What will the Seasons Bring?

[cekivi]

As we all know, one of the roadmap goals is to have seasons in the sandbox. I for one think this is really cool and my most anticipated part of the roadmap. The questions is what would other seasons be like? So, I thought I'd outline my ideas below and see what others think of them

If you'd like to post your own ideas please begin with a general description of the season's weather, easiest/hardest gameplay challenges and how it would feel to play.

Spring:

• Lots of rain and cold nights - high risk of hypothermia. Occasional sunny days are warm enough to not need winter clothing
• Biggest challenge: mud and moisture. Constant rain will make everything wet slowing down movement and increasing condition loss of equipment/clothing. While easier to survive (days/nights aren't as cold) you can still freeze to death if you can't get dry. Dryness becomes the new challenge as opposed to warmth. Fires are also more difficult to make since everything is saturated.
• Easiest challenge: water. Water, water everywhere and lots and lots to drink! Rainwater wouldn't need treatment to be potable.
• Players are in a watery world. More animals arrive (and with them more predators) to raise their young. Plants that were harvested in the winter begin to grow back. Any equipment still outdoors rusts and decays. Unburied corpses become magnets for disease and scavangers. Bears are more active (and hungry!). All ice fishing huts are destroyed. Days and nights are warm but a damp player can easily become hypothermic and freeze to death.

Summer:

• Long hot days and nights. Occasional rain but the weather is no problem at all.
• Biggest challenge: heat and water. Heatstroke is now your enemy. Playing at night to stay cool becomes viable. Water is no longer as abundant and must be collected and brought back to be purified wherever the player is.
• Easiest challenge: food and warmth. You can't freeze and animals and plants are again abundant. The player may even garden if they can find something to plant
• Summer is a time of plenty. Lots of food to go around and no real challenges aside from keeping cool and watered. Outdoor fires may be a risk if the game can model forest fires (can you imagine burning down all of Mystery Lake?!?). The catch is that by now most pre-apocalypse things have faded into the Earth and are not easily salvaged. Prepackaged food is a memory. And winter is coming. Can you store and preserve enough to survive?

Fall:

• Snow, sleet, rain inter spaced by warm days and frosty nights. A warm jacket and rain gear are again needed
• Biggest challenge: hypothermia and vanishing food. Believe it or not, fall can be extremely dangerous. A wet person caught in unexpected snow can easily freeze. Plus, the summer's abundance is fading. Food is still plentiful (e.g. berries, rose hips) but is quickly going away. Branches are also wet and need to dry to burn effectively.
• Easiest challenge: water and food: Animals are mating so there will be an abundance of things to hunt and berries are ready for harvest.
• Fall is the reality check. A last chance for players to prepare for winter. Food is abundant but is no longer being replaced. Animals become more aggressive. Snow begins falling again. The temperature drops and the days shorten. Winter is coming...

The Second Winter:

• Blizzards, ice fog and northerly winds
• Challenges: everything. Nothing is simple in the winter
• The ice huts are gone. All the food and equipment that you couldn't or didn't find is gone. Fluffy is back with a vengeance. With little to eat and nothing to scavenge did you prepare enough in the summer and fall to last through a second long dark?

[Pillock]

The only other thing that springs to mind is that warmer weather means that meat doesn't keep... at all. Eat it all the day you kill it or it spoils, gets infested with maggots, and attracts unwanted guests who can sniff it out a mile off. Preservation methods come into play?

You could fish from the shoreline or on the jetties - maybe fix up a boat? But lakes, streams and ocean are now major obstacles that restrict movement and cause massive detours. Winding River is impassable.

Oh, and the Riken is sunk and the forge lost... or is it grounded on a bank? The hull would flood, at least.

[Goggs]

Meat and fish could be dried or cured to keep it safe to eat all year long. I'm surprised this hasn't been done yet. All you'd need is a sharp knife a frame to hang the meat, a fire and time. 

Fruits and nuts would be able to be harvested in summer, these could also be dried and last for years.

[Aelaera]

Pretty much everything was hit in the first post, I love the idea of seasons in this game. It's technically a survival game- not necessarily a winter survival game, just winter is simply the most difficult season to survive in. Honestly, Hinterlands could almost just take a page out of Klei's Don't Stave series when it comes to how each season runs and it's very similar to how the OP stated it should be. 

Spring, summer and fall all mean many sections that we currently take for granted (such as crossing Mystery Lake or going to the islands in Coastal Highway) would be impossible to access. I would say however, unless Hinterlands as a good reasoning for it, Timberwolf Mountain shouldn't be affected by the changing seasons in terms of general atmosphere and such- but it should have some new dangers in the hotter months that would keep a survivor at bay such as avalanches or loose snow, which wouldn't provide for safe climbing conditions. 

Another good thing about seasons is it will encourage a player to move across maps as certain ones would be more advantageous to visit in different months. Pleasant Valley would be the place to be in warmer months, since any orchards and plants that had previously been there would return with a bounty of food. Coastal Highway might be a destination in summer, since it would be reasonable to expect cooler temperatures (with the nearby ocean) and with an abundance of buildings to hide in to escape the summer sun. Desolation Point might be difficult to traverse in the summer, but spring would be the time of year to start stocking up on water, since I've seen numerous, presumably fresh water sources. Mystery Lake as the faithful beginner's map would of course be a decent spot to visit year round, with easy fishing available in warm months (including in fall a potential goldmine of salmon the river supported their annual spawning) decent foliage to forage and enough places to take shelter from rain or sun. 

[Pillock]

3 minutes ago, Aelaera said:

(including in fall a potential goldmine of salmon the river supported their annual spawning) 

Q: What did the salmon say when he swam into a wall?

A: Damn.

[nicko]

ouch, bet yeah who knows that is HT job

[cekivi]

13 hours ago, Pillock said:

The only other thing that springs to mind is that warmer weather means that meat doesn't keep... at all. Eat it all the day you kill it or it spoils, gets infested with maggots, and attracts unwanted guests who can sniff it out a mile off. Preservation methods come into play?

You could fish from the shoreline or on the jetties - maybe fix up a boat? But lakes, streams and ocean are now major obstacles that restrict movement and cause massive detours. Winding River is impassable.

Oh, and the Riken is sunk and the forge lost... or is it grounded on a bank? The hull would flood, at least.

I didn't even think about meat rotting! That'd definitely be a neat mechanic to experience!

[cekivi]

1 hour ago, Aelaera said:

Spring, summer and fall all mean many sections that we currently take for granted (such as crossing Mystery Lake or going to the islands in Coastal Highway) would be impossible to access. I would say however, unless Hinterlands as a good reasoning for it, Timberwolf Mountain shouldn't be affected by the changing seasons in terms of general atmosphere and such- but it should have some new dangers in the hotter months that would keep a survivor at bay such as avalanches or loose snow, which wouldn't provide for safe climbing conditions. 

Another good thing about seasons is it will encourage a player to move across maps as certain ones would be more advantageous to visit in different months. Pleasant Valley would be the place to be in warmer months, since any orchards and plants that had previously been there would return with a bounty of food. Coastal Highway might be a destination in summer, since it would be reasonable to expect cooler temperatures (with the nearby ocean) and with an abundance of buildings to hide in to escape the summer sun. Desolation Point might be difficult to traverse in the summer, but spring would be the time of year to start stocking up on water, since I've seen numerous, presumably fresh water sources. Mystery Lake as the faithful beginner's map would of course be a decent spot to visit year round, with easy fishing available in warm months (including in fall a potential goldmine of salmon the river supported their annual spawning) decent foliage to forage and enough places to take shelter from rain or sun. 

Well, I imagine the canoe (another roadmap item) would help with this. Good suggestion though that certain maps would be more advantageous. I guess the game tilts in that direction a little bit right now but with the seasons you could justify more seasonal imbalance.

[SteelFire]

17 hours ago, Goggs said:

Meat and fish could be dried or cured to keep it safe to eat all year long. I'm surprised this hasn't been done yet. All you'd need is a sharp knife a frame to hang the meat, a fire and time. 

Fruits and nuts would be able to be harvested in summer, these could also be dried and last for years.

This. I would hope warmer weather would bring with it the ability to create a smoking/drying rack to make jerky that would last much longer than simply roasted meat. Of course, I would also hope we could create an outdoor meat locker container to take advantage of the freezing winter weather too. *shrug*

Along with that, it would be neat to be able to use a basement or other unheated/unoccupied building as a root cellar for hardier fruits and root veggies so you would have those through at least part of the winter, making late-winter and spring your leanest times for food.

 

How hot would summer get in the area where the game is supposed to be set? I was thinking something like Pacific Northwest summer, which means mostly 70's and lower humidity, with a few days or a week where it occasionally gets into the 90's or lower 100'ish. This would really make Pleasant Valley the ideal farming area. I could really see the coastal zones and Mystery Lake being a lot more humid though but maybe slightly cooler and then throw in the requisite hordes of disease carrying mosquitoes... or just super annoying mosquitoes and flies that might drive animal to odd behaviors.

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing sea lions added to the coastal zones as prey for hide, meat, and fat resources. We definitely need to see a greater variety of clothing resources with the seasons, so we are going to need some animals to fit those needs. I'd think seal skin could end up as rain gear. Current deer hide pants and boots become the normal decent weather gear and maybe moose hide pants and rabbit lined deer/moose boots for winter. Work gloves we can craft to protect our hands while farming? What about tops? Wouldn't want to wear the wolf skin coat during the warmer weather, but long-term, cloth is a finite resource so manufactured clothing will eventually be non-viable... which also means the current forged tools go away as well... so do we get a resource we can make homespun general/under clothing with; plant or animal?

[cekivi]

3 minutes ago, SteelFire said:

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing sea lions added to the coastal zones as prey for hide, meat, and fat resources. We definitely need to see a greater variety of clothing resources with the seasons, so we are going to need some animals to fit those needs. I'd think seal skin could end up as rain gear. Current deer hide pants and boots become the normal decent weather gear and maybe moose hide pants and rabbit lined deer/moose boots for winter. Work gloves we can craft to protect our hands while farming? What about tops? Wouldn't want to wear the wolf skin coat during the warmer weather, but long-term, cloth is a finite resource so manufactured clothing will eventually be non-viable... which also means the current forged tools go away as well... so do we get a resource we can make homespun general/under clothing with; plant or animal?

Interesting ideas. I hadn't thought about seals but there may be a colony nearby.

Also, for those of us on the metric system, how hot is 70F?

I was under the impression that summers could reach 30C but I've never lived on the Pacific coast so it was just a guess.

Also, another idea for summer: swimming and diving. If it's hot enough you should be able to dive for muscles, clams, kelp and whatever else the ocean washes up (flotsam? fishing nets?).

[SteelFire]

Dang it. I meant to go grab the conversion and have both units. 70F is 21C. So 30C, I think, would be reasonable for hotter days, just not every day. I'm kinda assuming our fictional Bear Island is further north along one of the Canadian coasts. West coast is warmer waters so you can get hotter summers than inland at the same latitude, but that typically also acts as a buffer that keeps it from being too hot. Of course, the mysterious disaster can be used to handwave whatever weather they want.

Yeah, I'm all for swimming and diving for mussels, clams, kelp, and maybe catching delicious, delicious crab. We do see some nets at a couple places along the shore, so some usable or craftable fishing nets and simple fishing poles would be great.

[Nasdaq401]

I'm hoping with seasons comes a fishing pole. I really wish we could even craft one now.  Hopefully this becomes a bigger part of the game.  If the water becomes not frozen I'm sure some of the maps will need to be redone around the edges and places you can go will have to have new routes added since you walk over a lot of frozen space.  

[FatheriatorCZ]

On 5. 5. 2016 at 3:48 AM, cekivi said:

 

Spring:

• All ice fishing huts are destroyed. 

 

Is´nt that a bit too harsh? I always thought that huts were build on poles that go from the botom of lake or that they are floating on some kind of ponton or something.

I would like to see taht some of them remain (the timberwolf one for example) because they are fixed in to the ground. 

[FromAfar2016]

3 hours ago, FatheriatorCZ said:

Is´nt that a bit too harsh? I always thought that huts were build on poles that go from the botom of lake or that they are floating on some kind of ponton or something.

I would like to see taht some of them remain (the timberwolf one for example) because they are fixed in to the ground. 

I agree.  Fishing huts mostly float (some better than others!) but barring that, we could get the chance to haul them closer to shore if we want to save them for next season, just like in real life!  Maybe any hut we don't save has some % risk of sinking?

https://albertaep.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/anglers-asked-to-remove-ice-huts/

[SteelFire]

Ice fishing huts generally aren't made to float, no. Some might, simply by the nature of their materials or simple design, but that's not the normal intent. They're typically designed like a sled, to be hauled across the ice by hand or light vehicle.

I would like to see the ability to save them before the thaw. Could make for an interesting mechanic during subsequent winters, with being able to position huts where ever we want and getting that first hole in the ice; can you say hand augers? The thaw is already going to require that we be allowed to fish anywhere, almost anywhere, on open water, so it isn't a stretch to allow ice fishing huts to be placed in different locations than current.

[Ruruwawa]

Do we know that a single game will span multiple sandboxes?  Somehow I had the impression that a game you started in the Spring sandbox stayed there forever.

Could be wrong, but it would solve the sinking fishing hut problem.

BTW I lived on a very popular ice fishing lake in Wisconsin for a few years, with a cluster of about 200 huts.  Folks kept a road plowed right across the lake all winter.  The real fun was in spring watching the fisherman tow their huts off.  Every year one or two pickups went through the ice. No injuries, but the law forbade leaving the trucks in the lake so there'd be a salvage crew after the ice melted to bring the carcasses up and haul them away.

[TWM]

Quote

Easiest challenge: water. Water, water everywhere and lots and lots to drink! Rainwater wouldn't need treatment to be potable.

Wrong! Coastal Highway and Desolation Point are at the sea, so most of the water is undrinkable.

Timberwolf Mountain hardly has running water sources apart from the lake. Pleasant Valley: little easier, but it still has large stretches without water. Mystery Lake... that's a long walk from the Trapper's homestead to the brook.

In any case: where during winter you can just pick up some snow from just about everywhere, in other seasons you'll either need to collect the water from a spring or brook or have some device outside to catch it when it rains.

Of course in real life, some of these places would have wells or some reserve of tap water in the pipe lines (but since the power is down, there's no water plant to process the water, so it would be limited).

 

[cekivi]

7 hours ago, TWM said:

In any case: where during winter you can just pick up some snow from just about everywhere, in other seasons you'll either need to collect the water from a spring or brook or have some device outside to catch it when it rains.

I was thinking of water catchment. Lots of rain makes water really easy to collect and store. You could even have a rain barrel to have 100L at the edge of your shelter. Of course that would require boiling before drinking

[vancopower]

Wow I waited long time for a topic like this to pop up I believe that all seasons should have their advantages and disadvantages here is what I have on Seasons :

Spring : 

- Instead of blizzard in spring we could have Hail Storm that damages you clothes and your condition, and has a chance to inflict concussion which results in scrambled controls until treated with resting 6 hours at least maybe more.

- Since rivers and lakes are not frozen anymore and the deep snow is melted there should be piles of junk at some choke points and some of it might even be junk we can scrap like chairs, shelves, and other type of furniture.

- We should get the ability to plant in this season, but not everywhere. We need to protect our plants in some improvised greenhouses because they can be destroyed by the hailstorm if we plant on the open. Also we could notice some new spots where saplings begin to grow but are tiny.

- I don't believe I should even mention this one but water is free in spring we will need to boil it however.

- Increased number of bear pop. This is the season where they actually come out of their slumber so lots of hungry bears hooray this will mean though that there will be less wolves since they also run away from a hungry bears. Also the AI of bears should be more aggressive just attack you on sight.  Most of their concentration should be by the rivers and lakes since they go there to fish. So fishing should be avoided in the spring for health reasons  

- you can catch other type of pray with snares like: squirrels, beavers, lizards.

- get access to new regions previously blocked by winter, which have crafting stations in them like gunsmithing tools or planting seeds or maybe even electricity the point is to make you come back in these regions and I'll explain why soon.

Summer:

-Instead of blizzard in summer we could have Drought when the temperatures are so high you can't sprint your stamina bar is red and your fatigue is draining fast together with your thirst bar. Also if exposed on the open you move at snail pace, and if you stay too long you can get heat stroke which drains your fatigue completely and you can not raise it up more than 1 bar until you cure it and the cure is drinking a lot of liquids and rest 8 hours. There could be some tea in the game that helps cure it faster. 

- Since staying on the heat in one place means death there should be more movement in summer time thus increased wildlife encounters: Deer, Wolves, Bears, Moose, Cougar, Rabbits, Birds.  Snakes love the heat that is how they can make their poison so yea we should encounter snakes maybe?

- Some of the plants can be harvested now, like: Mountain tea, beans, Cattails ... Fast growing plants. Saplings are halfway grown.

- Thirst bar decreases faster then normal, and stamina bar charger slower (it is hard to catch your breath when is hot)

- We can fish in the rivers and lakes, but we need to use a pole or a net if you want to be more efficient.

-  placing snares in summer is not effective since there is a lot of movement and they will mostly be broken by the larger wildlife.

Fall:

- Instead of blizzard in fall we could have heavy rain which makes you wet and cold and you have to dry your clothes by the fire, if you don't and stay soaked or in the rain for too long you could get pneumonia which decreases your stamina bar very fast and if you don't threat it for a while with steam inhaling it can develop and give you permanent stamina debuff . Also some points may be cut of because of the water however after it passes there might be something useful that we could find but in order to get it we should have a shovel to dug up all the mud.

- With every heavy rain 1 of the new regions becomes blocked so if you are not careful  you might block yourself in one of the new regions and you'll have to somehow make it until the spring.

- Normal wildlife pop but many variety still.

- All plants are harvest-able, some of them like tomatoes will produce every 1 or 2 weeks. Saplings are full grown, cattails if left alone in the summer are now plentiful: if there was one now there are 3. Also rose hips and mushrooms are grown too. If tree cutting mechanics is introduced now mushrooms grow on the tree stumps you create by cutting trees (And they will regrow every week, fresh stumps are excellent food I've seen this many times)

Winter:

- Well there should not be any bears in winter I think, Otherwise winter is fine as it is.

- Ideal time for snares.

- every new region is not again blocked off so if you are already on the other side: Good luck you'll need it.

- Wolves are in packs this is their season to shine. Other wildlife is almost non existent excepts deer and rabbits. 

- All planted plants are frozen and dead, you can however collect mountain plants for one last time.

And that completes the whole sandbox circle.

 

 

[FatheriatorCZ]

14 hours ago, SteelFire said:

Ice fishing huts generally aren't made to float, no. Some might, simply by the nature of their materials or simple design, but that's not the normal intent. They're typically designed like a sled, to be hauled across the ice by hand or light vehicle.

I would like to see the ability to save them before the thaw. Could make for an interesting mechanic during subsequent winters, with being able to position huts where ever we want and getting that first hole in the ice; can you say hand augers? The thaw is already going to require that we be allowed to fish anywhere, almost anywhere, on open water, so it isn't a stretch to allow ice fishing huts to be placed in different locations than current.

Well then it would be nice to tug them by hand.

But you would have to get fatigued quickly and mabye some kind of injury or something i dont know to make it more of a chalange.

Totaly for the idea of making fishing holes everywhere but mabye faster frozing holes becouse they are not sheltered + you are not sheltered too.

[cekivi]

9 hours ago, FatheriatorCZ said:

 

Totaly for the idea of making fishing holes everywhere but mabye faster frozing holes becouse they are not sheltered + you are not sheltered too.

I am too

But the main problem is definitely not being sheltered. Since you can't set up a stationary line and come back to it that means you're stuck on the ice and have to put up with the weather and wolves with no warmth or shelter...

[SteelFire]

Oh, ha, I wasn't thinking of making unsheltered holes out on the ice. Trying to fish like that would suck. Brrr.

I was thinking about moving the ice huts back out during subsequent winters and not having to deal with some odd mechanic of them needing to be put back in specific spots.

[Raf109]

Or the fishing holes wouldn't be frozen at Summer. Making fishing more viable.

[cekivi]

51 minutes ago, SteelFire said:

Oh, ha, I wasn't thinking of making unsheltered holes out on the ice. Trying to fish like that would suck. Brrr.

I was thinking about moving the ice huts back out during subsequent winters and not having to deal with some odd mechanic of them needing to be put back in specific spots.

It's actually a lot of fun. You set up your lines to give you a visual cue when a fish strikes. You can then retire to shore and stay nice and sheltered by a fire

[cekivi]

50 minutes ago, Raf109 said:

Or the fishing holes wouldn't be frozen at Summer. Making fishing more viable.

Sadly there won't be fishing holes at all in the summer. The ice will have all melted. On the bright side, we may be able to cast from shore or fish from a canoe instead.