLIGHT - While locked on to a live enemy animal, auto-landing is now disabled to make air-to-ground combat easier. + DRINKING - Increased rate of water gain while drinking. + DEHYDRATION / STARVATION - Decreased rate of health loss while these status effects are active. BUG FIXES + DENS - Added a bed to the den in the cliffs for birds. + FLIGH…
- Revamped Flying enters The WILDS - 16 May 2023
Release Version 1.4.3 NEW FEATURES: + NEW SKILLCHECK EVENT - Birds can now grab fish out of the water by successfully completing a timing skillcheck event. + RESPAWN OPTION - Added a respawn option in case your animal gets stuck somewhere, it will force your animal to respawn at either your current den or original spawn point. GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + FLIGHT MECHANICS REVAMP - Flying now has a "sprint" mode we'll call fast flight. Controls are swapped to a more manuevarable variation and flight movement is both faster and constant. + FLIGHT AUDIO - Added some ambient wind that varies based on speed to make flying more immersive. + FLIGHT BOOST - Flight boosting will flap your wings and give your bird even more speed but will drain stamina quickly. BUG FIXES + PAUSE MENU MISALIGNMENT - The pause menu wasn't being properly anchored so it just didn't show up on ultrawide resolution monitors, th…
- Ambient Animals enter The WILDS - 4 May 2023
Release Version 1.4.2 NEW FEATURES: + AMBIENT ANIMALS - Added ambient Seagulls by the shore as the first Ambient Animals in the game. Ambient Animals will not be interactive and exist simply to provide more atmosphere and intruige to the game. GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + LOCKED CAMERA RENAMED - The previous "Locked Camera" option has been renamed as "Assistive Camera" and had its description rewritten to be clearer about what it does and which setting is right for you. + ASSISTIVE CAMERA - Tilted the assistive camera up a little more to give the player a better view. + PERFORMANCE - Made some changes to how various things are rendered and saw a pretty good performance boost as a result. I'm deepening my understanding of how some more advanced rendering techniques are done so hopefullly more and more improvements will come over time. BUG FIXES + ENDLESS HEAD SHAKE BUG - Fixed the problems caused…
- Instinct enters The WILDS - 21 April 2023
Release Version 1.4.1 NEW FEATURES: + INSTINCT - Introducing the first iteration of the Instinct mechanic. Your animal's heart will begin to beat at opportune moments, allowing you to activate abilities that will help chase down prey, escape from predators, dodge attacks (dodge not implemented yet) and more. + INVERT Y-AXIS OPTION - Added an option for those whole like inverted Y-axis (up and down) look controls. GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + LOCKED CAMERA REVAMP - Created a hybrid locked camera, that both allows you to look around and have the camera follow your animals look direction. + CAMERA - The locked camera now also adjust the up/down look directions to match the slope of the ground. + CAMERA - K/M now defaults to the locked camera style. + CAMERA - Smoothed out the camera motion when attacking. + TARGETING - Targeting now applies a custom Depth-of-Field that focuses on your target. + JUM…
- World Expansion enters The WILDS - 6 April 2023
Release Version 1.4.0 CRITICAL: + DATA WIPE - All data will be wiped upon update. NEW ANIMAL: + MOOSE - Welcome the moose to the roster of playable animals! The moose is the largest species of deer and while being a herbivore it's impressive size and strengths makes it capable of standing on equal footing with even the most dangerous predators. NEW FEATURES: + MASSIVE WORLD EXPANSION - The world is now 4x larger than before. Breezy Mountain Passes, snow covered Mountain Peeks, large Grassy Meadows and more now await you. I had orginally planned on only doubling the size but decided to do the full map, I wasn't able to fullu detail it all but it's a great start and I'm excited to head feedback on how to further develop it. + REVAMPED AMBIENT AUDIO - Ambient Audio will now change based on season and time of day and various parts of the world will have their own sets of Ambience. This is s…
- Sleep Revamp enters The WILDS - 7 March 2023
Release Version 1.3.2 NEW FEATURES: + SLEEP REVAMP - Redid the sleeping mechanic to now do a dreamy look out over your den and let you have full control in modifying the time/season of the game in realtime. + FULL CONTROLLER SUPPORT - Everything menu / feature of the game is now usable with controller. I'll continue to improve upon this as we go, redesigning more menus to be more functional for both control styles. + MENU REWORKS - Moved all the of the game's menus into a master list on the pause screen, this makes our main character menu much more navigable and gives quick easy to find access to newer players. GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + CONTROLLER CAMERA - More improvements to the camera functionality for controller users. + TURN SPEED INCREASE - Drastically increased the turn speed of all animals to give movement a much more responsive feel. BUG FIXES + CONTROLLER TARGETING - There was a bug…
- Settings / Controller 2.0 enter The WILDS - 27 February 2023
Release Version 1.3.1 NEW FEATURES: + VOCALIZATION WHEEL - Vocalizations have been moved to a popup wheel, use 'R' on keyboard or LB on controller + CONTROLLER REWORK - Complete overhaul of the controllers input mapping, be sure to check out the setting menu to look through new keybinds for controller. + DYNAMIC INPUT LISTINGS - Buttons listed for actions will now swap depending on if you are using keyboard or controller. + SETTINGS REVAMP - Revamped the settings menu to work much better with controller and just more usable overall. GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + INPUT PERSISTENCE - If you use a controller on the main menu the game will now remember the device when entering the game and automatically connect it. + CONTROL SWAPPING - You can now swap back and forth between controller and keyboard with ('start'/'enter'). + NEW UI MUSIC - Replaced the UI background music with something a little more…
- Critters enter The WILDS - 16 February 2023
Release Version 1.3.0 NEW FEATURES: + CRITTERS - Critters are smaller non-playable animals that populate the world. The introduction of critters adds the Duck, Rat, Turtle, and Frog to the list of animal you'll find in the world! + RAGDOLLS 2.0 - A massive overhaul of the "ragdolls" or physics based animal movements after death and pouncing. Much of the constant glitching has been removed, bodies move in more realistic ways, and we introduced some hybrid controls ragdolled animals to simulate "death struggle". + CUSTOM CURSOR - Added a custom cursor to the game menu. GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + CARRYING PENALTIES - Carrying animals will now restrict your animal from running at full speed. KNOWN BUGS + RATS - Body breaks apart when grabbed. + CINEMATICS - Lake and River water flashes white on start/end of cinematics. + PACK ACTIONS - Still need to rework the AI more to make these active. "Pack S…
- Lookouts enter The WILDS - 3 February 2023
Release Version 1.2.9 NEW FEATURES: + LOOKOUT POINTS - Removed the proximity based cinematics and replaced them with interactable lookout points that will officially discover zones and play cinematics. + CINEMATICS 2.0 - Remade the cinematics to be MUCH smoother and heavily minimized any jerky motion, added sweeping orchestral music and a zone title screen. + DISOVERABLE MAP LOCATIONS - Undiscovered dens, lookout points, and other interactions will now appear as "?" until discovered. + LOCKED CAMERA OPTION - Under the gameplay settings menu you can now find an option to lock the camera. GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + PERSISTENT LOCATION - Instead of respawning at your den, your animals will now keep their last position in the world unless killed. If killed they will respawn at last active den. + WORLD MARKERS - World markers will now automatically disappear when reached. + FOX SIZING - Made the fo…
- Fox Furs enter The WILDS - 28 January 2023
Release Version 1.2.8.2 NEW FEATURES: + FOX FURS - Added 9 additional alternate fox textures representing the subspecies American Fox, European Fox, Sierra Nevada Fox, and the Canadian Marbled Fox. GAMEPLAY CHANGES: + MAIN MENU - Added additional vignetting to top and bottom of the main menu to make text more readable. BUG FIXES + CRITICAL - The bug that was locking people out of the game should be fixed (again). + FOX HITBOX - The fox wasn't responding to damage, this should be fixed now. + GRAMMAR - Fixed some types and grammatical errors (thanks discord folks). + VARIOUS BUGS - As always many other various bugs were fixed / improved. KNOWN BUGS + PACK ACTIONS - Still need to rework the AI more to make these active. "Pack Surround" and "Pack Attack" may appear as options but are non-functional.
