Ansible

I love this game, LOVE it. It's frankly the greatest video game I've ever played, and I'm at about 2100 hours into it. I commend this team for their masterful vision and work on it for the past decade. But, nothing is perfect, of course.

So, this is a weird question, but... as I've reported in the past, I've come across things in the game world that are kind of a in a state of "is this a bug? or is it not?"

Stuff that doesn't technically BREAK the game or makes it stop working, but takes someone out of the "game world" by seeing something that doesn't quite seem like it was intended.

And I'm trying to figure out if I should report these things to the HelpDesk, as if they are a bug, or collect them all and make one giant ongoing thread where I show the current "problems" in the game and post it here.

What I'm talking about are things like:

• Items not falling down when the object they are sitting on disappears/is harvested
• Items disappearing entirely when the object they are sitting on disappears/is harvested
• "Invisible walls" (I **HATE** invisible walls, if some point/area is not meant to be passed, then stick a real rock wall there or something!!!)
• Items that can't be harvested that can be in other locations (such as shelves, buckets, etc.)
• ...and other miscellaneous things that we're not sure whether or not they are "bugs"

I say that I'm not sure whether or not these are "bugs", because I'm not sure whether or not they are actually errors in the code, or design flaws by the designers not thinking about this situation or that they hadn't considered. I, as a programmer myself, realize that we are all human and we ALL make mistakes from time to time, and we can't always think of every possible situation.

But I guess what I'm asking is, what's the correct and proper approach to take with these things that seem troublesome? HelpDesk, or a single collective thread on these forums where I report all of these oddities? If I'm not sure whether it's an actual bug, or an oversight, or just wasn't "fixed" because of too little staff/resources to handle all of it... what do I do with it??

Full disclosure: I am a high functioning autistic, so I have a tendency to notice things that others don't, or that others just let slide by, because they mess with my sense of what's "right in the world". One example is when you're "mountain goating" on a cliff edge close to the ground, and you're walking around on the cliff edge, but you can see your invisible footprints in the snow 20 feet BELOW where you're standing at! Bugs the HECK out of me!

Bumping this, because I've got TONS of animal hides of all kinds that I can do nothing with, but I have zero cured leather and I need some! It would be awesome to be able to find some reproducable cured leather in the game SOMEHOW other than beach-coming (which I haven't figured out yet).

Why can't we use Prepared Rose Hips to make Rose Hip Pies? I mean, you would think that "preparing" them would actually REDUCE the prep time for cooking, but instead it invalidates them as an option for the ingredients to the pie? Makes zero sense to me.

"ski's" ... TRIGGERED!!!!

I'd just like to be able to switch seats without having to leave the vehicle entirely and go back in again from another door. Just let me click on the next seat over!!!

I know that The Long Dark is based on the Unity engine... and according to Unity themselves, their engine "powers over 70% of the top mobile games".

So, would it be a lot to ask of the team to use that "synergy" to port the game over to mobile devices? The "Standard Code Rant" applies here:

But I would imagine at the very least that porting a Unity Windows Desktop game over to a Unity Mobile game MUST be easier than, say, Porting over a C++ game or something like that... right? I would LOVE to be able to play The Long Dark on my phone while pooping at work. 😃 Just being honest here!

Or does that fact that Raph seems kinda ticked off at Unity right now mean that they're planning to take the game out of that engine anyways, so it's a moot point?

I actually think that's hilarious and kind of awesome @RJ_Dalton. You should take some videos and put them on Facebook! That's the kind of stuff that people find entertaining!

Can you walk on the invisible snow? Because that would be awesome.

I'd like to resurrect this two year old thread to report that I too received the badge and rewards for "defeating the dark walker" even though I DIDN'T. I was actually in the middle of a Dark Walker run (after failing multiple times on previous runs), and picked up one of the notes, and then all of a sudden it said that I won and gave me the badge. But the game didn't stop, it just kept going. And the dark walker eventually got me. But I have NOT ever successfully banished him, not even close, yet I still have the badge that says that I did. So I can safely say that this challenge is somehow bugged.

I'm really excited about the new hand coverings update that was just released. I love anything that increases immersion in the game world, and makes things feel less "gamey".

Can we please though discuss the elephant in the room, in regards to immersion-breaking? Things like this:

When I "harvest" a metal shelf, and the things that were sitting on that shelf just end up floating in the air. I'm just surprised that with all the work that they put into those hand coverings, they haven't fixed this old existing bug that's been around since forever! Can we please fix this???

Related, in "older" zones like Mountain Town, there's a LOT of items that can't be harvested (like lamps), that CAN be in "newer" zones. The discrepancy here is also immersion breaking. I suspect that this is because while they were working on the newer zones, they thought about what should and shouldn't be harvestable, but then didn't go backwards to the old zones to fix up those objects and make them consistent. They've already done something like this in the past with the item reallocation (so that like, food items show up in the kitchen more often, etc etc), so I know that Hinterland is interested in fixing "old" stuff once in a while. So can we please fix this as well?

Anyone else have any obvious immersion-breaking bugs that should have been fixed long ago? Any more "elephants in the room"?

Love the game, by the way, it's my go-to game for relaxation and fun:

"Almost empty" cans weight less than empty cans.

I don't know why I never noticed this before, but I wonder if it's always been this way, and either nobody noticed, or nobody said anything. But I just noticed it for the first time today. Someone could technically use it as an "exploit" and save themselves some weight if they want to use the cans for cooking or making water later on... if they just eat MOST of what's in the can, apparently they can get it to a point where two cans only cost them .02KG rather than .30KG.

Minor thing probably in the scheme of things, but I know sometimes those few KGs can make all the difference in the world! Like, for example, trying to get onto a rope.

Anyways, just thought I'd report it. I searched the forums and could only find one thread mentioning of "cans", and it was about spray cans.

I too noticed the sound improvements, as well as visual improvements. For example, meat looks much more realistic now, and moldy meat distinctly shows a green hue to it that it didn't show before. I'm actually surprised that they didn't trumpet these improvements as a new feature!

I just came across the same thing, so here's my debug screenshot for the location that mine was at:

Sure, probably. But still, invisible walls SUCK. Stick real walls there, then remove them later.

Totally kills any immersion for me.

Same here. And the worst thing about this spot is, there's a clear "safe" path straight down if someone wanted to mountain goat it!

On 12/19/2022 at 8:15 PM, Jolan said:

It should automatically be dumping a screenshot with that info.  Mine all end up on my desktop

Yeah, I didn't see that until after I'd already posted. I usually have like 8 or 9 windows open at once on my dual screen monitor setup, and thus almost never see my desktop.

Which reminds me, since I have a thread on "problems with the new areas", here's another gripe. There should be no reason for an invisible wall here:

If someone wants to be dumb and/or crafty and try to clamber over this cliff and risk the drop, they should be able to. At least it gives them death rather than... just stuck sitting in a hole.

One thing I HATE whenever I come across it in video games - invisible walls. At least make the rocks taller or something!

16 hours ago, stratvox said:

The right way to deal with reporting it is to use F8 to take a debug screenshot. It will be just like a screenshot but with a bunch of yellow text showing information about the game, including the exact location on the map that the picture was taken.

Here you go. Stangely when I hit F8, the yellow came up only for a minute and disappeared, so I had to keep pumping it while I activated my screenshot software:

3 hours ago, DaGnome91 said:

Really not far from where you "fell" is just another hole : if you keep climbing up the tree, heading for the bridge, you pass on the other side of the slide. Then, stick to your right and you'll reach it. No possibility to climb back up, with or without crampons and the tree inside is broken at 1m high so you can't get on it to climb out...

I saw it just before I'd fell in, lucky me!

Hmm, now that I think of it, it could be the same place...

Yes, that's the exact spot that I'm talking about.

20 minutes ago, stratvox said:

The right way to deal with reporting it is to use F8 to take a debug screenshot. It will be just like a screenshot but with a bunch of yellow text showing information about the game, including the exact location on the map that the picture was taken.

Thanks! I was unaware of such a feature!

Just now, Leeanda said:

I think the only way to find out is  to go far enough away from it then go back again..  .  

Yeah, I tried that. Went all the way to the next area that was called "Steely Chasm", but when I turned around and went back, the area name didn't pop back up again once I entered it like I'm used to seeing. Strange... bug perhaps?

3 hours ago, Leeanda said:

Can't you reload from an earlier save?  It'd be a shame to lose the run because of that.

Wasn't a big deal to start a new run. I started off in Broken Railroad again, and found that the location that this hole is in is called "Foundered Railroad", if that helps anyone. At least I think that's the name. It disappeared from the screen so fast, and I can't figure out how to access the area name again... 😢

I hope that was a nicely vague enough clickbait title to get people to want to click on this. Anyways, in the new areas I found a hole, that I can't get out of, so my first new survival game since the release is dead, and I can't proceed any further. Usually Hinterland is great about finding these and making sure players can't get themselves into a place that they can't get themselves out of, but this one is a HUGE major oversight.

The location is right here on the map, where my mouse pointer is:

Here's a couple screenshots showing the surrounding area from BEFORE I fell in the hole:

So, when you're coming into the new area from the tunnel, if you take the "top route", you can use a rope to get down to the lower part. Well, there's a cave you come across. Enter that cave and take the right turns, and you can enter an area that's actually HIGHER than the high area you originally came from, as you can see in the screenshot above. Well, I turned around and saw a broken tree going into a hole. Being the naturally curious Long Dark player as many of us are, I figured that Hinterland wouldn't put a hole there if I wasn't meant to explore down there. I was wrong, oops:

Here's another perspective where my back is up against the wall (corner). This shows pretty much everything that's in the hole, and the "lay of the land" if you will. No way to escape:

That tree is too steep to walk up, and all of the rest of the rocks are either too jagged, or tilted in TOWARDS the hole rather than away from the hole, so that I can't "mountain goat" climb my way out by using the trick where you somehow magically walk on the side of the sheer surface of the rock wall.

So... I'm stuck. I can keep the game as it is and start a new one, if Hinterland wants my save file to precisely locate the hole. Or, maybe what I gave in this thread is good enough?

Right now, in the carcass harvesting menu, the game "remembers" the last option you picked. If you picked no tools the last time, then the next time you go to harvest a carcass, it'll also show no tools as the default. Same with other tools like the knife and the hatchet. Whatever you chose before is the default the next time you enter that menu.

That's awesome! I just want to see that behavior proliferated to ALL of the other "tool/crafting" screens. If I'm going to craft a snare with my Quality Tools, I'd like that to be the default the next time I go to do the same thing again. Right now, it appears to default to no tools. It's a minor irritant for me that it'll work one way in the carcass harvesting screen, and another way on all the other screens!

On 11/12/2022 at 9:04 AM, Ghurcb said:

Personally, I'm not in favor of adding new UI elements on top of existing ones. I think this problem could be better solved by closer tying your character's ability to see and the amount of light in the environment. The light level indoors is only linked to the time of day (and maybe weather?), so it's fairly predictable. The different boundaries could be set for different houses (maybe even different rooms), making it about the same level of dark when you can't read/sew/etc anymore. Of course, there would still be a gray area of "it's dark, but is it dark enough?", but at least it would make more sense.

Yeah, either way. I just want things to be consistent. Because when I CAN survey when it looks like this outside:

And I CAN'T survey when it looks like THIS outside, and I can literally see a mile in front of my face clearly:

Something ain't right!

Something I just thought of - a visibility indicator. Because half the time I can see just fine, yet it says my character can't see.

The other half I can't see a thing, but apparently character can see just fine!

Makes no sense to me, so some sort of indicator would be nice.

I just figured out the problem, and I think it should be noted to the Devs as a bug. Even though my map shows the polaroid icon for that location, apparently I have NOT actually collected the polaroid for that location!

I think the polaroid icon shouldn't show up on the map until you've actually collected the polaroid first, even if you have already been there. This can be confusing for players that think they should be able to map that area and spend hours trying to map an area that they can't!