Hello Community,
We've just hotfixed The Long Dark Sandbox to v.338. In addition to several general bug and crash fixes, we've also made some changes to the in-game lighting.
Lighting Updates
In Tireless Menace, we added colour grading to improve the treatment of colours and light in the game for various times of day. Unfortunately, this had the unexpected side effect of making the game darker for some players, depending on their hardware.
In this Hotfix, we've updated all the building interiors to be more navigable during the day. We've also added an additional layer of Time of Day lighting, to better reflect the way you'd expect light to change over the course of the day. Prior to this, our interiors had two light settings -- dark (from night), and light (from dawn to dusk). Now, we gradually ramp up the daylight from dawn, to peak brightness around Noon, and then start to fade down to full darkness by dusk again.
You can get a better idea of how these lighting changes look in-game in this short video.
Gameplay Tweaks
Fatigue Tuning: We also re-tuned Fatigue so it is consistent across all Experience Modes. Previously, since you would be less tired at the end of a Pilgrim day, this would mean you weren't usually fully Exhausted at the end of your "active" day and therefore couldn't Rest all the way through the night. Now, if you play with a good reasonably average activity level, you should be Exhausted by the end of a full day of exploration and activity, and be able to Rest all the way through the night. This should be true for Pilgrim, Voyageur, and Stalker.
Parasites: We've decided to limit the Intestinal Parasites Affliction to Stalker mode only. Parasites definitely make the game more challenging by introducing food scarcity built around risks to the use of available Wolf and Bear meat, which is more in line with the play style preferred by our Stalker players.
Cabin Fever: We've added a Cabin Fever Risk warning, to provide plenty of warning before you get Cabin Fever. This provides you with the opportunity to change your behaviour to avoid getting it. Depending on what we observe from our playtesters, if this is effective, we may re-introduce Cabin Fever as a potential risk earlier in the game (whereas currently the risk doesn't become a real concern until you have survived for 50 days in Voyageur (25 days in Stalker; Cabin Fever doesn't exist in Pilgrim).
More detail on the changes below:
THE LONG DARK SANDBOX HOTFIXED to v.338 CHANGELIST
* [CRASH] Fixed Mac-specific crash when exiting interiors in Coastal Highway.
* [CRASH] Fixed rare crash on Windows at startup.
* [SAVING] Fixed issue with game not saving on some Unicode Windows systems.
* [SAVING] Fixed problem with starting the game in an interior in Pleasant Valley and not saving the state of that interior.
* [GAMEPLAY] Improved the Warmth benefit gained by Sprinting.
* [GAMEPLAY] Added Cabin Fever Risk.
* [GAMEPLAY] Intestinal Parasites now only occur in Stalker.
* [GAMEPLAY] Reduced chance of fishing line breaking upon successfully catching a Fish.
* [GAMEPLAY] Tuned Fatigue so players are likely to be able to Rest through an entire night after a full day of activity.
* [ART] Improved lighting for all interiors, including a new system for Time of Day lighting.
* [MISC.] Added a Brightness slider to Display Options.
* [BUG] Fixed issue with AI sometimes teleporting while pathfinding.
* [BUG] Fixed issue with bears not respawning.
* [BUG] Fixed issue where antibiotics button could reappear when already taken dose for parasites that day.
* [BUG] Fixed issue with screen inverting when inspecting the Magnifying Glass.
* [BUG] Fixed issue with JackRabbit Island not being discoverable.
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