Changes to the forge

[Raphael van Lierop]

32 minutes ago, Tbone555 said:

Haha I can't count how many sandboxes I kissed goodbye due to spidermanning on Timberwolf mtn! Or just generally getting bored and trying to break the game. I've gotten into so many areas I wasn't supposed to be in haha! That's typically how I approach videogames. If there's something that the devs obviously don't want me to do, I do everything in my power to overcome that and do it anyway, even if I completely break it in the process... Maybe I should apply as a tester somewhere

As long as you don't mind getting stuck and you don't blame us when you do, spiderman away!

[Raphael van Lierop]

51 minutes ago, Pillock said:

While you're here, should we be able to climb the 'short climbable sections' while we have a sprain? Because I have been doing this in my current game on Hushed River Valley. It's confusing because the first mission in Wintermute has you trapped at the bottom of one of these until you heal your wrist?

I'll have to check on that. I'd have thought a wrist sprain would prevent the short climbs but it might have been overlooked somewhere.

[Tbone555]

2 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

As long as you don't mind getting stuck and you don't blame us when you do, spiderman away!

Yessir, all getting stuck is 100% on me! Haha just my nature. I'll see where y'all want me to go and go the complete opposite way just because I can. Call me a rebel

[stratvox]

On 6/30/2018 at 7:44 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

Fair enough. Usually when people get stuck because of trying to find ways to traverse the environment -- like climbing down areas we didn't really mean for them to go -- we blame ourselves. Some of our players blame us too. So, we try to be careful about that and discourage it to avoid people having bad luck.

I'd like to get a full climbing system into the next game. At least, the next game it makes sense for. 

I've done tech support (over the phone, no less!) extensively in my career (let's just say that the day I got my first job where I didn't have to deal with the public any more was a great day indeed!), so I totally understand where you're coming from.

As a total aside, my fave tech support story doesn't involve me directly but my friend Jason who was lead tech at Canada Computer in Kingston back in the day. We had this machine coming in over and over again with "it doesn't work" on it. We'd run the burn-in software to see if something folded up, it wouldn't, and we'd give it back. A little later on the complaints were specifically about NHL 96 being busted on it. Jason's a big fan of that game, so he played it for a few hours at work... nice work if you can get it all with no problems. Anyway, after three or four rounds of this machine coming back in (at this point the store's losing LOTS OF MONEY on this box) we invited them in to show us the problem. So the guy comes in with his son, and his son gets on the game, gets owned by the AI, and hands it over and says "see, it doesn't work!" Jason grabs the controller, cross checks the guy with the puck (without getting called on it because he waited until the ref was looking away), skates down the ice and puts it in the net, hands the controller back to the kid and says "there's nothing wrong with this game."

Dad looks at his son with a very jaundiced eye and says "We're very sorry for having wasted your time."

I think that evening was an awkward one in their household...  

I do think that rock climbing sans gear makes sense for this game... just sayin'. I also understand the ironing out the mechanic for it would be challenging. That's why I was thinking that careful map construction to make specific places scalable could be a way to do it. I can also see how that might be less than appealing because doing the design and the playtesting of it could add a lot of time reqs to each region....

I noticed that you have an ad up for a developer with time working in innovative coop modes. The thing is I'm not a game dev; my current position has me developing a security model to permit secure WAN grid computing so that institutions that need to be concerned with data distribution can exploit compute power available on the internet to solve their problems; this is mostly being targeted at scientific/health/actuarial applications. Fun challenging work. Anyway. I have some ideas about how you could bring the TLD model of gameplay to an online coop mode in a way that should work well wrt ambience challenge etc as well as the general ethic and aesthetics of the game. However, I don't really know that this is the right place to discuss it, and I'm not talking about TLD per se because you'd have to redevelop a huge amount of the game to make it work effectively. If you'd like to talk about it contact me out of band (I'm somehow sure you can get my email addy out of my profile  ) and let me know.

I also have heard people talking about the "willpower" aspect in posts recently, and I posted a long time ago about what I think could be a way to handle that here: 

I understand a lot more about the games internals now than I did then, and I truly think this could be a very good replacement for the Cabin Fever affliction, and I think I have a good handle on what you'd need to do to make it work. It would also have the fringe benefit of helping shut up those whiners who complain that interloper's too easy

It would include the ratio of time spent indoors, but also include other things about the player's condition. Let me know if either of those things interest you!

Thanks again for taking the time to engage with me, I appreciate it!

Cheers!

 

[major0noob]

any word on moving arrowheads back to the workbench? or making complex arrow/arrowheads

[Luciën]

I didn't know that the forge was such a criticised element to some. Not to reboot the whole discussion, which I find interesting, but I like the forge system. And I don't consider the number of arrow heads too high in the world. I like my character to have 20-30 arrows in the pouch. For that, I need the forge. I feel.

I do find it strange to work with both hands in a 100-200 °C little pigeon hole without proper protection. I could see that you'd need special gloves (like some of them are already in the game but I don't know the english names for them) to be able to work without risk of burns. It might be good to add the possibilities of inflictions during the forging process, to make the possibility of having plenty of tools and crafted goodies a bit more of a (calculated) risk.

What about a forging skill? Where you'd have either a mini game for improving your skills or reading the good old blacksmith book?

[Wintermut]

It's even more useless since you can only cook ONE thing on it and it's the only cooking surface in the farm at Forlorn Muskeg.....

[nicko]

3 hours ago, Wintermut said:

It's even more useless since you can only cook ONE thing on it and it's the only cooking surface in the farm at Forlorn Muskeg.....

I don't think the forge was designed for cooking :)- just build a simple campfire near it, problems solved

[Soul Sojourner]

On 6/30/2018 at 6:12 PM, Tbone555 said:

Haha I can't count how many sandboxes I kissed goodbye due to spidermanning on Timberwolf mtn! Or just generally getting bored and trying to break the game. I've gotten into so many areas I wasn't supposed to be in haha! That's typically how I approach videogames. If there's something that the devs obviously don't want me to do, I do everything in my power to overcome that and do it anyway, even if I completely break it in the process... Maybe I should apply as a tester somewhere

Hahahaa 100% me too. The game insta-killed me when I tried to go over the mountain in Wintermute, to get to the other side of the dam. lmfao

[Wintermut]

17 hours ago, nicko said:

I don't think the forge was designed for cooking :)- just build a simple campfire near it, problems solved

Yes and waste more fuel on having two fires....

[Doc Feral]

Cooking while forging is unpractical, with the long forging times you risk incinerating your food.

[JErosion]

I wish they would change how coal, fire and the forge works. adding coal(after waiting for the allotted required to add coal ) to any fire raises the temperature to as high as 80C (which is 176F) Id rather when using coal in a stove or camp fire that it just burns longer and just a little hotter than wood does. For Forging purposes I think they should add a bellows to the forge, its an extra step but it could be part of a mini game to manage fuel, forging and heat levels. which brings me to the point of how heat just drops off once the fire runs out of fuel. i wish heat would taper off as fuel runs out. coarse if that was in the system then it could effect things like cooking. Like was that fire hot enough to kill any parasites?

[Serenity]

On 7.9.2018 at 7:41 AM, Doc Feral said:

Cooking while forging is unpractical, with the long forging times you risk incinerating your food.

Forging should really be incremental. Just like crafting. Put on your pot of water. Forge for 1 hour. Take water. Continue forging

This seems to be a holdover from before the cooking update