Big List

[Dark]

But its okay for bears to be awake. Im pretty sure there was a major earthquake that came with this geomagnetic event, and if strong electromagnetic fields can effect the behavior of humans, they can effect animals too

It is not so easy. Those mechanisms that are behind hibernations, are very complex, but this things would be mostly attributed to some hormones and genetics. And this things are not influenced by some solar events that induce a EMP or this kind of thing. But:

Black Bears tend to have a very active hibernation and certainly can even wake up. Grizzly (Brown) Bears are a little bit different, because in some areas where there is enough food, even during the winter (not north canada), they do not even hibernate at all.

Years ago i have heard (I'm very uncertain about this!), that change in temperature (too high) or a very low level of remaining calories, can wake up a hibernating bear or animal, but i don't know if this applies to this kind of bears in canada.

[elloco999]

Maybe you should read the disclaimer the game starts with. Because of the geo-magnetic event they have taken liberties with the animal behavior. If the devs want bears in the game, there will be bears in the game. And since the devs have all but promised us there will be bears, I'm pretty sure we're going to see them.

[EternityTide]

Black Bears, I think, consume approximately 20,000 calories per day prior to their hibernation. During hibernation, their metabolism drops by 75% (interestingly enough though, their core body temperature only drops by ~5.5^oC), and they burn about 4000 calories per day whilst in hibernation. They tend to store food in their hibernation den as well, and periodically wake up to renew their calorie stores.

[JErosion]

as long i can see a bear eating a wolf's face i will be happy

[Burning Bridges]

Maybe you should read the disclaimer the game starts with. Because of the geo-magnetic event they have taken liberties with the animal behavior. If the devs want bears in the game, there will be bears in the game. And since the devs have all but promised us there will be bears, I'm pretty sure we're going to see them.

Exactly.

There will be bears, and their behaviour will be changed through the event. They will be interesting because they are much tougher than wolves.

[elloco999]

And will likely also give much better reward than wolves. A bear is much larger, so more leather (or will it be pelt?) and meat. I hope they will be able to balance that somehow, because if it's possible to kill a bear with 1 shot and it gets me much more meat than a wolf or deer, I'm going bear hunting despite the bigger danger. So maybe bears will just be very hard to find, but there's always the threat of running into one when you least expect it.

[EternityTide]

But slower, I hope

[Burning Bridges]

Slower but stronger, that would be logical. Although wolves are already behaving exactly like bears should, and are slow, so they could use that behavior and do something about the wolves themselves.

[Dark]

Maybe you should read the disclaimer the game starts with. Because of the geo-magnetic event they have taken liberties with the animal behavior. If the devs want bears in the game, there will be bears in the game. And since the devs have all but promised us there will be bears, I'm pretty sure we're going to see them.

Yes and maybe they will give the protagonist superpowers due to the geo-magnetic event... [/sarcasm]

What i try to establish is a realistic fundament for the time and the space and the agents. Perhaps they will add a progressing date so that we have even an changing nature with a the occurrence of the bears in march? And you do not even need to resort onto the geo-magnetic event for the aggression of hungry bears, after their calories depots are gone. A hungry Grizzly (450kg bodyweight) will eat anything.

Slower but stronger, that would be logical. Although wolves are already behaving exactly like bears should, and are slow, so they could use that behavior and do something about the wolves themselves.

Bears (top speed of 56km/h) aren't that much slower, than a wolf (top speed 64km/h), but they are faster than a human (top speed 44km/h).

[s_miracle]

Slower but stronger, that would be logical. Although wolves are already behaving exactly like bears should, and are slow, so they could use that behavior and do something about the wolves themselves.

Bears (top speed of 56km/h) aren't that much slower, than a wolf (top speed 64km/h), but they are faster than a human (top speed 44km/h).

Awesome. I can't wait to be hopelessly devoured.

[Dark]

Awesome. I can't wait to be hopelessly devoured.

Yes it is hopeless to run away or to climb on a tree or to try to swim away from a bear. Bears have a better hearing and sense of smell than human, and can track you by your smell like the wolves. But there is something that bears cannot do: shoot a rifle at a target.

I'm not against bears in TLD, but with bears Hinterland should be very careful:

How they introduce them.

Where they introduce them.

Why they introduce them.

While with one wolf and a knife the odds for the human are not bad, a bear and a knife is near impossible for a human to win.

[elloco999]

Yes and maybe they will give the protagonist superpowers due to the geo-magnetic event... [/sarcasm]

It a good thing you added that /sarcasm tag. I would not have gotten that otherwise.

But the disclaimer doesn't say anything about humans with super powers, aliens taking over the brains of the wolves or mutated deers that shoot laser beams out of their eyes. It does say they have taken liberty with animal behavior and why, which explains the way wolves behave.

And it's a good thing they did. If wolves in this game behaved realistically,they wouldn't come anywhere near the player. Wolves are very smart and they know humans are their only real enemy. They know how a human smells and in an area where humans shoot wolves when they see them, they tend not to come anywhere near them. Only severe hunger would drive them to come close to a human. Given the number of deer in TLD and how often I see wolves take down one, they wouldn't be hungry enough to bother the player. I think the way it is now is much more interesting.

I just know someone will respond with something like "but in this or that occasion wolves did attack humans" so here's my response to that: yes there are always exceptions to the rule. But those are specific occasions, not the way wolves behave generally. So that doesn't explain why all wolves in TLD attack the player on sight.

What i try to establish is a realistic fundament for the time and the space and the agents.

I get that's what you're trying to do, really. Most people do I suspect. But the devs have chosen to have wolves (and other animals) behave in a not realistic way and they have done so for a reason.

Perhaps they will add a progressing date so that we have even an changing nature with a the occurrence of the bears in march? And you do not even need to resort onto the geo-magnetic event for the aggression of hungry bears, after their calories depots are gone. A hungry Grizzly (450kg bodyweight) will eat anything.

They idea for TLD is (or at least once was) to be an episodic game with a season (winter, spring etc) per episode. So the first episode of which we are playing the alpha now will be set in winter. The next episode will be set in spring etc.

But considering that they have said that bears will be in this game, I don't think we will have to wait until the next episode for their appearance.

[EternityTide]

Bears and wolves need to get tired quickly though, when pursuing a human. Humans are amongst the best endurance runners in the animal kingdom. I think though that bears need to be almost always lethal if they catch you, like the fight scene should only have a 5% chance of survival, as most of the time the bear caves in your skull

[s_miracle]

Bears and wolves need to get tired quickly though, when pursuing a human. Humans are amongst the best endurance runners in the animal kingdom. I think though that bears need to be almost always lethal if they catch you, like the fight scene should only have a 5% chance of survival, as most of the time the bear caves in your skull

Yeah, I'd think they could pretty much treat it as instant death if an angry bear gets ahold of you. I keep thinking of the movie "The Edge" that portrayed two men lost in the Alaskan wilderness that were being stalked by a man-eating bear. Granted, there were a lot of inaccuracies in this movie. But they demonstrated how a bear could be killed up close by using it's own weight against it (holding up and wedging a spear as it pounces and letting the bear fall on it). In other words, the developers may have some options for how they want to handle this. But mostly I'd like it if you just died.

[Dark]

If wolves in this game behaved realistically,they wouldn't come anywhere near the player. Wolves are very smart and they know humans are their only real enemy. They know how a human smells and in an area where humans shoot wolves when they see them, they tend not to come anywhere near them. Only severe hunger would drive them to come close to a human. Given the number of deer in TLD and how often I see wolves take down one, they wouldn't be hungry enough to bother the player. I think the way it is now is much more interesting.

I just know someone will respond with something like "but in this or that occasion wolves did attack humans" so here's my response to that: yes there are always exceptions to the rule. But those are specific occasions, not the way wolves behave generally. So that doesn't explain why all wolves in TLD attack the player on sight.

From the over 200 attacks on humans in the last 50 years, over half of them was due to rabies. Therefore the best explanation for the behavior (aggressiveness) of the wolves and other mammals would be a rabies infection or even a rabies epidemic transmitted through ticks or birds like the crows. But i admit that the alien "Body Snatchers" theory would be quite intriguing, and would be quite a narrative twist. On the other hand i would not like it, and also zombies would really destroy the game. Therefore a rabies epidemic with a coinciding solar flare / emp pulse is good, perhaps due to a polar reversal / or a multi magnetic fields appearance / or even total disappearance of the magnetic field would be the best in my opinion. And this would even work without turning the animals into a kind of zombies, because this would also set up some questions like:

If we have normal dogs or normal animals why they did not go berserk?

Or why does this not affect humans, they are also mammals ?

They idea for TLD is (or at least once was) to be an episodic game with a season (winter, spring etc) per episode. So the first episode of which we are playing the alpha now will be set in winter. The next episode will be set in spring etc.

I have possibly flawed in my memory that 6 episodes were in planning for TLD. So if we assume 60 or 30 days for each episode than this could fit in very well, if in the spring and summer episodes are the bears.

Bears and wolves need to get tired quickly though, when pursuing a human. Humans are amongst the best endurance runners in the animal kingdom. I think though that bears need to be almost always lethal if they catch you, like the fight scene should only have a 5% chance of survival, as most of the time the bear caves in your skull

Normal running speed of 10km/h or even 20km/h without much additional weight and with low own weight, then yes, but not top speeds. Humans are tiring faster in top speeds, than this animals with quadrupedal mannered running.

This is a very complex topic and is related to the behavior of the center of mass of the body in different walking and running modes for different terrestrial locomotions and naturally to the storing and releasing of energy in the legs and etc.

[EternityTide]

Agreed, but humans would be better at narrow/steep terrain than quadrupeds would. As well as that, Human bodies are better at coping with long-term stress associated with running, even with a load, I myself have managed to sprint 300m with a 15kg backpack on my back in about a minute (admittedly I was late for the bus, but I managed it, even though I could barely talk for 10 minutes afterwards) I will admit I am still feeling shin splints as a result of that, but It is possible, and I am not a massively sporty person. Although both bears and wolves are faster, we would cope better over distance and rough, tight terrain (like a forest or a slope).

[Wagyu]

And now for something completely different.

A lot of people have talked about how avalanches sound like an interesting idea. I agree with the principle of game concept coolness, but I don't think it's really workable as a gameplay mechanic, both from a "fun" and a "technical" point of view.

An avalanche isn't just a wave of snow that happens to be potentially lethal, it's an event that effectively modifies the landscape. It sweeps away trees, houses, and boulders. And it can come in upon a person in minutes or even seconds. From a game design perspective, this means that every time there's an avalanche, an entire section of the game map would have to be altered. That makes completely randomized avalanches effectively impossible. Designing a dynamic system to rework the landscape in the event of a random avalanche is theoretically doable, but the amount of coding necessary makes it prohibitive for the designers, and the amount of processing power necessary to calculate the changes makes it prohibitive for the end users. Scripted events are doable, but then the designers would have to put in multiple maps or sections of maps for the same regions, which would add to the size and lower the speed of the game. It's possible, but doing it right would be a ton of work for a minor payoff.

As for the fun gameplay aspect, the players would be dealing with the ever-present potential for a randomly occurring event where you have a serious chance of automatically dying, no matter your condition. That doesn't sound like much fun to me.

Can anyone think of a way to implement avalanches that's both doable and fun?

[jaminmax01]

Love the list, some of these suggestions would be absolutely perfect in this game.

[EternityTide]

Simple, you have preset avalanches that occur at random intervals. If you want to have a fun idea, try snow drifts that change over a 20 day cycle, that close off sections of the map for a period of time before disappearing to open them up again. This would create a more survival oriented atmosphere and force players to think ahead about the risk of travelling to a more isolated part of the map (you don't want to be trapped in a low resource environment when the drifts are too thick and steep to cross, and you have little to go on by way of food or shelter)

[s_miracle]

Love the list, some of these suggestions would be absolutely perfect in this game.

Thanks, glad you like it. Some ideas are definitely better than others, but none of them are outside the realm of possibility in my opinion. Please post here if you have an idea you would like to add.

Simple, you have preset avalanches that occur at random intervals. If you want to have a fun idea, try snow drifts that change over a 20 day cycle, that close off sections of the map for a period of time before disappearing to open them up again. This would create a more survival oriented atmosphere and force players to think ahead about the risk of travelling to a more isolated part of the map (you don't want to be trapped in a low resource environment when the drifts are too thick and steep to cross, and you have little to go on by way of food or shelter)

Definitely. Although the idea is more suited for story mode, I think this is possible in sandbox with one or more small "traversal" type areas like the ravine. Of course, I don't think it would be fun if it was just a dice roll in terms of instant death. You'd have to have some way of completely avoiding death and/or injury. Most avalanches are deadly because victims are entombed and suffocated in several feet of snow. Maybe a way to dig oneself out... or perhaps climb a tree to avoid the snow?

[EternityTide]

if you are in the path of an avalanche, the best thing you can hope is that the Atheist's are right and there is no hell.

Avalanches flatten trees and the sheer impact (avalanches are not pure snow, they generally contain detritus such as rocks, blocks of ice, logs and the frozen corpses of mountaineers who tried to copy bear grylls) would kill you. Burial would only occur if you hid behind an outcrop that took the brunt of the force out of the intial shockwave.

[elloco999]

My sister has been a ski and snowboard instructor in Austria for many years. All instructors are also required to help resque people (or at least try) when there's been an avalanche. They get training for this as well. Many people actually do survive the initial impact and the ride down the mountain, only to become trapped underneath the snow. But most people that are found during a rescue are dead even so. Why? Because they suffocate before they are found.

The chances of surviving an avalanche without special equipment are slim even when there are rescue parties out immediately trying to find you. They are practically non-existent when there's no one looking for you. Only if you were lucky enough that you end up in the top layer, close enough to the surface that the weight of all the snow above you won't stop you from moving your arms. And of course your bones need to be still intact.

There are certain items that help increase your chances for surviving an avalanche. These include:

- Airbag backpacks (helps you stay in the top most part of the snow)

- Avalanche beacon (helps rescuers find you under the snow)

- Avalanche lung (helps you breath under the snow)

But these items are not in the game and even if they were, the beacon is not going to do you much good without people that are coming to your rescue. The same is true for the lung if you're deep enough under the snow that you can't move.

[Wagyu]

There are a few other things that I think would be interesting, but difficult to implement in a realistic way. I just want to go over my thoughts for a few of them here.

18. Craftable candles and/or torches.

Craftable candles would be a real pain to implement realistically. Having candles in-game makes sense, but making new ones would be much harder due to the resources and time needed. In real life, candle-making needs wax, wicks, molds or dippers, a continuously burning fire, and plain old time. It's possible to implement in-game, but between the large availability of matches, lanterns, flares, etc. and the fact that candles would only be usable indoors, it's impractical to have a candle creation system. Torches, though, are definitely realistic and easily crafted, and I expect we'll be seeing them eventually.

22. Energy drinks and coffee that reduce fatigue.

Energy drinks, yes. Coffee would work only if it's canned. For fresh or even instant coffee, the creators would need to expand the fireplace system, which might be doable. It might be simplest to append coffee-making to the "Cook" selections, although to be realistic, you'd need some sort of kettle. Speaking of which, when water is being melted and boiled, what's it being boiled in?\

34. Tents

Between the wolves and the freezing weather, I don't see this one going anywhere soon. Still, they did implement the bedroll, so who knows? Maybe there'll be something later on.

That's all for now. Time for someone else to take a turn.

[JErosion]

18. Craftable candles and/or torches.

Craftable candles would be a real pain to implement realistically. Having candles in-game makes sense, but making new ones would be much harder due to the resources and time needed. In real life, candle-making needs wax, wicks, molds or dippers, a continuously burning fire, and plain old time. It's possible to implement in-game, but between the large availability of matches, lanterns, flares, etc. and the fact that candles would only be usable indoors, it's impractical to have a candle creation system. Torches, though, are definitely realistic and easily crafted, and I expect we'll be seeing them eventually.

Ive seen this one brought up a lot, and it prompted me to look at what it takes to make a candle. And unless you enter a house where someone made candles as a hobby your unlikely to find the things you'd need to make a wax candle. This leave making a candle from household objects, the simplest would be made from a Cooking Lard/Vegetable shortening, a metal washer, cotton yard and a mason jar. its doable but the amount of time and the resources spent it may not be worth it. Then again once you loot every house you have a lot of time on your hands

[elloco999]

In the stone age people already made candles using a stone dish, rendered animal fat and absorbent materials like certain mosses. In TLD there are plenty of empty cans lying around you can use, we kill enough animals to get the needed fat and for wicks we could use strips of cloth. Wouldn't take that much effort to make one I'd think.

Making wax candles is another story altogether. You're not very likely to find the required materials just laying around in most homes. But wax candles could be looted from homes. Many people have candles for lighting in case of power outages, so I wouldn't be surprised to find some.

Candles should provide less light than a lantern and must be lit with a match, but they can also be extinguished and lit again.