Dev Diary - March 2019


Hello community,

The team’s been hard at work since the holidays, which we used to recover from finaling the massive December “Redux” release, and it’s time to update you on some of the things we’ve been doing in the meantime.


EPISODE THREE



The team’s been working hard on Episode Three this year. We’d started work on it in 2018 and then put it aside to finish up Redux and work through all the tech and pipeline improvements we wanted to use for the remaining Episodes of WINTERMUTE. One of the first things we did after coming back from the holidays was re-evaluate our plans for Episode Three scope based on the lessons we’d learned from building and shipping Redux.

A key lesson there was the importance of having enough gameplay and narrative content to “fill the space” of the game, to avoid the feeling of senseless backtracking or the world just feeling too empty, as it sometimes did in the 2017 Episode Two and Three release. Building Redux provided a fresh perspective on how to better balance our narrative and survival experiences, as well as how to better write for narrative flow in our open-world survival experience. These key learnings let us review our plans for Episode Three to ensure we would hopefully avoid making some of the same mistakes we’d made in the original 2017 releases, which we weren’t super happy with (and nor were many of you). Based on how we feel Redux turned out, and how you also seem to feel about the improvements, we’re confident we’re on a much stronger path now.

Building Redux also showed us that the “ideal length” for a WINTERMUTE episode is about 5-7 hours. This gives us enough time to present a few interesting story threads, some compelling open-world survival gameplay, and enough narrative momentum to keep the story moving. It’s also an amount of content that feels substantial -- these aren’t throw-away one or two-hour experiences -- but they are compact enough that you can finish them in a weekend if you like.

In our original planning, we had considered building the episode around three major story “hubs”, each in a different region, but that episode would have ended up being larger than Episodes One and Two combined, and amount of content that just isn’t sustainable for our team size. Just the testing on an episode that big would be a hugely daunting task, nevermind populating it with enough interesting narrative and mission content to “fill the space”. The Redux knowledge has helped us focus Episode Three down to a tighter experience that takes place in a single region.



Therefore, Episode Three is the story of Astrid’s survival after escaping Milton, and takes place entirely in Pleasant Valley. As you probably know, Pleasant Valley is a *huge* region, with a lot of scope for interesting environments and some great story moments. We’ve been updating the region to freshen it up for the story, while adding some new landmarks and locations that are introduced in Episode Three. I’m really excited about how it’s all coming together, particularly in how true to Astrid’s character and background the episode is.


COMMUNICATING FUTURE RELEASE DATES

As you know, hitting publicly announced release dates has never been our strong suit.

As an independent studio without a huge marketing machine behind us, we count on our relationship with our community to be positive so that you’ll help us spread the word about the work we’re doing. We know we harm this relationship when we promise to deliver things to you and then, for whatever reason, they fail to happen.

Unfortunately, project planning and game development as a whole is not an exact science, and while we are ready to work really hard to hit our goals, I’m not willing to crunch my team to do so. In order to be more fair to the community, and also more fair to the development team, I think the best approach for us is to refrain from offering any more public release dates.

So, moving forward, we won’t publish release dates around any of our content, whether that be full Episodes or Survival Mode updates. We’ll keep working towards internal deadlines, of course, but we won’t share news on when we plan to ship updates until those updates are essentially finished. That way, when you hear a release date from us, you know it will happen.


SPLITTING THE TEAM

One of the things we’ve been working towards this year, with the development team, is hiring enough people with the right skills to be able to create two separate teams -- one to focus on Survival, and the other to focus on Story. We’ve made some great progress towards that goal and we’re getting very close to having all the people we need to accomplish that. Once we’re there, it’ll become easier for us to make consistent progress in both areas of the game, so that we can ensure a more steady supply of free Survival updates, as well as ensuring the Episodes get the resources they need. We still have a few positions to hire for to have full redundancy across both teams, but I’m hopeful we’ll get there within the next few months. If you know any great developers with experience crafting memorable and award-winning interactive experiences, please send them to our careers page[hinterlandgames.com]!


SURVIVAL MODE UPDATE

Last year, we put a ton of effort into Redux and solidifying our foundation for the future Episodes, so this year we’re working to get back on track with producing more frequent Survival Mode updates. To that end, we’re working on a bunch of new features and content for the 2019 Survival releases. As per my earlier point about release dates, we won’t be sharing any tentative release windows for the next Survival release, but I will say that we’ve already done a fair bit of work on the new systems and content that will comprise the core of the next free update.





A few things we’re working on for the next Survival update include:

Adding the Revolver to Survival Mode.
Overhaul of the aiming mechanics for the Rifle, Bow, etc., to do a better job of integrating Fatigue and the breathing cycle, and making aiming less frustrating.
Adding a new Food item.
Adding a new Clothing item.
Fixing the Sprains system.
...and more!

One feature I can confidently say *will not* be added in the next Survival update is the Bear Spear. This has turned out to be much more challenging to integrate well into the core Survival experience, so we’re taking a bit more time with it to make sure it’s a solid and promising addition to the Survival toolbox. It will eventually make its way into Survival mode, but it won’t be ready for the next update. And speaking of the Spear, we know that some of you [SPOILERS!] have been finding the Spear gameplay in Episode Two to be quite frustrating, particularly the last section in the Bear Cave, so we’re working on improving that. We’re also hard at work on a new Survival region, but that won’t be ready until (most likely) the update *after* the next one.

As you know we always like to keep a few surprises in our back pocket, but everything will be outlined in detail in the traditional Update Video we launch on update day. If you aren’t already doing so, it’s not a bad idea to subscribe to the Hinterland YouTube channel so you get notified when the update video goes live.


MOTION-CAPTURE SPACE



In a previous dev diary I mentioned that we’d been able to get our hands on the motion-capture gear from Capcom Vancouver’s now closed dev studio. We’ve been using the equipment and we thought you might like to catch a glimpse of the current set-up; this image is from the camera test we did to check out 18 of the 36 cameras. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough space in our current studio to set up all the cameras, but we’re looking for some overflow space so that we can set up all 36. In the short term, we’re going to remove the built-in desks and set up the gear in-house so that the animation team can very quickly and easily iterate on narrative scenes or gameplay animation in support of our Survival and Story goals. The animators whipped up this simple little animation to show you how well it works -- all told this took about an hour or so to shoot and integrate. It’s only a quick test and obviously not something we’d ever ship, but it’s fun as a proof of concept and, let’s face it, Jeremiah has some sweet moves worth sharing.




NINTENDO SWITCH VERSION



We get a lot of questions about when The Long Dark will be brought to the Nintendo Switch. As you may know, we spent some time last year trying to get the game up and running on Switch devkits and ran into a lot of performance issues.

The latest version of Unity -- which we’ll be rolling out as part of our next Survival update -- does offer some performance improvements (which should also make the Xbox and PlayStation versions of the game run more smoothly), but we still don’t find the Switch performance to be at an acceptable level yet. We’re going to keep working on it alongside our other priorities, but I want to set reasonable expectations around this -- not every game can run well on the Switch, and if we’re not able to get The Long Dark running at a level of performance and visual quality that I’m happy with, we won’t be shipping it. All that said, I’m still hopeful that we can find solutions to the current issues, and we think The Long Dark would be really compelling on this portable platform, so we’re not giving up!


*****

Thanks for reading this update, and if you’d like to share your thoughts about the contents of this developer diary, I hope you’ll take a few seconds to join the official The Long Dark community[www.hinterlandforums.com], as well as following us on Twitter. If you haven’t already done so, and you’d like to be kept up to date on project announcements outside of general development updates -- for example, sale events, new merchandise, and information about the studio -- please consider signing up for the Hinterland Newsletter[www.thelongdark.com]. And if you’re interested in more regular, bite-sized responses to community questions, make sure to check out the (almost) weekly Milton Mailbag[www.hinterlandforums.com].

See you where we see you!

Is there something that you've been wanting to ask about The Long Dark? The game's Creative Director Raphael van Lierop has been answering fan questions on our official forums[www.hinterlandforums.com]. Fans of the game can ask questions, and for each Dispatch a handful of those are selected and answered.

You don't need to be a member of our official forums to read the answers - though if you do sign up you can ask your own questions!

Be sure to read past Dispatches to see if your question has already been addressed!

The next dispatch is going out on Friday, so get your questions posted on our official forums[www.hinterlandforums.com] now to be considered.

Stay informed on the Milton Mailbag and The Long Dark by our newsletter[thelongdark.com].

Hello community,

We’ve just hotfixed The Long Dark to v1.34 [37910] to address some issues that surfaced in our recent update, VIGILANT FLAME.

You’ll find the complete changelist for the hotfix below.

Hotfix to v1.34 [37910] -- Release Notes

*[All] Updated "Use" verbs to better reflect player activity in the game. Verbs should now more accurately reflect intended use.
*[All] Pass Time Until Ready when Melting snow now stops when snow is melted. Boiling to Purify melted snow is now a separate Cooking action, as before.
*[All] Cooking times for partial-unit food items now scale correctly. I.e. 0.5 Kg of meat now takes half the full-unit time cost.
*[All] Wildlife will no longer attack players during accelerated time, unless they were already detected prior to beginning an activity. This addresses an issue where players were being ambushed by predators during accelerated time actions.
*[All] Fixed Mac keyboard icons for Placement actions appearing on PC.
*[All] Fixed Players being able to use a Recycled Can/Cooking Pot to cook when the item was at 0% Condition.
*[All] Fixed Quick Placement when using the Steam Controller.
*[All] Fixed exploit where players were able to restore burned food by placing it back onto an active cooking surface.
*[All] Fixed Mac trackpad secondary click not being active for Placement.
*[All] Fixed issue causing previously-killed animal corpses to reappear after updating the game.
*[All] Fixed issue causing active monitor to change when switching screen resolution.
*[All] Fixed players losing Placement functionality when interrupting Placement from the Pack.
*[All] Fixed camera bob persisting after lighting the Storm Lantern while walking.
*[All] Fixed issue causing players to exit the Fishing UI immediately after catching a fish, instead of being able to continue.
*[Survival Mode] Fixed issue causing arrows to become invisible after firing them.
*[Survival Mode] Many minor environment fixes to Hushed River Valley.
*[Survival Mode] Fixed numerous Hushed River Valley locations where players could become stuck in the terrain.
*[Survival Mode] Fixed Scrolling in Journal Notes.
*[Survival Mode] Fixed players becoming stuck in-between rocks near the bridge closest to Draft Dodger's Cabin in Pleasant Valley.
*[Wintermute] Fixed rare issue where players were permanently afflicted with Cabin Fever in some very old Wintermute saves.
*[Wintermute] Fixed getting stuck when crouching inside Jeremiah's Cabin during Wintermute Episode Two.
*[Wintermute] Fixed issue where players were unable to place items inside Jeremiah's Cabin during Wintermute Episode Two.

###End of Changelist###

Hello community,

We’ve just updated The Long Dark to v1.33, adding an entirely new wilderness Region, brand-new gameplay features including an overhauled Cooking system, as well as numerous bug fixes in an update we’re calling VIGILANT FLAME.

For all the details, please check out this update video. Full Release Notes are available below:


Vídeo do YouTube™: The Long Dark -- Vigilant Flame (Game Update)
Exibições: 38
Vigilant Flame, the latest free update to The Long Dark, is available now. It features new cooking mechanics, Buffer Memories and an all new region in Hushed River Valley.


New Hushed River Valley Region



Hushed River Valley is a multi-leveled Region that connects to Mountain Town, extending some of the same difficult terrain you see around the town of Milton. The new Region is full of waterfalls, rivers and streams, and lots of cliff areas, but includes no man-made shelters. It’s a highly challenging wilderness area, but keep an eye out for natural shelters, supply caches, and perhaps a mysterious Signal Fire to guide your way.

New Manual Cooking System



We’ve overhauled the cooking system so that it doesn’t occur in a simple menu interface anymore. You place cookable items in the new Recycled Can or Cooking Pot items, or on hot surfaces — namely, stones near burning campfires or on the surface of lit cook stoves — and wait for them to cook. Each food item requires a different amount of time to cook. If you remove the item too soon, it’ll be undercooked, and eating it could result in food poisoning. If you wait too long, you could overcook the item to the point where it becomes an inedible burned lump, thus wasting the valuable food and fuel resources you spent on it. You will also prepare water in a similar way. It means managing multiple timelines when cooking, but it should also free you up to take on other tasks simultaneously.

Buffer Memories



We’ve added new narrative collectibles to Survival Mode, in the form of “buffer memories”. These are the last documents stored in a computer’s memory before all the technology around Great Bear and beyond, was suddenly rendered inert by the mysterious aurora. Now, when the aurora appears at night, you might see some computer terminals display snippets of notes, emails, reports — information that provides more background on the world of The Long Dark. We’ve implemented a first series of Buffer Memories in VIGILANT FLAME, across a series of specific locations. Remember, each location may have more than one memory to offer. You can track discovered memories in the Collections section of your Survival Journal.

Radial Menu Quick Placement



As a result of our Manual Cooking work, you can now place items directly from the Radial. This means that you no longer necessarily have to go into your Pack to drop items for later placement. Radial Placement will be useful for quickly arranging various items, and is something we plan to use for more gameplay*oriented placement in the future. For now, the primary benefit is placing items from your Food radial directly on campfires or stoves, for cooking, or placing Pots and Recycled Cans on cooking surfaces so that you can cook food or melt snow for water.

General Fixes



In addition to these four main features, we’ve made dozens of bug fixes, made performance improvements across the game, and added several minutes of new ambient music to Survival Mode.

***

Changelist v1.33 [37608]

General Fixes

* [All] Fixed Crows spawning below ground.
* [All] Fixed Intro Movie not respecting Master Volume settings.
* [All] Updated localization.
* [All] Fixed duplicated resolutions appearing in Options.
* [All] Fixed FOV being limited to 100.
* [UI] Fixed inventory actions becoming broken when switching between Keyboard/Mouse and Controller.
* [UI] Improved responsiveness of Resolution Selector in Options.
* [UI] Fixed Main Menu flashing briefly before intro video when running the game on Mac or in DX9 mode.
* [UI] Fixed missing Title when viewing Map Screen in Mountain Town.
* [UI] Updated Region Description formatting to be more consistent.
* [UI] Updated UI art to include Climbing Socks.
* [UI] Fixed Feat progress bars to better represent progress.
* [UI] Updated Main Menu Custom Mode text to be easier to read.
* [UI] Fixed Fish appearing with missing or bright colours when taken from a fridge and inspected.
* [UI] Fixed Earmuffs appearing on Paper Doll when equipping other Accessories.
* [UI] Moved "Sort" icon in the Inventory screen.
* [UI] Updated Clothing UI tooltips for all platforms.
* [Linux] Fixed light shaft rendering incorrectly.
* [Linux] Fixed audio not playing for some players.
* [Wintermute] Fixed checkpoint screenshot showing image from previous save.

Gameplay

* [All] Fixed momentary freeze when opening Inventory for the first time.
* [All] Fixed Light Source menu being unavailable when Flashlight is the only light source.
* [All] Scaled size of Fish to work with new cooking system.
* [All] Consolidated UI actions around a single verb - "Use".
* [All] Updated controller actions to support new Quick Placement feature.
* [All] Fixed Aurora not always appearing correctly when player is Passing Time/Resting at specific intervals.
* [All] Updated cooking surfaces around the world for new Cooking System.
* [All] Updated Campfire placement
* [All] Fixed UI not always updating after performing an action such as Purifying water.
* [All] Fixed Clothing Screen stats not always updating after changing clothing.
* [All] Fixed Living Off the Land achievement progress being reset when drinking tea crafted from Reishi Mushrooms or Rosehips.
* [All] Fixed items falling through certain rugs.
* [All] Fixed missing audio when crafting Tinder from Sticks.
* [All] Updated instant kill regions on cliff faces to be more forgiving in some locations.
* [All] Fixed incorrect text appearing when interacting with an active Fire during windy conditions.
* [All] Updated Disclaimer screen not respecting game language when set to Dutch.
* [All] Player can no longer eat ruined food from the Inspection screen.
* [All] Fixed Weak Ice warning persisting if player loads game while standing on Weak Ice.
* [All] Fixed Bear becoming stuck in animation when not in player’s view.
* [All] Fixed player being able to become stuck when attacked while Crafting.
* [All] Fixed Campfire rewarding extra Charcoal.
* [All] Fixed extra arrow being generated after Harvesting a corpse then saving and reloading.
* [All] Realigned Wolf positioning when it feeds off a Moose carcass.
* [All] Adjusted the speed of Rifle shot sound effect when firing indoors.
* [All] Fixed unintentional movement when player is using the Radial Menu with a Controller.
* [All] Fixed misaligned blood decal after harvesting corpse.
* [All] Disabled Radial Menu while holding a stunned Rabbit.
* [All] Lantern now shows Gallons when Imperial Units are selected. Was showing Ounces previously.
* [Survival Mode] Fixed Locations Discovered in the Stats screen to account for Regions with variable number of interiors due to ruined structures.
* [Survival Mode] General fixes for a wide variety of minor locations to make them easier to Survey.
* [Survival Mode] Fixed rare scenario where WINTERMUTE map could appear in your Survival Mode map list.
* [Survival Mode] Fixed Moose getting stuck in running animation when it dies while running.
* [Survival Mode] Fixed not being able to Survey Wolf Carcasses that spawn into the game.
* [Survival Mode] Fixed arrow trails remaining after firing an Arrow in certain scenarios.
* [Survival Mode] Removed Stone Church from Faithful Cartographer requirements, as it was causing an issue with legacy game saves.
* [Survival Mode] Fixed Moose entering hold position when player is holding a light source.
* [Survival Mode] Fixed wildlife resetting location after player transitions to a new Region/interior.
* [Survival Mode] Fixed player becoming stuck when saving and loading while on stairs.
* [Survival Mode] Fixed non-interactable brush near Lonely Lighthouse.
* [Survival Mode] Improved Moose pathfinding when under trees.
* [Wintermute] Fixed player being unable to save if they delete all their Story saves, while playing Wintermute.
* [Wintermute] Fixed several locations where Bear could become stuck during Jeremiah's Folly mission.
* [Wintermute] Fixed missing textures on Cache boxes.
* [Wintermute] Fixed controller input registering during Episode One ending, resulting in UI popup.
* [Wintermute] Autosave option now only appears when playing Wintermute.
* [Wintermute] Fixed issue where Player could not enter Hank's Hatch during the Episode Two side mission if they unlocked the hatch, but were missing the letter.
* [Wintermute] Fixed deer carcass disappearing at the opening of Episode One if Player interacts with, saves, then reloads game.
* [ Wintermute] Fixed Cabin Fever icon appearing in Story Mode, even though the player can not get Cabin Fever in Story Mode.
* [Custom Mode] Adjusted how Wildlife Flee chance is applied.
* [Custom Mode] Adjusted loot tables.

Art/Environment

* [All] Fixed missing texture from the Burnt Flare when viewed in Inspection mode.
* [All] Fixed Smoke "glowing" at night or in fog.
* [Art] Updated Gun Rack scaling to better match Rifle size.
* [Enviro] Tweaked many item placements.
* [Enviro] Fixed numerous locations where objects clip into the environment.
* [Enviro] Polish pass on all Regions.
* [Enviro] Fixed floating snow banks.
* [Enviro] Fixed instances of bushes clipping into trees.
* [Enviro] Fixed Climbing Rope texture not appearing correctly.
* [Enviro] Fixed stretched texture on fallen tree trunk.
* [Enviro] Fixed numerous locations where players could become stuck.
* [Enviro] Updated various tree groups that were missing collision.
* [Enviro] Fixed some Ropes being difficult to interact with from the bottom.
* [Enviro] Fixed floating Rosehip bushes in Timberwolf Mountain.
* [Enviro] Fixed trees and bushes populating the same location in Desolation Point.
* [Enviro] Fixed Flag clipping into Lake Cabins.
* [Enviro] Removed extra exterior window on certain cabins.
* [Survival Mode] Fixed Moose scratch texture on trees appearing stretched.
* [Wintermute] Fixed Aurora during Episode One introduction sequence flickering at certain angles.

### END OF CHANGELIST ###

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27 DE ABRIL - HINTERLAND_COMMUNITY
Hello everyone,

Since the last time I updated you in February, the team’s been working hard on a variety of things.

Some have been more “housekeeping” related, like dealing with Unity updates, general performance improvements (as the game continues to get bigger and bigger and our scenes more complex, we have to continuously optimize to make sure performance remains above an acceptable threshold), integrating new tools and features into our development pipeline, and adding new people to our growing development team.

This is all part of our commitment to continue building on the foundation of The Long Dark’s Survival Mode, while also working on new features and content for our Episode One and Two “Redux” (which I first discussed here: http://www.thelongdark.com/news/dev-diary-february-2018/) which is solidifying the foundation for Episode Three and onward.

Let me cherry-pick a few things to share with you at this point. Keep in mind that each of these entries is at a different stage of development and while some of these things will end up in our next Survival Mode update, some will need further polish and tuning before they are ready.

New Region: “River Valley” (placeholder name)



New waterfall effects in action.



New approach to landscape layout and tree density helps keep visual interest while forcing players to keep close eye on the horizon.



River Valley features new rock formations with much steeper verticals.



Ice caves with bioluminescent moss.

Our goal with this new region is to create an environment that doesn’t have a single human-made shelter on it -- so, even more rugged and isolated than Timberwolf Mountain with its lonely Mountaineer’s Hut. This new region has also been a test-bed of sorts, for a new approach to how we create our environments, including new rocks and more varied tree density. We’ve also added a new type of cave system, redone our waterfalls, and have focused on having the entire region be more of an “environmental” puzzle for you to solve. We’re also experimenting with varying elevations and a range of climbing (or caving) options to find your way around.

New Gameplay: Manual Cooking



Cooking around the campfire.



Different cooking implements offer different benefits.

This is something we’ve been discussing for a long time and our most recent prototypes have proven fruitful to the extent that I feel comfortable sharing them with you. We’ve overhauled the cooking system so that it doesn’t occur in a simple menu interface anymore. Now you have to place food items -- either in cooking vessels like pots or cans, or on their own -- on hot cooking surfaces like stovetops or rocks around a campfire. Each type of cooking source -- whether it be a single-burner stove, a campfire, or a large “cooker” like the one you see in the Pleasant Valley farmhouse, has a number of available “cooking slots”. The cooking times have been tuned (still in progress!) to account for the fact they happen in real-time in the game now -- i.e. not during an accelerated progress bar. We’re still working through a variety of user interface issues with this system but we feel it’s pretty promising. This work has also opened up the possibility of placing items in the world directly from the radial menu, which feels natural and is a much quicker way to manipulate things in the world, vs. having to first drop them from your Pack and manipulate them in placement mode. We’re still working on this but the initial tests are promising!

New Content: Buffer Memories



The aurora may reveal old mysteries through the words of long-forgotten (or long-frozen?) residents of Great Bear.

I discussed these in my last update, and we have the first series of Buffer Memories in the game. These are basically “lore drops” that will live in Survival Mode, but are only available on certain screens and then only when the Aurora is active. Our first pass on these will be focused on adding some background history to the world, presented as the words of Great Bear residents from days, weeks, or years before the events of The Long Dark. Future Buffer Memory “drops” may also link up to gameplay events or supply caches. Active terminals can be interacted with to read the content, which will then be added to your Survival Journal. We plan to expand this with different display types and even devices.

Redux: Mission Overhaul

We’ve completed our overhaul of the mission structures in our current Episodes One and Two, as part of the “Redux” work. The result is that the mission structure that was almost entirely linear at launch, is now almost entirely open. There are still “critical path” narrative missions that need to be completed before you can move on to the next episode, but many missions can now be completed in any order, and several are completely optional. We’re also adding a new opening to the game, and adding some new “side missions”.

New System: Dynamic Conversation Interface



Now that the mission structure has been opened up, we can’t use linear cinematics to present our story anymore. We’ve moved everything into first-person dialogues between Mackenzie and the NPCs, like Grey Mother, and Jeremiah. We’ve also integrated all the Trust unlocks into the main dialogue flow.

To support this, we’ve come up with a new dialogue system. Rather than using the standard cardinal points menu for selecting topics, we’re putting all the topics directly into the world. How topics are presented will tell you something about their relative importance to you, and to the NPC survivors. You’ll quickly be able to pick out the topics that link up to mission content, vs. the ones that are more about providing backstory. Topics that depend on you having sufficient Trust with an NPC will hide in the “background”, and as Trust is gained, they will resolve to become clearer to you, so that eventually they will be selectable.

This is our way of tying the dialogue in the game more closely to the survivor’s state of mind, and making it feel more like a living, breathing aspect of the story and the characters you meet as you explore. Because of this new system, all dialogue in the game will now be fully voiced.

We’re still working on this but we feel it’s a promising direction, and most importantly it supports a lot of flexibility in terms of when and how we unlock access to content, which means the game will be more dynamic for the player.

New Gameplay: Bear Spear



This is pretty self-explanatory. The feature is at an early stage so consider this a “tease”.

Episode Three

Not to sound like a broken record, but I’ll share more specific news about Episode Three when I think the time is right. The time is not yet right.

Xbox One X & PS4 Pro Enhancements

Lots of people have been asking us about this. We have a first pass on higher quality visual settings for Xbox One X and PS4 Pro. We’re also working on HDR-support for both. 4k support works on Xbox One X but we’re not sure we’ll be able to get it working on PS4 Pro, due to performance. We’re still working on optimizations and we’ll see where we end up!

In order to support these enhancements we’ve had to implement an entirely new post-effects pipeline in the game, the side benefit being that we’ll be able to get an improved anti-aliasing and HDR-lighting solution in the game for all our PC players as well!

When Will We Get All This Goodness?

We’re working on a new update to Survival Mode, with a tentative release planned for late May or early June, depending on how testing and finaling goes. Of the above list, you should expect to see the New Region, Manual Cooking, and Buffer Memories. Anything beyond that will come down to testing, optimization, bug-fixing, and finaling progress. As always, our aim is to launch all major updates simultaneously for Steam, Xbox One, and PS4, with GoG and WeGame following shortly thereafter.

So hopefully the next time you hear something official from me regarding progress, it’ll be to tell you that the new Survival Mode update is ready!

Stay warm out there.

- Raphael

To keep up to date on the latest news, be sure to sign up to our official mailing list![hinterlandgames.us7.list-manage.com]