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eviltastic
Feb 8, 2004

Fan of Britches
BTW if anyone missed it, The Long Dark has a seasonal event going. Global -10 degree C temp drop, more blizzards, and maple syrup and ketchup chips available.

I guess the poutine will have to wait until some later episodes in the story.

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Arven
Sep 23, 2007
Do the badges you earn for the event do anything? I'm used to interloper and the settings for this event are kind of too easy in comparison.

Heffer
May 1, 2003

Is there a Space Engineers thread? Can't seem to find it.

Nice piece of fish
Jan 29, 2008

Ultra Carp
Not really. Which is a shame, with mods it's a pretty cool survival experience.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


What mods would you suggest? I haven’t touched that game in a loooong time, might be interesting to see it again.

Nice piece of fish
Jan 29, 2008

Ultra Carp

Galaga Galaxian posted:

What mods would you suggest? I haven’t touched that game in a loooong time, might be interesting to see it again.

Uhh, caveat that they actually work and off the top of my head:

Modular Encounters
Exploration Enhancement Mod
Energy Shields
Milky Way Skybox
AwwScrap
Better Stone
Thermal Mechanics
Aerodynamic Wings
Environment Lighting Dark
Screen gunk remover
Pistol, Carbine
Surface Occupation
Assertive Installations
Reavers
Clear Camera Screen
Air Traffic
Nerf Jetpack (only works in zero g, like it should be)

or really any mods that add encounters and things, don't have to do what I did.

Obviously Daily Needs mod needs added for the survival aspect.

And I'm sure there are others, I just like a solid challenge and having to engineer around things the vanilla game makes too easy like getting left alone, plethora of resources, personal jetpack etc. I do NOT recommend Scarce Resources though, it can conflict with other resource mods and also it's really really rough going even if it works properly. It sucks to play the game for 40 hours and then realize the mod removed all good resources anywhere or something.

Huge benefit is the ability to play it multiplayer which is awesome for coop, it's very helpful with an extra set of hands and playing with other people they will continually surprise you with cool ideas and innovative designs if they are any good. Or at least some entertainment when they inevitably crater something. There's a new DLC now that seems quite good, adds a bunch of useful things.

Also you can play some variant of Splitsie's survival mod collection that he showcases in his hardcore survival playthrough:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8N_14IYMHw

It's a slow type of game, but very rewarding once you get going. You do have to be very familiar with the game though, or you'll struggle.

bobsmyuncle
Feb 21, 2006

aw yiss

Arven posted:

Do the badges you earn for the event do anything? I'm used to interloper and the settings for this event are kind of too easy in comparison.

No, the seasonal badges for the Long Dark are just to show you did the event (like the Four Days of Night Halloween event). It doesn't add anything to your game experience.

edit: I will say that the event is set on Voyageur settings so veterans won't find it difficult to survive at all, but the badges are obnoxious. Once I got the "survive 25 days badge" I cheated the other badge because finding syrup is so rare.

bobsmyuncle fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jul 15, 2020

Power Walrus
Dec 24, 2003

Fun Shoe
I just started playing Astroneer, and is pretty fun. I’m setting up a nice little operation on Planet Newbie, complete with a cute little tractor-trailer for picking up my research buddies. One thing I cannot figure out, how do I build a small shuttle??? I’ve scoured the research tree, no sign of it there, and my large printer only has the option of printing a shelter. I think I like this game, but I’ve hit a wall where I need resources that I guess are off-planet.

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖

Power Walrus posted:

I just started playing Astroneer, and is pretty fun. I’m setting up a nice little operation on Planet Newbie, complete with a cute little tractor-trailer for picking up my research buddies. One thing I cannot figure out, how do I build a small shuttle??? I’ve scoured the research tree, no sign of it there, and my large printer only has the option of printing a shelter. I think I like this game, but I’ve hit a wall where I need resources that I guess are off-planet.
It should definitely be unlockable (1,500 bytes) and printed from the large printer. They reorganized the craft/unlock menus, maybe it's just easy to miss?

Power Walrus
Dec 24, 2003

Fun Shoe
Edit: I’m a dummy, I found it. Don’t know how I missed it before.

Power Walrus fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Jul 22, 2020

Bug Squash
Mar 18, 2009

Tapping out of The Raft, I just find it an unpleasantly stressful experience. Anytime I think of doing something exploratory it just feel like I'm missing out on collecting loot or maintaining supplies. Plus it didn't really feel all that fun, to be honest.

Dalaram
Jun 6, 2002

Marshall/Kirtaner 8/24 nevar forget! (omg pedo)

Bug Squash posted:

Tapping out of The Raft, I just find it an unpleasantly stressful experience. Anytime I think of doing something exploratory it just feel like I'm missing out on collecting loot or maintaining supplies. Plus it didn't really feel all that fun, to be honest.

I like a lot of the gameplay loop, but it’s as much a plate spinning simulator as cultist simulator. I like survival, but it feels like water and food deplete really fast, and after the first few hours, the shark is just an annoyance.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?
At least they added foundation armour, so in theory you can just armour up the bottom floor of your raft and never have to really care about it again.

Fojar38
Sep 2, 2011


Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia


also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->
Learned about Darkwood the other day and I'm playing it and it just seems like a Poland simulator?

Fifty Farts
Dec 23, 2013

- Meticulously Researched
- Peer-reviewed
Grounded is Obsidian's new survival/crafting game. The setting is basically Honey I Shrunk The Kids: The Animated Series: The Video Game (disclaimer: I don't know or care if there was an animated series), and that's probably going to be the big draw for people who aren't already into survival/crafting games (and even people who are, because tiny cartoon teenagers aren't exactly typical survival game protagonists). Ants are the size of wolves, and spiders are the size of... dire wolves, I guess? They're bigger than the tiny teenager you play as. Distances are measured in centimeters instead of meters because you are tiny, which I thought was a cute touch. Landmarks are things like The Baseball and Empty Mint Container. Wolf Spiders are big and scary-looking and murder you quickly (only ran into one of those, at night; I didn't turn on any of the arachnophobia accessibility options, but I appreciate that they exist for people who want/need them). Gnats act very gnat-like: they fly around erratically and taunt you into trying to attack them by staying low to the ground and getting close, only to fly out of your reach as soon as you make a move, then turn and look at you as if to say "haha, I'm a gnat, gently caress you."

Red ants are loving assholes. I had set up a little camp near the first big strange machine you find - I made a lean-to (respawn point), a storage container, and a cooking spit, and had cooked up a couple weevils. I was off looking for water that wouldn't cause my character ("I'm Willow. Willow Branch. Yup, that's really my name.") to lament her probable death from dysentery, and got a warning noise. When I got back to camp, there was a horde of what seemed to be at least 10 ants just going to town breaking all my stuff. I started stabbing with a spear I'd made, and managed to fight off a few of them, but there were too many and I got swarmed. I can respawn and recollect my backpack, and then I can just recycle all my camp stuff that wasn't destroyed by ants. Lessons learned: don't set up camp until I can build walls around it, and red ants are loving assholes. Once I've got my stuff back and make some walls around my camp, clean water is going to be my next big in-game problem. I can make a canteen, if I can find the bits for it, but I don't know how the game handles boiling water (as in, I don't know if I can just do it on the cooking spit or if I need some other tool).

If you've played any of the survival/crafting/voxel/etc. games (7 Days to Die, Empyrion, many many others), it's got a lot of the same basic gameplay stuff going on. Manage your hunger and thirst (grubs and weevils can be cooked, mushrooms can be picked, and you can drink from dirty puddles or rarer clean dew drops). Pick up bits and pieces to make things to get better bits and pieces to make better things, repeat as needed. When you cut down stalks of grass and weeds with your stone (pebble) axe, you have to carry the grass sheets (used for walls and doors) and weed stems (used like logs for building, also lol :420:), because they're too big to fit in your backpack. Other stuff like clovers, dried grass, and bigger stones have to be broken into smaller bits so that you can stuff them in your backpack, and the smaller bits are things you have to pick up manually rather than just getting 3 clover leaves in your backpack every time you cut one down (haven't found one with 4 leaves yet, but I'm sure there's at least one out there).

It's in early access, and also an Obsidian game, so I was expecting a lot worse performance than I got. I had a little bit of slowdown when I first loaded the game and looked around at the scenery, but that went away pretty quickly. I'm going to play a bit more tomorrow to see if I run into any bugs that aren't part of the game, but so far I haven't had any major performance issues.

Fifty Farts fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Aug 3, 2020

Dreadwroth2
Feb 28, 2019

by Cyrano4747
There are places ants don't really hang out you can build your base and storage, but apparently wolf spiders will seek out your base and obliterate it looking for an easy meal. They need to really tone the spiders down a loooooot.

esquilax
Jan 3, 2003

If you store food in your base, spiders and larvae and ants will spawn and try to destroy it to get at it. Spawn rates of larva are definitely overtuned, and everything destroys your constructions way, way too quickly. Until/unless they change that, don't leave any meat in chests or on the ground nearby. I made my second base safer by building on top of a rock, with the only way up being a trampoline (which bugs can still use, though not intelligently)

But spiders I think are fine in general terms - they fill a good niche as the "run away or die" enemy until you get tier 2 armor and weapons. And running a way from a spider actually leads to really good emergent gameplay - finding a clover low enough to jump on, then onto a blade of grass that leads to a rock. There are a surprising number of "a-ha!" moments, I was especially pleased when i figured out that to get at out-of-reach berries you can throw rocks at them to knock them down off the bush.

It's a very promising game - they have some work to do but it's a really good entry in the genre.

OgNar
Oct 26, 2002

They tapdance not, neither do they fart
I tried Grounded when they announced a free trial which turned out to be a timed demo.
Which turned me off since I love exploring the most.
So I just dumped it until it got older.
I'll likely try it again eventually.

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖

esquilax posted:

It's a very promising game - they have some work to do but it's a really good entry in the genre.
That's my takeaway, too. Content light right now, but so much balance/bugfixing needs to be done.
Built a walled off base and ants just clipped through it. I'd seen an and walking around outside, turn my back for two seconds, and when i looked back she was just inside the walls. Everything clips.

Private Speech
Mar 30, 2011

I HAVE EVEN MORE WORTHLESS BEANIE BABIES IN MY COLLECTION THAN I HAVE WORTHLESS POSTS IN THE BEANIE BABY THREAD YET I STILL HAVE THE TEMERITY TO CRITICIZE OTHERS' COLLECTIONS

IF YOU SEE ME TALKING ABOUT BEANIE BABIES, PLEASE TELL ME TO

EAT. SHIT.


That's a game concept I desperately wanted to make/play when I was about 9.

Guess that means I ought to buy it. Though I'm a bit stretched for money right now so I might wait a bit, especially since everyone's saying it's not very finished right now.

SolidSnakesBandana
Jul 1, 2007

Infinite ammo

Private Speech posted:

That's a game concept I desperately wanted to make/play when I was about 9.

Guess that means I ought to buy it. Though I'm a bit stretched for money right now so I might wait a bit, especially since everyone's saying it's not very finished right now.

You could try it on Game Pass. Game Pass is only $5, plus there's a bunch of other neat poo poo on there.

Dreadwroth2
Feb 28, 2019

by Cyrano4747
Game Pass has Touryst and Forager, both pretty fun.

Qubee
May 31, 2013




SolidSnakesBandana posted:

You could try it on Game Pass. Game Pass is only $5, plus there's a bunch of other neat poo poo on there.

I thought the version on Game Pass was also the demo? I have it and it's installed as "Grounded - Game Preview"

SolidSnakesBandana
Jul 1, 2007

Infinite ammo
That's what they call Early Access games on game pass. I'm not sure why. Scourgebringer is another example of this.

lordfrikk
Mar 11, 2010

Oh, say it ain't fuckin' so,
you stupid fuck!
Played around 7 hours of Eco. I really like that this one is focused on cooperation but holy moly the performance is abysmal. Also bought Rust and shortly after spawning in the game the night has arrived and some rando started chasing me while creepily calling me a bitch and saying to stop running before we both got shot by a third player. I'll be honest: the experience was worse than some horror games. I'll probably end up refunding it.

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖
I played RUST once and it took like 15 minutes to load into the world. To this day I don't know if I'm a hardware anomaly or if the game was really just that badly optimized.

lordfrikk
Mar 11, 2010

Oh, say it ain't fuckin' so,
you stupid fuck!
It took around a minute to fully load for me but then it was really smooth. I've tried many survival games recently and most of them are really, really badly optimized!

Qubee
May 31, 2013




Eco is great but yeah, optimization is awful. Between that and finding a server that doesn't have admins abusing their powers and passing on benefits to their cronies, it's hard for me to sink my teeth into it despite badly wanting to. Was playing on a server that seemed great at first, but I quickly came to realise that the core players were all really close-knit, and every time you'd walk by their houses they'd be milestones ahead. It also completely hamstrung cooperation, as they could pretty much do every task perfectly.

I'm hoping I'll be able to get my friends to get onboard with it one day, and have each one of us specialize in something.

lordfrikk
Mar 11, 2010

Oh, say it ain't fuckin' so,
you stupid fuck!
I can see that being a huge problem, yeah. The server I'm playing on seems OK so far. Our world leader just got elected yesterday and the first things they did was unify currency and establish UBI and proposed a bunch of other laws that encourage keeping the world clean.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
This thread has given me some good recommendations, so here's one of mine. Green Hell is a good game, with a friend, and with hunger turned down. It is most like The Forest, and my buddy and I played them back-to-back, so I'm going to make a lot of comparisons between them.

Green Hell is an open world survival game set in a jungle in South America. You hunt, craft, and explore in order to complete objectives and advance the story to unlock more of the map. The map is hand crafted; it is well designed but has limited replayability. You'll probably play through the story once and then put it down, but it should keep you busy for 20-30 hours.

The first thing I want to mention is that this game is beautiful and immersive. The jungle is thickly overgrown with greenery and colorful flowers, suggesting a rich and safe environment. However, the lush plant life also hides predators and other things that will kill you quickly if you're not careful. The sound is also great, immersing you in a world with wind in the trees, animals moving in the underbrush, and birds singing. Audio also provides critical clues when hunting animals or avoiding danger. The atmosphere can get tense and you have to use your eyes and your ears to stay alive. I recommend headphones and a dark room.

The premise is that you, a botanist, and your wife, an anthropologist, have traveled to the jungle in order to make contact with an isolated tribe for... some reason. Also not immediately clear is what you, as a botanist, add to the expedition. Stuff happens, and you wake up alone in the jungle with only a radio and a sports watch to help you as you set off in search of your wife.

Green Hell has a learning curve. You have to manage thirst, hunger, energy, and sanity while learning what in the world can help you, what can hurt you, and what can kill you almost immediately. When you start losing health, it's not always apparent why or what you can do about it. You might find yourself running out of energy multiple times a day. Your sanity may drop and you may find yourself attacked by not-so-inner demons. Reading the journal can give you direction as well as critical survival information, but you will die a lot. Not just starting out, either. The jungle is a dangerous place, and a well equipped player can end up in just as much trouble as a naked one if they don't watch where they're stepping.

While The Forest has light survival elements (stab deer, drink dirty water, be fine) and focuses more on combat and stealth, Green Hell leans into the survival aspect and has less of the latter. This is a good thing, because the combat in Green Hell suuuuuuuuuuucks. Luckily, though, like in The Forest, a bow solves most problems. You have to hunt frequently and spread your calories out throughout the day. You spend a good deal of time cooking, and later, waiting on the water filter to fill up. Starting a fire is a calculated risk as it can draw attention. You need to stock up on perishable food and water before setting out, and thanks to the in game map that doesn't directly mark your position, you may not end up back where you started.

The real fun of the game is the tension. Every misstep has consequences. Get in a fight, apply a leaf bandage to the wounds and hope they don't get infected. Get infected, get some maggots to eat the dead skin, then bandage the wounds again and pray. Get bitten by a snake, apply a tobacco leaf bandage and hope it doesn't get infected. Sleep on the ground and... well, you'll see. You can use up your medical supplies quickly if you;re not being careful. Things will track you, and if they surprise you, it's usually an instant death. You have to be very careful about where you go and what you bring when exploring, and exploring is definitely rewarded enough to be worthwhile.

The only major problem I have with Green Hell is with the save system. In order to save, you need to be at a particular type of building or object. This can be a huge pain if you need to quit the game suddenly if real life demands it. If you go exploring, chances are you may not save for several in game days. This is a particular problem because you do not respawn on death. You revert back to your last save. Due to how quickly death can come, it can be very frustrating to travel for days, pick up cool poo poo, and make it back to camp only to be bitten by a snake on your front step. Neat, you have to do all of that again without dying on the way. For this reason, I highly recommend playing the game coop. In coop, on death you drop your equipment and respawn. You can still get into tense, high stakes situations if you and your partner get into the same bad situation, but it doesn't require as much repetition on death. My other recommendation is to turn hunger to low when setting options for a new game. It's pretty hard to stay on top of on low, it's not fun at all when it's set higher. If there are other aspects of the game you don't like, chances are you can toggle them here too.

As I mentioned, I played The Forest and Green Hell back to back. Despite the similarities, Green Hell was different enough that I didn't get tired of the formula at all. On the balance, I'd say I like The Forest a little more, but if you're a fan of that game, you should definitely give Green Hell a try.

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖
Definitely echoing the recommendation, but I was hooked enough that after beating Story mode I immediately went into free play and continued on from there because I wasn't done yet. After a few tries I think I actually like setting nutrition needs to high, because it makes you really focusing on keeping food stocked, and otherwise you never really need to use food preservation options or even go out of your way much. In free play that harsher balance is fine, because survival is your main focus, but in Story mode I could see that being obnoxious because you're trying to progress but you might get sidetracked searching for protein. Still, fun game overall. Not infinite replayable, again mostly because of the map, but great while it lasts. Honestly my biggest issue is that there's not a ton of areas on the map suitable to larger building projects. Multi-object building was only added later in development and I don't think the map was designed with it in mind.

Bug Squash
Mar 18, 2009

I've been convinced to add Green Hell to my wishlist. I loved The Forest, so this seems right up my alley.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Vib Rib posted:

Honestly my biggest issue is that there's not a ton of areas on the map suitable to larger building projects. Multi-object building was only added later in development and I don't think the map was designed with it in mind.

Yeah, I was kind of disappointed when I tried to make a two story structure but could not find any way to make flooring for the second level. I think there's even a ladder in the blueprints but no real use case for it. Since you played (or had knowledge) of the game in EA can you tell me if the mining element is vestigial? I kept expecting it to be relevant to the story, but never found tools or blueprints related to it, save for the forge.

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖

BrianRx posted:

Yeah, I was kind of disappointed when I tried to make a two story structure but could not find any way to make flooring for the second level. I think there's even a ladder in the blueprints but no real use case for it. Since you played (or had knowledge) of the game in EA can you tell me if the mining element is vestigial? I kept expecting it to be relevant to the story, but never found tools or blueprints related to it, save for the forge.
I think recipes unlock as you work on metal stuff. Use a crude stone pick to mine some ore from seams in a cave wall, they're not terribly uncommon. You can use the ore + molds to cast metal in a mud brick forge to create metal tool/arrowheads, and put those on tools as you would with stone. They outclass stone by a huge margin in both effectiveness and durability but while they're not vestigial I would say you can get through your whole game without 'em. Equivalent of like, Minecraft diamond tools, except nothing explicitly needs them.

Vib Rib fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Aug 30, 2020

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Vib Rib posted:

I think recipes unlock as you work on metal stuff. Use a rude pick to mine some ore from seams in a cave wall, they're not terribly uncommon. You can use the ore + molds to cast metal in a mud brick forge to create metal tool/arrowheads, and put those on tools as you would with stone. They outclass stone by a huge margin in both effectiveness and durability but while they're not vestigial I would say you can get through your whole game without 'em. Equivalent of like, Minecraft diamond tools, except nothing explicitly needs them.

Cool, thanks! I found the caves with iron, never got any indication that a pick was an available recipe, and kept waiting to stumble on one. Yeah, I think between bone and what you pick up, you can get through the game just fine.

bobsmyuncle
Feb 21, 2006

aw yiss
I like Green Hell a ton but metal tools are a bunch of work for not that much greater effectiveness. Obsidian weapons and bone armor were good enough for me (I'm lazy).

You can use axes to mine iron, it's just a little fiddly to hit the vein correctly. You can also use empty food cans that you find lying around, like at the cocaine processing camp. You might want to read the wiki on forging if you decide to do it, it's kind of an ordeal.

Bug Squash
Mar 18, 2009

That's me wrapped up the campaign on Green Hell. Overall, I'm happy to think of it as a little bit more of the secret sauce that made The Forest so great but not quite hitting the same heights. It's definately a lot better looking, and a much more grounded setting, but it doesn't reach the absolutely bonkers fun of The Forst base building and mutant bullying. The difficulty curve is also just a sheer slope followed by a plateau. I nearly gave up on my first few trys because I died for lack of a stone or a coconut. Once you've gotten into the swing of things the game gets really easy and you basically never interact with half the systems in the game. I never got worms in my successful run, and the only reason I ever got food poisoning is from a misclick in the food inventory. Great game though, I recommend picking it up if you enjoyed The Forest.

Bhodi
Dec 9, 2007

Oh, it's just a cat.
Pillbug
I also enjoyed green hell, the two things I wish I had known going in are

* unlike real life, it's fine to stuff any random mushroom you find into your face hole (with a single exception)
* coconuts can be used by breaking them open and then manually placing the empty halves on the ground

A Sometimes Food
Dec 8, 2010

Anyone seen some good coverage for The Survivalists? It seems cool but I'd like to see some people playing it a bit.

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VegasGoat
Nov 9, 2011

A Sometimes Food posted:

Anyone seen some good coverage for The Survivalists? It seems cool but I'd like to see some people playing it a bit.

I played the demo and it seems promising. Full game isn't out yet though. The monkey thing is kind of cool, you can basically automate everything with them. Biggest issue is inventory management. You can have monkeys following you around with chests for extra storage but it's still a pain to constantly offload into them.

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