If not a compass why not a sunstone

[Tactical Ex]

I've seen a number of wish list requests for a compass. I agree that it might be a nice item to have but I'd be worried about the balance it might upset for the risk involved with bad weather.  I'm certain there are plenty of other threads for that debate but what about a sunstone? It would require finding the sun in bad weather and figuring out the cardinal direction from there given the time of day. It would have to be found and then polished/cut/crafted that would make it's acquisition something to work for and it's use something that isn't so easy and potentially more rewarding. 

[Amazombie]

I like this idea. My problem with the compass has always been i felt it went against the story of tld, but a sunstone would get around that. 

[ajb1978]

Well unless they update the sun's path in every region, this wouldn't be reliable anyway.  Comparing the sun as it tracks across the sky with clues provided by the geography, we have an impossible situation on Great Bear.  Let's start in Forlorn Muskeg, at the crack of dawn.  Let the sun get just over the horizon, and you can see that it is correctly rising in the east.  Follow the tracks east towards the sun and transition to Mystery Lake.  Now you would expect the sun to still be straight ahead of you when you enter Mystery Lake, but it's nowhere to be seen.  Walk "east" along the tracks a ways, then turn around.  If you've gotten far enough away from the cliff face, you will see the sun, magically rising in the west.  Should you pass some time, you will see the sun track across the sky, eventually setting in the east.  And Pleasant Valley is a whole different beast, with the sun rising in the north and setting in the south.

Unlike in real life, you cannot trust the sun for navigation.

[Tactical Ex]

On 1/17/2020 at 4:02 PM, ajb1978 said:

Well unless they update the sun's path in every region, this wouldn't be reliable anyway.  Comparing the sun as it tracks across the sky with clues provided by the geography, we have an impossible situation on Great Bear.  Let's start in Forlorn Muskeg, at the crack of dawn.  Let the sun get just over the horizon, and you can see that it is correctly rising in the east.  Follow the tracks east towards the sun and transition to Mystery Lake.  Now you would expect the sun to still be straight ahead of you when you enter Mystery Lake, but it's nowhere to be seen.  Walk "east" along the tracks a ways, then turn around.  If you've gotten far enough away from the cliff face, you will see the sun, magically rising in the west.  Should you pass some time, you will see the sun track across the sky, eventually setting in the east.  And Pleasant Valley is a whole different beast, with the sun rising in the north and setting in the south.

Unlike in real life, you cannot trust the sun for navigation.

I see what you are saying but this does not seem like a prohibitively costly technical fix. If the skybox and celestial movements are written at last how I expect, shifting the positions to be more consistent per region is a relatively minor math adjustment and requires moderate testing. 

Before even considering that, first, I think there is an assumption being made about the entrance and exit of the regions FM and ML in your example. The tunnel could bend. In fact in all cases of transition zones with maybe an exception for CH-broken highway and Ravine-BI the relation of the sun position in comparison to any other neighboring region can be explained away by just asserting that the transition entrance and exit do not have the same orientation. 

Even if we were to accept the limitations you offered, I don't think it is problematic to know 'per region' which way is North and use a sun stone accordingly. 

[ajb1978]

6 hours ago, Tactical Ex said:

this does not seem like a prohibitively costly technical fix

I accept that it might not seem like that to you, given that you weren't in any way involved with the game's development.  However I submit that if it were a simple fix, given the level of support this game has received over the years, if this were a simple fix wouldn't you think this would have already been implemented?

[Guest jeffpeng]

Well you could argue that the sun is fine. Just the maps we draw aren't aligned to north and the transitions are .... longer than we think they are, and aren't quite straight.

On topic .... after just having gone through a true odyssey through HRV ... nah, no navigation tools please. I know some people really do struggle without them, and I made a (somewhat weak) case in a thread before why this overly benefits people with good spacial awareness. But in all honesty ... it wouldn't be the same game anymore. I have 2000+ hours under my belt, and I can get lost in HRV (at night, in snowy weather  ) ... and that's pretty great. At least for me.

 

Edited January 19, 2020 by jeffpeng

[dbmurph22]

Getting lost is one of the best parts of the game.

[ajb1978]

7 hours ago, jeffpeng said:

Well you could argue that the sun is fine. Just the maps we draw aren't aligned to north and the transitions are .... longer than we think they are, and aren't quite straight.

I could accept that to be the case for say Pleasant Valley or Timberwolf Mountain...maybe they're just canted at the wrong angle.  But Mystery lake throws that completely out the window by being 180 degrees out of whack.  

[Guest jeffpeng]

42 minutes ago, ajb1978 said:

I could accept that to be the case for say Pleasant Valley or Timberwolf Mountain...maybe they're just canted at the wrong angle.  But Mystery lake throws that completely out the window by being 180 degrees out of whack.  

Yeah, I tried  

[Tactical Ex]

On 1/18/2020 at 11:31 PM, ajb1978 said:

I accept that it might not seem like that to you, given that you weren't in any way involved with the game's development.  However I submit that if it were a simple fix, given the level of support this game has received over the years, if this were a simple fix wouldn't you think this would have already been implemented?

Not at all, trivial software fixes get overlooked all the time based on scope/severity. In my profession I watch trivial issues go unfixed for years because the impact to the user just isn't severe enough to warrant the risk of change and the cost of testing. Adding a feature such as the one I suggested sits in the same feature domain including the sky animations so it would become more important to resolve if added to the game. 

Edited January 20, 2020 by Tactical Ex