JAFO

I think you don't actually understand just how much work a new chapter in the saga entails. They are not the kind of thing that can be knocked out in just 2 or 3 months. Not for a game publisher as small as Hinterland, anyway.

Nope.. This is the + they were referring to...

The laws of thermodynamics take quite a beating, too.

Thanks for posting this.. I'd forgotten how hauntingly beautiful it was. BRING IT BACK, HINTERLAND!

This ^. The very worst weight problem item? Water purification tabs. Those things are ridiculously heavy, compared to the real thing.

Well, there's always Deadman's Challenge...

Paper used to be more useful way back in the early days of the game, when there was a lot less of it around. Now, there's so much of it to be found that it's just an annoyance. Personally, what I'd like to see is that, if you collected enough of it, you could stuff it inside your clothing as insulation, giving you a warmth buff. Of course, it would probably make a hell of a lot of noise when you walked around!

Do you miss the old days, when you always knew your health status down to the nearest 1%? Do you look at the daily min/max stats for health, and wonder, thanks to your hectic misadventures that day, where exactly you fit between those two points, right now? Do you miss not knowing any more exactly how much damage you took falling down that hill, or when that wolf chewed on your head? Fret no more.. as I present to you the ultimate healthbar mod.. Inspired by an incident during a round of Deadman's Challenge being played by Youtuber Loonsloon, I was motivated to find a way to more accurately determine character health. Taking a ruler to my monitor, I found that the healthbar, including the 5% well-fed buff, was 66mm long. 105/66 = 1.59 10/1.59 = 6.3 Therefore, every 6.3mm of the healthbar was equivalent to 10% health. I cut a piece of paper to 66mm long, and made marks every (approximately) 6.3mm along the edge, after which I made smaller 5% marks midway between each of the 10% markers. I then taped the paper to the monitor bezel so that the marked edge was immediately below the TLD health bar. Boom! An easy way to gauge just how much health your character has, to within about 1%! Even when not playing the game, the paper isn't really obtrusive, but it can easily be folded down or removed if wanted. Eat your heart out, Hinterland.. your evil plan has failed! But seriously, folks.. go check out Loonsloon's Youtube channel, and subscribe. He's a really nice guy.. (hey, he's Canadian, he can't help it!) and his videos are excellent viewing. Even moreso, most of his regular commenters also have their own TLD channels on Youtube, so you're getting a lot of bang for your buck. Sucscribe to them all.. they deserve it, for keeping TLD alive in the public's view.

That's great to hear that she's doing ok.. thanks, everyone!

Ditto.

Congrats... and yes, it certainly was.

I love the way you put that... 👍 From what I've seen, that makes you THE winner by Hinterland's standards. The "Challenge Completed" Best Time screen tracks your longest run record, meaning they regard it as like a proper Deadman run, in that the longer you survive, the better. It's rather amusing to see everyone treat it as if it were a speedrun, like the other challenges.

No.

Correct on all points! Well done! (except it's Roy, not Rory)

Thank you... 🙂

However, there is another reason for casting as many bullets as you can... maxing out to level 5 gunsmithing.

Yes.. best condition tool is always selected, for whatever use, not just weapons. Really annoying when you don't have a can opener and want to preserve your knife condition, and it won't even give you the option to use something else instead. Having to drop your knife (and/or other tools) just to open a can is a nuisance.

It's what I do... And, it's as my name suggests. Just Another F***ing Observer*. 😀 * Bonus points if you get the reference.

Bingo. This really needs doing.

Hinterland has always favoured the storyline. The story was what Raph wanted to tell... the sandbox (that became Survival Mode) was merely intended as a testbed for getting the underlying mechanics worked out, after which it would be dropped. It was never intended to be part of the final game, and Raph was astonished when it became even more popular than the story.

Bears a striking resemblance to your avatar, no?

On that, I couldn't agree more.. As I was reading Raph's words on the subject I was saying "We don't need jumping, we just need the ability to step over 6 inch obstacles."

Hmm.. then maybe they are a little different. I've yet to kill one myself, so was basing my comment on that of several people who'd reported no more meat than usual. Good to know!

Yep.. it is a kind of short(ish) range thing.. I've never pinned it down, but as I mentioned above, I'd estimate it's maybe 20 or so metres range..

The thing I find most curious about this whole debacle (let's call it what it is!), is that Hinterland apparently have engaged a professional play-testing organisation to test new releases before they are made public. If so, they're certainly not getting value for money from these people, because concerns like these should have been picked up on and addressed before release. Certainly, if they'd made use of the normal Indie system of using the community to beta-test new releases, as they once did, they'd have received plenty of feedback on what worked and what didn't. But no.. that would spoil the 'surprise' of what changes were coming, so instead they switched to hiring outsiders to test new releases. The end result of farming out testing to a bunch of (to my mind, at least) incompetent "professionals" is precisely what we've seen with every single release made since 1.0. A whole slew of frantic multiple patch releasing in the week(s) post-release, to deal with glaringly obvious bugs and problems that the play-testers SHOULD have caught well before release day. Right at the time when the team ought to be patting themselves on the back, celebrating the release and taking a well-earned break, they're forced into a desperate round of patching before they can take some time off, still leaving a bunch of complaints and problems to be addressed as soon as they come back from vacation. That surely can't be good for team morale. It's a similar thing when it comes to the half-arsed changelogs they release. Hinterland may be an Indie company, but since Raph and many others on the team come from a AAA background, they still retain remnants of that AAA mindset where nothing about changes gets communicated to the players. Changelogs were a foreign concept to them when they began, and while they've tried to get their heads around the idea, they've never really taken to them and don't truly understand their purpose and importance, with the result that what they do provide lacks important necessary detail, is vague at times, and omits far too much altogether. Again, going by Raph's recent Kotaku interview, it's apparently about not spoiling the 'surprise'. And at the end of the day, this approach costs Hinterland money and goodwill with every release... and it doesn't need to.