stratvox

I dunno. I mean, we're playing a game where the aurora borealis turns all the predators into finely tuned killing machines, winter lasts for literally years, every day is twelve hours no matter the date despite being set in Canada's north, and rules of mass and weight kinda don't matter (e.g. water weighs less when it's tea... I mean wtf?) I think a special dispensation for the skillet as a melee weapon is not a terrible idea given it's ... weighty place in the culture, and I can't help but note that in the context of the game, a skillet is a tool item. Actually what would be really sweet would be permitting the player to load it up prior to the charge and if they time it right smoke the wolf in the side of the head on leap causing it to miss the player and run away whimpering would be freakin' hilarious. <charge> <swing> KADONG!!! <flee> It'd be a bit expensive to implement because of the need to do animation, but man... totally worth it imho. Bonus if you can also use it to bring down deer that happen to be running right by you, as happens from time to time. Here comes the stag, and KADONG!!! and down goes the stag, with the option to use a hunting knife, revolver, rifle, etc to do the coup de grace similar in principle to how we do bunnies now after hitting them with a stone, with a decision needed in like a second or the deer gets up and runs off. I love it. Should have a skill associated with it; call it "domestic mayhem" or something.

imgur versions of the images.

I, too, am passing some time in Desolation Point. Custom run, started in CH, made tracks down here to use the forge. I keep forgetting how awesome a place to live long-term the Stone Church is. DP is small but survivable for the medium term at least.

I will crouch on the bench in back of the Trailer in MT up by the HRV exit on nights when the aurora is up and watch the show. Should probably feed up and record one from beginning to end, post it on youtube sometime.

I've had it on numerous occasions, just most commonly on dead animals, and it's very often. For example, the hitboxes on the stove in the Mindful Cabin are boxed. I've also noticed that when walking with a torch that the "source" for the sparks that fly about isn't the torch head; it's offset lower and to the left. I wonder if the problem with the hitboxes is dependent on the resolution you run the game at in combination with a separate problem with the hitbox on animal carcasses? I run it at 4K. Could also be related to the fact that I'm running the windows version under the proton libraries in linux. There were some problems that came back with the linux version (stuttering after about half an hour to an hour of play that necessitates restarting the game); I should maybe try installing the native linux version again to test to see if the hit box problem exists there too.

Well, I dunno, I don't just play this game, but I play this game a LOT. I try to get other people into it, but I also play and advocate for other games. In terms of time put in I think I've probably played this game more than any other game at this point, but... o.g. Quake, Doom, and Heretic might put that to the test but there's no way to track how much time I spent on them back in the day. I just snapped this one, but I haven't actually started the game yet since I got up.

I have long thought that a mode where the temps in inside locations vary with the outside temps would be a great addition to the game. Make the indoor locations like caves in that they're +x to ambient temp, and run the weather simulator to determine temperature while the player is indoors, but I don't think that's a massive weight on computation for this game. Would make houses that have stoves/fireplaces/barrels much more valuable compared to those without. This would mean that (for example) fan faves like Jackrabbit Island and Misanthrope's would get seriously nerfed, but then again a late game player would still be able to use them successfully as shelter during a blizzard. While at it... most if not all of the buildings in the game have "burned out" versions of themselves; allow for the possibility that a building can burn because of a player running the fireplace. I've also thought that maintaining the stove/fireplace etc to prevent a chimney fire from taking out the building would be a possibly good mechanic for this.

More than from time to time; it happens a LOT. Running the Windows version via Proton under linux here.

As I recall, that change happened because people on the consoles couldn't use it; trying to navigate that interface with a mouse and keyboard was a snap, but using a game controller was almost impossible. I agree though, it looks about a thousand times better.

I wouldn't go that way, that's for sure. They hate you over there.

Yes. In a real situation (ha! like anything about this game is real; I think "magic realism" really describes it best), where winter goes on forever, the end game is basically a mass extinction event. My head canon for what is happening is that the earth took a double whammy on crash night (i.e. day 0 of a sandbox run), with a CME hitting that makes the Carrington event look like a firecracker, and Yellowstone erupting, bringing on the supervolcano version of a nuclear winter. Things would get very very dire very very quickly in such circumstances for everyone. Heck, I'd like to sit down and design a mode that uses this as a starting point, with the game starting with a week of auroras and glimmer fog followed by a limited set of weather (basically, no clear days, always cloudy and/or foggy). After fifty days when it's starting to get really cold the storms start to come, with blizzards starting as lasting for some number of hours to them lasting for some number of days a hundred days after that, with frequency set to high. Start with very high levels of wildlife, but set wildlife decline to max as they die off due to the never ending winter. Let people have the firearms, because they're gonna need them with wildlife set to high and wolves set to max damage. Then around day 1500 things start to get better, with clear sunny days finally appearing after years of a milky sky of stratospheric sulphur aerosols. I'd also like to try a mode where the aurora activates the player sort of like it does the wildlife, by a) making it possible to wake up when an aurora starts when you're asleep, and b) by making the fatigue bar irrelevant while it's active, so the player can run and run and run. N.B. running would still peg your calories, so you want to keep an eye lest you lose your well fed bonus by starving yourself. Blah blah blah. Lots of fun to think of ways to extend this place.

Sounds like the ol' bear spent the night loading for bear down at the local and is paying the usual morning price.

This looks great. Looking forward to it! Hoping this will address some of the stability issues I've been experiencing in the linux version.... but besides all that this looks like a really great update, and I can hardly wait to fire it up.

Snowstorm at night on Timberwolf's doorstep.

Interestingly I recently switched back to proton for linux tld because of this; even to the point of crashing the game or even sometimes the machine... which kind of indicates that maybe the root of the problem is video related rather than something else. At any rate, there are some serious issues with the linux version, esp. since the last two or three updates which have basically rendered the game unplayable. I have no idea what to do about it, other than that I've reported it via the support portal.

Might be a good idea to tag @Raphael van Lierop as he's the dude that can give the definitive answer.

I have also experienced this, while running the linux version. About an hour in the perf tanks and if you keep playing long enough (usually while I'm trying to get to a save point) it'll CTD. Even worse, when I'm playing the windows version under linux using proton, it can take the entire machine down with it, necessitating a power cycle. I should note that I have in fact submitted a couple of reports about this, and that the other games I run using the proton compatibility layer don't behave in this way, nor do the other linux native games that I have.

Do you happen to be close by snow shelters (I know there are several) when you hear them? I find that approaching all placed snow shelters result in a sound being played.

Nice! Also good science!

I suspect that they were probably exceptions created for specific locations; like back when Mountaineer's was the only exterior interior in the entire game... and also that given the engine updates (IIRC there have been two major Unity engine updates that have been done, and there may have been three wrt TLD) those exceptions may no longer exist; I ran that particular experiment a LONG time ago.

Actually interior fires have been affected by the outdoor burning bonus, and the reason why is because it's calculated based on *where the player is*... with some caveats; having an interior fire extend won't cause food to burn if the original run time of the fire was within the limit, and that's true whether or not the fire is indoors or out, but based on the player. So, for example, if I have a fire in the barrel outside the trailer in MT, and sleep inside, and the fire is long enough to cook the food but not so long as to burn it, it won't burn. OTOH, if I roll out a sleeping bag next to the fire and sleep, it can. It's an interesting aspect of how these things are actually calculated in the game, and can be exploited. I've known of this for many years now, and have used it to save wood. Try this, and see what happens: light a fire in Mountaineer's, feed it up to the full twelve hours, and go sleep behind it next to the chimney (where you will be protected by the fire) outside and track how long you're out for, and then go in and look a the time remaining on the fire. When I do that, they don't add up because the fire in Mountaineer's got the cold bonus. Serenity has the mechanic exactly right.

Last night I was in BI, entering for the second time to look for that "mysterious signal" mentioned in the SV journal. When I entered I was fortunate enough to find a moose hanging around just west of the Frozen Delta. I crept around for a while trying to find a spot where I could shoot it safely, but every time it got close to either the fallen tree or the hunter's blind it would turn around and walk away again, the tease. Eventually I just decided to eat it and shoot him from the ground. I went up crouched, and put an arrow into his mid-section. At this point, naturally, he spun around and charged. I got two more arrows off, one going into his shoulder and the last one when I could veritably feel his breath on my face going into his head... and taking him down. Just one step and I was able to pull my arrows. It's moments like that that make this game. I'd been through an extended period of low stress travelling, though of course once you get into a timberwolf region the stress level goes up. Now I've got thirty kilos of meat in the cave on the west side of the region and am in a position to stay for the long haul and wait for the aurora so I can fire up the ol' shortwave and find out what they've got for me. Should be super entertaining dodging the timberwolves; I'm thinking I should probably spend my time until the next aurora wandering quietly about the joint and laying waste to the packs, being careful to leave one alive from each pack to carry forward the tale of the apex predator and why timberwolves should run when they smell me. And now, of course, now that I've done the bravado the likeliest end for this guy is to have his intestines splayed across the snow after a bad encounter with a wolf pack.

After close to two hundred and fifty days banging around Forsaken Airfield, I've returned to Lower Great Bear to meander my way through Signal Void. Made my first quick foray into BI, but didn't stick around to tangle with the timberwolves; that'll be my next trip I reckon. Trying to decide if I should go through to the Ravine entrance and look around the radio tower or if I should just go back into the Frozen Delta and wait for an aurora. No glimmer fog since I came back to Lower Great Bear, so I'm beginning to think that must be a FT only thing. Anyway, I'm in the cave close by the transition cave to BI and it's a particularly limpid sunset. Here you go Oh, and here's a link to the imgur version at a full 4K. And here's the one I've uploaded directly: