Katmai Coast Rocks!

Katmai has a spectacular geologic history. Like Yellowstone, Katmai is a volcanic hotspot, on the Ring of Fire that circles the Pacific Ocean. But unlike Yellowstone, the volcanoes here have erupted recently!

In 1912, what became known as the Novarupta eruption became the biggest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. For more than three days, it threw more than 13 square kilometers of magma into the atmosphere. The ash cloud drifted around the world and caused a temperature drop -- 2 degrees Fahrenheit, 1 degree Celsius -- in the Northern Hemisphere for more than a year.

Novarupta is 75 miles/125 kilometers southwest from the location of our game map at Cape Douglas, so it didn't leave much permanent trace there. But Novarupta was only the most recent in a long history of eruptions in the Katmai area. Much of the game map is volcanic or igneous rock, which are exposed in the long stretches of coastline cliffs and flat rocks that extend out into the ocean -- perfect haul out spots for marine mammals. The flat coastline strip has a layer of dirt and gravel atop the igneous rock, which was placed here as alluvial deposits from the rivers and as moraines from the glaciers that slide down the mountain valleys.

Over the past several years, 3D artist Damian Paterson has been making environmental models for WolfQuest, and this year he has created several sets of cliff rocks for Katmai. With these models, I have been, slowly but surely, creating all these coastline cliffs -- but don't worry, there are frequent breaks in the cliff wall so you can access the beach easily. There are a lot of cliffs in the game! There is much else still to be done on the physical environment of the Katmai map, not to mention with all the wildlife that we are putting into the map. We'll share progress as we go in these devblogs, so stay tuned!