Is 1 degree Celsius really that warm?

[ark1of712]

Hey Hinterland! Loving the new update!

Currently the game considers any temperature above 0 to be 'warm' and prevents you from becoming colder and actually heats you up. Obviously this isn't the real case, as you will still get hypothermia even when the temp is above that but still low. I know the science is a mess and there's going to be three hundred different opinions on what temperature the body starts to really slow down, but I mean, I shouldn't be able to hop and skip about infinitely as long as my outer body 'feels like' 1 degree celsius. That's still really cold! Any plans on addressing this? Or maybe I'm nuts and as long as you have sufficient caloric store and it is above freezing you can actually function fine. Maybe nobody cares. Maybe aliens made the pyramids.

 

[TWM]

Problem is gameplay.

Certainly in the beginning, you're trying to get indoors for protection and warmth. Most of the houses have no stoves, so you're at a minus 5° Celsius to start with, but considering  your clothing is crappy, so if they'd put the bar for cold/warm at about 17° or 18° Celsius, you'd be in trouble and risking hypothermia all the time, since such temperatures will not be attainable until you've gathered just about all of the better clothes in the game.

So, okay, they could mend that by giving every cabin and hut a stove, but then still you'd face problems, since you don't have an axe at the beginning of the game, so you'd have to forage for sticks, which would send you out in the freezing cold for an extended period of time again.

Another factor is the developers haven't implemented a mechanic for body heat intensifying underneath loads of clothing, it's just a flat bonus which of course doesn't work like that in real life either. If they were to implement it, it would require a lot of extra programming, and it would force players to switch in and out of clothing all the time, which doesn't sound like fun.

So for those two reasons combined, and to keep the game mechanic as simple as possible, this seems like a fair compromise. Sure it's far from realistic, but so is the lack of sweating (and thus risking hypothermia from getting clammy underneath your clothing), or the lack of frostbite, etcetera.

 

[ark1of712]

Extra programming, yeah absolutely, but I don't think that's an obstacle to the hinterland team, their game is still in early access and there's room for more balance, additions, and improvements. Plus would it really be going out of their way to add more realism vis a vis sweating, clothing, hypothermia? That seems like the perfect direction to go in for a survival game. Fingers crossed.

 

[Dirmagnos]

That +1, were dealing with generalization, a median in terms of temperatures, since otherwise devs would have to put a lot more work into whole body temp regulation.

And that +1 simply represents difference between "cold" and "warm" not actual ambient temperature feeling. Otherwise game would be unsurvivable, with normal body temperature being around 37 degrees, even 15 degrees of ambient temperature will take person really close to hypothermia threshold, since body will continuously lose heat. At the same time movement would realistically give player considerably greater warmth boost and using bed/sleeping bag would give a lot more bonus than 3-4 degrees, since it would cut down body heat loss significantly, allowing person to warm up himself due to warm air circulation in semi-closed system.

Hell, even hunger levels should otherwise affect "feels like" status. Well fed person expels far more body heat than constantly starving one.

[strigon]

It's just for simplicity's sake. Having it centred around 0 allows you to understand at a glance exactly how fast you'll lose or gain heat. Sure, if it feels like 1 degree Celsius, that's still cold enough to kill you easily in real life, but in truth the numbers don't actually matter. The only thing that matters is what the numbers mean for you - and the numbers are designed in such a way that their meaning is easily understood.

[TROY]

I'm sorry, but no guys. 1 degree celsius isnt going to kill you and isnt really cold. not unless you are naked or wet or both. A marginally well dressed person could easily spend all day outdoors at that temperature without even being at risk for frostbite, let alone hypothermia.  But @strigon is correct about 0 being the center to make it easy to understand. The game mechanic can't truly account for all the factors that go into whether you feel warm, or cold but the way hinterland has it set up, while not true to life, is fair, and challenging at the same time.  The system does a good job of simulating a general level of comfort in regards to warmth without being complicated or requiring actual knowledge or skill in how to manage body temperature in cold weather.  

[ark1of712]

I'm getting that it would be a departure to implement it, but again, I don't see that as too much of an issue. It would make having the proper clothing and fire/heat all the more important. It seems like cold is too easy of an issue to avoid as it is, would ramping it up be so bad? @Troy I agree with the proper clothing 1 degree is pretty manageable, but I mean, you shouldn't warm up super fast at 1 degree like you do currently I feel.

[AHGoodwin]

I'm with TROY on this one. That really isn't all that cold. My husband wears shorts down to a bit below that. Granted you're being active, that's basically t-shirt weather. You want cold, try -30 with an additional 10-20 degree wind chill. That's when you can get frostbite in just a few minutes unprotected.

[Jason C Child]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothermia

 

Quote

Hypothermia is defined as a body core temperature below 35.0 °C (95.0 °F). Symptoms depend on the temperature. In mild hypothermia there is shivering and mental confusion. In moderate hypothermia shivering stops and confusion increases. In severe hypothermia there may be paradoxical undressing, in which a person removes his or her clothing, as well as an increased risk of the heart stopping.

 

[King.Of.Print]

I once got a Feels like = 51 celsius in game.
now, I am a guy who don't care much about heat, I just play along. in fact I think that 20 is really cold, and 28 is not hot, only something above 38 is hot.
so, I don't complain if feels like 40, yes it bother me, but is a minor thing and complain about would bother me more.
however once I was complain about how hot was, guest what? in real life a feels like above 50 celsius is enough to make me complain about heat.
but in TLD that is no enough...
when a saw the number, I was "how you withstands this?"

BTW, from what a know, about 25 celsius is the low you can get human core temperature before death.

P.S.: well, a house in the winter, without active for days, should get cold as the outside... or at least very close.
yes is warmer, because you don't have wind to "take away" your heat, but it should be almost cold as the outdoors.

[continuity]

They could replace the "feels like" temperature with an info graphic, something just to show if you are losing or gaining body heat and at what rate, I think Cryostasis had something like that.  If you want to know the actual temperature and wind chill you should need some basic meteorology gear like a thermometer and wind gauge.

Although really you don't need to know the actual temperature... look outside, is it a blizzard? if yes, then its too cold, if no, then go see how it feels.

[Dirmagnos]

14 hours ago, continuity said:

They could replace the "feels like" temperature with an info graphic, something just to show if you are losing or gaining body heat and at what rate, I think Cryostasis had something like that.  If you want to know the actual temperature and wind chill you should need some basic meteorology gear like a thermometer and wind gauge.

Although really you don't need to know the actual temperature... look outside, is it a blizzard? if yes, then its too cold, if no, then go see how it feels.

Why ? Whole point of "feels like" is to show how it... feels like. If it feels cold it feels cold, if its warm, then its warm. I dont need graphs or meteorology gear to tell me that im cold. Since game cannon present directly feel, then simple numerical values is as good as it will get(maybe color-coded stripes would be better, but it would present problems for color-blinded people when playing).

[continuity]

4 hours ago, Dirmagnos said:

Why ? Whole point of "feels like" is to show how it... feels like. If it feels cold it feels cold, if its warm, then its warm. I dont need graphs or meteorology gear to tell me that im cold. Since game cannon present directly feel, then simple numerical values is as good as it will get(maybe color-coded stripes would be better, but it would present problems for color-blinded people when playing).

OK aside from the fact that we have precise values for actual temperature, wind chill, and clothing bonuses, which is totally unrealistic, no one walks outside and thinks to themselves "hmm, it feels precisely like -14c right now".  And make no mistake this is a precise figure thats calculated from the factors mentioned.

You're right, you don't need meteorology gear to tell you if you're cold, but by the exact same token you don't need an exact figure to tell you you're cold either.

[cekivi]

Personally, I'm happy with the current system for the reasons @Dirmagnos outlined. It's not perfect but it's simple and works. Many more important things to fix first

[Dirmagnos]

2 hours ago, continuity said:

OK aside from the fact that we have precise values for actual temperature, wind chill, and clothing bonuses, which is totally unrealistic, no one walks outside and thinks to themselves "hmm, it feels precisely like -14c right now".  And make no mistake this is a precise figure thats calculated from the factors mentioned.

You're right, you don't need meteorology gear to tell you if you're cold, but by the exact same token you don't need an exact figure to tell you you're cold either.

And how exactly would you implement it better, so that it wouldnt have exact values ? "I feel like its about approximately between -15 and -20 degrees celsius" ? I dont think its looks/sounds better.

[continuity]

2 hours ago, cekivi said:

Personally, I'm happy with the current system for the reasons @Dirmagnos outlined. It's not perfect but it's simple and works. Many more important things to fix first

You're right, its far from a priority, but I just find it odd to have exact figures like that, same goes for the calorie store figure. They actually seem somewhat redundant anyway as you already have the information in the bars above, plus voice acting ques.

I actually think just taking out the "feels like" temperature and calorie store figure altogether wouldn't be a big loss.  The way it is at the moment feels a little like debug mode, which I guess makes sense for an alpha build.

[cekivi]

However if you took the ambient "feels like" temperature out completely (with nothing to replace it) you would quickly run into the problem of how to convey to the player whether they're freezing, warming up, or staying the same temp.

 

[continuity]

6 minutes ago, cekivi said:

However if you took the ambient "feels like" temperature out completely (with nothing to replace it) you would quickly run into the problem of how to convey to the player whether they're freezing, warming up, or staying the same temp.

 

No, the bar already shows you how your temperature is changing and how fast, and it even tells you in words whether you feel, warm, chilled, freezing.  Plus add in the voice acting queues I mentioned and I think you're pretty much covered.

[cekivi]

Ah, I had misinterpreted your comment as removal of all temperature dependent UI features. I still would prefer the "feels like" temperature though since those change arrows are very granular. Each arrow encompass a wide temperature range so it's hard to know whether you just need better socks to be warm or actually retreat inside and light a fire. The "cold", "freezing", etc. are also status indicators and are not indicative of the current temperature (e.g. you'll be "freezing" after a day outside at -1 or in a few minutes at -30). If the specific temperature was replaced with an icon/descriptor showing deathly/freezing/cold/tepid/warm/hot than I would be more accepting of a new temperature system.

The other problem though is losing the specific "feels like" temperature would make it more difficult to assess clothing. Having a bunch of temperature values on clothing with no context for how they apply to the game world would be rather disorientating.

[Dirmagnos]

13 hours ago, continuity said:

No, the bar already shows you how your temperature is changing and how fast, and it even tells you in words whether you feel, warm, chilled, freezing.  Plus add in the voice acting queues I mentioned and I think you're pretty much covered.

Strongly disagree. Again, irl player can tell how cold do he feel, removing values is like making player with brain damage incapable feeling pain. Having player comments is actually worse than having numbers, since then i would be able to ascertain this condition based on verbal comments of my protagonist. Its weird, like assessing my core temperature solely by using thermometer.

Next youl propose screen starting to freeze on the edges when player start to get colder. Seriously, hands off numerical values.

[continuity]

16 hours ago, cekivi said:

The other problem though is losing the specific "feels like" temperature would make it more difficult to assess clothing. Having a bunch of temperature values on clothing with no context for how they apply to the game world would be rather disorientating.

I'm actually in favour of removing temperature values on clothing too. do your clothes IRL have temperature values on them? i'd suggest just some descriptors like wind proof, heavy/light/medium, plus a simple green or red indicatior to show if its an improvement on what you're wearing or not.

[cekivi]

21 minutes ago, continuity said:

I'm actually in favour of removing temperature values on clothing too. do your clothes IRL have temperature values on them? i'd suggest just some descriptors like wind proof, heavy/light/medium, plus a simple green or red indicatior to show if its an improvement on what you're wearing or not.

Actually some of them did when I bought them

The problem with that system is that it again removes all context for the player as to what's going on in the game world. In real life, I could see the threadbare sections of a coat or the hole in my jeans and know it's not working as intended. I could also feel the wind getting into my coat and the snow on my bare leg. However, all that context is lost in the game. "Red" can mean anything from 1-30% condition. Does this mean the coat is now useless? Is it giving me any heat? How much do I need to repair it to get it to work? Is it worth repairing? All things that you can tell at a glance with a real wold item but can't in game. Just like all clothes magically fit the player I'm all for specific temperature values. They may be gamey but it allows the player to make informed decisions: something I'm always in favour of.

[Dirmagnos]

20 hours ago, continuity said:

I'm actually in favour of removing temperature values on clothing too. do your clothes IRL have temperature values on them? i'd suggest just some descriptors like wind proof, heavy/light/medium, plus a simple green or red indicatior to show if its an improvement on what you're wearing or not.

Some do, as mentioned. But generally when i look at how cold it is outside, then i put on appropriate clothing. So for all intentions and purposes they could as easy, at least for me, to have temperature tags on all of them. Same with singular pieces, when its colder i put coat on, when its not, i wont.