Raphael van Lierop

7 hours ago, artmunki said:

Always interesting to see old screenshots from a world I'm so familiar with in its current form. One thing I've been wondering for a while - a few old plays I've watched (and maybe a couple of these pics) kinda had me thinking that the scaling of the outside world was a little different in early versions. Is this right, or am I just imagining it?

Not 100% sure I understand what you mean by scaling. Can you give me an example of what you have in mind?

4 hours ago, Pyroxene said:

@Raphael van LieropAre you guys working on Episode 5, or is all the effort going into TFTFT?

We're working on both simultaneously.

6 hours ago, thekillergreece said:

Interesting development facts! 

I asked about the revolver thing because there's a .38 Hand-gun item in one of your pre-alpha videos. 😁

I wonder how many (if any!) items/gameplay mechanics/etc were scrapped or revised in a major way. Perhaps still planned in the future. (I think I'm going a bit offtopic)

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.

3 hours ago, BugReportEnthusiast said:

Also holy hell those voicelines "ah someone's stash" are were recorded 10 years ago, i thought they were new

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.

3 hours ago, Leeanda said:

Was fluffy not always in the dam then?

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...

3 hours ago, BugReportEnthusiast said:

..wait why are you showing this publicly then?

It was a joke.

26 minutes ago, thekillergreece said:

Lots of things have changed. 

I might misremember something, was there ever a revolver weapon in the pre-EA stage?

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?).

1 hour ago, thekillergreece said:

That Artbook, can it be purchased digitally?

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...

1 hour ago, ThePancakeLady said:

My username? Pretty self-explanatory. 

I love Pancakes. Truly my favorite food of all time, as @Raphael van Lierop found out while I pestered him for years on social media and on these forums to please please please add them to the game. Now that we have them, I suppose I could change my username to "TheHappiestPancakeLadyEver", but that's just a lot to type out. 🥞🥞🥞🥞🥞

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

On 4/27/2024 at 10:26 AM, ajb1978 said:

Well I tell ya one thing, based on how I was treated just now, I'm not gonna be around much anymore. I don't care if it was a joke, I can't stick around a platform where the literal founder insults me to my face. 

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?

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. 

On 4/27/2024 at 12:45 AM, ajb1978 said:

So my business analyst/project manager background is coming out to play.

What do you intend to do with this information? Curiosity is always a good thing and I've always encouraged it, but it needs some direction. Is there a way to quantify/qualify what you're looking for in a measurable way?

And even then, "how much do you like this on a scale from 1 to 5" carries with it the caveat "what are you going to do with that information?"

Wow, you must be fun at parties! 😅

5 hours ago, KaiGamez said:

Hey Raph, thanks for checking in. Super appreciate the kind words.

From this project's inception, we promised never to monetize our mod. It will remain free, now and forever.
However, we have made it a requirement to have purchased the TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY expansion before accessing our mod regions -- you are unable to start a save with our regions installed if you are missing the DLC content.

I would much rather encourage financial support to the Hinterland Devs that made all of this possible so that TLD content keeps on coming in the future.
Side note, if the TLD Dev Team ever needs an extra environmental artist -- count me in. 😄

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. ❤️

Quote

Are you guys considering some Patreon, or similar support? I would like to support you. Would this help in any way? Speed up the process.. And also, i am ready to pay for the new maps/regions. Otherwise i sould feel ashamed to get it for free 

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.

4 hours ago, thekillergreece said:

That's fine, life can be busy and all that.
IMO you could throw a sneak peek once a month / two months so we can know what you guys are cooking. This was one of the few reasons why I closely followed you on Twitter until you stopped posting there.

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.