Modifiable Houses: Indoor Fires and Lighting

[Celeblith]

I saw an earlier post that requested base-building as a new feature in the game. I can see this being cool, but I'd like to posit an alternative: simply put, added options for modifying houses, including indoor fires and placeable light sources.

TLD is a survival game in its purest form. With that in mind, full-blown base-building might be a little uncharacteristic of what TLD is all about: eking out an existence wherein merely surviving is thriving. To that end, I'd like to suggest adding the ability not to build houses, but to reasonably be able to modify existing structures. For example, I started a new survival game in Coastal Highway. I've established my base of operations on Jackrabbit Island (a temporary hunting camp/bunny mitten factory), and the biggest issues I've encountered have been light and fire. The house on Jackrabbit Island has no stove or fireplace, so I have no choice but to build my fires outside. You can imagine the impracticality of this: cooking food and boiling water now comes with an extra step and can only be done during certain times. Being able to build some sort of indoor fire receptacle (perhaps some sort of craftable, clay fireplace?) would A. make a lot of sense and B. be much more convenient. Obviously, this should come at the cost of a high craft time (maybe even one that requires multiple crafting sessions to complete?) and other expenses. Alternatively, how cool would it be to have a portable gas stove that runs on lamp oil or something? Those exist in real life and are close, personal friends of backpackers and tailgate-campers alike . . . so why not red-nosed, wolf-massacring PC survivors?

The second problem I've run into in my bunny gore dungeon has been lighting. My player character likes her late night snacks and the occasional soda splurge, but she's always getting lost in the small house or stepping on the drying guts I've strewn all over the place. Placeable light sources (and I don't mean expensive-to-burn and heavy-to-lug storm lanterns) would be a dream come true for my rabbit-slaughtering sadist of a survivor. These may include candles, electric lamps, etc. 

Other minor yet useful building-editing tricks and tools would be cool as well, and I'll leave it to other members of the community to build off this idea. Happy hunting 

[TheEldritchGod]

There already is RUST. And Unturned. And a thousand other games with buildable bases. No. Just No. Never a buildable base. Not in TLD. Not now, not ever. No No No No No No No NO.

However, that said, I like the idea of being able to modify the interior of existing housing structures. I'd like to be able to carry lamps and what not from one location to another to add lighting in one place. I don't want to chop up lamps for scrap. I want to collect them so during an aurora event my house lights up like a Christmas tree.

Hell. I want to collect every desk lamp, corner lamp, overhead light, and flashlight and stock the top of the lighthouse with them. (BTW, big miss on the developer's part. The lighthouse needs to shine in a steady beam during an aurora event.) The ability to transport electrical light sources from house to house would be great. As for long term light sources, the addition of a candle would make sense. Candles are just rendered fat, and we collect that as lamp oil.

Lamp oil could be "cooked" to make candles. Candles would be usable to light other sources and come with many different sizes. I would like to point out the existence of 7 day candles, for people who think that candles would not be practical for lighting purposes. I'm not suggesting such a thing, but a 24 hour candle would be nice. However, I would have the flame be rather fragile. For example, no candle could be lit outside. EVER. Any location where there is ANY windchill puts out candles. Also, if you carry a candle from one location to another, I would have the flame go out if you sprint while holding it. That will make moving lit candles around a very chancy affair and given how rare matches are, it'll make their use more of a pain in the butt.

[stratvox]

Just as a quick note on raw materials for candles; while having lamp oil come from fish oil makes sense, gathering animal fat makes more sense for candles, as you need a fat that is solid at room temperature to make candles, while lanterns require a fat that is liquid at room temperatures. Couple of interesting notes about that... as I understand it, bear fat is liquid at room temperatures, so could be usable for lamp oil, while deer, rabbit, and wolf fat is solid so could be the basis for crafting tallow candles. I'm not super solid on my knowledge of those things, so I could be wrong about the bear fat being liquid at typical room temperatures... plus of course room temperatures in TLD are not like room temperatures in a modern home, so...

This could be interesting from a visual perspective too... tallow candles smoke a LOT, so creating that in a fidelious way in the game could be challenging from the dev side but perhaps create some really interesting visual effects.

[Celeblith]

@stratvox The main reason I bring up candles is because of the live action short film for TLD, "Elegy." In it, a female character lights several candles on the dash of a car, presumably after being trapped their by weather or predators. I thought it'd make sense in-game, and I really like the notes and info you added. Great points about fat consistency!