The Elephant in the Room

[Ansible]

I'm really excited about the new hand coverings update that was just released. I love anything that increases immersion in the game world, and makes things feel less "gamey".

Can we please though discuss the elephant in the room, in regards to immersion-breaking? Things like this:

 

When I "harvest" a metal shelf, and the things that were sitting on that shelf just end up floating in the air. I'm just surprised that with all the work that they put into those hand coverings, they haven't fixed this old existing bug that's been around since forever! Can we please fix this???

Related, in "older" zones like Mountain Town, there's a LOT of items that can't be harvested (like lamps), that CAN be in "newer" zones. The discrepancy here is also immersion breaking. I suspect that this is because while they were working on the newer zones, they thought about what should and shouldn't be harvestable, but then didn't go backwards to the old zones to fix up those objects and make them consistent. They've already done something like this in the past with the item reallocation (so that like, food items show up in the kitchen more often, etc etc), so I know that Hinterland is interested in fixing "old" stuff once in a while. So can we please fix this as well?

Anyone else have any obvious immersion-breaking bugs that should have been fixed long ago? Any more "elephants in the room"?

Love the game, by the way, it's my go-to game for relaxation and fun:

[ManicManiac]

@Ansible
You've clearly been playing this game for a while.

If we each open support tickets for these things... then it's much more likely that Hinterland will be tracking on it and very likely get them fixed.

Whether it's barrels partially phased into a wall... or pipes floating in the air... or pine trees that have phased through boulders... or any other sort of what I tend to call "Strange Geometry" in my support tickets.

This right here is a perfect example.  
Take a debug screenshot (F8) and attach it in a support ticket.
This will help Hinterland to find, track down, and fix these little anomalies that much quicker.

https://hinterlandgames.zendesk.com/hc/en-us

Also, since you brought it up...  

I'll be rounding 2,500 hours myself pretty soon.
Not as much as some... but respectable, I think. 

[chrislacruz]

Not convinced this is an elephant... maybe a vole?

Edited December 7, 2023 by chrislacruz

[UpUpAway95]

2 hours ago, Ansible said:

I'm really excited about the new hand coverings update that was just released. I love anything that increases immersion in the game world, and makes things feel less "gamey".

Can we please though discuss the elephant in the room, in regards to immersion-breaking? Things like this:

 

When I "harvest" a metal shelf, and the things that were sitting on that shelf just end up floating in the air. I'm just surprised that with all the work that they put into those hand coverings, they haven't fixed this old existing bug that's been around since forever! Can we please fix this???

Related, in "older" zones like Mountain Town, there's a LOT of items that can't be harvested (like lamps), that CAN be in "newer" zones. The discrepancy here is also immersion breaking. I suspect that this is because while they were working on the newer zones, they thought about what should and shouldn't be harvestable, but then didn't go backwards to the old zones to fix up those objects and make them consistent. They've already done something like this in the past with the item reallocation (so that like, food items show up in the kitchen more often, etc etc), so I know that Hinterland is interested in fixing "old" stuff once in a while. So can we please fix this as well?

Anyone else have any obvious immersion-breaking bugs that should have been fixed long ago? Any more "elephants in the room"?

Love the game, by the way, it's my go-to game for relaxation and fun:

I find it even more immersion disrupting when the metal pipes sitting on top of crates just disappear into thin air and I just get a little bit of wood for breaking the crate itself (e.g. Broken Railroad Maintenance Shed).  Really, the pipes should just fall to the ground everywhere.

On the another immersion breaking note - why can't we use the many metal pails in the world to melt and boil water?  Currently, we're reduced to using tin cans or  have to find a cooking pot (or now skillet) and always carrying them with us; while the metal pails have to be broken down into scrap metal to make any use of them at all.

[Stuffed Plush Chainsaw]

On 12/7/2023 at 3:25 PM, UpUpAway95 said:

On the another immersion breaking note - why can't we use the many metal pails in the world to melt and boil water?  Currently, we're reduced to using tin cans or  have to find a cooking pot (or now skillet) and always carrying them with us; while the metal pails have to be broken down into scrap metal to make any use of them at all.

Well you have two interests here competing with one another:

1) The developers want a full and vivid world that looks like it could be a real place, albeit a very abstractly rendered one, admittedly. But a world with no pails (or buckets, as an uncultured being like me would call them) would warrant some questions, like: "Why are there no pails in the world?" or "Why have aliens (from outer space, ofc) invaded Canada and stole all the buckets they could find?" or "Are pails the true reason for the so-far unexplained calamity that has befallen Great Bear Island? Is this a conspiracy of buckets rising up against their fleshy overlords?" Shorter and more seriously: you'd find buckets in such a world, and hence they exist.

2) The developers want water manangement to be at least somewhat challenging. Putting a bucket on a stove and let it boil for 12 hours for 12 liters (that's roughly π gallons, my imperial yet mathematically apt compadres) of water would be hella convenient. It would also free up a lot of time to do other things, and in turn make the game easier, which to balance would warrant a difficulty increase, and also make the pail another piece of mandatory equipment to carry around, further adding to what I came to call "equipment creep" in TLD. (Remember when we got 30kg of carry weight and that's it? Felt adequate back then, but it's unthinkable as of today....)

So, yeah, immersion is kinda important as even I keep spouting off about on repeat, but sometimes gameplay is the more important consideration, and in this case I wholeheartedly vote in favor of the hacksaw way of life for the pail.

--edit

More on topic: I don't think the elephant in the room is breakling immersion from time to time. The elephant in the room is that a 10 year old game refuses to reach a state of adequate "polishedness". Yeah, yeah, I know, but the updates! The patches! The free content! All well and good and as commendable as it deserves to be. But I simply want for once the game to work as intended. How bout that for a patch.

Edited December 8, 2023 by Stuffed Plush Chainsaw

[UpUpAway95]

1 hour ago, Stuffed Plush Chainsaw said:

Well you have two interests here competing with one another:

1) The developers want a full and vivid world that looks like it could be a real place, albeit a very abstractly rendered one, admittedly. But a world with no pails (or buckets, as an uncultured being like me would call them) would warrant some questions, like: "Why are there no pails in the world?" or "Why have aliens (from outer space, ofc) invaded Canada and stole all the buckets they could find?" or "Are pails the true reason for the so-far unexplained calamity that has befallen Great Bear Island? Is this a conspiracy of buckets rising up against their fleshy overlords?" Shorter and more seriously: you'd find buckets in such a world, and hence they exist.

2) The developers want water manangement to be at least somewhat challenging. Putting a bucket on a stove and let it boil for 12 hours for 12 liters (that's roughly π gallons, my imperial yet mathematically apt compadres) of water would be hella convenient. It would also free up a lot of time to do other things, and in turn make the game easier, which to balance would warrant a difficulty increase, and also make the pail another piece of mandatory equipment to carry around, further adding to what I came to call "equipment creep" in TLD. (Remember when we got 30kg of carry weight and that's it? Felt adequate back then, but it's unthinkable as of today....)

So, yeah, immersion is kinda important as even I keep spouting off about on repeat, but sometimes gameplay is the more important consideration, and in this case I wholeheartedly vote in favor of the hacksaw way of life for the pail.

--edit

More on topic: I don't think the elephant in the room is breakling immersion from time to time. The elephant in the room is that a 10 year old game refuses to reach a state of adequate "polishedness". Yeah, yeah, I know, but the updates! The patches! The free content! All well and good and as commendable as it deserves to be. But I simply want for once the game to work as intended. How bout that for a patch.

I realize that.  It is something that would have been easily fixed with a little further forethought.  The metal pails that are usable could have been modelled with visible holes, rust, etc. that would have made them more immersive and still unusable.  The same thing goes for the pipes sitting on top of destructible crates.  They could be sitting on something else or they could have been given physics that causes them to fall to the floor rather than disappear or float in mid-air.  Some of the containers sitting on top of destructible crates already fall to the floor, so it is something that is possible to program within whatever limitations the game engine or this game's architecture has.

[UpUpAway95]

3 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I realize that.  It is something that would have been easily fixed with a little further forethought.  The metal pails that are usable could have been modelled with visible holes, rust, etc. that would have made them more immersive and still unusable.  The same thing goes for the pipes sitting on top of destructible crates.  They could be sitting on something else or they could have been given physics that causes them to fall to the floor rather than disappear or float in mid-air.  Some of the containers sitting on top of destructible crates already fall to the floor, so it is something that is possible to program within whatever limitations the game engine or this game's architecture has.

Just correcting a typo in the third sentence since I realized it too late for me to edit the post.  The third sentence should read "The metal pails that are UNUSABLE could have been modeled......  (sorry for the error and this awkward correction.)

[Stuffed Plush Chainsaw]

16 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I realize that.  It is something that would have been easily fixed with a little further forethought.  The metal pails that are usable could have been modelled with visible holes, rust, etc. that would have made them more immersive and still unusable.  The same thing goes for the pipes sitting on top of destructible crates.  They could be sitting on something else or they could have been given physics that causes them to fall to the floor rather than disappear or float in mid-air.  Some of the containers sitting on top of destructible crates already fall to the floor, so it is something that is possible to program within whatever limitations the game engine or this game's architecture has.

This is correct, of course. I also thought of the "hole in the pail" solution (actually a great name for a band, now that think of it), although it would be a little suspect (again ^^) if all the pails had holes in them.

But I get your basic stance regarding this. I, too, would wish for the little things to be a little more polished.

Interestingly enough I had a discussion about a very similar topic about a very different piece of software I am working on, and how I would wish we (as in my company) could prioritize the little things a bit more rahter than chasing the next big feature. You don't perceive a thing high quality because it can do a magnitude of big things, but rather because all the small details are thought of and harmonize well with the overall appearance. I realize that to achieve this indeed means affording time to things many if not most people will never consciously realize, but that's kinda the goal, coming back to immersion: you are not supposed to be alerted to the fact that the very artificial world you are interacting with in fact is very different from the reality you are trying to escape.

[UpUpAway95]

1 hour ago, Stuffed Plush Chainsaw said:

This is correct, of course. I also thought of the "hole in the pail" solution (actually a great name for a band, now that think of it), although it would be a little suspect (again ^^) if all the pails had holes in them.

But I get your basic stance regarding this. I, too, would wish for the little things to be a little more polished.

Interestingly enough I had a discussion about a very similar topic about a very different piece of software I am working on, and how I would wish we (as in my company) could prioritize the little things a bit more rahter than chasing the next big feature. You don't perceive a thing high quality because it can do a magnitude of big things, but rather because all the small details are thought of and harmonize well with the overall appearance. I realize that to achieve this indeed means affording time to things many if not most people will never consciously realize, but that's kinda the goal, coming back to immersion: you are not supposed to be alerted to the fact that the very artificial world you are interacting with in fact is very different from the reality you are trying to escape.

Your response brought this to mind.  Probably should be in the songs to listen to while playing TLD thread, but I couldn't resist to just plop it here.

Edited December 9, 2023 by UpUpAway95

[Stuffed Plush Chainsaw]

1 hour ago, UpUpAway95 said:

 Probably should be in the songs to listen to while playing TLD thread, but I couldn't resist to just plop it here.

It sure will be in my head every time I come across a bucket in the game now. 😵

[Enigmaecho]

On 12/7/2023 at 7:15 AM, Ansible said:

I'm really excited about the new hand coverings update that was just released. I love anything that increases immersion in the game world, and makes things feel less "gamey".

Can we please though discuss the elephant in the room, in regards to immersion-breaking? Things like this:

 

When I "harvest" a metal shelf, and the things that were sitting on that shelf just end up floating in the air. I'm just surprised that with all the work that they put into those hand coverings, they haven't fixed this old existing bug that's been around since forever! Can we please fix this???

Related, in "older" zones like Mountain Town, there's a LOT of items that can't be harvested (like lamps), that CAN be in "newer" zones. The discrepancy here is also immersion breaking. I suspect that this is because while they were working on the newer zones, they thought about what should and shouldn't be harvestable, but then didn't go backwards to the old zones to fix up those objects and make them consistent. They've already done something like this in the past with the item reallocation (so that like, food items show up in the kitchen more often, etc etc), so I know that Hinterland is interested in fixing "old" stuff once in a while. So can we please fix this as well?

Anyone else have any obvious immersion-breaking bugs that should have been fixed long ago? Any more "elephants in the room"?

Love the game, by the way, it's my go-to game for relaxation and fun:

I tend to take an “if I see that no I didn’t” approach to these bugs as it seems sometimes it’s just that a bug and not a design oversight, the shelve in your post for example I’ve had it where I harvest a shelf and the stuff floats one run falls the next, there’s random spots all over where tree limbs, sticks, random items are levitating sometimes to high out of reach, currently the one bringing me great amusement is the shed in the zone with the fire barrel. The dead body barrel and metal box keep disappearing and reappearing randomly, be there one day gone the next back few days later then gone again, apparently I have a hobo npc out in the zone roughing it like me😂

[Stuffed Plush Chainsaw]

1 hour ago, Enigmaecho said:

it’s just that a bug and not a design oversight

A bug is a design oversight by definition 😉 (except your memory literally being hit by a cosmic ray flipping a bit.... that's devine intervention)

[Ansible]

I found a hole in the geometry in Broken Railroad, one of the oldest zones. I can't get out of here!

[Leeanda]

54 minutes ago, Ansible said:

I found a hole in the geometry in Broken Railroad, one of the oldest zones. I can't get out of here!

Can't you reload the game?  Better than losing the run..

And please file a report if you haven't already

[Ansible]

I reloaded, to the same spot, for some reason. I didn't rest to save, so I have no idea why it comes back to this hole whenever I load. So, it looks like this run is toast, sadly. 😢 I'll submit it as a ticket, I'm just surprised that holes still exist in zones that have been out for years now... you figured all of the players would have found, and the Devs patched them by now.

[Leeanda]

19 minutes ago, Ansible said:

I reloaded, to the same spot, for some reason. I didn't rest to save, so I have no idea why it comes back to this hole whenever I load. So, it looks like this run is toast, sadly. 😢 I'll submit it as a ticket, I'm just surprised that holes still exist in zones that have been out for years now... you figured all of the players would have found, and the Devs patched them by now.

I'm sorry to hear that......where exactly is it?

[ThePancakeLady]

3 hours ago, Ansible said:

I reloaded, to the same spot, for some reason. I didn't rest to save, so I have no idea why it comes back to this hole whenever I load. So, it looks like this run is toast, sadly. 😢 I'll submit it as a ticket, I'm just surprised that holes still exist in zones that have been out for years now... you figured all of the players would have found, and the Devs patched them by now.

You have a yellow affliction risk showing by your HP bar. Did that become an active affliction at some point while trying to get out? Did you get a sprain, hypothermia- anything like that, before or after the screenshot (after getting down into that spot)? That will also save the game at that point- injuries and negative afflictions create a save.

[UTC-10]

According to the diagnostic screenshot, @Ansible is in Wintermute. 

He should be able to back track save by save until he reloads to a point before he got into that spot and then stays away from that spot. 

At least that would be the way I understood how saves in Wintermute worked.  I recall that Wintermute does do automatic saves, doesn't it, at intervals as well as allow for Save on Demand (don't know about Save on Event).  The cost would some loss of game progress. 

Very different from Save on Event only in Survival mode though in Survival the choice would largely be between losing the game or losing game progress.  Too many fail to consider the risk they take while trying things that can/will result in changing lose game progress into lose the game.  

Note that a lot of landscape issues can only be detected if someone stumbles onto one and reports it.  

Edited July 12 by UTC-10
Revised

[ThePancakeLady]

10 minutes ago, UTC-10 said:

According to the diagnostic screenshot, @Ansible is in Wintermute. 

I don't think so. The debug screenshots show all of the DLCs you own, no matter what, and Wintermute has no Voyageur mode. I believe they are in Survival Mode, and maybe tried to goat up or down in a place where I am almost sure I have seen someone else getting stuck at (and using the Fly mod to get out). I just don't have the free time to try to track that post down, and can't remember if I saw it here or on Steam.

[UTC-10]

I see. I am obviously blind.  

I might be able to figure out about where that spot is as my character is at the Broken Railroad maintenance  yard.  Joy! I have something to search for instead of playing mule to get all the gear and supplies I have stockpiled out to Transfer Pass and then to Sundered Pass.  😁

[UTC-10]

The location as best I can estimate is near the maintenance yard and further along than the trail that is in that area.  I would not try to go that far.  Terrain does not look like what his diagnostic screenshot shows so he might have fallen through the world surface (maybe fake snow) to a secondary surface which is possibly why he can't get out.  He must have been injured or some how had a save occur if a reload has him in the same location.  I had hoped to find the spot but I don't think I can find it.  

I have to go back and collect the ptarmigans I shot on the way out there.  

[Ansible]

I submitted a ticket.

[Ansible]

I've got another "elephant":

[Ansible]

On 7/12/2024 at 3:25 PM, Ansible said:

I submitted a ticket.

The ticket was resolved within a few days. Good quality resolve, not so good speed of resolution. Interesting thing though - I wonder if they did something else, something weird, to my save file... because now I can't seem to get my condition to go DOWN. I went three days without drinking anything, zero condition loss. I think they put me in God mode.

Maybe some sort of unsaid "apology" for the bug?

[Leeanda]

22 minutes ago, Ansible said:

I've got another "elephant":

Never sure with that one..sometimes it works sometimes not....  Similar to being able to read all night in the car in transfer pass, regardless of weather..

Edited July 26 by Leeanda