Falling through Ice

[FoneBoneJay]

So on the new map which so far I feel I've explored maybe 25% I discovered unlike on the other map, it is now possible to fall through the ice. When you do it is instant death.

I find this unrealistic because yes it would be almost immediate hypothermia, and your muscles would clamp up pretty fast, and the wind gets sucked out of you, but it is possible to survive this if you can get a fire going and or get to shelter almost immediately. Sure in -50F with a wind chill if you fall through ice and get soaked. If it is even possible for ice to be so thin when it is so cold. Suppose the temperature dropped from zero to -50 in the most extreme case of winter polar vortex weather it might be possible or even likely die in about 5-10 minutes unless you are 50-200 feet away from a cabin or with help But that is 5-10 minutes not instantly. Critical minutes to get a fire going could restore your dryness which will occur rapidly with a roaring fire, the colder the air is the less it can hold humidity and the faster water evaporates off the body.

Anybody else think this or what do you all think?

[JErosion]

and when you hit the water with your full backpack? All of that stuff you were carrying becomes a boat anchor and drags you down

[Sandra]

When it happened to me (luckily in a new run, not in my favorite savegame) my first thought was "Okay, she can fight off a wolf bare-handed, but she can't swim?!"

Thinking about it, the cold, the backpack etc. would make it difficult to survive. But I agree with FoneBoneJay: Finding shelter and making fire soon (very soon) should give you a chance to survive. Since JErosion is right, too, the survivor would have to sacrifice most of his/her stuff which would mean that except his/her clothing everything that is carried around is lost.

To be completely realistic the backpack itself would have to be gone, too. But having nothing to carry your stuff would make the game very frustrating.

[elloco999]

In RL, many people who fall through the ice have a hard never find the hole they fell through. You never just fall straight down, unless you were standing still. Your forward movement moves you under the ice. And since most people don't know that the dark spot is the opening (very counter intuitive) the look for the light spot (just an air bubble under the ice) and never make it back out. Also the cold water creates a shock that can be very disorienting.

And even if you find the opening, getting out in your soaked clothes is very hard to do. If you don't know how to (try to crawl out on your belly) the edge will break underneath your body weight and you go under again.

Even if you mange to get out, by now you are so immensely cold, shivering all over, it's next to impossible to start a fire. So your only bet would be to try and make it to a house and get some dry clothes on and into bed.

But the main reason going through the ice is instant death in TLD is probably because making the mechanics that would be required to simulate the wet clothing and the effects on fatigue and temperature is an awful lot of work for only one specific scenario. It may still get added anyway, but I'm not counting on it.

[FoneBoneJay]

I think in the future if this is supposed to be a survival simulator, simulation of water and how critical it is better make it in. First off in survival, water is a more critical resource than food. You can live off stored fat reserves for 3 weeks. Or eat food and then go for another week without dying. You can't live without water for more than 3 days without being so dehydrated and anemic you can't move. If you try going 3 weeks without water you will die, there are no exceptions. Our bodies are 75% water not 75% food. You also need water to digest food.

Hydration Is a critical component of survival in deserts. Deserts are very dry. The air in wintertime is exactly the same very dry and instead of being hot it is very cold. You won't lose moisture at the same rate in a cold environment as you will in a hot environment because the body sweats to cool itself but if you get yourself hot running for extended periods of time and sweat you then lose heat energy rapidly because of two factors. 1. Humidity levels are so low water evaporates immediately from the skin along with the heat, and 2. the wind chill which is much more dangerous at low temperatures because of lack of humidity. Relative humidity is a factor of moisture.

In any event you can make water from snow by eating it, which is a bad idea, because it can be contaminated but it also takes energy to raise it's temperature from a solid to a liquid. Which happens internally. That energy has to come from you.

Right now there is no simulation of that, nor is the a simulation of sweating only the exposure due to wind chills on dry skin. If you get rained on and soaked and then the temperature drops rapidly that can be as dangerous or even more dangerous than being exposed to substantial wind chills but completely dry.

There is also no simulation of how wet you actually get. You walk on two legs not one, if you break thorough the ice you might be breaking through on one foot while the other is still on solid ice, or the water depth might only be 1-2-3 feet, and you might not be totally submerged. Lots and lots of factors unmodeled but I'd like to see them incorporated over time.

I like the simulation of melting snow and boiling water. I hope they expand on this to actually show us gathering snow, and it melting in a pot. That would super cool. I also like the idea of doing the actual cooking. Flipping steaks for consistency to create a higher quality meal. All while boiling water and or maintaining the fire. It would be really really cool if they created an actual fire simulator, simulating how fires burns. I would also like survival to be resource management dependent. Why not be able to stockpile wood. create tools from the resources on the map, you could make an axe out of stone, all of the survival tools are modification of simple machines and would be workable without a factory building them. The real key item to manage is time. How long you can sleep, how long you devote to chopping wood, how long you can devote to fishing/hunting/gathering. Id really like to see the simulation get seasons. Because in Spring you could plant some crops, or you could fish, or you could hunt, in summer you could gather wood for the coming winter, you could make your clothes and you could do your exploring that you would otherwise not want to do during summer. And then in fall you could finish up wood production and stock piling, and you could harvest crops, you could hunt for what you need for the winter, your fridge is the outdoors in the snow/cellar. It would also be really cool if you could create structures in time but that might be a whole other simulation.

[Bill Tarling]

I think in the future if this is supposed to be a survival simulator, simulation of water and how critical it is better make it in.

The game makes use of various survival simulation aspects, but it is not (nor was it ever intended to be) an actual "Survival Simulator" type program or game.

[TattooedMac]

I find this unrealistic because yes it would be almost immediate hypothermia, and your muscles would clamp up pretty fast, and the wind gets sucked out of you, but it is possible to survive this if you can get a fire going and or get to shelter almost immediately.

Anybody else think this or what do you all think?

You need to remember this is still a Alpha Game in EA. I know the Dev's down the track, want to implement a 'struggle' component to the falling through the ice. But to get the new Coastal Region out to the players, they are using the ice falling as perm death, and as well to make a boundary for the ocean.

So be assured that there will be a struggle component coming, but when I'm not privy too at the moment.

Flipping steaks for consistency to create a higher quality meal.

Your kidding, aren't you ??

I would also like survival to be resource management dependent. Why not be able to stockpile wood. create tools from the resources on the map, you could make an axe out of stone, all of the survival tools are modification of simple machines and would be workable without a factory building them.

This has been in their roadmap, but things take time, and again, being a EA, there is plenty of time to implement these types of actions.

[FoneBoneJay]

I find this unrealistic because yes it would be almost immediate hypothermia, and your muscles would clamp up pretty fast, and the wind gets sucked out of you, but it is possible to survive this if you can get a fire going and or get to shelter almost immediately.

Anybody else think this or what do you all think?

You need to remember this is still a Alpha Game in EA. I know the Dev's down the track, want to implement a 'struggle' component to the falling through the ice. But to get the new Coastal Region out to the players, they are using the ice falling as perm death, and as well to make a boundary for the ocean.

So be assured that there will be a struggle component coming, but when I'm not privy too at the moment.

Flipping steaks for consistency to create a higher quality meal.

Your kidding, aren't you ??

I would also like survival to be resource management dependent. Why not be able to stockpile wood. create tools from the resources on the map, you could make an axe out of stone, all of the survival tools are modification of simple machines and would be workable without a factory building them.

This has been in their roadmap, but things take time, and again, being a EA, there is plenty of time to implement these types of actions.

I'm not kidding about raw meat and uncooked meat. Domestically slaughtered farm animals are processed in a highly evolved way which is mile apart from wild animals. There are two types of things that make you sick when you eat raw foods. Infection, from bacterial and viruses and intoxification, the poisions which are byproducts of that an already present infection animal will exhibit in the meat. Most farm animals are on antibiotics which would render the meat when slaughtered if properly processed assembly line style non-intoxified. The presence of infection occurs when dirty hands contaminates meat or it is contaminated by airborne bacteria which grows in the temperature danger zone of 40-140 degrees farenheit. If you keep the meat cold it doesnt grow. It also can't grow even if it is contaminated. Which is why it is important to either keep the meat frozen or cook it. If you eat meat without cooking it is a risk becasue of the already present intoxication and infections animals constantly battle. Meat doesn't degrade in quality when frozen or chilled it just drys out like everything else because of the humidity.

I get that the sim is still in development but I hope this turns into being more sim than game. It is still fun to play but under these conditions it is still very possible to survive for extended periods of time alone in the wilderness. Resources are constantly replenished in the natural world with seasons and this feels like a pretty artificial world right now. Realism is a key market of this niche product I'd expect more sim aspects to be a primary development front if they want to improve the game.

[FoneBoneJay]

I'm not being critical if I am I apologize I like the development so far. Even being attacked by the wolf your "condition" is not immediately rendered terminal in-spite of suffering massive trauma. While falling through water even to be completely submerged would very likely end in death it is not immediate. In fact people who are submerged and underwater for short periods of time have been rescued and resuscitated such that they survive the ordeal even after being clinically dead.

The important part when talking about survival is the modeling of condition and those things which negatively affect condition. One of the decisions to be made is, on a cold snowy wintery day with white out conditions and -50 wind chills, do you go out looking for food or wood if you have both stock piled? No you don't you work on sewing or on harvesting or whatever you can do in the cabin instead of getting potentially lost and dead from exposure. Same thing with messing around with wolves, sometimes if you dont have food and you dont have the gun but u have full health and a crow bar you you can chance it with a wolf attack and then eat that bastard. Risky yes, but life is risk.

"Survival is either dealing with the weather or preparing for it." Les Stroud... A critical component of weather is heat, the biggest detractor to maintaining heat is staying dry, but it is neither instantaneously lethal to get wet nor impossible to remedy. In fact you often sweat from over exertion in midday in winter and survival is effected by removing clothes.

[FoneBoneJay]

I think in the future if this is supposed to be a survival simulator, simulation of water and how critical it is better make it in.

The game makes use of various survival simulation aspects, but it is not (nor was it ever intended to be) an actual "Survival Simulator" type program or game.

Why is it marketed that way then? It is absolutely marketed as a survival game

"Survive By Your Wits Alone. Be on the lookout for potential supply caches, all the while using survival skills to overcome hazards introduced by harsh weather, wildlife, lack of food and water, other survivors, and the mysterious aurorae that add unpredictability to an already extreme situtation"

Sounds like survival is pretty important to the premise of the game. Keeping dry in cold weather is pretty important to the premise of survivial, just like not standing inside the reactor of a Nuclear power plant is pretty important to the premise of not dying from radiation sickness. All perspectives are valid though. Why the calorie simulation and temperature simulations why would that be modeled if this was just a "game"?

[Bill Tarling]

I think in the future if this is supposed to be a survival simulator, simulation of water and how critical it is better make it in.

The game makes use of various survival simulation aspects, but it is not (nor was it ever intended to be) an actual "Survival Simulator" type program or game.

Why is it marketed that way then? It is absolutely marketed as a survival game

There's a difference between using aspects of survival simulation [of which there are a lot of survival aspects within the "game"] and trying to be an actual representation of a "Survival Simulator" [which would be trying to cover condition precisions without necessarily being part of a fictional gaming story.

Even their opening disclaimer states it's not meant to represent or be an actual survival simulator.

Just as you wouldn't expect DayZ to be a survival simulator simply because it markets as surviving against zombies, or The Forest which markets as surviving a mysterious jungle.

If the "game" wanted to market itself as a" simulator" it would include the word Simulator in the title.

Yes the game does use a lot of survival simulation aspects, but again they're simply part of the story line and aren't meant for absolute accuracy.

I find this unrealistic because yes it would be almost immediate hypothermia, and your muscles would clamp up pretty fast, and the wind gets sucked out of you, but it is possible to survive this if you can get a fire going and or get to shelter almost immediately.

Anybody else think this or what do you all think?

You need to remember this is still a Alpha Game in EA. I know the Dev's down the track, want to implement a 'struggle' component to the falling through the ice. But to get the new Coastal Region out to the players, they are using the ice falling as perm death, and as well to make a boundary for the ocean.

So be assured that there will be a struggle component coming, but when I'm not privy too at the moment.

Flipping steaks for consistency to create a higher quality meal.

Your kidding, aren't you ??

I get that the sim is still in development but I hope this turns into being more sim than game.

It was planned as a game, has aspects of a game, and fiction aspects of a game, and will have NPC's as a game -- just as originally planned. You keep calling in a Sim, but it was never intended or planned as a Simulator. It was planned, designed, and written as a Survival Genre Game.

Why the calorie simulation and temperature simulations why would that be modeled if this was just a "game"?

Because they're part of the gameplay... other games are allowed to make hunger and temperature part of their game, why can't The Long Dark do the same. They might use something more calculated, but there's saying only a real simulator is allowed to base gameplay on these features or functions, and there's no reason a "game" isn't allowed to.

[FoneBoneJay]

Simulator Simulation, potatoe potatoe, Day Z is a horrible comparison. There is no product there. At least this is a playable alpha.

[FoneBoneJay]

It was planned as a game, has aspects of a game, and fiction aspects of a game, and will have NPC's as a game -- just as originally planned. You keep calling in a Sim, but it was never intended or planned as a Simulator. It was planned, designed, and written as a Survival Genre Game.

Only that is not accurate. I don't dispute it is going to be a game but most simulators are also games and the terms are not mutually exclusive. The developers have stated and actively advertising they are focused on driving the modeling of realism and that a simulation aspect is a focus. Realism is at the core of a simulation. There is nothing wrong with the term sim or simulation either. I don't mean it like "Goat simulator, or Simcity Online screw you customer" which is not a realistic simulator, that is a game; I mean it like the best sims that PC gaming has ever put out since the 90s and 2000s, Falcon 4.0, Microsoft Flight Simulator, IL-2, I'm not advocating that The Long Dark take a pure simulation tact either. But I am talking about considering the difference between Microsoft Flight and Microsoft Flight Simulator. One is a crappy arcade game, one is a simulation product that will be played into the 2020s

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hi ... er-surviva

In this video they reference a simulation of the nitty gritty details of the heart of the product of what you have to do to survive. This is what I support, this is what 6966 other financial supporters of the product support and this is what your market is looking for in a product. This is not WOW, this is not a "game only". Call it game first and simulation 2nd of course because we will all be playing it for fun. Games are meant to be fun. I ask you a philosophical question though of what makes it fun. I think beating nature consistently and surviving against the odds for extended periods of time is what is driving the fun for me right now. I would bet most people who are currently playing are playing for that reason too the survival aspect and the realism of the modeling. If you dont eat, drink, stay warm, and sleep your condition will deteriorate to the point where you wont stay alive. That is realistic. If you sustain a trauma wound from a wolf attack and don't bandage it and you bleed out will die too. Also realistic.

Another thing that is realistic is the need to stay warm in cold weather environment, staying dry in the wintertime involves not over exerting ones self by sweating, and not getting caught out in the rain, or falling into liquid water. If you get wet you need to get dry immediately. As evidenced by probably the best survival story I've ever read which is Jack London's To Build A Fire, Its a short story (1-2 hours to read but it is harrowing, climatic, and suspenseful. Check it out if you never read it. Your library has it.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Build_a_Fire

They even made a movie about it, the story is better but the movie is not bad.

No Jerimiah Johnson but good.

All I'm asking is that we be given at least a chance to do the right thing, not die instantly but be prepared, for probably one of the most dangerous obstacles to overcome. Be prepared with a fire striker, with a set of dry clothes inside a water proof pack, with kindling inside the dry clothes, and be able to strip naked to rapidly dry ourselves next to a fire, and then dry our clothes. While soaking wet we should take double or even triple penalty already modeled in the game "COLD" all depending on how hard the wind is blowing and how cold the air is. If we strip off wet clothes the water will evaporate off the body will rapidly within seconds or a minute, and with it the heat. That is where if you are prepared you put on dry clothes. If you have no dry clothes then you build a fire get it roaring and then strip off to get dry and then dry your clothes. You'll be miserable but you'll live. Unless of course you build your fire under a tree, and the snow falls down onto the fire from the convection currents from the fire and boom extinguishing your fire. There are some interesting things that can be modeled without too much affect on the game aspect but can greatly add value to the product for the market who is interested in the product, which is games who want an outdoors survival game.