Mliton Mailbag -- Dispatch #41


Raphael van Lierop

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Hello community,

Apologies for the delay since Dispatch #40 -- I had a couple of Friday's out of the office (once to take my family to PAX, and once for my birthday) which put me behind. We've also been pretty heads-down with development work so you may see the Mailbag frequency taking a bit of a dip over the next few weeks, as this is something I do when I have the luxury of some extra time. Thanks for submitting questions!

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Question from @hn3475:

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Have you ever thought about using different "cloth" materials? The last time I was playing, I was thinking that I can repair a superior wool scarf by harvesting a less effective cloth scarf. Do you think it might be a good idea to distinguish the type of material when repairing clothing? It would make wool a more valuable material. And if you aren't able to find the correct material to repair a wool item it would make it a patchwork piece of clothing that is slightly less effective than it would be in perfect condition. 

Yes, we have. You'll notice that the materials clothing items are made of does have an impact on their warmth, waterproofness, windproofness, warmth when wet, etc. characteristics, so we have this idea in the game just not in terms of what you can harvest from clothing (ex. nylon, cotton, wool, etc) -- everything is abstracted down to Cloth (covers Cotton, Wool, Nylon, etc.) and then Leather (for boots). So in this way, Wool is already a more valuable material than cotton or nylon (because of its inherent characteristics).

We definitely could add more depth to this system, although I think what would likely end up happening is we'd have to move to more of a consolidation type repair system where you literally sacrifice the bad version of a thing to repair a good version of the thing (Fallout does this). Otherwise we're asking players to maintain an inventory of many different types of materials. Also, if I'm in a survival situation and I have a giant rip in my best parka, I'm probably going to use whatever I have at hand to repair it, and not want to be limited to only using cotton, or nylon, or whatever raw materials it was made with. The UI considerations alone would become quite overwhelming, I think.

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Question from @ThePancakeLady:

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When we choose a career path, we all start somewhere. Where did you start?

More specifically- was there a single game or game franchise that you can say made you decide that you wanted to, or "needed to", begin working in video games (in any capacity)? What was it about that game or those games, that really "clicked" and compelled you to take that career path? And if not a single game or game franchise, what was it about video games in general that made you want to create them?

Any different career paths you once gave great consideration to before making the choice to become a game dev, that you still think about from time to time? As in- any other careers that you ever gave heavy consideration to, and think you would also have enjoyed, and done well in? Not speaking of any "regrets" about the path you did choose, but more about "I wonder if..." type thoughts? I never have regretted what I have done for a living, but I think back to when I was 12 or so years old, and really thought I would become a veterinarian, zoologist, or biologist, working with animals, and have those fleeting dreams about what my life would be like if I had chosen that path, instead of the one(s) I followed instead.

*Asking for a friend*, of course.  :)

 

I started working professionally in the industry nearly 20 years ago, and I dabbled for a couple of years before that, so it's very difficult for me to offer useful advice for people trying to "break in" today, based on my own experience. I don't know that my path would work today. In general, when people ask me this (usually it's because they want to help their kids break in to making games), I recommend picking up any of the free tools available, grab some reputable online tutorials, and just try to make something simple. If you enjoy making something simple, make something more complex. Then bring in a friend and make something together. If you can make things with other people, and you have the dedication required to learn new tools and be open to picking up skills that you don't already have, then you can probably find a place in the industry. If you get frustrated by how difficult it is to make something very simple, and you can only find happiness if your output is like what you see in today's triple-A games, then you will probably not make it. You have to be able to start on very simple, small things, and remain dedicated over the long-term. I don't think you can learn that in any particular school, to be honest. I think those are just life skills and personality traits that you either have or are willing to develop, or you don't have and are not willing to develop.

Regarding different paths -- at various times in my life I wanted to be an astronaut, doctor, architect, and novelist. I'm enjoying what I'm doing right now and I still feel I have some work to do before I'll feel ready to move on to something else. 

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Question from @mastercylinder:

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So I registered to ask this question. First of all, great game and I'm enjoying it loads. One thing I did notice though is that the stars look wrong on one side of the sky - that is one one side you get sharp defined points and on the other side they're "stretched" elongated - sort of like they're seen through a strong gravity source that's bending the light. This bugs me - as it feels like part of the story, but could legitimately be a bug. 

Is this my PC(I'm playing on an ultra widescreen monitor, but my resolution is set correctly, and everything else seems scaled right)? Or is it a bug in the skybox/unity? Or, and hear me out here, is a strong gravitational source the reason why it's always winter, but never Christmas? I'm not sure how the physics or orbital mechanics would work yet (the sun still rises and sets, so the planet still spins), but if something was pulling the planet away from the sun winter would never end. Time would also flow differently for the sun and the earth if the gravity well was deep enough.  I've attached parts of a screenshot taken on the same night (just facing different directions) to illustrate what I mean.

I think you see this because the skybox is a sphere but the texture is flat. But your theory is also fun!

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Question from @CalNieDaGtarGuy:

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This question may have been asked before- and I apologize if it has- but how do you feel about Digital Extremes and their motive for free-to-play games such as Warframe? Does it hurt other game companies or negatively affect game developers? As a consumer, it feels quite nice, but I am just curious how things look behind the scenes. Thanks Raph!

Regarding Digital Extremes and Warframe -- I'm thrilled that the game has done so well for them. Their fans seem to really like it, their business appears to be thriving, and really those are things every developer wants for themselves, so I have nothing but positive feelings for them! Regarding F2P games specifically -- I think it's a viable business model for certain types of experiences, but of course no business model is perfect. We can see stories about how the growth of some F2P titles puts a huge strain on the dev teams to produce regular updates lest they run afoul of their community (there was a story about the Fornite team really struggling around this recently) -- and even though we are small and our game is relatively small by comparison, we certainly feel that same pressure even though our game isn't free! I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, so please feel free to reframe it if you have something more specific in mind.

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Question from @Alex Azrael:

Hi Hinterland Team, Hi Raph.

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About customing rifle ammo

Like in the movie "L'ours" from Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Bear) :

Tcheky Karyo cuts a cross on the nose of his bullets with his knife, in order to have powerfull rounds which will fragment when hitting the bear.

it could be a good crafting option to add. Isn't it?

Have you ever thinked about adding it ?

 

Sounds like an interesting film! I've never heard of that technique before.

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Question(s) from @yollarbenibekler:

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Now to the questions: 

- I know even if you didn't start on a second game project, I'm sure you dream about it roughly. Do you think the second one needs to be more realistic in terms of graphics or do you love the current "out of an oil painting" graphics? I sometimes play a hunting game named "The Hunter: The call of the wild" and I really like the graphics. Especially one of the maps that has a tundra setting reminds me of TLD and I immediately switch back to the Long Dark. Don't get me wrong, I really like the current graphics of the game.

- Do you still get inspired by the new games and some of their features which make you say "damn, I need this feature in my game?

- I don't remember who mentioned about a challenge mode in which you should survive on a computer-generated road that lasts kilometers long (which have random houses-encounters on the way) but it is brilliant.

- What is your take on deep mysteries hidden in games? GTA 5 still has an unsolved mystery that puzzles the players to this day (The Mount Chilliad Mystery). Do you plan to implement such a thing in your game in the future that makes people search for years while they try to survive in the world? A small hint there, a little mysterious code there maybe? That kind of "game within the game" makes some obsessive players (like me) play the game more obsessively. And we like it.

 

Thanks again and again. If you come to Istanbul anytime or have a transit via Istanbul Airport please let me know. I'll buy you a drink. That'll be on the house (I work at the airport)

 

1) Yes I dream about other projects. They have their own art styles. None are super photo-realistic, though.

2) I rarely think "damn I should add that feature to TLD" but I do get inspired by other games, for sure.

3) That was me. :) 

4) Yeah I like the idea of there being things in world fiction that cannot be easily answered, and which players spend a lot of time speculating about. It's fun for us!

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Question from @Skelegutplays:

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What animal is this trophy in the camp office from?

My assumption would be it's a stag head, but it does have a very ALIEN aspect to it, doesn't it?

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Question from @MueckE:

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In the Dev Diary - of November 2018 you said, that episode 3 will not be released in December because you wanted to add more contend and need more time to polish this episode. Considering that again more than 8 months have past since then, since episode 3 basically was finished (just missed some polishing), i wonder what happened in the meantime?

In that diary you also talked about the growth of the studio and that now there are enough people so that a few of them can work exclusively on the sandbox. How come, with that in mind, in these months “only” Steadfast Ranger has been released? 

I just wonder why there were so many, good and regular updates in 2015 and 2016, with a small staff, but with the ever growing studio less updates are being released and little actual game development is done (from my consumer perspective). 

Could you give us some information about what’s going on behind the scenes regarding the points above?

 

I'm going to ignore the subtext in your post, which seems to come from feeling I have been dishonest about the information I've shared.

What I will say is: 1) updates don't come out as quickly as we would like, either, 2) the team is working very hard on making new content for both Story and Survival mode, and 3) my goal is to build a long-term sustainable business with a fulfilled, engaged team, and I run my studio with that priority in mind (i.e. I'm not focused on short-term goals, but on long-term studio health).

This means that we work hard, but reasonable hours, and we try not to feel pressured or rushed into releasing things before they are ready. That was a mistake I made in August 2017, when we released the first two episodes of WINTERMUTE. We spent an entire year trying to fix that mistake. We could produce updates faster but it would mean either pushing the team irresponsibly, growing the company irresponsibly, or putting out lower quality content than we are happy with.

I won't do any of those things, no matter what people might think about it. If you believe in supporting sustainable, honourable business practices in an industry that is not well known for them, you should support the way we are making the game.

Things were easier in 2015/2016 because we were making more isolated updates (sandbox only) and the impact of each change was much smaller. It's easier to build small modular things with smaller teams than it is to build large complex things with larger teams, which seems obvious. In Redux (which we worked on for most of 2018), we improved a ton of tech and processes, as well as adding people and equipment, which allowed us to hit a higher level of quality in Episodes One and Two (which were pretty much completely redone). Episode Three builds on the Redux foundation, as it was intended, and that's what I was referring to in my Nov 2018 dev diary.

(I should say that I write all this fully expecting it to end up in some unmoderated forum where it will be used as an excuse to attack me or my team, which makes me very sad. But, the words still need to be said.)

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Question from @Serenity:

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It seems in a recent update you increased the bunny hitbox a great deal. Now it's larger than the animal and you sometimes don't have to directly hit it. Bunnies now also sit still now and then. What was the idea behind making hunting bunnies that easy? Throwing stones at them wasn't the easiest task and you could fail a lot, but getting bunny skins was already considerably easier then when we had to use snares.

We found that hitting Rabbits with stones was frustratingly hard, and since they are generally intended as an "early game" source of resources, we felt it would be more useful to make them a little bit more achievable for players. Snares are still useful as a passive way of gathering resources -- in fact, they are the only "passive" resource gathering that exists in the game, currently.

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Question from @romerabr:

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Can we expect a Dev Diary soon? 

I don't share speculative "release dates" because if I miss them people get mad. There will be a project update fairly soon.

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Question from @StrayCat:

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I was wondering : is there some kind of hidden mecanism, that dynamically adjust difficulty depending on the player's condition ? It may be luck, but I noticed that difficulties hardly pile up. For example, if I get badly mauled by a wolf/bear, usually weather becomes clement during the recovery, even in pleasant valley (no blizzard there, really ?). I could see the interest of doing so : player's death becomes the consequence of his own mistakes, instead of bad luck piling up, lowering rage quits and frustration. But after all, it may only be my imagination, for I have no data to support this theory...

So, does the game secures us in one way or another, or do we really face the wrath of the nature that we ignored, unleashed ? Have a nice day !

 

This is a good example of a question where there is no good answer. If I tell you this is just in your imagination, the magic will be ruined. If I tell you it's a real system, some players will be betrayed by that. So I'm not going to answer. :) 

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Question from @Jendo:

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The research books have authors' names on them: who are they? :)

The people who wrote the books. :) 

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Question from @musrass:

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Are you planning to improve the hitbox(?) on items when placing them with right-click? Sometimes it can be really annoying to get the "invalid location to place the object" when it seems like a perfectly valid location to place the object.

But as always: thanks for a truly great and engaging game!

 

There may be many reasons why a particular location might not be a valid placement location, including the terrain, an angle, something already occupying that space, or proximity to another item. So, just because it "seems" like a place should be a valid location, doesn't mean it is. The solution is already there -- preventing you from placing something in an invalid location. :) 

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Question from @JeremiahJohnson:

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Im sitting here sharpening my hatchet and knife in the dark, waiting for the sun to rise when I think to myself "How do my arrowheads stay in perfect condition" haha

What are you thoughts on having to keep arrowheads sharp with the whetstone?

Hope everyone at Hinterland Studios is enjoying these last few weeks of summer!

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Means more than you think to alot of us survivors!:hatchet:

 

I have some ideas for how to improve Arrowheads and Arrows in general. Using a whetstone to maintain them sounds like a good idea.

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Question from @Vinceofpyrenees:

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Hello Raphaël,

Do you know the game "Unreal World", developped by two Finnish independent developpers ? What are your thoughts on this game ? Do you think you could enrich your game The Long Dark during 27 years as them, in the form of DLCs for example ?

 

Hello! I haven't played Unreal World, no, but I have heard of it (of course). It seems like a very detailed, hardcore simulation! If our goal was to make a very detailed, hardcore simulation, I'm sure we could learn from that game. :) 

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Question from @GothSkunk:

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  Ambient lighting: I've been playing Long Dark since between Rugged Sentinel and Vigilant Flame. In that time, I've noticed several changes to ambient lighting in indoor locations. Does the game's engine present a challenge when trying to appropriately light certain indoor locations? 

   By my observation both here and on the Steam discussion forums, one particular location that keeps popping up is the Pleasant Valley Barn, which for a long time was too dark to traverse even in daylight, resulting in complaints (though thankfully, no outrage). On the other hand, there ARE indoor locations in game, which I feel SHOULD be dark by design and impassable without a torch/lantern, even in daylight. For example, Carter Dam's lower areas (Carter Hydro Dam and Environs: Lower Levels). There are absolutely no windows except in the staff break room at the far end of the map. Once you go through that bulkhead, even in broad daylight it should be pitch black all throughout until you reach the staff break room at the other side.

   Appropriate lighting of indoor locations would give torches and the storm lantern increased utility. As they are now, their current utility is rather limited because many locations are so well lit ambiently, even in darkness.

   Which brings me to my next question: Are there plans to increase the utility of hatchet tools?

   I know a hatchet is required to properly traverse the Hushed River Valley (a region I admit I have not yet visited), but otherwise their utility seems questionable right now. The only other purpose they seem to serve at the moment is to cut tree limbs into firewood (and even then, minor limbs can be cut into firewood with a hacksaw) and break down certain environment objects into reclaimed wood. They can be used to quarter animal carcasses, but so can knife tools, with the exact same efficiency (at least, time-wise. Not sure about the decay of the tools when quartering). In my current survival sandbox, though I've crafted an improvised hatchet for the first time ever, I've left it behind because I just don't see a purpose for it until I decide to finally go to HRV (AFTER I've collected all the game's buffer memories).

 

Lighting in the game is very tricky because we have so many different scene, plus outdoor scenes, and all are lit differently, and have to account for time of day and weather conditions, and the aurora, which creates a ton of permutations. Occasionally a scene will get relit or the settings might change on purpose or by accident. Also, in general, lighting in The Long Dark is such a big factor for gameplay, unlike most other games where it's only about ambience/atmosphere, so we have to be careful not to completely nullify entire systems (light sources, fires, fuel and firestarting economy, etc.) due to making our interiors too bright or too dark. 

Regarding the Hatchet -- it has characteristics around harvesting, defense, and crafting, and just like all the tools it is balanced within an ecosystem of things that are available to the player, so it should not be evaluated independently of this. The question shouldn't be "why would I take a hatchet instead of X?", but "does a Hatchet provide me with the range of characteristics I need based on my goals at the moment?"

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Question from @Southerner in Snow:

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One good thing to sell in the merch store would be the deck of cards from the beginning of wintermute don't you think? any plans to add these as I love the look of the deck in wintermute and would like to use it for solitaire if I could... 

Anyway that's my question, will there be a deck of THE LONG DARK themed cards in the future?

P.S. Best regards to the team and I hope the work on episode 3 is going well.

 

Cool idea! We'll add it to the long list of Merch items we'd like to make.

Episode Three dev work is going really well, thanks for the kind words.

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Thanks to everyone who submitted questions! There we a lot of them so I skipped over a few that either weren't obvious questions, looked like they were mainly about trying to pick a fight, or felt like duplicates or wishlist items more than questions about the game.

- Raph

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I think it's really unfortunate that Raph and the team still have to deal with remarks/questions from people here that are worded in such snide and antagonistic ways...

I know I've mentioned this before but:

On ‎6‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 3:51 AM, ManicManiac said:

We already know the team is focusing their efforts on the next episode... [text removed for brevity] ...I would again urge patience.  I'm sure the team will be eager to share news when they have something more to share with us.  Lets give them room to work and show them a little faith, we know they are working on it... and we know they do great work.  That's why we are all here.

Hang in there survivors, it's going to be okay... :) 

 

Edited by ManicManiac
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4 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

 

Question from @GothSkunk:

Lighting in the game is very tricky because we have so many different scene, plus outdoor scenes, and all are lit differently, and have to account for time of day and weather conditions, and the aurora, which creates a ton of permutations. Occasionally a scene will get relit or the settings might change on purpose or by accident. Also, in general, lighting in The Long Dark is such a big factor for gameplay, unlike most other games where it's only about ambience/atmosphere, so we have to be careful not to completely nullify entire systems (light sources, fires, fuel and firestarting economy, etc.) due to making our interiors too bright or too dark. 

Regarding the Hatchet -- it has characteristics around harvesting, defense, and crafting, and just like all the tools it is balanced within an ecosystem of things that are available to the player, so it should not be evaluated independently of this. The question shouldn't be "why would I take a hatchet instead of X?", but "does a Hatchet provide me with the range of characteristics I need based on my goals at the moment?"

 

- Raph

Thank you for the answer! Especially about the hatchet. It's been bugging me for a while now. 

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@Raphael van Lierop: Thanks for the answers! Interesting to know what you once thought of, or dreamed of doing with your life, before you found the path you are on now.  And yes, Anni was part of the reason for my question. She's playing around with the Unity Bundle and some other tools right now, messing around with fairly simple Unity 2D projects, and a few others. She's starting to make assets. And seems to be having a lot of fun doing so. 

As always, great Mailbag Dispatch, and thank you for taking what free time you have to answer our questions. It is appreciated. :)

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10 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

- I don't remember who mentioned about a challenge mode in which you should survive on a computer-generated road that lasts kilometers long (which have random houses-encounters on the way) but it is brilliant.

 

I like that idea. You can measure survival in kilometers. I wanna play.
 

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5 hours ago, k0s0ff said:

I like that idea. You can measure survival in kilometers. I wanna play.

Me too!  Experience has taught me to be cautioun s about random gen; often it changes the gameplay to "a long search for what your prefer".  But this would be truly challenging -- especially for experienced TLD players because we know where the dangers and resources are in the static maps.  Measure this challenge in distance from the start and we'll be motivated to keep moving forward into unknown territory.

Edited by Ruruwawa
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Just wanted to tag in and voice my support of a procedurally-generated highway travel survival game.  TLD is great, but I (and I think most veteran players) always get to the point where I'm just going through the motions.  I'm settled, I have everything I need, and barring some monumental screw-up on my part (which happens because I'm human, but rarely because I know the game backwards and forwards) it becomes a Retirement Simulator.

Tracking progress by distance traveled in a procedurally generated landscape would really turn that on its head.  You might learn the mechanics but you can never afford any degree of complacency, because you do not and cannot know the terrain ahead.

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Quote

This means that we work hard, but reasonable hours, and we try not to feel pressured or rushed into releasing things before they are ready.

Good. I completely support a good working environment where people aren't subject to the garbage that people working in the AAA industry are. It's insane to me that people get mad about that.

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It kind of makes me sad that you understand this question this way. There is nothing in my question that wants to "expose" you, neither was it meant negative or to post your answer on reddit. Im not sure why you see it like this. Also keep in mind, that english isn't my language and that things i write might be easily misunderstood just because of cultural diffences. My question was a genuine question. Yes, it is a critical question and yes i ask something about a statement you made - but not to expose you or Hinterland. 

But still thank you for your answer.

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18 hours ago, Ruruwawa said:

Me too!  Experience has taught me to be cautioun s about random gen; often it changes the gameplay to "a long search for what your prefer".  But this would be truly challenging -- especially for experienced TLD players because we know where the dangers and resources are in the static maps.  Measure this challenge in distance from the start and we'll be motivated to keep moving forward into unknown territory.

 

10 hours ago, yollarbenibekler said:

That would be one hell of a journey. I totally agree that this challenge should be supported. Not only it should be a challenge but also an endless road mode that you try to survive as far as possible. 

I won't even speculate on how difficult it is to do this within a TLD. But on my view very curiously, that in one bag converged two themes.

If it's not a TLD then it's something else.

 

On 9/11/2019 at 3:37 AM, Raphael van Lierop said:

I recommend picking up any of the free tools available, grab some reputable online tutorials, and just try to make something simple.

The source of something new should definitely be "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. Visual style : "This War of Mine" and "DEADLIGHT". If you keep the balance, you get a great atmosphere of hopelessness and devastation. Maybe the mechanics to some extent will migrate to a new product. 

I think these products are able to turn the idea of games.

Maybe among us there is someone who wants to try himself in game development. Good luck.

P.S.

Maybe among us there is someone who wants to try himself in game development. Good luck.

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Thank you for the answer, @Raphael van Lierop

As as KSP player, I'm tempted to keep my explanation, at least for sandbox games. Though the flaw is the tidal forces would likely break the planet apart. It adds to the atmosphere of the last man alive eking out an existence on the edge of the abyss...

On 9/10/2019 at 10:37 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

 

My assumption would be it's a stag head, but it does have a very ALIEN aspect to it, doesn't it?

 

Wait. This fits my grand conspiracy theory! 

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11 hours ago, MueckE said:

It kind of makes me sad that you understand this question this way. There is nothing in my question that wants to "expose" you, neither was it meant negative or to post your answer on reddit. Im not sure why you see it like this. Also keep in mind, that english isn't my language and that things i write might be easily misunderstood just because of cultural diffences. My question was a genuine question. Yes, it is a critical question and yes i ask something about a statement you made - but not to expose you or Hinterland. 

But still thank you for your answer.

I apologize if I took your question out of context, or misunderstood your intention. You have to understand that, unfortunately, we operate in an online culture that is not friendly to developers or anyone who stands in front of a community. And there are dark corners of this community (not necessarily in these forums) where people congregate with the intention of actively trying to hurt my studio. So I always have to keep this in mind whenever I answer anything online. It makes me sad that I understood the question that way too, but I do appreciate you correcting my assumption. In either case, the answer is genuine and true, and I hope it addressed some of your concerns.

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9 hours ago, k0s0ff said:

 

I won't even speculate on how difficult it is to do this within a TLD. But on my view very curiously, that in one bag converged two themes.

If it's not a TLD then it's something else.

 

The source of something new should definitely be "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. Visual style : "This War of Mine" and "DEADLIGHT". If you keep the balance, you get a great atmosphere of hopelessness and devastation. Maybe the mechanics to some extent will migrate to a new product. 

I think these products are able to turn the idea of games.

Maybe among us there is someone who wants to try himself in game development. Good luck.

P.S.

Maybe among us there is someone who wants to try himself in game development. Good luck.

You are welcome to try, but you may want to wait. :) 

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Just throwing my hat in the ring to say how much I support Raphael's attitude towards his team.

I'm sure everyone knows the price that comes from needing to work long hours to get the job done. I'm in the middle of one of those times myself, and I miss the time I could have spent sharing meals with my family, talking with my children, helping my wife around the house, and just being present in their lives. However, I work in a job that demands commitment, where failure can mean people suffer harm or die.

The point, though, is that this type of event is the exception, rather than the rule. I do my best to ensure both myself and my staff rarely end up in these situations, balancing the workload to ensure everyone puts in a full day's work, then goes home on time. There's a feeling of pride that I'm sure Raphael also feels knowing that you're giving people a chance to use their talents to the fullest without abusing them.

We work to live, not live to work. Many thanks to the Hinterland team for all their work, and I hope you all find pride in your creation and happiness in your lives.

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16 hours ago, Jimmy said:

Just throwing my hat in the ring to say how much I support Raphael's attitude towards his team.

I'm sure everyone knows the price that comes from needing to work long hours to get the job done. I'm in the middle of one of those times myself, and I miss the time I could have spent sharing meals with my family, talking with my children, helping my wife around the house, and just being present in their lives. However, I work in a job that demands commitment, where failure can mean people suffer harm or die.

The point, though, is that this type of event is the exception, rather than the rule. I do my best to ensure both myself and my staff rarely end up in these situations, balancing the workload to ensure everyone puts in a full day's work, then goes home on time. There's a feeling of pride that I'm sure Raphael also feels knowing that you're giving people a chance to use their talents to the fullest without abusing them.

We work to live, not live to work. Many thanks to the Hinterland team for all their work, and I hope you all find pride in your creation and happiness in your lives.

♥️

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The lighting question got me thinking. I've been spending a lot of time in the lodge in Broken Railroad lately, and I've been curious about the fact that when you light a fire in the fireplace, it illuminates the basement. Gaps in the floorboards, testament to the damage and weathering of the structure? Or unintentional clipping? Either way, I can't complain. It saved me a few torches when I first arrived.

(I also have to say I'd be very interested in a procedurally generated challenge mode. Sounds fun.)

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I just want to support MueckE because I thought it was a great question.  It was a misunderstood question on the regards of intent, so here's my two cents.  I have always thought Hinterland has created a great community for the consumers and their development team.  I just recently explained to my friend that I have been waiting for years for the next episode, but I am okay with it because of how Raph treats his team and communicates with the players.  As a consumer I also kind of want to know why you don't build a bigger team to get it done faster.  I know there are probably many reasons for this and I was hoping to hear something more along those lines.

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