stratvox

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: 

On 4/14/2023 at 10:50 AM, Bearimpaler101 said:

Holy crap that wolf looks EVIL.

He's enjoying his work. Nothing wrong with that.

34 minutes ago, diggity said:

Multiple bases.  Around  the time TLD came out I saw a documentary about Siberian hunters who maintained multiple traplines and hunting shacks.  They circled around to each one, sometimes traveling 150 kms a day or more, usually with their trusty husky alongside, or running flat out behind the snowmobile.  They would restock, gather furs, do all the chores, and that was the day.  Then one or two days a week they stay in place and hunt. That quickly shifted my TLD strategy from one main to multiple bases.  Circle around to each one, keep them restocked, while doing whatever other goals you have in mind.    What stratvox says.

This is the way.

On 4/2/2023 at 5:45 AM, Boneviolin said:

Jeez I keep getting wonderful photos from ash canyon!

AC has the best vistas. The stone pillars of AC are in a class of their own. There are a LOT of cool cool places in AC to check out, it's totally worth exploring. N.B. If you have been to that pillar at the end of the series of three by the fallen log, you'll find an alcove/cave that faces across towards Foreman's. I've spent the night in there a few times, but... it's entirely possible for a blizzard to blow in, blow out your fire, and freeze you to death in there. 

Don't ask me how I know this, just know that I do.

This has become quite tedious.

17 hours ago, Renn said:

As much as I love Hinterland... I do feel they keep doing this to themselves. They promised updates every 8-10 weeks this year, but we had to wait much longer to even get news on Part 2, which means people complain there's no updates.

I think that a lot of this comes down to the problems they encountered with the Mac version which became apparent very shortly after TFTFT's initial release. I work in the software industry and generally in small houses and I think it's probably pretty safe to say that the diversion of company resources to figure out and fix the mac problems put everything else back on its heels, because that's what happens in small dev shops when a total "must fix ASAP or company death will ensue" problem comes along. Remember that the actual mac problems only got resolved a few weeks ago. Now obviously people were able to work on parallel tracks, but this would have had strong knock on effects in areas such as regression testing, play testing, etc and absolutely would effect the release cycle because the last thing they want to do is to have to repeat further regression testing after fixing the mac version because a bunch of other features got released for other platforms. Not only that, but while the issue with mac was being resolved I figure it's a pretty solid bet on my part (given that I know _know_ what was happening in their office) that anyone with platform chops would've been pulled off whatever they were doing and assigned to work on fixing the mac issues that were realised once TFTFT was released to the wider public. 

I do know that the people where I work (distributed numeric computation software) pull their hair out repeatedly because of Apple's insistence on Going Their Own Way wrt 3d graphical rendering standards which means we get to keep a parallel track going supporting that stuff strictly for mac hardware and which basically doubles the amount of dev time devoted to building *and maintaining* the capability and availability of our software on Mac... and that Metal (Apple's 3D api) has been a moving target for a long time now.

FWIW I'm not seeing any of these. I checked each of these container types and I didn't see this at all. Well, I didn't look at the abandoned cache for a floating book, but... lockers, filing cabinets, and first aid kits.... absolutely.

Maybe try pulling your mods one at a time; seems pretty likely that one could be interfering with how those work. 

Heck might be as simple as reinstalling them, depending on how it is they work.

Multiple bases in each region and in all regions. A base basically consists of shelter, a dozen or so litres of water, a few tens of kilos of meat, excess tools, a cooking pot, whatever cloth I gathered from the immediate area that is too much for me to carry, maybe some cured leather, snares, and any top tier clothing as spares in case I get into a tussle with a bear or wolves and get some clothing ruined. I've been playing a long game (I'm 233 days in on a run where after I made my way up to TFTFT and the Forsaken Airfield. I currently have bases at Junker's Paddock, Mindful Cabin, Island Cabin, Brittle Cave (in FA) and the depot in the transition zone. I've been banging around between these locations with the occasional trip to the airport to score stuff. The idea is that I don't have to carry much stuff with me because it's waiting at my destination, along with emergency supplies (clothing etc) so that I'm always reasonably close to a place to scarper if the weather turns nasty or I get into it with the wildlife. This run's an exception, usually I have setups like this in three to five locations in all regions but this particular run is the one I started after the Second Save Enflushening specifically intended to get up to the far territories to explore. I figured I probably wouldn't last that long, but as it turned out I managed to evade death in the early going and my guy's now basically thriving in FA and is waiting for the next FT region to drop.

Region by region I tend to have hidey holes at: 

Old Stone Church in DP

Arch Cave in Crumbling Highway

That house up on the hill just outside Town Site in CH

The lookout in CH

Fishing Village, CH

Jackrabbit, CH

Cave near ML exit, Ravine

Camp Cabin, Construction Trailers, and Trappers in ML

That cave where you turn off the river in WR

Forest Cave, Signal Hill, Farmhouse, that cave on the river down from Thomson's, Community Hall, PV

The cave near Three Strikes, PV

The Abandoned Preppers Cache, PV

Old Spence, cave next to the cave to BI, Cave in the pillar near where the bear spawns near entrance to ML, all in FM

Maintenance Yard, Hunter's Lodge, BR

Mountaineer's, the cave next to Eric's Falls, Cave in Deer Clearing, TWM.

Bricklayer's, Substation, and the pen in BRM.

There's more, but you get the idea.....

Cheers!

Well I'm a linux dude but I'm definitely glad it's finally coming together for you guys. Enjoy :)

I've wasted my life! 😭 

2 hours ago, TonyInPleasantValley said:

I think panic has killed me more in survival than just about everything else, except my own stupidity...lol

Oh, one thing I've noticed about TLD. If and when I find myself in a rush in this game, then I know that somewhere along the way I done fscked up.

On 3/14/2023 at 2:49 PM, Glflegolas said:

Returning to the original question -- to get the DLC or not -- I think it depends.

If you're a veteran player who has thoroughly explored the entirety of Great Bear Island and whose favourite gameplay is survival, then I'd say: YES, and you won't regret your decision at all.

If you're primarily interested in playing Story Mode and just play a bit of survival here and there, I'd say: NO. You're unlikely to enjoy this DLC.

If you are relatively new to the game and aren't sure whether you enjoy story or survival mode more, I would say: WAIT.

This advice comports with reality rather well.

Another one for all of you!

Algonquin Park, 1914. 

Beautiful!

Yes. I've also been experiencing some sounds stopping when a new sound plays, so, for example, the survivor starts a catch phrase but it suddenly stops because I picked up a stick or something and when the tick noise happens the voice will disappear.

Oh wow, there's a name I've not heard in a long long time... good to see you've returned!

I have not been disappointed so far. I pretty much got it the day it was possible to buy it. Currently that basically means the transition zone and Forsaken Airfield. FA is perhaps not as ... cosmetically spectacular as say AC or parts of BRM, but it's a very good region with some very interesting features, and the view from the porches of the cabins are absolutely amazing, esp in the early evening or morning when the aurora is active. I've had a survivor going in there for a couple of hundred days now. There are some glitches, which I expect are going to get fixed over time, as I have seen happen with new releases in the past, so be prepared for those, but overall I'm happy so far. Note well that as Serenity said the price will increase over time until the end of the the DLC release cycle around the end of this calendar year, but that may or may not matter that much to you.

Overall this entire period is a major update to the game, including migrations to a new version of the underlying game engine and a major reworking of loot tables, resources, and the addition of new game mechanics; I fully expect it to add significantly to the TLD 'experience' over the course of this year.

Here's another beaut of the sky in Algonquin: 

"Sunset" 1915. You can find this one in the National Gallery of Canada, near the Byward Market in Ottawa.

I have noticed it at Junker's Paddock in FA. I am divided between it being an easter egg about the mountain lion or a sound effect caused by the metal sheets sheltering the little area in front of the truck vibrating in the wind. I don't hear it at Mindful, but I do hear it at the Island Cabin... which has a shed with those metal sheets a few yards away. So, could be either. I've had this run exclusively in FA once I got up here about day 20 or so (started in MT, did a quick run into HRV to grab the bag, then down through the basin to FM, down Hat Creek and directly along the tracks to BR, made arrowheads at the Maintenance Yard, by this time I had some saplings so I made a bow and some arrows and then crossed the bridge to make my way into the far territories, and have been knocking around FA ever since I got up here (closing in on a hundred and seventy five days in FA).

I've been working on the idea that it's a sound caused by the metal sheeting and wind. It'd be all right to spend more time touring around other regions to see if that relation holds true or not... but I think I'd be starting up a new game to do that.

Found a new one today: 

"Pine Cleft Rocks" - 1915. 

I think I should make a mission to wander the entire game and see if this one is in there.

While I'm at it, for those that Twit, here's the feed; it's worth a follow as it posts art every day. https://twitter.com/TTLastSpring

Guess that's not it then. I dunno. Are there other people who are successfully running this on Mac?

I would be super happy to be able to buy the "tourism" posters for the regions that can be found in the game in a few locations, for example, this guy: 

If there was a complete set I'd buy the lot, in all truth. 

It's possible that it's the video card; drivers perhaps the 5700xt's drivers don't support metal? @Admin can you tell us if metal 2 or metal 3 is required to run the game? I found this tidbit: 

Quote

How do you know if your Mac has Metal? Metal has been available on macOS since 2015 for Macs (2012 models or later) running OS X El Capitan. And Metal 2 (the second version of Metal) supports macOS High Sierra and later since 2017. For the Metal 3, Apple says it supports Apple silicon Macs and macOS Ventura or later.

Seems like it may be relevant to the original request...

2 hours ago, codeNick said:

Yup that was it.. The new build by default set the value as 'ultra' reducing that solved the issue. Thank you so much for this tip!

Glad I could be of help. Enjoy!

I've put a fairly solid amount of thought on this, and there are a few issues I can think of. None insurmountable, but definitely there, esp. since Hinterland is a small company.

Ultimately I'd like to see regions functioning as complete ecosystems with animal movements being determined by the choices they're making as they pursue food, water, and safety from predators/competitors, and keeping in mind that some animals have homes and some do not; for example bears have their caves and rabbits have their burrows, but deer, wolves, and moose are more nomadic in their natures, and I'd also expect some animals (like the bear) to be willing to travel far to pursue food. For example, I for one am very happy about timberwolves and their cooperative natures because it rings truer to wolves' nature; they are like humans in that they are pack hunters that hunt animals by pursuing to exhaustion, however I have heard a LOT of folks complaining about timberwolves because I guess they weren't willing to go to the trouble of figuring out how to manage them effectively. If you do them right they will straight up stop bothering you as the survivors of the pack have concluded that you, the player, are simply not worth the trouble (that's what the morale bar is all about). This means that it's better for the player to NOT kill them all because if you kill an entire pack when a new pack spawns it won't remember you for the deadly threat you are to their survival. 

I can see how this would cause the folks at Hinterland some pause about the idea of broadly reworking animal AI and ecosystem effects causing migration around the map; the reaction to timberwolves has not, by and large, been very positive, even though I love 'em (and sacrificed lots of runs to figure out how to manage them).

There are even resources available for the grazers (rabbits/deer) in the form of the terrain scatters, which could influence their movements (deer moving rapidly, while rabbits change locations less often due to the need to dig new burrows). Predators would then also be trying to find them because that is how they get to eat as well, while also lone wolves running away from bears and moose but wolf packs perhaps being willing to go after them if the pack is large enough.

I'd also point out that it's apparent that they're using the existing system to simulate this somewhat, even if imperfectly, but ... I suspect you need to spend some time playing in the deep game to be able to see it. For example I'm close to two hundred days in in Forsaken Airfield, and while the bears remain statically attached to their caves, the deer, rabbits, and wolves are clearly changing spawn points over time so that this week there's a bunch of deer on the shore of Shoulder Lake but next week they're over between the Airfield and Surveyor's Memory and the week after that they're over by Spotter's Blind, with wolves behaving approximately similarly. This is a reasonably good computationally cheap way to try to simulate this but unlike a true simulation (where all the animals on a map are agents that make decisions on either the real map or an idealized graph version of the same) this doesn't allow for animal behaviour to change as they react to you, the player. On the gripping hand, multi-dimensional simulations of that kind can get pretty computationally challenging pretty quickly, which would have a pretty profound effect on overall performance of the game.

Anyway. It's fun to think about, also fun to reason about. I think it could be pretty cool to figure out ways to make real quasi-ecosystem simulation possible, and may be a cool mod that someone could put together once modding becomes a real thing with a truly stable modding API etc. For example, there's almost always a relatively large herd of deer in FA (largest I've ever seen in the game BY FAR) with usually five or six does and one or two bucks; sometime when the player is hunting them it'd be interesting to see the two bucks decide to attack the player using their antlers and hooves (similarly but not the same to what the moose does) in order to protect their herd; I'm sure we've all seen those videos of a deer buck attacking that hunter and totally pwning his ass despite the fact that he had a rifle.