Milton Mailbag -- Dispatch #17

[Raphael van Lierop]

 

Hello community! It's time for Dispatch 17 of the good old Milton Mailbag. All the news that's fit to print in the Quiet Apocalypse's most desolate, forgotten community (at least, that we've discovered...so far).

On we go...

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Question from @Jolan:

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Would you ever consider buildable outdoor storage boxes? Even it its as simple as  being able "move" an already existing container.  What I really am looking for is outdoor storage that I can build/move near to my prefered firepits.  That way I can store meat without leaving it strewn around the ground, chocolate, and (even more imporantly) neatly store my sticks/tinder/books etc.  Perhaps as a mechanic you could make it similar to a snowshelter in placement and utilize a small amount of cloth and a larger amount of recycled wood.  or wood logs.  

Yup, it's been discussed many times. I could see us introducing the idea of placing survival "caches" in specific places (maybe using a small container you can make) and buried under the snow for protection, and marked by a small cairn of stones (you would collect + craft). One of the issues with it is how our mapping system works and "updates" -- it's hard for us to add stuff to the world map once the map has already been generated (meaning, the location of things that aren't pre-placed, like where Reishi or Carcasses end up). So we'd need a way to handle you putting a cache in a location and then updating the map with this location so you can find it back later. Can be done, just needs to be the priority for a specific update/episode.

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Question from @Smellyfries:

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I noticed that the rifle you find in chapter 2 has its own unique appearance when you find it, and while in your inventory, but when you hold it in your hands, and in the cut scenes it looks just like any ordinary rifle. Do you plan on changing that in the re-dux?

Nope, because you don't find this Rifle anymore.  

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Question from @JeremiahJohnson:

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Absolutely excited for this new update and future projects! Thank you for putting in so much work. Might be an odd question but are you planning on adding Male and Female animals? (Deer/Moose without antlers) As well as younger animals. (Mother bear watching over cubs, younger deer, etc) I was also wondering if the blood tracking will be worked on? The animals seem to only drop a very small amount of blood for a bullet, arrow, knife or hatchet wounds. Thanks again for working so hard to get us these chapters and more survival content. Looking forward to see what Great Bear will throw at us next????

Female animals and younger/baby animals would be cool, but would have to come after we've added all the new wildlife we're planning to add. The challenge with adding younger animals is with animation, really -- anything that moves in the game does so using an animated "skeleton" and that skeleton can be scaled up or down by ~10% and the animations still line up, but if we try to use them for something bigger or smaller the break down. And the skeleton has to be created from scratch in that case, and attached to the model (I'm simplifying -- it's a process called rigging and skinning). So, in the end, adding a baby Fawn, for example, is as much work as creating the Stag. A Doe would be less of an issue provided she wasn't more than 10% smaller than the Stag. Etc. Boring development stuff but hopefully it gives you an idea of why stuff like this is harder than it may seem. In the end I'd rather spend the time/effort on new creatures that offer new gameplay opportunities. But it would be so nice to see a little herd of deer that has one Stag, a few Does, and a few Fawns, for sure. I've always wanted players to have to make the tough choice around whether or not they could kill a baby deer.

Regarding blood trails -- this has been tuned a few times. Keep in mind your Quality/Display settings might have an impact on how much blood you see, and how long it lasts in the world before we remove it.

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Question from @codfish107:

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1) Any ideas or plans to do more with the food system? I know the cooking system has been changed (which i personally like), but are there any plans to make food/hunger more than just counting calories? Maybe adding a nutrient system of some kind? Even when i wasn't starving myself for the Don't Starve Achievement on stalker, i felt that most of the food i had was useless, it was just the hoarder in me that made me grab it anyways.

2) Any plans to add a region that's almost all urban like Timber Wolf Mountain is almost all wilderness (maybe a city, harbor, or airport)? I know Desolation Point and Mountain Town are fairly urban, but i feel like it they have a decent wilderness to them still.

 

1 -- Yes. But I don't want to get too crazy with it, as I'm not sure hardcore nutrition simulation is really right for this game. I do think we can do more than we currently are, for sure.

2 -- Probably nothing as urban as that (as urban as TWM is wilderness), at least not on Great Bear, but we will add more locations that have that "built up" feeling.

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Question from @Dan_:

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From the spear picture, it's easy to recognize which fireplace that one is, though I won't spoil. 

Will that building interior be reset with the update? Meaning, are the supplies from my survival saves in that building safe? 

 

Should be -- Survival Mode saves should be mostly ok, but we'll send out a notice on what areas might be "at risk" due to Redux, just in case you want to pre-emptively move stuff. As noted several times, though, we are DELETING save files from the "Old" Episodes One and Two, as they are no longer compatible when Redux comes out. The episodes have changed far too much to guarantee backward compatibility with the old story saves.

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Question from @Amazombie:

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You mentioned maybe being able to do something with bones. I'd love to be able to make fishing hooks with them as well as use them for sewing like regular fish hooks now. Any chance we will ever see a pull sled of any type to help with base moves? Another add that would be very nice would be maybe foxes and large snares to get them? 

Yup, those would be two good things to do with bones. I'm sure there are others too.

Re: Sleds -- I think I've responded to something about this in a previous Mailbag; short version: it's very hard for us to simulate sled behaviour in our world.

Re: Foxes -- if you look at our company logo you can see why we can't let you kill Foxes.

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Question from @Alonzo.:

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Are there any books out there similar to the game that you could suggest?

I'd prefer that other people in the community suggest books they think are similar to the game!

For me, there are a few that were inspirations when I was coming up with the idea for the game and world, but they are not necessarily *like* the game: THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy), EARTH ABIDES (George R. Stewart), DOG STARS (Peter Heller). I read one recently called STATION 11 (Emily St. John Mandel) which I think comes pretty close to how I see THE LONG DARK, tone-wise and whatnot. There are lots of other books as well. Interestingly, I've been more influenced by post-ap novels than by wilderness survival novels. Not sure what that means.  

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 Question from @Ape88:

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I know that long term survival was never the goal for the game and that the sandbox was originally meant to be just a testing ground for the story mode, but is there any chance we might see the ability to find and/or create whetstones?

I promise you will die before you need to make a whetsone. Either you will find a whetstone, and/or you will use it up, and/or you will craft new homemade knives, hatchets, etc. and eventually you will starve/freeze/get eaten by wolves long before you wish, of all things, you could have made a whetstone.

BUT...with all that in mind, tell me why you want to be able to make a whetstone?  

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Question from @William:

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When will the custom settings for wildlife-struggle be fixed ? I thought I found  the Holy Grail in these settings and then they dont work... found it out after being killed by a wolf instantly after ~8 days, despite "Struggle condition lost" set to none. Its frustrating for me getting instantly killed by a wolf - often times it was not preventable. I like them to be a threat but not to be the Grim Reaper(insant death sentence).

The setting is actually working as intended, it's just the description that was poorly/confusingly written (my bad). We're fixing the descriptions to ensure each setting's impact is clear. In the case of "Struggle Condition Lost" being set to NONE, all this means is you won't get any ADDITIONAL damage during struggle. You will still suffer the standard base Condition damage inflicted during the various damage events we trigger during the Struggle. There is no Struggle that does no damage to you.

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Question from @WildGPS:

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I know that the end of season 1 is a long ways down the road yet, but I'm curious whether you are currently leaning more towards doing TLD: Season Two (same engine, same mechanics, new story), TLD2 (updated engine, updated mechanics), or brand new IP unrelated to The Long Dark once you are all wrapped up with Episode 5?

NOT MAKING ANY PROMISES HERE...

But, since it's a theoretical, I'll say I'm leaning towards TLD 2 + Season 2 (same but updated engine, updated and new mechanics, new story), AND a brand new IP unrelated to The Long Dark. But The Long Dark could evolve in a bunch of different ways so we'll see what happens. We could make Season 2 for the existing game and then also separately work on a "Sandbox 2.0" so to speak, and then also work on a new IP. Or more than one. Or, maybe the team will feel tired and need a rest and we'll put The Long Dark IP on the back-burner for a while. Lots of options once we (finally) finish Season One. 

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Question from @StrayCat:

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Do you have plans to add new features to threaten the player's life ? Every threat is now well known : appart from [thirst, cold, exhaustion and hunger], we have diseases, blizzards, wolves & bears. The last addition was the moose (& broken ribs), but that wasn't an exclusively negative one, as we finally hunt them for their meat and hide, and we can choose to leave them alone for safety. On the opposite, we get no benefit from blizzards (except for no wildlife), it is no more than a threat we have to manage. Do you plan to add more of this kind of threat, thrown at our faces with only "hey, deal with it or die" ?

Yup. But generally I never want players to feel they are in a truly hopeless situation. One of the best parts of The Long Dark is having that feeling of hopelessness for a minute or two (or longer) and then having some kind of miraculous stroke of luck that turns things around. If people feel they have no way of succeeding, they will just quit, which isn't what we want. We want you to keep playing, keep striving. That said, I think we still have lots of obstacles to throw your way before our bag of tricks is empty.

Also, even a blizzard offers benefits.

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Question from @okapi:

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My question is, will I be able to try again next Halloween to get those badges? I really want to get the badges... 

I'm on PS4.

 

You won't be able to get THOSE badges, but you'll be able to get next year's (2019) badges, sure!

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Question from @yollarbenibekler:

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I'm the proud owner of the game since 2014 and I'm amazed by the development which has gone positively day by day. 

The thing is: I want to donate more. I know for some, it is harsh but I think a dlc would boost your finances up and cheer the people up who want to donate more. Do you ever consider putting an extra region as a DLC in future? You can do it via kickstarter and when you achieve the goal; you can just add it to the main game for free if this donation demand is not accepted widely. There are still people who want to help you. And I want to see the world grow.

 

Thanks for the kind words and the generous offer. We'll think about DLC and how it could fit into our plans. It's tricky because we don't want to create stuff that feels out of reach for some players b/c of their financial situation, for example. We're thinking about how to do this in a fair way.

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Question from @ilynrot:

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first of all I absolutely love The Long Dark. Thank  you guys so much for making such a wonderful game. My question is about the achievement "Skilled Survivor". I am usually not someone to chase achievements in games but since The Long Dark is one of my all time favorite games I really wanna complete all achievements. The problem with this particular one is the fact that it needs every skill on lvl 5. I play Interloper only and I guess i might not be the only person doing so. This obviously means I will never get lvl. 5 with the rifle. It feels like I am getting punished for playing the most challenging version of the game. Also it´s not like I can switch over into another difficulty and just quickly get the achievement. Getting all skills to lvl. 5 takes quiet a long time and it would force me into playing a version of the game I don´t really enjoy (no offense to anyone here, I just love running for my life when it´s  -45 on the first day) for hours and hours.  Would it be possible to slightly adjust the achievement for interloper only players ? Either to remove the rifle skill in interloper completly or maybe build in the execption for interloper difficulty? I have no clue about anything when it comes to developing a video game but I really hope that this problem can be solved with an easy fix.  Again I would´t mind changing the game mode for a few hours to get a specific achievement but the time investment it takes to get "Skilled Survivor" and the fact that it is impossible to get in interloper is making me desperate enough to pose this question here.

Interesting conundrum. We'll have to see if we can come up with a good solution for this.

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Question from @UTC-10:

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Is there any consideration to expanding the cooking utensils? While the cooking pot is great... when  you find one, it is disappointing to go through a region like Coastal Highway, explore all the houses, and not find one.

Yup!!

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Question from @Korlis:

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In the film The Hateful Eight, the characters prep for a coming blizzard by rigging up stakes and a line to mark the path between the cabin they're holding out in and a nearby outhouse and barn. Could something like that be implemented in The Long Dark? We can leave markers like stones or used flares, but a taller, more visible object would be useful, especially if it was possible to string line between them. Basically, it's for when I get lost between the camp office or garage and nearby fishing holes in a blizzard or at night...

Also, The Thing has come up in mailbag responses before, but are there any other films that have inspired the game and/or have possible mechanics you'd like to crib?

 

Blizzard lines -- yes. It's on our mind for reasons that will become obvious in the future.

Movies inspiring mechanics -- not specific mechanics, but lots of scenarios, for sure!

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Question from @musrass:

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Is there a chance in the future we can have the ability to make notes in our maps? Maybe at expense of another charcoal? After surviving for a while it would be great to leave reminders to yourself (where you left certain items for instance). I know I can write things in my log, but I think it makes sense to do that directly in the map.

Possibly with a big overhaul of our map system. I'd like to do one but I'm not sure where it will happen, exactly. 

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Question from @Forogueman:

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In the august dev diary you said, that in episode three we will be "exploring a new region". Will it be a totally new region, that isn't in the game yet, or will it be an existing region, that we haven't yet seen through the eyes of the story mode?

I'll address this in a future Dev Diary.

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Question from @greatwhitegamer:

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Who voiced Jeremiah, Gray Mother, Methuselah (am I spelling that correctly?) and Mathis in Wintermute?   

You can find this in our credits, but just in case other people are also curious:

* Jeremiah -- David Hayter

* Grey Mother -- Gwynyth Walsh

* Methuselah -- Gord Marriot

And of course:

* Mackenzie -- Mark Meer

* Astrid -- Jennifer Hale

Note: This is for the current Episodes. We have an expanded cast for Redux.

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Question from @galenwolfe:

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I really enjoy the game, but one of the things that has always been off putting in the experience is the random "you've sprained something". I understand that people slip and fall but there are times that it seems the character is actually jonesing for meds rather than actually getting hurt. And then other times when nothing at all happens for long stretches. But, what really is off putting, is the lack of any sort of stumbling/tripping/falling animation. 

There's feedback when you have a sprained ankle -- you stumble/lope awkwardly. It's possible to turn this off in settings as it makes some people sick so make sure you have this turned on.

As for more feedback for the event that "triggers" the sprain -- this is almost always the result of something like a Fall (for which there is both audio and visual feedback -- the screen goes red and you hear a voice line reacting to the impact), or a Struggle (so, wolf in your face, etc.) There are very few instances I can think of where you would sprain your wrist or ankle where those events are not tied to a really obvious cause.

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Question from @jahhat:

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1. In the new survival mode game I randomly spawned somewhere in the Great Bear Island, and i'm just curious where is the Will Mackenzie's plane or debris, which should be nearby in this case?
2. Seems you will add a region with a flight strip and planes, so, will we able to fly away from Great Bear Island or Aurora won’t let us go?

 

 

 

1 -- Who said you play Mackenzie in Survival Mode.

2 -- What makes you think we're adding an airstrip and planes?  

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Question from @Faithful Cartographer:

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1. Will there be a development Diary about the survival mode update in December?

2. Redux episodes one, two and survival mode update coming out at about the same time?

 

1 -- Probably not. No dev diary about the update because we'll just give you the update.

2 -- Redux One and Two, and Survival Mode update all at the same time, yes.

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Question from @paulrysavy:

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My first ’what if’ question. What if camp fire had some degrade time like Snow shelter, and/of could be destroyed. During play many times we use camp fire to warm up carcasses, and with time this camp fires are stay there, or we put down a camp fire start a fire, and bugs. It would be good to handle more flexible the camp fires.

My second what if question is, what if we could open MRE packs like quarter packs ( it would contain a foodpac, tea, coffee, matches, 2 painkiller ). I think the game mechanic of quarter packs could be a good start to develop it. And from the from the point of view of game realism some times it would be life sawing.

 

I'm not sure adding decay to placed Campfires is interesting? Is it?

I don't really worry too much about "realism" when designing the game, and you shouldn't worry too much about realism when playing it. The only metric to decide if something should be added to the game or not is "will this make the experience more interesting?". Sometimes more realistic is not more interesting, so in that case, the answer is "no".

Same thing for the quarter packs -- the UI overhead of handling that adds an unnecessary step. If we do it for MRE we have to have it on everything. So every time you eat something we have to pop up a question, "Do you want to eat: All/Half/1/4 of this thing?". Is that interesting? I'm not sure.

One thing we do is you have a max calorie store of 2500. If you start eating something that takes you up to the 2500 threshold, we let you keep the rest of that item. So for an MRE, if you "top up" your calories to 2500 and the MRE still has food value (calories) remaining, you'll notice we let you keep the MRE and the remaining calories to eat next time. 

What interesting choices do you feel being able to eat "partial" rations adds to the game? 

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Question from @DerpyLemon115:

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If you had to completely rework one the the existing regions from the ground up (transition regions included) what region would you like it to be and why?

We're pretty much constantly combing through all the regions and improving them bit by bit, to make sure that really new regions don't feel much different from older ones. If I HAD to choose one, I think I'd probably say...Desolation Point. I'd make it bigger and add more abandoned industrial stuff there. And more ships. Why? Because exploring abandoned industrial stuff is cool!!

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Question from @Guenter:

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Can you explain me the bunker (Preppers Cache) behavior?
How often and when do they spawn?

Sure. Not all regions have Prepper Hatches. The ones that have Hatches spawn one per valid region per Survival Mode game "session" (i.e. for that entire "life"). Each region that has Prepper Hatches has many locations where they could appear, so you never know from game to game where exactly the Hatch will appear in a region that has one. So, over time, you can learn where the hatches *might* appear, but you can't know for sure where they *will* appear. We may change this logic in the future, but that's how it works currently.

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Question from @Farhadyazdani:

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Are you planning to expand the game? For example, planting plants and fruits, or hunting birds, adding smoking cigarettes? can you add  this property to the game that when you bring the camera down and into the legs, we can see our limbs, including the chest of the hands And legs. It really feels like we're a human and we're wearing something! Are we going to make bullets in the future? And if so, what new ideas will be added to the game? Thanks for the time you gave us.

We are always expanding the game, yes.  Planting plants/fruits -- difficult in Canadian winter. Smoking cigarettes -- perhaps some day. Full body awareness -- perhaps some day. Making bullets -- perhaps some day. What new ideas -- endless possibilities. Keep reading and keep playing. 

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[Skipping some questions that are actually like 12 questions because it's not super fair to everyone else...try to keep your questions limited to 2-3 at most, thanks.]

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Question from @Triple_D_50:

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1) Will console players ever be able to place items anywhere, ie: matches on fireplace, gear organized on shelves. I would love to be able to put stuff wherever I want, like pc players can.

2) Will there ever be a primitive way to start fire, like finding flint, or maybe sticks and gut starters?

 

Item placement -- Console players have always been able to do this, ever since we enabled it for Mouse + Keyboard. Check your controller map! It's R2/RT depending on if you have a Xbox one or PS4 controller.

Primitive firestarting -- yes, eventually.

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I think those are all the questions for this week! Thanks to everyone who submitted questions, and please keep them coming. Also, please make sure you Like or Heart or whatever, this thread, so we know you're reading it and finding it interesting.

Enjoy your weekend!

- Raph

 

[Smellyfries]

17 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

you have a max calorie store of 3500.

I thought it was 2500 calories?

[Guest jeffpeng]

Just now, Raphael van Lierop said:

at least not on Great Bear

So there IS a world out there! 

Just now, Raphael van Lierop said:

The only metric to decide if something should be added to the game or not is "will this make the experience more interesting?"

Thanks for summing something up I struggled to bring to such a defined point over years of hobbyist game design.

Just now, Raphael van Lierop said:

Because exploring abandoned industrial stuff is cool!!

It is! More of it, please.

[Dan_]

It is 2500, geez Raphael you gotta know this stuff by now! 

Numerous exciting little nuggets of info in this last mailbag, thanks for taking the time. 

[Raphael van Lierop]

13 minutes ago, Smellyfries said:

I thought it was 2500 calories?

Yes, thank you.

[Raphael van Lierop]

Just now, Dan_ said:

It is 2500, geez Raphael you gotta know this stuff by now! 

Numerous exciting little nuggets of info in this last mailbag, thanks for taking the time. 

Well, it *used* to be 3500. Some time...you know...in the last 5 years.  

[Smellyfries]

No problem!

[DaveMcD]

I think the craftable whetstone idea probably stems from wanting more craftable / primitive tool equivalents. I'm in that camp I guess. For me it ties thematically to the idea of survival and how well you can improvise to meet your needs and make good decisions. Yes there might be a factory made or forgeable tool but a more primitive improvised knife or arrowhead made from a tin can might get you out of a bind now but its balanced by the cost of lower durability and longer times to use etc. I think some complexity to aquiring the skills to make such things (tied to reading or exploring parts of the world) could be kind of fun too, especially things like primitve fire making skills.

[ThePancakeLady]

1 hour ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

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If you had to completely rework one the the existing regions from the ground up (transition regions included) what region would you like it to be and why?

We're pretty much constantly combing through all the regions and improving them bit by bit, to make sure that really new regions don't feel much different from older ones. If I HAD to choose one, I think I'd probably say...Desolation Point. I'd make it bigger and add more abandoned industrial stuff there. And more ships. Why? Because exploring abandoned industrial stuff is cool!!

*Has heart flutters, and stops breathing for just a second*

 

Wants. Wants wants wants wants.

Did I ever mention that DP is my favorite map? 
Yes. I would love to see DP grow, and have more to explore. Maybe... a little First Nations village, where workers at the Whaling Plant may have come from?

[Sipriano]

6 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

What makes you think we're adding an airstrip and planes?  

Where is Mackenzie going to land?

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Sipriano said:

Where is Mackenzie going to land?

Bush pilots land anywhere right?

[BESt]

Regarding the sprained ankle question: it happens quite often to sprain your ankle or wrist from just walking and I don't understand from this MM if it is intentional or not...

[codfish107]

9 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

at least not on Great Bear

Thank you for responding. Does this suggest that TLD will eventually take place outside of Great Bear, perhaps in a second season or in a TLD 2? 

[ThePancakeLady]

4 hours ago, codfish107 said:

Thank you for responding. Does this suggest that TLD will eventually take place outside of Great Bear, perhaps in a second season or in a TLD 2? 

I still think it would be awesome for Wintermute to end with Will and Astrid finding a way off of Great bear Island, making their way back to the mainland. Imagine Season 2 being set in an urban area on the mainland? Even a smaller town or city? Going back t the airport Will and Astrid departed from before The Event, and finding it a wreck, torn apart by desperate people from the area? The world that our survivors came from is totally unrecognizable now...

I would play that. I would play that hard.

[Looper]

6 hours ago, BESt said:

Regarding the sprained ankle question: it happens quite often to sprain your ankle or wrist from just walking and I don't understand from this MM if it is intentional or not...

Interesting post. I don't really understand the many complaints against random sprained angles. From a gameplay it makes sense that there should be some random risk involved with traveling/climbing. With all the medicine available (Great bear is a big drugstore)  it isn't a problem. From realism perspective - you should consider that walking with 25-30 kg on your back (including bedrolls, long sticks, 25 pieces of coal, pots etc.) in thick snow along slopes could easily trip or sprain you.

[ajb1978]

8 hours ago, Sipriano said:

Where is Mackenzie going to land?

Mackenzie's plane is amphibious.  It has pontoons, and the pontoons have fixed wheels on top of that.  So he could land on water, a road, a stretch of flat field, etc.

[BareSkin]

16 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

there are very few instances I can think of where you would sprain your wrist or ankle where those events are not tied to a really obvious cause.

We've all suffered a random double-sprain while walking on flat paths (personal example: Quonset to Lookout in CH) or in flat caves (personal example: Broken Bridge cave in DP). It's very annoying, since sometimes a sprained wrist simply means death. No problem with getting sprains while walking up or down slopes of course.

16 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

I'd prefer that other people in the community suggest books they think are similar to the game!

There is a book that comes to my mind, it has been originally written in French in 1940 and describes a futuristic technological Humankind that suddenly loses electricity at the atomic scale: no more power, no more steel, etc... It's called Ravage (Ashes, ashes in english), by Réné Barjavel.

La Nuit des temps (The Ice people) is much less about survival, and more about humankind stupidity as a species (and smartness as individuals), same author, 1968.

16 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

I'm not sure adding decay to placed Campfires is interesting? Is it?

I would like to build/destroy the campfire. Decay is a late game problem, and most runs don't go until late game. I would imagine it to be like snow shelter (they also decay): you need X stones in your inventory (resource wildly available, I'd say 5 stones) to place a Vigilant Flame campfire (that has stones), and if you want you can undo it and get some of the stones back. Building takes 1 game-minute, same as dismantling it if you feel like it. That also adds a decision making: do I use the stones for throwing them, or do I keep them for making a campfire?

That would also prevent the very strange gameplay that consists of not fearing wolves as soon as you have ignition, tinder and a stick: a defensive firestart instantly makes the wolf fly away? Really? The price of not fearing wolves is... a match? I'd largely prefer a mechanic where having a lit torch is your 100% safety. That asks for advance planning, and would be coherent with the blizzard no-wildlife protection.

15 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Well, it *used* to be 3500. Some time...you know...in the last 5 years.

@Support says you should try making an update of your game files

[NardoLoopa]

3 hours ago, Looper said:

Interesting post. I don't really understand the many complaints against random sprained angles.

I find the mechanic frustrating, mostly because I haven't quite figured out how to prevent it when needed (I know how to mitigate it).  But that's my issue, not something that HL needs to solve.  Though, it does make me laugh through my tears when I walked from ML to PV to camp in Burned Ridge Cave, only to sprain my ankle while adjusting my bedroll near the campfire.

As for fiction: To Build a Fire, by Jack London immediately comes to mind in Survival Mode.

[Raphael van Lierop]

15 hours ago, Sipriano said:

Where is Mackenzie going to land?

He's flying a floatplane.

[Raphael van Lierop]

Re: Sprains:

I know it's not a satisfying answer, but there is no mathematical way to get a sprain when on flat ground. I often see the complaint "I don't get why I got a sprain...I was walking on flat ground!!". No, you weren't. I suspect you perceive yourself to be walking on flat ground, but you are not when you get the sprain. The way we calculate sprain chances (for ankle sprains) is you first to have to be walking on a 20 degree grade (up or down), and then that is modified by things like Fatigue level and how much gear you are carrying (i.e. if you are more tired, or carrying more stuff, you increase your chance of getting an ankle sprain when on a surface of at least 20 degree grade). Now, keep in mind that this 20 degree grade difference could be as simple as suddenly going up and down a small hill or bump in the terrain. It doesn't have to be always from going up or down a steep slope for an extended period if time. Just like you can sprain your ankle walking off a normal sidewalk (in real life) if you aren't careful. Your chance of getting an Ankle sprain on a slope also increases the steeper it is. Being Encumbered or Sprinting also increases the chance.

Wrist sprains should come from Struggles, for obvious reasons. Falls are another thing that can trigger sprains, either Wrist or Ankle, which seems fair. With Falls and Struggles the feedback is more obvious so I suspect people don't feel disoriented when those happen.

So, in summary:

* Ankle Sprains can happen when you walk on a slope that is at least 20 degrees

* The chance of getting an Ankle Sprain increases based on: Steepness of slope (over 20 degrees), being Exhausted, being Encumbered, Sprinting.

* There's a pretty good chance of getting a Sprain when Falling. Falling = a drop that is over 5 meters.

* You can get a Sprained Wrist or Sprained Ankle from Wolf Struggles.

Hopefully that helps clarify things a bit.

[BareSkin]

21 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Re: Sprains:

[...]

Hopefully that helps clarify things a bit.

It does, and a lot, thank you for very specific and detailed answer.

Nonetheless, maybe if possible there should be some "smoothing" with nearby ground coordinates in the calculation of the slope then, to detect if we're roughly on a somewhat flat location or not. About the wrist sprain, then don't happen only with falls or struggles, very often you get double-sprained for what seems no "gameplay" reasons. You just walk in a somewhat flat cave, not encumbered, not sprinting, not exhausted. Just starved like Interloper asks you...

[Raphael van Lierop]

24 minutes ago, BareSkin said:

It does, and a lot, thank you for very specific and detailed answer.

Nonetheless, maybe if possible there should be some "smoothing" with nearby ground coordinates in the calculation of the slope then, to detect if we're roughly on a somewhat flat location or not. About the wrist sprain, then don't happen only with falls or struggles, very often you get double-sprained for what seems no "gameplay" reasons. You just walk in a somewhat flat cave, not encumbered, not sprinting, not exhausted. Just starved like Interloper asks you...

I'd have to investigate the specific location, but that double-sprain situation looks like a bug to me. If you can give me the coordinates in the world we can take a closer look. There might be something invisible in the geometry that is triggering this. Looking at the screenshot, I wouldn't expect you to get either sprain from that surface.

[BareSkin]

2 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

I'd have to investigate the specific location, but that double-sprain situation looks like a bug to me. If you can give me the coordinates in the world we can take a closer look. There might be something invisible in the geometry that is triggering this. Looking at the screenshot, I wouldn't expect you to get either sprain from that surface.

If my memory is fine, it's was just before Bareskin15 discovered bears don't fear fires: that would be the bear spawn cave near Broken Bridge, in Desolation Point, there was a car in front of it, and some rabbits.

It's good if that specific location helps you debug the root cause, but anyway, it was just an illustrative example, many of us experienced such behavior of the game in many, many locations. Had this on the path arriving at the Lookout from Qonset Garage, following the flat road paths in Pleasant Valley, it happens everywhere and people often report what we call "random double sprains"... Flat ice is the only place I can think of being safe.

I'm pretty sure if we open a thread "Post your strange double-sprains" it would be a hit . Of course if such bugfix is seen someday in a changelog, that'd be welcome, but we all understand the priority choices that have to be made. While I don't complain about it, it's hard to read "everything is fine" about sprain behaviours. But just to be really clear, I'm not particularly asking that it's fixed, we live with it as RNGeezus (or "The Game", or "TLD Gods") fatality!

[Raphael van Lierop]

1 hour ago, BareSkin said:

If my memory is fine, it's was just before Bareskin15 discovered bears don't fear fires: that would be the bear spawn cave near Broken Bridge, in Desolation Point, there was a car in front of it, and some rabbits.

It's good if that specific location helps you debug the root cause, but anyway, it was just an illustrative example, many of us experienced such behavior of the game in many, many locations. Had this on the path arriving at the Lookout from Qonset Garage, following the flat road paths in Pleasant Valley, it happens everywhere and people often report what we call "random double sprains"... Flat ice is the only place I can think of being safe.

I'm pretty sure if we open a thread "Post your strange double-sprains" it would be a hit . Of course if such bugfix is seen someday in a changelog, that'd be welcome, but we all understand the priority choices that have to be made. While I don't complain about it, it's hard to read "everything is fine" about sprain behaviours. But just to be really clear, I'm not particularly asking that it's fixed, we live with it as RNGeezus (or "The Game", or "TLD Gods") fatality!

Everything is fine with the design of Sprains, but that doesn't mean they are working correctly in the game. The more bugs we get the more effectively we can diagnose the issues. If anyone is predisposed to helping out with this, please report some bugs to the Public Bug Database, along with screenshots (coordinates are very helpful): https://hinterlandgames.atlassian.net/projects/TLDP

[DaveMcD]

2 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

 

* There's a pretty good chance of getting a Sprain when Falling. Falling = a drop that is over 5 meters.

* You can get a Sprained Wrist or Sprained Ankle from Wolf Struggles.

Hopefully that helps clarify things a bit.

100% definitely had many wrist sprains from walking activities (i.e. not struggles or falling) they're easy to remember happening because you're usually taking a highline around a wolf, sprain your wrist and have to panic eat some painkillers before you can do any throw or shoot defense.

Or am I misreading the explanation of how sprains happen and these are expected?