Just messed around with the game learning the various mechanics and exploring the environment, obviously running up to a wild wolf wasn't going to end well.
I would assume they are celebrating how far they've come in "just" a year, upgrading the engine to Unity 5 for one thing and adding new features as well as the usual bugfixes and community suggestions.
(Would help if I remembered how the game was when it was first released, some devs seem to put the game on early-access as nothing more than tech demonstrations.)
The game is shaping up nicely and I don't think it'll be stuck in "Early-access hell." like so many other titles that have gone on for years with little to no real progress.
(Castle Stories to name one game that initially looked very promising.)
Or so I hope at least but I haven't checked what the developers have planned for this game so for all I know it could be another year or even two until they feel ready enough to release it in full.
Nice! With the story mode my interest has piqued. It's not that I dislike sandboxing around for hours, but having an objective or a reason to do anything is an important incentive for me. (Providing that the writing doesn't suck of course, or it's just detrimental xD)
The post-geomagnetic disaster game The Long Dark is all about surviving the worst that Mother Nature can throw at you. Which, to be clear, is quite a lot, and all of it pretty awful; I don't think you can really appreciate just how badly this planet wants to kill everyone on it until you strip away the veneer of civilization that keeps us warm, sheltered, and conveniently fed. But soon that freeform fight to stay alive will take a turn into the realm of the narrative, where the name of the game is to survive... as someone else!
Two someone elses, actually, they being bush pilot Will Mackenzie, who may be the most Canadian video game character ever created, and doctor Astrid Greenwood. Their struggle to maintain the flame of life will be documented in an episodic Story Mode in which players will alternate between the two of them, viewing the story from both perspectives. Story Mode gameplay is "derived from" the Sandbox mode, developer Hinterland Games explained, but will be modified to accommodate narrative-based gameplay, with a progress-based save system in place of the current permadeath setup.
The release of Story Mode won't mean the end of The Long Dark Sandbox, though. "Our original plan with Sandbox was to use it solely as a gameplay test-bed for Story Mode, and shut it down at launch," studio founder Raphael van Lierop said. "We’ve discovered that Sandbox offers a completely different experience, highly beloved by our players, and it deserves to continue to exist in its own right. So we plan to continue updating Sandbox with more features and content, expanding the foundation of our core exploration-survival experience, in parallel with our work on Story Mode."
The first episode of the first season of The Long Dark Story Mode will be out in the spring, with two to three more episodes expected to release over the course of 2016, totaling an estimated 10-12 hours of gameplay. When Story Mode launches (which will also mark The Long Dark's exit from Early Access) the current $20 price will be increased "to reflect the game’s enhanced content value after more than a year of polish and content updates, plus the addition of Season One Story Mode content." What it will go up to wasn't announced. All Kickstarter backers and Early Access purchasers will receive the first season automatically, at no extra charge.
Hope they also fix hunger and thirst to "reasonable" levels. Needing water and food after only 5-10 minutes in-game is far from immersive.
Actually this is what makes these... 346234 survival games that appeared lately so... unappealing. Start game, chop a tree, pick a rock and... oops! You are dehydrated!
Hope they also fix hunger and thirst to "reasonable" levels. Needing water and food after only 5-10 minutes in-game is far from immersive.
Actually this is what makes these... 346234 survival games that appeared lately so... unappealing. Start game, chop a tree, pick a rock and... oops! You are dehydrated!
Pls!
It's because people lack the patience (and game lacks the scope) for a 100% time accurate environment. Some of the games are pretty badly balanced which obviously doesn't help.
If you reduce starvation to trivial levels, you wind up with minecraft instead.
No one said 100% accurate. No one said "trivial". It would defeat the purpose, obviously.
I am thinking about some sort of balance to the mechanics so the player wouldn't feel like the game is punishing him just for the sake of doing it or for the sake of calling it "hard". Hard for the sake of being hard is not fun.
These devs then to simulate some form of reality and, therefore, mechanics comply. But when it comes to basic needs, everything goes up the roof!
* I picked 2 branches, 3 rocks and 4 raspberries. Stamina decreased to 60%!
* I sit in the sun for 5 minutes. I am now burning and dehydrated.
* I just walked 200m. I am now starving.
This is not hardcore. I'd call it rather bullcore.
Heck, even Fallout New Vegas system would work, if properly tweaked, to specific games. Damn Bethesda for not using it in F4!
EDIT
Some guy survived 3 weeks - THREE WEEKS - in a cave without food! Real story, ofc. And these surviving games are forcing me to eat 2 carcasses a day just to keep a decent level of stamina/satiation etc.
No one said 100% accurate. No one said "trivial". It would defeat the purpose, obviously.
I am thinking about some sort of balance to the mechanics so the player wouldn't feel like the game is punishing him just for the sake of doing it or for the sake of calling it "hard". Hard for the sake of being hard is not fun.
These devs then to simulate some form of reality and, therefore, mechanics comply. But when it comes to basic needs, everything goes up the roof!
* I picked 2 branches, 3 rocks and 4 raspberries. Stamina decreased to 60%!
* I sit in the sun for 5 minutes. I am now burning and dehydrated.
* I just walked 200m. I am now starving.
This is not hardcore. I'd call it rather bullcore.
Heck, even Fallout New Vegas system would work, if properly tweaked, to specific games. Damn Bethesda for not using it in F4!
EDIT
Some guy survived 3 weeks - THREE WEEKS - in a cave without food! Real story, ofc. And these surviving games are forcing me to eat 2 carcasses a day just to keep a decent level of stamina/satiation etc.
Like I said... pls!
Reduce it and you quickly get trivial. All of the things you mentioned are just basic time compression. No one wants to physically wait 10 minutes to butcher a carcass, then several hours trying to start a fire to cook it. You balance hunger and thirst on the amount of content your game has, else people are going to get bored long before starvation sets in
NV's system didn't work for much, it was a complete and utter joke for survival. There was so much food and water spawned everywhere. The game wasn't designed for any form of survival, it just had hunger and thirst which didn't work with the rest of the gameplay.
As for real people, those who survive without eating probably didn't DO anything for weeks. If you don't use any energy, you can generally survive for an extended period of time and while realistic, it ain't gonna make for interesting gameplay..
If you want better survival games, they exist; they're just not graphically exciting things and/or real-time games in the first place, simply because it's impossible to actually engage the player in a realtime environment without compressing activities and threats.
New Update! The Long Dark Sandbox Updated to v.321: "Tireless Menace"
CHANGELIST
Spoiler:
Gameplay, Tuning & User Interface
* New! Radial Menu and streamlined Status Screens.
* New! Sandbox Challenge Modes: “Hunted, Part One”, and “Hopeless Rescue”.
* New! Emergency Stim gear item. Emergency stims added into various locations (also made available in older saves) and also available in some containers.
* New! Brands can now be taken from a burning fire (replacing Torches taken from fires; Torches are still craftable).
* New! There is now a chance of getting Cabin Fever from spending too many continuous hours inside.
* New! There is now a chance of contracting Intestinal Parasites from eating too much meat from carnivores (i.e. Wolves and Bears).
* New! Added a Curiosity state to Wolf AI. There is now a chance that Wolves will hang back and follow the player from a distance, before deciding to either leave, or stalk the player.
* Refreshed wildlife spawning in all major regions (except bears).
* Overhauled item degradation behaviour and retuned all decay rates for 1000+ day timescale. Gear decay now begins at game start for all items in the world. All Clothing items decay based on a daily rate modified for interior/exterior storage, and player use. All food decay is based on storage (interior vs. exterior) and, for fish and meat, whether an item is raw or cooked. All tools continue to decay based on use only.
* Removed decay from Matches.
* Added various rope climbs and climbing anchor points across all regions (including access to a couple of previously inaccessible areas).
* Added rope gear spawns into a few locations (also made available in older saves).
* Journals can now be saved on the death screen. Saved journals can be viewed from the main menu. A maximum of 10 journals can be saved at any given time.
* Updated the gear naming system to reflect item condition (applies to Food and Clothing items, currently).
* Complete overhaul to Rest system. Player cannot Rest if there is no fatigue. Added a Passing Time mechanic to allow advancement of time.
* Added slow Condition gain while awake and healthy (i.e. no Afflictions, and not Starving, Exhausted, Dehydrated, or Freezing).
* Added Hypothermia Risk affliction, as an early warning system to help avoid “surprise” Hypothermia.
* Added more stats tracking including: Intestinal Parasites, Cabin Fever.
* Differentiated all light sources more clearly, by tuning burn times, Brandishing effectiveness, and item “cost”. This applies to Torches, Flares, Brands, and Lanterns.
* Flares are now Brandished and not thrown.
* AI will now ignore dropped Torches and Flares.
* Harvesting Branches now produces 3 Sticks (increased from 2).
* Harvesting Sticks now produces 2 Tinder Plugs (increased from 1).
* Hatchets now modify Branch harvesting time correctly.
* Brandishing now only works if an item is lit.
* Items that decay to 0% Condition will now be marked Ruined, but persist in the world.
* Increased the Wind speed required to blow out existing fires, as well as which prevents fires from being started. This should reduce instances of strong fires being blown out suddenly due to wind changes.
* Delay condition-loss from Bear struggle until the struggle animation is complete. (This does not apply to Wolf struggles.)
* Combined Stats with Journal. Made accessible from Main Menu and Deathscreen as well as in game.
* Simple Crafting now accessible directly from Radial Menu (see above for more details).
* Updated art for Feed Fire screen.
* In the Options screen, Key Bindings will now display a mouseover effect.
* Show sheltered icon when in caves and other large enclosed spaces outdoors.
Art, Animation, FX
* New! Added experimental First-Person presence for Wolf Struggles with Knife, Hatchet, and Prybar.
* New! First pass on colour grading.
* New! Added rim lighting effect for night-time lighting. It should be more possible to see the “edges” of snow banks and things on clear, moonlit nights, enhancing night-time navigation.
* Improved the Bear model and texture.
* Improved the Bear animations.
* Improved the Wolf animations.
* Updated the visual effects for Torches, Flares, Lanterns, and Brands, so that flames begin to “sputter” when you are running low on burn time.
* Added new Footprints system, which improves the footprint visuals as well as respects weather conditions; footprints will persist for a longer period of time, unless filled in by snow or high winds. (Future improvements to this system will be focused on enhanced Tracking gameplay.)
* Improved draw distance for falling snow.
* Updated the “light shafts” window effect to improve performance.
* Increased the visibility of blood drops, to aid with tracking wounded animals.
* Added blood splatter effect when player is injured by blood loss event (ex. during wolf struggle), when wildlife is hit, and when a carcass is harvested. Also, when hit, the first blood drops from a bleeding animal will be larger, to help the player determine the direction of the animal’s movement.
Misc.
* New! The game now supports Steam Cloud Saves for Windows, Mac and Linux. This means that you can continue to play your saved games across multiple systems (provided you are using the same Steam account).
* New! More graceful handling of corrupt or incompatible save games. Saves will be shown as corrupt or incompatible in the UI, allowing players to remove them and avoiding system crashes due to corrupted save files.
* New! All game sessions are now saved upon start, not at first Rest or interior/exterior transition. This should result in fewer “mysterious” save losses when players abandon games before they have been auto-saved.
* Improved Steam Controller support. All in-game actions can now be rebound using the steam controller configuration screen.
* Particle optimization now active for Windows. This should result in better performance of heavy snow and blizzard conditions for some players.
* Mac and Linux rendering now uses OpenGL 4.1, which should result in some performance improvements for players on those platforms.
* Added error handling for updating to default key-bindings due to the addition of new controls (ex. the new radial menu is bound to the Space Bar by default). Note that this error will only be seen if a newly added binding was already in use.
* The save icon now appears when saving the player profile.
* Added save file compression which results in smaller save files and faster cloud-save uploads.
Audio
* New! Added master volume slider.
* Added more general ambient and exploration music, and fixed some issues that were preventing ambient music from playing in certain circumstances.
* Fixed issues that were preventing desired gameplay speech from playing. As a result, you should hear more gameplay-relevant voice feedback from the survivor personae.
* Overhauled struggle audio for both Wolves (to account for new first-person presence) and for the Bear struggle (to make it more impressive).
* Footstep audio now differentiates between shoes, boots, and bare feet.
Bug Fixes
* We now display an error message if user tries to use a stove to start a fire but are missing all of the required items.
* Fixed issue where you could get stuck in an infinite cooking loop when using gamepad/controller.
* Fixed issue where you could get stuck in an infinite crafting loop.
* Fixed issue where you could quit the game in the middle of a save, which would result in corrupted save files.
* Fixed issue where worn-out tools could be used one extra time.
* Fixed Distress Pistol using wrong ammo icon on inventory screen.
* Fixed issue where the First Aid screen would not update if an affliction healed itself while the screen was open.
* Fixed a bug causing the player to holster the held item while cancelling item placement.
* Fixed issue where blood trails were only being left when wildlife was fleeing.
* Bears are now spawned facing outwards from Dens. This helps fix some pathing issues when the bear attempts to leave the Den.
* Fix issue with items being left behind when transitioning scenes with item placement in progress
* Fixed issue with corpses getting re-oriented after loading a save.
* Fixed issue where players could add fuel to fires that had already blown out (the fire FX didn’t reflect this state).
* Fixed issue with camera sometimes crashing into geometry when placing a campfire.
* Fixed issue with being able to place snares too close to geometry, causing the snared rabbit to be inaccessible
* Fixed issue with Bear playing sleep animations after leaving the sleep AI state.
The Long Dark — Sandbox Mode Feature & Content Roadmap v1.1
Please note that this list is aspirational, and intended to provide an overview of the development team’s intentions for the game as it evolves. It is not a promise or guarantee that these features will be added within the outlined intervals, or that they will be added at all.
The list is not presented in any particular order, so there is no implied priority. “Windows” are provided to give a sense of how far out we think a feature or area of content might be, if we choose to tackle it.
Keep in mind that this is a living list, and as such will constantly change. Things will be added, moved, and removed. Also, this list is not meant to be all-encompassing — at any given time, we are likely working on things that are not on this list. And finally, we may also work on things in secret and exclude this from the list so that they are more of a surprise!
WARNING: Although we strive to keep this list as spoiler-free as possible, please keep in mind that by reading this list you may be spoiling the surprise if and when some of these features do end up being implemented.
Next Sandbox Update Planned For: June, 2016
Next Update (ASPIRATIONAL ***IT IS POSSIBLE NOT ALL OF THIS WILL MAKE IT INTO THE NEXT UPDATE ***)
Challenge Mode: Nomad
Challenge Mode: Whiteout
Weather Almanac system (first pass)
Skills system (first pass)
Feats system (first pass)
Research Items (books of knowledge to improve skills)
In-game rewards (Badges)
Simple shelter-building
New in-game fonts
Steam Trading Cards
Translations for: French, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Norwegian, Turkish
NEAR TERM (1-6 Month Window)
Moose
Cougar
Improved Cooking; more of the cooking action happens in-game (vs. in menus); cooking happens in game-time (i.e. not accelerated time), so you can multi-task.
Frostbite affliction
Axe (tool)
Wellbeing system (i.e. mental/emotional cost of survival; “willpower locket” fits in here)
Aurora gameplay effects & hazards
Widespread narrative collectibles
Backer naming and writing rewards integrated into game world
Primitive firemaking skill (ex. bow-drill)
Improved first-person presence (low-hanging fruit)
Improved Sprains
Improved Infections
New Clothing system & all new Clothing assets
NPCs in the Sandbox
Parlay system
Challenge Mode: Hunted, Part Two
Improved firemaking (blowing mechanic; first-person presence)
Revolver
Non-map based Navigation system
Knowledge system
Improved first-person presence (more complex interactions)
Snowshoes or Nordic skis?
MEDIUM TERM (6-12 Month Window)
Mod support
Spring Sandbox
Moving water
Improved Fishing
Wolfpack behaviour
Wildlife interactions (ex. Wolves vs. Bears)
Grizzly Bear
Sandbox survivor personas (characters?)
VR Experience
Crafting for safehouse customization
Crafting for clothing customization
Gunsmithing & ammunition crafting
LONG TERM (12+ Month Window // R&D)
Full-season survival Sandbox (transitioning from season to season)
New travel options: Canoe, Horse
Seamless world streaming
Long-distance travel
Planting
Sandbox AI community social dynamics
Last edited by prudislav on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 21:14; edited 1 time in total
from what i understood the story mode is developed simultaneously with sandbox mode content ... iirc v1.0 will be when they release first episode of story mode
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