Question Thread :: Milton Mailbag

[Smellyfries 40]

At night time, you can hear owls hooting in the trees. Are you going to make it so that we can find Owls at night, and possibly kill them for feathers?

Yes i do think it's a inhumane thing to do, but maybe if someone playing interloper who needs feathers to make more arrows, happen to find a rare owl spawn and collect like 15 feathers and some extra meat. I think the main risk of hunting an Owl is shooting it out of the tree (and possibly miss) and going out at night.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Smellyfries

[TheRealPestilence 21]

Has it ever been possible to find items in car visors?  Is it possible now?

[TheRealPestilence 21]

I'm curious how the animal damage system works.  You recently confirmed animals have condition.   Do hits by arrows or bullets deduct condition from the animal until the animal's condition falls to zero?  Does bleeding reduce the animal's condition over time like it does for the player, or is bleeding out different for animals?  Can a second hit in a less vulnerable location reset the bleedout time for an animal, or is bleedout cumulative like it is for a player with multiple bleeding injuries?  Will a bear or moose which has been shot multiple times die from purely normal hits, or will it only die when a critical hit is finally made or it bleeds out?  Finally, it's possible to hit an animal with an arrow and receive an archery skill point for the hit, but not cause the animal to start bleeding.  If a player was able to repeatedly make a series of those hits without ever causing the animal to bleed, would the animal eventually take enough damage to die purely from condition loss?

Edited August 14, 2018 by TheRealPestilence

[Ice Hole 797]

The fire animation has changed and looks better than ever. 

What were the issues that were overcome to make it look so authentic?  Did you study artificial gas fireplaces?

Maybe show a montage of the fire animation evolution. 

 

Thanks

[Smellyfries 40]

Are you going to add a quick stat weight meter to the bottom right of the screen that act as a quick way to see your carry weight? Right now the only way we know how our weight is, is by checking your inventory, or seeing the red weight symbol in the bottom right. It would be cool if there was a meter similar to food and water that you could see in the bottom right to quickly check your weight without seeing exact numbers.

[ThePancakeLady 721]

Apologies if this has been asked. I did search, but did not find anything similar. But, I did search shallowly, so it may have been asked, and I may have missed it.

So:

Many of us believe the character Will looks like you, and may have his personality modeled after your own, loosely or not so loosely. Perhaps this is true, perhaps not. We gamers tend to assume a lot of things without knowing the full story. So, can you shed a little light on the story? Are the characters in Wintermute modeled after real world people in your life, or the lives of any of the devs and writers? No need to name anyone. Just curious if the appearance, style of speech, and personalities are based on real people, completely fictional creations, or a bit of both.

[justyr1 7]

So I've been curious about a backpack system for a while. I read your answer regarding something similar on one of the Mailbags, so I'm hoping this isn't completely redundant. It's understandable that the way the current system works it would be difficult to compartmentalize items in a separate bag attached to the character. What about making backpacks modifier items just like the Moose Satchel? So you start of the survival mode with no backpack which gives you a base weight of say 30~, you can find different types of backpacks that would increase your carrying weight. Maybe all the way up to a rare rigid frame expedition pack that allows you to carry in the ballpark of 70-80~. Movement speeds would be affected when you get to bigger packs. Backpacks could have their own slot in the clothing menu. Sorry if this ended up looking more like a wishlist item than a question. The question of if something like that has already been considered is the core of it. Love the game so far. It's one of my go-to's and I always seem to return to it.

 

Also, you guys have mentioned wanting to work more on character presence in the first person. Has there been progress on making it so our wrists/arms and hands while playing reflect what you're wearing? Thanks for a great game, can't wait to see what happens next!

Edited August 15, 2018 by justyr1

[Thundur 5]

Sound is a huge factor for immersion in video games. In TLD it is done perfectly. Could we ever see behind the scenes in the recording studio? It would be fun to see how sounds such as rock climbing, the bear, blizzards, prying open lockers and the rifle were made

[Smellyfries 40]

Are you going to add more feats? Maybe some feats for mapping, safe cracking, and possibly rope climbing?

[Luciën 28]

Another language related question from me.

Since the game has an obvious Canadian character, and Canada also has the French as official language, I was wondering. Has there ever been considered using French as the game's language? I know, I know, we have bilingual signs for Lac Mystère. And I know English is way more common in the game world, it would cross my mind every now and then.

[Luciën 28]

To add to my previous question: have you considered maybe making the in game world more bilingual?

[Morphe 38]

Is the "Willpower" system still a thing? 

[King Wasabi 1]

Do you have an possible ETA on The Full-body simulation, Seeable clothing on body, More Body awareness Animations, yet? I would completely understand that this isn't a high priority right now, but I'm going to go on a whim and say June 2019?

[amorphea 3]

Ok another question: you've already said you want to expand the cooking system would you consider allowing us to salt our meat (not sure if that's how you say it) so it last longer? When i kill a moose or something i always find myself with more meat then i can use but i simply cringe at wasting stuff in the long dark. I know a lot of players keep their meat outside cause ot lasts longer then but that also makes me highly uncomfortable so a way to preserve meat (or at least slow it's decay) would be handy.

[Pillock 1,319]

What's the stupidest / funniest / most embarrassing way you've died while playing or testing TLD?

[TheRealPestilence 21]

Mailbag 3 doesn't answer any of my questions.  It makes implications, but it doesn't confirm anything other than animals have specific hit locations.  In fact, an argument about your mailbag 3 answer is why I decided to ask you specific questions about the damage model in the first place.  Are you saying mailbag 3 confirms my understanding of the game's damage model?  When your players want to understand your game mechanics, why be vague?  Will you please post specific answers to my questions you dismissed in mailbag 8?

[ThatDearGuy 25]

What's the best way to pry a Hinterland employee away from their keyboard? Assume it's Friday.

Edited August 19, 2018 by ThatDearGuy

[Guenter 6]

@Raphael van Lierop my biggest question i have ever had in this game:
Do bunkers spawn since day one, because I have over 100 houres in TLD, and I never found one, so I thougt, that the spawn at a certain amount of survived days

[Nogen 14]

Hi Ralph!

Here a bit chauvinistic question. As a French Canadian (or Québécois, as we prefer), I wanted to know if there is some in your team?

Thanks!

[henroe32 87]

I was wondering what the Hinterland approach to Easter Eggs and jokes within The Long Dark was. They’re some of my favourite parts of games I play as they often make me chuckle. In game I always like to read the description for the hoodie and look at the writing on food packaging so is it fun for you guys to add these into the game and do you plan on adding many more in the future?

Edited August 20, 2018 by henroe32

[jacksavage4731 0]

will you be able to drive cars because the fact that you can open the fuel hatch and the hood makes me think that it might be a thing later ?

[Alcator 8]

In real life, trying to chew off raw mammalian meat is really difficult, the taste is disgusting, and most people would immediately recognize what they are doing and stop. On the other hand, fish can be eaten raw, after removing the outer layer. In The Long Dark, we cannot eat raw fish, but the game allows us all too easily to eat raw mammalian meat. Could this be swapped? As it is right now, the raw meat is just a trap for players, that usually results in food poisoning.

[Alcator 8]

The one thing that disappointed me about the original Episodes 1 and 2 was the (almost complete) lack of moral choices. In Episode 1, I didn't see any meaningful choice - at one point, The Grey Mother presented me with 2 options how to find food, one being hunting and the other being ransacking the abandoned Gas Station, but that station is abandoned and looting it does not really affect anyone. In Episode 2, there was the one moment with the Forest Talker bag, which resulted in death if returned without ammo, but that's it.

The game was initially presented as a game of meaningful choices - with "What will you do to survive?" etc. hinting at so much more than what we got so far.

So my question is: Should we keep hoping for some more complex moral/ethical dilemmas, or is it going to be similar to the Ep 2 "one moment per episode" approach?

 

[Admin 1,348]

To help make sure this thread remains focused on collecting questions for the Milton Mailbag please refrain from posting anything here that is not a question for @Raphael van Lierop . Any other posts will be removed.

[BlackCoyote 13]

Oh boy, I suspect this has been asked before, so apologies if it's been answered.

Have you considered a way to smoke meat/make jerky?

Here's my thought, using cured birch branches to build a smoker, which sits on a camp fire outside. You need to keep the fire going for 8-10 hours straight to smoke the meat, the meat looses half it's calories, but lasts longer and maybe doesn't attract predators (or you can carry more before getting the 1 scent line.) It would give birch another purpose, plus force you to find a protected place to monitor a campfire all day/keep it burning.

I'm bringing this up because I've had back-to-back games where I've gotten a moose and a bear around the same time. It's just a LOT of meat to deal with, not to mention all the wolves I've left to rot in the snow when they came for me as I ferried meat around. Just hate the waste!