Question Thread :: Milton Mailbag

[thekillergreece]

Awesome update so far, Revolver does a great addition!

1. Since you was a developer for the Company of Heroes, could you tell us what is your opinion on Company of Heroes 2, if there is any? Many fans from CoH criticized CoH 2 for being quite different, uninteresting, etc.

2. At some point you said: "game's current performance is preventing us from doing a lot of things we'd like to do, including: graphics improvements, AI improvements, more animations, environment detail, post FX, Switch port, world streaming, etc." and "The Long Dark is pushing a lot of the engine's capabilities due to the size of our game, essentially."

Does it mean that there might be a scenario where you will no longer be able to add more content on TLD due to the game reaching engine's limit?

3. The more you release content updates for Survival mode the more I am thinking about how awesome companions would be with you. Namely, dogs. Will they ever be a thing? I can imagine the huge technical difficulties but.. Hey, they would be awesome for short to medium term survivals. Maybe players will feel very emotional once after 300-days survival their one and only companion dies trying to protect the owner from the wildlife attacks or old age.

4. Finally, have you guys used any mocap for the wolves? They look so real. If not, are you considered to begin mocapping a dog into wolf for quicker animation work, etc? 

 

Thanks so much! If those are too many questions let me know and/or pick any of them instead of answering every of them.

[Rhett987]

Love the new Update, now I wonder if you are seeing a glaring need for a function of the game to be able to use both hands at once. Example: Torch in one hand revolver in the other? or does that not fit the game style that the revolver was supposed to add? Could you possibly explain if that is something that is possible for the game? 

 

[Serenity]

Is the barn in PV intended to be so dark? Especially in the evening when there is still some light outside, it's pitch black inside, which makes early exploration very difficult. I get that it doesn't have any huge windows, so maybe it's supposed to be dark. On the other hand it seems like there are some small windows. And other places with no windows seem a lot brighter

Edited May 9, 2019 by Serenity

[ThatDearGuy]

Any chance a future Hinterland game might find its way to GOG, or has that door been closed now? I was just beginning to build a nice library there. 😊

[JaegerTheBaker]

Will native mouse and keyboard support be coming to The Long Dark on Xbox? I've seen that Microsoft was allowing developers to implement it and I was wondering if you were going to implement it.

[Alcator]

1. Would it be possible to add a "harvest" action to Cured Deer Hide that would turn it into two Cured Leather pieces? Long-term, we are basically swimming in Deer hides, but we can't use them to fix non-deer articles, such as Mukluks or Leather gloves.

2. Could we get a "dismantle" option on burned out campfires that would remove the campfire?

Edited May 9, 2019 by Alcator
correction of capital letters.

[BESt]

I really like how the crafting system was implemented and worked in the Wintermute. Have you ever thought to implement a similar crafting system in sandbox mode, in which you first needed to find/read books in order to be able to craft/forge items? I consider that the character should gain knowledge in order to know how to craft everything, instead of being an all-knowing survivor from the beginning. Or this difference between Wintermute and sandbox is intended, and if that's the case, I would be interested to find out why.

[Grignard_TN]

I asked this in the discussion forum and it was suggested that I bring it up here:

I'm curious about the choice of rifle and caliber chosen for the rifle in TLD. I'm not terribly familiar with the rifle itself but I understand it has a long history in the late British empire. As far as the caliber in general, I don't think I have ever seen a rifle chambered for .303 where I'm from in the US. Is .303 a popular caliber in Canada for hunting deer or other cervids? Was the rifle chosen to emphasize the "Canadianess" of the game ( I'm not Canadian, but I feel TLD has sort of a Canadian "identity" and I think thats pretty cool. It works very well for this game)?

[Faithful Cartographer]

Hi Raph!

Thanks for the update, survival mode! Now to questions...

1) How do you feel about cloud gaming? And did you know that The Long Dark is available to play on major cloud services like "Geforce NOW" and "Playkey?" 

2) I would Like to know if the Studio will leave this year for summer vacation or you will continue to work on the game all summer?

[ManicManiac]

I know that you and the team always have to weigh gameplay value against difficulties inherent in adding or changing features/mechanics, but how would you feel about players being able to breakdown burned out campfires?

I mean, even if only as an option to get rid of them when we are done using them.  I ask because I find myself looking for good places to put them outside, and most often I opt not to just because I know I will eventually wreck the place with campfires just littered all over.  This is also why I don't use fire to thaw carcasses, I know it would make it easier to harvest and keep me warm... but I just can't get past the fact that it will leave a fire pit there forever (I suppose I also worry if leaving fire pits around might interfere with limb spawns as well - if left in a place a limb might usually spawn I mean).

Edited May 10, 2019 by ManicManiac

[ManicManiac]

I know you mentioned expanding on the fishing mechanics is still on the list of possibilities for future updates...  What are your thoughts on the player being able to find/craft something like an ice fishing Tip-Up?

(Context) the idea that perhaps ice fishing in addition to the present mechanic, could maybe also be a passive activity like using the rabbit snare (the difference being the tip-up only yielding one fish where as sitting at the hole to fish already has a chance to yield more in a given time frame).  That a player might set the tip-up, freeing up the player to go do something else until the flag pops up when a fish is caught.  Similar to the snare if it's neglected for too long the fish would "get away" and need to be reset.  (I know you had a question about fishing last week, but since this one was more specific I hoped it would be worth posting)

Edited May 10, 2019 by ManicManiac

[Morphe]

How does shaved Will look like?

Seriously now, (I mean if you want you can answer) is there a chance for the "rose hip vines" climb animation to be dependent from the player so that I control whether I go up or down? Not like it takes much time, but it's sometimes annoying when you want to pick rose hips, but you end up going down/up, which also makes me nauseous (severe motion sickness here). The ability to quickly climb up back would benefit everyone, I think at least.

 

Also, here's what I meant by climbing even though you didn't want to:

Edited May 11, 2019 by Morphe

[Sito]

Hello Raph. It has been a tough week for Hinterland but you pull through as usual

My question is how do you prepare your team for the possible negative response to a major update that changes mechanics of the game? With this update ( and previous) the fan base reacts in a hateful way on some things that must feel very personal to you and your team. You work so hard to produce a quality game experience and then you get such negative response from those that previously were so supportive. I can imagine that it would be very demoralizing to you and your team but you and the admin response to player frustration remained positive all week. Good on you!  

Again the question is how do you prepare for that, and how do you keep the moral of your team up during a problematic release?

Kudos on fixing issues right away. Hinterland rocks!

Another question... can you let us test for you? We would have caught the sprain and aiming issues right away.

 

[Master_Superninja418]

What are some new additions you would like in the game?

[amadeuszbx]

Hi, more personal questions, than questions about The Long Dark but I think that you could probably use some of those, given that previous weeks were full of discussion about technical aspects of the latest update. 😁

1) Could you name a few of your favorite games? In general, don't have to be anything related to survival or something that inspired TLD. Just several titles that you really enjoy as a gamer, for one reason or another. Can be 2 or 3, can be a whole top 10 if you'd like.

2) The philosophy of Hinterland Studios and its approach to the game development and developers is very clear and very refreshing in the game dev business. Several things that are so exceptional about your studio are: not giving any dates ahead of time, taking your time with the updates (not trying to roll out updates every 2 months or something), focusing on several chosen tasks at a time, instead of trying to fix everything that people complain about all at once. While I can guess that the last one probably comes from the size of your team, it seem that you have a strong philosophy of leading the studio. Something that may be a little bit annoying to some fans (like slow development of WINTERMUTE and not giving any release date at all), from the perspective of game developer working for you seems like heaven! They are not rushed and can take their time to really do what they want and how they want it and to polish up their work, instead of rushing it. So my question here is: What influences such policy and what affected your philosophy of managing a game studio? I know the topic is kind of broad, so you can adapt my question however you see fit. I would just like to get some general comment from you on your approach to managing Hinterland Studio  (or employee's work routine to be precise). Such work philosophy seems (unfortunately) quite rare in game dev business, although it is more common in indie field, and I guess that you are still considered indie developer.

Sooo, introduction to second question is kind of long, but question in and of itself can be answered however you see fit (through a short comment, even 😄) so I hope you will manage to do that! Thanks!

[MarrowStone]

Does tall grass/cattails affect how well wildlife sees you? 

Does birch bark tea work while you have an affliction such as food poisoning? Or does it only work alongside the conditions of normal health regen?

Edited May 12, 2019 by MarrowStone

[Azdrawee]

Since episode 3 and 4 are both going to be about Astrid's side of the story, have you ever considered releasing both of them at the same time, like you did with Will? It would seem only logical. (To be clear: I would much rather have ep. 3 ASAP if episode 4 is nowhere near done yet) 🙂

[ThePancakeLady]

The old website... I miss the section where the team was listed with short bios. I get why it was removed. But, I still miss being able to go see who is working on the game. It felt like I could connect to the people working at the studio more as human beings, not just anonymous avatars on the Internet. It was interesting to see a short bio, with devs listing some of their former work. It just made everyone more easy to relate to as people, and made me think of them as individuals, humans, not nameless machines working behind a screen.  

So the question is... any chance the studio would consider adding something like that back, on the website, in the "Studio" section? With each person giving their own short bio, no contact info, used with permission of each person only, of course. Maybe first names only, no photos unless they felt comfortable with it,  just an avatar of their choosing (done in TLD style, of course...)? Or do you feel this could place you, the studio, or individual staff members at risk? (I know you had death threats in the past... which sucks- these things should not happen, but they do these days...). Just curious, I know family and friends who would like to get to know your team better, and I feel like that section on the old website gave me that opportunity. But, again, I know it also gave haters more opportunity to target people or the studio at times, and online privacy is a huge issue these days. 

Sorry for rambling, just a random thought that came up when my family and I were talking about the game with a few friends who also bought the game, because of our obsession with it, lol.

[vta4ever]

any chance of maps that use human infrastructure to add to the atmosphere and how it plays out, like a map built around an oil pipeline or an airfield?

[vta4ever]

do you plan to make a season two?

I would gladly pay 20-30 dollars as you guys are outstanding devs

[vta4ever]

bought this game in 2017, and have played it ever since. you guys are awesome devs and I wish I supported you on Kickstarter. (too be fair I didn't know it existed) 

what are some ways I can support you guys?

[LilWolf]

You said several times that you would like to make other games and that Hinterland doesn't become "The Long Dark Studio".

What kind of video game (or genre) would you like to make in the future as Hinterland's second game?

[CalNieDaGtarGuy]

Just noticed that the hunting lodge in Broken Railroad is named the Mystery Lake Hunting Lodge. I may be totally incorrect, but it would seem that this lodge is nowhere near Mystery Lake, unless I'm missing out on some totally unknown connection point between the two. Is there a reason it is named the Mystery Lake hunting lodge? Did I miss something while playing Wintermute that I should have gotten?

[Michi]

7 hours ago, CalNieDaGtarGuy said:

Just noticed that the hunting lodge in Broken Railroad is named the Mystery Lake Hunting Lodge. I may be totally incorrect, but it would seem that this lodge is nowhere near Mystery Lake, unless I'm missing out on some totally unknown connection point between the two. Is there a reason it is named the Mystery Lake hunting lodge? Did I miss something while playing Wintermute that I should have gotten?

I don't remember what context this was in, but I believe a location in the Broken Railroad region was described as being "on the outskirts of Mystery Lake Park" in a note that you can find in Wintermute. So presumably the Mystery Lake area encompasses not just Mystery Lake but also Forlorn Muskeg and Broken Railroad.

[apple_geek101]

Is there a Discord server for the Long Dark and if not, would you guys consider making an official server on Discord? I find that I'm on Discord more often than the Steam forums and forums here and it would allow for more discussions about the game and allow for players to play along with each through voice chat, etc.