Harvesting wood considering the near surroundings

[John Dow]

Another thing I missed so far, even I'm not sure if it's implemented yet or not.

Harvesting wood should take more relation to the surrounding area one is within.

I once needed tinder so badly, I even tried to stand near the armchair, near dead woods, or in the long grass near the lakes to get some tinder, but I couldn't harvest it there.

I think it would be nice to take the surroundings more into consideration for what kind of wood you will get.

Same of course for all the different sorts of wood...

Regards,

John

[levism84]

Not a bad idea, since they already do something similar with harvesting outside verses harvesting inside. The only problem from a programming point of view is it is much easier to have two pools to generate wood from (outside and inside) than it is to have hundreds if not thousands of pools to generate from (one for each "area" of outside). Those numbers have to be tracked somehow and right now they are more than likely being tracked using the base map.

That being said, perhaps there is a middle ground.

We know from the game's mechanics that audio files can be associated with terrain (the sound of trekking through snow, the sound of walking on the frozen lake), so it is reasonable to assume these pools could be associated with a limited area of terrain as well. For the sake of explanation, let us assume there are lightly wooded areas (the frozen lake), moderately wooded areas (clearings surrounded by woods), and heavily wooded areas (areas within three or more trees). The designers could spend the man hours to develop three outdoor "pools" to draw wood generation when harvesting from and associate the terrain of the map with one of the aforementioned levels of wood abundance. If they did, there would be more variation based on location to harvesting success or failure rates.

Even more streamlined would be to designate areas where three or more trees are within a certain radius of each other as "heavily wooded" and grant a bonus on the normal map's harvesting success rates.

[gwishades]

+1 surely something can be done, and not being to complicated.

[Trandor]

+1 I like the idea levism84 proposes.

Although I have to say, I never had much trouble gathering wood. Just don't go out in the middle of a blizzard or at night and you'll find plenty of wood.

[Muddi]

I think the system should be completely removed.

It is a survival game.

Let the player gather wood by themselve.

I don't see the point of that mechanic.

[Trandor]

well I quite like having this option, but foraging for wood manually would also be great. like when you have to go somewhere anyway and can grab a couple of logs on the way, that'd be great. maybe leave both options in so players can choose whichever option suits them better.

[gwishades]

+1 sounds great keep both!

[elloco999]

The problem is how are you going to forage for wood yourself? Would there be wood lying around on the ground that you can pick up? That would not be too hard to implement. But realistically, wood that's been lying in the snow would be soaking wet. So you'd need to gather dead wood that is hanging in the trees, or break off dead branches still attached to trees, or chop/ break down a dead standing tree. All of those need to be designed and developed and would take a good deal of time.

I did see someone mention that after a storm, there should be wood lying around under the trees. I do like that idea. These dead branches would break off during the storm. They would be dry enough for some time to use as firewood, so it is realistic. And after some time they could disappear (been snowed under). But you'd still need the current foraging system as well.

[Trandor]

true. I was also thinking about that. I was also thinking about not cluttering the world map. But the code for spawning and despawning items out of range is very clean and efficient, so that would not be a problem imo.

[levism84]

I think allowing for both types of foraging is a good idea, but I'd honestly be a fan of finding wood lying around as opposed to the automatic forage option (so long as wood was readily available to be foraged). I believe I understand why the forage wood option was originally implemented, as a mechanic for supplying the player with necessary resources at the expense of calories and condition but without subjecting them to hours of searching for wood. In addition, the current time mechanic wouldn't not allow for extensive foraging.

[elloco999]

Yeah, looking in the woods for 3 hours (in game time) to find just 3-4 pieces of wood and maybe a few tinder plugs is not really my idea of fun. Maybe the first few times, yes, but after that it will get old pretty quick.

On the other hand, like @Trandor said, it makes sense if you're walking to some place through the woods it would make sense that you'd find some firewood and take it with you, wouldn't it?