stratvox

@jeffpeng I just tried running TLD under Proton. No Z-fighting on the terrain, performance is adequate. I soft-linked in my linux save game folder into the same place where it exists under the wine prefix for that particular game, in my case by issuing: and it picked everything up and loaded just fine. It seems that the save games and config files are at least arch portable (i.e. x86_64). Thought you may be interested by that. N.B. I did take a back up of my saves folder, and I'm going to think about whether I wish to continue using this or revert to the linux native version. If you're thinking on trying this I highly recommend issuing something like to make sure you don't destroy your saves and profile if it turns out my success was a fluke. There are interesting subtle differences in how the game looks... definitely worth playing with. Later: Running the game with "-force-glcore" works, and the flickering returns. Using "-force-vulkan" ends up with the game croaking on startup with a "failed to initialize player" error. This points back to your thesis that it's nVidia's bad OpenGL conformance that's leading to these issues. I'm waiting to see if the Vega 64 prices drop next week; I may pick one up if they do. If not, I'm looking at the 5700(maybe XT) maybe around September after the drivers have caught up a bit and to see if any other manufacturers start putting out cards. Word is that the state of the drivers is shaky at best in linux land, although generally there's optimism that that will be dealt with reasonably quickly.

I have done so... took me a while to get a video chopped down enough to be able to upload it to that page . I think I uploaded that one a week or three back. I have heard back from some of your folks on some of the bugs I've reported, but not this one; I'm hoping that it'll be at least investigated before the next release comes out. I'm also unsure that's it's not driver related; I'm strongly considering laying hands on an AMD RX5700XT next week (gonna eat up all my points at my local retailer for that one) so I can tease out the extent to which it's game/engine driven vs. gpu/driver driven. My experiments with using Vulkan vs OpenGL on this nvidia card seem to indicate it may well be driver related; if I end up pulling the trigger next week I'll post here and let people know. This is all linux-driven and as such I'm sure only affects a small subset of your players; probably smaller even then the hardcore interloper/deadman crowd. Still, as I really like this game and your studio and want to see it (and you!) do well and also try to help make linux gaming a viable alternative to Windows gaming I'm hoping to kill two birds with one stone... I appreciate you taking the time to discuss this.

Just re-upping this thread. Having visited a few more maps I can definitely say that the most recent update (1.55) has resulted in a LOT more terrain z-fighting than used to be the case. @Raphael van Lierop @Support I want to make sure you're aware of this; right now it's making playing the game actively fatiguing because of how much flickering one gets on the screen. If you lack linux testing harnesses I can possibly help you out with that. I'm figuring on waiting for another week or three as today's Ryzen and Navi releases should result in price cuts on older parts... at which point I'll think about either grabbing whatever's best from the newly outdated or dropping the dough on the 5700XT. The point of getting the 5700XT would be to eventually get a new ryzen machine sans video card and put the nvidia back in this one and get a full AMD stack gaming machine. In my day job we're developing a grid architecture distributed supercomputer for scientific research; you can find our open beta at https://portal.distributed.computer. When I get around to having this machine become a spare I'll just turn it into a machine that works on the distributed computer and stick it in a corner somewhere. Once we get the standalone linux worker going and I can run it at idle priority and headless I'll probably stick a new NIC in this one, attach it to a wireless access point running in infrastructure mode and replace my very old wireless router gateway and get a far more powerful firewall/gateway setup for the home network here that also crunches on scientific research projects for fun and profit. Happily I've been running high volume transaction services on the internet for years (solaris and ubuntu/centos/debian linux have been the main platforms I've worked in) so I feel pretty comfortable about running a secure ship here. To return to the main point... please Hinterland investigate the z-fighting issues, and if you're having a hard time getting a good system up and running to test linux builds I'd be happy to lend a hand.

One thing's for sure... real pack predatory behaviour on the part of wolves will profoundly change the balance of terror in all experience modes outside of pilgrim. If they get it right wolves will change from an "oh look, you're bringing me snacks" to "oh sugar I gotta get out of here".

Yeah, my long run is not interloper. On the gripping hand he just had his second long dark birthday (i.e. made it to day 730); the reason he's got all that is because he's basically been /everywhere/. Interloper is more fun than stalker just because it doesn't have as many wolves. I think worrying stalker will turn into an FPS with wolves is kinda like bolting that barn door.

That's why I said "AN apex predator", not "THE apex predator". Once you get weapons (rifle, bow) you become one of the predators... but not the only one, and of course one way of handling being one of the apex predators is by taking care of the competition... and that goes just as much for your peers (wolves) as it does for you. Also, think about how nutso it will be if there are four or five wolves on a map that will come after you when you're spotted on interloper: it's gonna get tight.

I experienced that this very morning.

I disagree. That's on the other side of the collapsed tunnel with the penitentiary bus. I've wondered if you can get down there by goating down from where the plane is crashed. May try sometime to see....

A grey and lavender mid-morning, humid and raw.

My long run guy is basically a tank. Balaclava, Rabbit Hat, Moose Satchel, ear wrap, Moose Hide Cloak, Bear Coat, Two Cowichan sweaters, Snow Pants inside Deer Pants, two woolen long johns, two climbing socks, Deer Boots. When fully repaired even blizzards become manageable. Not that you want to stay outside, but you've got a lot more time to find shelter, that's for sure.

You don't get to see snow and the aurora at the same time every night: What the? The sun is shining, the sky is blue? Where the hell is this snow coming from? The blizzard that's about to force me into the barn:

I'd like to add that the plenty of ammo may be about ensuring a player can arm themselves quickly because they don't have to go far from anywhere to find ammunition. Smart timberwolves in all the major regions could profoundly change esp. the stalker experience.

....as for the bigger picture I don't know. If the timberwolves really do work together as an effective hunting pack it may be that you'll want its fast firing. The ideal behaviour for a pack of wolves would be something like this: The entire pack is pretty evenly spread over the region that are accessible to it (i.e two packs in TWM one south one north). When a timberwolf identifies quarry, they bark to alert the other wolves. The other wolves start moving towards the bark. The alerter starts following the player at a distance. Periodically they bark to alert the pack to the new location. When enough of them arrive they attack. Say, minimum four? Other wolves will join in as they arrive. They attack in a coordinated manner to bring you down. If you get to this stage you are in big big trouble. How to avoid the pack attack? If you're armed, kill the alerter wolf immediately and make tracks so you're not there when the rest of the pack starts showing up... or if you've got a good position to rain death from wait for them to kill as many of them as possible. If you're cornered by a pack, the revolver starts looking really really good... and I can see how those scenarios could result in eating a LOT of bullets... esp. if they've considered how much has to happen to deter the pack, as well as any individual timberwolf. If you're talking stalker (aka "wolf city") it makes it more stalkerish... way more stalkerish. I mean, stalker is all about the wolves (which is why I don't really play it) and something like what I've outlined above will significantly add to the challenge of the maps that get timberwolves. Also, think about it... you're cruising through somewhere in the early evening out in the fields and you pick up a timberwolf alert (you hear the alert barks from nearby). It's keeping its distance, and you need to shut it up and get away from it. If you're weaponless, you need to get away and hopefully indoors post haste. Imagine, you're run-walking to get away and you keep hearing the patter of their paws and the yips they're using to tell their buddies where you are. That'll be an amazing tension builder. You have a revolver. You finally spot the alerting wolf and turn the hunter into the hunted. If you get in there and hit them they run away whimpering. It's time to get a move on and hope you can avoid the wolves coming to look for their friend. Still lots of tension. I'm intrigued because I really want to see better behaviour from the wildlife... and because one thing that would really help the late game be more interesting is to have the player as an apex predator in an (undoubtedly vastly oversimplified) ecosystem. Another question I have is... will the wolves we've come to know and ... well, love o.O... still be there? How will they interact with the timberwolves? How about the timberwolves with the deer? If the pack goes after herds of deer using the technique I've outlined above, it won't be long before they hunt them to extinction... or that the deer will have to have an insanely high respawn rate to keep up. Testing the interaction of all the animal mechanics must be insane. Overall, I'll end this by saying that we've seen major overhauls and interesting buffs already (birch bark, well fed, etc) and they've handled them incredibly well from a gameplay perspective, so I've got a lot of patience to see what happens when Ep. 3 comes out and timberwolves (hopefully! oplease oplease) get introduced into sandbox. They've (i.e. Hinterland and Raph) have earned a lot of trust from me when it comes to not fscking up the game.

Revolver/Bow looks like a great road combo. Total mass of weapons is half that of the rifle.

He's pining for the fjords.

Some Winding River randos: This was good mapping weather. Looking up the river towards the dam. This was later when I was ferrying stuff from ML to PV. The weather adds just a touch of melancholy. I was in WR for three days. One of them started with a pea soup fog; a little later on it burned off so I went up to the dam to pick stuff up. As I moved my stuff through the cave to PV, I had occasion to hunker down in the cave and make some water and cook up some venison. It was my last trip through the cave. I stopped to look back at the cooking fire, which would burn down soon:

I did discover something interesting. If you then wake up, and exit the game, and then resume it later, the fire in the inside will not have the burning animation, but it will have the logs in the "set up" configuration and will give off light and heat.

So, now that I'm done mapping FM, I'm in WR. There's really only one place to live in the map; the cave where the river is about to turn. Interesting thing about that cave; it's got a campfire in it, and that campfire is in the "indoors" part of the cave; if you drop a curable item right next to it it will start curing. This would seem to indicate that the fire will not benefit from the cold bonus. However, if you place your sleeping roll right at the edge of the rock before it turns to snow, you will be sleeping in the "outdoor" portion of the cave... and the fire in the indoor portion will benefit from the cold bonus.

It's not realistic for winter to never end. It's not realistic that bears can't climb trees. It's not realistic that predators glow green and become super dangerous when there's an aurora. It's not realistic that you can fix a sprain in moments with a bandage and some acetaminophen. It's not realistic that you only get ~10kg of meat from a deer, or only ~30kg from a bear or moose; those animals both weigh well over a quarter ton when fully grown. It's not realistic that there are only bucks, not does. If death is the only guarantee, why bother? I mean, it's not like real life has a hundred percent mortality rate, now does it?

Again, for me, the current system makes sense. As was said earlier... yes you can "waste" meds by screwing it up, but let's take a look at how humans operate under severe stress for a moment. So you've just had a wolf struggle, terminating when you jammed your hunting knife into its neck and it ran off whimpering. It's dark, the weather sucks, and you're a long way from home. It's entirely reasonable that the avatar could make mistakes while doing their first aid on themselves... but how to model that? Random occurrence of a mistake that wastes it, or put it on the player to follow the right procedures? Putting it on the player absolutely makes the most sense, and leaving room for the player to make a mistake and waste resources also makes the most sense because that can go down that way in real life. It's similar to the people that want to be able to walk up to a pile of sticks and pick them all up in one shot through some kind of automagic bundling facility. Part of the reason they don't have that is because one of the most precious resources in the game is time... and picking up a pile of forty sticks effectively should take time. The interface ensures that time gets taken by making you double click to get each stick in your inventory. Any other large pile of stuff should work the same way; you can't expect to be able to load up ten fir logs in under three seconds, it just doesn't really follow how reality works. A similar thing I've seen in the forums lately is people complaining about the revolver firing because they're picking up sticks and miss the stick and fire the revolve. Well, if you're gathering wood with a firearm in your hand I think it's reasonable to accept that accidental discharges are possible. Just be glad that they don't have the possibility that your accidental firearm discharge ends up in your leg or something. If you want to fix that? Put the revolver away before picking up that wood.

This is really the crux of the matter. This game punishes not paying attention to what you're doing when you're doing it. I personally like that aspect of it... that there's a real possibility that you can screw up applying first aid to yourself and waste resources, which is a real departure from how most video games handle picking up medkits, but it's probably not everybody's cup of herbal tea.

It's a finite play, but that finite number can be very long; there's a guy who's had a run that lasted over ten years in game.

You can either stream to twitch or youtube, record to hard drive, or do both. There's a learning curve, but I can say once you get over that curve it works very well.

Well, it matters, but not that much really. Daily usage of a bearskin bedroll gives you about six weeks of use before repairs really need to be done. By and large it should be totally possible once in the middle game to get that many bearskins coming in; often you can get a lot more than that many coming in. The thing that's really good is that it's easy to set yourself up with a permanent fire once you hit fire five; you only need about four or five fir logs to give you twelve hours of fire when you're burning outside. I think the longest running fire I had with my current guy was around 260 hours. This has several huge advantages, beginning with having long-running fires cuts down on the match consumption. Also, instant warmup; once you've got a fire going over the course of a full day or so it's at max temp and you're gonna get three bars warming up if you're within its range. I've generally found that at fire five you can keep a permafire going with an hour or three of wood gathering per day, depending on what you find and how far you have to carry it. Note that I'm not suggesting a newly dropped survivor should try to dive immediately into cave living, but after you get your good clothing going on it has a lot of advantages.

The cave down in Milton Basin is a good spot to camp out for a while. My long run guy has spent at least a couple of months living out of that cave. It's a bit of a hike down the watercourse to FM to get to the worktable and forge at Spence's, but it's far from impossible and generally is an overnighter which is far from onerous. Overall I find cave living to work a LOT better than living in buildings... the extra something something you get out of your wood when living and cooking outdoors is a huge advantage.