From the Archives: Old TLD screenshots (2014-era)

[Leeanda]

6 minutes ago, BugReportEnthusiast said:

The Long Dark doesn't need a sequel, it's perfect as a standalone game. Not every great title needs to have a sequel

When people ask for GameTitleHere  2s, they usually picture a game that's bigger, better, prettier, and everything is working exactly as they envision it...
...which is never what happens.

TLD is already a massive game with tons of features and more is yet to come. We got additional content with the tales DLC as well.

What this game needs is more improvement and polish.

Make some features interconnect with each other better, flesh out some systems, squash some bugs here and there.

I didn't say it wasnt perfect, you just did though...     

I didn't expect anything, but a girls gotta dream.  😊

 

[Leeanda]

1 minute ago, BugReportEnthusiast said:

..wha? The game being or not being perfect has nothing to do with anything i said

I'm just saying that TLD doesn't warrant a sequel

You kind of did, but I was also kind of teasing.. sorry should've made that clearer.

Maybe not an actual follow on ,but there is still room for another survival , parallel to it.. 

[Raphael van Lierop]

39 minutes ago, BugReportEnthusiast said:

..wha? The game being or not being perfect has nothing to do with anything i said

I'm just saying that TLD doesn't warrant a sequel

I don't think you can decide this for other people.

[PilgrimReaper]

Thanks a lot @Leeanda and @Raphael van Lierop for this super interesting back & forth, such a fun and instructive read!

[Leeanda]

5 hours ago, PilgrimReaper said:

Thanks a lot @Leeanda and @Raphael van Lierop for this super interesting back & forth, such a fun and instructive read!

I'm glad you're enjoying it...  I am too😊.  I just hope I'm not driving Raph nuts with all the questions😁 

And I do appreciate the insights, and the time he takes to answer ... Especially over the weekend ,shows his dedication to the game and us

Edited May 6 by Leeanda

[hozz1235]

This is great, @Raphael van Lierop!  It's like a "forum Milton Mailbag"!  I'm going to hop on and ask a question I've seen discussed.  What was your intent with having a loading screen when entering a small interior location (such as a cabin).  Speculation was that so you could not "reroll" the interior loot (by entering, loading a prior save outside and re-entering).  Is that true or was it due to other technical reasons (which we would love to hear)?

[Glflegolas]

On 5/5/2024 at 2:39 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

We released the first WM episodes in August 2017. I had the general story outlined before we launched on Early Access but it changed/expanded over time as the audience grew and our resources increased. The original plan had you only playing Mackenzie, looking for Astrid. We were able to add Astrid as a playable character, expand the story, expand the world, and eventually, build up a world and fiction that can support multiple games (which was always the dream).

I know many people are (entirely fairly) disappointed with the pace of WM episode release, but I'm not sure how many realize that each episode has a game's worth of content on its own. One of my regrets is ever calling them episodes and not Parts, like TLOU did. Episodes sound "small" by nature, and IMO our episodes are not small. Fully voiced acted, with cinematics, music, etc. Each are good sized productions.

I agree with the name "episode" being a bit of an issue. As a YouTuber, I usually call each video an "Episode" but when The Long Dark's story mode calls each of the five parts an "episode" I end up having to call my videos "Episode 2 Part 4" and soforth. 

Aside from that, however, I can totally see how each episode of Wintermute takes so long to make. Between writing the story, creating the map, doing the voice-acting, drawing the animations...that's a lot of work. And then the playing to test for bugs and crashes. I can say, with 100% certainty, that you outdid yourself on this game. 

[mintietcatm]

On 5/5/2024 at 12:04 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

You can play the original two Episodes (we call them the "Predux" versions) on Steam using the Time Capsule.

https://www.thelongdark.com/time-capsule/wintermute-1-0-launch/

And yes, Episode Five ties up all the loose ends, or attempts to (we'll see if we succeed). There are many! 

So excited for episode five... The preredux has its charm but its amazing how much the story has improved!!

[Raphael van Lierop]

On 5/6/2024 at 6:06 AM, hozz1235 said:

This is great, @Raphael van Lierop!  It's like a "forum Milton Mailbag"!  I'm going to hop on and ask a question I've seen discussed.  What was your intent with having a loading screen when entering a small interior location (such as a cabin).  Speculation was that so you could not "reroll" the interior loot (by entering, loading a prior save outside and re-entering).  Is that true or was it due to other technical reasons (which we would love to hear)?

Hey -- well you're asking about ancient history here (from a dev's perspective), so my memory might be a bit foggy, but there were a few issues we were trying to work around.

WARNING: There is some dev "inside baseball" here which may destroy some of your illusions about how the game works, so if you want to continue to play with some amount of innocence, do not continue reading!

1) Performance & memory -- we were concerned that having to keep every building interior, cave, etc. within the single Unity scene they exist in would create big performance issues for us down the road, so we were trying to future proof a bit, not really understanding that we'd be making this game for years and years and that eventually Unity would have better tools for handling this. The way we approached this means the only thing that needs to be kept in memory is the scene you are in, not all the other scenes that are "inside" it. So when you enter an interior and there is a load, the exterior is unloaded from memory (RAM). This is better than the game having to keep all the scenes you have visited in memory while you explore. Back then unity didn't have great tools for handling this sort of thing so having each interior be a separate scene was a good way to manage memory (in game dev, memory management is a huge consideration, especially when you are trying to have a reasonable min spec and also considering consoles tend to have less memory than PCs). 

2) We wanted to be able to "roll loot" for each interior and handle it separately in each game save, but also keep the possibility of having some interiors be selected for each game when the player entered them. For example, for some of the more "generic" houses, we had several interiors for them and at run-time when you entered each one we could pick an interior and loot for it at the time, vs. predetermining this ahead of time (which also helped with the performance/memory issues). In the end we didn't end up doing this more "random" kind of interior swap per save because we wanted the game world to feel more hand-crafted. But it was something we explored early on.

3) The lighting model and renderer for the outside world, which we needed for the weather and time of day systems, did not work well for interiors. You could see this for years with places like the Lookout Tower -- how the lighting would look quite "washed out" in comparison to say, something like Trapper's Cabin, or Carter, where the lighting is much darker, moodier, with more contrasts, etc. Keep in mind that Trapper's was our first interior scene and it was the benchmark for everything that came after. Conversely, we could not get these super contrasting and darker, moodier shadows in the outside world, due to how dynamic we needed the lighting to be and how it needed to change with weather types and time of day (passage of time). Not to mention how big the outside world is and how far you can see. We needed to create a whole system just to handle time-of-day lighting for interiors to make sure they matched what was going on outside, including weather considerations (blizzards), even though when you are in an interior the game has essentially "forgotten" what was outside. (This system is probably the source of the most complaints from players over the years, as everyone tends to have an opinion about interior lighting -- too light, too dark, etc etc.) In the end, it was important to me to preserve the moodier lighting of the interior scenes so embracing two different lighting models (one for exteriors, one for interiors) was a good solution.

4) Separating things this way made it much more possible to handle a massive amount of loot and resource tuning across the game, by a relatively small team of designers. This was especially relevant in the first 2 yrs of dev where I was the only designer working on the game. This approach, along with how we created our loot system, meant I could populate and tune all the resources in the game across ML and CH myself. We still use these systems to this day (although they have been tweaked/extended, and new things have been added over the years like radial spawners (for things like branches) or random spawners (which can handle more complex spawning behaviours across a region, for example for important spawns like rare tools and combinations of things which you don't want to handle on a scene by scene basis otherwise the game balance can get messed up). 

Over the years, as Unity has improved, we've been able to come up with some clever solutions for things like #3, by using some tricks to add a bit more shadow and contrast to the outside world (ex. we implemented a system of light probes for Ash Canyon that let us make the narrow ravines seem darker than the rest of the lighting around them), and also found some ways to "fake" the exterior world so that some interior scenes would feel more connected to the outside world (ex. the small Power Plant in Ep4/Blackrock Region, where you can see weather and time of day through the window; this is 100% fake as this scene is separated from the rest of the world). And ultimately we've been able to figure out some better ways to make our "connected interiors" like the Infirmary at Blackrock Prison or the Control Tower in Forsaken Airfield (in TALES) have moodier lighting despite being set "within" the rest of the world scene (i.e. there is no load zone). So, this has gotten better. But there are tons of legacy buildings in the game that we'd not really be able to retrofit these approaches to, and honestly I don't think they would end up -- in some cases -- looking as moody and atmospheric as they do now. Overhauling every interior in the game to use these new approaches would basically be like rebuilding the entire game.

For what it's worth, it took a while before game engines were good enough to handle both excellent interior lighting and excellent exterior world lighting seamlessly in big open-worlds with time of day like ours (it's easier when you have fixed lighting and time of day and can set your lighting parameters to it; the fact that stuff can happen in TLD at any time of day (or weather type), including most of our moments in story mode, means we have to account for this in every single cinematic and dialogue scene -- it's a lot!). Certainly Unity 4 was not made for this when we started working on TLD, and even in the years since we have had to bend it out of shape to do the things we wanted to do with it.

So, the answer to your question is -- there were valid design/gameplay reasons to handle it this way, and we were also working within some technical constraints, and also also trying to make good future-looking decisions about how we would handle things as the game would grow. Which, I guess is a pretty fair description of game development in general. 😅

 

[Raphael van Lierop]

(Damn that was a wall of text...sorry about that!)

[Valuable Hunting Knife]

'build up a world and fiction that can support multiple games'.

Nice.  Very nice.

 

[Leeanda]

Only a low wall 😊.    But it's not something that can really be explained quickly.  Like all the work I imagine..

Is that partly why there's less colour in the game now ,compared to the older versions. Eg.. the trees being no longer green

 

Edited May 7 by Leeanda

[Raphael van Lierop]

21 minutes ago, Leeanda said:

Only a low wall 😊.    But it's not something that can really be explained quickly.  Like all the work I imagine..

Is that partly why there's less colour in the game now ,compared to the older versions. Eg.. the trees being no longer green

 

No, mostly that is determined by art direction decisions, and wanting to keep the game fresh. I think I talked a bit about some of the limitations of the earlier versions of Unity and how as the lighting model became more sophisticated we were able to do more things with lighting, textures, shadows, colour, etc. The overly green leafy trees didn't quite hit the mark visually after a while, so we replaced them with ones that looked more appropriate for coniferous trees, and made them look colder. Other changes/improvements to our time of day lighting, skybox, and global lighting for dusk/dawn also had an impact on the art style and colour choices.

And also, you might have noticed that we kind of constantly tweak things in the game. 😅

[Leeanda]

3 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

No, mostly that is determined by art direction decisions, and wanting to keep the game fresh. I think I talked a bit about some of the limitations of the earlier versions of Unity and how as the lighting model became more sophisticated we were able to do more things with lighting, textures, shadows, colour, etc. The overly green leafy trees didn't quite hit the mark visually after a while, so we replaced them with ones that looked more appropriate for coniferous trees, and made them look colder. Other changes/improvements to our time of day lighting, skybox, and global lighting for dusk/dawn also had an impact on the art style and colour choices.

And also, you might have noticed that we kind of constantly tweak things in the game. 😅

I had noticed the occasional tweak 😁.    

It certainly does look more fitting now though, there's a definite bleakness to the landscapes..  except those beautiful skies..which I hope never changes.

[hozz1235]

4 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

So, the answer to your question is -- there were valid design/gameplay reasons to handle it this way, and we were also working within some technical constraints, and also also trying to make good future-looking decisions about how we would handle things as the game would grow. Which, I guess is a pretty fair description of game development in general. 😅

 

Thank you for that in-depth answer!

[thekillergreece]

So, there were concerns about performance and memory which explains why most interiors had to be separated from what I understand.

Since Unity got better and all that, could it be why ZC's cabins (and the main hub building next to cabins) are not in separate interiors? I was surprised they had no loading-screen interiors but actually interiors to enter without loading.

[Raphael van Lierop]

6 hours ago, thekillergreece said:

So, there were concerns about performance and memory which explains why most interiors had to be separated from what I understand.

Since Unity got better and all that, could it be why ZC's cabins (and the main hub building next to cabins) are not in separate interiors? I was surprised they had no loading-screen interiors but actually interiors to enter without loading.

Yes, some of the tech improvements and key learnings from earlier experiments have paid off in the Far Territories. I mentioned the Control Tower in Forsaken Airfield before, and there are others too. 

All that said, I'm not a fan of having too many of these types of buildings as they just contrast too much with other existing buildings and create this very same "why this and not that?" kind of sensibility.

I also think -- just take this as a subjective opinion, and not a judgement in any way -- but people seem to focus on this a little too much IMO. Games like Fallout and plenty of other big open-world games also often have interior scenes that are disconnected from their exteriors. It's not that uncommon. It's nice to have a cozy favourite location that you can look out from especially if the view is nice. It's also cool to have dark and moody places that *feel* like they are connected even when they are not. Trappers, the Quonset, the PV Farmhouse, etc etc -- these are still some of the best places to inhabit in the game, IMO. But to each their own!

[Pyroxene]

@Raphael van Lierop well, I believe most games have the habit of "un-loading" assets that are not in use. This increases the FPS rate. I would know, because I've done some 3d modeling myself, to make animated movies with clay figures.

[Leeanda]

@Raphael van Lierop       on that note... Do you have a favourite map,or place to make base camp? 

I know mystery lake has a place in most hearts with it being the first map.at least with those who started playing that early.

Edited May 8 by Leeanda

[ThePancakeLady]

3 hours ago, Pyroxene said:

@Raphael van Lierop well, I believe most games have the habit of "un-loading" assets that are not in use. This increases the FPS rate. I would know, because I've done some 3d modeling myself, to make animated movies with clay figures.

The game does that, always has AFAIK. Look at your session log (player log) if you are playing on a PC version of the game (Windows, MAC/OSX, Linux/Steam OS). You'll see something like this all through it: 

Quote

Unloading 44326 unused Assets to reduce memory usage. Loaded Objects now: 22655.
Total: 41.014500 ms (FindLiveObjects: 2.692900 ms CreateObjectMapping: 4.098600 ms MarkObjects: 13.563500 ms  DeleteObjects: 20.659100 ms)

^^^ That is copy-pasted from my most recent Steam save's session log. Of course you can't see this if you are playing on a console version of the game, only PC copies of the game.

[artmunki]

18 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

(Damn that was a wall of text...sorry about that!)

But it was an informative wall of text, giving us some insight into the game's development. That's a good thing. 

[JMK]

On 5/5/2024 at 6:58 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

(This is a slide from an early 2013 deck.)

It's amazing how you sucessfully fullfiled your player experience slide goals, your vision became a reality. Bravo !

An interview about the making of would rocks, make it live stream ! There is one with the University of Winipeg but it would benefit an upgrade 😉

 

[Raphael van Lierop]

6 hours ago, Pyroxene said:

@Raphael van Lierop well, I believe most games have the habit of "un-loading" assets that are not in use. This increases the FPS rate. I would know, because I've done some 3d modeling myself, to make animated movies with clay figures.

Oh yes, games do this all the time. There's nothing unusual about it. It's a very normal method of memory management. It's just that most games are linear so the unloading happens once you have gone through something you don't plan to go back to. 

[Raphael van Lierop]

3 hours ago, Leeanda said:

@Raphael van Lierop       on that note... Do you have a favourite map,or place to make base camp? 

I know mystery lake has a place in most hearts with it being the first map.at least with those who started playing that early.

I cannot tell a lie. Trapper's and the Quonset will probably always be my favourites. I also have a soft spot for some of the less "popular" locations, like Hibernia at Desolation Point. It makes little sense from a gameplay standpoint, but I just love the vibe and the feeling that it's at the end of the world...

Tough to pick a favourite region. Probably PV? I've just spent so much time there...

Unfortunately, as time has passed I've had less time to play the game "for fun", and mostly only have time to review stuff the team is making or spot-check things, so I've had less opportunity to create deep memories of "living in" some of the newer regions, so I think my preferences skew a bit to the earlier ones we made. I guess that's mostly about nostalgia in the end. They feel like "coming home" for me, if that makes sense.

I will say that I think the team has become better and better and creating interesting and diverse regions; each has something interesting to offer. But some, to me, feel more like places you visit moreso than set up a long-term home in...

[Leeanda]

3 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

I cannot tell a lie. Trapper's and the Quonset will probably always be my favourites. I also have a soft spot for some of the less "popular" locations, like Hibernia at Desolation Point. It makes little sense from a gameplay standpoint, but I just love the vibe and the feeling that it's at the end of the world...

Tough to pick a favourite region. Probably PV? I've just spent so much time there...

Unfortunately, as time has passed I've had less time to play the game "for fun", and mostly only have time to review stuff the team is making or spot-check things, so I've had less opportunity to create deep memories of "living in" some of the newer regions, so I think my preferences skew a bit to the earlier ones we made. I guess that's mostly about nostalgia in the end. They feel like "coming home" for me, if that makes sense.

I will say that I think the team has become better and better and creating interesting and diverse regions; each has something interesting to offer. But some, to me, feel more like places you visit moreso than set up a long-term home in...

It makes perfect sense, I started when episode three was introduced so I think that's why PV,and the farm feel like my home.. 

Hibernia is an unusual choice though but I get why you feel that way...   I usually stay at the church as it's very peaceful up there.. but it does feel like its namesake..

Ever fall off the ravine? Or rope bridges?😁