Why do watchtowers have proper windows?

[Adamo]

I mean windows you can see out of. The view is very expansive so a lot is being drawn, including some excellent weather,  so why don’t most other buildings have working windows? I wonder if it is the elevated view meaning no animals are drawn perhaps that helps?  ( Probably asked a few times already but it’s not a great set of keywords to work with in search sorry!) 

[Stinky socks]

You are right, it must be a lot more processing power than say, having see through windows in mystery lake trappers cabin.

A head scratcher for sure.

[mfuegemann]

I do think it is just the design decision to separate those buildings from the scenery, where the inside is larger than their map representation.

A view would be possible but could lead to perspective anomalies. I would love the feature, though.

[hozz1235]

Watchtowers are exterior locations whereas most other buildings are interior.

[UpUpAway95]

10 minutes ago, hozz1235 said:

Watchtowers are exterior locations whereas most other buildings are interior.

Good observation!  I never thought about it before, but I wonder if they could get rid of a lot of the loading screens and give us see-through windows and more accurate lighting through those windows if they changed the way the game autosaves (which now uses those transitions).  Perhaps they could put in a manual save feature that uses a bed or bedroll without burning up a full hour of game time.  If they insist, they could still leave the "Pass Time" save as requiring a full hour of game time to execute.  Interior vs. exterior temperature isn't the issue since we have that variance already in open caves.

Edited April 30, 2021 by UpUpAway95

[Stinky socks]

40 minutes ago, hozz1235 said:

Watchtowers are exterior locations whereas most other buildings are interior.

That doesn't change the fact that quite often, these exterior locations have almost as much detail inside as an interior location would. Besides, it's not completely exterior🤔since you can cure guts and stuff inside.

If you take mountaineers hut for example, it has a lot of detail inside. Also watch tower at bleak inlet has a lot of detail inside as well.

On the other hand, if all those houses at milton were see-through, I doubt most GPUs could cope with extra load.

On the other-OTHER hand, if you take red dead redemption2, it's got a lot more detail in the world AND inside houses, which don't have loading screens.

Ah, can't wait to have milton look like St.Denise.🤤🤤🤤

[Adamo]

I think this is interesting yes the majority of interiors are like the tardis aren’t they compared to the area they use on the map

1 hour ago, mfuegemann said:

I do think it is just the design decision to separate those buildings from the scenery, where the inside is larger than their map representation.

A view would be possible but could lead to perspective anomalies. I would love the feature, though.

 

[UTC-10]

Keep in mind that the game has evolved over the years in development and issues like memory requirements and processing power (CPU and GPU) would seriously influence just how much could be done.   Certainly top of the line computers could do more, but what about those who did not have such computers to use?

I remember back in 2019 when I was having problems with the save game function not working and not being obvious about it and occasional crashes because the game ran out of memory to put stuff (I had 12 GB of RAM and 2 GB of VRAM).   32-bit address space was kind of limiting back then.  64-bit address space was a lot better and a lot of memory-related problems seemed to disappear. 

Since a character was not going to immediately interact with trees, critters, and terrain that was hundred of feet away, certainly short-cuts to reduce memory demands were likely used.  Someone had to decide what to do about the situation and we have what we have.  If TLD was being developed NOW it would seem likely that we might see a very different game world structure even if the game overall was of very similar design. 

That's the way I see it. 

[Stinky socks]

Well, I think catering to only slower systems means leaving a lot of graphical detail out on the table. Those things can always be tuned down when operator has limited processing power.

UktraHD 4k textures and billion polygon models for everyone!!

[hozz1235]

On 4/30/2021 at 1:11 PM, UpUpAway95 said:

game autosaves (which now uses those transitions).

I believe the original intent behind saving when transitioning was to prevent people from reloading an interior over and over, which was done to get the item you wanted from the randomized loot table.

[UpUpAway95]

11 minutes ago, hozz1235 said:

I believe the original intent behind saving when transitioning was to prevent people from reloading an interior over and over, which was done to get the item you wanted from the randomized loot table.

Makes some sense, I guess... but TBH, it's kind of moot when there are now guaranteed locations for most "choice" items and players are basically now just replaying those routes over and over again with each new run... bee line for the matches, head to a known location for a bedroll and combat pants, then off to Ash Canyon for the crampons and a possible bear skin coat... etc.

[Stinky socks]

Hahaha, yes, you are damaged goods once you know too much. No enjoyment afterwards. Time to move on or fade into the long dark for some time before coming back for another run.

Well, it all depends on how you set yourself up when you begin a new run. Of course, if you made a mental list of what you will do and where you will go once you start, all enjoyment goes out the window because you are in "doing chores" mode. 

Forget it all! Fight a wolf, go try fishing, get lost in a snowstorm! Live life to the fullest! Want to know what I did? Iran through a blizzard totally blind to reach broken highway from fishery! It was fun and I almost died! Slept in a car because I overshot the landing! 

[odizzido]

From what I can tell, hinterland made the decision to have most building inside areas be a different map because it's easier. If they change the inside of the building map it doesn't change anything on the outside map which reduces the amount of work they need to do.

What could happen, but almost certainly won't because it's work, is right when they're finishing the game make all the buildings exist in the same map. That way they only need to rework the outside once when everything is final. It would be nice.

 

Anyways since that watch tower is simple and likely will never change they might as well have it in the outside map. That's probably why.

[ajb1978]

3 hours ago, hozz1235 said:

I believe the original intent behind saving when transitioning was to prevent people from reloading an interior over and over, which was done to get the item you wanted from the randomized loot table.

It is.

 

[UpUpAway95]

3 hours ago, Stinky socks said:

Hahaha, yes, you are damaged goods once you know too much. No enjoyment afterwards. Time to move on or fade into the long dark for some time before coming back for another run.

Well, it all depends on how you set yourself up when you begin a new run. Of course, if you made a mental list of what you will do and where you will go once you start, all enjoyment goes out the window because you are in "doing chores" mode. 

Forget it all! Fight a wolf, go try fishing, get lost in a snowstorm! Live life to the fullest! Want to know what I did? Iran through a blizzard totally blind to reach broken highway from fishery! It was fun and I almost died! Slept in a car because I overshot the landing! 

What I was saying is that most sensible people wouldn't bother with save scumming in order to get a particular item from what's available on the randomized loot tables since the good loot in this game is all available in largely known, essentially guaranteed locations.  Really, are you going to save scum to get peaches rather than tomato soup?... when you know the combat pants you really want are up the hill in the signal tower?  Not playing loper - Are you going to scum repeatedly to get a ski jacket when you know you can get an almost guaranteed expedition parka at the summit of TWM?  If you're going to scum to get "what you want," then you already have to know something about what the game has available... and once you know what the good loot is in this game... chances are you also have acquired some sense about where to reliably find it.  At this point, I think it's a moot deterent.

Anyway... back to windows.  I think the tardis explanation is probably closer to the actual reason.

Edited May 5, 2021 by UpUpAway95

[Adamo]

Interesting posts  I thought up another "benefit" of the window situation: As it stands now the player cannot routinely be inside a building and shoot passing wildlife, the blinds, and the doorless huts and the PV farmhouse porch don't offer protection from a charging wolf or bear. That prevents a sniping gameplay - unless you get lucky with a critical hit from those open locations. The towers make the sniping impossible ( I assume!)  Next time I play im going to see if the tower windows shatter when shot, and what happens to interior temperatures. love this game

[Stinky socks]

Sniping is cheating? Oh, that's new:)

[Adamo]

Heh

[hozz1235]

16 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

What I was saying is that most sensible people wouldn't bother with save scumming in order to get a particular item from what's available on the randomized loot tables since the good loot in this game is all available in largely known, essentially guaranteed locations.  Really, are you going to save scum to get peaches rather than tomato soup?... when you know the combat pants you really want are up the hill in the signal tower?  Not playing loper - Are you going to scum repeatedly to get a ski jacket when you know you can get an almost guaranteed expedition parka at the summit of TWM?  If you're going to scum to get "what you want," then you already have to know something about what the game has available... and once you know what the good loot is in this game... chances are you also have acquired some sense about where to reliably find it.  At this point, I think it's a moot deterent.

Anyway... back to windows.  I think the tardis explanation is probably closer to the actual reason.

If you look at the mailbag @ajb1978 posted, you can see that is the case:

Loot gets rolled when you enter. We save it so you can't just exit, reload, and reroll to try to get a better set of loot. The game state persists in memory when you leave so we don't need to save it at that point. We could save again but I'm not sure what the benefit would be.

Trying to define "most sensible people" can be a tough nut to crack but HL must have thought it was a relevant enough issue to address directly.

[Stinky socks]

This is ridiculous 😂I cannot believe that's the reason for hinterland's decision. This isn't competition gameplay..

[UpUpAway95]

9 hours ago, hozz1235 said:

If you look at the mailbag @ajb1978 posted, you can see that is the case:

Loot gets rolled when you enter. We save it so you can't just exit, reload, and reroll to try to get a better set of loot. The game state persists in memory when you leave so we don't need to save it at that point. We could save again but I'm not sure what the benefit would be.

Trying to define "most sensible people" can be a tough nut to crack but HL must have thought it was a relevant enough issue to address directly.

I'm not arguing whether or not HL thought it was necessary... I'm saying that my opinion is that it is a moot deterrent because the good loot is placed in predictable locations and most sensible people go for the sure bet rather than spend hours spamming a door for a random roll of the dice. A good portion of the loot occurs outdoors and is also not gated behind the entrance to a building,   If you think it's worthwhile to try spamming the re-entry to a building for hours to get the difference between cotton socks or wool socks, etc.... then I would just let you do it.  You bog down your game and largely ruin the experience... but that's your business.  Still, it's my opinion.  HL can do whatever they like.

It wouldn't matter to me whether they eliminated this deterrent entirely.  There is, IMO, no incentive in this game to spam a door for hours on end to get marginally better random loot at a house.  Better to just move on to the next house.   I think I'm a pretty average player and pretty sensible.  IMO,  a more effective deterrent against all forms of save scumming is to have the game automatically exit save (overwriting the previous save) in the manner that Minecraft Bedrock Edition does on the Xbox One.  The moment you leave your game, any progress is automatically saves... whether you want it to be or not.

At any rate... this has nothing to do with the windows; and apparently my posited theory about whether or not eliminating this door save would enable clear windows would not solve the tardis issue with the building exteriors being smaller than they should be.  I suggest if people want to continue to argue with me over what are clearly stated as my personal opinions about save scumming and deterent to it, they PM me instead.  It is irrelevant to this thread.

Edited May 6, 2021 by UpUpAway95

[stratvox]

On 4/30/2021 at 3:46 PM, Stinky socks said:

On the other-OTHER hand, if you take red dead redemption2, it's got a lot more detail in the world AND inside houses, which don't have loading screens.

In the game dev world, I believe that's referred to as full streaming resources that load and unload them as needed from RAM into the video card so they can do this. This is the real thing about the adjustable BAR/Smart Access Memory features on nvidia and amd; to make the moving of data from RAM to video RAM faster and more efficient... especially more efficient.

It's a relatively new game tech, and TLD predates it. I'm hoping that once the last two episodes are done, that Hinterland will start developing TLD II, where basically they don't really change how the place looks and feels but redoes the underlying base so that we can benefit from having houses fully integrated into the world in the way you're talking about here. There are probably a few other things that could be done that would be all right too, for example modelling the effect of wind on arrows, or gravity and wind on bullet trajectories; right now the guns are like the rail guns in Quake II; just a straight line from the barrel and the arrows are only affected by gravity. Another cool idea for the game would be modelling how the ecosystem functions in the game between say rabbits, deer, moose, wolves, bears, and mountain lions, along with better animations for how they interact with each other and move around the world. I mean, think about stumbling on a pack of wolves harassing a mountain lion. It'd be so cool... and sooo dangerous. It would also serve to make the wildlife much less predictable to the player if they were autonomous agents traversing the terrain and reacting to their environment seeking food whilst avoiding becoming food.

Edited May 6, 2021 by stratvox
clarity

[hozz1235]

15 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I'm not arguing whether or not HL thought it was necessary... I'm saying that my opinion is that it is a moot deterrent because the good loot is placed in predictable locations and most sensible people go for the sure bet rather than spend hours spamming a door for a random roll of the dice. A good portion of the loot occurs outdoors and is also not gated behind the entrance to a building,   If you think it's worthwhile to try spamming the re-entry to a building for hours to get the difference between cotton socks or wool socks, etc.... then I would just let you do it.  You bog down your game and largely ruin the experience... but that's your business.  Still, it's my opinion.  HL can do whatever they like.

It wouldn't matter to me whether they eliminated this deterrent entirely.  There is, IMO, no incentive in this game to spam a door for hours on end to get marginally better random loot at a house.  Better to just move on to the next house.   I think I'm a pretty average player and pretty sensible.  IMO,  a more effective deterrent against all forms of save scumming is to have the game automatically exit save (overwriting the previous save) in the manner that Minecraft Bedrock Edition does on the Xbox One.  The moment you leave your game, any progress is automatically saves... whether you want it to be or not.

At any rate... this has nothing to do with the windows; and apparently my posited theory about whether or not eliminating this door save would enable clear windows would not solve the tardis issue with the building exteriors being smaller than they should be.  I suggest if people want to continue to argue with me over what are clearly stated as my personal opinions about save scumming and deterent to it, they PM me instead.  It is irrelevant to this thread.

I don't think anyone is arguing over your opinion - everyone is entitled to that.  My only point is your constant use of "sensible person".  What you consider "sensible" may be completely different for someone else.  I also would not spend hours upgrading a pair of socks from cotton to wool, but perhaps someone really wants a parka in the early game and don't want to make the hike to TWM summit?  I can see someone spending some time save-scumming.  Perfect case of this:  Gambling.  Millions of people partake in it with a very low chance of gain, but that carrot dangling out there is hard for some to resist!

[UpUpAway95]

35 minutes ago, hozz1235 said:

I don't think anyone is arguing over your opinion - everyone is entitled to that.  My only point is your constant use of "sensible person".  What you consider "sensible" may be completely different for someone else.  I also would not spend hours upgrading a pair of socks from cotton to wool, but perhaps someone really wants a parka in the early game and don't want to make the hike to TWM summit?  I can see someone spending some time save-scumming.  Perfect case of this:  Gambling.  Millions of people partake in it with a very low chance of gain, but that carrot dangling out there is hard for some to resist!

I don't consider people with gambling addictions to be "sensible" about it.  As I also implied... if people feel that they are being "sensible" in a single-player game by save scumming, my personal inclination is to just let them do it... but that's me, not HL.  My opinion is that HL could come up with a more effective way to stop save scumming (if that's what they want to do) by simply making the game save when it is exited to reload.  Currently, I see the greater incentive to roll back before the game can save would be to avoid an imminent attack... as in see a bear charging, quickly exit, and you'll reload wherever it was you last slept or entered a building and possibly not lose the character to a death.  As it is, HL's deterrent doesn't prevent that sort of save scumming.

Edited May 6, 2021 by UpUpAway95

[Stinky socks]

20 minutes ago, hozz1235 said:

someone really wants a parka in the early game and don't want to make the hike to TWM summit?  I can see someone spending some time save-scumming

Well let them🙄if they want to spend half a day reloading a game, that's their time to waste..