Raphael van Lierop

We're working on both simultaneously.

Yeah we had some early loot stub-ins for development but we didn't have any Revolver gameplay until Steadfast Ranger. I have always opposed to putting more guns in the game, but with the addition of Timberwolves we knew we needed a different tool than the Rifle or Distress Pistol for them. Note that we always refer to firearms as Tools, not Weapons. 👍🏻 It's crazy to look back at this old stuff and scan old Unity files and realize that some of our game tuning has not been modified since we launched. Probably one of the most "mature" survival game platforms from that standpoint. There are some very old bones in the depths of this game.

Most of the gameplay VO in the game is the same as it was when we first recorded it. We occasionally add more when we get Jennifer or Mark in to record for the Wintermute episodes, but otherwise that system has not really changed since we first implemented it.

Not this early. Remember, this build is pre-Early Access. I believe we added her/them just before we launched on Steam. The goal was to set the expectation that you shouldn't get too comfortable visiting places between saves/sessions as the risks might change. We kept her in as long as we could, but eventually the Dam became so dense with art assets such that it was impossible for the AI to pathfind around. So we moved her/them. Another thing to note about the game this early on -- ML was the only region, and as a result resources we quite limited, and with the instakill wolves, it was very difficult to survive more than...10 days? So dying often and having to try again was very core to the loop. This diminished over time, as the world got bigger and we added more and more tools to the gameplay mix. Players could survive longer, deaths were more painful as a result, and at some point I think a lot of players decided that permadeath wasn't really their favourite idea. We tried to mitigate some of this with profile-level progression systems like Feats, etc., but ultimately it's tough to accept that you've lost your 100+ day save with tons of loot stored up, etc. etc. and backing up your save file seems like a reasonable decision...

It was a joke.

Nope! We didn't add the Revolver until the Steadfast Ranger update. In fact, in the early days of development, pre-Early Access, we didn't even have a Rifle! The only tool you had to keep Wolves away was the Flare. Back then, we didn't even have a Struggle system. If a Wolf got to you, it just killed you. Made the game super stressful, let me tell you. (Sometimes I miss that simplicity!)

Oh, BTW, it's confidential pre-alpha footage so, like, do not distribute. 😅

This was post-KS but pre-Early Access (by about 4 months or so?). The_Long_Dark_PRE_ALPHA_SANDBOX_May_2014.mov

Not sure yet. Our focus is on a physical edition, as we owe it to some of our KS backers, and it seems like a nice coffee table book would be of value to many of our fans.

@ManicManiac That's one of my favourite early shots. I have a batch from that era that I can post soon. We moved away from that sky/horizon contrast over the years but I do miss aspects of it.

I've raved about this on other platforms, but if you haven't checked out PACIFIC DRIVE, you should. There's a lot of TLD in there, and I can say this confidently because the devs told me so. 😅 That said, it's very much its own game, and really compelling. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1458140/Pacific_Drive/ Really good dev team with wonderful folks, and backed by Kepler Interactive, a really good publisher also run by friends.

Hey! Trying to be more active here and share more stuff with this community that they might not be able to find in some of the other channels where TLD fans hang out. I have a pretty massive archive of "old" TLD stuff going back to KS, Early Access, and honestly quite a bit from before (early 2013). A lot of this stuff will end up in our Art Book, once Ep5 is in the can, so that we cover the entirety of TLD and TALES development over the 10+ years (😬) of development. Hope you enjoy these shots, from mid-2013. Those of you who backed our KS might have seen these before. You can see that the game's art style has changed a bit over the years. I'm sure you recognize Trapper's Cabin in the first shot.

Really sorry that @ajb1978 felt that I was attacking them! I could have found a gentler way to make that joke, or just not made it at all. And yes, there was sarcasm in it, which is part of humour after all. People who know me know that dry sarcasm is a big part of my humour. I also make a lot of dad jokes given the opportunity. I hope we don't have to stop making jokes or having a good time simply because it can be misunderstood? For my part, "you must be fun at parties" is not a terrible insult, it's something you say jokingly or even affectionately to someone who comes across as super straightlaced or pedantic about things, but maybe there's a language barrier thing here? Also, the mods or anyone in the forums are welcome to report any of my posts as they wish. I'm just another forum member, after all. Now, moving on as @ManicManiac requested...

Not that pestering me a lot is the path to getting things you want in the game, right? RIGHT? 😅

Oh come on! The original post is an innocent question, conversational, in response to many folks saying "hey we want to see/hear more of you in the forums". I was just jokingly responding to your comment which seemed a bit OTT. Why not just participate in the thread and don't turn it into some huge dramatic thing? Just trying to get some discussion going in the forums. I think people telling devs how they should and should not spend their time here is part of why we don't spend more time here. The barrier to "accepted" involvement is just too high. Now, do we want to keep this discussion about the transition from lurker to forum member going, or should we just lock the thread?

Re: Discord vs. Forums -- I get the differences and I understand the attraction to something like Discord. It definitely works well for certain kinds of communication, but it's also more bursty and generally less thoughtful, which is one of the reasons we avoided it in the early days. There's something about expecting people to write complete sentences that lends itself to deeper dialogue, in general. But I'm not really looking for comparisons between tools -- more just trying to understand if there was something specific that encouraged folks to transition from being a watcher to a participant.

Wow, you must be fun at parties! 😅

We appreciate all that! Re: needing more enviro artists -- you should send me a DM with your resume and info, and I will pass it on to the team. We have lots of work and are always on the lookout for good people.

Super cool to see this development ongoing! Kudos to the mod team. ❤️ No monetizing mods, please. Mods should be free. If you want to get paid to make content for TLD, join the dev team.

This is probably a weird question to ask, and may not get much response for obvious reasons, but I'm curious. The vast majority of the folks who visit these forums opt to just scan using a Guest account, vs. creating an account (like currently there are 90+ people in the forums but about 80 of them are guests). I assume it's because they are looking for info on the game (maybe they are stuck or want to know how a specific thing works), but I always wonder what prevents them from taking the leap and creating an account, then participating more actively. It's totally fine if people just want to look for info, etc., but obviously what we hope is that people will join this community and become active participants. For any of you who made that "leap" from maybe being habitual lurkers to active forum members -- what changed for you? What made you decide to jump in?

Here's a pretty good wiki that is (mostly) accurate to what's in the game to date; I would consider this background to be canonical: https://thelongdark.fandom.com/wiki/Will_Mackenzie

Me: What's your favourite thing we've added in TALES? You: [writes several paragraphs outlining pros/cons, design suggestions, etc. etc. Also ensures to get at least one comment in about things being slow/delayed.] Ah this community. I wouldn't have it any other way. 😅

Curious to hear from you all. What is your favourite addition to the game brought through TALES so far? Could be one of the things added for free to the base game, or one of the TALES-only features or bits of content. I'll go first: First-Person Hand Coverings Took so bloody long to get this working and we needed Unity to progress to a certain point that we could use some of the tech there to handle this properly given how our game data is handled, but when I first saw this working as a prototype I almost cried. No judgement for people's choices, and don't attack other people for their choices, please. And no complaining, ok? This is meant to be a fun share.

Yeah, and I really regret not being on there anymore because it was a very easy "low impact" way for me to update folks, and the news would eventually find its way in here and everywhere else. But that's not a good replacement for nurturing our own Official community better. My assumption is people come here vs. posting in Steam or Reddit or wherever (or maybe you post in all those places too) to get that special insider feeling, and if we don't provide that here there's not much point in spending your time here vs. those other platforms, especially when they are quite active. We get it.

We don't take anything for granted, and the industry is in shambles, but we're fine, and we're still on track to deliver on our long-term strategy for Hinterland and our projects. But of course we are impacted by the losses at other companies, as it creates a lot of angst in the general atmosphere, and it's also hard to see our colleagues at other studios suffering.