Hallucinations

[Eames]

Something would cause it - maybe low condition, exhaustion, not enough sleep, food poisoning etc. Then you would start seeing things - animals, items, trees - that one moment are there, only to disappear later. Maybe day temporarily became darker or there would be post-processing effects: vignette, blur, bloom etc.

[Resethel]

I like it's exciting! That could add a lot of gameplay

Hallucinations may happen, not systematically, when:

• starving
• parched
• intoxicated by food ( you shouldn't have eat this odd-looking mushroom )
• exhausted
• If the character catches fever (because of hypothermia for exemple)
• When your morale is low, and the character develop some psychotic troubles, or just is depressed

 

The hallucinations by their nature could add a loooooot of things!

[Wastelander]

I'm all for this, but they should be a rather rare occurence - indredibly rare, to be precise. Otherwise people just get used to them and make fun of them. Think 'rare' as in 'Battlefield Hardline Troll Reloads' rare. But then, yeah - when you're starving, a lot of things start to look kind of tasty, and when your morale is low all kinds of things can happen.

[vancopower]

On 6.6.2016 at 8:03 PM, Resethel said:

I like it's exciting! That could add a lot of gameplay

Hallucinations may happen, not systematically, when:

• starving
• parched
• intoxicated by food ( you shouldn't have eat this odd-looking mushroom )
• exhausted
• If the character catches fever (because of hypothermia for exemple)
• When your morale is low, and the character develop some psychotic troubles, or just is depressed

 

The hallucinations by their nature could add a loooooot of things!

Or drink too much mushroom tea perhaps?  

[Tbone555]

man, im all for this. just imagine youve been running a high fever for days, and you wander through the mine to DP in an attempt to find medicine. out of the shadows a wolf or even a person or monster jumps at you from nowhere and grabs you.

the mines are scary enough without that lovely thought xD

[Rusty_Old_F250]

I'm in! +1

But I agree with wastelander, it needs to be very rare, enough to really mess with our heads when it happens. Suddenly, nowhere is safe, or is it? 

Sam

[MarrowStone]

This would be a very startling and unique mechanic. I'm all for it! But yes, it needs to be super rare. 

[InsaneWithAnger]

I think it is a very creative idea, but I'm not  convinced hallucinations would "fit" in TLD. Either they effect survival and are annoying when they happen ("that's a box you idiot, not a damn steak!" *Player proceeds to die from choking on cardboard*), or they don't affect survival and are useless to the gameplay experience. 

But provide me some more examples. I might be willing to change my mind. 

[Rusty_Old_F250]

Here's how I imagine one possible scenario going down:

Player reaches very low condition (<10%) trudging back toward shelter, wolf appears running toward player, player gets "attacked" and falls to the ground, blacks out. Wakes up a second later, no extra damage, no blood anywhere, no wolf tracks. Just silence. 

Sam

[MarrowStone]

How i envision it:

They are super rare, like 1 percent chance of experiencing it any time a condition applies.

Im not fond of the being attacked hallucination idea, but i do want them to induce a sense of dread or fear, not annoyance or confusion

Loneliness can cause a person to hear things that arent there

For example, they might hear singing/shouting in the wind

Or a chainsaw/gunshots in the distance

A car running with interior lights on.

Other, super rare occurrences could be fun:

Take the 30 foot bear you see somewhere near the homepage of this site, that would really be cool to "see" but only for it to dissapear a second later

 

[Axtos]

Don't forget verry huge shaddows under the ice.. :-)

[Wastelander]

@MarrowStone had some pretty solid ideas there, welcome to the forums while I'm at it!

What I would like to add would be persons from the characters past calling from somewhere (messing with any kind of surround sound) to 'come home'. Good ol' Will has a pretty established past on the wikis, don't know much about Dr. Greenwood, but still. This might be a bit tedious for Hinterland because they need to hire new voice actors and actresses, but it would be pretty damn amazing to suddenly hear Anna call out to Will to 'come home into the light' when at 10% condition or something like that.

[Eames]

Quote

they don't affect survival and are useless to the gameplay experience.

Right now TLD is heavy on post-processing: color correction, bloom, chromatic aberration, SSAO. Hallucinations could be purely cosmetic and non-intrusive: blur, desaturation, visual noise, vignettes, hue shift, kaleidoscope, FOV etc.

Or they could be audial: phantom footsteps, howls, gunshots, screams, talking, burning...

[MarrowStone]

14 minutes ago, Eames said:

Hallucinations could be purely cosmetic and non-intrusive: blur, desaturation, visual noise, vignettes, hue shift, kaleidoscope, FOV etc.

Or they could be audial: phantom footsteps, howls, gunshots, screams, talking, fire burning...

Exactly, Oooh another good idea is sometimes when dying of cold your hud will not show the freezing symbol anymore and show the warming up symbol, to give the illusion your player is feeling warmer. 

[Eames]

Quote

when dying of cold your hud will not show the freezing symbol anymore and show the warming up symbol, to give the illusion your player is feeling warmer. 

Calm your horses, Satan

[Wastelander]

Yeah, I'm all for the game straight-up lying to us. After all, our own worst enemy is our own mind - and our mind is the best and worst deceiver

[MarrowStone]

Here's a good link to see what sort of psychological phenomenons people dying of hypothermia have...

http://www.livescience.com/41730-hypothermia-terminal-burrowing-paradoxical-undressing.html

basically it describes that in end-stage hypothermia, humans have been known to feel extremely hot and undress. Our lil' bush pilot we play as in fact says, "Wait, I'm so cold I'm warming up again. "

Another thing we do when higher brain functions are shutting down from hypothermia is that we unconsciously and irrationally "burrow" as a result of some odd primitive hibernation instinct. Which means we find little nooks and crannies that aren't necessarily warm and just stuff ourselves there.

So, oddly enough, some victims of hypothermia are documented as being found dead, naked, and underneath furniture, or under logs, with a trail of clothes behind them.