April Developer Diary -- The Future of The Long Dark In a couple of months, itll have been ten years since I submitted the incorporation documents for Hinterland Studio Inc. and the company became a real business. I guess that milestone has me in a pretty pensive mood as I write this. Ten years is a good amount of time for a game company to exist. I look back at photos of my basement home-office, to the various studio spaces weve grown into and then outgrown, to now looking around at my non-basement home office and big screens with 60+ people Zoom calls, and I reflect back on the journey that has gotten us to this point. I look at the mix of faces I see looking back at me on that screen during our team Town Hall meetings. All kinds of different people with all kinds of different backgrounds. Every one of them a wonderful human being who is putting their heart and soul into Hinterland, to help create experiences for you, our players, and, in our own way, trying to shift the medium a little more towards thoughtfulness. A ten-year anniversary seems like the right moment to talk about the future. Whats Next for The Long Dark For those of you who know your TLD (and Hinterland) history, you may recall we announced The Long Dark with a Kickstarter (one of the first to use CAD!) in the fall of 2013, and followed up with a Steam Early Access launch of our sandbox mode in September 2014. For the next few years, we continued to expand and evolve the sandbox portion of the game (adding Xbox via Game Preview in 2015) while we also slowly built out the first parts of WINTERMUTE, our story mode. We launched our TLD 1.0 with Episodes One and Two of WINTERMUTE in August 2017 (adding PlayStation), then re-released the Redux versions at the end of 2018, followed by Episode Three in 2019, Switch in 2020, and Episode Four in October of last year. In between, we continued to update the sandbox portion of the game, which we renamed to Survival Mode. Somehow, along the way, we managed to build a community of nearly 10-million players. Without you, The Long Dark, and Hinterland, would very likely not be here today. When we launched our Kickstarter back in 2013, I promised that all backers would receive the five planned episodes of our story mode for the backing price, a promise we carried over to our Early Access and Game Preview backers. Meanwhile, our plan was to incrementally update the games foundational Survival Mode and align those updates (generally) with features and content we knew we wanted to include in later episodes (sometimes we did the opposite and introduced new features or content into Episodes which later found their way into Survival), and to keep players engaged in between the episodes. But this early 2013 backer promise meant that we have updated the game for free ever since we launched it, despite the fact that the games scope grew with its success and each episode represented a lot more effort and time than we had originally intended. (Keep in mind that our plan for TLD with the Kickstarter was a ~10-hour narrative-driven survival game and no freeform sandbox. Now, each of our episodes can be longer than 10 hours and the sandbox is now one of the biggest available within the entire genre of open-world games.) Aside from the fact that its important to live up to your promises, I think this free updates paradigm has resulted in a lot of good will with you, our players, and has hopefully strengthened our relationship and your loyalty to us as a team and studio. So, were really happy about this initial promise and were happy to have been able to go above and beyond to deliver on this over the past several years. But it hasnt been easy. One of the challenges of supporting both Survival and Story modes in The Long Dark has always been managing our resources to sustain both. Delivering WINTERMUTE was a promise, an obligation, but continuing to support Survival Mode was a choice. We did it to ensure our Survival players didnt feel neglected while we worked on the story episodes, but as a result, some of the magic that drove the early years of The Long Darks success, and the growth of the game and the community, was lost. We werent able to update Survival as frequently, as our studio focus was necessarily split between both modes, and these frequent updates were a big part of what helped the game take off. Last year we ran a community poll, asking how you would like us to dedicate our focus for the future of The Long Dark. Amongst other bits of useful feedback, we discovered that nearly 80% of you wanted us to begin producing paid expansion content for Survival Mode. Weve always felt fortunate that theres been a core group of you that have been asking us to start charging for content for a while now, but this was the strongest indication of what our players wanted us to prioritize for The Long Dark. Unfortunately, updating Survival mode with paid DLC is not that simple. Due to the decisions we made early in the projects inception, the games survival foundation has been inextricably linked to the story mode, and the story mode has been completely dependent on the core survival game. This has meant that over time, as the game has increased in scope and complexity, with new mechanics, new regions, new challenges, and new episodes, the game has become...unwieldy. Every update requires the entire game to be re-tested. Systems, content, and code have their roots deep into both parts of the game. Our testing times have gone from maybe a week per update (in the projects early years), to more than a month per update. The deep interrelationship between mechanics and content between the two modes has also meant some updates we would have liked to make in one area, couldnt really be done because of how they might impact the other. In short, the game has just become too big for us to maintain well. To address this, the team has been hard at work since we launched Episode Four, to decouple Survival and Story from each other. Its been a huge amount of work, involving careful separation of content but in some cases also the wholesale refactoring of code and entire systems. The good news is that we are now at the point where Survival Mode runs as a standalone experience, with no linkage back to Story mode. What this means is that we can now update Survival independently of Story. Updating will be easier, and faster. Testing will be simpler and more streamlined. And it means we can make changes and improvements specifically for Survival, without any concern about how they might impact WINTERMUTE. The opposite will also soon be true. The WINTERMUTE episodes will be completely separated from Survival, and when we update to Episode Five, well be able to do that without concern for how it might impact (or be impacted) by Survival. This also means that the WINTERMUTE episodes can potentially receive targeted updates without concern for how those changes might impact Survival Mode. This process has been a ton of work for the team, and unfortunately its all behind-the-scenes work to the extent that you are probably asking yourself but how does this impact me? Well, how it impacts you is that the split opens the door to a whole new era of Survival Mode content updates that will bring new life and new energy back into The Long Dark. It doesnt change anything about content you already own, and everyone who owns The Long Dark (on all our supported platforms) will still get Episode Five when it releases. And this split means we can finally deliver on your request that we start producing paid content for Survival Mode. So thats what were doing. Later this year, well be launching a paid update path for Survival Mode. This will be the first paid content weve added to The Long Dark (apart from our soundtracks) since we launched it nearly 8 years ago. Were still working through the details of the roadmap and our release plans, but I can tell you this much with a high degree of confidence:
- Itll be some kind of season pass-type approach (actual name TBD), where we have a ~15-18 month campaign of updates that unlock for anyone who has purchased the pass. The updates will come on a regular cadence over the course of that period.
- The pass will include a combination of content and gameplay system updates, including new regions, new challenges, new mechanics, etc., as well as general improvements and updates to core systems in the game.
- Additionally, for anyone who doesnt like the season pass style approach and prefers to only pay for content when its complete, we will re-package the seasons content into 3-4 individual paid DLC packages.
- Were still working on pricing, but the season pass will provide a discount on the combined price of the DLC, and each piece of paid DLC will be very fairly priced.
- We want to make sure our existing players who choose not to buy any more content (or are unable to afford it) are still going to have a great experience of The Long Dark, and wont feel left behind. So well also continue to provide some free updates to the base Survival game, so anyone who doesnt buy the pass will get something. These updates will generally be smaller, more modest improvements compared to what you will see being added to the paid content stream, which seems only fair.
[ 2022-04-29 17:30:46 CET ] [ Original post ]
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- The Long Dark Depot (Linux) [2.24 G]
- TLD Dev Depot (Linux) [5.42 G]
- DLC01Linux [721.27 M]
- The Long Dark: Wintermute Linux DLC [8.16 G]
- The Long Dark: Tales from the Far Territory Linux DLC [728.71 M]
- The Long Dark: Tales from the Far Territory
- The Long Dark: WINTERMUTE
What is The Long Dark?
The Long Dark is a thoughtful, exploration-survival experience that challenges solo players to think for themselves as they explore an expansive frozen wilderness. There are no zombies -- only you, the cold, and everything Mother Nature can throw at you.Current Game Features
The Early Access version of The Long Dark features the game’s non-narrative Survival Sandbox mode. The game will leave Early Access one we launch Episode One of our Story Mode. All Season One episodes are included in the cost of Early Access.- No hand holding! The game challenges players to think for themselves by providing the information but never the answers. You have to earn the right to survive.
- Permadeath! See how long you can survive, check your standing on the global Leaderboards, then head back in and push yourself to survive longer.
- Monitor your Calorie count, Hunger and Thirst, Fatigue, and Body Temperature. Maintain your overall Condition if you want to survive. Let yourself weaken and any small threat may lead to your death.
- Over 30 square kms of wilderness to explore (and with more regions coming!). Mystery Lake, Coastal Highway, Desolation Point, Pleasant Valley, and more, all interconnected and each with dozens of explorable locations.
- Dynamic weather, wildlife, and time of day, all with an impact on how you choose to survive.
- Over 100 gear items including clothing, tools like hatchets and rifles, first aid equipment, foodstuffs, light sources like lanterns and flares, and firestarting equipment.
- Hunt Deer, Snare Rabbits, and watch for Crows as they can signify the presence of animal, or human, corpses that can be vital sources of Supplies. Wolves are territorial and will defend their territory, or stalk you if they catch your scent. If you let them get too close, you may find yourself in a desperate struggle to survive. Be on the lookout for Black Bears, as they roam the landscape in search of food.
- Harvest Wood for fuel, maintain your Gear and Clothing, and keep your Knife, Hatchet, and Rifle in top shape as they will save your life!
- Harvest Medicinal plants like Old Man's Beard Lichen, Rose Hips, Reishi Mushrooms.
- Deep First Aid system featuring many afflictions including: Sprains, Blood Loss, Infection Risk, Infection, Food Poisoning, Dysentery, and more.
- Craft Snares, First Aid items, Repair your Clothing and Tools, and Harvest raw materials from the environment, as you do your best to become self-sufficient.
- ...and much more!
Ongoing Development
With an average of 3-4 updates per month, The Long Dark is in a state of constant improvement. We have released over 75 updates since bringing the game to Early Access. Updates typically include new gameplay, tuning, new areas, items, and visual improvements. We are constantly improving the game based on our iterative development process, with input from the community.
Please note that the Early Access price provides immediate access to the Sandbox Mode, and includes the cost of Season One episodes of the Story Mode, the first of which will be available at the game's full launch.
The Hinterland Team
The Long Dark is brought to you by Hinterland Studio, an independent game developer comprised of industry veterans with significant credits on many renowned series including Far Cry, Red Faction, Saints Row, God of War, Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age, Company of Heroes, and many others. The Long Dark is the team's first attempt to create a unique and thought-provoking independent game that pushes the boundaries of the medium.
We appreciate your support of our efforts!
- OS: SteamOS or Ubuntu 16.04 or 17.04
- Processor: Dual-Core Intel i5 CPU @ 2GHz+Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel 4xxx Series w/ 512MB VRAM or better
- Storage: 7 GB available space
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