KaiGamez

IT’S BEEN A WHILE Hey everyone, Kai here. It has been something like twenty months since our last public DevLog, so I believe we are long overdue for a progress report. Lots has happened over that time so buckle up, we have some exciting news. For those of you that are members of our TLDev server; much of this information is a rehash of what you have already read, so feel free to skim. As always, our teams statement: “The Long Development is a small team project and a collaborative community effort to expand 'THE LONG DARK's' Great Bear Island in both a beautiful and balanced way. Our team is focused on creating as 'Hinterland-like' regions as possible to ensure that they fit within the world of the vanilla game. We are not out to make perfect idealised locations, but rather ones that are balanced. Consisting of a handful of core members, our 'TLDev' team brings a variety of work that allows this mod to be as expansive as it is. Our mod contains hand-crafted regions that seamlessly connect to the larger world of Great Bear, featuring custom 3D-modelled structures that make these regions' identities feel unique. Last but not least we have an additional 20 minutes of brand-new music that fit in our various regions' atmospheres. Currently, we have two major regions and two transition regions in development, with more planned for the future. We take our time creating these regions, and as every member contributes to this project with our own free time; we apply ‘no crunch’ rules. Our work releases whenever we feel it is ready, and it will be completely free for anyone who owns THE LONG DARK and TFTFT.” - THE FIRST FEW The last couple months have been monumental in terms of our team's progress and this has led to the big next step in bringing custom regions to this game; I am very excited to announce that we have begun closed beta testing for a couple of our regions. We currently have people scouring the shore for all kinds of issues as well as testing the general balance and integration of the regions. The feedback we have already received has been number one; positive, and number two; extremely valuable. It has been so fun to engage with testers and be able to work through tangible criticism and praise – so thank you to all our beta testers that have and will continue to help us push this mod to the highest standard we can. Looking forward, we plan to expand our current testing team. So if you have some spare time and love this game as much as we do then you can fill out our quick survey provided below for a chance at a spot. No worries those who are not selected as these regions will go public, eventually. Let it be noted that you may need some understanding of mod installation and general feedback loops to be selected as a tester. TLDev Beta Tester Application: https://forms.gle/TooPURJFc8epNqVX7 For those that are accepted into the tester pool; you will now have access to separate channels on our server that are used to provide feedback and share thoughts. We have decided to keep our testing closed for now in order to preserve the surprises and discovery for public release – as these are the best parts of this game. This means testers are asked to not share media or heavily discuss outside of those dedicated channels. - “ARE YOU” SHORE? Yes, we have decided to stick with its original name despite some overlap with a certain airfield. FORSAKEN SHORE is set to be our flagship ‘hub’ region for whenever public launch time comes around. Design wise, this region is basically finished and while we have some larger implementation issues to wrestle with still, I am very excited to see what everyone thinks. This region was my ‘original’ idea when we started TLDev, and seeing it come to fruition is mindblowing. Make sure you bring your respirator, I heard the oil rig wreck is not very environmentally friendly. A few weeks ago we released a short teaser that shows off a unique fishing lodge location. At this point the video is fairly behind in terms of its env. design development – but take a look if you haven't already. Forsaken Shore Teaser Trailer: https://youtu.be/dIbTR1ya6Ec?si=3GhIJlF2MonRixSs - TRANSITION TIMES TWO When FORSAKEN SHORE releases, it won’t arrive by itself as two transition regions; ROCKY THOROUGHFARE and DESPONDENT CRAG will also be joining the roster. As of the current beta build; the coastal region ROCKY THOROUGHFARE serves as our connection between TLDev’s portion of the island and the rest of Great Bear. This is subject to change but for now; the broken bridge in Desolation Point has been repaired and venturing across it allows access to our content. ROCKY THOROUGHFARE has a few unique features such as the radio tower and lake cave, but at a baseline it is really an introduction for FORSAKEN SHORE. Keep your eyes ‘peeled’ for who the testers call ‘Potato Pete’. The second transition region is titled DESPONDENT CRAG. It is situated high up in the mountains of FORSAKEN SHORE and later down the line will connect to a future region. It has no man made shelters and is split up between Descent and The Spine, both of which are visually distinct and should provide a fun challenge when travelling between regions. My advice; bring coffee and warm clothes. Testers; DESPONDENT CRAG should be in your hands fairly soon as well as FORSAKEN SHORE Update 2 which brings a new birch area to the ‘High Shelf’ and a balancing patch. Stay tuned. - ABOUT THAT MOUNTAIN MOUNTAIN PASS. TLDev’s first region that has not seen the light of day yet is still currently on hiatus. It has not yet been fully restructured since the TFTFT update. Once that is all sorted out I will need to go back and revamp much of the design work as it is painfully outdated compared to what we are putting out now – but we still plan on releasing it down the line. THE REAL MUSIC DEAL If you haven't heard yet; we have our own soundtrack that comes alongside our project. Me and our composer Joeler worked together to package up his work creating a cohesive first volume. The entire album can now be streamed through Joeler’s Soundcloud page, if Soundcloud doesn't float your boat the original YouTube videos are still up just now with the fresh coat of paint. TLDev OST Volume One -- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/joeler-884171206/sets/tldevost TLDev OST Volume One -- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL25hw_Ncqb2YFOo0_kT9fvNyBiSZYUvju - ROUND OF APPLAUSE In complete transparency, TLDev’s 2022 (and a bit of 23) year had some large hurdles we had to overcome; between the release of TFTFT and TLDev’s previous programming stepping down. That being said, I would like to give special thanks to Dom (STBlade for anyone in the modding scene) who has taken on the programmer role and managed to tackle all the new problems that have sprung up over the last year. It has been such a pleasure to work alongside him and without his work this mod would not have been able to continue. On the technical side; the foundations of our project have been overhauled allowing for future regions to be built much quicker than we have done in the past (looking at you MOUNTAIN PASS) granted no new game updates uproot anything. This process will also be further accelerated by the onboarding of a second environmental artist sometime this year. More on that when it happens. A reminder that due to the complex nature of this project; the TLDev team is not building tools for public release. This means; no, people will not be able to create their own regions. If you have any questions or just want more information you can come join the community over on our Discord Server. The Long Development Discord Link: https://discord.gg/EVspXHdQP9 We are heading towards year 4 of this project's development and that is insane to think about. Our team is still dedicated to getting these region's out to everyone, and I personally am excited to continue building away for years to come. Thanks for reading and sticking around for this long development. As always, stay tuned. - Kai 53 68 61 74 74 65 72 65 64 20 4D 61 72 73 68

The Long Development Dev Log: October 2022 Hey everyone. Kai here. We return with an interesting DevLog this month that outlines the future as well as gives everyone a general update of where we are at in regards to the changes that are coming to The Long Dark soon. Our trademark statement and our first teaser trailer here for any newcomers: The Long Development -- Mountain Pass (Mod Region) -- Teaser Welcome Back You might have noticed the time between DevLogs has increased fairly substantially. From now on, we will be sticking to larger and less frequent logs. This is due to a multitude of factors but it all boils down to; the work we are doing now is not super exciting or flashy. Jeremy has been working hard on his portion of the job, and this has taken a ridiculous amount of time, but has included a multitude of improvements. Although too numerous to list individually, the improvements give us many more options to work with and enable the creation of higher quality regions. Any roadblocks holding us back on this front will soon be removed. We inch closer and closer to the finish line every day, and we cannot wait for everyone to begin exploring Mountain Pass and our other regions. The Name Game Earlier last month our team had a bit of a scare regarding a handful of our beloved region names. I won’t get much into it here, but I will let everyone know that we are in between a rock and a hard place. Eventually we will have to decide whether to rename our regions, or to run the risk of two Mountain Passes existing in the future. A change this drastic will require a lot of effort on my part to rebrand just about every piece of content we as a team have ever put out. This might not solely affect MP, but Forsaken Shore as well. Worst case scenario, we would most likely release a couple of polls on our Discord community server and allow the members to weigh in on choosing a new name from a provided selection. Again, all of this hinges on the final names of the upcoming official expansion regions. (See https://www.thelongdark.com/expansion/ for more details on that.) All is not bleak though, after short exchange with The Long Dark’s Game Director over Twitter, I was assured that: While this is wonderful, this is also not explicitly stating that the Mountain Pass name will not be used officially in future. The team is crossing our fingers, but we just won’t know until the dust has settled. The regions we create are nothing more than love letters to players that adore The Long Dark as much as we do. Our self-imposed mission is to create unique, beautiful, and grounded regions; and we do not think having a duplicate named region would work under those criteria. Our Expansion Dilemma I want to preface this section quickly by saying this will be controversial. I would also like to remind everyone that nothing is set in stone, and feel free to let us know what you think in our Discord community. Throughout the last couple months our team has been working through the idea of limiting access to our custom Mod Regions behind the ownership of recently revealed TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY official expansion. It is common practice for larger modding projects to do something akin to the aforementioned idea, and would give our team more freedom and capabilities to bring our dream regions to life for you all to enjoy. This comes out of respect for Hinterland. Everyone on the TLDev team wholeheartedly believes that the creators of The Long Dark should be paid accordingly for all the hard work they have poured into this world that we all get to enjoy. As we enter a brand new DLC era for this beloved game, we at TLDev would never want to be responsible for a loss of profit in any way. If we proceed with this limited access model, players would have to purchase TFTFT before gaining access to any of our free mod regions. Please see the visual representation below. Potential Content Model Pathway In addition to all this, we are also contemplating the idea of providing one ‘freebie’ transition region as a proof of concept. This would likely be Rocky Thoroughfare, and would allow players that have not purchased TFTFT to get a feel for what our team's mod regions have to offer. This leaves our main regions (MP, FS, and whatever else we create) limited behind the official expansion. Like I mentioned before, this is still in heavy discussion. If you feel inclined, please let us know what you think about this over on our Discord community server. (The Long Development Discord Link) One Final Push With all of these previous points, upcoming weighty decisions, and the upcoming repercussions of TFTFT release taken into consideration, the TLDev team has decided to push back the release date of *Mountain Pass into 2023. We know that this is a little disappointing, but we feel it will be the best while we figure out where we all fit within this brand new expansion filled era of The Long Dark. However, just because the public release has been pushed back does not mean that our closed beta test will also be. We are still aiming to have some testers give feedback before the end of the year. Final Thoughts Thanks for taking the time to read through. We are in the final stretch. I sincerely hoped this would be the big celebratory one, but we must keep working. I will let everyone know that our next news drop should be a little sooner this time around. Next time you can look forward to MP’s release, and a bit more insight into the development of our second region: *Forsaken Shore. I will also add at the end here that we have expanded TLDev’s presence recently. (The Long Development Official Twitter Account) We now share our news through Discord, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and Hinterland Forums. I am also working towards eventually separating TLDev’s posts away from my personal (Kai) accounts, as it only seems more professional. With this step in a more standardised direction we have also opened up an official email for TLDev. This ensures that even people that do not have accounts for the various websites we are on still have the opportunity to get in contact with us if need be. More on that in a later DevLog. Other DevLogs April2022 DevLog - Birthday and Location Reveal February2022 DevLog - Programming Deep Dive December2021 DevLog - End of Year and Team Insight November2021 DevLog - Project Announcement and Custom Building Reveal Reminders Everything shown is subject to change. Due to the complex nature of this project, our team is not documenting every step of region creation. This means no, people will not be able to create their own regions. If you would still like to contribute to this project in any way, our Discord community server has spots for you. We have many areas that need community input and we would love to see you there. So if you would like to contribute, have questions, or even just want to see some more sneak peeks, come join us! The Long Development Discord Link

Sorry for the very late response. TLDev is only creating regions - we have no plans to introduce any new wildlife. We have tossed around the idea of creating special tools like a 'heavy axe' but things like that aren't set in stone, we do want to keep things as vanilla as possible.

Thanks for the comment. I have played your concept project and was quite impressed. Right now we have Waltz creating our models, but he has said in the past that he wont be doing this forever as he has to make sure he is working towards his career and pursuing job opportunity's - which of course is way more important than this mod. If a spot opens on the team I will most likely check through our discord to find a replacement, so id recommend joining up.

We don't give specific dates, mostly because we don't want to back ourselves into a corner and end up disappointing people if we hit a speed bump. But I can say that MP should be accessible to the public some time this year.

Got a massive version here - only issue is the map isn't vector based. So there will be some fuzzy pixels if you zoom in far enough.Working towards converting the entire thing for the v4 of the map, but do what you want with this. Google Drive share link as I think the Forums like to downsize the image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XwxuhYd5qzLDzUn35IYkcfIjJ5779sUK/view?usp=sharing Reddit Post link - even this is a better quality then the forums.

I do - is there specific size you are looking for in particular?

The Long Development Dev Log: April 2022 Happy Birthday TLDev! This is quite an interesting (and content filled) DevLog this time around. Today April 16th marks the exact date a year ago, when Jeremy and I first met, and started on this massive project. Over these last 364 days we have made huge strides, and hit small speed bumps - but it is such a treat to see how far we have come. In this DevLog we have lots to reveal: New Promo Art, The First Teaser Trailer, New Music, and a showcase of some location names for Mountain Pass. We also of course have some other little goodies to share as well. I will put our trademark statement here once again for any newcomers: “The Long Development is a small team project and a collaborative community effort to expand Great Bear Island in a beautiful and balanced way. We are focusing on creating as 'hinterland-like' regions as possible to ensure that they can fit in the vanilla game and not feel out of place. That means we will not be out to make the perfect base locations, but rather the most balanced locations. We consist of a couple core team members that all bring their own talent to the project. The variety of work that each person brings allows this mod to be as expansive and unique as it is. It features brand new regions connected to the larger world of Great Bear that are filled with custom 3D modeled structures to really make these regions stand out in their own ways. Last but not least is (as of now) 15 minutes of new music that not only fits the region's feelings, but also fits in seamlessly with the rest of the great tracks featured in survival mode. As of now, there are 2 major regions + 1 transition region in development with more planned for the future... but we take our time when creating these regions as the entire team has lives of their own and this project is all on our own time. This mod is totally free, now and forever.” - Did Someone Say (Teaser) Trailer - Promo Today we release our first teaser trailer for Mountain Pass. It features a handful of different shots, purposely not giving away *too much information. In the background we have one of Joeler’s wonderful tracks playing. We will talk more about his music later on. It is exciting to finally start creating some more promotional material for this project, and I am hoping to continue doing so. I am aiming to have a trailer for every region + transition region, with some of the larger regions receiving a teaser trailer beforehand. Mountain Pass Teaser Trailer I would also like to remind everyone that footage shown in the trailers are not always representational of the final product. This trailer serves as a great example as the MP you see in this trailer is already a slightly outdated version of the region. - The Long Dark but Different - Concept Art The Long Development Promo Image created by Kai. Following in the footprints of Hinterland’s Official ‘The Long Dark’ Artwork, we wanted to create something that is familiar, but with our own spin on things. This promo art is mostly kitbash, and sticks to a gradient palette to really stand out from the official artwork. (It is also ridiculously easier to paint grayscale.) The image features our signature hammer and our *upcoming Oil Rig building in Forsaken Shore - and this will be serving as our promo art for the time being. - Keep The Ideas Coming - Community Focus From the conceptualization of this project, we always wanted to have a decent amount of community input. From point of interest names - to full blown region concepts, we love seeing people's ideas. I wanted to showcase to everyone that yes, we actually are taking into account your suggestions and merging them into our designs to make these regions as good as they can be. Today I wanted to share some examples of how we have done this. For the main course - without spoiling every part of the map, I did want to reveal some names that were taken from our discord that *will be used when the region is released. I did a quick photoshoot (in a blizzard) to show off some of MP’s locations. A quick reminder, everything you see in these screenshots are a work in progress and might not end up being the final product. The Lonely Respite - a small cabin, hidden away on a cliff ledge in Mountain Pass. Frontier Lake - a large frozen lake in the centre of the basin in Mountain Pass. Pritchett’s Clearing - a grassy field enclosed by towering rocky cliffs in Mountain Pass. Signalman’s Pond - a small pond that drains into Frontier Lake in Mountain Pass. We feel as if these names fit wonderfully into Mountain Pass, and we are so happy that they came from the community. In a later DevLog I have plans to outline a few ways of potentially having even more community work adapted into our mod - but I will save that for later. Special thanks to Blockhead428, Fuar, Jaspo, and HoboFarmer for these specific names. - Names Aren't Everything - 3D Art While the location names are great, you might be asking: “Is that all you guys are incorporating from the community?” and to that I say, no! We have - I will admit sometimes random ideas brought up in our server. Sometimes ideas peak the interests of different team members we have working on this mod. Recently, one of our members (Decency) was talking about the idea of including some man-made Stone Walls on Great Bear. Spurred on from this conversation, our 3D Model Artist created a custom asset that will be making a few appearances in our coastal regions. Rock Wall model created by Waltz. We are so thankful to have Waltz on our TLDev team, he is a very talented individual that has created many high quality models for our mod. If you haven't seen the images of our custom Train Maintenance Shed or the Fishing Cabin that Waltz created, make sure check out our Nov2021 DevLog for some great sneak peeks. - Speaking of High Quality - Soundtrack Update Fresh out of the oven, we have a brand new track created by Joeler. He has been hard at work creating not only music for this project - but branching off into other styles for different projects. It is such a pleasure to watch other people’s talents grow and evolve. Mountain Pass -- Ambient Track -- The Long Development With this track added to the collection, I am fairly certain we are nearing ~20 minutes of music for this project alone. Quite impressive for a standalone composer. - Happy Birthday TLDev - Final Thoughts Thanks for reading our anniversary DevLog. I hope you enjoy the teaser trailer, oh and make sure to keep sending us your ideas through Discord, we love seeing them! It is time for our team to put our heads down and continue working on what's to come in the future. Just a quick heads up, the next DevLog should touch on what Jeremy’s been up to - as well as potentially bringing a community region idea to life sometime in the future. Here are a handful of other DevLogs you can check out: February2022 DevLog - Programming Log December2021 DevLog - Team Insight November2021 DevLog - Custom Building Reveal Just a handful of reminders: Everything shown is subject to change. Due to the complex nature of this project, our team is not documenting every step of region creation. This means no, people will not be able to create their own regions. If you would still like to contribute to this project in any way, our discord has spots for you. We have many areas that need community input, such as names for landmarks in the regions, and even beta testing the regions before they are released to the public. So if you would like to contribute, have questions, or even just want to see some more sneak peeks, come join us! The Long Development Discord Link

While none of our mod regions are released yet, you can come see our development happening through our discord. You will also be the first to be notified when we do release if you choose to join! Discord: https://discord.gg/EVspXHdQP9

Thought I would post my V3 map here also. Hope everyone enjoys.

The Long Development Dev Log: February 2022 Hey everyone. Kai here. First DevLog of 2022, things are looking great. We are nearing our very first anniversary of when this project was officially conceived and we have a very exciting future planned for our little mod here. This log focuses on some real technical talk, so get your thinking caps on. Hey, What's Going on Over There? Hi, Jeremy here. Things have been quiet these past few months. I'm sure you're wondering why there hasn't been a beta yet. We want to share what's been going on recently. Currently, our Unity project is very sensitive to changes made by Hinterland. Our regions touch a majority of the game's code, so even small changes from them can have huge impacts on our mod. These impacts are almost always bad, and might not be immediately obvious to the user. As an example, early on after the 1.94 update, I encountered a bug that was breaking my saves due to a small bugfix Hinterland made for the Nomad challenge. As a result of this sensitivity, stability can be hard to maintain. We take protecting your save files very seriously, so we've been holding back on releasing anything until we're certain we can handle anything that might happen. We need a robust system that lets us adapt to these changes quickly and efficiently, but we don't have that yet. As my GitHub profile would attest, I've been working every day to help prevent those terrible things from happening. Most of the commits go towards my AssetRipper project. It powers most of what we do. Without it, none of this would have ever been possible. This has been constant work. Since I started AssetRipper in July, I've only had 9 days on which I didn't make any GitHub commits. In addition to the updating issue I mentioned above, there are some other problems I've been trying to solve. These issues are not as serious, but they do cause us inconveniences. Static Batching is where the game combines a bunch of unmovable objects to run faster. Unfortunately, when we rip the game, the objects are still combined. This makes those assets almost impossible to use since manual separation is so tedious. We've only bothered to separate a handful of key assets such as fishing huts and hunting blinds. Due to the inconvenience of separation, our design choices have been limited in some situations. For example, half the house assets got put in static batches. One of the goals for AssetRipper is to separate them automatically, which would give us a lot more options when placing assets and prevent frustration over unavailability. Some of the assets have duplicates in the game files. Although this doesn't cause huge problems, it makes updating our project more difficult. Whilst working on the static batching problem, I've been also working on this, since they go hand in hand. The idea is to merge identical assets before they get exported. This requires additional infrastructure because rounding errors can prevent assets from being merged. Since it has to support every Unity version, AssetRipper requires lots of code to run. This code is time consuming to write and inevitably prone to occasional mistakes. As a result, it's desirable to have some of the code written automatically. This is the goal of my version specific assembly generation. It writes the most tedious code, so that I can focus on more important aspects of AssetRipper. The version specific assembly generation has a secondary purpose. Currently, AssetRipper doesn't have support for all Unity asset types, so a couple get missed when ripping the game. These asset types are not very common, but they're still being missed and could have an impact on gameplay. The version specific assemblies don't have this limitation. We appreciate you guys being patient these past few months. Rest assured that we have not forgotten you or given up the project. We've been working tirelessly to ensure that things go smoothly when we finally do release. I can't give a timeframe for when things will be ready, but I'm working hard to ensure that they happen as soon as possible. In the meantime, Kai has some things to share with you... Mapping the Coast - Rocky Thoroughfare Rocky Thoroughfare Charcoal Map (wip) This is a small coastal transition region that connects Desolation Point to Forsaken Shore. It features a few points of interest including a radio tower and a handful of trailers. Looking out over the ocean you may be able to spot the derelict Oil Rig that has crashed into the shore just ahead. This small shoreline transition region design is held near and dear to me, as it is very reminiscent of… previous projects of mine. (If you know, you know.) It was super fun to bring this region into the game. I cannot wait for people to take a stroll through and experience its design in TLD. Soundtrack Update We have an older track to show off, one that wasn't featured in a previous DevLog, crafted by none other than Joeler. He has been hard at work creating not only music for this project, but branching off into other styles, and it is always wonderful to watch other people’s talents grow and evolve over time. If you would like to hear some of Joeler’s tracks, you can check out our Nov2021 DevLog for more! Final Thoughts Once our team gets over these speedbumps, 2022 is going to be a wild year, and I cannot wait to get people in the new regions. I guarantee you I am the most excited out of anyone! If you haven't seen the images we shared of our custom Train Maintenance Shed or the Fishing Cabin, or the in game region screenshots, check out our Nov2021 DevLog for some great sneak peeks. Just a handful of reminders: - Everything shown is subject to change. - Due to the complex nature of this project, our team is not documenting every step of region creation. This means no, people will not be able to create their own regions. - If you would still like to contribute to this project in any way, our discord has spots for you. We have many areas that need community input, such as names for landmarks in the regions, and even beta testing the regions before they are released to the public. So if you would like to contribute, have questions, or even just want to see some more sneak peeks, come join us! The Long Development Discord Link

Hey everyone! The Long Development is a small team project and a collaborative community effort to expand Great Bear Island in a beautiful and balanced way. We are focusing on creating as 'hinterland-like' regions as possible to ensure that they can fit in the vanilla game and not feel out of place. That means we will not be out to make the perfect base locations, but rather the most balanced locations. We consist of a couple core team members that all bring their own talent to the project. The variety of work that each person brings allows this mod to be as expansive and unique as it is, featuring brand new regions that connect to the larger world of Great Bear filled with custom 3D modeled structures to really make these regions stand out in their own ways. Last but not least is tons of new music that not only fits the region's feelings, but also fits in seamlessly with the rest of the great tracks featured in survival mode. As of now, there are a couple major regions, and a handful of transition regions in development with more planned for the future... but we take our time when creating these regions as the entire team has lives of their own and this project is all on our own time. This mod is totally free, now and forever." In order to not flood the entire forums with our DevLogs, I have decided that I will just post them down in this thread over time. This might not be a totally perfect way of doing things, but we work with what we got. Just a handful of reminders: Everything shown is subject to change. Due to the complex nature of this project, our team is not documenting every step of region creation. This means no, people will not be able to create their own regions. If you would still like to contribute to this project in any way, our discord has spots for you. We have many areas that need community input, such as names for landmarks in the regions, and even beta testing the regions before they are released to the public. So if you would like to contribute, have questions, or even just want to see some more sneak peeks, come join us! The Long Development Discord Link

While 1 region will indeed help keep him alive longer, the other 2 regions that are on their way will for sure prolong your runs. Great Bear is a large island, more to explore!

Glad you like it! The railway bridge does have supports yes, just hidden by trees and rocks in the image given. We do have places in our discord if you ever want to contribute to location names or just give us your ideas, you never know what will make it in! See you around.

Unfortunately not, it will have a load screen. We do have plans for a building with no loading planned for the future, so stay tuned.

This is a great concept @Jaspo! The effort you have put in to this project is amazing. I have taken a look through the file you have provided and was pleasantly surprised how fleshed out it was. As @Lohaan mentioned before I come from a certain modding discord that focuses on creating as 'hinterland-like" mod regions as possible. You can see some of our DevLogs here: When looking through the images you have shared some of your ideas have more or less already made it into a region named Mountain Pass. I was actually really shocked, the second image you posted looks straight out of a mock up of Mountain Pass. I would love for you to drop by our discord and post your ideas there aswell if you can, we love to incorporate as much community ideas into our regions (without making it feel out of place of course.) Discord Link: https://discord.gg/EVspXHdQP9

The Long Development Dev Log: December 2021 Hey everyone. Kai here. This year is coming to a close, we have made so much progress and we have created an entire community based on this project. It has been really great chatting with everyone on the server and being able to share our love of The Long Dark. We have a bit of a dryer DevLog here in terms of showing new content off, but we have some great updates and community stuff going on so it will be great. I will put our trademark statement here once again for any newcomers: The Long Development are a small team focused on creating as 'Hinterland-like' regions as possible to ensure that they can fit in a vanilla game and not feel out of place. That means we will not be out to make the perfect base locations, but rather the most balanced locations. Mountain Pass Charcoal Map This is a large frigid rocky region connecting to Forsaken Shore and Timberwolf Mountain. Although its actual terrain size is similar to Pleasant Valley, its playable area is closer in size to the Timberwolf Mountain map. The map features 3 distinct layers that all provide a balanced gameplay experience. If you haven't seen some of the screenshots taken in Mountain Pass, make sure to check out our Nov2021 DevLog Mountain Pass is almost ready for survivors to jump on in, but first we are going to send in some testers to make sure everything is in top shape for the rest of you. That segways us pretty well into our next topic. Rocky Thoroughfare and Beta 1 In the upcoming weeks we'll be putting together some content to do a public beta test of Rocky Thoroughfare (a small transition region). This will let testers check all our systems in a smaller contained environment. Testers are selected based on a variety of things, but you are going to want to make sure you are in the Discord server for your best chance at it. The most important part is to keep what you discover while testing under wraps. We want everyone to have a fresh experience in these regions and don't want things spoiled. The select group of testers that will be chosen for our Beta Test 1, will have to follow some certain rules and once Beta 1 is over… well, we will see how it goes from there. If you don't make the pick for the first round of testing, don't worry. We will always need more testers for whatever comes next. A few things of note because this is a beta: It will most likely have bugs. Saves made on the beta might not be compatible with the release version. Although we've done our best, there may be more polishing to do. Remember, this is the first time something like this is happening in all the years of TLD’s life, we can't promise perfection, we aren't a game studio. We're eager to hear your opinions and get reports for any bugs that may arise. You can join our Discord Community here: TLDev Discord Server Jeremy’s Plate These past couple months, we have been sharing less progress images than normal. This is largely caused by the mountain of behind-the-scenes work that needed to be done by none other than Jeremy himself. I will let him take the floor for a bit and share what he would like. Jeremy: Asset Development This time around we do not have much to share on Waltz’s work, but fret not he is hard at work on some very special things. If you haven't seen the images we shared of the Train Maintenance Shed or the Fishing Cabin, check out our Nov2021 DevLog for some great sneak peeks. Soundtrack Update Joeler continues to produce amazing tracks that fit so seamlessly into the TLD world, and we have more to show off here today. Shoreline Roadway Theme Track - The Long Dark If you would like to hear more from Joeler, you can check out our Nov2021 DevLog The Writers Come Marching in As of very recently we have shot out some invitations to certain people in our discord, we really do want this to be a collaborative community effort in as many ways as we can. I think a good step in the right direction could be involving some eager writers to come on in and create some backstories for locations and scenes in these custom regions. I would love to feature a piece/pieces of writing from the community for our project every DevLog (roughly every month.) - Brian G, Forsaken Shore Oil Rig Final Thoughts and Happy Holidays Great Bear Postcard Art Like I mentioned before, 2021 is coming to an end and I am going to assume that most of the TLDev Team will be taking a well deserved break for the holidays so don't expect too many progress images. I myself will be sticking around in the Discord to answer questions and anything else while Beta Test 1 is running. Now I just wanted to get it out of the way, and this could potentially be a dampener on the mood, but I feel like this is very important to get this out there especially now that more of the playerbase is uncovering the treasure trove that is modding. The Long Development is firmly against piracy. We strongly feel that people at Hinterland should be paid for their time and effort. This means that we will not help you with any issues or information regarding our mod if you are using any unofficial versions of the game. Just a handful of reminders: Everything shown is subject to change. Due to the complex nature of this project, our team is not documenting every step of region creation. This means no, people will not be able to create their own regions. If you would still like to contribute to this project in any way, our discord has spots for you. We have many areas that need community input, such as names for landmarks in the regions, and even beta testing the regions before they are released to the public. So if you would like to contribute, have questions, or even just want to see some more sneak peeks, come join us! The Long Development Discord Link

Hey there! Glad you are interested in modding. There are a lot of great mods out there but the ones I enjoy are some of the more simplistic ones like the FoodPack or IncreaseSaveSlot. I also really enjoy the mod regions, they aren't out to the public yet but it is for sure something that is near and dear to me. You can check out some of the sneak peeks and DevLogs on their discord server here: https://discord.gg/EVspXHdQP9 If you are concerned about safety, I guarantee you that any mods found on: https://xpazeman.com/tld-mod-list/ are safe. Xpaze is a large member of the modding community and any files on there are completely trusted and hand placed on there by him. It also has a legend to show you what is working on the current version of TLD and what isn't. If you would like to know how to go about modding and need instructions, or just want to ask questions, there is an official modding discord here: https://discord.gg/2mnXAZfGXQ that would love to help you out. See you around, Kai.

Sorry about that! I have provided a new link, let me know if this fixes the problem.https://discord.gg/2nPJdWKJ If this doesn't fix the issue make sure you have a discord account. Thanks!Kai.

Hey there! Feel free to drop by the TLDev discord, we are going to need some testers for our regions soon! https://discord.com/invite/EVspXHdQP9 - Kai.

Hey everyone. Kai here. This entire project started roughly 8 months ago and it has been quite the experience, and for this post I just wanted to give some more information on the progress we have made, and the path that we want to take for the future. Like I have mentioned before, we are focusing on creating as 'hinterland-like' regions as possible to ensure that they can fit in a vanilla game and not feel out of place. That means we will not be out to make the perfect base locations, but rather the most balanced locations. Mountain Pass Development Update Mountain Pass Vector Art This is a large frigid rocky region connecting to Forsaken Shore and Timberwolf Mountain. Although its actual terrain size is similar to Pleasant Valley, its playable area is closer in size to the Timberwolf Mountain map. The map features 3 distinct layers that all provide a balanced gameplay experience. We continue to hammer away at the first ever custom region in The Long Dark and are nearing the finish line. We are just putting in the last few final touches on the visual side of things, while Jeremy is working hard on all the framework and integration. This region has been the culmination of hundreds of hours of work and I am so excited for people to jump in and take a look. I only have a couple images to share, obviously I would hate to spoil the whole region and I want everyone to explore for themselves when the time comes. The Lake in the Basin of Mountain Pass. Firing a flare at the Railway Bridge in Mountain Pass. A Hunting Blind in Mountain Pass. A burnt forest in Mountain Pass. If all goes well, expect MP in the early months of 2022. It wont drop out of nowhere, you will have plenty time to get excited when we start releasing our promo images and the Mountain Pass trailer. See you all there. Custom Model/Asset Development I have been absolutely blown away by Waltz’s work in these last few months, he has been crafting unique buildings and structures for Mountain Pass and our other regions. The topic of ‘custom assets’ might be a bit controversial, but I feel Waltz has been able to replicate TLD’s style in a realistic and grounded way. Being able to explore them and see how they fit within the game, and how the community reacts to these new buildings is going to be very interesting to watch. The interior of the Train Maintenance Shed in Mountain Pass. A fishing lodge set to appear in Forsaken Shore. Soundtrack Update If you enjoy the music of The Long Dark we have great news. Our custom regions will include custom tracks, the idea is that they will blend in with vanilla survival ambiance tracks seamlessly… but distinctive enough to recognize that they are part of our custom region expansion. I have a couple tracks to show off here, all created by none other than Joeler himself. Mountain Pass Theme Track - The Long Dark Forsaken Shore Theme Track - The Long Dark Let us know what you think on our discord. (Link below.) The Long Development Roadmap TLDev Release Roadmap With the recent announcement that a small transition region is joining our ever growing custom world, we have decided to slot it in before Forsaken Shore. This transition region is a perfect introduction to FS and will be setting the atmosphere for what's to come. This is a small coastal transition region that connects Desolation Point to Forsaken Shore. It features a few points of interest including a radio tower and a handful of trailers. Looking out over the ocean you may be able to spot the derelict Oil Rig that has crashed into the shore just ahead. Final Thoughts Just a reminder to keep in mind, everything is subject to change. More details will be revealed once we get closer to a release date Once again to clear up some confusion, due to the complex nature of this project, our team is not documenting every step of region creation. This means no, people will not be able to create their own regions. If you would still like to contribute to this project in any way, our discord has spots for you. We have many areas that need community input, such as names for landmarks in the regions, and even beta testing the regions before they are released to the public. So if you would like to contribute, have questions, or even just want to see some more sneak peeks, come join us! The Long Development Discord Link You can also contact my business email for more inquires at: kaiusernametaken@gmail.com

Hey all, decided to update my old map. Planning on adding Ash Canyon and whatever comes next in the future. Looking for feedback right now, let me know things to improve upon, inconsistencies, or glaring issues. Thanks.