Amethyst Mountain Deluxe 1.6 Released

[WileE]

We are very pleased to announce the release of Amethyst Mountain Deluxe version 1.6.

Go to the downloads page to get it: www.wolfquest.org/downloads.php.

Highlights include:
* A major performance increase for all systems and graphics cards.
* Realtime shadows on the terrain (available only on better video cards).
* Safer multiplayer environment with better pack and wolf name filtering and forum registration required to start of join open games.

Enjoy!

The WolfQuest Team

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WolfQuest Amethyst Mountain Deluxe
Release Notes

July 10, 2008
v 1.6.0

IMPORTANT NOTE:
The internal version number of the game has been changed from 1.5 (Amethyst Mountain Deluxe April/May releases) to 1.6. All players are encouraged to update to be able to take advantage of the improvements in performance, stability, and safety in open multiplayer games. All players must have the same new version to play multiplayer together. An actived WolfQuest Community account is now required to start and enter an open multiplayer game. See the Multiplayer Enhancements below and the WolfQuest Manual for details.


RESOLVED ISSUES
Single Player
* Grayscale effect is turned off completely for all old video cards and Intel, Nvidia, and ATI integrated cards, since integrated video does not really perform well enough and a number of video drivers are buggy with not properly disabling image effects automatically (old Intel 82865 on Windows, Radeon on G4 Mac Mini and old iMacs, and current Intel X3100 on OSX MacBooks show blank screens). The old "gray screen of doom" workaround disabled the grayscale effect on Fast and Fastest. But now some integrated graphics perform well enough on Simple, so it needs to be turned off across the board. This means that for an image effect capable card, the grayscale effect will be visible at all quality levels.
* Intro theme music carries forward seamlessly through flyover as originally expected. Switches to exploration music when flyover ends.
* Music will no longer play briefly at music change points when music volume is set to 0.
* Camera immediately returns to follow mode when player starts to run away from the social arena (was a pause where the wolf would run in place and look odd).
* Zone entry chime volume reduced.
* Player and NPC social arena run away locations adjusted to not have obstacles confuse them, and to run off camera properly.
* Stranger wolf should run away properly and not leave the player stuck in the social arena.
* Game no longer unpauses when opening help menu from option menu.
* Mate name is now filtered when entered in social arena, as well as on load and save of game. (Was filtered in stats panel already).
* If a game save is not selected, load game button does not try to load anything. (Previously started the level but threw errors.)
* Fixed a problem with player nametags not showing properly when players entered and exited game or mate was added (toggle would flip between old and new wolves showing names).
* Game now properly pauses when windows are open (single player only. May have only been an IDE issue).
* Saved carcasses are grounded properly when loaded again (single player).
* New carcasses are now grounded properly on slopes.
* Saved carcasses will not create duplicates when loaded again into fixed carcass mission locations.
* Pickup carcasses don't show eaten condition while they have full food value. (They now change after first bite).
* Scent spokes now extend all the way to the center (there was often an empty area in the center and missing spokes entirely).
* Scent spokes now properly span the zone, even when the center of the spokes is near the edge of the zone (they were only as long as the distance from the player to the center, but this made them too short when loading into a zone).
* All territories have the same number of scent trails leading to the stranger wolf and scent spoke placement is cleaner.
* Wolf death animations won't loop anymore.
* Mate no longer runs toward the world fence; should also die properly if it is killed.
* Reduced chance of getting a second mate in the social arena.
* Camera will stand still in social arena when wolves bite.
* Character animations such as running should be smoother.
* Large patch of dense flowers removed from forest since they were a performance problem.
* / and \ characters replaced with "_" in saved game names so the save does not fail.
* Carcass and other pickup creature triggers are now properly grounded. (Triggers that appeared on a steep hill might been too far off the ground to be able to trigger it, even though with carcasses the carcass scent plume was visible on the ground.)
* Multiple carcasses will no longer spawn on top of each other if player stands still for a long time ("mutant" or "deformed elk" glitch).

Multiplayer
* Server game instance no longer crashes when players enter and exit MP game.
* Multiplayer connection error messages should show more reliably, and return user to splash screen more gracefully. This includes trying to start a multiplayer game without an Internet connection.
* Player join and leave game messages in chat window, including names, should be more reliable.
* Only the local player should trigger a change in music to forest theme.
* "panda" no longer gets through in chat (allowed word "as" + ending "s" = "panda").
* "a**" and "bit**" will no longer get through in chat.
* Available multiplayer games should stay visible in the join game list even after the server game instance has been running for a time. (Servers re-register with the Master Server every 60 seconds. Client games still may still need to click the Refresh button over the course of a minute to see the game.)
* Password field may not be left empty when starting a private game. (Also fixes issue where starting a private game without a password would advertise it as an open game.)
* Chat window is deactivated on reentry into MP game even if it was open when bounced out of MP game previously (helps prevent turbo wolf on startup).


ENHANCEMENTS
Single Player
* Several optimizations should give a major performance gain of at least 10-15 fps increase on all quality settings. This will give low-end machines tolerable performance at the lowest settings. Better graphics cards can now use higher quality settings and resolutions and still maintain decent performance.
* Shadows! On supported video cards, at Good, Beautiful, and Fantastic quality levels, shadows may be enabled in the Game Settings window. This setting is saved between game sessions. Shadows are very taxing on the CPU and GPU, so only higher-end video cards can run them with decent performance. Reducing the resolution at launch can help pick up enough performance to run shadows. Shadows checkbox is NOT visible on computers with integrated graphics or older graphics cards.
* Lighting more accurately reflects position of sun and time of morning.
* Simplified terrain texturing is used for integrated graphics and older graphics cards. The cliffs and ponds don't have separate textures on these cards.
* Music playback is stopped completely when volume set to 0. This may give slower systems a slight performance boost.
* Help file updated with info about anti-aliasing at Fantastic quality setting.
* Ponds and new lighting incorporated into world map.
* Game won't freeze up for a moment while NPCs or scent spokes appear.
* Player name is filtered when Play Game button is clicked and can be corrected before leaving Customize Wolf.
* Windows that do not have a hotkey to toggle (like map or help) will close by pressing ESC and/or advance to the default option by pressing RETURN (Windows with just one button now say "Done" and use RETURN to close them, like the quest dialogs).
* FPS display has dark background to be legible on all terrain. Rounded to 1 decimal place.
* No more than 1 grizzly will be active at a time.
* New "Got a mate" music cue plays when you get a mate in the social arena.
* Random grizzly frequency reduced.
* Carcasses spawn at a minimum distance from each other if player stays in one place for a long time. No more carcass clusters.

Multiplayer
* Internal version number changed to 1.6. All players must have this version to play with each other in Multiplayer.
* Starting or joining an open multiplayer game now requires entering an activated WolfQuest community username and password. (Private games can still be started with only a pack password.) Review the policy for safe multiplayer games and report abuse at http://www.wolfquest.org/abuse. Get your free community account at http://www.wolfquest.org/bb. It may take 2 days for your account to be activated. You do not have to post to the forums to activate your account. Private games still do not require a community account.
* Password entry for joining a game is shown only after selecting an available game.
* Chat message is filtered before sending. Filtered words must be fixed before it is sent.
* Punctuation or non A-Z characters not allowed in pack names to discourage creative spellings like "$EX"
* Starting or joining a multiplayer game logs the following information to a log file on WolfQuest.org: Date and time; Graphic card type; Graphic driver version; server or client game; open or private game; max number of players. No personal information, such as IP number or forum user name is saved to this log. It is purely to allow the WolfQuest team to demonstrate how many users are taking advantage of multiplayer, and to get a better idea of the hardware users have in order to improve the game.
* There are now separate error messages for wrong forum login, wrong private password, and network related connection failures.
* A dialog is shown when host shuts game down. (Previously were just bounced out.)
* Additional words added to lexicon and banned word list for names.
* Lexicon and banned word list can now be updated without a full game update. (Will result in more frequent updates.)
* Lexicon and banned word list expanded with user suggestions.
* Filtered words now shown as "???" instead of ***.
* Text box in chat window will get focus when chat window is enabled. (You no longer have to click first.)

SIGNIFICANT KNOWN ISSUES
* Macs with Nvidia graphics cards can freeze when VRAM is used up. This can happen when running at a high resolution for the game (over 1280x1024). Fantastic quality level may make this happen at a lower resolution. This is a bug in Apple drivers.
* Carcasses or carcass plumes may still appear outside the world fence if the player spends a lot of time near the fence.
* Mate sniff nose animation with player has been disabled because of an issue with the animation.

[Rikkuzilla]

W00t!!! (^-^)v

[Blindseer]

finally!

I hope everyone enjoys it!

[breanna]

XD cool! yays!

[MajesticWolfs]

I am downloading it now. I am glad most or all of the bugs are gone.

[Fawn]

Woot!Woot! downloading right now.....

[MajesticWolfs]

I just read on the download page that you will show the players name.So does that mean that it will show your account name on here instead of your wolfs name.But what about the players that dont have names will it just say Guest or there wolfs name?

[Fawn]

the players who do not have a forum name cannot play multiplayer.

[Blindseer]

you can do private games if you dont have a forum account, but not open.

it will say your forum and wolf names.

[Fawn]

you can do private games if you dont have a forum account, but not open.

it will say your forum and wolf names.

cool, did not know that.

Anyways, playing it right now, its great! Kudos to the Wolfquest team!

[MajesticWolfs]

My game keeps crashing when i try to connect to multiplayer. But it doesnt crash when i play single player.

[WileE]

Sorry about the problem with multiplayer tonight. We've been having some issues with our fancy dedicated server -- phpBB doesn't seem to be happy after a while and we have to restart the server, which is of course no fun for any of us. We're working on it.

So when wolfquest.org wasn't working, the game couldn't find the online lexicon nor could it validate user logins for open games.

Now that the server is up again, you shouldn't have that same trouble.

We have posted an update to the game that makes sure chat still works in private games even if wolfquest.org is down, as well as showing an error message if it can't validate the user login (instead of just sitting there).

This is fairly minor and it is NOT required if you already downloaded 1.6.0. We are going to try really hard to figure out what's locking up the server.

Thanks for your patience and enjoy 1.6.

Best wishes,
Steve

[shifty glob]

i just downloded it today and its great! thanks wolf quest people!
now i can hunt with no lag, and the trees have good shadows! (i play on fantastic)

[moonlight_tiger]

The hunting is a bit shaky with the camera, and the word black is filtered. But the rest is awesome.

[Aroma]

Awsome! I download it right now