A way to Destroy Items (Rubbish Bin)

[Kirby]

I´m aware that destroying items is unrealistic. But so is 0% quality items disappearing once stored in containers. I have a bunch of items (primarily Tinder) I no longer need, but I don´t want to store them in some container where they take up space and I don´t want to drop them somewhere where they take up memory and processing power.

I think it should be possible to either bury items in the snow or burn them in a fire. Of course, the option to do that would have to be difficult to access to avoid accidentally destroying things.

[Ape88]

IMHO, I think items such as tinder, which are "unneeded" to start a fire after a certain skill level should still be beneficial and add a certain percentage chance of starting a fire rather than the 0 percent added currently once the survivor is at the level where they no longer have to have tinder to start a fire.

[Kirby]

@Ape88  

 

[elloco999]

I wouldn't mind a way to dispose of items such as burned out brands, used up sewing kits and other items that don't disappear. I generally dump them somewhere out of sight, like behind the shed  outside trapper's. But I'd much rather throw them in a trashbin or something where they will disappear forever.

For items like tinder I agree that they should still have some useful function in late game, so disposing of them should not be necessary.

[IanS]

I think the best solution would be to go the path of games like Fallout 4 and simply make every item in the game harvestable for raw materials. Take the sewing kits, you could make fish hooks from sewing needles and you could also use them for first aid. The whetstone has a wooden base that could be used to start a fire, or to fashion a grip for a knife.

[Samski]

Great idea, you can make a nice knife out of an old rifle or rabbit snaps out of the bow.

[tentacles]

Yes, having to drop items onto a waste dump is quite immersion breaking.

Still, I don't actually like the idea that you would have to craft a "rubbish bin" just to get rid of items that you don't need.

I love the idea to make everything harvest-able. But that would probably require quite some time to implement. Probably the easiest and fastest way to implement it would be to add a "Destroy" button to the inventory. When the devs have enough time, they could then change it into a "Harvest" button.

[exeexe]

After the magnetic storm hit earth there could be opened up to some lavapools here and there where u can throw things into it to delete them. 

 

[Kirby]

1 hour ago, exeexe said:

After the magnetic storm hit earth there could be opened up to some lavapools here and there where u can throw things into it to delete them.

That escalated quickly. "I no longer need these items... THROW THEM INTO LAVA! HAHAHAHAHA!"

Realistically, adding lava would be unfair to the player, since it would instantly kill you. Also, where would these lava lakes be? Most maps are finished and I don´t want to walk 3 weeks to throw away my used sewing kit.

[exeexe]

44 minutes ago, Kirby said:

That escalated quickly. "I no longer need these items... THROW THEM INTO LAVA! HAHAHAHAHA!"

Realistically, adding lava would be unfair to the player, since it would instantly kill you. Also, where would these lava lakes be? Most maps are finished and I don´t want to walk 3 weeks to throw away my used sewing kit.

they can easy remodel the maps. thats for the devs to figure out where the lava is gonna be

[nicko]

1 hour ago, Kirby said:

That escalated quickly. "I no longer need these items... THROW THEM INTO LAVA! HAHAHAHAHA!"

Realistically, adding lava would be unfair to the player, since it would instantly kill you. Also, where would these lava lakes be? Most maps are finished and I don´t want to walk 3 weeks to throw away my used sewing kit.

Why would it instantly kill you! it just a lava pit after all, the only way it would kill is if you got to close to it?

What we need is a wheelie bin.

Where have you really been! (pun intended)

[Mel Guille]

9 hours ago, exeexe said:

they can easy remodel the maps. thats for the devs to figure out where the lava is gonna be

"Easy" is a relative term -- the team actually puts quite a bit of time and effort into crafting the environment. Small details such as the shape of snow on a rock or the placement of trees can have a big impact on the "feel" of a space.

Also, given that we're trying to evoke a sense of the Canadian landscape, I feel pretty comfortable saying that pools of lava are unlikely to make an appearance.

An item disposal system might be interesting, however. Other than tinder, what kind of things were you imagining getting rid of? 

[Captain Obvious]

Could you not just have a button to 'bury' something in the snow? And you could retrieve it later, if you remembered where it was!

[exeexe]

7 hours ago, Captain Obvious said:

Could you not just have a button to 'bury' something in the snow? And you could retrieve it later, if you remembered where it was!

No the idea is to put it out of memory. The memory of the computer

[SteveP]

Memory clean up item by item is ahh... silly. Throwing cattail heads into fire is reasonable but so would stuffing them into cloth to fashion a quilt AKA bedroll. Less silly, more useful. Once a large number of items is transformed into a new object, the old objects can be garbage collected to release the allocated memory structures. (free() or obj_free())

Think of it another way, once a cattail plant is harvested, that object no longer exists so it can be garbage collected the same way that Java memory garbage collection works. These are arcane issues best left to the developers.

+1 for creative thinking.

[henroe32]

22 hours ago, Kirby said:

That escalated quickly. "I no longer need these items... THROW THEM INTO LAVA! HAHAHAHAHA!"

Realistically, adding lava would be unfair to the player, since it would instantly kill you. Also, where would these lava lakes be? Most maps are finished and I don´t want to walk 3 weeks to throw away my used sewing kit.

A geomagnetic storm would not cause lava pools to open up.

[henroe32]

What if there was a "challenge" mission set somewhere like desolation point or coastal highway where the hostile wildlife is abnormally concentrated on the main land do you must find your way across the perilous frozen sea which slowly melts if you take too long. A blizzard could add to the chalenge of this mode (a wolf running at you from out of nowhere would be terrifying) and maybe the ice could be thawed out in certain places as time progresses meaning that you would have to navigate around this perilously unstable ice maze. 

Not related to the main subject, but I guess you should be able to fish and dispose of objects by dropping them in the ocean or fishing holes (you should be able to make these anywhere)

[exeexe]

42 minutes ago, henroe32 said:

A geomagnetic storm would not cause lava pools to open up.

Why do u think that?

 

[henroe32]

7 minutes ago, exeexe said:

Why do u think that?

 

I think the developers are going for a more EMP style disaster rather than a ground shaking apocalypse given that most of the buildings in the sandbox are fairly normal apart from the occasional dead body and the fact that none of them are locked away from the grinch (player). 

[exeexe]

3 hours ago, henroe32 said:

I think the developers are going for a more EMP style disaster rather than a ground shaking apocalypse given that most of the buildings in the sandbox are fairly normal apart from the occasional dead body and the fact that none of them are locked away from the grinch (player). 

Many of the buildings are not normal anymore and cant be used

[Captain Obvious]

12 hours ago, exeexe said:

No the idea is to put it out of memory. The memory of the computer

Why? It's not like it's gonna save space on your hard drive!

It'd have exactly the same effect. Bury something somewhere and forget it even exists. It simply adds the option of digging it up again later, making the option actually useful functionally rather than just aesthetically.

[tentacles]

20 hours ago, Mel Guille said:

An item disposal system might be interesting, however. Other than tinder, what kind of things were you imagining getting rid of?

I'd say anything that has low quality and that can't be repaired or harvested.
Just some examples:

- A burned out brand
- low-quality food items
- A 5% bow

I can't think of more examples at the moment, but the point is:
It isn't limited to tinder items only.

[tentacles]

24 minutes ago, Captain Obvious said:

Why? It's not like it's gonna save space on your hard drive!

It'd have exactly the same effect. Bury something somewhere and forget it even exists. It simply adds the option of digging it up again later, making the option actually useful functionally rather than just aesthetically.

But it would reduce the number of items that need to be processed: Whatever you place on the ground needs to be loaded from disk at some point if you move into the same area. And if you look at your "dust bin", the game will render/display these items even if you are 100% certain that you will have absolutely no more use for them.

Don't get me wrong, this issue isn't a game-breaking one. It's just a little annoying, that's all there is to it.

[Captain Obvious]

1 hour ago, tentacles said:

But it would reduce the number of items that need to be processed: Whatever you place on the ground needs to be loaded from disk at some point if you move into the same area. And if you look at your "dust bin", the game will render/display these items even if you are 100% certain that you will have absolutely no more use for them.

Don't get me wrong, this issue isn't a game-breaking one. It's just a little annoying, that's all there is to it.

I'm not a computer/programming expert but even if you had a hundred things buried that's still a small amount of information compared to the information contained in the rest of the region. For example, just consider how many sticks, clothes, food, bits of coal, drops of blood, footprints, not to mention all the animals, are being processed. A few buried items would be a drop in the ocean in comparison! So I shouldn't think it'd have a significant effect on performance!

Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong though.

[tentacles]

1 minute ago, Captain Obvious said:

Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong though.

I can't correct you, because the impact is indeed small; as long as your waste dump doesn't hold millions of items.

I think it is more a matter of good design / taste / immersion: A game that automatically removes whatever is dropped to the ground must provide some means to store items. TLD is of course no such game and as such, should give players some method to remove items themselves. Harvesting items is one way, but that doesn't make sense for each item (brands, etc.). So a basic delete option should be added to fill this gap.