Patch Notes

Added a tag system

In the “Display” window, you can create and edit tags: start by typing in the text entry field. You can then edit the symbol, color, and text associated with this tag. Up to 64 tags are supported.

Offspring are created in “litters” of 3-4 wolves

Added a menu that lets you review them.

Added the ability to support save files with many, many wolves with no slowdowns

I personally tested a save file with over 1600 of them to verify this.

Added filters based on inborn genetics and player-given tags

You can filter the list of wolves based on a list of premade filters, or on any of the tags you created and assigned to wolves.

Filters may be combined. You can edit how the filter combination is applied: “AND” restricts the search to wolves that match both filters, while “OR” searches for wolves that match either or both.

Due to technical limitations, only one genetics-related filter is allowed at a time.

Added a description field and a tabbed interface

To open up more room to display genetic information, the Display screen now has a tabbed view. Password, which was available in the launch version, is now located in a tab. A new tab has been added for entering your own text description to attach to a wolf.

Exposed UI scaling to settings menu

This is a setting from the engine that requires a restart/reload. Some may find it preferable to make buttons larger on certain screens.

Export Data (from both play-in-browser and downloadable versions) and Import Data (downloadable version only)

You can export your save file from either version. This data can then be imported into the downloadable version. Useful if you are trying to create a pairing from wolves that were created on different devices.

Important! This functionality is for your own save data only. Loading random save files from the internet is not secure!

Added background music

There is a volume control in Settings from the main menu, if you would prefer to turn this off. The music doesn’t start playing until data migration has finished.

Changed particle effects to be less of a resource hog

I believe this may have been responsible for some of the crashing in the original upload.

Cleaned up some visual elements

• “Running wolf” loading animation has been replaced from a sketch to a solid, shaded grayscale animation.
• Borders for large buttons were replaced with a different asset that behaves better when UI scaling is used.

What wasn’t in the update

I’m still a little bit embarrassed by the art in this thing. The digital painting on the title screen is still unfinished, and the wolf template itself had some clearly-drawn-in-ten-minutes patterns. When I posted this project last November, I thought I would quickly make a higher effort template and swap it in before anyone noticed. However, I didn’t manage to finish it, and art tasks like this fell to a lower priority than technical tasks.

I eventually looked at my analytics and saw that more people have been playing this demo over time, and realized that players may now be emotionally attached to their wolves. Now I have no intentions of swapping the template. Any future versions of this demo will be compatible.

What’s next

I still want to finish the remaining art and add a new template. If I do, I am going to find a way to have it coexist with the original one. If there are any major bugs that are discovered, I will do fixes. This demo will not receive any new features, though. Just bug fixes and art fixes.

I am considering creating more games that use this system. By games, I mean with more actual gameplay in addition to getting random creatures and pairing them up. I will post details in devblog posts directly to my creator page when I have more to share.