suggestion Burn everything

[Brudaks]

The game currently models a reasonable situation for starting and sustaining a fire - you would want a starter, some tinder and some reasonable fuel. However, the game frequently puts us into situations where unreasonable fuels start to make sense - hence, my suggestion to enable burning everything that's remotely burnable.

For starters, I once froze to death due to lack of fuel while carrying a jerrycan with than 5 liters of oil/gasoline/whatever. Pouring gas into fire is likely to be a waste as it burns very quickly, but it will bring at least some heat if it's needed. In another case, I froze to death due to lack of tinder - after a couple failures in building a fire, finding a stick and making a tinder plug took just too long. Perhaps tinder should be optional when accelerant is used if you're okay with a penalty to success chance ? A book lying in a puddle of oil will start to burn when lit by a match.

But the main theme of this game is scarcity and desperation, and what could be a more thematic result than a blizzard that you survive at the cost of burning your only hatchet and bedroll? Many of the tools have significant amounts of wood in them - for example, the rifle may be tricky to dismantle it but just throwing it in a large enough fire (same conditions as coal?) should be comparable to a piece of cedar firewood and just leave some scrap metal behind.

Most things in this game seem burnable if you need heat. If you have a kilo of newspapers, they can be used as fuel. If you're freezing, setting that parka and other clothing on fire should be an option. Heck, even a box of crackers will give add some heat to an existing fire. Burn! Burn everything. Heat is life.

[alone sniper]

Hi !! @Brudaks !!

Welcome to forum !!! 

This suggestion is great !!! +1 !

[aurora]

At least harvesting a hatchet will result in wood. Don't know why you do not get wood when harvesting the rifle or a knife, maybe it's just not enough wood to be of any use ... 

[Lovehandel]

I have no problem with the way fire works right now, except when you first start a new game. 

 

It is no big deal for game veterans because we can head directly to some type of shelter if we choose, regardless which map we start on. But last night I started a new game and died because of bad RNG. Eight consecutive attempts to start a fire failed. I understand that this is bad luck and just restarted. New players may just say screw it. We want the game to be harsh, but we want new players to have a chance to survive long enough to be eaten by wolves  

 

I would like to see the random chance for fire starting success suspended until the second or third attempt at fire starting (pilgrm/voyager) to give new players a chance to survive the first day when the random start puts them at two hours of daylight left and a storm coming in. After that, they can die like the rest of us.

[LucidFugue]

Agreed on starting fires without tinder, and making more items burnable, including gasoline. The interface might need another revamp if that's the case, though. It would be problematic to have the 'add fuel'  list littered with most of your current inventory when in the majority of cases you only want to see wood. 

[Wastelander]

3 hours ago, LucidFugue said:

Agreed on starting fires without tinder, and making more items burnable, including gasoline. The interface might need another revamp if that's the case, though. It would be problematic to have the 'add fuel'  list littered with most of your current inventory when in the majority of cases you only want to see wood. 

Maybe have an additional button for "emergency fuels". If that happens, please put unread skillbooks in there as well. 

[aurora]

9 minutes ago, Wastelander said:

Maybe have an additional button for "emergency fuels". If that happens, please put unread skillbooks in there as well. 

Isn't this already possible? I think i burned a skillbook, i did not finish reading, by accident ...  

[Wastelander]

2 minutes ago, aurora said:

Isn't this already possible? I think i burned a skillbook, i did not finish reading, by accident ...  

Yes, and to prevent this I'd like them moved from fuels to emergency fuels  

[aurora]

Just now, Wastelander said:

Yes, and to prevent this I'd like them moved from fuels to emergency fuels  

Ok ... so i am not the only one who burned a book by accident 

[nicko]

i tend to agree if your fire is hot enough you should be able to burn pretty much anything that erm would burn.

As for those who burn a good book by mistake yes that can suck but you only tend to do it once , though saying that maybe a new audio warning of some sort might be cool, where you ask yourself. "do I really want to burn this book?".

As for moving the book it to a different menu not sure isn't it under logs/wood menu and wouldn't that mean having a another menu just for books which might suck when lighting fires. Less menus buttons the better sometimes. anyway off topic I guess this OP was about burning things. Fire bugs lol

[akodo1]

so I had started reading a book and I selected it to burn and it warned me 'you are not done researching, are you sure yo want to burn?' or some similar message.  Are you saying if I haven't started reading at all, this warning won't pop up?  Because if so that seems wrong.

But yes, I am a fan of being able to throw all sorts of stuff on the fire.  First is tinders, adding 1 minute burn time per tinder.  You really going to let your 2 stick fire burn out when you have 100 tinders in your pack?.  Anything that can be made into tinder also should be burnable.  As should cloth. and clothing items. and fuels.  

While technically burnable, I'd say no to having food, hatchet, and rifle be fuel options.

I am undecided on if rope should be fuel.

But honestly the whole fire thing is odd, the way temperature grows as you add fuel even if adding fuel just before the fire goes out, and adding fuel to a roaring fire adds just as much burn length as adding fuel to a small campfire.  Seems to me game should be set up so if you have 8 logs to last you through the night, it's wasteful to throw all 8 on the fire at once which would give a hot burning fire that then dwindles and goes out 4 hours later. You are better off putting on 2 to start, and waking up periodically to add a fresh log to get the fire to burn all night long and still probably have a couple logs left over.   But game says all-logs-now or logs-gradually-overnight = all the same.

[LucidFugue]

On 11/10/2016 at 9:28 PM, Wastelander said:

Maybe have an additional button for "emergency fuels". If that happens, please put unread skillbooks in there as well. 

I was thinking it would be better to ditch the menu driven interface for fires altogether. I'd prefer to have more first person presence work done on this. 

Right now if you have a lot of firewood, you stack it somewhere near the fireplace. You need to pick it up and put it in your backpack, then approach the fire and select it from the menu so it is taken from your backpack and added to the fire. 

What if instead you could pick individual items up from the world and hold them while walking about, much like the lantern at the moment. You would add fuel items to a fire this way, dropping logs or books or whatever onto the fire directly. 

One of the best games for first person presence is Fractional Games work - Amnesia and Soma. Just the level of interactivity there in terms of pulling and pushing objects in the world and moving stuff about. TLD is on a different engine and won't get to that level without a lot of work, but there is definitely a focus on removing menus that take you out of the game and keeping you in an uncluttered first person view as much as possible. 

I think this is in line with that vision. 

[togg]

Removing menus will take a looot of work. But I'm not saying it couldn't be cool.

+ 1 for 1minutes burning tinder, the other stuff no imho. It would make the game feel unclean unless they would really build a new mechanic for emergency fire, that by the way will never save you from anything. So I really don't know if it's worth it.

[MarrowStone]

I love the idea of menuless fire maitenance, maybe a placeholder before they work on first person presence for it is where we can right click the logs like we already can do and "place" them onto the fire.

Im up for adding tinder to the fire for +1 minute, and and using accelerant in place of tinder if your skill is high enough, books however should count as long lasting tinder after that.

Tools should be dismantled before burned though, i dont know howd you get your scrap metal back if you tossed it into the fire.

I probably wouldnt pour kerosene directly onto a burning fire... id soak cloth with it then toss it in to prevent it blowing me up.

Overall a great discussion with afew rough edges, but totally doable after theyre cleaned up!

[Mikhail_Reign]

33 minutes ago, MarrowStone said:

Tools should be dismantled before burned though, i dont know howd you get your scrap metal back if you tossed it into the fire.

...... Wait until the fire has burned out and its all thats left? Or just flick it out with ya boot or a stick or something. A camp fire isnt going to melt metal or anything. If you throw an axe into a fire, the handle would burn and the head would be fine. Maybe a bit heat treated, but put another handle on that head and it would be a fine axe again.

 

Gun parts might require some cleaning before you used them, but again the heat from a campfire is nothing for gun parts.

[MarrowStone]

45 minutes ago, Mikhail_Reign said:

...... Wait until the fire has burned out and its all thats left? Or just flick it out with ya boot or a stick or something. A camp fire isnt going to melt metal or anything. If you throw an axe into a fire, the handle would burn and the head would be fine. Maybe a bit heat treated, but put another handle on that head and it would be a fine axe again.

 

Gun parts might require some cleaning before you used them, but again the heat from a campfire is nothing for gun parts.

I meant for UI purposes sorry,

I know clearly well its feasable in real life Im just not sure how the devs would implement it in a simple way.

 

[Mikhail_Reign]

When the fire burns out, there is X scrap metal in the fire you can pick up?

[MarrowStone]

1 hour ago, Mikhail_Reign said:

When the fire burns out, there is X scrap metal in the fire you can pick up?

Will it spawn around the fire or would you "harvest" it from the wood pile?

Im saying if it can be done simply im all for it, so please dont feel threatened by my comments. 

[Mikhail_Reign]

Harvest the fire.

A: Harvesting a campfire removes it (solving a problem).
B: A harvested campfire which didn't have any scrap would normally give, lets say, charcoal which could be used for preserving fish, so it would be worth kicking out ya old fire anyway. Could be anything else. Coals for tinder, anything.

[MarrowStone]

2 hours ago, Mikhail_Reign said:

Harvest the fire.

A: Harvesting a campfire removes it (solving a problem).
B: A harvested campfire which didn't have any scrap would normally give, lets say, charcoal which could be used for preserving fish, so it would be worth kicking out ya old fire anyway. Could be anything else. Coals for tinder, anything.

There we go, Two Birds with one stone

[nicko]

Harvesting a campfire I think would solve many solutions. What resources you get for harvesting a fire, well I guess that is another topic.

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