peteloud

After finding a load of arrows in a L&F box in PV, I raced off to ML hoping to find more in a L&F box there, (I'm in a long Stalker run and desperately struggling to find birch saplings to make arrows). I didn't find any arrows. I too leave the resources I collect carefully spread around the regions so in emergencies I should be able to find a shelter stocked with useful supplies. Having them replaced in a L&F box means it's a big job re-stocking these shelters with emergency supplies. However I appreciate the efforts that Hinterland make and that there inevitably are difficulties when they make major changes to the game, so I try and not become irritated.

jeffpeng, ". . . the pace of the game encourages you to think before you act, . . . " That might be the key element. I enjoyed the Sniper Elite games where, "the pace of the game encourages you to think before you act," whereas I dislike games that are all action where you have to rush into all situations with guns blazing. Similarly I like games that are business simulations. . . . an after-thought. Perhaps the playing games such a TLD, Factorio, Transport Tycoon DeLuxe and similar games could be a very useful, positive factor in recruitment for many jobs, including jobs in software development, but also in many areas unrelated to IT.

jeffpeng, After seeing your earlier comment I gave Factorio a try and have been enjoying it. When I started this topic I thought that the favourite games might have suggested that we, TLD players who make serious comments, had similar personality traits. There is more variety than I expected. I suspect that what appeals to IT guys in TLD is that serious players analyse how things happen in TLD and try to identify solutions to reduce problems and work out the best way to proceed. I suppose that happens in most games, but some of the comments I see here show that a great deal of careful analysis has gone in many suggestions.

Yavind, What are your longest Interloper and Stalker games? Post a copy of a screen dump of your journal here, that would help to reassure those who think your claim is unbelievably good. That is only a two minute job.

Yavind, Are you telling us the truth?

". . .the idea that you can drop a Decoy, back away to like 20-30m, and get a guaranteed headshot - I thought that was realistic approach, not an exploit. Please don't make it too hard for us - we might give up. . . . . . . . . . I have just tried out v1.61 wolf decoy. After dropping the decoy the wolf didn't come closer than about 40 metres, then wandered off. That made it safer. On the third or fourth attempt I shot it with an arrow. It took a couple arrows as it was about 40m away.

I could also ask the question, "But Seriously, why is there a sizzle when I put a piece of meat on an unlit stove?" or "But Seriously, why is that stick/arrow floating in mid-air?" The answer is that some there is a bit of code which links an action to another action and there are instances when it shouldn't apply. The solution is for Hinterland to employ 5 times as many people and check every minor aspect of the code more carefully. Then Hinterland would go bust and we wouldn't have any further development of TLD. Alternatively, we could just say, "Why get excited about it?", and carry on enjoying the game.

I was trying that yesterday. It seemed to help, in the areas immediately in front of the window, but only marginally., I didn't notice a change throughout the room. My guess is that a quite complicated lighting model is used where a room is illuminated with light from many sources, windows, fire, lantern but does not take into account the spread of light from reflection of light from strongly lit areas. I have noticed that the PV farmhouse is less dark than in the past. The interior background level, areas not directly lit from a specific light source, seem to be brighter. I think it is a fascinating subject. It would be interesting to have a detailed explanation of the problem from Hinterland.

A few comments higher up I show a screen dump of the interior of the Radio Control Hut to show how dark it is inside. Here is an exterior shot of PV to show how burned out the snow settings are with the same brightness setting. If I adjust the brightness setting to make the dark interiors lighter the bright exteriors would be even worse than above. I am using Radeon R7 360 graphics and decent DELL displays which Windows tell me have a colour profile of "DELL P2314H Color Profile D6500". My primary use for this system is for processing photo images to professional standards using Photoshop, therefore it is carefully adjusted to produce high quality imagery. This suggests to me that the TLD images are too dark and too bright, not that my system is at fault. If anyone can suggest other settings for my system to improve TLD imagery I'd be delighted to try them, providing it doesn't screw up my Photoshop photo processing.

In the Lost and Found box outside the PV farmstead I unexpectedly found about 20 arrows. I can't remember dropping or storing them or seeing them lying around. The condition of them varied greatly. Could these be arrows that I have fired at animals all around PV and was not able to recover?

". . . . .Permadeath is just not for me. " I avoid Permadeath by backing up my saves. If a pack of wolves or a triple bear attack kills me I restore my backup. The games would soon lose its enjoyment if I had to repeat those first few hundred game days again and again and again. If this was a competitive game this would be cheating, but it's solo game so I'm only cheating myself.

This is my screen dump of the Radio Control Hut in Survival mode, If I increase my brightness setting from its current 112 when outdoors the snow it burnt out.

I am surprised that Hinterland hasn't done something about this. Surely it is not all that big a job to add another key to the controls. I'd prefer to see "T" used to convert a depressed "W" to auto-walk, and a following use of "W" or "T" to cancel auto-walk. I suggest "T" because it is convenient key to dab when your finger is already on "W".

I have found that dropping a decoy from the radial menu has not been working for the past few days. I'm not sure when this started, I guess that it is somehow linked to the new version 1.6. It is not working in Wintermute nor a Survival game I'm playing. I tried re-loading the game, it still didn't work, re-booted my computer and it still didn't work. In all my tests I was carrying several pieces of cooked meat or cured guts. I have not yet tried with fresh meat or guts.

lyttol, . . . . using the terrain more to my advantage, . . . . Yeah, that has enabled me to survive a few wolf attacks. I just got to the point where playing a Stalker Survival game was more enjoyable then Ep. 3.

KinoUnko, Thanks for that. Clearly that was what I needed to do. I didn't see any prompt text nor did I hear Astrid say something about signalling. I have had a bellyful of it for the moment, back to survival.

As I said in an earlier posting, I am playing Ep. 3 at the hardest level and finding hard and very irritating. I have played around 3,000 games days of Survival with around 90% of that at Voyager to Stalker level so I am far from an inexperienced player. There are parts of Ep. 3 that I like very much but encounters with Timberwolves are too hard and not enjoyable. I have spent almost a full game day looking for a survivor that is marked on the map and can't find the survivor. I feel that I must have covered every square inch of the relevant area three times over. I am freezing cold, very near to being out of food and water and out of ammunition. The game has ceased being enjoyable, interesting relaxation. I don't doubt that the game would have been easier, less irritating and more enjoyable if I had played at an easier level. My irritation will cool down if I do something else for an hour or two. Then I shall return to an 850 day Stalker Survival game to see what changes there are in this latest version of TLD. Eventually I'll get back to Ep. 3 but I'll play at the middle level next time. . . . . . . . . Additional edit I didn't give up. I decided to bash on a rescue another survivor. While searching for the survivor I went into an old barn. I was in the closed area at the back, or left end, of the barn, the area with a wooden floor above it. While in there I heard wolves I had my gun ready pointed at the door though which they must come to get me. No, it wasn't like that, the wolves that were outside of the building were attacking me and and eventually killed me. They were outside, I was inside, and there was a wooden wall between us.

I eventually I got past that first wolfpack. There was one action that made it much easier. Since then I have been attacked a few more times and once more died. In other attacks I was more proficient with my revolver, but it was not easy. Now I am out of ammunition and have only one arrow. I don't know how I will survive the next wolfpack attack. I am now regretting playing at the most difficult level. I takes the relaxtion aspect out of the game.

I am playing Ep.3 at the most difficult level, and at the moment finding those wolves too difficult☹️ I have reached a point in the story where I have been killed by the wolves four or five times. They are very different to the wolves I experience Survival Stalker level. In Survival a pack of wolves attack one after the other with predictable behaviour. I am not finding that in Ep. 3. In Ep.3 the attack behaviour of wolves is unpredictable and the attack is not sequential. They come at you from all sides and more than one at a time. I suspect that is more like the real behaviour of a pack of wolves. They don't give me time to look around, aim my revolver and shoot them, and trying to re-load my revolver is sure to lead to my death. It might be that it just takes me a while to learn how they behave and to adopt a better defence strategy, but for the moment they find me easy meat.

Thanks for your feedback. I shall investigate further as suggested by Raphael. It was just such a puzzle. The sound in the Survival mode was extremely crisp and sharp, then a few minutes later so fuzzy.

I have progressed further in Ep. 3 and other speech is terrible too. They speak as if they have very thick scarves over their mouth. I can not make out what Molly says and the priest is very muted too.

Before starting on Episode 3 I went to finish off a bit of a Survival game. The sound seemed better than it was previously. When I started on Ep. 3 the sound quality was so bad in the conversations with Molly, both face to face and on the phone, that I could hardly make out what they were saying. I had made no changes to any sound settings. Has anyone else experienced such a problem?

At what level are you playing ?

I have seen a few comments in the forum in which contributors have mentioned other games which they greatly like. I think this is interesting because I have a feeling that we players of TLD are similar in many ways. I always have a little smile when I realise that many players are IT professionals. So what have been your favourite games over the past many years? My favourites have been Skyrim Assassin's Creed Black Flag. Far Cry 3 S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Shadow of Chernobyl, and an old DOS game, Transport Tycoon, that was updated to Transport Tycoon DeLuxe for Windows. I was also very impressed by the environments and graphics of Assassins Creed, Unity and Syndicate, but by about 75% of the way through them I lost interest. I have been impressed with and enjoyed many other games, but they are my favourites.

Yavind, Your estimate of an income of 20 CAD per game with total income of '660 000 00 CAD millions' seems unrealistically high. (Although I'm not sure how much you mean by "660 000 00 CAD millions " .) I bought my TLD through Steam when it was offer, and paid something like £5.95. From that Steam will have taken their cut, so Hinterland could not have received much. I regard my £5.95 as extremely good value for the considerable number of hours enjoyment I have had from the game, so I wouldn't begrudge Hinterland make a good profit from it.