Snow As Drinking Water Ideas

[robdoar]

Once the melting vessel is in place, I have a couple ideas about how to handle the snow, and the water / snow mechanics.

1. Yield - Snow is mostly air, it takes anywhere from 5-20 gallons of snow to get a gallon of water. I know collecting water is forthcoming, but if collecting snow is also forthcoming, this should be reflected.

2. Melt the snow (not boil)

Since snow is essentially distilled water, boiling is not typically necessary, but recommended as it can be contaminated by animals. If you wanted to be through, you could boil it after melting, using more resources.

3. Eating snow

If a person loses their melting vessel, or it decayed, a challenging option to add would be the ability to eat snow. This could coincide with a sharp calorie loss, but if a person needs to pick that in order to not die of thirst, it may buy them enough time.

[Raphael van Lierop]

Re: #3 -- it would also result in a sharp increase in Freezing level.

Some of these ideas become interface challenges. For example, does "Eat Snow" become a button you have to press?

Re: #2 -- no sense in disinguishing between melting and boiling for the purposes of the game, since there's an accelerated clock.

Re: #1 -- this is accounted for in the amount of time it takes to melt the snow. We won't be collecting snow as a discrete action.

One of my rules is no pointless busy work. Where it's relevant to the amount of time or energy it takes to accomplish something, it's reflected in the "cost" in those areas.

[Guest Alan Lawrance]

Re: #2... just to clarify the "accelerated clock" thing... we speed up time during certain actions (sleep being the most obvious), but we do it for cooking, boiling, crafting, foraging, etc. I wonder if we need to make this more obvious, like actually showing the time, which would be clearly moving faster.

I think Rob does have a point about Melting taking less time -- so you could melt snow faster than boiling it... thus getting to drinkable (but not necessarily safe) water sooner. Or if your first was dying and you only had time for melting. Might be too much of an edge case to be important, but I do see the relevance of the distinction.

[Bill Tarling]

Re: #2... just to clarify the "accelerated clock" thing... we speed up time during certain actions (sleep being the most obvious), but we do it for cooking, boiling, crafting, foraging, etc. I wonder if we need to make this more obvious, like actually showing the time, which would be clearly moving faster.

I guess that's one of those 'discovery' or Ah-ha moments...

I don't know why I never noticed [or realized] it also affected the game accelerated time -- I probably should have clued in to the connection. Maybe it's because during fire/burning accelerated time the screen stays focused on the fire image [but I haven't noticed the background light changing].

Does normal time also accelerate during fire building time? (I'm assuming it does now).

NOTE: I just started the game and stood there -- I can now see the shadows move [if there's clear sky] according to the time of day passing -- it was also the first time I realized the trees actually sway a little].

When doing time accelerated tasks, that may be the time to include some sort of relevant actual clock time passing notice.

[Raphael van Lierop]

If you look, you'll notice that the amount of "burning time" left on a given fire is used up at an accelerated rate when you cook or boil water.

There are many, many ideas for how to improve many of these UI elements which I hope we can implement in the coming weeks/months. That'll include how we communicate passage of time.

I think Rob does have a point about Melting taking less time -- so you could melt snow faster than boiling it... thus getting to drinkable (but not necessarily safe) water sooner. Or if your first was dying and you only had time for melting. Might be too much of an edge case to be important, but I do see the relevance of the distinction.

I think there is indeed a valid distinction there. My point is with an accelerated clock, the delta between melting and boiling is small enough that it is most likely meaningless. If the clock acceleration were to change and you had to "experience" the time difference in real-time (or close to real-time), then yes it would make sense to distinguish between this.

It speaks to a larger question about how we handle tasks that require a "passage of time". The current way of handling it means you spend the resources but don't have to spend your actual time waiting for the thing to be done. This is, for example, in contrast to many games with time-based actions (like long build times for tech tree items in a game like Clash of Clans for example) where you literally have to wait for X minutes of time to pass before the task is finished.

I personally don't see the value of waiting real minutes (you see it F2P because they want you to spend money to skip the waiting period).

[robdoar]

Dear Lord, I hope not to have a 1:1 passage for passing time with mundane tasks.

Raph, please note that my ideas are not out of any displeasure with the current system, but rather ideas to enhance the simulation, from my humble perspective as a survival instructor. If 0 of my ideas ever get implemented, I have no problem with that. Raph and Alan have forgotten more about creating games then I will ever know.

I know my world, and I have zero doubt that Raph and Alan know theirs.

[Raphael van Lierop]

Please, keep the ideas coming! Even if we can't implement them as suggested, they can often spark other thinking which leads to other great stuff.

(Aside: I can't find the thread where this was mentioned, but someone -- might have been you, Rob -- mentioned that when you "take a drink", you are automatically satiated, and that this offers less granularity than eating, where each food item has different caloric value. In actual fact, when you take a drink, you currently drink up whatever amount of stored water that is needed to satisfy your thirst fully, provided you have enough water to do so. If you do not, you will only drink the water you have, and it will satisfy a % of your current "Thirst". We could potentially add the ability to select how many mL/oz of water you want to drink at any given time...might be a good wishlist item.

As a general note that level of granularity in the simulation is all possible, but introduces several interface challenges that I suspect we'll have to tackle sooner or later...)

[robdoar]

I think Rob does have a point about Melting taking less time -- so you could melt snow faster than boiling it... thus getting to drinkable (but not necessarily safe) water sooner. Or if your first was dying and you only had time for melting. Might be too much of an edge case to be important, but I do see the relevance of the distinction.

That is my line on thinking on that one.

For Example:

Melt Snow, 4 Liters (yes I picked liters for you guys) 30 mins, 15% risk of infection

Boil Snow, 4 Liters 1 hour, 0% risk

I think this adds an interesting decision for players to make, and and something they may regret. Do you go the safe route and use more time and resources, or do you risk it to save your time and resources?

That's a persistent theme I see with many of my students. You have the leap first, and hope for the best type, and the scout out every route before deciding type. Decisions have consequences

[Raphael van Lierop]

Well, we actually already have the ability to do this in the game as it is currently set up.

If you look at the interface, there are two options: Melt Snow, Boil Water.

The Boil Water interface is currently intended for purification of non-potable (or questionable) water sources. (At the moment we don't have any water sources besides melted snow so the system is moot; the intention has always been to have sources of water that might be more questionable; ex. pipes in the dam that may or may not have potable water...you want to drink it without boiling it first? Take your chances with dysentery).

Currently Snow Melting automatically becomes Potable. We can easily make it Non-Potable (or ???) so there is a chance factor involved.

If you want to remove risk, you can spend the resources to Boil the water you just melted.

So yeah, we can do this right now. Would be a simple change. And it's directly in line with the Water resource design (where many of your potential sources are questionable). We just haven't gotten around to fully implementing it yet.

[Raphael van Lierop]

BTW -- before you ask -- Water Purification tabs are also part of the design. A resource you can find in the world that saves you time (faster than boiling) and can be used without the benefit of a fire. Again, all planned, not implemented (yet).