(Never) Losing your journal (again).

[Hatchet]

For the people who write in their journal on a regular basis i think it can hurt a lot if that person meets his or her demise and looses everything written in the journal.
It hasn't happened to me yet as i haven't died nor got my saves erased but i do take a lot of risks in TLD, sometimes my friends shout at me; 'WHAT ARE YOU DOING MAN???' when their nerves can't handle the stuff i do but i always say, if i die, i die. 
But... ever since we had the addition of the journal i don't want to loose everything that i wrote in there, ever.
So here's my suggestion;

Once a player dies, on the next playthrough (only on the same difficulty setting) the player can come across his or her own corpse, this corpse won't be an extra corpse to loot, nor will it have any items the player had (besides the journal) on him/her.
The corpse will replace a (nearest) corpse that would spawn in the vicinity where the player died, and it will have the random generated items (or none) on the corpse along with a few potential item spawns next to the corpse.
So if for instance the player dies near 'The Tooth' in Coastal highway, then the corpse from 'The Tooth' will be transported to the area where the player has died, every item that was on, or laying next to said corpse will also be on the player's corpse along with his/her journal.

Perhaps it would be possible to write in the same journal, in a different 'chapter' or the journal would be considered an item and could be read but details like calories burned, places visited, etc... wouldn't be viewable.
Also, your save wouldn't be erased when you died, you would simply have to start a new game on the same save so you could get your journal(s) back.
I say journals because if the player dies a second (third, and so on) time while carrying the other journal(s) (if this would be a thing but the player would not be able to write in the same journal) you would have a corpse with multiple journals.

Let me know what you guys think!
 

[Patrick Carlson]

Hey Hatchet, thanks for your thoughts on this. Giving the journal a more permanent life of its own, even after a character dies, has come up a lot in the community since the feature's introduction. I know I get attached to mine when I play, although I always try to save some screenshots of the memorable days. 

Without being able to speak to its feasibility, your suggestion is certainly a creative one. Do you feel like including the items on the corpse would be a necessity for your approach? What if there were a small chance wolves would have scavenged the body and destroyed your journal if you didn't find it within a certain number of days in your next game? Just thinking through your ideas here.

Thanks again,

--Patrick

[Hatchet]

I also had that idea that wolves could scavenge the corpse, but then again if the player would be too late the journal would be gone and that would stink, and if the players know that the corpse can dissapear, if they want to get their journal back, the first thing they should always do is get towards their corpse ASAP, and that's too liniar for this game if you ask me, would be nicer if players had all the time in the world to retrieve their journal

The items on the corpse would be the same items on the corpse that would be replaced, so no extra items or no fewer items, just as many, or none at all as on stalker mode you rarely find anything on a corpse, atleast i don't
So if for instance the corpse that would be replaced with your corpse would have a rifle laying next to it and a soda on the corpse then your corpse would have a rifle next to it and a soda on it and also your journal, but the corpse that was replaced would no longer be there.
Any items the player had on him/her when they died should not be on their corpse to prevent exploits.

Also to prevent players exploiting this mechanic, having an extra "container" to store things in if a player would die in a certain spot they want to die in, players would need to be alive for atleast 14 days before they could "retrieve" their own corpse and journal, but then there would be the issue of not being able to write in the same journal, which can also be fixed by letting players copy their current journal to the journal they retrieved from their corpse.

[Dirmagnos]

18 hours ago, Hatchet said:

Also to prevent players exploiting this mechanic, having an extra "container" to store things in if a player would die in a certain spot they want to die in, players would need to be alive for atleast 14 days before they could "retrieve" their own corpse and journal, but then there would be the issue of not being able to write in the same journal, which can also be fixed by letting players copy their current journal to the journal they retrieved from their corpse.

Among other things that i had to extend gaming world, without adding new stuff/maps was an idea that strong storms/blizzards can change landscape(altho it would be completely rng for it to happen), more notable by covering old corpses/containers/items and possibly uncovering new ones, or "bringing in" new stuff, like spawning random items in random locations all over the maps.

[illanthropist]

I don't use the journal because of it's temporary nature, that and if I want a permanent record it involves flicking through pages and taking screenshots.

Ideally I'd like to see it saved in an epub format, I assume being HTML based it would be easier than PDF to export and doesn't has licensing requirements.  Though I have no idea how this would port to consoles.

In hindsight it might have also been nice to apply the same epub technology to books and newspapers found in game, loot one, read it to learn survival/crafting skills, say a book on herbal medicine or other royalty free purely for entertainment purposes that are burnt once perused, not that I condone book burning on a regular basis!

Could have made a nice alternative timesink sitting out a blizzard.

 

 

 

[bethany]

To add a quick note to Patrick's comment, the desire to relive some of your more memorable experiences is certainly one we understand and something we'll be exploring more options for in the future.

I do agree that your idea is quite interesting! Thanks for sharing it with us.

[Tbone555]

I'll admit, completely losing my first journal turned me off to the whole idea. I was so pumped when I saw that you can make your own entries, it's such a cool idea, especially for the role play aspect, and a pretty good way to kill time when you're just waiting to warm up, staring at a fire.

but then I died. Completely lost it, no way to save it. And since then, I haven't been able to bring myself to start another journal cause I know I'm just gonna lose it in the end.

[SteveP]

On 2016-02-28 at 9:49 AM, illanthropist said:

I don't use the journal because of it's temporary nature, that and if I want a permanent record it involves flicking through pages and taking screenshots.

Ideally I'd like to see it saved in an epub format, I assume being HTML based it would be easier than PDF to export and doesn't has licensing requirements.  Though I have no idea how this would port to consoles.

In hindsight it might have also been nice to apply the same epub technology to books and newspapers found in game, loot one, read it to learn survival/crafting skills, say a book on herbal medicine or other royalty free purely for entertainment purposes that are burnt once perused, not that I condone book burning on a regular basis!

Could have made a nice alternative timesink sitting out a blizzard.

 

PDF is proprietary and subject to backwards compatibility issues and cross platform issues. EPUB is a more open technology without DRM although Adobe can add DRM management to their product. Proprietary products can be a real thorny issue. EPUB could be problematic with XBox and so perhaps others with more knowledge could comment. This has potential since we could include truly useful information on forging and flint knapping and game calls and hunting tactics. Another value added feature.

Wikipedia comparison of E-Book formats - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats#EPUB

Apparently there is potential support for EPUB on XBox but I can't be sure about this. At the very least, I think there could be open source tools for EPUB that could be licensed from Linux community perhaps. Needs more research.

[Jolan]

On 2/27/2016 at 0:24 PM, Hatchet said:

Once a player dies, on the next playthrough (only on the same difficulty setting) the player can come across his or her own corpse, this corpse won't be an extra corpse to loot, nor will it have any items the player had (besides the journal) on him/her.
The corpse will replace a (nearest) corpse that would spawn in the vicinity where the player died, and it will have the random generated items (or none) on the corpse along with a few potential item spawns next to the corpse.
So if for instance the player dies near 'The Tooth' in Coastal highway, then the corpse from 'The Tooth' will be transported to the area where the player has died, every item that was on, or laying next to said corpse will also be on the player's corpse along with his/her journal.

Perhaps it would be possible to write in the same journal, in a different 'chapter' or the journal would be considered an item and could be read but details like calories burned, places visited, etc... wouldn't be viewable.
Also, your save wouldn't be erased when you died, you would simply have to start a new game on the same save so you could get your journal(s) back.
I say journals because if the player dies a second (third, and so on) time while carrying the other journal(s) (if this would be a thing but the player would not be able to write in the same journal) you would have a corpse with multiple journals.

Let me know what you guys think!
 

this would be cool!  I would be happy though if I could just read the details of a run including journal rather than having it all go poof!  But it would be kind of cool if you found your own jouranal.

 

[Seshins]

Ive only just started to use the journal (day 104) and im really excited to relieve the story.....until i found it the journal is gone when the character is gone.

 

Would love to be able to export it to epub or some format. Would make a great section of the forum for people to post up their storys.

[Skitfaced]

this definitly needs to be a poll post

(double thumbs up idea)

[Hatchet]

On 28-2-2016 at 7:44 PM, Bethany Williams said:

To add a quick note to Patrick's comment, the desire to relive some of your more memorable experiences is certainly one we understand and something we'll be exploring more options for in the future.

I do agree that your idea is quite interesting! Thanks for sharing it with us.

I am glad to hear that, you guys take literacy in a serious way
Thanks for showing so much interest guys, loving it!
What exactly do you mean Skit? Pro/contra options?

[Skitfaced]

On 3/12/2016 at 7:12 AM, Hatchet said:

I am glad to hear that, you guys take literacy in a serious way
Thanks for showing so much interest guys, loving it!
What exactly do you mean Skit? Pro/contra options?

I originally intended to rant about different ways to find the journal that would make a good poll. Finding not only your own journals from corpses but finding other randomly generated journals from the corpses such as "left salty crackers on the top shelf in the fishing hut" or directions to a cache. Or possibly linking to the spawns of bunkers. Anything that somebody would jot down in their journal that they'd need in case of emergency. Or having it so that dying in a certain location would spawn a corpse in that same map in a new save. But only give that spawn a chance of 10% or 30%. Lottery is a good game mechanic to implement. I thought of the idea when I saw that paper in the mountaineers hut in timberwolf. I wanted to say that having a poll for different ideas of the journal spawn mechanic. Message me about it if you want to collab-brainstorm 

[June]

How about a simple button on your "game over" screen when you die, like VIEW YOUR JOURNAL or something? Then you could just copy paste memorable entries. 

[Hatchet]

On 17-3-2016 at 11:55 AM, Skitfaced said:

I originally intended to rant about different ways to find the journal that would make a good poll. Finding not only your own journals from corpses but finding other randomly generated journals from the corpses such as "left salty crackers on the top shelf in the fishing hut" or directions to a cache. Or possibly linking to the spawns of bunkers. Anything that somebody would jot down in their journal that they'd need in case of emergency. Or having it so that dying in a certain location would spawn a corpse in that same map in a new save. But only give that spawn a chance of 10% or 30%. Lottery is a good game mechanic to implement. I thought of the idea when I saw that paper in the mountaineers hut in timberwolf. I wanted to say that having a poll for different ideas of the journal spawn mechanic. Message me about it if you want to collab-brainstorm 

Excellent take on the whole journal thing, lots of creative minds here
Can"t make my post too long, have little time at the moment i'll check back when i do have time.

[SEAplane]

The journal, much like the in game climber note, adds so much depth.  Being able to find your journal or play back as a high level 

documentary would be interesting.  Inserting some of the entries as npc text or dialog would be as well.  

I agree investing in a journal and then losing it is hard.

 

+1 on the ideas of location and recovery.