Stronger Relationship with the Environment


FluffyEskimo

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Like all of us participating on these forums, I love TLD.  I feel this game brings something fantastic and new to gaming and as a programmer, I feel inspired.

I'm making a few suggestions here (hence the #suggestiontag) centered around making the environment - specifically the ground - interact with the player more.  There are a couple minor tweaks to existing mechanics, as well as a couple new mechanics which I'm outlining below.

Minor tweaks

  • On sprains, breaks, etc: add a camera jarring animation at the time of injury
  • On steep slopes: add an occaisional stutter step camera animation (and slipping audible) to simulate your feet slipping in the snow

New mechanics

  • Slips and falls: when running or at risk of spraining something, add a random slip and fall
  • (long shot) 2-handed scramble: relating to the slope suggestion above, maybe you need to holster your items and scramble to make it up some slopes
  • (longer shot) Slides: there may be different kinds of slides that give the player varying degrees of control
  • (if we've come this far) Sleds
  • Thick snow
  • Snowshoes

I am trying to balance neat stuff we can experience as players against the actual work our beloved devs would actually need to put in.  The minor tweaks would need camera work to play the animations, assuming steep slopes are already being detected to determine travel speed.  If sprain-threatening conditions are being detected, slips and falls could be a more common and less severe consequence.  Maybe your clothes get a little more wet in this process.

I foresee the scramble mechanics as being more work, since there are a few things that need to be handled.  The character's hands would need to be animated.  The slope the character is interacting with may need to be animated.  Existing slope mechanics may depend on a boolean value, ig: "Is this slope steep? (Yes/No)," which sometimes means it takes a lot of time and energy to rework everything that value is tied to (work like this often makes games buggy).  What happens if a player is holding something when he starts slipping?  Does it go to their inventory, or should the item be dropped somewhere?

Slides, though, would probably be a major rework.  It's an entirely new transportation mechanic that needs to answer these questions, at the very least.  "How fast is the character going?"  "How much control does a character have when they are sliding that fast?"  "How does terrain effect the direction and acceleration of the slide?"  "How does terrain effect the character during the slide? (ig: branches to the face, glancing off a tree trunk, full speed into a rock face)"  "Can the character land safely after catching air?"  "Can anything slide besides the character?"

However, the idea of gleefully careening down the side of a mountain on a toboggan in this game makes my heart skip just a little bit.

A bit simpler to implement may be swathes of thick snow that slow the player and wildlife, plus make the player's pants, boots, and socks wet.  Unless of course you are wearing snow shoes... (3 gut, 5 sticks, and a rabbit hide x 2 for a pair).  Maybe this also limits the slopes you can go up, it slows you down, causes more serious trips, and makes it harder for you to fall through thin ice (even a little bit?).

Anyway, those are my suggestions!  Please share your ideas in keeping with this theme of helping players experience the environment, or if you think similar mechanics could benefit other elements of gameplay!

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Since the last update, the camera does a new jerking motion when you get a sprain. Gives the impression of a slip/fall.

I like the idea of a scramble/clamber motion for the character, and seen it suggested before: perhaps it could work in a similar way to the rope-climbing system? Perhaps it'd need to wait until the 1st person presence (hands on-screen) has been fleshed out a bit more.

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44 minutes ago, Riverotter said:

I love  the idea of after a bad blizzerd there could be deep snow to were you cant travel effecintly at all no sprinting ect, unless you have snowshoes. 

 

This is where realism and the game have to separate and I don't think there is much you can do about it.

 

All the snow that falls during game play actually never lands (except to cover blood stains and footprints.) You can be forced to hold up for a three day blizzard, then you venture outside and there has be zero accumulation. The alternative would be, after 14 - 21 days all the buildings in the game would be buried, you would never see a road. We would all be the guy at the camp office, sitting at the top of the stairs watching life replays

 

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1 hour ago, Lovehandel said:

 

This is where realism and the game have to separate and I don't think there is much you can do about it.

 

All the snow that falls during game play actually never lands (except to cover blood stains and footprints.) You can be forced to hold up for a three day blizzard, then you venture outside and there has be zero accumulation. The alternative would be, after 14 - 21 days all the buildings in the game would be buried, you would never see a road. We would all be the guy at the camp office, sitting at the top of the stairs watching life replays

 

I imagine the intense strain this would put on a lot of people's hardware would make the game less user friendly, even if it would add a ton of realism.

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I would love the ability to be able to mantle things, clamber over small logs I would easily be able to get over in real life, pack or not, It is very frustrating when being chased by a wolf, and the only thing between your character and a door is a log I could easily clamber over with no difficulty. Instead I loose 30-40 and have various ailments. (This happened in my current sandbox the day before yesterday).

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