stratvox

Dry like the Gobi Desert seems to be the consensus.

Oh I hear you there. I'd love it if the game could model real snowfall, with drifts and everything. It'd add a whole new level of challenge to the game. Waking up and needing to dig out from the Camp Office because a big snowdrift blew up against the front of the building overnight during the blizzard. Turn snowshoes into a real thing that would matter. Or Ice Age mode, say: the snow once fallen never goes away and as the game progresses all the structures and trees slowly get buried beneath the snow until you're wandering across a barren snowscape. That would be incredible. 

I'd be more inclined to think you should look at other programs on the system that might be hitting your CPU hard... HP tends to ship a lot of shovelware on their laptops, and even outright crap like McAfee or Nortons. When I get laptops that are destined for Windows I tend to download the Microsoft image and install that instead of using the software that comes from the manufacturer because the manufacturer's version usually includes a bunch of crappy software. It's just easier than going into the control panel and removing all the crap via add/remove programs...

In all seriousness, I bet that your antivirus is looking at the running instance of the game periodically to see if it's being "suspicious" (this is generally referred to as heuristic analysis in the literature); you may find that you can tell it to not bother looking at that program or you can maybe find a better antivirus than the one your using; both mcafee and nortons suck.

Nice, as I recall there's some amazing country up there; been a while since I was up that way (like forty years a while).

On 11/27/2021 at 9:23 PM, UTC-10 said:

I discovered that down in the bowels of the Cinder Hills Mine Aurora annex that I could read the Advanced Guns Guns Guns (AGGG) book during the day while sitting waiting for the day to pass (and hopefully the aurora would appear to let me out).  

I recently tried using a hacksaw to cut up a metal shelving in the annex.  I found that during the day, not during the night, I could actually cut up the shelving without igniting a light source.  The same thing on the access passage to the elevator where there was a couple of metal shelving.  Now on that level technically there still was the "door" to the outside.  

This led me to think that if I can do that in the annex then how about in the upper part of Cinder Hills Mine (not the annex) which has a work bench?  I had never tried this because, obviously, it is DARK in there and no campfires means torches, flares or lanterns.  I went into the Cinder Hills Mine work bench and tried crafting a simple something or mending something, without a light source, and I could do it in the dark as long as it was day outside.  

Interesting.  I hope this would not be considered a bug and get "fixed".  I would find that very regrettable.  

Not quite on subject but only found out recently.  

This is not a bug, and the game has worked this way for years. It makes sense from a gameplay POV; trying to drag enough fuel into some of those mine worktables to be able to make a really big item like say bear coat would be completely impracticable.

I'm pretty sure that this is a "this game mechanic will blow out our computational complexity so we can't do it" situation.

On 10/21/2021 at 8:58 AM, Cr41g said:

Actually Blackrock isn't that unreasonable... Kingston Penitentiary here was a maximum security facility built in 1835... designed to hold 600 inmates the population at one time exceeded 900 resulting in riots in 1954 and 1971. Budget cuts saw the end of KP in 2013 and at the time it housed a small number of Canada's most infamous. It could be assumed Blackrock could be similar to this example and the bus could have been taking inmates FROM the facility and not TO (or I could be wrong if information was revealed in episode 4 which I cannot play)

You in Kingston?

I often leave stores of wood at key locations as I travel through regions... it makes it frustrating when Hinterland needs to tweak a region and moves 'em all into the lost and found boxes

The note about a couple of pieces of emergency coal is also well taken, esp when playing with max coldness over time, like in interloper.

At the Pensive Pond, I'd've definitely gone for the cave... but I've also had survivors live in that cave for several months at a time (try it it's one of the better locations to live in PV so much wood in the area and good quality fir not that cheap cedar crap  ) so I'm intimately familiar with the surroundings.

And yeah... PV is pretty much the region where six hours of wood might not be enough to get through a blizzard; pretty much any other region you'd've lived.

I voted for this. Well deserved imho.

Up on Monolith. In the late game that whole plateau suffers from a serious dearth of wildlife; makes it pretty much impossible to live up there for extended stays.

Set up and took this one thinking of its utility as wallpaper.

On 11/17/2021 at 3:57 PM, Kranium said:

If we are to add a new predator animal in this game, it should be a mountain lion. I live where this game takes place, basically (remote rural BC) and we have tons of them here. I saw one on my way back from a walk to the end of the driveway (it's almost 3km long) 2 weeks ago, just sitting on a nearby hill, watching me.

 

Never seen or heard of boar hereabouts, though.

Yeah, mountain lion's are the animal that make the most sense to me too. I also think it'd be pretty cool to have a mode/mod that replaces all the deer with woodland caribou. Keep everything else the same, just ... caribou.

I lived for a while in Prince George when I was very young. Whereabouts are you?

If it's ruined by the time you've found it, you're no longer in the early game.

Found a new one; for those that don't know I got the bulk of these off Thomson's twitter account. Here's another aurora painting he did:

This one's from 1917. Don't know what it's called.

43 minutes ago, Bromstarzan said:

I was looking for the exact same thing. I would like the wolves attack me at a rate of, say 10% of the encounters (if I approach them aggressively). It would introduce an uncertainty that is now non-existent with the binary options we have (on/off). Perhaps there is a combination of difficulty level, equipment (clothes) and situation that can produce this effect already? In the "decoy category" one could make use of 2 cans/pots by banging them together to scare of wildlife...

Need to investigate!

I play custom, turn wolf population down to low, crank the damage they can inflict, and set wolf fear to max. I also set animal detection to very far and scent factor to maximum. 

I set all other animal populations to either Voyageur levels or max.

This has a few effects. It makes wolf encounters much rarer, because there are a lot fewer of them. They are unpredictable because they will be pulled to you if you're carrying smellies but will often run away after they become aware of you, esp if you have bear coat and bearskin bedroll. When they do end up getting inside your defences and tangling with you, then it's far more serious. Encounters are rarer, unpredictable when they do occur thanks to the wolf fear factor, so the tension remains high.

In a lot of ways I'm trying to make them like bears but with decent chances that they won't attack you because even when their population is set to low there are a lot more of them than there are of bears.

If you have smellies bears will detect it from amazing distances and come looking for you.

Bow hunting deer will be more challenging as they will be pretty far away from you when they scatter.

This will also result in animals interacting a LOT more than they do in the standard modes, which opens up many more opportunities for an enterprising greenhorn on GBI to thieve fresh deer off wolves by scaring them away with stones or whatever... because yes, if you bounce a rock off Fido's noggin while they're chowing down on a deer they'll run. The animal interactions can also result in animals moving on from their spawn locations as deer flee chasing wolves or they all run from mr bear and migrating from their spawn positions.

I have spent a fair chunk of time over the last year playing with the custom settings to make the game a little more unpredictable, and this seems to work pretty well... and given that the wolves can kick the crap out of you if they /do/ catch you it highly motivates careful gameplay esp in the early game and makes animal encounters of all kinds much more difficult to predict, esp wrt where you have them... but also lets you off the hook enough to keep it interesting.

AFAIK this is the closest thing I know of to what you're asking for.

To illustrate what I mean, these two pictures are taken from the same location: 

With FOV maxed:

and with FOV set to min:

I've found that playing with the FoV setting under Options -> Display allows some fun stuff with the screenshots. If you don't know about that setting, you should check it out. Changing it has side effects wrt how far away things get rendered, so remember that if you decide to mix it with actual gameplay and not just for getting that sweet shot.

A fave spot on an early foggy morning.

Thanks

The whole deal here is like that old old adage by Mark Twain about stories: "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Stop thinking physics and start thinking "what makes it cool?"

One of the things I get out of the atmosphere of Great Bear is a strong sense of magical realism. So the aurora brings computers back to life, and fires burn longer when it's cold, and if you're inside a building it doesn't matter how cold it gets out, and you can cure dysentery by drinking mushroom tea, and and and... 

This game has some very clear antecedents in the art style department, and it kind of follows from how early 20th century Canadian art was being that it would also lead to a magical realism sort of existence. I had a huge amount of fun selling a fellow old on the game by showing them a picture of The Indian Church by Emily Carr and then showing them that place in the game. 

It's enchanting as an echo from his (er, Raph's) predecessors as a British Columbian artist. Emily Carr was the bomb. So many great pictures.

I'm a hundred and seventy days in on a custom, cold and blizzards set to max, voyageur resource base, all afflictions (so predator meat in early game is a gamble), fire doesn't overcome ambient, struggle damage cranked, and animal awareness and scent increase set to max.

I just came into Pleasant Valley. Between maximum cold settings and maximum blizzards it's a hell. So much blizzard it makes getting around the region very difficult... PV is big and that allows the blizz setting max opportunity to mess with your life. You get like halfway across the field and all of a sudden all the faraway stuff disappears and thirty seconds later the wind's cranked, you've got all the down arrows on your temp meter, and you can't see sfa.

My POV on lower difficulties is that I (when I had No Idea What I Was Doing Back In The Day) successfully passed a night on the ledge up to the summit on TWM, and that was only because I had the bearskin bedroll. I'd ... messed up and got exhausted on the ledge. So, I slept. All night, in one hour shots. If I'd had the bedroll I would've been in trouble, but the bearskin kept me in positive territory all night. When I woke up shortly before dawn my FL was -10, or +2 in the bag. That'd've been -5 with a normal bedroll.

The bearskin's ability to open up a far greater number of places one can sleep in relative safety makes it not exactly necessary but really useful.

My personal head-canon on all this is that we're dead and in purgatory.

TLD is a very Canadian purgatory.

I take it. It's +12 takes many marginal situations and makes them easily survivable. I don't find its decay rate to be that bad; it's well over a month before you want to even think about repairing, and given the bear population on Great Bear supplying that is not really difficult. I tend to end up having the bear skins pile up anyway. If you have moose on outside (armour, waterproof) and bear on inside for coats, you'll only need a bear skin once every six months or so for the coat. It's relatively high decay rate's not really a big deal.

There are a surprisingly large number of nooks and crannies in many of the regions that don't qualify as caves but will offer protection from a blizzard. When you're looking at bunking out in one of those, the bear skin bedroll can make the difference between living and dying. I usually play custom now with blizzards and coldness set to max and yeah... it matters.

I'm still on my first playthrough, and playing very deliberately. I'm definitely going for completely going over the map on this playthrough. Working the region over, you might say. There are a lot of cool little spots that I've found. Liking this one quite a bit, and I'm looking forward to checking it out in survival as well.

The stone work in the new region is on point.

I never thought I'd see flowing water like this in the game. This opens up a bunch of new possibilities, imho.

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The face of this region is cut by many river gorges.

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Looking back while leaving a quick warm stop:

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I had a feeling about that mine, and I got away with tons of loot. Getting it out, however, shows one of the best overall areas I've ever seen in this game.

Look out for that first step... it's a lu-lu.

It is hard to explain how happy the look of the snow in these two pictures makes me feel. The weather is so good in this game.

Also a pretty nice shot showing off some of the landforms. The spectacular spectacular land forms.

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I was exhausted after the two trips up and down (and many go drinks hammered in) so I passed out in a conveniently located cave. Next morning started out foggy and I continued downstream.

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The floor of the gorge is sinking and narrowing. Turns out there are a lot of little hidden corners in this gorge. Looking up at the sky.

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Getting a little tight: 

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That bottom down there is a LONG way down from here. This little trick area is just the capper of the whole trek down the river.

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Out of the gorges. I'm near Cook's Farm. The end of it is amazing; there are serious options about where you can end up when you come out. I decided to put off going back to the prison; I'm thinking I still need to go hit the aggressive wolf and last convict cache up on this side of the map before I go back in to see Mathis.

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Gathering wood near Bricklayers where I'm going to pass the night before rolling up to look at those other side quests before going back in to the prison. At some point Mackenzie's going to go in there for the last time and if side quests are unfinished when that happens, then they're unfinished. Got a nice view and really whacked sunset sky colours, thought I'd share.